Few of you might remember that I wrote a very short blog a while ago about my sun squig sculpt. Well I didnt like it, and now its part of something a bit bigger. As you read through go ahead and steal any and all of these ideas for yourself. Please enjoy my musings on unifying armies in miniatures, while keeping each model unique.

The nerds among you already know what a squig is, and some of you nerds also know about my sun squig sculpt from a while ago, go ahead and skip this whole part if you want. But for those unaware, a squig is a little red ball with legs and a horrible face, that goblins tame. I think its from Warhammer Fantasy originally and it looks something like this:



But they can come in all shapes and sizes and have such simple designs, that you can make them pretty much however you want and they'll still look like squigs. If youre looking to sculpt your first miniature, this is the easiest place to start. A squig was one of my first sculpts and I sculpted it for the GoobinsGitz cavemuncha competition back in 2023, which I won if you even care.
So for my design I wanted to do something pretty strange. In Warhammer, goblins and squigs live in caves, eat mushrooms, and of course worship the bad moon. And I wondered what a group of goblins that worshipped the sun would be like. Maybe the warhammer nerds know that there actually are some cannonical sun worshipping goblins out there, but i havent seen any models like that so I'd have to create my own. After some doodling I came up with a squig the shape of an 8 pointed cartoon sun. And because this squig is sun shaped, the sun worshipping goblins idolize it. This simple concept is what I'll expand on throughout this blog.



I didnt do anything with this for a while after sculpting the first squig but ive collected a lot of models by now. As I was looking for models with similar iconography to the sun squig design. That means looking for models with spikes coming out like rays of light. Another requirment is that I only like to collect indie or handsculpted miniatures generally. Just not a fan of modern gamesworkshop sculpts with so much going on. Yet again I find simple is best. Heres a few nice examples: spiked squig from ManyWorldsMiniatures, flail orc from Kev Adams Heartbreaker orc set, big skull helmet from GoobinsGitz, Mad Pricker from SimpsoMiniatures

Now astute readers may notice that this handful of miniatures is nowhere near enough for an army and barely even a warband. So what now?
The next step is to convert models to share similar traits of your army. So in this instance ive gone through and done some kitbashing to a few of these models more cohesive together while also becoming more unique. When youre not good at painting, kitbashing is an easy way to make your models stand out and feel more personal to you.
To mimick the sun iconography of my army Ive added Gardens of Hecate maces onto these GoobinsGitz goblins and sculpted my own too. And ive sculpted and cast a few shields bearing the visage of the sun squig which ive also used as masks and stuck on a bannerpole.

Here I made a mordheim warband of beastmen. With their unifying trait being, that they are beastmen. Half man, half beast, or maybe the ratios get a little mixed up, but thats the spirit of chaos anyways. All of these models look very different with this wide array of bits, so they were also tied together with a cute uniform pattern copied from GoldenGobboMinis.



By now I have collected a ton of different goblin, orc, troll, and squig models. But the predicament here is how to I make them all fit with the theme of their mascot? Ive been collecting tons of beautiful handsculpted models but they dont all scream "sun" and they are already such delightful sculpts that changing them would just make them worse. So how do you make them all cohesive in a unique way?
This was a problem I faced when I made my mordheim witchhunters warband. I had just signed up for the local mordheim league and I wanted to rock up with a warband that was terribly out of place. So of course I wanted to use my fresh set of dopes, from the dessicated dope. Theyre really fantastic simple characterful models that I couldnt bear to change. But I have this writhing tumor in my brain that tells me to make each and every model unique to me. Theres something satisfying about having a collection that only you would have. And usually that comes with kitbashing or sculpting my own stuff, but with these dopes and many other models in my collection, physically changing them would just make them worse. So of course the answer is to spend a long time doing freehand patterns on all of them. Giving them all a bright blue striped uniform really makes them stand out and look cohesive.



I like my models smooth and simple, but rarely felt especially proud of my paintjobs, just something to make a sculpt a finished piece. But lately im really loving painting. Especially adding freehand. it changes painting miniatures from a 3d coloring book to something much more unique. I encourage all of you to try doing freehand on every model you can. Simple right?

These concepts dont have to be for a whole army, they can be to make individual models look more interesting or just fit into a world better. [show W!R models with graffitti and freehand]

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April 16 2026

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