Monday, August 9, 2010

Conan: Frost Giant; Second in the series.









Hey All!

Next up in my series of Conan related figures is one of the sons of Ymir... The Frost Giant from the Robert E Howard tale: "The Frost Giants Daughter". This particular tale is probably one of Conan's more off beat adventures as it involves his encounter with the apparent apparition of a beautiful naked woman on a snow covered battlefield upon which he is the only survivor. The woman turns out to be the daughter of Ymir the frost giant and it's her custom to peruse battlefields in search of wounded or dying soldiers to seduce and lead to her two frost giant brothers who eagerly dispatch their victims and serve their smoking hearts to their cruel father. Conan, of course slays both the giants with ease and proceeds to attempt to take his just desserts from their deceptive sister.
Staying true to form, Howard is very vague in his description of the giants and most artists (Frank Frazetta and Barry Smith, for example) have depicted these guys as really tall viking types. I took some inspiration from Frazetta's cover painting for "Conan the Cimmerian", and the unproduced Frost Giant "build a figure" from the unreleased series of "Legendary Comic Book Heroes" and some form my own imagination to come up with the scary fellow you see here.
He started out life as a Marvel Legends Beast figure and takes accessories form various figures from that scale. His mail armor is sculpted as are his horns and facial detail. The braids in his mustache are braided kite string. I added the "decapitated head charm belt" as not only a way to add some character, but also to help clarify the scale of the figure. Strangely enough, they are both modified Star Wars Han Solo heads I had lying around the studio. I had a blast doing this guy. The larger scale was liberating to work with, but it took forever to paint him! I need bigger brushes if I'm ever going to work in this scale again!