Happy Xmas & all the various holidays

Seems to be a new tradition that December runs over me, repeatedly, like a herd of reindeer on meth.

What a month.

So please excuse the pathetic trickle of updates.

First my computer died, then I fixed it.. or thought I did, but was hardly working, then it flat-out died, so I've been unable to do much of anything, though a new computer is on it's way!  So sometime before the new year I'll have things up and running again and January should see a steady march of projects and ramblings.

I'm visiting family for the holiday and hope everyone out there is doing similar, or enjoying it all in other ways.

In theme for the holidays enjoy the snowman the mice family are building!

 

 

 

Happy Xmas All

Happy Halloween! A Trick & Some Treats

                                    

  Happy Halloween ! 

                                    

By far the coolest holiday, I had to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. If you don't have the tradition in your country, it is pretty much isolated to countries that trace back to those islands off the upper left hand side of Europe, then why not import it? If McDonalds can be brought to India, then certainly Halloween can find a home anywhere.  Costumes & Monsters & Candy: what's not to love?  Plus it's a holiday that is focused on the night... not many of those around.  So unleash your favorite costume, and if you're young enough, have a kid, or maybe if you're just short enough, go demand candy from the neighbors ;) 

Just look at all the fun these kids are having... 

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd open my door to this lot either.

In the tradition of Trick or Treat, I'm going to give you both!

 The Trick: 

Easier than pie perfect animal eye:

This is a trick that is simple and effective.  One of the things most commonly complained about by people trying to paint miniatures is painting eyes.  I have seen people get so obsessed with trying to get eyes right that they continue the typical 'dark almond shape, smaller light almond inside, dark dot/line inside' style on everything with eyes. That might be ok for humans but relax! Most animals don't have eyes like humans, with all that white showing. Not long ago I saw a picture of some horses, a whole unit of cav, and every horse had these awkward almond whites for eyes.  I don't want to seem mean by showing a picture of them, not trying to 'shame' anyone, my only purpose is to remind people that it is easy to get stuck in a pattern & assumption, and sometimes those assumptive patterns are neither effective or worth the increased work & strain. 

For most animals just paint the eye black and add a small reflective dot.  Don't use white by the way.  I almost never use white, it is far too bright.  A small dot of off white like P3 Menoth White or Reaper Linen is fine.  The Ape above's reflective dot isn't done in white but it looks white because it's the lightest color on the piece. And that's it! Takes all of 3 seconds and looks right if I say so myself. 

If you have problems with human eyes you can do something similar.. go with that dark almond shape (don't use black! A brown is best unless you're going for the 1920's starlet or modern goth look) and add a dot of light to one corner, and repeat for the other eye, now the person is looking to one side. Much easier than looking straight ahead!  A great compromise if you're not confident about your brush control or have a whole bench full of eyes to do. 

OK, that was your Trick, now on to 

 The Treats: 

My house is fresh out of goodies, but some of the neighbors are giving things away...

Monty's Caravan is spilling out goods here and here. He's past 50,000 views, so go view some more and see about some prizes! 

Loki's Great Hall has a Jack-O-Lantern set out, so go up to the door and demand Treats, and don't let that Viking costume scare you. He's celebrating cramming in 200 followers into his Hall, so if there is room for all of them, surely there is room for more. 

And have a Happy Halloween!

Nothing to be afraid of.   Right?

Arthur & Mordred: Climactic Clash

Earlier this year I participated in the Lead Painter's League challenge on the Lead Adventure Forum, and had a great time doing it.  - If I do it again next eyar i'll have to go back and add a tag for 'LPL' to those updates, in the meantime you can use the search function for 'LPL Round' and find the entries.

One of my worthy clashmates was Lead Asbestos, who had some nice Gladiators pitted against my Angels, after the week's contest he sent me a PM and asked if I'd be willing to paint the 2006 special Salute mini, which was a Dark Ages Arthur vrs Mordred battle duel. He had got a few and wanted to get some painters he liked to paint them, which was quite flattering of course and I also liked the idea of getting to paint the minis, since they looked very fun to paint. He was also kind enough to send me a bag of useful minis along with these two for future projects which may appear here soon.

So here's my take on the Salute duel:

I've seen some very nice versions of these. I had the same idea as some: red cloak and trimmed tunic for Arthur, for that Romano-Brit look. I went with a darker simple scheme for Mordred than most I've seen, to make him look more somber and sinister, since he's a villain in the story. It is also why I made the face of his helmet iron rather than bronze, just to keep it more dreary.  I also was aiming to have a cool tone on one side, warm tone on the other: blue vrs red.

