Giant News!

Not that sort ahem, but fans of re-purposing models may enjoy this one.

I never liked the GW plastic giant, he didn't seem to be that big to me, and for the price I couldn't justify one.  My visions of giants were always influenced by Jack and the Beanstalk and traditional fairy tale images of them striding over forests, wading seas and the like; not the Dungeons and Dragons and latter fantasy traditions of them being maybe 12 to 20 feet tall.

Secondly, I'm always on the lookout for models I can utilise in my fantasy armies, that bring scale, novelty and economy to my collection.  Trawling around the internet for some troll models I found an old toy that seemed ideal for just that remit.  It may have been termed a troll, but the order of scale was something else altogether.

And so for £10 on eBay I picked up a Harry Potter movie Troll:

Mine wasn't packaged, natch...

Being an eBay bargain mine was in a scruffy state, indicative of being played with not kept behind glass, he was lacking his accessories too, but that wasn't likely to pose an issue.  what mattered to me was the potential after a degree of polishing.  Firstly I added a club, made from a suitable twig, a piece of slate and some twine to arm the fellow.  Then I filled the worst of the gaps and sealed all of the mobile joints with super glue.  Then it was time for a nice black under coat and a progress picture.

Diamond in the rough

Next, was a protracted period in a cupboard, whilst I moved house!  But eventually he came back out and I decided to add some further detail to his right arm, to give some contrast and a sense of scale.  A sprue of plastic shields was sacrificed to put him in proportion.

I then began painting by hand mixing an enormous amount of flesh coloured paint.

Very pink!

 Gradually I built up many layers of flesh tones, before finally being satisfied with the finish, the clothes were four or five layers and kept simple, leaving only the details.  sheer volume accounted for this simple model took little longer to paint than a normally scaled single figure!

Finally I finished the base in the style of my Dogs of War army, a style that would also look acceptable next to my Orcs and Goblins; and lo, Simon the Giant was finished:

Front...

...and Back

The shield of shields, trophies from previous battles?

For a plastic toy, it has a great expressive face

 And in case you haven't figured it out by now, yes he is huge!:

Yikes!

Shown with one of my new(ish) foot knights for scale, Simon stands some 7.5 inches tall, almost twice as tall as the GW giant.  He infact gave me some storage issues, but I eventually found a box he and his more diminutive (Orcish) pal could live in.

Overall, I couldn't be more pleased with this bargain, he really adds some character and certainly gets to my ideas of enormity for giants.