Silver Tower, death rattles and PAX Aus

Ahhh poo, this silly bitch has gone and got a secondary infection off of suspected whooping cough- so that's seven weeks of being sick.

I am crapola at looking after myself, so I am following my friends advice 'treat yourself like you where your own girlfriend'.  Huh.  Why didn't I think of that?

Well, since the doctor has confined me to stay home in the warm for a week, my meta-girlfriend-self was sooo sweet and treated me to Warhammer Quest:  Silver Tower.  Wow, she is so awesome!  Thanks me.  You're welcome me.  X

Finally a descent product from GW this year

51 minis for $250 bucks, that's actually pricing the minis at around $5 each- plus lots of card and dice and shit I will probably forget about.  Why oh why cannot citadel apply this to their main ranges?  Even $10 a mini would be... Er... Something.

Box art from Silver Tower

Look at all the gribbly monsters and Most importantly... Familiars!!!!  I freaking love familiars!!!  jes Goodwin hooked me on them back in the eighties, and I have been obsessively collecting them ever since.  Reaper, Rackham- if it's a wee diddy thing, it's on my pull list.

I will clear my small backlog first before starting it.

Gotta say, if Age of Sigmar contained these minis and a points system, it would have been a 'must have' instead of a 'what the fickety-fuck is this shitballs?'.

On that subject, the guy in the shop said he has sold zero Sigmar boxes.  Nada.  None.  Nothing.  His customers hate it.  Cabbage riding Orruks?  Nope.  Everyone is sticking to 40k or hopping over to X Wing, which I think will be my next game.  But first I must recover and get back to work.  Gotta get me a Rey flown falcon baby, because #wheresrey? Hasbro dropped the ball shaped pooch and fuck it when it comes to Rey. 

Gotta say, dating me has really raised my bar for potential future girlfriends.  I am generous, thoughtful, I understand my miniature addiction, love eighties goth music, funny, am totally freakin' gorgeous and actually can make a cup of tea to British standards (the color of he-man).

Oh, and if you would actually like to meet lil' ole me and see me model on computer things live, or get free lessons on how to, you will find me at PAX australia 2016 at the CG Spectrum booth.

I will also be on a couple of the panels, talk about my past works in character design for games (I worked on Dragonage, Civilization IV, Unreal Tournament 04, Lord of The Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online and many more).  These days I mentor the next gen online.

I will also be on panels covering some of the LGBTIQAP+ and feminist issues in games- most specifically how to design female characters.

Also you may spot me at the Reaper Painting tables.  Because minis.

 <3

I have a desk! And other little miracles of existence

 I have a desk and a daylight lamp.  This means craft!

Check out these Epic Chaos Primarchs looking all based up and shit.

My flatmate jury rigged a daylight lamp strip onto an old ikea desk lamp arm for me today and we finally cleared enough room to give me a hobby space.  I am excitimicated!

(My idea of jury rigging involves gaffa tape, chord, pegs and possibly a brunette or two... but I digress.)

She is taking me up to the local mall tomorrow so I can stock up on staples like brushes, primer, windex and distilled water.  

I won my court case and my job is going well, so I will be able to get myself a secure flat nearer the city in a month or two, and that means I can finally ship my entire studio and collection up out of storage.  King's minis will be back in business again, like the old days.

These guys will no doubt follow on behind!

Gives good head

Got a lot of sculpting done tonight and prepped armatures for the three ass cannon crew, their six heads and the base body for the Cenboars.  I went with first wave Kev Adam's Ravenin Hordes era boar bodies (I am also sculpting a boar for a client based on citadel's fiend factory one, so that's weird.  Boars everywhere!).

The cenbor base boar body will go off to be moulded and once the masters are back, variants and the upper bodies will be made.  So I get a war boar mount as an extra model for sale!

Ass cannon head number one.  Based on the original, but with a little more strain on his face and a ball in its mouth.  He gets ears next then once the cannon collar is made it is finished.

