Callidus Assassin

I've been playing the board game Warhammer Fantasy for the better part of my childhood and teenage years. I was rubbish at it, but I was mainly in it for the minatures as you can well imagine.

I'd never done a piece from the Warhammer universe before so I decided to give it a go. I wanted to do a Callidus assasin from the Warhammer 40.000 universe. From Wikipedia:

Callidus: Latin for "cunning". Specializing in trickery, deception, deceit, infiltration and impersonation. Their greatest asset is their ability to use the shape-changing drug Polymorphine. This drug, coupled with special training, allows Callidus agents to change their very shape and appearance allowing them to impersonate other persons, members of the opposite sex, and even humanoid aliens like Orks and Eldar.

I wanted to show an assassin in the process of changing shape. She'd be turning into the person she'd just killed. I thought of adding the body from the beheaded man to the base of the piece, but it turned out to be too time consuming for me. I left her with the head alone. It solved my design problems and it still looks cool.

I made it in green stuff and used guitar strings for the tubes ( think it was an A string :-P) I cheated and used small plastic skulls from the warhammer fantasy minature range.

Photos by Greta Clemente

The model alone is about 15 cm tall. I made the base in sculpy and painted it with Citadel colours.

I imagined the transformation process to look a lot like Han Solo being freed from his carbonite prison in Star Wars Episode 6

Photos by Anders Clausen

Props for Goutted'Or part 2

I had to do some daggers the main character would be juggling. They were made in green stuff. The skull was also made for the movie, to my knowledge but not included in the final cut. I'm not implying theres anything wrong with that decision. I'm just saying..

The knives had to be exotic and varied. The skull had to be cartoony. I think I did alright.

Photos by Christoph Peladan.


I had to do a small rowin boat as well. It had to be tied to a huge tree. The boat was done in one piece of thick cardboard with a lot of glue. Then I covered i in small strips of thin cardboard and painted it. All done in one day. The ores were created from a stick and a piece of cardboard. Nothing fancy, but it looks good I think.

Just so I don't get into copyright trouble: The tree wasn't done by me! 

Photos by Leonardo Ligustri and Greta Clemente.


Then I did a ship. It was made from a 5 £ model ship. I had to make it look old and derelict.

I cut the ship in two with a saw. Added planks made from cardboard, made a railing in the back. The sails were cut to pieces and then small flags were added to the top as well as a looot of rope and then some more rope for good measure. I even made the goddamn ladders!

People dont realise that mast are not one solid trunk of tree, but smaller pieces stuck together. I certainly didn't know until I'd studied the a lot of model ships from various books on the subject. I had to seperate the masts and then reconnect them to make it look believable. Then i had to break them again because a derelict can't have intact masts. It's a fact.

I painted it, added seaweed using a combination of cotton, wood glue, paint and water. Then I repainted it.

I just couldn't resist adding a frontfigure to this piece as well. Made with love in green stuff.

Here's me with my creation. isn't she a beaute:


Finally I had to do a pair of legs hanging (from a rope). As a contrast to everything else I'd previously done, these should be able to animate i.e. move.

The legs were made in Super sculpy. The trouser legs incidentally, were made in real fabric and then painted to look real.... yeah, showbiz, I know.

Photos by Greata Clemente

Props for Goutted'Or part 1

In the summer of 07' I ran into Christoph Peladan, a budding director and animator from France. He convinced me to help him as a volunteer props maker for his short movie "Goutted'Or". I'd mainly be sculpting, but I would also have a chance to do some carving and painting jobs.

The first thing i'd be working on was a small frontfigure for an approximately 1 meter long model ship. It had to be loosely based on Cthulhu the half squid half dragon god. The ship had already been made. We made an imprint in a large piece of sculpy, baked it and carved it into the right size. Then I went to work with green stuff. Sculpted the torso and face first. Later I did the tentacles using wire and a lot of patience.

The painting was done by someone else. What more can I say?

Here is a small cannon I also had to do, approximately 5 cm long. The barrel is made in green stuff and the carriage was done in  solid styrofoam.

Photos by Greta Clemente.

Next up I had to do a large version of the squid (Horray!) This time the ship was five meters long so it had to be made in solid styrofoam as green stuff is too expensive and heavy. I can't really classify the material correctly, but it's like compact styrofoam so it doesn't smoulder when carved. 

This proved an interesting challenge as I not only had to scale it correctly, but I also had to carve it, which meant I'd be working from the outside and going in unlike sculpting, where you work from the inside and then outwards (Well that's how I work in general anyway)

I made mistakes, heck yes I did, but theese mistakes were easily remedied with some fimo plast.

The smaller front tentacles were made from a single piece of styrofoam, but the rear tentacles were done in two parts: One part wold be connected to the frontfigure. The other would be fitted later to "grasp" the ship. I reinforced the joints with a gluegun, wires and finally fimo light.

Photos by Christophe Peladan