Gifty McGiftface and The case of the disappearing Hobbits

Pippin:  'Lol.  Aggro'ed.'

One of my gift mini packages arrived today.  This gem plus a stack of plastics of various LOTRiness.

Sadly, some of the fellowship have journeyed elsewhere, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth (of Sauron).  A big thanks to Eyecandy animation in Canberra for the donation!

So I have a confession.  

Sorry... But I hate Lord of The Rings.  The books, the films and especially The Hobbit in all its dreadful forms.  Now, I appreciate the significance and importance of the series... I just don't like it.  None of it.  About the only thing I dig is the concept of Ringwraiths riding Fell Beasts.  A ghost on a giant fucking carrion thing swinging a mace? That's freaking great!

I.. Uh.. Oh, fuck it... since I am confessing geek shame, I also really hate watching anime.  I can stomach the GITS movie and Akira, and the studio Ghibli stuff is charming, but everything else I have seen just shits me.  Especially the TV series stuff like fucking Attack on Titan and bloody Neon Genesis Evan... Fuck it, why bother finishing the title, the ending was shit.

What else?  Oh yeah... Torchwood.  Uhg.

And Capaldi.

I have a lot of dislike for geek stuff.  Should I hand in my geek cred card?

Weird energy day

So, I get a message from an old friend from my college days and he has a box of old minis he wants to get rid of 'to clear up some mental space'.

I gladly accepted them.  For mental space reasons, of course.

Then, later the same day a completely different friend offered me a box of miniatures that she wanted to get rid of 'to clear up some mental energy'.

Naturally they where grenadier monsters that where all gaps in my collection (and that is a tricky thing to do).

Naturally, mental space comes first!  I bravely accepted them.

What is going on?

Anyone else got some mental energy they need clearing up?  ;)

Skulldred demo table

So after a lot of work and penny pinching, I am slowly managing to assemble a new demo game for Skulldred Skirmish at The Arcade.

The game itself is also coming along, having been partly reassembled from locked PDFs of earlier versions.

The current version knocks size scores down one dice, so human sized models get 2 dice instead of 3.  It also limits gangups to 2 dice, with more possible for swarmers (a special ability).  This makes the regular game less about just tight clusters, spreading out the combat to give a more RPGesque feel.

To simplify things further, all attacks that land cause a straight line back recoil (unless you have dodge special ability that gives you a 180 arc), and the most drastic change is models with armor get an 'armor save'- the attacker rerolls the damage dice, and any dive that roll equal or less than the armor score gets discarded.  This makes it immediate and allows little guys to get lucky shots in on big guys.  If this brings the damage down to zero, the model still has to recoil back or be stunned.  This also allows for multiple wound scoring attacks for heavy weapons (the remaining damage is how many wounds you score- capped to 3 for heavy weapons and 4 for magic) and extra damage dice attacks (like explosives).  

Magic and power attacks are charged by spending pips on power dice- so magicians charge up for bigs spells or keep a steady stream of little ones if you need to.  Things like dragon breath, dragon punches, petrifying gaze and spinning attacks are powered by power dice.  Power is not just for wizards now!

So those changes are all working nicely.

After six years of hell, it will be finally good to kiss this project and set it free.

Toy update

Speed painted!

Grrr!  Arg!

Undead warband

An undead warband for under $50?  Yoink.

I won't be painting these guys up for a while, as I will be visiting Sydney to appear on the CGSpectrum booth at GX Australia to do some live digital sculpting demonstrations.

I am rather stressed right now thanks to having to go to court over my horrible encounter with transphobic police, so a little retail therapy was in order.

I am not sure if I will do square bases on all of these.  I am not sure of anything lately.  Feeling uncertain about the future.

Meh.

Dollar store monsters

Dollar store toys are a fantastic source of cheap miniature gaming stuff.  I am addicted to browsing through the shops, staring at cheap crappy knock offs and dreaming up ways I turn them into something special.

I grabbed these two toys on the weekend for a crippling $4 total, whilst my girlfriend was hunting for glowsticks for a costume. Yeah, she is a batshit crazy arty type too <3.

How to convert your dragon...

Rowr.  Dinosaurus wrecks!

Since my recent misfortunes, pushing my dollar value has never been so important.  But there is a joy to turning trash into treasure!  Rich or poor I am going to be haunting dollar stores.

I am drooling over some of the amazing minis coming out at the moment, but this will do plenty for playtesting Skulldred and keeping me in craft projects.