Ass cannon head number 2.  'Fen cyclops'.  It is having trouble firing, so is biting down on it's lip.  I know, I know... You want some fen cyclopses.  Noooope.

I think perhaps an ogre-like head with an underbite and fangs may be in order for orcish teams.

Whilst all that was drying I also rolled put some sheeting yo cut the Juggernaut test panels.

Lots to do.  Lots to do.

Ass Cannon

Well people, I spent the night sculpting a Chaos Demonic Ass Cannon.

I figure if my computers are down, at least I can kickstart some capital by catching up on my Oldhammer miniatures.

The length of the model is three inches along the wooden base (top right).  I had to guess based on the bases of the crew pictured along side it.  Still, that is a satisfyingly heavy chunk of lead to mail. I don't have the set up for quality resin at the moment.  Plus resin is often poo poo.

My version has seperate heads, allowing you to field several cannons with different looks and poses.  The two corks show the cores for two of the heads.  The barrel core is also shown- the cannon will be wider than this after the greenstuff is layered on.

My verson has more details and sharper sculpting than the inspiration.  The neck will have a collar so the head ball sockets into.  I may add some chains and other details.

Following this is Dwerg Cenboars, a metal Jugganaut kit and finally masher / dicer machines.

If this helps get me in the black, Dwerg crossbows/guns and McNastybeestie heroes and highlanders /sassanorks.

Realms of Fido

I love dog minis, so even though I am not fond of the style of Marauder Miniatures, I  still got excited when I found this in my mate Pete's box of delights.  I pushed this one up the queue because I wanted to show Pete that his donated figures are in good (and grateful) hands.

 

 I started with natural ghoul greys highlighted in menoth white base but was attacked by the demon 'fukdisforralaff' and changed to crazy chaos mode.

I feel the trick with minis you do not like stylistically is to go all out batshit crazy on them. We all know just how prone to serious mental disorders guano can be.

Stay frosty people <3

 

[Lgbtiq bit:]. Speaking of bats... DC comics not only gave us a lipstick lesbian batwoman (and a redhead too) but recently announced Catwoman is officially bisexual.  The original, retired Catwoman  Selina Kyle is to be involved romantically with the current Catwoman). This is massively important, because erasure of bisexual identity is a real problem, even in LGBTIQA communities. Just youtube the Anna Paquin interview on bisexuality and you can see it in practice.   I had the pleasure of discussing this with a fired up bisexual friend recently and she got me all fired up about the problem too!  Some people like chocolate, some people like strawberry.  Some are happy with either (or both in one bowl). And that's that.  

I like mint choc with the chocolate picked out.  That isn't a metaphor by the way.

Well done DC!  I must get some DC minis to celebrate.  I hope Marvel makes Spider Gwen a polyamorous pansexual.

Look it up if you have to.

What a Total cult!

Want a work in progress shot of my dirty great cult?

This batch is abooooout fifty percent done.  Lots of cheques, skin work and details to go.  I start base up, in case ya didn't know, so I can use big brushes without worrying about dirtying the models legs.  Feet are usually last to finish.

And here is the rest of their team so far.  I hate having doubles, so I just head and weapon swapped a whole bunch with daemonette and millitia bits.  Arrr.

I had planned to do much more with converting the whole lot, but this is part of my 'just get it done' campaign.  There is nothing stopping me stripping and reworking things later!

The bases are the new citadel 32mm bases.  They are a bit tall and chunky for my liking- plus here they cost 70c each, which is fucking ridiculous.  But GW is pretty much an evil cult.

Once these are used up and I going back to the normal 30mm bulk buy bases for my 40k moderns.

Miniatures. Actual miniatures. In a miniatures blog. Whatever next?

I have been insanely sick with flu this past month, and it is really grinding everything to a halt re: hobbies.  Work and sleep are pretty much it at the moment.  But one thing did happen tonight that was nice.  I got the good camera back.

