A Desk! A desk! My Kingdom for a Desk!

I am exhausted but have a grin across my face only the Joker could top.  For the last few years I have been working on a makeshift desk, cunningly crafted from my student drawing board layed upon two filing cabinets with blue tac to act as a cushion.  The cabinets gave me no leg room, so I worked with a twisted back, and the drawing table itself had sharp metal ridges that gathered particles of epoxy, wire and epoxy and lead filings.  Not very healthy.
Kate and I decided to throw out the cabinets, shifting everything into storage boxes and buy me a proper desk...  and boy, its a thing of beauty.

Dave now makes stuff here!

I now have leg room, a dust free working space and finally room to work on a few scenic items and have a few to one side drying.  I am just so incredibly happy to finally have a dedicated space.  Bless Ikea. Creative energy flows around the room on the gentle breeze that bloweth on my straightened knees!

It took six hours of hard work to clean out the study, refile everything into 24 interlocking plastic storage tubs and make room for the desk,  as I blog this (and drink that coffee there), Kate is still busy refiling her paperwork into a storage folder.  The house is chaos!  Once she is done I will take over to do mine.  It is staggering how much crap can build up in a room if you let it.  The final joy is going to be dragging the grey, sombre, tin filing cabinets out to the road to be picked up by the council waste truck.  Begone foul soul sucking, knee cramping fiends!

One of the fun things I did today with the project was go through every one of my sketch books and remove any miniature designs, placing them into plastic flip folders for easy access.  I had about fifty sketch books, so it took most of the day to do.  I ended up with two A4 folders full of designs, which reportedly hold around 250 pages- giving 1000 a4 pages all up, with an average of 5 figure doodles on each page.  Thats well over 5000 miniature sketches.  That should keep me busy for a while.  :)




The first thing onto my desk was one of my new Dwerg Burrowguard troops and an Arcane Asgard Creature of Chaos Elephant Man to match the one that appears in Aly Morrisons 'Eavy Metal article in White Dwarf 80.

WIP Viking Forge Creature of Chaos (Aly Morrison Asgard Original Inset)

Colors matches in real life, but the photo changes it quite a bit.  As you can see, the two figures vary..  For starters, the weapon is cast lower down and has bandages wrapped around, I suspect to avoid breakages.  I am not sure if the original had a seperate weapon- which some of the Asgard figures do (never a good idea in my book), or if Aly converted it.  If anyone has an original I would be pleased to find out (and buy one).


Mine came from Viking forge, who have most of the Asgard molds.  I found quite a few little variations.  The model is surprisingly small, and seems to have warped quote a bit over its very long life.  The face is longer, the eye flatter, the trunk thinner near the bend, the shield rougher on the inside, the whole body feels squished horizontally and the front leg is about half as thick as it is wide.  Weather this is a casting issue or the original sculpt was poorly proportioned, its hard to say.  I was so delighted that this figure was still available that I grabbed two.
Mine has a belt and a roughly torn kilt, but Alys appears beltless and smooth all the way to the hip.  I suspect he has filled it with milliput to allow for decoration, as he definately did with the Skaven Plague monk from the same article.  I filled mine with liquid green stuff, just to check out how it performed really.  Not as good as milliput but more convenient.


  The White Dwarf 80 article has long fascinated me, and I have been eagerly collecting all the figures it showcases.  You may remember the copy I made of his Skaven plague lord from the same article.  I have most of the figures now, and trying to work out what bits are what for the converted models.  I would love to have a showcase featuring them all.

Well, I am now going to take my new found creative energies and put them into finishing off some more sculpts.  Have fun.

Go paint something.

Monster Paint Set and a New Coat D'arms paint stockist

Hey folks,


Sorry in advance, but I will be getting a little bit commercial for this episode.  Hopefully by the time you finish reading this entry you will forgive me, as it is totally about rocking the retro.
 First I am just going to whip out something that came in the mail from the land of Ebay a couple of weeks ago.

Citadel Monster Paint Set

 Ahh. That's right folks, it's the Monster Paint Set from the 1980's.  Check out that lovely painting by Bob Naismith on the cover!  Thats what the Golden Demon looked like in the 80s, by the way... before he got all crusty and angry.  I remember that fateful day when I discovered a department store in Southend stocked miniatures.  I walked away with a snotling pump wagon (never assembled), spikey bondage minotaur lord, chaos sorcerers, a giant scorpion, the monster starter set, creature and monster paint sets.  That night I dunked my snotlings in a thick layer of green paint.  It had begun!

Mmmm... Still fresh!

I was surprised to find the paints where still in great shape; though unfortunately not the original colors that are supposed to be in the box, but I knew that when I bid.  I was more concerned about getting the box to be honest and perhaps having a sniff of the paints!    It holds great nostalgia for me.  What a great day that was back in the 80's!

Okay, now the commercial bit.

Remember I was ranting about the orange when I painted the Chaos Sorcerer?  The next picture shows an original 1980s citadel pot next to the modern Coat D'arms paint.  See?  How awesome is that?

Citadel original Orange next to Modern Coat D'arms orange

So that brings me to my big news...

There is a new stockist in Australia for Coat D'arms paints!






Me.








That's right.  I love the paints so much I decided to import them.


In a couple of weeks you will be able to get your hands on the entire Coat D'arms Fantasy Range direct from my new sleek, sexy, easy to use e-commerce site.  Retroliciousness in a few clicks!
Yep, all 77 clasic colors in those fat, perky little 18ml pots.  You can forget the dark days paying 8 Australian Dollars for a measley 12ml.

