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So I've recently bought the Valerian and Aleya Black library celebration box, because I was honestly curious if the sculpt of valerians head is as ugly as the box paint job. It is not as bad, but pretty bad and I figured out what bothers me about it: first of his hair is to voluminous and his hairline looks weird which makes his head look even bigger, also his jawline looks rather strange and gives him somewhat undefined features, which also exacerbates the image of his head being to large for his body.
So I took this as a challenge and tried to fix it, with greenstuff. What I did was rather simple, I removed the hair and resculpted it and did the same thing you would do in real life if you've got and ugly jawline: I added a beard and I think I was able to fix a lot of the problems of this head sculpt:







I'm rather proud of it, but beauty is obviously in the eye of the beholder so some people might not like it at all and prefer the original head, which is obviously also fine. But, objectively speaking if you look at the original, non modified head, there are some issues with the proportions and the general composition of the features, at least in my opinion. I honestly think GW should be ashamed of themselves to put out such a (in my opinion) lazy and ugly miniature. Also I'm not a professional sculptor or anything I'm just a schmuck with some greenstuff and I think I was able to make the head look better than it was before with some effort. Now think about what GW could have done if they really cared.....

Edit: I just realized, he kinda looks like a discount leonidas now. Don't know if thats a good or bad thing, but it's kinda funny nonetheless

I think you've done an excellent job with the hair and beard. I'm not too familiar with the original (wish you had a side by side), but what you've accomplished here looks great. Greenstuff and hair is a strange thing to do. A thin layer as you've done can really go bad because the definition (the cuts, if you will) can be too shallow, or worse, too deep and end up turning the GS into coleslaw, and you avoided that. Can't wait to see how well the detail picks out with paint. Thanks for sharing.

edwardmyst wrote:
I think you've done an excellent job with the hair and beard. I'm not too familiar with the original (wish you had a side by side), but what you've accomplished here looks great. Greenstuff and hair is a strange thing to do. A thin layer as you've done can really go bad because the definition (the cuts, if you will) can be too shallow, or worse, too deep and end up turning the GS into coleslaw, and you avoided that. Can't wait to see how well the detail picks out with paint. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, I honestly forgot to take a picture of the head before I started working on it, but you are right, it would have been a way better comparison. But if you look valerian up on the gw site, you'll get the idea.

Been some time since I've updated this. Here he is painted (photo is not that good sry):





Let me know what you think. Did I succed in my quest to make Valerian not look like christopher walken?

I'm not familiar with the character, but that is some great hair and beard sculpting right there.

Good work buddy! The sculpting makes a vast improvement on the original head, and the paintwork is excellent. *chef’s kiss*

The added beard etc totally rocks and I think will look 100x better than the original. Hope you will share pics of the completed mini please...

Ha now I actually wish I had got that miniature - amazing what a little conversion work will do for it....

Its this guy, right?

Yours is waaaaaaaaay better such a weird quiff on the original model.

The revised head will make a big improvement but there still is something a little weird about the mini proportions - might just be the photo - probably just how blocky the armor is

Thank you very much for the praise. I'm really happy with it. And yeah I agree about valerians armor. It does not look very good....imo it's mainly because of the absolutely idiotic placement of his misericordia (his dagger). He couldn't even properly move...

Anyway, I am not going to use my altered valerian head for the original miniature, but rather for the new blade champion model Custodes will be getting in the new shadow throne box.
I'll definitely post updates and the finished miniature.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
Its this guy, right?

Yours is waaaaaaaaay better such a weird quiff on the original model.

Yes, that's him....christopher walken in space. The more I look at this sculpt the more I hate it...his face looks unproportional and fat and his hair and hairline is ridiculous. Which really bothered me because I loved the character Valerian in the black library models he featured in, which also highly motivated me to "fix" the head.

The weird belly/groin pot plate doesn’t help either…

 Flinty wrote:
The weird belly/groin pot plate doesn’t help either…

Most custodes models have that round plate, but on Valerian it seems unproportionate. The sculpt seems like an complete afterthought, they could have at least given him a more fancy spear...

Aleya looks decent though.

Y'know as soon as you said that I saw it.

He's totally Christopher Walken in space

So I've finished this model finally, and I used the head on my custodes blade champion conversion:

Body is the Forgeworld Custodes Tribune, the head is my resculpted Valerian and the arms are from the blade champion kit

At first I was like. GW sculpts aint that bad. Then looked him up. OMG that sculpt is so bad.

It is not easy to sculpt! be proud, you did good.

 Mothsniper wrote:
At first I was like. GW sculpts aint that bad. Then looked him up. OMG that sculpt is so bad.

It is not easy to sculpt! be proud, you did good.

Yeah, the original head sculpt is atrocious, which really bothered me because I like the character valerian from the Chris wraight books.

Anyway, thanks for the kind comment. I'm really proud of this conversion.

Tiberias wrote:

 Mothsniper wrote:
At first I was like. GW sculpts aint that bad. Then looked him up. OMG that sculpt is so bad.

It is not easy to sculpt! be proud, you did good.

Yeah, the original head sculpt is atrocious, which really bothered me because I like the character valerian from the Chris wraight books.

Anyway, thanks for the kind comment. I'm really proud of this conversion.

Even in the art that character looks like a dork.
Sadface indeed
Oh I think I read Luthr Huss by Chris wraight, I like his work!