So though nothing here is recent, the photos are now quality and finely detailed.  You know.  Like finecast.  (cough, cough)

90's Plastic warrior.  Shit just got shit yo.

So first up in my quick photo session tonight between pixel pushing and dying by degrees, is a classic 90's chaos warrior.  After the wonders of the drastic plastic orcs, psychostyrene dwarves and ultra classic skeleton warriors boxed set and purely brilliant plastic space marine box, citadel did a shit stained backwards slide into the single posed dross of the 90's.

No wonder I left the hobby to have lots of sex with goth chicks.

I went with a quick Mike McVey-esque style paint job (painted on crackles and smooth blendin')- Rodney Matthews color scheme and finished it off with a John Blanche style graphic pen attack.  Hate must be written on knuckles.  It must.

The base is also worth noting.  Based on the AD&D battlesystem pictures, the base is made from mounting board card.  You often find old school minis glued to cardboard, and prior to slotta bases this was pretty standard practice.  Beer mats, by the way, where the best material as they are designed not to warp!  I had a theory you could turn it to rock hard plastic instead of freying paper shite by soaking it with superglue.  You can.  It also lets you sand the edges to smooth, plastic like finish.  There see?  No more excuses for not basing that irregular sized mini up.

Minotaur Lord.  Citadel 1980s.

On the day I first bought miniatures, this was one of the chosen.  Sadly, my original is gone, so it was a joy to get my hands on a second copy and do him justice.  The base needs work.  It is merely a poker chip with grit and cork stucketh upon yonder surface.  Mid green and highlight missing.

And to finish up a picture of my mostly done Ral Parth storm giant.  A classic Tom Meier sculpt if I am not mistaken.  Somehow, my money is on the Gypsy.

Ral Partha Storm Giant VS. Citadel Talisman Gypsy

Blending!  Blending!  Yarrrr!

Well, a productive break considering I have not picked up a brush in ages.

Enjoy peoples.

Seriously.  You can enjoy peoples.  I recommend the danish.

Nurgling around with green stuff

Xanadu is on telly.  So I was elsewhere.

The blightking box is very model specific in its parts.  Torso variants A and B fit model 1 only, for example.  So what is a girl to so when she likes both A and B?  She reaches for the dremmel, greenstuff and fixes the problem.

As usual, I added super sculpey to the green stuff.

Aaaand since I had the dremmel out I decided to do this.  Mmm, nurgling peekage.

And a bit more to my Blanchitsu warband... Mostiqorr!  He sucks worse than xanadu!  My first pain engine parts come into play!

So this leaves me with all these parts.  Five models for 100 bucks?  Lol, GW... you failed to factor in my cheapness and sculpty skills!  I see six more, yes I do! A project I shall document next year as 'kit pushing'.  I promised myself I would squeeze THREE giants out of the citadel giant.  And dammit, I shall!

Speaking of projects, once I paint these I am heading back into old school territory.  

 Stay tuned.

Great.  Now I have "got to believe we are magic" stuck in my head.  Thanks Kat.

Jitter free hobbying

Putrid Blight kings.  Not to be confused with the kings of putrid blight or the blighted putrid knights (splitters!).

Them's all stuckered together like and converted whilst the turkey digests.  Bwaahp!

Honourable mention to the engineer behind Gutrot Spume (not to be confused with Gutrot Smith).  A seriously clever bit of plastics mould cutting.  But a dull head... I switched it out for something more interesting.

I need to charge a good camera.  Still on my shit apple 3.

Oh and a chaos undivided demon.

Yep.

Some (nearly) finished stuff

Lots of minis this blog- not one completely done,  but very close.  My camera phone does not do a good job in low light- I must dig out the digital cam that I used at the start of the blog.

Enjoy!

Female chaos thug

I tried a new flesh recipe for this girl, starting with a base coat of vallejo model color tan, highlighted up through bone.  I tried a muted, natural look for her so she could double as a barbarian raider.

I love chaos thugs, and collect as many broken ones as I find going cheap.  They are so much fun to convert, fun to paint amd a blast to play.  Psycho punk mutants?  Yes please.

