If you follow this blog for a while, I owe you for sure a proper apology. But apart from that, you might have noticed that many of our kits do reflect not only my personal taste but also my life experience. "Little pest", today's focus protagonist, is one of those kits for whose design I got my hands full with my daily life, in specific the turbulent first months of cohabitation with Giulio, my English Bulldog.
There are two types of Bulldogs: the lazy ones and the crazy ones. In general, people only know about the first type and use to imagine this dog-shaped mortadella as chubby, narcoleptic and lazy boys but indeed they could also be almost the opposite. Giulio, being part of the second type, since his arrival was anything but calm or lazy. At all.
Never tired, never exhausted, never quiet: Giulio was, and still is, an untiring war machine whose only goal is entropy.
"Little Pest" is the first scene that I designed for this project, a year ago and, as you may guess, is about a little trouble made by this little Bulldog to his owner: taking advantage of the Dwarf's distraction, the little pest managed not only to give a good bite to that tasty sausage, but he even cut a hole in his owner's backpack to grab some cheese! Bad boy, baaaad boy!
I love to give a touch of humor to my creations and portray daily life scenes, this kit is a nice mix of both.
It's not easy to narrate a story, no matter how simple, with a static sculpt. I wanted it to be easy to understand so I make things the most obvious possible: there's a hole in the backpack, a piece of cheese that is falling out, and a piece of torn leather is suspiciously in the dog's mouth.
To complete the scene, the sausage shows the sign of a bite. No need to be Sherlock Holmes, to figure out the situation!
It has been fun to work on the Dwarf facial expression, frowning as only a Dwarf could be!
What I love about this sculpture is how the tiny details have been enhanced by Valerio: I know that it sounds weird, but one of the details that impressed me the most, when I saw this character for the first time, was the Dwarf's fingernails! They are a bit chewed, surely this Sentinel doesn't spend time on a proper manicure!
The classic tropes of our Iron Crow Sentinels are still there: the chubby backpack, the many maps, the tasty food and the little doll (you know, my Dwarves are kinda sentimental!). Of course, it's not all about being cute and eating proteins, and the big shield and the crossbow are there to remind us that this character still is a warrior. Or kind of.
What I wanted to add, designing this scene, is a piece of daily life: Iron Crows live outdoor for most of their time, their life is often lonely and far from their relatives. Imperial Crows and Hunting Bulldogs are not only precious allies in their duty, but they also are everyday life companions.
"Little Pest" has been originally designed as a bust, but as you can see I decided to give this character a pair of legs. The reason is simple: initially, I wanted to create a range with both busts and full figures, but then my aversion for busts took over. I'm sorry.
Said so, this kit will be available both as a full figure or bust (in fact, it's just a matter of assembling the legs and feet or not...).