Monday 5 August 2013

The Barbarian

Call him what you like. Say what you want about him, he was always my favourite bad ass! If there was ever a call for who was gonna play as who. I was always jumping to the front making my claim to be playing as the barbarian. He even got to be the feature point of the box art!!!

 so if anything became the face of Heroquest. he may not be skilled in the arts of magic or have a handy knack of spotting big spikes sticking out of the ground. but hes pretty mean with that broadsword. Now I'm not sure if he was everyone's favourite. but he still is mine. even playing fantasy video games, Skyrim or whatever. I still play as the brutish sword wielding oaf.

it seemed also when you took a look at him, that there were 'variations' of the figure.
in the box you got this red plastic dude with a slightly warped sword.
on the back of the quest book you had this awesome 'Mike Mcvey' painted version.
and also a metal variation was also floating around
I wanted that dude in the middle!! I've never even seen a picture of that same figure anywhere at all. the picture on the right claims to be the same. but we can see side by side. they aint the same!
i think that figure has popped up on Ebay for a substantially ridiculous amount over the years. and rightfully so if it really is that rare!


so who's fault is it?
 Get to the choppa!!!!!

Yes his fault. Conan the camel punching barbarian. I've never read any of Robert E Howard's tales, nor have i ever touched the comic book. but when i watched this film as a kid. i was just blown away. Arnie is Conan and not even Kal drogo can do anything about that!
So it comes as no surprise that anything called barbarian after this film, was pretty much a copy of, or so influenced by Conan that it may as well of been a copy.
Heroquest's barbarian also had to of been strongly influenced by his portrayal. and anything barbarian esq for the next few years also seemed to be that way. i collected so many of citadel's metal barbarians and still have many of them today.
sadly the whole 'barbarian' thing seems to of drained away. the nearest you see to a barbarian in games workshops catalogue of today are chaos marauders. but if you ask me they aren't even good models let alone barbarians.

Sadly many moons ago, because he got used so much every time Heroquest got played, (I'm sure I used to carry him around in my pocket for safe keeping too,, not safe enough though!) as he was the first and only casualty of a big heavy foot of doom. my foot to boot! (great pun!!)
but that wasn't so bad. i was pissed that id lost out on my favourite character, but i had loads of barbarians that could fill the void. OK none of them were a perfect match, but that didn't matter.

Over time i would change the figures I used as my barbarian.each time thinking I've moved onto something better. with the introduction of the internet I was starting to see I wasn't the only person doing this, be it a simple repaint or a complete proxy like i was doing.

was nice to see everyones own personal takes on the barbarian.

Some went for the straight up repaint
courtesy of Gunamar Ironwill
courtesy of goblin-king

We had He-Man barbarian!!
courtesy of painting agency

some gave him new weapons

Some took to having a female counterpart
courtesy of Sjeng

then some went with alternatives from other dungeon crawlers
coutesy of Tasao

So I scoured the web, every time I saw something that looked like that barbarian on the back of the quest book, I would nab it! for a few years i settled on the below figure from the Celtos range.
apart form the dodgy fringe line, i saw him as being the closest in pose and stature to that barbarian on the back of the quest book. and was very much my staple for a few years

throughout this time i was convinced i had the best fit barbarian for the job!
others cropped up on the net, but still i felt i had made the decision to rule them all. and I'd never need another replacement figure again......
not even this wonderfully painted original could sway me

then i spotted this little figure from Hasslefree miniatures
wolf
Great pose! even has a identical sword to that of the Celtos barbarian i have been using for the last few years. But I'm still not sold?? out of the 3 heads available, I would have to sculpt some hair. I have got no problem with that! but still.... I'm not sold on it and not sure why! I then happened to stumble on a magnificent blog by damien thevenin, who's complete reworking of Heroquest is nothing short of amazing!! He too had used Hasslefree's wolf mini to make his barbarian!
this is fantastic right? it truly is, and still i'm not sold.  for me this version almost hits the mark but has a bit of an Arabic vibe about him. not sure why. but this confirmed why id chosen against using this previously. all the above..great versions of. But for my picky self i still thought there was something better out there. in truth i was totally wrong. id scoured the web into every dank dark corner possible. Google searched so much i was ending up in all sort of weird places.
Truth was my answer lay right under my nose all the time!

i had stumbled upon a fantastic thread on Warseer that was a worklog for someone creating warhammer quest characters and the likes, he hit upon something i had been trying to do for a while. and that was creating character! any model can be painted up in a various sort of way. of customised a little just to add a little bit more. even with the original Heroquest barbarian he had managed to give this a new lease of life

so i go back to the drawing board on this. a bit of rope, a vial, generally just a few things that make someone look like they are kitted out for some adventure time!
so i start looking at the wolf miniature from Hasslefree once more...what if i add a few things to his belt? and a new head? of course a head that fits what i want much better.
then completely out of the blue i find this gem of a blog and they have some wonderful projects on there. including a Warhammer quest log. of which they have used a wolf mini as the barbarian also.
and et voila. the perfect head too!!!!!!!!

