And because there's no such thing as too many pictures...

I realise I've hardly shown off any of these miniatures on this blog!

Now that I'd finished the first of the dungeon boards, I could not resist taking pictures of the Super Dungeon Explore! miniatures I had finished on it:

First, the skeletons from the Shallow Grave spawning point:

 

Turtles from the Rock Pile spawning point:

 

 

Flaming gels et al from the Fire Whirl spawning point:

 

Fire elemental boss Roxor: 

 

Death Spectre - Does his scythe remind you of a video game?

 

Vampire Von Drakk with his monstrous bat shapeshift:

 

Rockgut the troll. I absolutely hated the colour scheme on this model... until I added the purple in his mouth. I feel it tied it all together:

Goodly hero Van Wildling and his bestial werewolf form Van Wilder. Fancy that - Castlevania meets cheesy 80's comedy in one fell swoop:

 

Miserable toads! Futurama hypno-toad on the left, real-life tree frog on the right:

 

Gallery of villains! Minibosses from various special releases:

 

Von Drakk heroes:

 

Kobolds! Kobold spawning point. Don't quite remember the name, but this is one of my favourites:

 

Dragon hatchlings from the Dragon Clutch spawning point:

 

Caverns of Roxor heroes! Some of the best sculpts in my opinion. I love not-Link on the far right:

 

A selection of core box heroes. More to come:

 

I'm sure you can tell I've gone a bit super dungeon explore crazy, since the last post over a year ago! :p

Long time no update! (again!)

Helloooooo!

It's been too long since the last update. No really.

Don't worry though, the hobby's still been rolling along, even if I haven't really been posting.

So lately I've been going through a bit of a patch with real life that made me neglect this blog (seems like it happens every year doesn't it? Ha!), but I did keep up with my painting.

It seems I do my best thinking while painting, which is probably why I do it so much. Meditative really.

I'll admit it, when it comes to painting little toy soldiers, I'm something of a lifer.

Now that I've got a bit more spare time on my hands though, I decided to get started on a project that I'd been keeping for a special occasion - Tyson Koch's Super 3D Dungeon Boards, from Kickstarter.

So... without further ado, here's a test piece of detail:

Now, as far as casting is concerned, the pieces are far from perfect, but you do kind of expect that with polystone resin pieces.

Resin casts are very individual, and may come shrunken or warped, rarely absolutely perfect. It's a bit of a gamble really, and since I intend to play dice games on this thing, it's cool in a 'meta' sort of way.

In terms of surface, think greasy (yuk), super smooth or matte.

These ones were a mix of super smooth and matte, meaning I had to just hit the surface with a bit of matte varnish before priming it in black:

 

So what's up with the airbrush then?

I figured now might be a good time to dabble with using an airbrush. 

I'd used an airbrush before to lay on base colours (particularly for my Imperial Guard tanks) but not to lay on colour gradients.

So, after half an hour:

 

Slick! Too slick.

Verdict? Mmmm... no.

Something about the smoothness of the result didn't sit right with me.

The airbrush worked great, but it looked much too smooth. I like the idea that there would be some contrast between the smooth gradients on the miniatures and the textured finish of the surrounding surface to help them stand out.

So I broke out an old friend -  the trusty GW tank brush:

 

Years of friendship leave a scar on the stoutest of hearts

Here I was halfway through. Better, no?

...and here's where I got after an hour. I put in the painted pile of loot in the out-of-bounds corner of the board, and its really added interest to a dull corner.

Look at it from a distance, however, and it's the river of lava still draws the eye most.

I like it!

The treeman (ent, if you prefer) and a digression

Here's the first character choice for my Warmaster Wood Elves, one of Splintered Light's excellent treemen:

Converted Wild Riders for scale. Still haven't finished the unit, dammit.

And here's the reason why the Wild Riders unit isn't finished, despite some good progress, a Super Dungeon Explore skeleton:

Really, I could paint them all day. Well, not really. But they are pretty fun to do. And fairly fast!

In other miniature related news, the temptation to work on this is legendary:

3D Super Dungeon explore tiles, put together by Tyson Koch and Kickstarter! Very pretty indeed, only minimal issues with warped tiles.

The urge to break out the spray cans and get to work is unbelievable. We'll see how long I can hold out.

Wood Elf Challenge week 3 and prototypes!

Challenge? What challenge?

