Got her a new hooded cloak from the Hell’s Messenger TBLeague line, which is a closer match to the item description drawing for the Cloak of Non-detection in the inventory screen.
Upgraded her bow (to represent the Eagle Bow).
Bought a quiver that hangs on her thigh from a belt. Is thing a thing? Like was it ever done in olden times? Anyway its how Imoen rolls for this setup I guess.
Found a 1/12 scale shield that works great as a buckler. Diameter is 5 cm which translates to 12 1/2 inches in 1:1 scale.
Oh, and I forgot to highlight that I got her some jewelry, presumably enchanted: an amulet and a ring.
The ring could be a Ring of Protection +1? Or the Ring of Energy aka the Victor? I reckon whatever one likes for their own head canon! I’ll think of it as ROP +1.
The amulet… again per head canon… I guess I’d probably have her using the Shield Amulet.
The shield I generally like to use for Imoen is a buckler. And the one I like best is Kiel’s Buckler, which raises her Dexterity by +1 to an amazing score of 19.
But when I went looking for 1/6 medieval buckler shields, I found none!
So I looked for 1/12 scale shields instead, and found this:
The shield is 5.7 cm which translates to 14 inches diameter in 1:1 scale. That’s actually a fairly standard size for a buckler, or at least it was in real world medieval Europe. So I think it should work pretty well. It’s supposed to arrive next weekend.
And which bracers or gauntlets do I generally give Imoen? Well, unless I have Kivan or Coran in the party… or my Player Character uses a bow… it’s going to be the Bracers of Archery. The bracers improve her THACO for shooting arrows, i.e., her chance of hitting the target successfully, by +2.
The Bracers of Archery have a rather plain appearance in the item description:
However, as mentioned other party members may put the Bracers of Archery to better use overall. And because I do routinely send Imoen in to backstab enemy spellcasters—which means that at times she will be forced to engage in melee combat with enemy tanks—I might also give her a pair of Gauntlets of Weapons Expertise:
Those gauntlets improve her THACO with the dagger by +1. They also add +2 to the damage from a successful strike. And they are quite a bit more ornate in appearance than the Bracers of Archery.
In any case, when I went looking on eBay for 1/6 female medieval bracers I only found a couple pairs of them. And at least in terms of appearance, one pair did catch my eye.
Now, the shield and the bracers do share a similar color scheme. Or at least both use the colors of gold and copper. And the design aesthetic is kind of similar as well.
And I noticed that in Imoen’s portrait she’s wearing a necklace that has gold and copper colors.
Anyway, searching on eBay, in terms of the appearance of the items I doubt that I’m going to find close matches to Kiel’s Buckler and the Gauntlets of Weapons Expertise. So I’m content that at least I have some equipment for her that picks up on that gold/copper color scheme in her portrait.
Actually come to think of it, why not also give an enchanted ring and a magical necklace? But that’s for another post!
Oh, and as you’ve probably noticed those bracers shown above I have already equipped her with. I think they’re a great accent to the rest of her clothing, armor, and other gear. I think the shield will do the same. We’ll find out shortly.
Once the party gathers enough coin, I’ll typically first equip Imoen with a Shortbow +1 from Thunderhammer Smithy. And then in Chapter 5 after completing Marek’s quest in the city of Baldur’s Gate she gets the “Protector of the Dryads, the Eagle Bow” which is a Shortbow +2.
But until just recently it’s been a challenge even finding a shortbow of any sort on eBay. A couple months ago when I was first looking to assemble gear for Imoen at that time the best I could find was “1/6 Scale Medieval Bow, Arrows, Quiver – Fantasy.”
Which is fairly decent I guess. But unfortunately after I applied a thin layer of Vallejo weathering paint wash to the pleather quiver it cracked in several places. And I also cut off the fabric shoulder strap which obviously has a modern day aesthetic, painting the white snipped off part brown. For the quiver shoulder strap I used a nice leather one that Gustavo Ponce Bautista had made for Minsc, but that I ended up not using for Minsc because I ended up using something else.
