Coryphee: A Flourish and Knife-shoes

In terms of style and character, I'm going on record to say that the coryphee are unique to Malifaux.

A coryphée normally refers to a rank in ballet. The rank-and-file ballerinas are the "corps de ballet", and the coryphée serves as their lieutenant -- the lead dancer of the corps, but below the other dancers.

But of course, this a wargame. So even dancing becomes violent.  In the game, Malifaux's coryphee (sans acute accent) keeps the dancer garb but are embellished with blades on the hands and feet.  They have an ability to move into an opponent's space to attack and move out without getting hit in turn.

So you have a nimble dancer adorned in taffeta with scissorhands who deftly tumbles in to cut you to ribbons and then tumbles out in time with the music.

Further, they're man-sized puppets, not people... because it helps to be a mannequin if you're going to dance around in knife-shoes.

So... graceful bladed ballet-lieutenant puppets.  Can't think of where I've seen that elsewhere.

Onto painting them.  I've played these only with basic priming done in a game or two. I found it was really difficult to figure from the card which one was half kneeling down (aka Coryphee 1) and which one was re-enacting the crane kick in Karate Kid (aka Coryphee 2).  So lesson learned?  Paint them the same color as the cards (i.e., same color as the box).  I don't often follow the canned color pattern, but experience showed the way to wisdom here.

General Color on both

• "Skin" Fabric - Base: FolkArt Butter Pecan, Wash: Vallejo Sepia Ink, Highlight 1: FolkArt Linen
• Boots - Base: heavy glaze of black, Highlight 1: FolkArt Metallic Black to finish (to give a shiny leather look).
• Blades - Vallejo NMM Grey Metallic set

Coryphee 1 - Color pallet Pink

• Corset and gloves - Reaper Gem Purple
• Bows on Corset - Base: Reaper Entrail Pink, Wash: Brilliant Red, Highlight: Entrail Pink and Apple Barrel Antique White (also see final touch notes below using FolkArt Metallic White)
• Dress - Base: Reaper Entrail Pink, Wash: Reaper Crimson Red, Off Shadow: Brilliant Red, Highlight: Entrail Pink and Apple Barrel Antique White
• Bows on dress - Base: Reaper Gem Purple
• Undergarment - Reaper Moldy Skin and Bloodless Skin

Coryphee 2 - Color pallet Turquoise

• Corset - Base: Reaper Ghoul Skin, Main Shadow: Reaper HD Field Grey, Lines: Bloodless Skin
• Dress and Bow - Base: FolkArt Aqua, Shadow 1: Reaper HD Turquoise, Deeper Shadow: Reaper HD Winter Blue, Highlight: Reaper HD Ice Blue and Apple Barrel Antique White
• Undergarment - Base: Reaper Moldy Skin

Quick shot of what Coryphee 1 looked like after Grey prime, black wash, white drybrush while I worked on the "skin" fabric

Coryphee 2. Initial work.  Stripes on the corset worked out well.  And I was also pleased with the undershadow colors on the back of the dress.

Here's Coryphee1 mounted on base. The Malifaxu 2e figures have an annoying recurrance with great figures but impossible to stay mounted on the base due to the size of figure's foot print.

Size comparison with AA batteries to show perspective to the problem.

Anyway, at this point I felt the bow had no "pop".  Visually, it just got confused with the rest of the dress. So I decided to mix my 2 Highlight colors with some FolkArt Metallic White and just lightly go around all of its edges. 

The base was looking a little lonely - mostly because it was off-center.  So I crafted a little ribbon laying on the floor out of green stuff, as if the coryphee had just swung a scissorhand to cut a ribbon. Used the same blue dress color as above.

Now presenting the graceful bladed ballet-lieutenant puppets...

Collodi 3: Colors on the Puppeteer

Wyrd makes miniatures that are insanely detailed for plastic, and insanely complicated to put together. My FLGS pointed out that I should grateful I don't play Von Schill and had to assemble his Steam Trunk. I am.

But for all the details, I'm a little surprised they didn't make the wood look like wood. So I added the detail myself.  I applied little wood lines with Van Dyke Brown like I had on the straight razor and the rolling pin on Collodi's party crashers.

I searched for a color scheme I thought would be comparable to an Italian puppeteer. I eventually found one I fell in love with as it had that beautiful shade of purple that was very stylish.

For reference, that's a Venetian marionette of Mangiafuoco - the evil puppeteer who kidnaps Pinocchio in the story written by Collodi himself. If that's not a nest of intertwined references - I don't know what is.

Liking the color scheme meant more stripes to paint. My first pass was FolkArt Raspberry Wine and Olive Green.

.

The back had a lot more folds. It was kind of fun trying to draw a straight line and see where the brush took me. The overall effect to me looked like he was stepping his right foot forward, and the cloak on the floor was dragging in that motion.

The topmost green stripe should have gone all the way to the edge of the overcoat. so I had a little repainting to do.  But what really bugged me was what I painted looked less a  stylish wardrobe and more a Rita's Water Ice sign. It all had to do with that FolkArt Raspberry Wine color. 

My painting buddy happened to have a Ceramcoat Grape handy which blended into this beautiful royal color. Once I re-painted the stripes with this color I knew that's what the hat and robe should be. One catch I ran into when I went home to do some touch-ups: According to a discontinued Delta color chart I found online, Delta no longer makes "Grape". Did a little testing and eventually found Anita's Violet was a decent match. But the search made real something I already suspected: most paint lines have slew's of options for tans, browns, yellows, greens, oranges and blues - but purple is much more limited.  You really have to borrow from different paint lines to get a good palette. 

FolkArt Teddy Bear Tan was the middle stripe.  For the wood, I followed the same pattern as the wood handle on his doll friend's straight razor: VanDyke Brown lines, heavy glaze of Teddy Bear Tan, but this time I used a wash of FolkArt Coffee Bean. Brushed off that last wash on places to give it more of the uneven tone that wood grain has.

Back of the robes delivered what I wanted on a first coat, though it obviously needed some shading to bring out the "swanky" velvet sheen I wanted.

Had to put him on the base just for sizing him up and make sure I'm still headed in the right direction.

With that confirmed, it's onto the finer details.