It's over. The LPL has ended.The Lead Painter's League was quite enjoyable. It's a very different sort of painting challenge, with a steep learning curve. Still, I came in 5th place of 46 my first year out, so I'm pretty well pleased with that. A challenge that runs 10 weeks gets in your blood & routine. I still have about 5 or 6 team concepts that I considered doing, I'm good to go, let's continue! Ah well... next year!
The final round was a bonus round with 60 bonus points on the line if you ticked all elements: a new team, maritime theme, a 2nd team as a rival, and a large item. I decided to go with something a bit unusual. Rather than the pirates I'd assumed I'd do in the beginning I opted for something silly: Teddy Bears!
Eureka Miniatures (with a web location in US & Australia) have several ranges of psuedo-historical Teddy Bears: Wild West, Pirates, Seven Years War, Roman & Zulu Wars. Brandishing the excuse of the LPL I ordered some Teddy Bears. I got 8 British Soldier types, to be a port guard, and 10 pirates.
V.
I loved working on these. Something very freeing in the whimsical style and bold detail. I painted them a bit differently than I'd normally paint minis, since these are toy bears and I wanted them to stay looking like toy bears. So bold, bright colors, very simple NMM (non-metal metal) painting of any metal parts (since they have wooden swords painted to look like swords). I love details like the cork-pop guns, and how the captain's peg leg is fake: he has his legbent behind him, resting his knee on a stick to make it look like a peg leg. This was a pain and a half to photo though. I'd have done it a bit differently if I were to do it over, I learned a lot and got some ideas for scenic picture settings, so looking forward to next year's LPL!
A few extra shots of the action around the harbor:
Inka finds it very disturbing that they don't have pants.
Why shirts but not pants? I don't know, but I think it's ok for teddy bears.
I was thinking next time the Wednesday group runs Legend of the High Seas, I'm playing teddy bears!
Combining these two groups I could have either a Royal Marines force, with the Blue Coat bears as the naval officers and Red Coats for marines, or as a Privateer force, with the Blue Coats as the Captain & officers, pirates as lower level troops and Red Coats standing in for the higher level troopers. How to explain that they are Teddy Bears? You saw Pirates of the Caribbean... but instead of an Aztec curse to turn them into skeletons, it was an Algonquin curse, for stealing the honey, turning them into honey bears.
Yeah, why not?
A big thanks to Alex for running the LPL, Ray for handling the leaderboard week to week, all the people who participated and all who came to look, comment and vote!
The final round was a bonus round with 60 bonus points on the line if you ticked all elements: a new team, maritime theme, a 2nd team as a rival, and a large item. I decided to go with something a bit unusual. Rather than the pirates I'd assumed I'd do in the beginning I opted for something silly: Teddy Bears!
Eureka Miniatures (with a web location in US & Australia) have several ranges of psuedo-historical Teddy Bears: Wild West, Pirates, Seven Years War, Roman & Zulu Wars. Brandishing the excuse of the LPL I ordered some Teddy Bears. I got 8 British Soldier types, to be a port guard, and 10 pirates.
V.
Dread Pirate Roe Bear General Lord Thedius T. Bearnsworth
Roe Bear has spent years eluding Her Majesty's forces in the Carribearan Islands, raiding stores of honey, driving the prices for honest citizens ever higher.
The loyal soldiers:
The pirate crew:
The infamous ship: The Honeydripper :
General Lord Bearnsworth has laid a trap for him at Skull Island, but only managed to spring the trap on several of the crew, Roe Bear and his officers were nowhere to be found... until their ship skirts through the shoals, to spring their own trap on the would be trappers!
My entry:
A few extra shots of the action around the harbor:
Inka finds it very disturbing that they don't have pants.
Why shirts but not pants? I don't know, but I think it's ok for teddy bears.
I was thinking next time the Wednesday group runs Legend of the High Seas, I'm playing teddy bears!
Combining these two groups I could have either a Royal Marines force, with the Blue Coat bears as the naval officers and Red Coats for marines, or as a Privateer force, with the Blue Coats as the Captain & officers, pirates as lower level troops and Red Coats standing in for the higher level troopers. How to explain that they are Teddy Bears? You saw Pirates of the Caribbean... but instead of an Aztec curse to turn them into skeletons, it was an Algonquin curse, for stealing the honey, turning them into honey bears.
Yeah, why not?
A big thanks to Alex for running the LPL, Ray for handling the leaderboard week to week, all the people who participated and all who came to look, comment and vote!
What an absolute delight! Beautifully done and great fun. I was aware of the Eureka minis and have been tempted by the Zulu Wars one. Where did the ship come from?
ReplyDelete5th place is a wholly respectable result, especially given some of the other amazing entires. Vey well done.
Those are absolutely gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteLove how you intentionally make sure they still look like toys despite being such despicable sea terrors!
:)
LPL gathers a very notorious group of top notch painters, and you are for sure amongst their 'creme de la creme'.
Congrats!
A.
Congrats on 5th, I doubt I would have made it that high in the rankings!
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the bears and the amazing work you did they got an instant vote. Great concept there and very creative...could be amusing to have a good laugh when you play Legends...
They are quite simply fantastic. What a fabulous set of models and brilliantly painted.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is quite acceptable for that Teddy Bears not to wear pants! (All my daughter's bears have tops but no pants!)
Lovely work on the bears. Same question about the ship please.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing.
Helen
I can honestly say that I did all my voting without looking at who painted the entries, and in every case voted for yours! Your 5th placing, amongst some very talented people, was indeed well deserved and I've no doubt you will go from strength to strength next year.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Buccaneer plushies above, I've seen these at Eureka's shop in Melbourne and love them - Nic does a wide range of very different stuff and I'm almost finished converting some of his Frog Warriors from the "Pond Wars" series into a Blood Bowl Slann team. You've done a superb job with Cap'n Poo Bear and Friends - just don't leave them at Paddington Station!
Thanks Michael! All of the teddy bear ranges have tempted me ;) I just think it's such a fun idea.
ReplyDeleteTank Girl: Thanks!
re: The Ship:
It's a toy from 'Minimates'. It seems they have 3 different versions of the ship- only difference I could see is how they're painted, so I got the cheapest since I'd just be painting it over, which was the Pirate version. I got it on Ebay, pretty cheap, about $14 including shipping. The doors to the cabin open, and the roof of it, opens as well. the grating area in the prow also lifts up so you can get into the hull of the ship. It's a pretty cool little ship.
Thanks Axtklinge, very kind of you!
Styx, thanks! yes, I'm looking forward to playing a Legends campaign with these!
Kingsley: I keep telling Inka that! Bears have no need for silly concepts like shame ;)
Thanks Paul! I had to get some of those Pondwar frongs too when i ordered the Teddy Bears- they're just too fun to pass up. I kept the weapons, figuring I'd use them for some generic fantasy skirmish, or maybe some alien scouts for my Quar of Phobos when we cycle back to a VSF campaign someday. Looking forward to seeing your Blood Bowl conversions with them!
Very cool little band of mates there.. and the ship is spot on as well!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on 5th.. well deserved.. and a tough fight considering some of the match ups you had in the middle there as well!