Friday Rucht Hour: Let's Mod up a Kraken

So, as you know, I've recently bought Privateer Press's Kraken. (See my unboxing and assembly posts for more info.)  Well, it's time to mod her up. If I'm going to drop that much money on a figure and it's of appreciable size, you better bet that I'm going to have fun with it.

First of all - if you didn't know before - here's a look at the model:

                 

Now, I started by wanting to put a figure into one of the Kraken's claws. But the question was, how? If you just stick a random mini into the claws of the Kraken, it's not going to look good. The figure will be posed for something else and look stiff while being held aloft. No worries, I thought. I have some figures of dead and dying warriors from another mod I did earlier. There was one problem. Even those figures didn't look quite right and most of them were completely flat on one side, because they were supposed to be lying on the ground. Look below to see what I mean...

So, I proceeded to dig around in my bins for bits and other minis. I remembered that I had an old bag o' zombies. I had always intended on them being grunts for another game, but a zombie would work nicely for my purposes.

Because the zombies were made of soft plastic, I just used the ol' boiling water trick. I bent a zombie in half, to make it look like it was being pinched in the middle. Then I put a rubber band around it, to keep it bent. I put the zombie in boiling water, took it out, let it cool, and voila! A figure bent over as if it were clasped in the middle. Quick work with a drimmel took off the zombie's plastic base. The whole process was about 15 minutes, tops. 

Here, you can see the zombie in the claws of the Kraken. I'll paint the zombie to look more like a human on the final product. 

Next up, salad dressing! The Kraken is supposed to be this menace which rises from the sea so I crafted seaweed from green stuff and draped it all over the model. To make the seaweed, I just made long, thin strings of green stuff and flattened it out carefully. Because green stuff has a taffy-like consistency, I stretched out the strands as far as I could to make them thin. It also helped make the ends of the seaweed taper off. Because most seaweed is twisted, I just twisted the strands around before applying it to the figure. Then, I tamped it all down to give it the appearance of something wet and clingy.

Behold! The modification is 90% done! Now, all I have to do is to add some barnacles to the figure and I'll be ready to re-base and paint!