Aaaaaaaand after a short lunch break session, I have the joints filled and have remodelled the 'train your dragon' toy a little by shaving off its bulbous cartoon eyes and adding some of my own.  I am tempted to do more prominent ball eyes and add spikes.

I used a water thinning putty to fill toy cracks- in this case aves apoxie- so I can use a moist brush to smooth it down.  I only use greenstuff to fill flexible models.

[update]

Okay, so I made some balls of putty at the end of lunch and let them dry.  I glued them onto the face then sculpted around them, using a blue heavy mix of greenstuff with a little super sculpey added (to help control the stickiness and hold its shape).

The eyelids where made with two sausages.  The first is for the lower lid.  It is pushed into place, then smoothed in.  The top lid goes over this, and is shaped to give some expression before smoothing.  I will let this dry overnight before washing off the vasoline off with alcohol wipes and basecoating.

Meanwhile...

Rowr!  Dinogasm!

Rest in Peace Wayne

Wayne England has passed away.  Condolences to family and friends, and to those of us who remember this issue especially fondly.

Thoughts on Bones

My local game store's Reaper minis are running a tad low, so it was nice to see a few more appear on the shelf- obviously emptying out the last of the stored stock.  Delightfully, this included three more pillars of good, so I yoinked them, plus three 'ghostly summons'- which are just perfect as magical portals for Skulldred- so much yoink!

If I could steer the direction of Reapers Bones, there are a few things I would like to see...

Firstly, the medium has proven itself as a good gaming material.  Durable, light and affordable.  All good.

I would like to see the polymer tinted a little more away from white.  Bone color to go with the name perhaps, but a warm mid grey would be a good idea in my book.  I have an eldritch horror mini from the earlier release that was more towards this color- and the striking difference was you could see all the detail.  I think customers would be more likely to buy them when they can actually make out what treasure is inside.  It would make painting easier too.

Secondly, I would like Reaper to step away from the recasting metal originals and make new masters for future releases specifically for bones.  Why?  Well, it would mean artist can exaggerate and deepen the detail that is lost in the process for starters.  The second reason is to allow for modilarity, which is my third point...

Modularity.  Bones polymer works perfectly with superglue, so multipart models are not the daunting problem they are in metals- it is actually desirable. I haven't picked up any of the zombies, skeletons and so forth because they are just repeats.  Yaaaaaawn.  But a sprue of arms and seperate legs and bodies?  Yes please.  I love the Nova corps models, but an tactical squad of identical poses?  Blehg.

Third is the packs.  I would like to see them orientated to more 'encounter packs'.  So, for example, rather than hunt down two packs of troops, a leader and some treasure- it's all bundled into a mid sized pack.

Likewise, a skeleton encounter- dwarf villagers, a pack of dungeon debris, a bunch of pillars- etc.

This would get over the current problem I can see of lonesome stock no one needs sitting on the shelf.  I picked up Eregris Darkfathom to lead my Tiik army, but there are ten or more just sitting there lonely.  No one needs fish preists without fish warriors- and the shop is all out of warriors.

Finally, updating Warlord and packaging the minis with bases and cards in skirmish packs suitable for that game would be a no brainer.  Warlord could be sold off the back of Bones.

Thoughts?  Stick em below biatches!

A horde of bones

Well folks, the gradual climb out of the hole that was my life is progressing, thanks again to all of you who helped me via the gofundme.  Mwah X

So I have been getting a fair bit done. I also started a teaching position yesterday that I will talk about after the companies official announcement- the gofund me also drew the attention of employers.  Also it drew threatening emails from transphobic rednecks who don't quite have the grasp of what intersex means and think it is a 'lifestyle choice'- buuut anyway, let's just focus on the positives shall we?  A nice contract job, a successful gofundme and lots pf fan messages that make me feel human again.

So I have been pushing on with Skulldred, and painting both for that and for therapeutic benefits (my anxiety is pretty crushing right now).  I managed to get further with that glorious dragon Rhiannon gave me as a gift.  He is drawing a pleasing amount of coos from the folk who I share office space with.  This pleases me greatly, and probably pleases The Old Ones too.  Lovely chaps.

Still lots to do, but I am loving working at the bigger scale.  She looks epic on the demo game table... See?

I mounted her on an old CD, and used ripped up cork coasters to build up the base around her.

This picture shows the playtest warbands assembled from cheap Bones minis.  I have painted them to 'kinda playable' tabletop standard, but most are not finished.  I really miss my lamp, magnifying glasses, paints and inks.  Oh well, I should be getting my passport shortly and that will let me have storage to move my stuff up.  