Broo test piece

I love Broo.  This is my test piece, a mix of natural hydes, insane scribblings, sickly green greys and poopy shit splatters.  Likey?

I hear a whisper on the wind that Broo where the Space Marines of their time insomuch that they made citadel a tonne of money- and this is reflected in just how many they churned out.

This chappy is from the pre-slotta era and is a fixed head variant.  Broo later morphed into 'beast men' with several artists tackling them, including Trish Morrison, Bob Olley, Kev Adams and Jes Goodwin no less.
As the range evolved they became less beast men and more goat men, though you can find all creatures great and small in the early ranges- camels, owls and bees for example.

Added to lead pile
None today!

Paint Queue
More undead.  More broo.  And a coffee and sandwich.

Basing. Always more basing. And a spawn.

Tonight was a fabulous frenzy of basing.  A lot of my figures are on 3mm thick mdf bases, whilst my newer figures are on 1.8 or 2mm thick low profile bases, which I prefer.  A big assed packing knife and sandpaper, a little thinned weldbond pva glue to seal the bottoms (and stop them pilling) and a fresh paint job here and there, and a whole slew of minis where rendered a bit gooderer.

I had a couple of tubs of minis that I had been putting off because of this, but now I have the technique of shaving the bases down to an art, and the fact they where quick to paint- they lept up the paint queue to tonight.

Among these where early citadel dire wolves and hogs, a host of farmyard animals from Megaminis and Hasslefrees excellent baby maws... (perfect little buggers for slaanesh warbands- I must get more of these and some adults too!) Oh... and dogs.
Lots of dogs.
Why I have so many I really don't know... blink dogs, ratter from citadels rare villagers set, more megaminis, chaos hounds and armored war dogs from Ral Partha.  Strangely I do not think this is enough though, as I felt the urge to start putting these on the bases with their masters.

Oh, and I rebased the chaos dogzoat spawn to a large renedra round base to give him an epic feel and protect his wings in gameplay.

I figured I would leave you with a picture... here is one of the whacky chaos spawn I threw together after Steve posted all those lovely John Blanche pictures a while ago.  I noticed a huge mold line on the arm so I will have to address that before I continue.  I think he needs a stupidly sized, moss covered banner ala 80's blanche.

So that's my night.  Yawn.  G'night all.

Slaanesh warband 2

Though very tired today I did manage to push some more figures further along the paint queue this evening.  I am mentally exhausted, but soldiering on with tasks will help recovery.  So...

I added chaos thugs to the mix, finally slapping paint on figures I have had under coated for years.  No real shading to speak of yet, but the little army is starting to appear in crude form.

I also finished two Ral Partha Golems... finally completing the set of four.  I have to dig out the clay and flesh ones for a family photo.  Sadly these two are on the endangered species list.  Ral Partha destroyed their molds during the Fasa takeover.  I have tried contacting wizards of the coast to get the rights to recast all these lost lines but to response.

Slaanesh Warband

Howdy doodie, duderinos.  The waves of figures on my desk have yet to destroy me.  A few more near completion.  Mushroom bases, a bit more touches of color and edging, then varnished and done!

Here I give you my new Slaanesh members.  I decided that pastels don't really say hardcore spank as much as shiney red and black leather.  So I give you my deviant palette.

The Daemondog ("young girl... they call them the Daemondogs".. Bowie anyone?) previously shown has her slap on now for the most part.

The Demonettes (fuck the bullshit 'a's) got classic paint schemes based on their first appearance in white dwarf- courtesy of Phil Lewis and John Blanche.

More as I churn, churn, churn.

Chaos Spawn

Okay, okay... I replaced the zoats head.  Tsk... you people.
Under the knife went a two headed chaos hound.  Much more spawny.

As you can see, I got the base tints down on my zoatspawn, but am yet to highlight  or smooth out the skin.  But progress is happening- which is nice.

