So much fiend... We need a factory.

One Fiend Factory goblin, as promised.  (Shitty iphone pic.)

I went with classic DnD ocre skin, and took the oriental themes in the model into  account for colors- so this goblin pack should double as XP grinds for both oriental adventurers and western dungeon bashers alike.

The rest of the goblins will be dressed in all kinds of colored fabrics to help identify each in combat.  The skin, metals and green hair will tie them together a bit.

And since I was in FiendFactory mode here is more stuff...

Uh, Oh... Spongebob Squarepants is fucked!

The Angel of Hell, or as I like to call it- Evolved Squidworth.  This photo really doesn't do the glazing justice... The orange windsor and newton over white in the eyes really pops off the gaming table.

I have a lot of projects to get through, but it would be cute to redo this model with a modern eye from Rus' Original Fiend Folio art. (Anyone got a PDF?).  I realised halfway through that I could have asked him what colors he imagined this blighter... I am currently working with him on a private comission and have his email.  Doh!

I love FF stuff because it is kinda like a turd polish challenge... Plus I get to experience old school at its oldest.

Goblins with thankful hafts

I just wanted to thank everyone for all the emails and facebook messages showing support for my decision to be openly trans, intersex, lesbian and completely unable to settle on a basing standard.  Plus all the lovely baby congrats!

There are just too many and some are quite long and heartfelt, and deserve more than a 'ta very much luv'.  I hope to get back to everyone eventually.

Your support is really important to me!

So last night was my first night with some hobby time in aeons.  Actual, literal aeons.*  Strange aeons, at that.

[*Oh stop it, your thinking in linear time and space, mere mortal. ]

My focus at the moment is cleaning up and storing so I can get dust and sand free to finish my commissioned mini sculpts.  One day I will have a separate clean desk and a dirty desk.  Mmm.  dirty desk.

To that end, I just rebased my Fiend Factory goblins from 30mm ply down to 1" round bases ready for some old school dungeon bashing fun.

Fuckity fuck, these little fuckers are fuckers.

The spear shafts snap easily, are thin (not DnD collectors series thin though- still grrr) and seemingly hard to fix.

To solve the problem, I sliced mine off an hand and haft (great pub name) and rebuilt the naganata by threading thin wire through metal pipe from a railway hobby store.  I could not find any flexible plasticard or nylon tubes- which are better because they will bend back rather than snap.  Broom bristles make awesome pikes that won't spear you through your hand.

I am tossing up whether to headswap and augment them to make a little variation, but not sure yet.  I am not overly fond of these minis.

Now that the whole team is on 25mm rounds rather than 30mm ply, they fit in a small tray and fit neatly into my overflowing FF box.  A few more sessions like this and I may be able to move.

Paint jobs soon!

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.

Links. Warmallet 60,000 and the Missing Links.

Skarsnik just made me realise that I missed off a links section to all the blogs I follow- you can now find them on my sidebar.  Happy browsing, and send me a message if you want linkage loving!

I also found a widget for page counts, and look at that... I am rocking up to 60,000 views.  How about that?   I was going to post up a whole heap of Rogue Trader pics ready for 40,000... you know, but it slipped me by.

Rogue Trader minis, with a Paranoia Troubleshooter (purple hair)
Citadel 80'

So here is my Warmallet 60,000 (hits).

[ It took 20 thousand years after someone accidentally pulled the plug on the Emperors throne, and mankind freed from his psyonic opression cheered the hell up, allowed women equal rights and stopped pissing around with Catholic Church Iconography... the Eldar then started to respect humans as intellectual equals instead of a dirty, pipe ridden mob of skull worshipping cultists and a new age was formed where everyone, you know... mostly get along.    Turns out the Astonomicon was like a dog whistle to the orcs and what has making the more or less peaceful orcs go a bit loopy.  The Necrons turned out where just escaped animatronic Terminators from James Cameron Theme Park World that got a virus and went a bit squiffy in a freak video programming without instructions incident.  Easily turned off once you had new battereis in the remote.  Zoats showed back up (still eating Zoatybix) - they had been off on this great party planet with some insanely good pineapple and cheese on sticks.  They appologised for being late, but did bring along some pretty awesome Kryomek... sorry...  Zerg... sorry... Tyranid repellant (same formula as Bat shark Repellent funnily enough)  - turns out the Tryanid where attracted to cabling plastics used in power armor all along- just like how cockroaches are drawn to the wiring in my bloody microwave.  Humans suddently realised they could take the Eldar and Necron antigrav technology thats been laying around for decades actually was better than tank tracks, and switched over.
Anyhoo- everyone gets back to some space pirate shooty explory space adventure action!
 No one ever did find out what the little venty, jetpacky nozzles where for on the Marines backpacks.
 In the future there is only war whatever you like! ]

