Bulding an Orc Shaman from scratch

December 30, 2007 by Blackhat · Filed Under Modeling & Scenery

As with the Night Goblin shaman, there is only one model available. And just as with the Night Goblin shaman, this just isn’t good enough. So, once again it’s time to go converting…

This project isn’t as ambitious as my other shaman-building attempts. Very little work is involved, and all the pieces used are from a single Orc boxed regiment.

Looking through the bits you get in a new set, I found that a number of them would go very well on a shaman. In fact, I had no need of any other bits, so if you buy a boxed regiment you can get 15 warriors and a shaman to go with them.

What I used:

The head with the leather hood / cap. Helmeted heads were out of the question, and the one with the topnot didn’t really fit too well. The hood looks sort of more shamany. The torso with the large stitching. Wizards can’t have armour, so it was either this body or the one with no stitches on the back. I preferred this one, and co-incidentally it suited my paint-scheme perfectly, as we shall see… The legs with the teeth hanging from the belt. Again, the bits of armour on some of the legs made them unsuitable, and the teeth (plus the pouches) made this set appealing. For my next shaman I will use the other set of legs which appealed, the ones which have a very short robe and various pendants and amulets. The left arm with the dagger. Sacrifical knives always suit wizards far better than whopping great cleavers. The right spear arm with the tooth on a wrist-band. The tooth decided it for me - another bit of magical paraphernalia. The spare human and Orc skulls on the sprue, plus two shield bosses. And that’s it!

First off, assemble the legs, body, and head. Unlike with the ordinary boys, it is fine for the shaman’s head to droop a bit, so no work is needed on the neck to raise the head. However, you will still need to trim the ball of the socket-and-ball joint between the legs and body - otherwise it just looks stupid. Shave the ball back to a millimetre or two, so that the polystyrene cement has something to grip. Fortunately, the somewhat stooped pose of the model will suit the shaman (but looks bloody stupid on the boys, oh well…).

On the right arm I chopped the spear off just above the hand, leaving perhaps three millimetres of shaft. On this I stuck two human and two Orc skulls, at various angles of facing. Cementing the two shield bosses back to back, I placed these on top of the last skull, facing forward and back, in the manner of a totem pole.

Once all this is done, painting can commence. I did the skin in my normal fashion (goblin green, with Orc flesh wash and nothing else), painted the skulls and staff-top white, using a little black in the eyes and armour wash (now black ink) in the teeth and nasal cavities, chequered the shaft of the staff in black and white, and then moved onto the clothing…

Up until actually painting it I hadn’t decided on the final colour scheme. I did have a few ideas, but waited until I had finished all the other Orcs to see how they turned out. What I did was this:

Shamans are dangerous. They can cause those around them to spontaneously ‘eadbang. So they need to be spotted easily, in order to be avoided. Because of this I eventually decided on a similar look to my Goblin shaman - red and yellow parti-coloured. Because this was an Orc, and Orcs aren’t anywhere near as colourful as Gobbos, I settled for one side of the tunic red, the other yellow. Blood red and sunburst yellow worked well, and chestnut wash finished them off perfectly - whilst it darkened and dirtied the red enough so that it was not ridiculously bright, it did not ruin the yellow, darkening it only slightly and giving it a great dirty look. Chestnut wash has to be the most useful and versatile of all the washes, and I can’t laud it enough. I have yet to find an end to its uses.

The skirt I painted Vomit Brown, and then washed this with chestnut as well - giving what I consider to be one of the best leather looks I have come up with - and I have a number of different leather shades from experimenting…

For the hood, I decided on a darker shade to give a brooding look - bestial brown with armour wash worked very well. The boots were painted vermin fur and washed with chestnut (yet again), and knife was done with chainmail, bestial brown and chestnut wash, and the adorned teeth with skull white. The large stitches were painted snakebite leather, as were whatever belts and straps that could be found.

Finish off the details such as claws, eyes, and teeth, attach the arms, and there you have it, one original Orc Shaman. And, as with the Orc boys, no undercoat was used, except for the yellow - and the results are just as good as ever.

Reproduced with permission from:
Jason Job © 2003