Have just been experimenting a little with these. No pics, I only have a terrible camera phone.
Some things that work really well:
- Filing the front of the feet down into a square shape. Makes them look armoured, scales better with the smaller hands on the forgefathers (the big fantasy feet look like clown shoes) and mixes well with the blocky style of the rest of the sculpt.
- Clipping off the dagger, replacing with grenade. Nice and easy. Takes away a fantasy element, adds a sci-fi one.
- Adding the "scanner" piece to the top of the gun on the 2-piece model. I did this with the 2 prongs facing towards the model, attached to the larger of the 2 flat un-detailed areas on the top of the gun. Really helps to draw attention away from the problem.
- Filing down the back of the non-cloaked body a little. This normally looks like cloth with a slight fold in the middle, but if you can just file it down enough to level off the fold line, you can paint it to look like armour instead of cloth. I guess you could also use filler or something to smooth it out instead.
Things that didn't work:
- Adding goggles to the 2-piece model. Was really fiddly and still doesn't look right, the asymmetry of the goggle design is the problem, it looks odd.
So, after a little bit of extra work I'm now very happy with how the steel warriors are looking.
