Saturday, December 7, 2013

Silly Rabbit

Death awaits you all.
A rabbit may seem an odd starting point for monster creation. (Unless you're a carrot; rabbits scare the hell out of carrots.) Nonetheless, various folklore traditions and taxidermists provide a surprisingly varied collection of horned and/or winged chimera-bunnies (Sweden's Skvader, Germany's Wolpertinger, America's Jackalope to name a few).

Alan Hunter illustration from Fiend Folio
Not to be outdone, the Fiend Folio throws the Al Mi'raj into the mix. I foolishly believed that this was a recent hybridization in the spirit of the Owl-Bear... take a rabbit, slap a unicorn's horn on its noggin, and call it a day. It turns out this critter can be traced back to the Mid-East as detailed on Wikipedia. Cool.

Cool too is the fact that Wyrd produces a Jackalope mini perfectly suited for a simple Al Mi'raj conversion. Nasty, big, pointy teeth (to quote Tim the Enchanter), an aggressive stance, and separate antlers were all selling features. A winged unicorn from Mirliton, earmarked for another conversion, provided the horn.

Step one: drill a hole in the forehead just forward of where the antlers would go.

Step two: carve the lower section of the horn into a post that fits into the hole. Attach with super-glue.






Step three: Some putty work.

Painting was very straightforward. The source material indicated a pale coloration with a black horn. The spotted coat seen in some illustrations was intriguing but in the end I kept it simple.

 
 
 

The Wyrd mini was fun to work with and is just a pair of wings shy of the dreaded Wolpertinger, undisputed king of all rabbit-monsters. I'll save that for another day though. Right now I have a post-operative unicorn and several half painted minis vying for my attention.

9 comments:

  1. Interesting critter. Its quite amusing you posting this I was only reading about Jackalopes earlier in the week and behold you mention it here! Never heard of this creature off to investigate.

    Its a lovely conversion and paintjob.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Simon. It seems the Al Mi'raj lacks the Jackalope's notoriety. I always assumed it was only a 1970's creation for an RPG.

      Delete
    2. On the subject of Jackalope minis, I actually painted Reaper's version last year as a wizard's familiar.

      http://minisbyfinch.blogspot.com/2012/08/slime-time.html

      Delete
  2. An eye catcher of a conversion. And I like it. Fine modeling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now that is seriously disturbing, brilliant, but seriously disturbing nonetheless!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seriously disturbing is the best kind of disturbing. Thank you Michael.

      Delete
  4. A cool idea for simple conversion a painter can do to any animal. Nicely converted and painted Finch. Thanks for the idea.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Thom. You're right, the possibilities are endless.

      Delete