I am basing all my paranoia, 2000ad and Dredd figures on 30mm resin Sulaco bases and giving them all a 'lit by neon' in the dark blue future cities look.  Vibrant feature colors on drab base tones, so every single scifi figure I own is compatible in style for gaming.  I am daydreaming of building a cool game table to play it on in the distant future once I have space.  Oh, for a garage.

Jumping in my blue box we hurtle back in time to the early 1980's and after defeating a nasty outbreak of Sontarans using a jellybaby we arrive in time to photograph some of Citadel's first releases- Fiend Factory and Fantasy Adventurers (aka FA and FF to us collector types).

Fiend Factory Gnome Theif, Wraith, Medusa and Fantasy Adventurer Dwarf

 I have been slowly collecting these since I discovered the joy of ressurecting old school lead using modern painting and finishing techniques.
I have decided to base them all on 30mm modern with moody, torchlit dungeon lighting.  The monsters are all lit brighter and warmer at the front, as if caught in the adventurers torchlight, and lit by the eerie blue glow all dark places appear on TV.

I think these need a bit more work, but I am just so excited by my new photographic lightbox (and the fact I now have photoshop again) that I wanted to take some pics of SOMETHING.  Something Like this...

Lord Aquila from Citadels Heroic Fighters Boxed Set

 This is actually one of the first miniatures I finished painting at the time I started this blog.  I recently rebased him onto a 30mm lipped base from his original hex base.  I find the base makes him feel really proud and draws focus to the model.  I guess psychologically it suggests a little display plinth.
  It was a practical move, since the main reason I switched was it gives extra support and protection to my Skulldred skirmish games.  All this box set brethren, some Paladins, 'Battle Lords' and 'Big Fighters' all recently got the base switch, and its amazing how much more character they seem to have.  They have been on my shelves for ages and I barely look at them... but pop them on chunky decorative bases and whoomp- they get some presence.
Though not entirely happy with the paint job, I feel I should preserve him so I can see how far my work has progressed over the last two years.  At some point I may decorate his base with some 80s mushrooms, but for now I think he is good to go.


For those of you who are eagerly waiting some new Bederken releases, you may be happy to know this little blog photo session was squeezed on the back end of photographing the new models.  Yep.  Pics soon.
Well I have to go back to the land of work-work-work.  Webstores and miniatures do not build themselves.

A motley Crew, Asgard Black Dwarf and friendsElf

Some poncy Elf, Nob the Mercenary, Bird Thing (Chaos Familiar)
The Black Dwarf (Asgard), CP2 -Bryan Ansell's Heroic Adventurers boxed set Cleric
FF5-2 Demon with sword and whip

I thought I would go back to doing some mixed group shots this year.  What a motley crew.

Starting on the left is an experimentation piece, starting with white and working down using thin washes.  Yawn.  I also tried out some NMM since I was trying out new stuff.

Nob got a polish- I worked up flesh tones, but still have not got around to doing his clothes.  He is a citadel mercenary- a variant of the militia figures-  you will find a few with the same body in that line.  Both ranges go for moderately high prices now a days.  You want old school character, this range was a high tide point.

Bird thing is one of my favourite figures of all time.  A classic Jes Goodwin sculpt.

Next up is a real joy for me.  White Dwarfs great cousin, The Black Dwarf.  He is from Asgard miniatures, and from a series of probably the coolest dwarf proportions from that time.  I spotted him back in the 1980s in an 'eavy Metal article by Aly Morrison.  I took the red and black chequered hood and tiger fur from his pic, but went in a different direction with the rest.  God how I loved that figure and poured over that article!  I have about 80% of the figures from that display now, some of which I have painted in the same way to fulfil a childhood whim.  The converted figs may have to be scratch built.  :)

Asgards Black Dwarf- so ahead of its time its breathtaking

This guy is the grand daddy of all Chaos Dwarves.  Look at the poise, the brooding nature, the expression and detail on the shield and that unusual weapon!  Whoever sculpted it (answers in the comments if you know) should be really proud.