Also pictured are two other spawn- the body from the dog mated with a demonette, and I think I posted a pic of the Blanche inspired winged spawn a while ago.

All very work in progress.  But its nice to feel like I am gaining momentum again.

I also managed to undershade and color tint a host of 80's orcs- including two boar riding heroes from Kev Adams first ravening hordes release and some limited editions.  That was fun.  I have been dying to paint those babies since Duran Duran where in the charts.

So yes, some progress finally!  Enjoy.

Realm of Chaos made me do it

See?  This is what happens when I am left alone with broken minis.  A frikkin realm of chaos spawn made from three classic eighties figures- the zoat, coatl and that cornerstone of so many chaos conversjons of its time- the giant scorpion.  Remember Pete Tailors elephant headed spawn with... giant scorpion arms... or his yellow winged spawn made from the orc war wyvvvvvvern, umberhulk and... giant scorpion arms.  In fact I rarely saw a whole one.
For this one I had the spawn from white dwarf shown here in mind...  the coatl wings especially reminded me of this twisted minotaur.

For this conversation I blended procreate with small amounts of fimo to make a slow drying detailing putty that blends and feathers easily.  The fimo slows the cure and reduces the memory quality- which is what makes blobs of green stuff so dammed hard to feather together... perfect!  I use bright pink fimo so it stands out from the grey understructure.  Super sculpey works too.  Its softer cured so dont use for support structures especially if you plan to Vulcanise it.

Anyway, this zoaty spawn was a great little break between cure times for Oladahn from Hawkmoon and a fiddly boar warrior who does not like the sword I have given him.  We shall see who wins in due course.

This spawn will no doubt sit unpainted for a while till I have some brain cells back enough to concentrate on it.  The rest of my hobby time will no doubt be more unexciting basing and priming of my backlog.  Last night saw another twenty minis get grounded- but alas I am still not done basing just the minis I bought at cancon and moab over the last few years.   It's in my mind to have these done before the next one so I can purchase more :)

Sleep well you Slaved to Darkness...

My chaos spawn.  Citadel zoat, Coatl wings, Giant Scorpion claws.  Scratch built tail.  Base by warbases.  Dirt by bondi beach.  Hair by Julien.  Egad by jove!

Remember these?  Mike mcvey pj judging by base.

Saturday was sunny and dry...

Yes, the only saturday better than mr.saturday is a warm, clear, dry one.

Yes.  Its spray time!

Today I based and primed 149 minis.  The only reason I stopped is I ran out of superglue accelerator and superglue.  Nuts!

  Rather than facing my usual wall of unfinished minis to work on I decided to freshen everything up by raiding my storage tubs and giving me something totally fresh to play with.  I stopped enjoying the other ones so a little new-new shiney was needed for a morale lift.

In all that frantic work I did manage to do a few key things which I am excited about.  The main thing was a war on my procrastination.  I seem to have struck a good pace toward that end.  So here are the key achievements.

  One- I got all my oriental heroes and ninja collection well into the path of playable.  These have been sitting in a tub for years in an embarrassing state of just undercoated.  Not the biggest collection so far,  but its nice to see them finally based the same and progressing.  Its equally nice to know no more are lurking in my unpainted draws.  I don't know about you,  but I have a horrible tendency to buy doubles because I forget what's in my draws.  Ooh missus.

  Two- I got my part painted skaven tub rebased and mostly painted.  I still have a huge collection of unpainted metal skaven- but my Skulldred warband is well decked out for now.  They may have to wait.

  Three- my whole minotaur collection is assembled bar the skull faced minotaur lord, (a pinning nightmare I couldn't face without kicker or vodka) and is primed. Some even have color applied.  This is a huge deal for me- as its one of the areas of my collection that I have owned the longest and it was furthest from done.  A BIG morale boost.  Plus I do get a fair number of emails asking about them.

Threes a fair number, right?

