Aeryn Stormwind, the Nord Sellsword

Taking a little break from the horses, I've been working on another of my Skyrim figures recently - Aeryn. I had her 90% finished a few months ago but I was never happy with her head, so I ordered up a replacement to customise a few weeks ago.

As this post is going to be pretty huge, here's a quick preview of her final form so you at least have something to look forward to...XD

Before we get to the actual doll herself, you really ought to know a little about her character first.

Aeryn Stormwind is a proud Nord who joined the Stormcloaks based on their loud and often very convincing arguments about their need for freedom from oppression and whatnot. She left after a while though, finding their ‘anti-everyone-who-isn’t-a-nord’ approach to be rather racist and unacceptable to her personal sense of morality. Now she spends much of her time doing mercenary work and drinking copious quantities of mead…and not necessarily in that order.

She favours two blades over one, and can usually be seen with a sword in one hand and a shorter dagger in the other. Occasionally she’ll switch them out in favour of axes, and that’s when you know you’ve really pissed her off.

She also has an adorably fuzzy little Fjord mare named Freya and will protect her with her life and at all costs. (I can't wait to try to recreate her in 1/6th scale!)

I'm so glad I gave her that nose - I love big snoots (and I cannot lie)

As with the rest of my Skyrim figures, I wasn't intending to make her an exact copy of her in-game counterpart when it comes to armour and things - mostly because I use about 90% modded armour and weapons anyway, and it's more fun to reinterpret things.

She started her 1/6th scale life as a Barbie 'Made to Move' doll. I've been waxing lyrical about these dolls for months but they really are fantastic and easily rival more expensive 1/6th scale bodies in terms of articulation!

Now, I know some of you might be wondering why I didn't just start off with a 'proper' 1/6th scale body instead of a Barbie, but to be perfectly honest, a lot of it came down to cost. I can get one of these for under £20 and to me it's a known quantity now - I've tried other brands of female figures and this is by far my favourite thus far for cost/quality. The only thing I want to change is the hands, so I'll be on the lookout for small gripping female hands.

Those eyes though, jeez.

She was the brunette 'Teresa' one, but lost most of her locks fairly early on.

Sorry about that.

Whhhyyyyyyyyy?

#sorrynotsorry

I started repainting her face and it was at this point that I knew she'd definitely need another head in the future as this one just wasn't cutting it. It's a lovely head mould in general, but it certainly wasn't Aeryn and my seriously terrible painting left much to be desired.

I'm coming for your soul

She gained an undershirt made from some roughly textured off white fabric - it didn't need to be perfect as you'd only really see the sleeves in the end.

I rather annoyingly made her trousers too short at the waist so I cunningly disguised my mistake by adding a massive leather section at the top, complete with tiny brads to lace up. It looks nicely fantastical and more like an intentional design feature than a frantic effort to save face. XD

It still kept falling down so I had to resort to a couple of plaiting bands to cinch it in at the top. XD

I wanted to keep the chainmaille sleeves of her in-game outfit, so I rummaged in my materials stash and found another of those cheap fake chainmaille purses I'd used on one of my previous figures.

The links were the right size but the colour was too bronze for my liking so once I'd cut out the right sized blocks I laid them out and thoroughly soaked them in a combination of Citadel metallic paint, some old silver poster paint and some of the washes to change the colour. The paint was quite thick and I worried about it getting in all the crevices and preventing the 'maille' from moving naturally so I *shoogled it around a lot as it dried so that wouldn't happen. Even with a lot of handling it still hasn't come off so I'd definitely consider it an effective solution.

*technical term, obviously.

I've never made a full set of maille with this stuff but it wouldn't be too difficult as it's relatively easy to work with and it drapes and forms to the shape of the figure beautifully.

Using a particularly thick knitting needle as a stand-in arm, I sewed up the join with thick linen thread, making sure I left a gap at one end so that the maille could butt up against her torso easily.

As she'd be getting a breastplate over the top anyway, I just roughly stitched the sleeves together at the front and back. It still allowed plenty of movement but meant that there was no danger of them slipping off down her arms.

Somehow a picture of Mrs B seems to have got mixed up with all my 1/6th photos so here, have a bonus semi-tame blackbird.

The pauldrons were pretty simple, just roughly cut leather shapes, attached at the back with a short leather strap and at the front with a homemade buckle.

I added in some rabbit skin underneath as a wolf fur substitute.

 I wouldn't normally use real fur but in this case I had an old vintage fur stole in my stash, rescued from the 'to bin' pile when my mum was sorting through some of my grandma's old clothes. I'd rather see it go to use than off to the dump, and at this scale it makes fairly convincing wolf fur so it was ideal for Aeryn who spends most of her time out in the snow.

I'd quite like to make this wolfhead hood thing too, but I've since misplaced the fur so it's perhaps a project for another time.

The breastplate was pretty simple, just a rough shape cut out of tooling leather, then soaked and applied to the body to dry into the right form. I wrapped it up with clingfilm afterwards so it would be a nice snug fit.

I obviously forgot to photograph it, but I made a simple 'woollen' vest top out of felt to go on top of the shirt. It also helps keep the chainmaille in position.

I added a leather gorget over the top with some brads added in for detail.

In the end I glued it to the breastplate directly and then dyed the leather with a combination of Citadel washes and natural beeswax to protect the finish. I used a Copic Marker for the darker edges.

I sewed some scrap pieces of leather together and then added them to the woollen vest thing for a little more visual interest.

As I was more or less making this up as I went along, the attachment points are a little iffy but never mind.

She had a brief stint as an Ancient Egyptian as I mummified her in tissue while I sculpted over her feet with Milliput. As much as I'd have liked to have kept the ankle articulation, in the grand scheme of things it wasn't really necessary and I'd take being able to stand unaided over potentially tippy feet anyday.

