The Mother of Invention... Ronin-Style!

It's been a little quiet in the Crow's Nest, gaming-wise, as the only paint brush I've been allowed to hold is one with emulsion on...

However, in those rare moments when the beady eye of Mrs Crow is looking elsewhere, I have managed to get a little scratch-building done.

Necessity, being the mother of invention, or in my case, lack of funds, has resulted in my re-purposing of figures and an attempt at constructing a convincing Japanese building from things I had lying around.

First, the building. I found a rather good tutorial on Mura Miniatures on how to build a simple 28mm Japanese house
- www.muraminiatures.com/making-a-simple-28mm-japanese-house.html
and using these techniques and the pictures and measurements from Oshiro Model Terrain
- www.oshiromodelterrain.co.uk/catalogue28.html -
who make rather nice Japanese buildings, I decided to have a go at building a Kura, which is a Japanese storehouse. Bearing in mind this was my first attempt and it's not finished yet, I think it came out rather well.

And another view:

Foamcore interior, coffee stirrer cladding, textured wallpaper "sample" for the upper walls and the roof is made of those corrugated coffee holders you get free in coffee shops. Not bad for free stuff!

Next, we have my version of an Oni. Whilst one of my previous posts gave a good overview of all the Oni figures available to purchase, they didn't match my own idea of what one should look like, so I decided to create my own. Here he is, in all his muscular glory:

Base figure was a spare Heroscape Hulk figure, to which was added pipe-cleaner hair, horns made from the ends of a GW plastic skeleton's bow, a hunk of meat on a hook from the GW plastic Kroots sprues and a bloody big hammer, sourced from a Mega Bloks knight's set. Currently, still waiting for his paint-job to be finished, but so far, so good!

In a post on The Miniatures Page, I postulated on whether it was possible to make a Tengu from a Kroot. You tell me...

And another view;

So, base figure is one of the multi-part Kroot, to which has been added a GW Tyranid Bonesword blade, a robe made from an antibacterial wipe and wings from a plastic vulture, which I think was originally a GI Joe accessory. Had to re-jig the right hand slightly, but as Kroot have two fingers and two thumbs, their hands are reversible, so his right hand was originally a left hand. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't use the cloth wipe, as although it gives a good material texture, it was a bugger to paint, shedding fibres everywhere. Still needs his paint-job finished, but you get the general gist of where I'm going with this one.

As always, comments appreciated.