Dr N R Gull's Patent Medicine and Pandemonium Shadow Show - Papa Doc himself

On the fourth night, the Burgomeister did not awake at all. His fat wife rolled over and screamed as she saw the wet mess her husband had become. Flies crawled over his eyes. Outside, she heard piping music.

The Carnival had come to town.

*****

This has come out pretty much how I wanted. One of those rare occasions when what I saw in my head translated very neatly to what came out in reality.

The construction on this was very simple  (I seem to say that a lot) with only one new technique required.

The wagon was a 4Ground General Wagon kit and the covering was tissue paper soaked in watered down PVA - which was the new technique I had to learn. It turns out to be very easy and something I think I might use a lot in future.

I filled the back of the wagon with Nurglings - because why wouldn't you? - and added some accouterments from the bits box.

The  horses are from the deepest, darkest recesses of the bits pile:

For 30 years I've had that box stashed; the old plastics have a lovely slender quality which would help with the balance of the composition. 

The base was constructed out of some blue foam, sand and tea leaves.

Papa Doc was bashed together out of bits and pieces. The base was then painted to suggest the disease and decay the carnival leaves behind.

And then a few bits and pieces of thread for reins and brass rod for harnesses. 

Well, I'm done. There's always a melancholy sense when you reach the end of a project. On the plus side, this has turned out exactly how I wanted; I am very happy with the overall look of the carnival as well as being very proud of some of the individual characters. There's also the satisfaction of knowing that these are unique, each handcrafted: no-one will ever have a set like these. That's a rather nice feeling.

If you want to see all the work collected in one place, I've put a page on the blog to record this project which you can access here.

The 'Fire Eater' and the Beast Tamer

The Burgomeister woke up, sweating, breath hoarse in his throat, ragged, panting. For the third night in a row, some horror in the night had awoken him. His fat wife snored, fitfully, beside him. A cold, high, piping child's voice that had ripped through his dreams and threw him, wet and mewling into the cold night air. 

"Flies, flies, eat up his eyes. The Burgomeister's eyes crawling with flies!"

He clutched his chest, breathing ragged. But then he heard it, outside in the night. Beyond the village.

A hoarse, grunting; a rough barking. And a liquid, retching coughing.

Something was coming. 

*****

These two were, again, relatively simple. The idea of the Fire Thrower was to create something that looked like an arc of vomit. The build was very simple and the only scultping was the bile on a wire armature. 

The Beast Tamer was slightly more involved: the chap himself was more or less a straight build from the Empire State Troops box. The two beasts though, representing people who had been caught by the show but without the talent to become a performer, were more or less sculpted from scratch apart from the heads and hands. 

The inspiration for this particular peice lies far back in the mists of time. I remmeber seeing the slann warbeast and handlers in a long ago White Dwarf, in this exact picture:

I even bought the blister pack; but I couldn't make little dioramas like that, back then. The influence on this piece is, I think, obvious. 

The painting was, as with the rest of this little project, all washes and glazes. 

Again, I'm very happy with how these have come out. Now there's only the Travelling Show itself to go.