I was sculpting a cloak over the shoulder armour of an IG torso at the weekend and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to think outside the box a bit in order to make them look ‘evil’.
Sculpting over large shoulder pads is a tricky proposition as I have to decide where it will be joined, whether over the top with clasps either side of the beard, or hanging more from behind the neck armour.
I’ve filed flat the shoulder armour to a smooth surface, so really now I’m looking for ideas or ideally example models people think that have cloaks and large shoulder pads, but done in a suitably evil way. If you know what I mean.
Not sure if it’s the way the cloak hangs, the pattern on it, or any other hanging details that make it evil. Or perhaps do more with the shoulder pads?
Ideas to make the cloak more evil could be to have it stitched out of humanoid skins (sculpting in faces and whatnot), the clasp holding it could be suitably evil (a rotting hobgoblin head, dangerous looking spike, or whatnot), and/or the pattern of the cloak itself. Having the model standing over a defeated foe with the cloak covering part of the enemy could work (though it would be tough on such a small base).
So I decided in the end to have the cloak hanging down the back from underneath the shoulder pads.
Something I have been pondering over is whether a cloak of skulls (with fabric on the inside, i.e. what you’d see from the front of the model), would be in keeping with CD or not? Think Skulltaker:
It certainly would add some interest to the back of the model, and be ‘evil’ enough.
I’ve done a skull helmet which will have a hood, so that’s taken care of most of the ‘evil’ feeling from the front. The shoulder pads will have runes on.
Doing flayed skin cloaks would actually be quite tricky to do effectively I think, so you’d know what it was supposed to be.
Good suggestions. Since I recognize this topic I might as well add that I’ve spent some time on decorating the Titan Wargames dwarves’ cloaks, and from the scale of a whole unit I think it worked with a head hunting theme, with skulls and heads from every army and country in the world, as well as scales, fur and flayed skin (including a flayed face). Amongst other paraphernalia I threw in a severed elf hand atop a ripped piece of High Elf scalemail. The skin, fur and scale trophy add-ons to the cloaks were sculpted on the top of the cloak akin to the Chaos Warriors, whilst the trophies were hung in sculpted chains from the shoulder pads and neck guard. (Pictures to appear later on.)
A skull cloak wouldn’t look out of place on a Chaos Dwarf character, especially not if you sculpt it with some resemblance to the Hellcannon barrel (this would lend it a daemonic character, and the skull layer would then perhaps not need to be thick). I personally appreciate modelling efforts that tie in themes from the wider Chaos range into the Chaos Dwarfs, so a Skulltaker cloak is the spirit!
I would ditch the skulls and go more with screaming souls ( make the skulls in green stuff then stretch and twist them to give you the screaming effect)
