'Childhood' from ByronM: Alice in Wonderland

For this week's theme week entry I present to you a figure that I have had sitting here waiting for the better part of 4 years.   This figure is a gift for my wife, which is now kind of an annual tradition during the Challenge.   This years addition to her collection is a steam punk version of Alice in Wonderland.  I felt this would fit the childhood theme since it is a favourite story from many a childhood.

The figure is from a company called Guild of Harmony which makes (made?) some excellent steam punk fairy tale figures.  While I can still find a facebook page, the links to any kind of store have disappeared, so I really don't know if they still exist doing this line, or if they are just doing their new line through Demented Games.   It therefore looks like I may need to hunt out other options as I am out of their figures for next year, so any suggestions of other companies out there that do similar figures are welcome!

The figure itself was a lot of fun to paint and I tried to keep it as authentic Alice as I could.  The signature yellow hair, blue dress, and white apron. I then worked on all the small details like the flamingo stock for the gun and the bright green caterpillar, all keeping with the real colours.  I considered going with metal for the flamingo to not have the high contrast clashing colour there, but decided that it would look more the part with it pink.

The white rabbit, I kept partially white, as he is a clockwork rabbit in this case and mainly metal.  So his arms, legs, paws, and face are white, but the rest of his body is silver and brass.

Since the figure is not just a figure for gaming, I wanted to do something a bit more than normal for the base, but wasn't sure what to do until I remembered a pile of scale street lamps that I got a while ago and a pile of small gears.  I came up with the idea of Alice following the white rabbit down a path in a park to their very important date.  The path would be made up of gears to keep the steam punk feel, and the street lamp would be there to help light the way, literally as it lights up with batteries.

Currently the light is lit by a 9v and wires that I cut out of the picture, but it will be lit by watch batteries hidden in the base once I get the bottom part of the base cut, I was so worried about getting the figure done I lost track of time and never cut it in time.  When done the base will be an extra 6mm thick to hide all the electronics in.

I kept the gears a mix of brass, bronze, and copper to fit the theme.  I then added a fall look to the base to keep with the warm metal tones.  I know it contrasts with Alice's cold tones, but I think that works to really make her stand out.

Overall, I am really happy with how everything came out, other than her face!  It is fairly small and I just could not get it just right.  It was either too dark, or too light, and I kept messing up the rose cheeks and eyes.  In the end after about 10 repaints of the face, I gave up with my final attempt which is passable, but still not just "right".  I may do something about it at a future date, but I just didn't have time to keep playing with it and still finish the rest of the figure.  What I was going for was something like Mr. Lee's version of the figures face which is excellent and has tons of character, I just couldn't get it going for some reason this week.  I normally have issues with flesh tones, but this week I was even more befuddled with them than normal.


For those interested this is the fourth Steampunk figure I have done from Guild of Harmony, all as presents to my wife Kim.  The other three were Mary Poppins, Tinkerbell and the Little Mermaid.