This was very enjoyable to work on!  And made me eagerly anticipate a time when I might get around to painting some of my Saga minis: both historical and 'muppet' Elvorix! 

Fun with fight scenes... enjoy!

Back into the Bog: More RPG Minis: Bog Creatures

All told for this project there were 29 individual minis, here are the ones I group as 'The Bog Creatures':

The King of the Bog: not to be messed with. 

Mean little frogs, but cute! I've long been tempted by these Reaper frog minis, was nice to get to paint them!

A Lone Troglodyte Hunter...

What are these? I don't know, but they look unwholesome, and sure they'd be comfy in the bog.

Your party's Ranger has his work cut out for him with these! 

They'll take you down there... so be careful!

Enjoy!

More RPG Minis: Final Room Baddies

Some more minis from the big RPG minis lot...
Here are some 'final room' type baddies.
You know, when you'd get to that last room on the map- usually the biggest room in the dungeon, you know you've made it because the DM's voice is a bit more excited and has that 'here at last' tone to it.
The room has a lot of columns, you've fought your way through, but get ready for a long detailed description and probably a proper villain monologue too.

A Death Knight or Undead Paladin...

Undoubtedly some high-end magic items, some spell casting ability and you've got no chance to turn him.

For the more robust party, a powerful devil:

This guy was a lot of fun to paint!
Reminds me of the crazy power-gaming D&D I did when I first started playing the game, at about age 13 or so... some adventure where we had to defeat a couple major devils.  We did manage to banish them, but they abducted one of the party's followers, so we mounted an expedition to harrow hell itself.  Great silly fun.

More to come!

In the meantime, enjoy some monologuing and bickering of some other 'major baddies'...
I'm looking forward to this series :)

The Green(skin) Knight: 3 Year Glance Back

I was organizing some of my painted minis files and noticed that one of my favorite pieces was coming up on being 3 years old.  Older than this blog, so I thought I'd throw him a little birthday party, since he never got a dedicated update.

I rarely have the time to spend a long time on a single mini.  If I was wealthy maybe I could make the time, but I suppose I've always been an 'army painter' at heart, seeing how I have more projects going than I have time to paint in three lifetimes, and I'm always getting motivated to do new armies, warbands and teams.. but occasionally I make the time to focus in one just one.  I did for this goblin, which was for a painting contest on The Warhammer Forum.

I had in mind to make a 'Goblin Knight'.  So first I had to convert the Goblin.  I used the GW Goblin Hero on Squig, and 'knighted him up' using part of a Bretonian helmet, and green stuff to make a broken lance, barding, a little outcropping and add to the helmet, and plasticard for the shield and plasticard tube for part of the helmet.  The helmet was important.  I felt it needed to be there, to sell the 'knight' concept, but didn't want it on his head, so I opted for this idea, to have it flying off his head as he charges forward.

Here's the conversion (click for larger):
 

And finished:

It's amazing how fast three years goes by, this feels like not long ago at all. 

Looking at him again I have it in my mind to reuse this scheme of ivory to red through coral for another project... so you may see something of that in the mid-distant future. 

Happy Birthday Brave Little Goblin! 

The Brute Squad: More RPG Minis

Some more minis from the big various group of RPG Minis for Squad Class painting, this is a grouping of 'ogre types', which should be a staple of any DM for a D&D or similar setting.  Ogres make great wandering monsters for dungeons, wild lands, or even as threatening NPCs for a caravan guard, local city organized crime or tavern bouncer.

A shaman type, big savage brute and a slightly more civilized brute.

If you see them from this angle, chances are it's through the one eye remaining that isn't completely swollen over as you bleed all over the floor now that they're done with you. 

Enjoy!

Big Brutes to do the DM's Bidding

One of the projects at the stations is for a client having a whole bunch of RPG minis painted.
It's a lot of fun to have a wide variety of minis that I have complete reign to do whatever I feel is right.
They are quick Squad Class pieces, but I'll be enjoying the variety and individuality of the lot.

This takes me back to when I first discovered miniatures- as a young teenager, getting into D&D and seeing the miniatures collection of some friends, one who's older brother painted, quit nicely I remember thinking at the time, and how I wished I could have some minis too- I couldn't of course: I was far too poor!  A nice thing about D&D, I could play that game with just the set of hand-me-down dice one of the guys gave me, some scrap paper and a pencil,but buying any of the books let alone miniatures was not a possibility.

