these threads are awesome,
as we get near to seeing people making custom minis.
forgive my bias,
but I am of the firm opinion,
that anyone can make an awesome custom miniature.
take a stab at it, give it a go,
and you'll be surprised at how awesome a mini you can make
and where our skills leave something to be desired,
we can seek out local artists or whitlers,
and they'll help us find what
"we know when we see it."
that's always an option, for getting the 'fit and finish' people are questing for.
I digress;
we've got a lot of options for proxy figs.
Malifaux's "doppelganger b" is a nice option for a shapeshifter female clawdite.
doppelganger b is more tactful, and is wearing sci-fi armor with a tenticle arm and a hoof-leg thing...
slanneshi from W40K also could work, as less-tactful clawdites?
if gruesome is your style,
kingdom death do some great resin minis.
"male war druid" is perfect as a... male clawdite.
Wargames factory make fine miniatures too,
highly cost effective, yet you are not skimping on quality, and buying proud american minis.
it depends on your choice of moment for the clawdite.
we also have mageknight and heroclix,
not to mention heroquest/heroscape,
paizo minis are also great!
I use those as proxies for yodas etc,
and some kickstarters
such as Bones, Fist-fulla-minis,
bitz-n-beyond etc,
they're great too.
Hergelic -
there was a kickstarter for "Whale-bots"
this is exactly what I envisaged of for Hergelics,
whale-esque things similar to the antagonist from Lilo and Stitch.
similarly, shapeways has several cool whale models, which could be bitz-bashed
with say, a heroclix Thing etc...
if you want more of a large anthropomorphized fish,
you'd have to provide some scale sketches to a minis-artist,
and see what they come up with.
very few whale models in detail exist,
which would be directly usable as a nice looking proxy.
For hergelics, maybe the Hulk set from Heroclix would be good,
as they're cheap, would be large for a 40mm round base.
a headswap for a whale-ish face or torso, and you're good to go.
another option is horrorclix 'deathly orcha',
or Aliens V Predator clix, if only for the head.
Kroot warrior heads could also be used, as could tyranids.
Slann mages from W:fantasy could be just the ticket,
if you're looking for a Jabba-ified Hergelic.
falleen are much easier even there again.
any humanoid model, with light green through brownish-red-green
would do.
the heads are the only part - falleen have elongated craniums, and long thin hair.
so, humanoid models, and "Eldar" or "dark eldar" 40K new pattern heads,
or elvish models,
would suffice.
The heroclix Indyclix set also had a horror-clix model with the hideous elongated head,
which might suffice for a falleen male pirate or something.
The ultimate option,
would be,
for the community to look into,
commissioning a custom maker,
and doing a few generic figures.
many hands would make light work.
we make it happen for statcards,
yet apart from TLT and TL20.2,
we havent had anywhere near the interest in the miniatures themselves...
that has always baffled me,
as I would have thought folks
would care more about the minis, and less so about the baseball cards.
Already, I've brought thisspassians and Quemarians to the table,
as the goofy monk
and the naga monk...
subjects which were beyond my skill level, but which were happily formed
by an excellent custom mini maker from woolongong.
the Paerduag and the Troig were once-off only unfortunately,
and I'm still looking for a paerduag.
I was hoping for more interest, to get the quemarian pirate, and other aliens,
such as the 'sluggakken', "troig", "hork bajir", "kilrathi"/"khajiir". 'Winged Weenie-dog' aliens as Toydarians didn't seem quite right...
Hasslefree also made several nice 'not-alien' figures, you could enquire about
and get on a once-off basis.
in this vein,
I think we could also go the route of just producing conversion parts
just the bits themselves,
via a 3D platform.
that will depend a lot on;
the per-unit amount folks are valuing a mini at,
EoI proposition etc.
margin, and volume are the key ways we can find
that happy win-win,
to keep the per-unit down enough for most folks to say
"to heck with P+H, I'm in".
bottomline; most of the time, its the shipping third party step
in the distribution chain, which kills a project
before it's even on the tarmac.
I hope this gives you options,
and goes some ways to answering the proxy dilemma
(crazybirdman, you're geographically fairly close to Ken-To 'everlasting bonsai' ,
who makes EXCELLENT ergesh and parwans, even fenghuang
worth every cent)