The Halfmen of Westfalia

A few months back, I was following the design and sculpting of some stellar fantasy halflings by Westfalia Miniatures when I was given the opportunity to obtain some sample casts.  Naturally, I jumped on the opportunity and a few weeks later I had the figures in my hands.

Westfalia has decided to go with resin for these figures, and while I am typically partial to pewter, I was quite impressed with these.  The detail was crisp, there seemed to be just enough bend to the material without it being either flimsy or brittle, and mold lines were very minimal. My young kids even managed to grab a hold of the figures and were playing with them for a while without my knowledge, and nothing managed to get broken. I gave the figures a good wash, primed them, and finally finished them this past weekend.

These really are lovely little figures, and they paint up quite easily.  The leader with the hammer seems a shoe-in (or should I say shoeless-in?) Tyrion Lannister.  If only there was an unhelmeted version bearing the likeness of Richard Dinklage...

In homage to the halfman, I painted these guys in typical Lannister colours.  I hope you enjoy them, I even got creative with my background! Westfalia is planning a Kickstarter to fund the production of a large range of these little guys, and it is set to start around Dec 16, or so I am told.

Here are a couple more shots for your enjoyment:

Small Diversion

I recently got distracted from the painting of my Dux Britanniarum.  I assure you, I have some Saxons finished, they just aren't photographed yet :)

One of the online forums I frequent, warhammer-empire.com, runs an annual miniature exchange.  I participated this year for the third time in a row.  For my recipient this year, I decided to paint up not one, but two miniatures to match his army theme of purple and  yellow.  I decided he needed a nice, stately captain - well suited by an old Empire Reiksguard foot knight captain!  To accompany him, none other than a stalwart halfilng would do!  It was a great opportunity to paint another lovely White Knight miniature, as well as some classic Empire goodness.  Onto some pictures!

The duo:

And some closeups of the Captain:

 

Finally, some closeups of his tiny compatriot:

I had lots of fun painting these guys, so I hope you enjoy them!  They are on their way across the ocean to their new home, here is to hoping they make it there safely.

Here come the little folk!

"What are you doing?"

 "Tomatoes, sausages, and nice, crispy bacon!"

Hobbit references aside, I am now pleased to share with you all a secret project which I had worked on this summer!

White Knight, with his wonderful range of landsknecht gobins, gave in to popular demand to see a separate set of halfling heads sulpted by Kev Adams to fit on the goblin bodies.  In my conversations with him, I was able to trick/beg/barter a set of mastercastings of the aforementioned halfling heads to paint up so he could show the world some painted examples.

Upon receiving them in the mail, I was delighted to find the 12 crisp heads, with great details and expressions.  The pick of the crop to me (and WK will agree) were the bare headed halfings, who simply oozed with character.

I set about assembling the 6 heads that most appealed to me, and slapped on some paint.  Here are the final results!

First up are 2 of the bare heads and a nice feathered cap.  The strapping chap in the middle is my favourite of all 12 heads.  Nice bushy eyebrows and a full face.  I found the sculpt somewhat resembled my late grandfather, so in his honour the middle halfling with the halberd has been named Tom.  I don't normally name my miniatures, so that's a pretty big honour :)

Next up were some more heads, a couple with handguns and another halberd.  I made a slight slip up with the guy on the right - adding a blue wash to add some colour around the eyes ended badly.  My wife said it looked like he got a black eye, so I decided that was a better story than taking time to fix it.  So the halfling on the right got into it last night with a surly (and quite drunk) dwarfen merchant at the hogshead tavern.  Today he showed up for duty with a nice shiner and his pride mostly intact!

These guys were lots of fun to paint up!  The details pick out nicely, and they don't overwhelm the models.  I find models with tons of little details can be somewhat cumbersome to paint, even if they give good results.  To me, these little guys are both fun and rewarding to paint, and nicely fill a gap in the miniature market.  I hope to finish off a few GW halflings soon so you can compare the size and scale of each.

Enjoy!