Maybe that's a reason I can't resist buying them now ;)

Would make RPGing very cool to have a huge variety of painted miniatures on hand, for any possibility, ready for action, so I'll be trying to make some nice additions to his collection.

Here are a couple of the big bashing baddies to start with...

A Swamp Troll from reaper if I remember correctly.  Couldn't resist going with a swampy-green.

An even bigger troll-type. Going for more of a 'rock troll' coloration for him. 

The Eyes Have It: 'It' being paint.

Following the review of the Occulites, here are the minis after being painted.

Here is the brave leader, with faithful Luftle companion. 

It wasn't easy coming up with a color scheme, since I quite liked the official color scheme choice that Darwin games went with. If I hadn't seen it (Brown bodies and dark green skin, pale yellow eyes) I'd probably have done the same. But since I had seen it, I wanted to challenge myself to come up with something different. 

What I aimed for was a red-brown fur body.  I used the look of powdery chocolate truffles for inspiration.  

Skin I went for a drab blue,with bright pinkish for eye & under neck-belly skin for bright accent.  

The Luftles kept the same pattern of coloration, but going into dried-orange for fur and a brighter jade skin. 

I still may go back and tip the ends of these leaves in yellow.

Here is the group together (click for larger):

 

They were really great fun to paint! 

Speaking of eyes, showing why one is better than many... 

Enjoy!

Game Convention: Just the Pretty Pictures

Here is the first report from Kubla Con this past weekend, in the SF Bay Area, California.
This will be just the pretty pictures.  Later I'll report on games played and such.

One of the coolest things about a game convention is the impressive terrain and games you'll see: some people really put a lot of effort into it, which is great for the hobby since it tend to inspires others to have a go at pushing their own hobby or at least collecting and playing more.

So here are some of the fun things I saw.

Click for larger: 

For scale, those are two 28mm minis on the overlook deck.  This was a stunning Civil War scene.

I'd have been happy to dive into that water.

Another epic battle about to commence:

Isa so donna wanna count all dem minis. 

Terrain is nothing to speak of, but impressive nonetheless.

There were many games of both WWI & WWII areal combat. Always thought this looks cool.

Full terrain version from Fantasy Flight for their board game Shadows Over Camelot

Skrapwelder's completed multi-player game for Empire of the Dead which we'd play tested last week.

Everything is all painted now. He must have squeezed in 3 weeks of work in one on this.

Apparently the tradition of red double decker buses goes back further than I knew. 

Skrapwelder got better pictures, when he gets them to me I'll be giving them effects treatment & post them.

Dr.Mini-pusher I presume? 

A couple Ancients armies face off. I always love seeing nice ancient armies.  I really do want to make one.

Someday I will. I have a ton of British Celts in the bitz closet. 

I wonder what rule set will come to take the crown from the fallen WAB, 

or if it will become like Blood Bowl and continue on even stronger.

A couple shots from the Flames of War tournament.  

A lot of nice tables, but I didn't want to push too far through while the tournament games were in play.

This is another game that always tempted me, but it is daunting: what period to build & what theater?

With my luck I'd build something I really enjoy like British in North Africa, early war, and find everyone is playing Late War Normandy. Don't really want 2 or 3 armies just to start in. Love to look though.

I did see that there was a Warmachine & Hordes tournament on both Sat & Sunday, but I took no pictures. 

Why? Because they were playing directly on the hotel white tablecloths and a lot of the armies were partially painted or not painted at all. Very disappointing.  For a game that has been around longer than Flames of War that group really could commit more to aesthetics. If I had signed up for a tournament and saw games set up on white tablecloths with minimal terrain I think I'd have dropped out and done something else. I guess it is fine for some, but it would be a big drain on the potential enjoyment for me. Compare that to the picture above, that makes me want to play that game. 

A bit blurry, but on Saturday night, some ran a maze with an Alien theme for the kids:

You can just make out the Brood-Dude. Sorry for the blur, was best I could get with the crowd.

There will be more to come: 

* The Zombiesmith booth with new Quar & 'War of Ashes' previews & Quar gaming.

* Blood Bowl

* Dust Warfare games & review

Almost forgot, Kubla Con got invaded by young Mongol Warriors! 

Nice to know there will be another generation of gamers!