so of course at this point I know I'm close to getting that barbarian i want...
now just gotta find that head right? some of you may recognize it already. so i scoured everything i could think of. every GW sprue that i could possibly think of. until i finally broke. and just asked the creator (of which you can see my pleading on his blog)
and it turns out it belongs to a space wolves sprue!!! space wolves????? i never thought once to look at 40k stuff at all!
so there we go. that was my journey to creating my (for now) perfect barbarian.
I've got the mini.
I've got the head.
I've got more bits than i can comprehend.
so let get cracking.
bish bash bosh,,paint paint paint




I did initially just want a smooth sword, but I couldn't quite fill in the etchings on the sword to be as smooth as i wanted. plus i has all my bits ready and just wanted to get him done. maybe a little bit of a rush job...but i was excited to get him completed! I carved the diamond shape on his brow to be more triangular and gave him a nice 80's rock band hair style!

also sculpted some fur around those boots
attached a bit i had found in my bits box. this seems like something a barbarian might be carrying around. a pouch for his gold. a vial of some concocted potion. a big ass dagger! and some looted gems!
oh and gave him some stubble too :)

so there we have it. a little bit of my journey in creating and very little on the actual creating of! It took a long time, but thankfully the gift of the internet and the many many wonderful ideas people have, helped me get to where i wanted with my favourite Heroquest character. all the great ideas I've seen everywhere helped guide and influence. and hope for many years the community continues to thrive with such magnificently creative souls!

hope you enjoyed
till next time! :)

14 comments:

  1. I love him! Excellent and smooth paintjob. The stubbles are a very good idea. He looks even more bad ass now. Also the extra bitz are a great addition as his appearance of an adventurer now is increased.
    The whole post is a pleasure to read I couldn't stop nodding when I went throgh the text. Arnie is the man that's for sure and GW's supply with real Barbarians isn't the best these days. I'm glad my Barbarian made it here. The pictures of all the other Barbarians out there are a great collection.
    Keep on the good work mate!

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  2. thanks very much buddy. after all it was your creation and recipe that i finally went with. just my own little twist ontop of it! so massive thank you for the heads up.
    p.s lets see some more WHQ stuff on your blog :)

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  3. Awesome article! Love seeing all those barbarians. Strange that there are so little female barbarians. I'd like to see more of those :)

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  4. i had really hoped to provide more options for people. seeing what others had created to a greater depth. but i just got impatient. and finding all those links all over again would of been an immense task.
    on the subject of female barbarians...lets just say living in a female dominated household 3/1 there may well be female variants cropping up at some point hehe
    thanks for the comment sjeng. much appreciated :)

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  5. I think the metal version is the same version of the questbook but only the mouth seems different (opened), so it is just a head variant or maybe it's the photo that make it looks with open mouth, who knows

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  6. I just read this. Having been on the perfect "arnie" Conan hunt for ages. I just recently picked up this mini. I also picked up a copy of the "metal pops" terminator figure. My fingers are triple crossed that they are close to the same scale. If so, I will finally have my arnie conan. Now, what to do about recreating that pesky atlantean sword.......

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    1. the sword on that wolf mini from hasslefree is pretty chunky. im fairly sure you could shave it down a little and sculpt the prongs a little. id say any head you can grab will work with a tad green stuff around the jawline and some careful contouring in the paint job. this "metal pops" would that be from the terminator genesis game..warlord games i think it is?

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  7. Hello!

    You linked this picture from Eastern Empire, and I expecially like the elf.
    However, I couldn't find this figure on the linked site (which I find overall very confusing). Do you know if the Eastern Empire guy sculpted this elf by himself, or did he modify some given figure, and do you know wich one?

    (Big Bene from the Inn)

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    1. Hey Bene. i believe that elf is an old citadel elf. you could always ask Seb over as eastern empire (he alos posts at the inn sometimes.
      http://eastern-empire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/wood_elf_hero.jpg
      i tried searching around but struggled due to there being quite a few variable elves all posed exactly the same. each time i thought id found him..i hadnt..pesky elves

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    2. that's an old Citadel figure sculpted by Jes Goodwin. You can find him in the Collectors Series with the code 1404 Wood Elf Scouts.
      Referring to his style, I am sure Jes Goodwin is the same person who sculpted the HeroQuest metal prototypes for the Heroes (except the Dwarf) and the Chaos Sorcerer, Chaos Warrior, Fimir, Gargoyle, plus Zanrath (High Mage), Boroush (Storm Master) and Fanrax (Necromancer). Not sure about the remaining figures.

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  8. The elf is indeed an old citadel miniature. It's the same elf that can be seen on the narrow side of the AHQ box.

    The citadel metal barbarian is the same as painted by Mike McVey. The perspective and lighting fool the eye. I stumbled a few times over this effect as I was collecting the AHQ bestiary. Therefore I had to compare eBay photos with the pictures of the bestiary. A little difference in the perspective and the miniature seems very different.

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    Replies
    1. excellent. would love to see your collection sometime always admire when people go out to hunt a whole set down.
      would like to see better pics of that barbarian too :)

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  9. Awesome! Perfect! I'm inspired to create my own. Keep up the great work!

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    1. go for it. would love to see what you come up with :)

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