Reaper Bones: Colossal Skeleton

After finishing up this week's Monday Miniature, the Orc Berserker, I decided that I wanted to tackle one of the larger Bones figures.  I had a couple sitting around my desk taunting me (as all unpainted figures do), and decided it was a good time to get one completed.  Bones II includes several larger figures (including numerous dragons), so I wanted to at least get one of my existing ones completed before Bones II arrives.  As such, here is 77116 Colossal Skeleton:

You'll notice the base isn't a typical washer.  The Colossal Skeleton stands about 4.5 inches tall, and has a massive base.  I had read that lids from food tins work well, and in a sense it did.  Unfortunately, it has a slick coating (to keep food from sticking), and that plays havoc with getting any kind of putty to actually stick to it.  I left the figure attached, but I plan to rebase him once I find a suitable replacement.  Because of the flexible nature of Bonesium, the skeleton's right arm tends to "drift" considerably if the figure isn't based.

The figure was painted with a couple of medium browns, bone white, a couple of grays, black, and some brown washes.  A few bits of the weapons were painted gold to give it a little more variation, but otherwise it's a fairly limited palette.  I was attempting to use paint mixes to introduce variety, and while I'm pretty happy with the brown colors I achieved I think more variety would have been better.

While it may be hard to tell from the pictures above, I tried using a "cooler" bone color on the underside surfaces and a "warmer" bone color on the upper surfaces.  It's fairly noticeable when looking at the figure in person, and it creates some nice variation.

Conclusion:  Overall I'm very happy with how this figure turned out.  Larger figures can be challenging due to the sheer amount of surface area.  I'm really pleased with the warm/cool variations in the bone color, as that gives more variety in a color that dominates the model.  I also think my NMM blending on the dagger was pretty good, though my NMM is still way too dark and needs to shift into lighter grayscales.  The one thing that would help strengthen the figure would have been more variation in colors for the various straps and bits of clothing.

So that's it for the first large Bones figure that I've completed.  I'm not sure which large figure I'll paint next (or when), but I do have Deathsleet and Ebonwrath waiting in the wings (no pun intended)....

Until next time!

- M:M