Slowly but surely.

Skulldred 4 Bones wip

So here is a WIP shot of my two Skulldred playtesting warband.  Lots to do, and I am just aiming for tabletop ready standard at the moment.

Reaper Bones are a really cheap way to do this.  My goblins cost $9, three bugbears for $15 and so on.  That is retail price- you can probably get cheaper directly online.

One cute trick I have been using is the office cappachino machine to heat up and straighten the bent shafts (ooh missus!) by applying steam directly to specific areas.

Bones

Over the last few days I have been rebuilding two cheap Skulldred warbands  using Reaper Bones for playtesting and diagram photos to replace those lost.  You may remember the bugbears I bought for therapy, the pillar to remind me of your support etc?  Well those have been joined by a six pack of goblins, a sodding great ogre, some tiik fishmen and a sea hag.  I have been speed painting them to tabletop standard, and it has been lovely to get back on that horse.

As for rules, I have recovered a Skulldred beta 4 PDF version from an email (it is actually one I sent to Ken St.Andre to review) and am currently porting it back across to open office ready to rebuild.

The nice thing about Bones is that they are durable and heavier than GW plastics on larger monsters.  I worry about snapping my GW giant, but a Reaper one?  I could drop kick that bitch across the room and it would be fine.  Anyone in its path probably wouldn't be.

My friend Rhiannon capped off the warband today by gifting me this bad boy for the size 5 category monsters.

It is freaking huge!  

I do love a good undead dragon, since I first battled The Dracoliche in Pillars of Pentagarn.  I have a couple of great lead ones, but was always loathe to play with them as they are a tad fragile.  This one is dropkickable too.

I am dead impressed by it so far.  Cannot wait to see it in action!

Crow Thing!

Well folks, I am officially back producing work!

Here is the final concept for Chaotic Crow-Things leader mini.  Crowangle has long been my most popular mini, outselling absolutely everything three times over.  So I thought I would kick off with his big brothers... a new faction of creepy crow things.

These chaps are just shy of human size, with optional wings, or backpack.  Along with the leader, I plan to give you a pack of modular Crow-Things warriors which you can mix and match parts to make a swarm of these critters.

CrowThing Leader

The green for the leader is already underway.

I am midway through setting up a Patreon.  You will be able to become a Patron to get access to hand signed and numbered prints of all the new concept artwork and illustrations, discounts and access to limited edition variants.  Plus I will be auctioning off the actual original art for you to hang on your wall as part of my strange wanton urge to pay my rent and do this full time.  It's this crazy thing called 'being an artist'.


Thanks again for all the support!

Moving in day

Today was special.  I set up my desk at The Arcade in Melbourne.  It is a collective tank for games development run by The IGDA, so I am surrounded by geeks getting shit done.  My neighbors made games like Armello, Crossy Road and The Fighting Fantasy mobile games.  It's lovely.

I don't have my box containing unfinished greens yet, and only have basic tools, so I am starting a few new minis from scratch until I can get that shipped up and can finish older works.

  I even had to run around Melbourne gathering basic supplies like Kneadatite, superglue and balsa wood.  But by seven o'clock I was settled in and had puttied flat tops on my three balsa mini handles ready for work tomorrow.

What is special about this is that it is all funded by you, my fans.  I will be focusing full time on doing retro mini shit now.  New figures, new webstore, patreon bonus material, illustrations, concept art originals and numbered signed prints, and of course Skulldred (once I have the hard drive shipped and restored.)

This is my job now.  Thanks to you.  X

Pew pew

10/10 Abrams.  The Force was strong with you.

No spoiler posting below people.  Just know it is daaaaaamn good.

Official! Darkling is back!

Thanks to everyone's generosity, I am pleased to announce that I have just secured Darkling Games new Melbourne studio.  I am just upstairs from the folks who made Crossy Road, funnily enough.

Work begins January 4th, then there will be a delay as I build our new website, wrap up outstanding comissions and set up our Patreon launch vids and redbubble shop.

Then it's full bore on all new releases, tutorials and art.

Once my old pcs arrive and the discs are recovered, Skulldred will begin again and Kingsminis will return!

FULL TIME BABY!

Now... If you will excuse me I have to find a house.

Thank you all again

Yesterday I grabbed a Reaper Bones 'Pillar of Good'.  I was just window shopping with a friend when it caught my eye.  I got it to remind me what a pillar of strength you have all been to me.  Gaaaaw, look, you made me go all soppy.  Soppy and geeky all at once.

Goppy.

Hmm.  That needs work.

