I’m pretty proud of these: Upgraded and repainted ogres (#025) from the the Elemental Evil miniature series from WizKids. I readjusted their poses, used green stuff and various bits to vary their appearance and armor.

These very nice ogre miniatures just came out a year ago when the “Elemental Evil” storyline started in Dungeons & Dragons. The resemble the ogres from the 5th edition monster manual and don’t look like previous ogres from the game. If that’s a good or bad this is debatable, but I like them. They remind me of the WarCraft ogres which I remember fondly from my teen years with the WarCraft 2 video game (except the number of heads on the body).

Anyway, these miniatures are a great for their price. I didn’t get them in these awful random miniature boxes sold by Wizards of the Coast, but bought them on ebay directly. They were 7 euros each, so I got four of them. They are really big (2 by 2 inches base) and have nice details. But … I wanted to experiment a little bit with them. They would be part of Castle Skyreach’s ogre army and there would potentially be several combat encounters with them. With miniatures this big, I decided to try a little sculpting with green stuff to make them more distinguishable from another.

The comparison above shows the same miniature before and after my tinkering. I’m very happy with the results.

Preparation

First, I cut the arms of three ogres off the main body and reattached them in a slightly different angle. Then I also cut two ogres in half at their waist and reattached them in a different angle. This way they all had a slighly different posture.

Second, I sculpted pieces of rope, leather and plate with green stuff. I also borrowed the decorative skulls from one ogre and put it on another. Then I used a dinosaur skull bit as a helmet for a shaman type ogre.

Basing and Priming

I airbrushed all four ogres with black primer and then dusted them with white primer to achieve basic shading. They already look great! I actually used them in the game like this and my players loved them.

Painting

The ogres really took a long time to paint. I spent over two months with smaller painting sessions on them. I struggled with the skin color at first. Should they just look like normal human skin or should I use other colors, as they are monsters? I tried a couple of things and then painted them with the Reaper Master Paint Tanned Skin Triad. I don’t know many shops here in Germany where I can get Reaper paints, but the triads are cool, especially for skin where I always struggle with different color recipes. I brought this paints back from a business trip to Vancouver, Canada. Note to myself: Need other skin triads from Reaper 😉

After I finished the skin, I used Vallejo Model Color Red Leather for their foot and hand bandages and drybrushed the brown and grey/white fur clothes. For the hides they’re wearing I used VMC Orange Brown and Cork Brown. The skulls at their belts and the shaman’s dinosaur skull were painted in Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite, then washed with Sepia Ink and then drybrushed with a little bit VMC Offwhite. For the ropes I used VMC Flat Brown and highlighted with a little bit VGC Bonewhite in it. The metal parts were painted using VMC Gunmetal Grey, washed with Sepia Ink and then highlightes with VMC Silver at the edges.

I used three different different hair colors for the ogres: Black brown (Reaper Brown Liner as base color, washed with black and highlighted with a mix of Brown Liner and Bonewhite), brown (VMC Chocolate Brown base, washed with black and highlighted with a mix of Chocolate Brown and Bonewhite), and blonde (VMC German Brown as Base, Sepia wash, highlight 1 with VMC Dark Sand, highlight 2 with VMC Light Sand).

The final step was decorating the bases. I had previously drybrushed them with different earth tones and painted the little rocks in grey. For the final touches, I planted a couple of grass tufts on each base and added some wood chips or something from the Armypainter Forest scenery decoration package. And with that, my ogres were finished!

Behold (four of) the ogres from Castle Skyreach! Much better than the factory paint job, eh? 🙂