WIP: High Elf Dragonlord Part 2

Previously on... WIP: High Elf Dragonlord

Let's continue with the Dragon! It really looks good so far so I'll start fixing stuff. First of all, the neck. I want some nice curves in the neck so it gives the whole body of the lizard with some interesting shapes. For now I think it would be wise to make it removable, I might want to paint it separate from the body, so I put liquid mask on the union of the torso and neck so that the putty doesn't glue them together. Then I'll put putty on the neck to make it final.



The curve looks nice but it might not be enough. With the help of my good friend Lord_Azoth, I push the concept a little further. Why not make the rider as the central piece of the miniature, and show the dragon submit to its legendary power? I could do the rider pulling the reins of the dragon so that the head falls back and the neck twists a bit more. Let's do some tests with the rider on top.

By the way, the rider needs a little presentation too. He is going to be a mighty Elf Dragonlord, but also a White Lion of Chrace. My army is going to be based around White Lions of Chrace so it makes no sense to put a dragon in it, but they are so cool that I don't care about this. So he will have the usual White Lions marks... a lion head on his shoulder, big badass axes and so on. I make the rider out of spare parts of elves I have at home. The legs are from Dark Elves on Cold Ones, much more suitable for my purpose.

Here are some pics of the early concept trial:







I really like the effect, it looks like the dragon is totally dominated by his rider. The main problem is the rein. It makes no sense that it is attached to the mouth of the dragon like that, so I have to revise the concept even at the risk of losing a lot of strength of the pose.






So a classical two piece rein seems much more fitting. As you can see, now the sensation of strength pulling back from the rider is much less. On the other hand, I gain realism because now it makes sense that the dragon has reins attached to the side of his head. I'll take it from here, as I lose a lot of time trying to fit in all the pieces with blu tack just to see how the whole composition looks like. Let's start by making the neck a little more final.

Here is where the neck attaches to the body. I put some liquid mask as usual so I can model on top and make sure that the putty doesn't glue the neck and torso (I don't want that yet). I really want to have torso and neck separated for now, for modelling purposes.


Here's how the neck union looks like at this point.


In the meantime, I can also start on some details that are not vital at this point of the project. They will be very important later on, but not now. Like the axe, I want it double-bladed so I make the other side of the blade with putty. It is true that I don't need it know but it may help to give me a rough idea of the composition when testing the pose.


I'll being modelling some of the armour plaques in the neck of the dragon. I want them to look like the ones that come with the plastic kit.


That one was the last photo I made back in 2010. The project was set aside at that exact point, but I took it from where I left it less than a month ago. So there's a 18 month gap between the last pic and the next ones! Stay tuned for the new progress!

Continue to WIP: High Elf Dragonlord Part 3