Forest Spirits On The Cheap

[Thurizdan]

Dia duit my fellow seers of war! After my foray in to the realm of ice, granite and bloody murder with my Khaine themed army, I have reformed and decided to get in touch with my natural side. As usual, I'm trying to save as much money as possible, being a penniless youth, so this army will involve a lot of recycling.

I picked a forest spirits theme but I wanted to avoid making it too powergamery so for the moment the target lineup isn't quite so harsh. At the moment I'm thinking:

Treeman Ancient
Branchwraith
Spellsinger on Unicorn
Wild Rider Noble (WiP)

8 Dryads (WiP)
8 Dryads
8 Dryads
15 Dryads

3 Treekin (WiP)
3 Treekin
9 Wild Riders (WiP)
3 Warhawk Riders

With upgrades this comes out to 2,250 points (it's another tournament army). Notably lacking is a second Treeman which I omitted because we've been threatened with a comp system that specifically forbids it.

On to the physical aspect, the small Dryad groups will be actual Dryad models. The large group will be converted out of some Kroot that I have on the shelf (I need to think of some fluff for why these guys will look so weird). The Treekin will be converted from Ogre Bulls that I no longer have a use for. I'm going to have a crack at making a Treeman from the plastic woods set; I'll have to get my best sculpting hat on. I'm turning some Brettonian Knights into Wild Riders and the Green Knight as their leader, I might use Pegasus Knights as my Warhawks too. Oh and the Fay Enchantress obviously for the Unicorn.

So I have my first images for show here because lets face it, most of you didn't read that wall o' text. All of these are unfinished and need touching up:

First Treekin









Wild Noble

[Thurizdan]

Second lot of images:


Dryads







Wild Rider Test

[Fallan]

Looking realy good! But I'd like to see some pics without that strong flash or lightsource since I believe that it takes a way a lot of the quality of your work..

[Thurizdan]

Yeah, I used flash cause I took them in the evening. I'll get some better ones tomorrow.

*EDIT
As promised, some slightly clearer pictures and a litle extra work done. The banners on the Noble are fern fronds in case you were curious.

[Thurizdan]

Some pictures of the Wild Riders, a couple more finished. I wanted to keep a slight Brettonian fell to them as if they were knights who had become lost in the forest and became forest spirits or some such. Also, remember these are being painted for the third time so the paint is a bit thick in some spots. (excuses)

[Braad]

I honestly don't like the treekin. The tree sticking out of his head is weird, the tree next to it doesn't look very real, and the base looks a bit too neat with that stream straight accross it and such a neat edge.

The rest is awesome, and the idea is cool! Your bases look very nice.
If you put the ogre on a same such base, and without a tree from his head, it would be cool, as the rest of his body is very nicely done. A few of the leftover branches from the dryad sprue growing from his back or something would probably work much better.
Maybe create some kind of unevenness on the base with greenstuff, paint as normal and fill the lower bits with what you use for water to make some kind of swamp idea. Or at least a stream that swirls a bit with low, not too sharp edges.

[static grass]

I love what you have done with the green knight! The horns look great and his banner is awesome, where did you get the leaves from?

The theme is very good.

By warseer don't think I have not noticed teh number of WE threads at the moment

[Thurizdan]

Thanks for the replies!

@Braad: The stream is going to be part of a display base and I'd already made the other two. The reason for the sheer edge is because they are going to be in a recess in the board and I can build up the bank around the unit so it slopes much more gently. The stream is straight because it's too hard to line up with the board otherwise. I agree the shrubbery on his head isn't very lifelike, I just had this old plastic Christmas tree lying about and thought I'd make use of it. Does anyone else think it looks silly? I'll take it off if everyone thinks I should.

@static grass: Thanks but to be honest, its pretty hard to make a bad Green Knight, it's just such a fantastic sculpt. The leaves are fronds from some variety of Tasmanian fern in my backyard, good luck getting them in Norway. I blame all the Wood Elf projects on the environmentalist movement. Maybe I'll make an army of lumberjacks and oil drillers to compensate.

