Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Anophelii

Combine the two most dangerous creatures on earth and you have the mosquito-people. In China Miéville's novel, The Scar, they are called Anophelii. The male Anophelii are portrayed as harmless scholars, while the female Anophelii are ravenous predators. The she-Anophelii only come to their senses when their overpowering hunger has been sated by a blood-meal.

Anophelii by Deviant artist VenGethenian


“Like a woman bent double and then bent again against the grain of her bones, crooked and knotted into a stance subtly wrong. Her neck twisted too far and hard, her long bony shoulders thrown back, her flesh worm-white and her huge eyes open very wide, utterly emaciated, her breasts empty skin rags, her arms outstretched like twists of wire.”

The Scar

The difference between the Anophelii genders are based on real-life mosquito biology, with only the females being equipped with mouthparts necessary for sucking blood.

However, striking a blow for equality, Syfy's Mansquito defies mosquito gender roles, and gives the male mosquito the ability to suck blood as well.


Human-sized mosquito-people are not available in any scale as far as I know, but I picked up a bunch of Mage Knight Spine Suckers (Minions #79, #80, #81; Nexus #105) for 79¢ which would be perfect as some sort of stirge- or mosquito-demon.



Using a technique I picked up from a fly fishing forum several years back, I printed some mosquito wings onto clear acetate sheets. These were cut out and attached to the miniatures.


The tutorial mentioned inscribing the veins in the wings and going over the lines with a dark wash, but I didn't bother with that step. I may have to print out some bigger wings since the current ones seem a bit undersized in the close-up shots.



A similar, but more involved tutorial for creating iridescent wings can be found at OOAK sculptor. I'll probably graft some 40K Gargoyle wings onto some of the other miniatures for a bit of variety (if I can ever find any at a low price).


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