Four- raided my Fiend Factory and monsters draw and got well and truly stuck in.  Everything from giant spiders, boars, snakes, assasin bugs and merbeasts got based and primed.  I still have a handful to go,  but its going to be good to have all these creatures playable instead of rotting in zip bags.

  This required a huge mental shift for me.

   You see I suffer badly from perfectionism- and its been holding me back horribly from completing my paint jobs.   I originally planned to have every FF and FA model on hand sculpted flagstone bases- but this would just take forever to do.   I had to negotiate with my brain and say- "look brain... stop eating that book on coding c# and come listen to me.  How about we just get them ff figs all done to an okayish standard on 25mm textured bases and worry about all that... brain... are you  listening to me?  Put down that abstract concept and.... BRAIN!  (Sigh) I dunno why I bother..."

So after that little tirade I did indeed go the simple,  quick basing route and tore through the lot in no time.  Satisfaction!

Perfectionism is a cruel affliction- one I am working on reducing so I can enjoy life more.  It goes beyond being finicky- it actually stops you doing stuff you enjoy because the anxiety of the outcome not being up to your unreasonable standards puts you off. Any advice is appreciated in the comments below.

I plan to have a full set of FF minis done and based for retro dungeon bashes at some stage.  Hence 1 inch rounds instead of my usual 30mm skirmish bases.  I picture using some of those pen and ink dungeon tiles you can get from rpg drive through for some seriously old school action.

Er.. Four.... no... Five.  Nurgle and Slaanesh warbands undercoated and some tzeench demons nearly colored.  Bet your itching to see that project roll off the line!  I sure cannot wait to finally have my classic Realm of Chaos skirmish board ready to play.  Some batreps perhaps?

Six... I kicked off my classic rogue trader figures with battle brother Orrinocco the comms officer from the first 40k relased marines (C100 predated release).  What chapter?  Crimson Fists of course.   And not the modern colors- that slightly purple toned grey blue from the cover art of 40K first edition.  This mob will be seperate to my c100 kill team Charlie project as the marines are all second generation. A set of space adventurers, mercs and iron claw pirates will join forces with them to battle ambulls, zoats, space orks and space elves surrounded by chocolate mousse tub buildings and red tipped giant cacti.  Zoatibixalicious!
I dropped using the brilliant Fenris resin bases for now, because I simply do not have the inclination or time to drill and pin all my 40k minis- plus some odd the rarer ones I want to keep the tabs on.   I highly recommend these bases- the sullaco ones are just fantastic... but for now I will set them aside in favor of discs with glued grit, just to get me roaring along into RT nirvana.

Lastly I managed to go through a great deal of my collection and start weeding out the doubles.  These will be ebayed off shortly, the dirty swines.  It's a pretty darn good haul- something for almost everyone.

Anyway,  glad to be back.

Wear Purple Day

Today is Wear Purple day in Australia- to show gender variant and intersex youth we care.
And we should... among the transgender community alone youth suicide rates are around 45% according to some accounts- with many cases unreported.  This is a direct result of how society treats these kids.  People should not have to suffer for how they where born.

The wargaming community should be much more aware.  Its quite common to use the term transexual as a slur on a poorly sculpted female figure for example- and I already mentioned GWs sins in this department regarding Slaanesh.

Take a moment to visit wikipedia and look up transgender and intersex if you have never heard of these conditions or you still think they are mental disorders.  Then perhaps show your support next year with yer paint brush like I have here.

Its a silly little gesture,  but the more people know, the better this world will become.

Purple!

Cultist conversion, flamer

I have been passing time in canberra painting stuff with my nephew.
Here's a quick snap of the nurgle cultist I converted a little bit with spare putty, and a flamer my brother in law got me.  My hearts not really in it,  but it is  therapeutic.

For retail therapy I grabbed a molly squidgepidge boxed set, a pathfinder gnome Wizard and some more Greystuff to turn into old school style minis for you all.
Matt primed them up for me,  along with his Vicktorias boxed set.  He is done on the skins. .. gotta go get a move on to catch up!