Planning the future

Thanks everyone for helping me get back on my feet.  I thought I would just give an update on my plan for the new year as it stands.

I will be setting up residence in a games startup collective in Melbourne.  This time, however, the focus will be on doing what I do best... this stuff.

I am thinking the best path for me is to reboot Darkling Games around a Patreon core structure.  Patrons will allow me to just sit all day and make Skulldred, new fantasy illustrations (for posters, cards and merch), new miniatures and then expansions, scenario packs and other old school things.  Patrons will also get access to painting tutorials, videos, skype tutes, exclusive content/minis and hand drawn art originals and painted mini commissions.

This means me at a desk, 8 hours a day, doing nothing but cranking out old school goodness.

Skulldred, Bride of Skulldred, Pint o' Skulldred, 30mm Dungeon Tiles, Stardred, D'Undred and so on, plus t-shirts, merch and minis.

Sounds like a dream for me.  What do you think?

Please help me get back on my feet

I have to swallow my pride and do this. I know many of you have approached me asking to help, but I have turned down all donations because I was taught this is deeply shameful.

I was always taught to earn things by myself through hard work, but I just cannot seem to catch a break. Everything just keeps getting worse. I cannot seem to stop the slide. The job I have taken that was to rescue me actually made things worse by not covering moving costs. I am literally working myself back onto the streets.


The last two years have been a nightmare I just cannot seem to wake up from.


To be honest I have tried to end my life several times under this pressure, out of shame, out of hopelessness. The situation looks impossible. My industry has shut down here, and being transgender makes getting work difficult overseas, plus I am loathe to leave my son behind- he lives in Canberra with my family. I had to move a nine hour drive away for work.


Last week, I gave up. It was too hard. I rang emergency services because I was suicidal, the police that came where, unfortunately, transphobic. Rather than helping me and getting me the attention I needed to save my life, they taunted me, inflamed the situation, and when I tried to end my life on the spot they drove me to the ground, hand cuffed me and, unbelievably, peppersprayed me: an unarmed woman begging for help. It isn't like in the films... pepperspray is an agonizing ordeal that lasts hours. After processing (for, get this, assaulting a police officer) I was finally dumped, blinded (no contact lenses left) outside the police station- still with no help. Having called for help to save my life, they made it immeasurably worse. This is the transphobia I had heard about, but only have just now encountered first hand. I don't have words to describe how horrible things have been.


So, with great shame I have come to a point where I have to admit that cannot survive without charity. I have the means and skills to get myself out of the hole but large ticket items are standing in my way and I just cannot get to a point where I can cover those costs. My PC's are dead and so I cannot freelance or get to my showreel to get a VFX job... however someone kindly donated a PC, so if I can ship them here to Melbourne from Sydney, I can switch the drives over and get back to business.


I need desperately to:

* Replace the contact lenses the police destroyed with the pepperspray. - I cannot afford to lose another contact lens. I need to see to work.

* Get my hormone levels checked and my estrogen implant replaced. It should have been removed months ago.

* Ship up my belongings to Melbourne, allowing me to transplant my HDDs to the old PC friends donated to me (♥), and get my ability to freelance and my showreel back online. This will also gives me kitchen utensils, bedding, art materials and restore me to a functioning household. Currently I have to eat out for every meal- it is killing me both financially and having to eat junk to keep costs down. Once I have my stuff and a pc I can ebay a lot of my collection off to raise funds.

* Cover my rent over the Xmas period when the industry shuts down and there are zero jobs (I am looking at retail jobs to cover myself but a 40 year old transgender woman is pretty unlikely to find one... still, fingers crossed).

And hopefully if I can raise enough...


* Travel to Canberra to see my son for X-Mas. I want to be there for his first Christmas.

* Fix a damaged tooth before it becomes a serious problem.

*Pay for proper therapy to manage the stress of my situation.

* Bring my credit card debt I ran up whilst I was sick and unemployed down as much as possible to stop the cycle of fees and interest charges eating my income. My moratorium ends in December.

* Pay upkeep on my business websites to keep my folio online. Get Darkling back up to where I can make sales again.

If you can donate, thank you from the bottom of my heart.


PAYPAL: delaneykingrox@gmail.com

GO FUND ME:  https://www.gofundme.com/e2aakrjv

Happier Times:  Me and one of my babies, The Skaarj from UT2004.

We can rebuild her- we have the technology (and $100 bucks)

Miniature painting is my idea of therapy.  Through dark times, those little inch high bastards have kept my mind from the maelstrom.  

