Monday 29 May 2023

Tall Lady


 Warhammer has trained me to think of giants as being gangly, uncoordinated brutes. Well, not all giants are Warhammer giants.


DnD has plenty of shambling brutes for the players to fight. Lurking Stone Giants, thuggish Hill Giants, the very large Chaos Dwarves that are Fire Giants and so on. But right up there at the top end of the Challenge Rating scale are the Cloud Giants, sophisticated and rich lordlings who live in Jack and the Beanstalk style castles. 


The tall lady here looks like she's drawing on that background. There's a few clues - the astrolabe on her staff, the clouds she's walking on, the 5e background fluff has mask-wearing specialists called Smiling Ones. Not a work of genius to figure it out, really. She's a Dungeons and Lasers piece, one of the stretch goals from the one I got all these swamps and trees from, and one of the most eye-catching.


If I'd been allowed to keep her for myself, she'd probably have gone with the colours in the old Monster Manual illustrations (3.5 for those who keep track). Pale blue skin, light green and purple cloth and lots of gold, as they're supposed to be fabulously wealthy. But I wasn't - my youngest snaffled the model, started painting it herself, got bored and demanded that I finish the job and gave me a detailed colour scheme to work from. 



Green, gold, a green glowing staff 'like she's using the power of nature', blond hair, blue eyes. Once that was done, she started adding extras like the diamonds on the mask, and proved quite the task master in terms of what was acceptable or not. It only took me two weeks to get approval. Personally, I preferred my first two versions of her optional mask - one in plain white (too boring), one with just the red checks (not complicated enough). The blue and red makes her look ever so slightly like a bonkers football supporter who can't decide if she's Scottish or English. But it's not my call, so I take no responsibility!

The size comparison Stormcast supports Ireland.


Great piece to work on, anyway. I can't remember the last time I tried to paint the irises on miniature eyeballs, but a giant is clearly the best place to start. Done, anyway, and straight off to gather dust on my daughter's shelves until I can teach her enough DnD to run a Giant PC!

5 comments:

  1. Great fun to do something on a rather different scale and she's come out looking great. Don't report me, but I think I agree with you on the mask paint scheme...

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  2. Lovely work! Is the mask detachable then?

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    1. It is, just slots into place. I didn't fancy drilling into her face for magnets, somehow, it felt disrespectful!

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  3. Ahhh that’s so great - I thought little kraken only designed the mask. It’s great to see her creative mind put you to work.

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    1. It is, although it would be even nicer if she was a little less... direct in her criticisms sometimes!

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