WIP Undead Empire Army - Undead Emperor/General on Skeletal Griffin

When last we left off, I had assembled the skeleton griffin and primed it with Krylon Almond primer. Additionally, I had primed the Empire general rider black.

I next washed the entire griffon with GW's Agrax Earthshade. However, I forgot that the material that Mythic Articulations uses to print its models is very absorbent and I ended up making the bone color too dark a brown. You have to water down the washes to an extent. I tried to lighten it up using a dry brush of bone, but it's not really working. I'll have to reprime the entire thing.

I've pretty much finished the mounted Emperor though. Everything was primed black except the laurel-wreathed skull, snatched from an Empire banner pole and primed Almond. I went with a red and gold color scheme, although it looks maybe more Castilian than Germanic Empire? All the metal parts were painted with GW's Leadbelcher, and then lightly coated in GW's Typhus Corrosion technical paint. I then did a dry brush of Ryza Rust over the metal to make it look dirty and rusty.

I've loved that banner for years. I've always thought it should be a true undead banner - not Empire! I still need to do the feathers.

WIP Undead Empire Army - Undead Emperor on Skeleton Griffin.

A little diversion project from adding the finishing touches to my undead classical Greek army. A mounted general with an army standard for my undead Empire army. Not really an "army", but a detachment or vexallation (as the Romans would call it). I have a few units of renaissance themed undead, including some wonderful models from Greebo Miniatures latest "Un-Renaissance" Kickstarter.

For this project I am doing a simple conversion using two different models: The plastic Empire General from Games Workshop and a Skeletal Griffin from Mythic Articulations. Mythic Articulations don't really produce gaming miniatures per se, but rather produce "anatomically accurate" skeletons of cryptids (mythical beasts). Brian Richardson is a gifted digital sculptor and puts some thought into how these animals would have really looked. Note the clavicle and the huge breast bone on the griffin. All their models are then 3D printed.

Mythic Articulations produces two griffins, one fully articulated and printed as one piece, and the other one in various pieces that you can articulate however you want. As you can see, I splurged for the "Griffin in a Can", because I wanted to be able to pose the figure to my liking. I was worried about the design because I imagined it would be fiddly and difficult to put together, but surprisingly, the ball and socket design allows you to fit the parts together very easily. The design is also fairly strong, and although I will probably have to glue it into its final configuration, it does allow you to try multiple poses without loss of strength. The only draw back is that the ball joints will be noticeable, even after painting and maybe some touch up work with some green stuff.

I was also worried about the scale as well. Mythic Articulations does not produce models according to a particular scale, say 28mm. As a result, for normal sized creatures such as a unicorn, the modes are far too big. But they can easily represent giant creatures and I have some in my armies such as an Asian Dragon, a Kirin, a European Dragon, a European Wyvern and a Cockatrice. Even though these models have given me a concept of the scale, I was still worried the griffin would still be too large for the GW figure and I'd have to build a howdah or something. But actually, as you can see, the size and shape of the shoulders/torso fits the General figure almost perfectly!

The General model is pretty much unconverted except for the head, I am using a skull ringed with a laurel leaf that is from a GW Empire battle standard. I primed the General figure black and the griffin almond using krylon spray primer. Then I assembled the Griffin in the configuration you see.