Week 15 (20 Oct - 26 Oct 2002)
Hamster gladiator
Octavius sighed and stretched his aching limbs. Rome had been nice, in some ways. He'd been planning on opening his own gladiatorial school soon, and meals at the Collosseum hadn't been that bad, really. Still, he supposed he couldn't regret taking the time-traveling interdimensional aliens up on their offer of a gladiator's paradise: the chance to battle a host of odd beings for ever-increasing purses.
Some of them were pretty tough characters, though, and it'd been all Octavius could do to hold his own. He hoped today's match would be something a little more familiar. A lion maybe, or some beefy ex-soldier.
The translucent hologram of a many-tentacled green alien appeared in front of him.
"Your next opponent is ready."
The gladiator nodded, and braced himself for teleportation.
When the stars cleared from his eyes, something was amiss. The cheering crowds of beings from across the galaxy were all in place. The black sand of the arena pit was much as always. His opponent, though. . . . Octavius scratched his head with the point of his gladius.
"What the bolus. . . ?"
Cute little guy, isn't he? This week's mini is a limited-edition piece sculpted by Sandra Garrity as part of the first Visions in Putty show on the 1listsculpting Yahoo group. Everyone involved sculpted a gladiator, and received a full set of the other participants' minis for taking part. (My piece was painted up for week 7.)
I started out with Reaper Oiled Leather and worked my way up from there. I'm not quite sure what most of the other colors are, as I started this a few weeks ago and just finished it up recently. He was a fairly quick job, and the drybrushing got a little stark, so I had to glaze back over it with some very thin Oiled Leather to add in a little depth and smooth the transitions a bit. The metals were done with GW Mithril Silver washed with a blue/brown ink mix, then brought back up to Mithril Silver on the highest highlights. The greens are old GW Snot Green highlighted with Vallejo Ivory. The pinks are a mix of Reaper colors, and the reds are GW and Vallejo.
If I had any more 25mm GW bases lying around, I'd tack this guy onto one of them just so I could sculpt on some tiny little hamster droppings. Fate has been kind to the viewer.
Back to Week 14 (13 Oct - 19 Oct 2002)