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I just posted pics of my finished Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf mount here, and I've been toying with the idea of giving him a cape. He's finished, and I like how he is, I just think a cape would make him stand out more (as if he needs it), and make him look more regal. I've never made a cape before but it seems simple enough. My question is though, how easy is it to add a cloak to him after he's already painted? Any tips?

 Badger_Bhoy wrote:
I just posted pics of my finished Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf mount here, and I've been toying with the idea of giving him a cape. He's finished, and I like how he is, I just think a cape would make him stand out more (as if he needs it), and make him look more regal. I've never made a cape before but it seems simple enough. My question is though, how easy is it to add a cloak to him after he's already painted? Any tips?

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It really depends on the situation. sure, painting it will be easy, but you may have to re-paint some parts on the model as you may accidentally screw up his back if you do the underside of the cloak.

or you could alternatively buy one of these sets: http://victoriaminiatures.highwire.com/product/camo-cloaks-x5

Someone recommended them to me, i have yet to try them.

Those are nice, thanks! Wouldn't be too hard to modify them to fit up underneath his back pack. I'll keep those in mind. I just had a thought: I intend to have the cape attached high up on his back pack rather than his shoulders. That might make it easier to sculpt it, then remove and paint it, and reattach it. I may put some fur up around his shoulders, but I don't know if I could make it work well.

If anyone else has any cape making, and/or retrofitting tips I'm all ears.

This should be very helpful to you...

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-to-sculpt-greenstuff-cloaks-and.html

That is an awesome article! Thanks a ton! I may even be able to work it in such a way as to be able to paint it separately from the model with this technique. Pretty stoked now. Just finished his pack, which isn't in the pictures, and I think a nice red cloak with his company badge on it will be nice. Thanks again!

I've created a cloak with a similiar technique in the linked tutorial. I rolled out the putty on a smooth vaseline coated surface, waited for it to harden somewhat, cut it into shape and then added it to the model with the vaseline side facing outwards. If you are carefull and don't spread the putty too much around on the connecting areas the cloak should come clean off once it is hardened with no or minimal putty residue on it.

But i had a hard time getting folds and stuff on the cloak. If you want them you will probably need to sculpt them on after the cloak is cured. Also you need to be very carefull when setting the model to cure. You have to secure the model so that gravity pulls at the cloak at the correct angle and don't ruin the fold/bends of the cloak. Maybe rechecking it from time to time and rebendining it is needed until it is hard enough to hold on its own.

I don't know what putties you have at hand. If you have some hard cureing putty like milliput it can be helpfull to mix it into your greenstuff. (70:30 of GS : Milliput should be enough) That way the final cured cloak will be really hard and you can sculpt on it without bending it even if it is relatively thin. That allows to sculpt the fur, folds or whatever you want on the removed cloak without risk of damaging the painted model.

Thanks for the tips. I'm still unsure about the fur part, I don't really want his cloak to come up on his shoulders and cover up the design on them so that probably won't be an issue as I can't think of how to have fur and avoid that.

Well you could try to pull the fur up to the shoulder level and attach it to them but not over them. I did something similar with my first scratch builld model (only the head and pistol are not by me). You can see that i attached the cloak with seals at the back of the shoulders and probably around his neck somewhere hidden beneath all the fur.
The problem here is that you will have a hard time sculpting it on the model without damaging the painted areas. Also in your case you need to either remove the backpack attachment and put the backpack directly onto the cloak or sculpt the cloak around the attachment thingy.

This is the model i'm talking about.

That looks awesome!

The back pack I'm using has a wolf head on either side, so is a bit bigger than the usual. I snipped the normal exhaust ports off and glued on heads from Thunderhammers. It's a bit bigger, so I don't know that I could get enough fur to look good without obscuring the knotwork trim on his pauldrons.

I may have to do like you say and remove the backpack though, which is fine. I've got it on there now so he doesn't look incomplete in the mean time, but it won't be difficult to remove without damaging him. I should probably do that anyway, It'll make it much easier I think.

You are probably right with visibility with the larger exhausts. But it might work if you do something similar like i did and pull the fur up all the way to his head. But i don't know if this will look good as his backpack still needs to go on there.

But i just thought of another way for a fur cloak:
http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=77_71&product_id=80
You might need to file the sides a little until it fits between the shoulder guards but as this thing is designed to go under the backpack you can probably add it without even removing it.

I've seen those but forgot all about them. That would be an awesome way to get fur, without obscuring the pauldrons. That's really about what I had in mind I think, and shouldn't be difficult at all to do up. Just do the basic cape, and once it cures add a bit of fur around the bottom half of the back pack. Should be easy to do without removing the backpack, and the fur would cover any gap between the cloak and the back pack.