Pirate Ogre Whaler - Part 1 of 3

a.k.a Yet another pirate ogre.

This figure is the latest in the occasional series of models all based around the pirate ogre theme. These few posts record the rather torturous method I used to complete this miniature.

Initial mock up

The initial idea behind this figure was to create a figure based on the Long John Silver character from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic story 'Treasure Island'. I gave the model a greenstuff eye-patch and cut off one of the legs. I had planned on giving the figure a crutch, but more of this later.

Recalling the previous ogre pirates, I had supplied one with food and drink; thinking along these lines I wanted this ogre to be a hardened booze hound so I thought 'Give him a proper drink'. Rather than just a wimpy cup I reasoned why not give him the barrel to use as a beer jug.

The jug is made from a spare barrel I had left over from a previous raid on Ade's spares box. One end was cut away to form a hollow shape (although I then went and filled it back up again with plastic off cuts and melted it all with liquid poly cement to form a smooth surface).

The pipe is made from scrap plastic sprue simply using an approximate sized drill bit to hollow out the pipe and whittling away the shaft until it looked suitably pipe-like.

Note the liberal use of Blu-Tac. I use this to try out ideas to see if they'll work. It allows you to step back (literally) and view the model from a distance to see if they look right. You will see in the inital stages I had planned on having an owl sit on the ogre's shoulder (the owl was the only model bird I could lay my hands on as I didn't fancy the hard work of making another parrot).

Once happy with the basic idea I pinned the right foot of the model to the base using a small cutoff piece of a paper clip.

The smoothly filled barrel looked quite boring so being a proper ale fan I added a nice foamy head with greenstuff. I glued the barrel directly against the ogre's hand and, when dry, added a greenstuff handle.

The earring was made from cutting away a random piece of plastic I spotted lurking in Ade's spares box.

The tricorn hat is made from the ubiquitous greenstuff.

With the belly plate, I cut away the existing triangular 'teeth' and then modelled the skull and crossbones into place with greenstuff. This was done simply by using two long strips and an oval blob of greenstuff. Then using a blade, a scribe and a sculpting tool I cut and poked the material until it looked vaguely like a 'skull and crossbones' shape.

Useless walking stick

Note the owl is still only Blu-Tac'ed into position

The false leg was made from the cap of an empty Revell poly cement needle applicator. I made the majority of this figure at roughly the same time as the pirate ogre fisherman model but I got to this stage and just hit a mental blank. The main trouble was that it looked too similar to a previous ogre figure I had made (the ogre musician/bellower) especially with the false leg. It didn't help matters that I hadn't checked to see if this was the same limb I had lopped off the other miniature. Typically it was the same left leg - ahh fudge!

Originally I thought of having the figure hobbling along with a crutch tucked under his left arm, but I simply couldn't make this work. Someone had suggested the clever idea drilling a hole between the arm and the body to accommodate the head of the crutch but I still couldn't figure how the hand would hold the support. After giving up the crutch idea I then tried to make a walking stick from sprue. But to be perfectly honest it looked awful, the angles were all wrong (see photos above). I realised that instead of looking like a fearsome monstrous brute I had just made the ogre look like a disgruntled OAP ("Go and play round your own end, pesky little ogres! Moan, moan, gripe, gripe").