I purchased a
Splintered Light Miniature's Bat Swarm. A bat swarm comes in six basic pieces: the individual bats, a base, a rod to use as a pole, and three different sizes of bat mounting gadgets (for lack of a better term). I included a straight pin on the right as I will use them for mounting and to give a rough scale to the pieces. The set from Splintered Light is designed to make a swarm of bats, but I had different plans for these "creatures of the night".
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I decided to base these bats individually so that I could use them as nuisance monsters with the rest of my 1/72 fantasy figures. I started by using # 10 washers and filling the empty spaces with pieces of plastic card. Except for the smaller size washer, it is the same procedure I always use when basing with washers.
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The next step was to glue some cork to the washer with PVA/white glue. I allowed the glue to dry and then shape it into a piece of rock with an razor blade knife.
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I then took the individual bat models and glued then to straight pins. On the underside of each figure was a spot modeled to allow it to be glued to the bat mounting gadgets. I used those places to super glue the bats to the straight pins. Luckily the heads of the straight pins were the same size as ends of the bat mounting gadgets so the models required no modification.
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After the glue had dried and the bats were fixed on their new perches, I bent their wings into various poses so they would appear to be flapping instead of soaring on thermals like buzzards of the night.
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Here is a view of the bats from above so you can see the posing from another angle.
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I finished my models by dipping the straight pins in super glue and inserting it as deeply into the cork base as I thought looked good. I then added PVA/white glue to tops of the washers and dipped them into sand to make the rocks appear to be surrounded by gravel. Below you have a a view of the completed bats from the front.
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I have to take a small break and talk about the name of these models, the "Bat Swarm". I have to say that a group of bats is not called a swarm but a colony. Except these bats are no ordinary bats, these bats are evil man eating bats that swarm all over you. I think that in the case of fantasy bats, which exist only to swarm over adventurers and devour them, you would call them a swarm. Returning back to the models, I give you the last photo of the models - the reverse view.
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They are now ready to prime and paint. I will be showing pictures of the completed colony/swarm and individual bats in my next post. Questions and comments are always welcome. Thanks for reading...
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