Hans - Citadel C26 Feudal  work in progress

I have never really  loved the feudal range to be honest, but am starting to see the character in them now.  This one needs a bit more work, but I like the atmosphere of the piece so far.  All my peasants are getting the drunken Brughel, Gilliamesque 'oh look Dennis theres a lovely bit of filth over here' treatment.

Red Orc Restoration, C29 Creepy Crawlies, Heroquest Undead

Original, cleaned and fully restored painted FF24 Red Orc (aka Red Goblin)

Happy new year lead freaks!
Over the holiday season I got a few nice emails encouraging me to do a lot more stuff this year.  Get that!
So with that in mind I wanted to start the year with a tute.

During the holidays I got stuck into the lead pile and knocked off a few jobs that where bugging me.One of which was some sexily bad Citadel Red Goblins!  That clever son of a gun Beepie (bpi) painted some of these last year so well that it encouraged me to hunt them down on evilbay and get me some retro badness.  The elongated heads and faint eyes make these models look bad to begin with, but as you can see a little love and pow!  Its like Gygax & Dave A. are still alive and rolling up stats.

These old figures can be restored with a dunk in bicarb soda water to halt any potential lead rot, and a gentle working over with a copper brush.   Wear a mask.  I had my lead levels checked this week by my GP, and came up clear.  Yay for me.  Anyway, find a soft copper brush- mine is a cheap BBQ scrubber from the supermarket.  Test it with some gentle brushes and look for scratches, then go for all holy hell.

As usual, I use diluted grey-green miliput brushed on with a cheap brush to fill minute surface cracks.  A quick smooth off with fine sand paper, and a polish with bluetac and you will have a lovely painting surface.

Beepie sanded off his shield bosses so he could paint some insanely small insignia on the shields, and looking at the models I think that's a great idea.  This brings me to my next subject.  Augmentation.

Converting old miniatures feels a bit naughty, I tend to only do this to broken ones, but there is no harm in using a little putty to fix up a figure to modern tastes right?  I call this augmentation, because I am not really converting the figure at all, but it would be wrong to say they are perfect archive pieces.  The orc to the right is my faithful archive model.  The next batch (these figures are dirt cheap because, damn, they are ugly) I am augmenting.

To give an example, the models sword is battered and wonky.  Great for an orc, but most figures from this era suffer the same problem.  Applying freshly mixed milliput grey-green with a moistened card and carving a smooth, sharp edged blade is a great augmentation.  Fingers of this era are often just lines, lacking the comic book knuckles that the early eighties brought that beg for highlighting.  A small amount of greenstuff mixed 8:1 with sculpey a black clay shaper and a little patience can make all the difference.  Speaking of which...

C29 creepy crawlies (beetles, scorpion, unknown chaosy two headed  lizard thing and giant tick)

These bad boys are mostly C29 creepy crawlies.  They have been modernised by gluing on slotta bases and then very carefully sculpting a dungeon floor surface using procreate to hide their integral bases.
Any help identifying the mysterious two headed, one winged chaos snake thing is most welcome!  Really early chaos familiar perhaps?

MB Heroquest plastics.  Yay.

Continuing on the old dungeon theme, I found a bag of unloved Heroquest figures in a flea market a few months back.  By some strange twist of fate, a few months before I discovered a shrink wrapped mint Heroquest box in an bric-a-brac and antiques store not one hundred paces from the same spot!  Tenner.  Bargain.  Its now in my vault...  will be selling that on ebay soon, once the Aussie dollar drops a bit.

I converted the minis by carefully shaving off the plastic base with a razor.  I say carefully, because the plastic used for these is much harder than modern citadel plastics, so does not take stress well.  If you try this, dont cut with something like tin snips, you will get white stress tears and odds are the leg will snap off.  A fresh scalpel and some patience payed off, and I had these, two zombies and five goblins prepped for a little mid week old school insomnia indulgence.
I plan to go back and do some sexy blending later on these, pick out the teeth then varnish the ever living crap out of them for sticky pizza fingered gaming in the near future.  I googled heroquest to see if anyone else had painted their figures recently and to see what they did, and I was really surprised how big a community it still has!  You go Heroquest fans!