Squig Hopper

A very special thanks to Sebastian Archer for contributing to our site. Sebastian has won four 1st Place Golden Demons since 2005 and his work is an inspiration to painters all over the world.

I painted this figure in a mad panic in the 4 days leading up to GD haha... somehow I finished, although I was up VERY late on the last night!

I wanted to use a fun, bright and classic sort of colour scheme for the goblin, but because I wanted to make sure that the rider remained the focus of the figure, I used much more neutral colours for the squig. Most of the brightest colours are around the goblin's face.

Painting the checks on the hood was a horrible experience! The tapering, rounded shape made it a very tricky game to make them look regular and even hehe....there are a few little cheat areas hidden on it, where I had to have oddly shaped checks in order to make all the squares meet up properly.

The idea of the base, was to make the hopper more dynamic by having him raised up in the air above the down-sloping rocks of the base. I did this because I knew that he would have to enter the fantasy large category in GD (strange rules for OZ GD), and would compete against much larger and more impressive figures. I was worried that the little squig hopper would get lost amongst the other entries, so giving him a lot more height was my way of trying to grab attention. I had to put a big heavy flattened lead fishing sinker in the base to counterbalance the weight of the figure though, and stop him toppling over!

The stones on the base are cork - most of the rock face is a single piece of cork, and I carved the stone shapes out of it using a knife first, then files to make the surface smoother. The edges of the 'pyramid base' are jsut plastic. I used a normal GW 40mm base, then created the basis of the shape with cork, then cut up and old blister pack and stuck a piece on to the back and each side. Then just carefully cut and filed it into shape so that the joins weren't visible.

I was very lucky to win the silver trophy at GD :)

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