Evil Warriors - Skeletor

A close contender for the first figure to get paint was Skeletor. The most evil looking badass villain in the history of Saturday morning cartoons and 80s boys' toys, superbly rendered in 30mm by the talented hands of Boris Woloszyn for Quest Miniatures. To say I'm in love is an understatement. Painting this figure (or figures) was the single most enjoyable painting experience I had to date and possibly the best paintjob I have delivered so far and I thought I was passed my prime.

Like with He-Man I had to do two versions, one built out of the box and one converted to have his sword as per the toy version. Both figures were glued to their plastic bases and then I sculpted some tile texture over it with putty. As he is based on the Filmation cartoon version, I went with a bright colour scheme to match that, which was not a natural thing for me to do as I have a tendancy to go for muted colours even when I'm not trying to do so. I'm very happy with the end result, but I'll let you make up your own mind.

Both Skeletors, side by side.

The first is the original sculpt built as is. I do like the pose with the staff, it's quite dynamic I feel. As I said, I went with a bright Filmation colour scheme and I'm particularly pleased with Skeletor's yellowish face and his blue skin. For the base, I went with a more understated purple so it wouldn't look too much like his clothes are made of the same material as the flagstone tiles. I will keep this theme for the other Evil Warriors.

The second version is a bit of a mix of Filmation and toy references. In the cartoon, when Skeletor had a sword, it was a regular one, where in the toy version, he had his half of the powersword that looked like a purple version of He-Man's and that's what I went for here. The sword was left over after my conversion of the spare He-Man figure to hold his axe, so that was just drilled and pinned into place. The swordhand is another plastic bit from the aforementioned Fireforge men-at-arms set. I cut away the left hand from the staff, filed it down and glued it into his open right hand. Easy.

Here we have Skeletor and He-Man crossing swords:

And taking their battle to the rooftop of Castle Grayskull:

"It's over, He-Man. I have the high ground!"