Kimera Models – Lokaris Done!

We’re finally at the end of a deliberately long journey and I’m excited to talk about this miniature and show the final results. Lokaris has been an unusual voyage in the sense that I had an idea of what I wanted to do with it and tried it and realized straight away that I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. When I first saw the sculpt Lokaris reminds me of this guy from Game of Thrones and it would be cool to do something like a Wildling though I don’t think this sculpt matches that aesthetic quite enough.

My original plan was to play up the barbaric qualities of this sculpt. Unfortunately, I painted the scale mail first and the gold just didn’t scream barbarian and so I knew I needed to rethink the whole concept. Fortunately, an idea popped into my head and gave me a completely different direction. If you’ll humor me, here is a brief piece of fiction that I wrote on Lokaris:

There was one thing he told that boy not to do and now his nephew had gone and done it. Stay outta them woods. There’s nothing but trouble in there. The warning couldn’t be any simpler and yet the thirteen-year-old couldn’t resist. Maybe its ‘cause his parents are dead and gone and now Bron is stuck with his unfamiliar uncle. That didn’t matter much when one or both of them were going to wind up dead.

Karthak knew who lived in those woods and he know what code they lived by too. Nobody seemed to know the man’s real name because he lived off the land and roamed as he saw fit. At some point, the nomad found a wolf companion. Those were halcyon days compared to now.

If you go down to the Thirsty Boar, there’s an old man with one eye and scars littering his face. It’s uncomfortable to look at and he’s even worse to listen to. When he’s not spitting on you when he talks, he blabbers on about Lokaris. A man at peace with nature or he was anyway. Slowly but surely more people settled in this area and they took what they wanted from the forest. Lumber and game, it didn’t matter really and they didn’t worry about any harm they caused. One day, Lokaris ran into some men who tried to rob him. First, they killed his wolf and then they took what little he had. As ol’ one eye tells it, Lokaris snapped that day. He skinned the wolf and donned the pelt so man could see the destruction he had wrought. He adorned its bones so that no part was wasted. From then on, if you harmed Nature’s creations, Lokaris would do to you what those men did to his wolf.

Karthak ran under the eaves of trees, huffing and puffing. He couldn’t call out for Bron or he might attract Lokaris. At the same time, each second that passed meant that Bron could be found by Lokaris. The boy would receive no mercy from that man.

So yes, Lokaris is a kind of Earth warrior, not unlike GW’s Wood Elves but he’s not a hero who is going to save us, he’s more the hero that we deserve. I’ll talk a little bit more about how I tried to achieve that look after I show some pictures of the final product.

The main way I tried to show that Lokaris is in touch with nature is with the bunny who is completely unafraid of him. I also went with a color scheme that ultimately looks somewhat elven but on a barbaric sculpt like this, it gives you a different sort of feel. Hopefully that all comes across well in the final product but of course, I’ll let you be the judge.

Once you get to the end of a project like this, it is natural to do some reflection and I do sincerely believe this is one of the best things I’ve painted to date. Its at least competitive with this Stormcast from quite a long time ago now.

With Lokaris, I’m proud of how I came up with a rich color scheme that works well together. It is underappreciated at times in our hobby with how difficult that is. Games Workshop basically does that work for you for all their armies and me being able to pull it off took me years of practice essentially. Most of all, I think the textures on the miniature are as good as any I’ve done. What helped me get good at textures was painting that bust a while back. I didn’t realize it then but it really taught me some things that paid dividends on this project. Sometimes when we work on things in this hobby, you don’t always feel the growth occuring but when you see that you have indeed improved, it is very satisfying.

Before Lokaris, I was feeling not very confident with where I wanted to go with display painting. I had a couple of aborted projects, especially with some busts before Lokaris and I’m relieved that I found my groove on this project and reminded myself why I like 75mm miniatures so much. For the time being, I’m content to stick with 75mm and see where I can go from here. This is the second one I’ve completed and perhaps there is further room that I can grow.

Of course, the real question is: have I improved since I painted and entered Minerva at MMSI in 2024? I believe that I have and you can see it in side-by-side image above. Obviously, if I receive another gold medal for Lokaris or the bust I’m bringing, that would be another clear sign too. I’ll save that discussion for next week as I’ve probably yammered on enough about Lokaris at this point.

Painting this miniature was a long journey because I took my time and was thoughtful with pretty much everything I did on the miniature and I think that really paid dividends. While there were plenty of moments where I thought to myself, am I ever going to get this done? Ultimately, taking my time and taking breaks as needed worked wonders and I never felt burnt out while working on Lokaris. I also never felt like I wasn’t giving my best effort which is key as well. I’m afraid that I did do that at times with Minerva and that might have hurt the final product a bit. You live and you learn.

I promised last week that I’d touch upon my birthday spoils and truthfully, I mostly got cash which I haven’t done too much with yet. I did buy the final expansion for Arkham Horror: Third Edition so I can finish the LaserOx organizer. For some reason, Amazon needs a week plus to ship it here, so I haven’t received it yet. My brother was incredibly generous and bought me a box of each set of Sorcery: Contested Realm as well. I’ve been opening a few packs of cards every day and am only halfway through the process. I will open everything up and then talk about that at some point in the nearish future. I’ll probably work on building some new decks since I now have so many more cards at my disposal as well so expect more Sorcery discussion eventually.

My Fallout haul that I talked about a couple of weeks ago also deserves a mention. The picture quality isn’t great, partially because everything is still in shrink wrap, but this is everything I bought for $160 from Modiphius. It is the largest miniature purchase I’ve ever made.

Truthfully, if you’re on Discord or Reddit for any particular game, you’ll see people have posts like this which seem to be almost bragging about the money the person spent and how excited they are to start said game. Generally speaking, it feels like most of those people never go on to post many painted miniatures and so you’re left to wonder if they even play the game that they dropped hundreds on and then posted on social media. You can rest assured that I’m not going anywhere even if I have a more than healthy Fallout backlog at this point!

All in all, I feel a bit spoiled both in the hobby and with my birthday last week. With a backlog bigger that is larger than I’ve ever had, I certainly need to think about getting some stuff done but I’ll talk more about that in a week or two as I start to work on things post-Lokaris. I’ll also have a full-report from MMSI, especially considering it might be my last year attending for the foreseeable future so I hope you’ll look forward to that as well.