Wolfygryphs finished! ARROOO!

 Last night I finally managed to get my White Wolf Demigryph cavalry (converted from Thunderwolves) to the point where I'm happy to call them  finished. It feels like I've been painting these guys forever - 6 of the last 7 nights have been spent on them - but in  truth it only adds up to around 18 hours, which is 2 hours and 15 minutes per model. When I think about that, it's not too  bad. It's probably also true that the time feels greater because of all the time I spent converting them, but thankfully  that's all done now too.

There are things on these guys that I could potentially go back and change, but at this point I think I will leave them  alone. If I get inspired later I might change their claws from black to a bone colour, but I realised this would take an  eternity and decided against it. They may not even look better, against the brown on the bases. I also didn't do any skin  colour inside the ears - I feel like I've left them unpainted, but to be honest a fluffy white wolf probably has fluffy  white fur inside his ears as well, and I'm not sure the skin colour would have added anything.

I've included a couple of close-ups of the banner, to show how it came out. Being a green stuff copy of the original heavy  metal banner, the detail was never going to be perfect. The results are a little rough around the edges, but this effect is  probably accentuated by my slightly rough painting. I tried to repair a couple of ill-formed details with paint, but with  limited success. As usual, I have cheated and not put any text on the scrolls on the banner. Another thing for later, if I  get inspired. The fur could also stand to be cleaned up a bit, but it would take a disproportionate amount of time for little reward, so that may never happen. After all, I'm painting armies - I'm not some Cool Mini or Not artist lavishing attention on individual models.

Anyway, I ended up taking a lot of pictures because I know these guys are of interest to a lot of people. I'll include  further comments in the captions. Right now I'm looking forward to being able to move onto other stuff, as these guys have  absorbed my attention for over a month.

My White Wolf "Demigryph" Knights of Ulric. They don't rank up perfectly in every configuration, but given that I didn't plan it very carefully, it's quite acceptable.

The front rank, complete with command group. Note that I plan to make a second command group when I make my last couple at some point down the track - there's no point having 2 ranks of Demigryphs.

The front rank again, from a slightly different angle.

The second rank of Wolfygryphs.

The champion, who wields a converted Space Wolf axe.

His head is a Marauder Horseman head - there are some great hairy heads in that set.

The musician also uses a Marauder Horseman head. The trumpet is from the Teutogen Guard.

 

I had only just stuck on the static grass when I took the pictures, hence the hairy edge of the base. That stuff will brush off later.

The standard bearer, with his cloned Teutogen Guard banner. His head comes from the Empire Flagellant set. The eyes are actually really sunken - not sure I should have tried to paint them in the end.

And here he is from the other side.

A close-up of the banner. As I said, the thing suffers slightly from being made of green stuff. Crisp detail is lost a bit, and my painting was not neat enough to clean it up. It looks OK, but it's certainly no masterpiece.

And the banner from the other side. One day I might think of something good to write on these scrolly-bits.

The first of the regular guys. His head comes from the Space Wolf Thunderwolf kit - I carved a strange metal bit off the top of his head.

A closer look at the rider.

This guy has a more dynamic pose, leaning over to hack at something. Another Marauder Horseman head on this one.

From the side. This pose seemed like a good idea at the time, but trying to get it to look right was a bit of a pill.

And from the other side.

This one's head comes from the Space Wolf Thunderwolf sprues again.

This was another problematic pose. Apparently making guys chop at the enemy is hard to pull off with limited components. His arms were mostly wire at one point.

I'm pretty happy with how the cloaks came out. The white cloaks and white wolves do make for a lot of similar-looking fur, but then I don't think that is inappropriate.

This guy was one of the easiest poses, as the grip on the axe is actually just from a standard plastic White Wolf hammer. Of course, everything else is different. But the poses on the weapons were generally pretty fiddly.

This head comes from the old Empire hairy head sprue.

The shield on the back was an approach I took for a couple of the models. In the end I didn't bother with a strap to hold it in place - partly because I forgot at the time when it would have been good to do it. I figure it's lost in the fluffy fur cloak.

And a view from the other side.

The last guy also uses a standard Empire hairy head.

A view from the other side.

A couple of the models have their shields on the saddle. I wanted them all to carry shields, especially since I intend to use them as the lance/shield combination, rather than cavalry halberds, which are a blatantly inferior choice. In the end though, this was as far as I was willing to go in terms of altering my theme for the sake of the rules.

A final look at the whole pack.

ARROOO!