Urban Werewolf, AK miniatures - Part 3 of 4

Following on from my previous posts about werewolves one of the reasons I bought them in the first place was that I had been recently rereading collections of old 2000 AD comics and one in particular that I remembered about Judge Dredd battling werewolves, drawn by Steve Dillon from way back in the summer of 1983.

Get down Shep!

In the preamble the authors, Wagner & Grant, mentioned that they wanted to show that the werewolves still had a trace of humanity and he indicated this by showing them still wearing fragments of their clothing. When I first saw the models I wondered if I could produce a similar effect with one of these figures (that's the reason I bought two identical figures in the first place). With this in mind I decided that I would make an urban werewolf.

Original model

Point (or Tail) of no return

In the Judge Dredd story the werewolves are shown wearing ripped and torn trousers but more noticeable is that they don't have tails (I'm not sure if werewolves generally have long tails or not), so obviously the first thing I did was commit myself to the idea and snip off the model's tail with my side cutters. I know I was going to use greenstuff to make the tatty trousers but I thought that rather than simply cover the fur I would file down the metal, hoping this would give the impression that the werewolf was actually wearing the trousers rather than just having them placed on it. With a Sharpie pen I marked the area of the clothing so that I didn't remove too much of the detail down the legs and waist and then filed down the fur detail in the appropriate area.

The greenstuff was applied and smoothed out using a rounded metal handle of my trusty scribe. then using the same scribe I added the seams and also created the shredded edges of the trousers. Once the main area of greenstuff had cured I added the pocket just to give an extra dimension to the model.

Comparison view of the two models 

The claw scratch marks effect were added to the door with a pencil.

As previously mentioned I wanted to give the impression that this werewolf lived in a ruined urban setting as depicted in the old Judge Dredd story. Therefore the base was painted in shades of grey rather than brown and added off cuts of plastic sprue and card to compliment the ravished urban look as opposed to the previous model which had a deliberate rural feel. Powders were used for the rust effect.

Just another day in Mega-City One.

Just a quick post for everyone that had their formative years influenced by British comics in the 1970/80's.

Mega-City Judges, Mongoose Publishing

"The judges are the lawkeepers of Mega-City One, fighting to protect innocent citizens from criminals and scum. Few in number, the judges welcome only the best and the brightest into their ranks, and not all of those survive the 15 year training regime. A force of judges will be very well equipped and able to handle most situations."

 That quick overview from the Mongoose Publishing website.

Way back in the mists of time (or for any younger readers: the late 1970's) my older cousin used to collect the comic 2000AD featuring of course Judge Dredd; my older brother used to buy Starlord (the original home of the Strontium Dog character) and I had the Beano and Dandy. Naturally I used to read all the 'big boys' comics when they were literally handed down to me. 

These three figures, from the Justice Department Box Set by Mongoose Publishing, are painted to match how my brother remembered the Judges from the comic. I've seen the figures painted up with golden eagle on the right shoulder and the left shoulder pad painted yellow, but my brother wanted both to be the same colour. I later checked an old comic and the rule book from the role-player game and saw the shoulder pads were, in fact the same colour, normally a dark shade of yellow. 

The older comics also show the uniform to be a very dark shade of blue (navy?), not black or a lighter shade of blue I've seen in later editions of the comic or models. I assume this is because with black it is difficult to show highlights and shades and still making the image eye-catching. Looking at the uniform now it does seem an odd mix of colours but I still like it (nostalgia is a wonderful thing).

Judge Super Dude (remember him Ade?)

Although I did actually want the uniform to have a satin look the varnish is still wet on some of these photos. The camera was borrowed so I needed to get it back to my friend as soon as.