Koniminiatures' customs & tack (updated Feb 21st)

Amazing work as usual ! You are truly gifted !

It's incredibly looking model. Wow. I don't have enough words, I will just say it's very impressive and extremely well done. That tongue has perfectly natural colour and makes very good colour accent for this dark animal.
And also, hey I have never heard of this breed of cattle, they are a bit weird I would say

This has to be one of the best customs I've ever seen!

Glad you're liking it so! Thank you very much for the great comments. I was a little worried about pulling off such a monochromatic and, as Anna points out, very unlikely-looking animal; I just hope its new owner, too, will be pleased with it upon inspecting the model in person. I had great fun building it, for sure.

Mangalarga wrote:

This has to be one of the best customs I've ever seen!

Trusting you to have seen a few too, that is indeed a compliment of some caliber - thank you very much!


In further cattle news, the cow custom mayhem referenced on the 1st page of this thread has finally progressed to the resculpting at least being more or less complete on the 1st batch of models:


Shown are resculpts of the Mojo 2014 Highland cow 387199, CollectA 2010 Brahman bull 88579, Papo 2012 lying Simmental cow 51151 and Schleich Holstein bull 13632; and in the 2nd picture Papo 2013 Charolais cow 51158, Schleich 2001 Holstein cow 13140, Anna's resin gaur. What their new breeds are to be shall remain a surprise for a bit yet, I think (though guesses will be entertained..!). I'll add to this thread a few closer looks at a couple of the above resculpts in a moment.

Alright, since it may be years yet before I'll get around to painting these, and because both are intended for uniformly dark colourations rendering their sculptural detail far less visible, I'll post below little walkarounds of the most-changed two of the above completed cattle resculpts, namely Ana's great gaur and Highland cow. We'll start with the latter.

Here's a sordidly unflattering picture of the original model:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

In the model, I found Anna had provided us with such a graceful composition and balanced, classic sculpt that I ended up wanting to, for my own copy, join in this perceived hat-tip to the grace of the old Lineols and Elastolins, if only in my crass and graphical manner. Aside from the recoating, I also very slightly remuscled and repositioned the animal.

I'm unsure of whether my "contribution" just adds pointless romance or baffling psychedelia to the poor cow, but well, she's certainly been ”stylized” now alright. Hopefully my eventual, dark paintwork of the piece will work to ameliorate the mad hair it's got going now.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

That's absolut amazing, Lea!

Love the idea! Love the species! Love them all!

I`m a huge fan of your work.
I love your imagination, your technique, your style..
And every time you surprise us with more and more unique,
amazing and crazy (in a nice way) works of art.
Bravo Lea :)

Love the highland!

Aw, thank you, Bonobo and Kosta, LeeAnn - and everyone who've commented! I don't know quite what to say - these are great compliments on my feeble efforts, and I'm afraid I'm far better at stilted sarcasm than I am at plain sincerity. I'll try, though: Thank you. I'm absolutely chuffed to hear you're liking (so far!) the outcome of the Great Hack and Slash of 2014. (Just don't go tell Anna what I've done to her beautiful sculpts.. )

Speaking of which, here's lastly the customized gayal bull (Bos frontalis - a hybridization between gaur and Bos taurus cattle). It started out as a rough cast of Anna's splendid gaur (Bos gaurus) resin - a model I'd long coveted and, amazingly, got a late chance to acquire, thanks to Anna's generosity.


After that came smoothing of the surface, some additional details and a slight rebuilding of parts of the anatomy to reflect a hybrid conformation. The animal's depicted fairly lean (so perhaps more a F2 bush bull than a butterball draught animal, for example), but I must note that part of the prominence of the ribs of the offside of the model for instance is attributable to its sideways twisting pose and air-filled lungs - he's shifting his weight and ready to bellow, after all.

The bodybuilder veining will get toned down by paint later, but has, I'll note, been modelled quite closely after reference photos - gaurs do get some pretty weird anatomy, particularly once all hot and bothered. (The bloody weird arse - since putting one as odd as that "nicely" would be needlessly prim - was likewise done after disturbing amounts of reference photographs and video footage of the real animals' mildly horrific behinds. You don't want to know the things I've seen!)


Phew..! Deluge of images now officially over. Many thanks to Anna for so generously trading away and casting for me the beautiful resin, and for so trustingly allowing me to customize the copy to my heart's content! Thanks to y'all viewing, too, if you made it this far, of course.

More deluge of pics please

You work is beautiful, I can't wait to dig in with final result pics

W O N D E R F U L Works Léa ... Fantastic :)

Wow ! Just wow

We want more now !

That... is just.... omg!!
I have no words..... <3

Holy cow!

It was a joy looking at those pictures.
Like walking through the art gallery of a bovine museum.
Wonderful job. Very, very impressive.

Amazing work!

Wow, they are just impressive!

Lea, you did it again, your works are unbelievably good I love each one of this cattle. I especially adore, really ADORE the Highland cow with this new hair style. As I said previously it remind me some of the A. Durer drawing This is incredibly cool this style And, yes, after your remakes they became the best cattle models I've ever seen all from this group you have shown. Please show us some more photos of zebu too

I can't say anything.. This is just so amazing

Oh no! Now I feel extremely tempted to commission you for some cattle customs! And I can't afford it at the moment
These customs are to die for!

Lea these cattles are so amazing, I especially like that Highland cow! I wish to have such georgerus cattles in my collection, I think they are the best ones that you can find at the moment!

Thank you to all of you commenting - I'm chuffed to hear you like the cattle! Also, please accept my very late response; I wish I'd found the time sooner for an uninterrupted couple of hours just for forum browsing, commenting on everyone's threads, seeing people's acquisitions, etc.. But no - here I am, two weeks (!) later with just about the time to comment on my own stupid thread.

As I say, I've been really happy to hear of your approval of the cattle so far - though I'm afraid some of the praise leaves me without graceful retort. Thank you, everyone, for all the great comments. I'm quite honored you think they might be the best cattle of late (let alone ever..!) Anna & Arafan - and while I cannot agree (they have far, far more flaws than the photos show, trust me), I am certainly humbled you think so highly of the silly things.

Ana wrote:

And, yes, after your remakes they became the best cattle models I've ever seen all from this group you have shown. Please show us some more photos of zebu too

Very detailed work Lea!

.... Damn! Even your work in progress horses are so fantastic!

Just how do you manage to put do much detail into one model? So much awesome!