Now that her feet were a nice boot shape, it was easy to glue and sew on the leather parts. I added some more of the rabbit skin for the tops, though I keep having to brush hair mousse through that part to stop it getting too fluffy! XD

I rubbed on some natural beeswax so they're nice and waterproof - something which will hopefully come in handy if I get the chance to take her out in the snow at some point.

All she needed now was hair, so I carefully glued on some Tibetan mohair. I didn't do a particularly good job of it if I'm honest, probably because I was so fed up of the head by then. Still, it was passable until I got a replacement.

At one point I made some 'steel' sections for the pauldrons out of styrene and weathered them to death before gluing them directly onto the leather. I'm really glad I added them in the end as they go really well with the chainmaille and give her shoulders a little more protection.

I took her on holiday with me and gave her a bit of a photoshoot.

All the little belts and bags were made from scrap leather - the fingertips of leather gloves make excellent bags btw!

Her sword and dagger were made from carved wood which was then painted with several coats of metallic nail varnish.

I liked the pictures (Instagram ftw!) but I couldn't look past the creepy vacant eyes and the awful smile. She just wasn't right, so I began my search for a suitable head. Eventually I narrowed it down to two options - both Kumik sculpts. One was broader in the face, with a larger nose, which was accurate to Aeryn's own, but the other was more like her in the jawline and cheekbones, and although the prominent nose is one of my favourite features in her in-game look, I went for the second one in the end.

I bought it off eBay, forgetting that these particular headsculpts come in two parts - the solid resin face and the silicone scalp with rooted hair. It's a good idea for those who like to swap hair colours and things but personally I think it's a right scutter and not something I was particularly enamoured with, especially given how distorted the scalp part was to begin with.

 I'd had a few ideas on how to hair her - rerooting being one idea, the other being to rule out the silicone scalp entirely and sculpt the rest of her head onto the faceplate and add the hair on afterwards. I needed practice in rerooting anyway so I went with that, but using mohair instead of synthetic fibre. I have nothing against nylon/saran for hair, but I greatly prefer the look and feel of natural fibre - especially on these particular figures as it helps to cement their more grounded and realistic feel.

So, with that in mind, I removed all the synthetic hair and made sure the scalp was clean and ready for rerooting. I used a flat ended screwdriver and pliers to scoop out all the dried glue and hair plugs from the inside - never try to pull them out from the top, it takes forever and isn't very effective.

 

I got out my homemade rerooting tool (a needle with the eye cut at an angle and a broken hand drill) some off white/ blonde mohair and set to work.

I made the rookie mistake of using too much around the edges of the head and not enough in the middle, and even partway through the rooting it was obvious I was going to run out of mohair.

I filled in the bald spots with as similar a colour as I could find and tied her hair back out of the way while I added some copydex glue to the inside of the head to hold the hair in place.

One other thing about the silicone part - it doesn't always line up perfectly with the face plate, so there's a gap at the top. I ended up chopping off some of the side pieces and supergluing it to the face once the hair was all sorted.

Once I was sure that everything was secure, she got her first trip to the salon (aka the bathroom sink) and a dollop of conditioner for good measure. A few plugs came out - annoyingly right at the front, so I had to patch those bits before I could do anything else.

I washed it again and this time plaited the hair, then held it in place with rubber bands while it dried, hoping that it would hold its shape afterwards...

Sadly it didn't.

The 80s called, they want their perm back

At this point I just thought screw it, and wrapped it all up out of view so I could start on her face.

Once I'd used some acetone to scrub off most of the paint on the eyebrows and lips, I carved the scars into her skin with a scalpel and a fine jewellers file. I didn't want to go too deep but I wanted enough of an 'incision' for the 3D effect to work.

With the face ready to paint I gave it a spray with Testor's Dullcote to give the surface some 'tooth' for the paints and pastels to stick to. I repeated this step after every couple of layers.

I repainted the lips a ridiculous number of times before they looked right, using Citadel acrylics and pastels. Aeryn also has complete heterochromia, so her pupils are both different colours. It's something I've always loved as a feature on people, and it somehow really works for her as a character. I didn't alter the original whites of the eyes, I just painted over the pupils using acrylics, with a little dab of metallic poster paint to give them a little more life.

The scar had a tiny amount of reddish brown wash added to it and later on I gently went over the edges of the carved out parts with a white pencil, just to highlight the edges, although I was careful to keep it subtle.

I drew on the eyebrows with coloured pencil and acrylics applied with a very fine brush.

Her eyeshadow/kohl was added with pastels as well as some shading to the insides of her ears and nose too. Coloured pencils are super useful for tiny details, so I went over her eyebrows again, in addition to her waterline and lashes. Her lips got some texture lines drawn in as well which really brought them to life.

Finally I drew on her warpaint (pastels mixed with clear matte varnish) and glossed her eyes.

I washed her hair yet again, but this time added some Citadel glaze/washes (Agrax Earthshade and Seraphim Sepia) at the roots before it dried. I also added some of my mum's fancy hair oil stuff for dry hair which I thought might help it from going super frizzy. (I can't remember what it was, but it looked expensive and she doesn't know I used some, so shhhhhh :P)

The likeness isn't perfect but it's a lot better than I anticipated!

Once the hair had dried completely I brushed it out, then styled it with some mousse and a little more of the Citadel wash and then finally, after she'd been recapitated, she was finished.

I couldn't resist doing a bit of photoshopping as well, using some of my screenshots from the game.

I couldn't decide which of these I preferred so here, have two. :P

I'm really hoping for some snow soon so I can take her out for a proper photoshoot!