I will just say that things have not gone well with my move.  It has been the darkest time of my, er, extremely interesting life.  I needed a lot of help this week.  My therapist said to find something I enjoy that can distact me from all the horrible things going on.  Something to calm my mind.  You know the first thing my mind went to?

Well, yeah, of course it was dirty, dirty sex... but after that, I could think of nothing better than losing myself in the craft of miniatures.

It's time to get back to doing what I love. So here it is... the next phase of my miniatures adventures.  Laney rebuilds.

With my studio packed up in a storage unit nine hours drive from me, this meant starting again from scratch.

So, I went to Mind Games today and with a budget of $100, I set about picking the best paints for my style.

 I put together this kit.

•Black.

•White.

•Steel.

•German blackbrown by Vallejo (for me, it's a no brainier.  It's one of the most replaced paints in my collection.  Infact, I find anything vallejo with the word 'german' in it extremely handy.)

•Cryx bane base.  Shading up grey looks dull, but the green tinge this gives is super pleasing.  It works for stubble glazes too.

•'flesh' (I say scowling at the racism) i.e a warm caucasian skin color that has enough titanium in to be a great base to glaze over.

•warm leather (which is skin colored for many I might add)- a great punchy highlight to the cool german black brown.

•turquoise- a great accent color, good for aging metals, eyes, magic, clothes.

•hot magenta- which will really pop flesh when glazed and be a bold accent color on pouches and stripes.  My drunken noses need it.

•Lahmian medium was a must too.  I am a glazy bitch.  I glaze into the abyss.

•0 and 000 brushes:  I prefer windsor and newton watercolor brushes but time was short.  These expensive ones will do for starters.

Finally something to clean off flash and add battle damage.  It's a new fangled thing called a craft knife.

So, something to paint.  Hmmm... The bones range at Mind Games isn't huge- it irks me that I had no money when at PAX so couldn't buy any of the thousands of Reaper minis there.  So, I just grabbed some bugbears because they where cheap and frankly just badass cool.  It also interested me to try to color them with just those paints.  I would have gotten more sandy colors and rusts had I planned it.  This is a fun challenge.

So here I am... Once again armed and dangerous!  And yes, I am starting to look a lot like my Darkling games logo character- apparently I was subconsciously drawing my true self all along- how's meta is that?

[edit] aaaand first one done.  No lamp, not much light, bad camera, and I suck, but so nice to be back on the lead horse.

It occurred to me that the paints I would buy would vary hugely to what you lot would get.  So, if you had to start off all over again, what would you pick?

Melbourne. I am in you.

I am alive and well and living in Melbourne.  Nice place you have here.  According to the Maslow hierarchy of needs I need...

1) A geek/queer friendly house

2) A geek/queer friendly girlfriend.  Or several.

3) A chicken parmigiana with a side of poutine.

4) Somewhere to ship up all my miniatures and paints (and furniture and other less important stuff).

5) To not be severely allergic to poutine.

6) More miniatures.  Naturally.

The universe is providing.  Good little universe.  I have a cute date tonight in a place that sells parmigiana.  You would think that a 39 year old polyamorous transgender lesbian who makes her living making monsters for video games and collects miniatures obsessively wouldn't get dates.  But actually I would say I am far, far more successful now than when I was pissing around with living as a straight male.  Go figure.  Now, I am not saying that it is a great strategy for you if you happen to be a white, straight male who desperately wants a date, but it has worked for me nonetheless.

This is a weird, weird world.

I also have visited and firmly approve of Melbourne's Mind Games store, where I spent what little spare cash I had on a single Reaper Assassin as a little reminder that I am now an solo female adventurer, and that if I stop eating poutine and parmigiana and get my ass to yoga that I can have legs like Bobby Jackson sculpted them.  She has my haircut too.

02643: Diedra Dark Willow
Bobby Jackson

So PAX wasn't the great experience I hoped, mainly because I was exhausted from packing for a week, mentally strung out from the whole ordeal and broke.  With trade shows, you bring with you a certain energy that is magnified by the place.  In my case it was not the great, cathartic experience I had hoped for.  A big hi to Turelio and the folks at the Reaper stall.

I did get to meet all my games friends, who are now quickly forming into a dangerous drinking posse.  This is good news for my creativity and happiness.  Not so crash hot for my liver.

Hopefully next year will be a bit more grounded for me, and I will have had the opportunity to bring Darkling games back to life and have a test game running at PAX.  Limbo is nice and all, but I wouldn't wanna live here.

How the flying fucklesticks is everyone else here going?