Right then, here are the other two Treekin. The grey one has a glowing crystal in his stomach that matches the eyes. Sculpting another stomach is too hard. He also has birds from the Giant kit and greenstuff accessories by Luis Vuton. The brown Treekin has a face sculpted from greenstuff which is a cross between an Easter Island statue and Bob Marley (could be the dreadlocks). His pants have woodgrain pinstripes to add something interesting for the eye.














I've got three more Treekin to do, they're underway and I have painted three Pegasus Knights up for my Warhawks but I don't want to post photos until I can get a drill to pin them onto their bases.

Any ideas on how I can convert Kroot into Dryads? I was thinking just cut off the hands and replace with Dryad bits. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[kormas]

wow, it is a very good idea, and i know the feeling of having to create an army out of other bitz .

the i really like the tree kin, a VERY good idea, my only critisizm for them is that you might want to try and make the pants blend a bit more, caus at the moment they still look like they are wearing pants .

my only dislike are the wild riders, they have way to much armour on them, i personaly think they still look to much like normal brettonian knights, not sure how you would fix it, but hey, they are better than nothing

the green knight fits really well, the horns seal the deal .

over all it is looking like it could be a very interesting army

[Thurizdan]

The pants are easy to explain away! I'll say the Treekin are wooden forms used as a cage/slave collar for a trapped soul who did something bad to the forest like chopping down trees or starting fires or littering. Empty, they are nondescript but when a soul is placed inside, their residual self image (I stole that from the Matrix) shapes their prison to look like they did when they were alive. So I guess that there were a lot of fat lumberjacks wearing pants in Athel Loren that day. They still have gnarled and treelike bits because they can't alter some of their body. Sort of like the fish faced pirates from the Pirates of the Carribbean sequels.

If the Wood Elves had a heavier Forest Spirit cavalry option I would have used it There's nothing to say that they aren't actual Brettonians under the spell of the forest or maybe dead Brettonians animated by spites. You'll notice that in the 'Eavy Metal Brettonian army, only the Green Knight has any green on him, none of the other Knightly models have green anywhere in there heraldry. So there's a small difference for ya.

[Kaos]

Inspiring! Very cool stuff, makes me want to get my ogres out again.. altough i will make them chaos ogres..

Cheers!
Kaos

[Jormi_Boced]

Neat idea with the treekin. I look forward to seeing more of you list brought to fruition.

[BeatTheBeat]

Great execution! Your painting style really makes them look like they're right out of an acrylic painting. Inspiring

Cheers,

BTB

[Thurizdan]

The Ogre Kingdoms are really great for customizing since you can just say "oh he was a mercenary in the Southern Chaos Wastes" and give your Hunter a boomerang. But the plastics are also the cheapest Ogre-sized models which helps a lot. And I'm sure, Kaos, that you can make your Chaos Ogres far superior to Games Workshop's hideous attempt.

It's funny, I've been asked several times before whether I also painted on canvas, I wonder why that is...

[Thurizdan]

I did two test pieces for my Kroot-to-Dryads, just added arms and made the feet look like roots. Is this enough do you think? Ignore the paint job, they were once Daemonettes in a Malal Chaos Army.

[Jormi_Boced]

I think they look pretty dryady!

[Thurizdan]

I'll drench one in Devlan Mud, see how it turns out.

[MF3000]

A lot of innovative ideas, I think the greenstuff work can use minor refinement, but wow... I loveeeee your ideas for ogres/treekin. It's ... fantastic. So much so I'm subscribing and feel the need to have a few ogre/treekin running around.

sj

[Thurizdan]

Well I'm flattered MJ3000! Yeah I didn't bother too much with the GS. The Treekin head wasn't meant to be particularly realistic or anything.

[Thurizdan]

Well here are the test painted Kroot-Dryads. I started off painting them dark but I changed my mind and went for something a little more eyecatching. The photos were a little blurry so I was lazy and just sharpened them up a bit in the GIMP.







So what do you think? Should I make some more?