I used Vallejo weathering powder on the quiver and bow. The paint job on the simulated wood for the bow in its stock condition looked too shiny—more obviously like plastic. The weathering powder definitely helped it look more naturally like wood.
Anyway the quiver looks downright roached now, lol.
It’s not absolutely terrible. And it’ll do for a good while, I reckon. I think of this bow as the Shortbow +1 available at Thunderhammer. Which toward the end of the game will have seen plenty of road miles.
And today as I write this I’m seeing a fair number of pretty decent options for the Eagle Bow on eBay. I’ll probably apply minimal weathering to it if any, since it’s a high end enchanted bow.
So I expect to be updating this shortbow before long to give her something fancier looking. Some choices I came across just this morning:
I’m leaning toward the combo of the bow plus three arrows and the separate quiver at the bottom of the above selection. Just wish that the quiver was a bit fancier, though.
This has been the most challenging piece of gear to customize for the project so far.
There are some in-game images of the “Worn Whispers” aka “Boots of Stealth” that give the wearer a boost to stealthy classes’ Hide in Shadows and Move Silently ability scores.
So what to do with all this, i.e., how to best represent these boots?
Well, first from eBay I purchased a pair of generic medieval female leather boots which happened to be brown, “Medieval Knight Boots Shoes 1/6 Model Accessory fit 1/6 Action Figure Model Doll”:
And I painted the leather black using Angelus leather paint. I applied two coats.
I also purchased from Hobby Lobby some “faux fur” with which to line the inner tops of the boots (that fold over) and some purple thread to simulate the laces.
And I trimmed the fur down to scale and glued it on to the inner top of the boot. Again, this was done in order to suggest that they are fur lined. But the main reason for adding the fur was to give the tops of the boots more bulk and “presence.” I was trying to represent the prominent folded “cuffs” of the boots at the top to better match the in-game graphics.
When I pushed the Phicen feet down into the boots the seams in the heel actually started to split. Probably due to paint drying on them. And the soul at the heel on one of the boots started to detach. I was able to use some black sewing thread to stitch the heels up. And I glued the sole back in place. It all worked out fine.
Next I added tiny “metal studs” made of chromed plastic in an assortment of several sizes and shapes that Gustavo Ponce Bautista kindly added to my order of the Shadow Armor.
And I used teeny tiny pinhead sized specs of blu tack to secure the studs to the boots. This turned out to be a very wise decision versus using craft glue. The blu tack is very forgiving. It allowed me to move the placements of the studs around to eventually achieve the geometrical design I wanted, evenly spaced. Had I attempted it with glue I would made so many mistakes that I would have ruined the boots.
Then I added the Vallejo black weathering powder, which dulled the leather to make it look more worn. Thankfully, the very slight amounts of visible blu tack that still poked from the sides of the studs, after doing my best to push it under the studs, was rendered invisible by the black powder. It all worked out perfectly.
I’m toying with the idea of attempting to use craft paint to try to simulating color streaks in the faux fur. But I’ll probably leave well enough alone!
I posted about this before here, but I can add a little more info on it.
I found this dagger on eBay:
It’s made of plastic versus die cast. But that may actually have worked out better for adding the color wash to the blade. (Reason for the green wash is explained below.) The dagger design looks pretty good, I think.
I painted the sheath black using Angelus leather paint.
And I layered a couple thin wash coats of metallic green acrylic craft paint to the blade itself. The green hue of the blade is intended to represent the weapon’s enchantment to deliver time-released drips of poison upon a successful strike (provided that the target doesn’t make a saving throw against it).
Using some of the same leather I purchased from Hobby Lobby to make the grip for Minsc’s longbow
I fashioned a loop to attach the scabbard to Imoen’s belt using a craft glue:
And I painted the loop with the black leather paint before attaching it to the sheath.
When I applied weathering dust to the entire figure it of course landed on the sheath and blade handle.
I’ve already posted a bit about the base clothing, see here and here. But I can provide more detail about what I did for the shirt and pants to get the figure to where it’s currently at.
