Big & Small: Old & New

Last month I took part in, and got the narrowest of victories in the painting contest on The Warhammer Forum, with my Blood Bowl Apes, and the spoils of victory is to pick the theme for the next contest.

A couple years ago I tried to enter these every month. It was great fun, win or lose (since it's not really the point) and good motivation to paint and do something new or unexpected.  The contests began to suffer from a slow down- taking a very long time between contests, languishing in limbo as it waited weeks for a poll to be put up, and I lost interest since it just didn't seem to be happening. But seems to have renewed interest of late and more timely chugging along, which is great news.

The theme for this time, is 'Dynamic Duo': Two against the world.  So many great iconic characters and stories of two heroes facing impossible odds: Batman & Robin, Legolas & Gimli, Frodo & Sam, Lone Ranger & Tonto, Han & Chewie..I'm sure you can think of a lot of others too.

I'd thought I'd do a couple for Prehistoric Pulp, but then I thought about one of my (many) unstarted projects: the Halflings.  Awhile back I ordered a lot of Warploque Miniature's halflings-because they are awesome- and imagined they'd make a nice fantasy force for games like Songs of Blades & Heroes, or perhaps a fantasy skin of Saga.

I also am a big fan of old Citadel miniatures from the 80's era.  So when I run across a nice one I'll pick it up.

And so my two heroes are born- or, almost- they just need to be painted!

Halfling veteran and his Ogre compatriot.  

These two have a long history and many tales of past battles.  

This Ogre is from 1993, so nearly 20 years separate these two miniatures, but I think they make a great pair!

They have a similar character about them. 

The Ogre I converted a bit. He was supposed to be a standard bearer.  But for a skirmish game, and being possibly the only Ogre to be in the halfling's force, I needed him to take a more active role. 

So I converted the standard into a spear worthy of an Ogre! 

I also de-skullified him.  His medalion had a skull face, and the pommel of his sword was a skull (as is the round thing hanging from a chain off the spear) so I shaved the skull icon off, and filed & rounded out the other two details.  Skulls are fine for chaos marauding ogres, but this fellow has long since settled into life among the halflings and they aren't too keen on such things. 

I'm really looking forward to painting these two up!  

See how good painting contests are?  It's got me to give the first step of attention to a project. 

The contest deadline isn't until November 5th, so if you think of something you have lying around that you've wanted to paint, why not do it?  Any genre is open, so it doesn't have to be fantasy.  Check it out here. 

And in the meantime, if you have any suggestions for names for these two, let me know! :)