I typically prefer working with pewter miniatures over plastic ones, but for my first attempt at a fairly extensive conversion the plastic WotC uses on their D&D Miniatures was a good start. I actually picked up a couple of Stonechild miniatures just for conversions for Earthdawn obsidimen. The pose isn’t as interesting as the Chainmail sculpt and seems more compact, but considering how rare it is to find miniatures to pass as obsidimen you learn to deal with what you have.
For this one I decided to try my hand at a conversion. The last image shows an unconverted version of this miniature for reference. The first step was to cut off the arms, slice them apart, and remove the weapon. I then repositioned the left arm and re-sculpted the shoulder around a pin. The right arm took more work; it was cut apart in three pieces and one was discarded. The other two were connected with a couple of pins and a greenstuff joint. I then resculpted the arm from greenstuff and pinned it to the body.
I didn’t have any plasticard laying around, so the sword was carved from a fake credit card that came in the mail. It’s made of two pieces glued together to give it width. The sword itself is a replica of a falcata, which I scaled down from a picture found online. After the blade was shaped I sculpted a hilt from greenstuff and attached it. The old sword blade was discarded (it was rubbery and weak anyway) but the crosspiece was used to fashion a hilt to place in the back scabbard.
The tower shield was made by rolling out greenstuff around the side of a shot glass (one of he tall thin ones, not a standard tapered one) to give it its curvature. After it hardened I added the ribbing along the edge. The wood grain effect is simply painted on. The symbol painted on the shield is simple but significant to the character and the game it was for.
The slate base was made using the instructions on the Brushthralls web site, with a few exceptions. I didn’t have access to any milliput, so I just used some old GW blue+white stuff instead.