Update: I’ve been getting a lot of requests to sell copies of Drazhar via Shapeways. While it’s very flattering, I’m sorry to say that I won’t be doing this. Drazhar is very much Games Workshop’s IP and putting aside the legality of it, I wouldn’t feel comfortable selling my version when a miniature already exists. And no, I won’t be selling my .stl either!
During the process of painting the Archon commission I was perusing my Dark Eldar codex when I came across a great bit of art depicting Drazhar, the mysterious champion of the Incubi.
Unfortunately the existing miniature for Drazhar is very old (released in 1999 as far as I can tell) and doesn’t quite capture the character, presumably due to the limitations of moulding at the time. I therefore set out to try and make my own version armed only with the reference picture and my very limited sculpting skills!
As usual, I used Blender for the digital sculpting. To help me get somewhere near the pose I learnt how to rig a simple model and then played around with it until it felt about right. I intended to scale Drazhar to be similar in size to the new Eldar Visarch, but in the end I don’t think I made him quite slender enough and I don’t think the proportions are quite right.
I had to make some changes to get something that would print ok at Shapeways, mostly by reducing the amount of spiky parts and hanging pieces. I also reversed the grip on the swords to something that felt more natural to me.
Happily one of my loyal customers was keen to have a copy of the finished sculpt painted for his collection so we came up with a colour scheme that is fairly close to the original model. I particularly enjoyed painting the helmet – I don’t often get an opportunity to paint white armour so that was a nice challenge. The main colours used were incubi darkness and kabalite green for the armour, liche purple and magenta for the cloth and other details, and moot green for the glowing green details.
I’m looking forward to painting a professionally sculpted miniature for my next big project!
Gareth Nicholas Blog 
Can we get a shapeways link to get our own?
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Sorry, I won’t be selling copies. Please see the note I’ve added at the top of the article. 🙂
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Holy mother of pearl that’s incredible! I know that you mention you aren’t 100% happy with the proportions, but I think you’ve nailed it. And the paint job is flawless as always. Just superb!
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Thanks Charlie! Good to see you here – I remember when you were schooling me over at Platoon Britannica! 😉
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First…love your work, you really captured the essence of Drazhar.
I would love to see a step by step on how you started your work in blender, how you rigged the model etc.
or if you could link to some articles on it. I’m quite interested I trying something similar.
best regards
Filip
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Thank you! As far as blender goes, there’s loads of tutorials on youtube and elsewhere. I’m afraid I don’t have time to create that sort of content and I think other people have already done it much better than I’d be able to. 🙂
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Looks amazing. Would have loved to paint one. Cheers.
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Thanks. Don’t worry, I’m sure GW will make something far better than this before too long!
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You are too hard on yourself, the sculpt looks amazing. Games workshop should really contact you to buy this. Drazhar is in need of an update, and I think you it out of the park!
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Thank you, but trust me: with the talent they have there, they definitely don’t need my help!
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I can only agree with the post’s before me your Drazhar looks just so much better. He looks in motion and about to strike his opponent. And the paint job very very nice! Keep it coming very inspiring 🙂
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Thank you! I think a lot of the credit for the pose goes to the artist that created the original piece though!
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Amazing work. Paint and sculpt:)
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Thanks! 🙂
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If you can’t sell it, put it for free.
Amazing job.
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Would you consider putting it up as a 3d model? I’m sure I would appreciate it considering games workshop has left my favorite character to die for nearly 20 years and I doubt a free model would be exploiting Games Workshops IP
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Sorry to disappoint, but I won’t be sharing my .stl file. The problem is that if I do that it wouldn’t be at all difficult for someone unscrupulous to produce casts from a decent print. Not to mention that I have a customer that paid good money to have a unique piece created by me. 🙂
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Ahh totally fair~! Gives me an awesome project to look forward to (albeit at the price of butchering some poor incubi). Love your work and was really happy to find this piece~! Thank you~!
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I Always love that piece of Art, that’s really nice so amazing!
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Now lock … 2 years later, with you knowleg back than, you still coude mad a better version than GW now
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