Thursday, 8 August 2019

Starfire Elemental

It’s a well-known fact that artists often have a hard-time sticking to the brief. Such was the case for Bobby Jackson when he came to sculpt the starfire elemental for Maze of Malcor

Basically, a starfire elemental is just a big ball of floating fire. Instead of that, Bobby sculpted a floating metal sphere, burning with internal fire, and smoke pouring out of it. I love it. It doesn’t match the description at all, but it’s just such a cool figure.

In the end, it was decided to use this figure and sculpt the more accurate version and include them in the same pack. I think it was the correct decision.

The starfire elemental is technically a creature, but in truth, it acts more like a spell effect. Soon after it was released, Games Workshop saw the model and stole the idea for their entire range of ‘EndlessSpells’. (Okay, that’s almost certainly not true, but I figure a little GW controversy might help sales!).

It was a fun, quick paint (except for trying to paint in the small, flaming cracks in the sphere), and it looks fantastic on the tabletop!

8 comments:

  1. I agree, it's a great mini, and you've done a cracking job on it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is great! This is the first one of these I've seen painted. I'm glad you guys let me have fun with this one. I was imagining a Starfire Elemental that had been captured by some long dead wizard and was now loose following the thaw. (that seemed more fun to sculpt than a blob of fire) :P

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a great model!
    I agree that this is a far more interesting model than just a ball of fire.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice paint job, you've inspired me to paint mine!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent work on it Joe! Maybe this in the next iteration...Steampunk Felstad!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oooh! That's a very nice paint job. The sphere looks like something from an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral.

    ReplyDelete