You may already know I have a thing for traditional Vampires. This week’s showcase features a slightly converted Mantic Ghoul. A head-swap made him into a vampire thrall. A suitable servant for Vlad. He also looks a bit like edgy Yoda in his teenage years, but that is incidental. So buckle up and I give you some pointers regarding the conversion, paintjob and basing.
The conversion is fairly simple: Just take a Mantic Ghoul body and add a Warlord Orc head. I chose the bald one with pointy teeth and eye patch. All of them have pointed teeth to some extent, but this specific head worked best for a Vampire thrall in my opinion.
Purple is the new black – painting the thrall
Just like Gruff last week this chap is a bit older. In fact I painted him when I got back into miniature painting after a longer hiatus due to work commitments in 2018.
I wanted something a bit different for the skin and decided to go for a desaturated purple combined with a medium green tunic. The only other colour is introduced via the thin yellow line on his tunic and the yellow moss on the base.
Nowadays I would push the contrast using a rather dark shadow colour (violet blue maybe) and add a bit of colour variation to the skin, maybe red, yellow or a warm brown. The tunic would also benefit from more shading with a dark green with a red bias.
This was also the first time I used Tamiya Weathering Master pigments to add dust effects to the clothing. They come in what looks like a make-up dish and can be applied with a small brush. They stay put, so don’t need fixing.
Fallen angel – basing the foul creature
The base is extremely simple. Just a bit of XPS arranged to look like stairs hewn in rock and a few flowers and bushes. The autumnal bushes add a bit of colour to the base and mirror the yellow accent colour used on the thrall. A few years ago I came across a cake topper featuring a little angel. To have more than one I fashioned a press mold and now can add broken angel statuettes as needed.
Worth noting are the Vallejo effect paints. The range also features a yellow lichen colour, which provides a good base to work from. You apply it in an irregular fashion with a sponge and then mix a bit of orange in to depict the slighter darker inner areas of the lichen. Less is more with this paint. So just lightly dip the sponge in it and remove excess paint with a paper towel. You can also add a faint dark grey line around the edges to delineate it more from the rock.
There we are. A simple conversion, that you could use to make a few thralls for an encounter. I hope you enjoyed the showcase and stay tuned for next week’s installment. Edgy Yoda or not, wield your brush with honor.
That is a very nice conversion idea, and great painting of course. You are always going the extra mile as showcased by the decoration on the tunic.
Thanks. It is a fairly simple conversion, but makes use of the Orc heads. I never liked the torsos of the set, but the heads are nice. I might come back to the Ghouls in some point and try out some other colour variations on the skin.