Repainting a non-mini Dragon

Ever since I can remember, I’ve pretty much been responsible for making miniatures for any role playing groups that I’ve been in.  Mostly, because I’m the only one who thought that we needed matching miniatures for our characters.

Right now I’m taking my turn GMing our Iron Kingdoms game.  I decided to make it a super epic level campaign in which the party goes after all of those godlike beyond epic monsters that they always had to avoid in our other campaigns.

That means Dragons.  Now, if you’re familiar with the Iron Kingdoms setting, you’ll know that there are no dragons smaller than Colossal size in all of the IK.  When I started looking for minis, I was at a bit of a loss.

I could get a huge resin dragon for somewhere between two and five hundred dollars.  It would fit the bill, but that’s pretty expensive.

I could pick up one of the discontinued Wizards of the Coast Colossal Red Dragons, but they’ve been going for two hundred dollars each, and are way less interesting minis than the resin ones for the same price.

I’m so glad that my wife pointed out a third option.  For around twenty to thirty dollars, you can go to an Asian gifts store and pick up one of their dust collectors.

Now these minis tend to be a little less detailed than pewter or resin minis, and the pre-paints on them tend to be horrific.  Whatever you do, don’t pick one up that has glitter all over it.

But with a little love, you can turn them into great looking minis.  I have a second one in my back room waiting, but here is the first one that I’ve finished:

In the end, he looks like a pretty good, and massive sized mini.

I had to do a little bit of green stuff work on him.  His horns were made of rubber and needed to be re-sculpted in something that could be painted, and his eyes had pupils sculpted onto them, which I thought would look better painted on.

His base was made from half of a super cheap Wal-Mart clock, and on our game board takes up just the right number of squares for a beyond epic level massive dragon.