Snakeman Painting and Modeling

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Snakemen Armies David McBride	Snakemen Battle Reports	Snakemen Tactics Snake Tactical Theory

I thought it would be different and fun to give the snakemen a sub-Saharan tribal motif. Africa has some very nasty and large snakes in it, making this a fitting fantasy army to get that look. The swords are made to look like sword axes (almost becoming Kukri knives from SE Asia), the shields are definitely Zulu inspired, and the three-bladed throwing knife is right out of central Africa. Nyoka is a Swahili word for Snake.Though there is only one pose cast for each troop type, the figures can be varied by simply bending arms, wrists and torsos and painting in the figures in different ways. A great deal of effort and collaboration between Sandra Garrity (sculptor), Bryan Hitsman (caster and moldmaker) and myself occurred to get figures capable of being easily varied in appearance.Painting SnakesSnakes are exceptionally fun to paint. Nature does pretty much anything it wants to with snake colors and patterns. Considering this is a fantasy race, you can even go beyond nature. All of these Nyoka patterns are based on real snakes:

Nyoka Swordman, Spearman, Archer, Charmer and Mamba

A great website for snake pictures is here - these are just North American snakes: ttp://www.pitt.edu/~mcs2/herp/SoNA.htmlThe hooded Kaa snakemen have nice broad backs to really show off their patterns:

Kaa Commander/Lord, Wizard, Snake-archer, Hurler, and SwordsmanThe shields are essentially Zulu shields, keeping with the African motif. They offer a nice broad surface to pain as well. True Zulu shields were typically not dyed, but kept the same pattern as the cow's hide they were made from. There were usually two lines of marks or stitches near the center of the shield. However, there is no reason to stick to that kind of pattern, these are fantasy snakemen after all. I made two different unit markings for shields - one was an eye, and the other a pair of fangs. Posing SnakemenThis army was designed to be posable, meaning the figures can be easily moved to different positions. This allows players who like a lot of variety in their troops to easily alter them. There are a large number of positions each figure's arms and torso can be shifted to, many without making any cuts and most without requiring any gluing or pinning. Having strong fingers helps, but if you don't, you can always use a pair of pliers and a small strip of thick cloth or leather to protect the area of the model that is gripped.Below are demonstrations from several models of the types of alterations that can be done to the snakemen figures.

Wizard

	This was easy, the torso was just twisted forward, and then the head back to center it.
	This was just like the first one, except the elbow and shoulder were lowered to make him hold his knife low.
	This one had its torso twisted forward, and both arms lowered. I think it looks like he is looking at the ball of flame in his hand, like it was just summoned.
	This is a very happy spell caster. He's feeling it. His torso was twisted to face forward, then his head back to center. The head was then bent back to make him look more upwards. The knife arm was brought down at the elbow and shoulder. The fire hand was pulled upwards, and the wrist bent to hold the flame flat.

Spearman

	This low spear position looks very animated. The base of the spear was cut, then the arm holding it bent forward at the elbow.
	I really like this overhand spear. This one required that the spear head be moved from one end to the other, by cutting it off with an x-acto. The wrist was then twisted up, so that hand's thumb was point behind the snake. The spear head was then glued to the leading side with superglue. A second drop of superglue was put on the joint to reinforce it after the first dried.
	This one was a bit more complicated. The spear was detatched from the base, as was the shield. The body was brought forward, while the shield arm was move outward. Then the spear arm was thrust forward.

Kaa Swordsman

This is the simplest thing to do with the shielded snakes. The shield, torso and weapon arm all easily bend, allowing them to face in different directions or present all of their shields forward.

 

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Thane's Games