Mad Bodgin’ Mage Log: The Eidolon Bahamut Comes

When I got the Archangel, I thought it was awesome model. The head crest and the way it sat kind of bugged me, however, so I thought a little bodging was in order.

As some of my previous bodges would indicate, I’m a fan of Final Fantasy. When presented with an eyeless dragon, there was absolutely no question what the concept of this bodge was going to be.

We were gonna turn this…



…into something resembling Final Fantasy IX’s iteration of Bahamut.



This Bodge was done back in mid 2013, and took about two months to complete.

Regrettably, I didn’t take photos of the earlier process, but basically this was what was done to it:

• Head crown thing now added to the chest to bulk it up a bit.

• Left arm was moved to outside of leg, makes him less lazy lookin’.

• Head tilted up a bit, so he’s roaring at the enemy (or blastin’ them with megaflare)

• New horns to replace the old. Bits taken from a Reaper…



…and a Phoenix.



• Greystuffed, then priming.



When I finally sat down to start painting this guy, here’s what I did:



The wings are kept in place with some rare earth magnets. Thankfully, I didn’t accidentally glue them in backwards.

Don’t laugh. It happened once with a Khadoran jack, and the bodge ended less than ideally. I remember the solution involving a sock, and the basement floor.

So… with that mostly done, I went to find suitable figs that could be made to pass for Final Fantasy IX’s two summoners,

Dagger & Eiko



Dagger turned out to be more work than anticipated. When searching for figs to use as a base, I didn’t look close enough, and chose one that didn’t have legs, per se. A bit of an “oh crap” moment. This was the one:



That was, like, an HOUR long extraction from a tree that I didn’t expect. A piece of that tree became Eiko’s horn. The lower legs that she has now, I think, belong to a Kayazy Eliminator (she had new legs herself, so she wasn’t using them anyway)…



…and her staff arm came from Kaya.



I chopped off one end, and attached it to the other to make it look more like a mage’s weapon.

Here’s how that turned out:



Eiko was far easier. I used this reaper fig as a base:



I tweaked the pose slightly, added a branch from the aforementioned tree for a horn, and zombie hands for wings (these guys just keep showing up in my bodges). I altered the hair a bit, too:



And here they are, all put together:



Here’s the entire ensemble, all put together:



At this point, I had just noticed the rest of my Everblight force had purple arc markers, so had to go back and fix it. I decided to finish the project off with Vivi’s hat:







t’was a bodgin’