Martian Steppe Tiger (Part 1)

One of the things I loved most about Frank Chadwick's  Space 1889 universe is his wildlife on the planet Mars. It seems to me that he took some of the best creatures from all those great books we read in our younger days and somehow made them all fit into his version of Mars. He has everything from oddly Barsoomian multi-appendage lizards, to the tentacled Kno Shoshu (which reminds me of a creature from a certain War with two certain Worlds if you catch my drift).

Let us not forget the Martian "horse," the Gashant. How do you turn Edgar Rice Burroughs' multi-legged steed the Thoat on its head? By taking away legs of course! While the talented Mr. Bob Murch did sculpt  excellent examples of the martian Gashant, I have always been disappointed with the fact that there were never any other miniatures of the martian wildlife.

Which brings me to my first martian animal project the Steppe Tiger. I took a look at all the renderings I could find of this savage predator. Here are a some examples:

Illustration taken from page 182 of Space 1889 Core Rulebook

Illustration by Tim Bradstreet and Rick Harris taken from Steppelords Of Mars

Illustration from page 93 of Savage Worlds Space 1889 Red Sands

Illustration from the upcoming German edition of Space 1889 from Clockwork Publishing

Since this was my first attempt at "converting" a miniature with green stuff, I decided to look for  a figure that was as close to the illustrations in Chadwick's book. The best miniature locally available to me was Reaper's 02897: Hellhounds.

I was particularly drawn to the pose of miniature on the left. It seemed like the perfect stalking pose of a large cat, minus the fact that it was a demon dog of course. 

The first thing I had to do was remove the tail and the spikes from the rear elbows of the creature. Next I filed down the nose to give me room to sculpt the snout of the martian steppe tiger. I also needed to soften the appearance of the spine that is so predominate in this figure.

Even though the original illustrations from Space 1889 do not show the Steppe Tiger with ears, I really like the ears Jason Wiebe sculpted on these Hellhounds. The ears seem very cat like to me and so I sculpted the mane of the tiger's head around them.

I added a bit of bent coat hanger for the tail. I filed the tip to a very soft point and later I added some of Reaper's "brown stuff" to make it look like it was a little furry. 

In these photos you can really see the texture of his fur and hopefully the wispy mane that this martian creature is known for. My only concern is that it may need more pronounced claws as the only claws visible in this photo are my unkept fingernails.