This first entry was an exercise in letting ago of fears and going for it. I must attribute my undertaking of this project to Age of Sigmar regulars from the Warhammer Weekly show, who, many cycles ago, made a big point of getting wild and wacky with your hobby. In particular when you've been using the guide rails of Citidal paints and the thought that you only had to paint the models that you were given. 

And thus began the era of making my own models or in this case, not kit-bashing at all, and going straight for a custom sculpt. Pretty daring at the time. 

Below are the steps I made towards my own skaven flavored Purple Sun Of Shyish. I'm sure it tastes great. This was a fairly recent project which just goes to show that even after a few solid years of hobbying, one can still have fears about taking leaps of creativity. In this case, feeling too comfortable in the build model, prime model, paint model routine that I'm sure a great many folks get stuck in (because we want to get to playing the game sooner!). I chose to dip my toe in another medium altogether. 

A key element was patience (which you'll have to get used to hearing). I knew that I was going to be doing lots of drastic additions and subtractions to the main model. I had to refrain from fully enclosing the Purple Sun from the back just so I could back-fill the sculpt just in case.

When doing custom jobs, its a good reminder not to rush into a full assembly. 

I just did a quick online search for a rat's skull, imagined an exaggerated, often biologically incorrect image in my head and then focused on bringing out the prominent features of that image first. Objectively not too complicated as I let the original model guide me. I did need a dremel  tool handy to carve out the corners of the eyes and did end up going all the way through the plastic at some points. 

I took this opportunity to practice under-highlighting. I recognized this hobby project's main goal was to practice the sculpting and not worry so much about the paint job. That said, under-highlighting was just what the doctor ordered as it's forgiving and fast so long as you plan on applying only a few super-thin coats of color afterwards.

Side Note: this technique works much better if primed black first for greater contrast. However I knew my final color was going to be very bright and did not want huge contrast from the highs and lows. I avoided dishonor. 

Here is the final product in all of its glory. Definitely a confidence booster. 

Again this first entry was to show that confidence is huge part in trying new hobbying techniques. I apologize for the lack of structure to teaching the "how it was made" and how to do it yourself. In addition, I will be doing my best to focus on solving problems within the hobby for future posts; still figuring out how best to present these posts. That said, the lesson concerning having the courage to try new things has been the driving force behind this hobby for me from day one. I thought this was an easy lesson to present with my most recent work while not scaring anyone with outrageous/professional hobby projects. I mean, come on folks, you're all intimidating enough with your years of experience and what-not. 

My next post I hope will concern the discussion of storing horde miniatures in the general sense. I'll discuss my own custom methods and some other ways the community has used. Later I'll hopefully transition into how exactly each method affects your ability to even play the game effectively. 

Thanks for reading. Cheers!