So... When GW closed down Specialist's Games, I went on a Warmaster buying spree, picking up the rest of the models I was planning to use for Wood Elves.

What better way to keep tabs on getting models done than participating in a challenge right?

The plan is to get a unit of three bases done every two weeks. I actually paint faster than this, but given the complexity of some of the conversions I will be doing to make my Wood Elves look like their Warhammer counterparts, this sedate pace is. perfect.

This week's challenge unit is Glade Guard. Just FYI, week 1 was also Glade Guard and week 2 Dryads. Just to clarify though, week 1's Glade Guard didn't include a proper command base -- I'll be adding them later.

Here's how I did them -- one base is going to the earlier unit lacking command:

Painted! Simple and easy:

Lined up and ready to pew pew pew:

 And now, the fun part. Here's what my Eternal Guard will look like:

 

They are insanely complicated to make, out of Copplestone Rangers:

Brass rod spears and green stuff chest plates, arms and helmet accessories. See why I like the slow pace?

And, made out of GW Dark Elves, Wild Riders:

I am really happy at how these units have turned out, even if they are tons of work. Should look great when all done!

Wood Elves and Romans...oh my

So!

Here is the latest on what I've been working on, 10mm Wood Elves!

What with the death of Specialist Games and all, I'd thought I would showcase how you can keep the hobby alive using partly non-GW models and the trial rules.

So here are the Glade Guard, Copplestone Rangers from their not-LOTR 10mm range. A tad large, but spot-on in terms of looks:

These are Dryads, GW Daemonettes with their erm... 'thumbs' (lower half of the claw) removed. If you can't get your hands on these easily -- and really who can, these days -- Eureka has suitable models in their 'Woodland Creatures' pack you can use.

And now, for something completely different: These are Roman Heavy Cavalry, for use with the Early Imperial Roman Warmaster Ancients list. These are specifically of the 'horsey banner' unit.

Excellent sculpts from the talented hands of Steve Barber, whose models single-handedly convinced me to give Ancients a try:

More, much more on these armies to come...

I'm baaaack! (And smaller than ever)

Hi everyone! (all 17 of you anyway)

Yes, I have been remiss in posting updates, haven't I?

In the two years that I've gone AWOL from this blog, a great deal has happened:

1. All of my 28mm stuff has been put on indefinite hold. I've even been flogging large swathes of the unopened stuff, in order to free up space. I've been quite the hoarder given the series of sales that affected people in my area, leaving me with more than I was inclined to paint.

Which means:

2. No more 28mm updates for the time being, with the exception of Super Dungeon Explore, which I love to death.

3. I've moved on into 10mm gaming, namely Warmaster Fantasy and Warmaster Ancients. I'm currently working on Empire (remember that War Altar?), Beastmen and Wood Elves, so these will be the focus of new Painting Haul updates.

Hang in there, lots to update you on!

More pictures of Billy the Subjugator (Titan)

Billy's been giving me some problems lately.

You see, being more of a painter than a sculptor/modeller, I was in a bit of a rush to get paint on Billy, and have encountered an interesting conundrum.

I feel some areas on Billy are a little bare and need more detail, but I only realized this after the model was pretty much close to fully painted.

Kind of an unavoidable problem in my opinion, and a side effect of building complex models mostly from scratch, in that you aren't really sure if the model has enough bling on it as you're working. I've had similar problems with terrain before, but as that sort of thing can be rescued with freehand and weathering, and managed to solve the problem that way.

Billy, on the other hand, is somewhat different. As a daemon engine of Slaanesh, he's supposed to be all whippety-sleekness, and not really given to massive spikeyness or corrosion.

My solution? I'll add wires I reckon.

It will reinforce the Noise Marine connection, and hopefully add a little more colour to the model, which I see mostly as black/gunmetal/gold so far.

Other than that, here are some of the points of note I've added since we last saw Billy:

He's got a shiny new loincloth, cut from the Ogre Bulls banner, trimmed and freehanded with a purple chaos star. Also all of the larger studs (except the gimp ones on the legs) have been painted as turquoise gemstones, and the chain + skull thingies have been painted.

We'll see how the wire idea works out. Planning to add it to all the under-carapace areas. Should be a nice boost to surface detail, especially with a nice stripey yellow and black colour scheme.

Here goes.

PS: Building your own model from odds and sods taught me another interesting lesson -- it's really hard to declare a scratch-built model 'complete'.