On eBay I purchased “Saintess Knight (Silver) – White Female Clothes – 1/6 Scale – TBLeague.”
And since the top looked like an extremely tight fit also via eBay I bought a different top, “Hua Mulan – White Shirt (Female) – 1/6 Scale – ZOY Toys Action Figures.”
Both I think are most likely some sort of synthetic that’s intended to mimic linen? Anyway, I used the Hua Mulan top and the Saintess Knight pants.
And since I was going for this:
I picked up this “wine” colored dye at Hobby Lobby:
I soaked the clothing in a plastic cup of room temperature water with a generous amount of dye for most of a day. The fabrics were very similar but evidently the pants didn’t absorb the dye quite as much as the shirt. So the shirt came out a shade darker than the pants. I decided I liked the fact that there was a noticeable difference of shades between them.
I didn’t take a picture of the dyed clothes prior to weathering them. But as we might expect, the color darkened a bit due to the brown weathering powder.
And by now I’ve posted quite a few pics of the dirtied up figure. But here’s a re-post of a pic that shows off the full effect with both dye and weathering pretty well.
The game shows all rogues (Thieves, Bards) as hooded.
Presumably characters aren’t wearing onesies with hoods! So the hood to me implies a hooded cloak. That’s just left to the imagination, of course. But that’s what I went with.
And there are many enchanted cloaks in the game. I’ll often give Imoen the Nymph Cloak to boost her Charisma to get the best prices from merchants, or Algernon’s Cloak to Charm enemies. But I also like the Cloak of Non-detection for her, especially when playing with the SCS mod installed. I keep her class as pure Thief and like to have her backstab with the Dagger of Venom. The Cloak of Non-detection allows her to remain in stealth mode should (SCS’s AI-enhanced) enemy mages cast Detect Invisibility, Oracle, True Sight or True Seeing. And the “Whispers of Silence” cloak, aka Cloak of Non-detection, actually is shown with a hood on in it in it’s item description in the inventory screen.
So I like to think of the cloak she’s wearing as the Whispers of Silence.
I chose purple for the cloak’s color. Imoen’s portrait has her in a purple top, and there’s purple hue in the background. I chose a wine color for her base clothing in order to feature a more realistic feeling contrasting color, i.e., not have her entirely in purple. (See the pic of the sprite shown above for reference.)
So I found this cloak on eBay. It has some rather poorly applied weathering effects, i.e., its dirtied up just at the bottom, plus some unconvincing mud splatters that are very light colored:
This stock cloak has very clean scissor lines as well. Not very realistic looking!
Therefore I got to work on it first with a steel wire brush which made the texture more coarse and worn. As such I added tears and tatters, and I frayed the edges. Then I applied black and brown washes along the edges and applied weathering powders.
The iPhone camera in the low-light charcoal colored box that I designed to photograph figures makes the cloak look almost pink-ish here. But it’s purple. Here’s the cloak in more natural light:
Haven’t posted in a while but I’ve definitely been busy. The build for Imoen’s body is nearly finished.
I’m going to make a detailed post tomorrow explaining how I did everything, and what the thought process was behind various decisions, etc. But anyway, here’s the work in progress. It’s using a Wonder Woman third party head sculpt as a placeholder for Imoen’s head sculpt.
It came out a bit differently than I imagined in my mind’s eye. I like it, though!
Here’s the sprite again for reference sake:
The Imoen head sculpt should by now be in painter Mark Simpson’s hands. Youri at JustOneSixth in Netherlands sent the print on to Mark in the UK a couple weeks ago. I expect to hear from Mark before too long here to show me how things are progressing.
Also, shortly Youri will be sending me a several prints of the Wand of Magic Missiles , one of which he will paint for me and a couple that I will paint myself. More on the wand in a future post.
Oh, and I’ve purchased a shield for her that hopefully will serve convincingly as a buckler. Should be arriving next weekend. More on that in tomorrow’s post!
One Sixth Baldur's Gate 