I will also be stocking decent, sturdy empty dropper bottles for those of you who, like me, prefer squirting to dunking.  Switching your entire collection of paints over to droppers will be really affordable now.  I am excited.  You excited?

Anyway, here is more paint pron.

Mmmm.  Paint.

Okay, commercial over.  And hey, I vaguely promise to not drag on and on about these paints in future articles.  Heres the gist.  They rock.

So next episode I will be back to showing off more retro stuff.  Painting the Skulldred contributor minis has taken up a lot of my painting time allotment but rest assured, there is old lead begging to be painted and blogged.

Anyhoo... Goodnight children, whatever you are.


(Coat D'Arms rocks.)

Cote D'arms in Australia

A couple of folk have asked who sells Cote D'arms paint in Australia.  The Answer is Olympian Games!


Kinda.

It is not listed on their site, which merrily asks you to suggest things to put on the site.  My first suggestion would be some contact details.

Cote D'arms you say?

Hopefully someone will slip them a message via smoke signal or messenger pidgeon so they can pop up an email or phone number so we can get our hands on those delicious paints!

CANCON booty

A great cancon haul for me. I got a whole bunch more kryomek figures in a bargain bin, including aliens, chunky cyclos and swat. Cannot wait to paint those to match my rogue trader stuff!

I also scored myself a Steampunk Dorothy from Guild of Harmony, a pack of silurids for Malifaux then wrapped up my spree with a ten pack of cote d'arms paints so I can sniff my way back to the 1980s once more.
Add that to yesterday's haul and I had one full boot on the way home!
Anyone get any good stuff?

Cancon day 1

Finally, finally, I rocked up to the bring and buy sale in time to get some bargains! Usually I am digging through piles of plastic high and dark elves and goblins looking for something decent.
I am now the proud owner of some Cryomek aliens, plastic rat ogres and some first edition Eldar scouts.
Met a guy fielding two 1980's hobgoblin rocket launchers in his chaos dwarf army (props), and found an Aussie cote d'arms stockist. Finally!
Exciting but frantic mood today. Looking forward to chillaxing Sunday.

Here's a picture of an Asgard Dragon lizard tyrant facing off against a Grenadier giant by mark copplestone in the first ever Skulldred convention game!

Cancon

Hey folks, I am in Canberra tomorrow for cancon. You will find me lurking at the eureka miniatures stand doing live sculpting demos. If your interested in how minis are made, want to pick up some green stuff pushing tips, wanna shoot the lead breeze or want to just give me money for no reason stop on by!
If space is permitting, I also have with me a skulldred demo board, so may get some games in if you rock up with a small warband.
See you at the show!
Oh and I will be selling bederken blister packs too!

Storage tip: Chinese food containers

A quick tip, take away containers flipped over make great storage stackers for minis. I blue tac the figures to a bit of stiff card.

Happy birthday - heres diffusing

Never drink and blog. I somehow typed 1979 instead of 1976. Unfortunately the tardis could not take me back to change the date of my birth to comply with my blog as I had already visited that timeline and would cause a world ending paradox.
Instead I have to post a correction instead. Thus stealing away the smug satisfaction of correcting someone on the Internet for my dear readers!
Though being a horse would be kinda cool (works for sarah Jessica parker) I am still a rabbit.
Mind you, the dreaded beast of Antioch was a rabbit too.

So I rewarded myself yesterday with a day off to sit and paint something and kinda discovered a neat new painting technique that I will be using a great deal from here on in.
It's getting pretty steamy here in Sydney, so I dragged out the retarder to keep my paint from drying on the brush. I decided to make up a batch of some ready mix retarded, flow improved matte medium- elsewhere I think its known as gunk. I can't remember the link- battle bunker perhaps.
Anyway, I thought I would use this to practice wet blending. Normally I use a glaze technique to build up layers of shading, but this can take a bit of time. I never nailed blending before- its always eluded me.
Normally you either go wet onto wet, a highlight onto mid tone for example, or wet next to wet and use a damp brush to transition. Both can cause hard edged if you stray too much into the shadow portion of your models, or if you lift off too much paint with your brush work. I decided to try wet on wet, and it occurred to me that what I really needed to do was just diffuse the brush strokes edges. Imagine the difference drawing an ink line on two sheets of paper- a dry one and a wet one. The ink line on the wet one would diffuse as the edges dilute.
So here's what I did. Load and wipe one brush with retarded paint. Then load and wipe another brush with water/flow aid/retarder/matte medium.
Stroke brush 2 over the surface to moisten in, the apply brush 1 on the highlight. The paint edges blur!
A little coaxing with brush 2 will soften the edge further, then whilst you wash brush 2 and reload it, the strokes are dry. The matte medium helps the damp brush liquid stick to the surface, the retardant stops the whole thing evaporating and the flow aid breaks the paint tension and lets the paint diffuse.

Apart from avoiding the hard edges, this technique makes hard edging really nice and blended!
I looked around but this does not seem to be a discussed technique, so I am calling it diffusing.
Pics once I master the technique.

Day of the Dave

Hey mortals,
Tomorrow is my birthday!  Yes, its the Day of the Dave.  Strangely, I have not asked for any miniatures as gifts this year because... well, take a look at the last post.  The last thing I need right now is more miniatures right now.  Oh, go on, maybe one more.  No!  Resist.  I don't need any more miniatures this year... especially taking into account the four.. wait... six stripping jars awaiting a gunky afternoon of Dettol fumes.  Stripping jars.  You start with one and next thing you know they are multiplying like rabbits.
Speaking of rabbits, I was awfully dissapointed to find out that I was not a Dragon as I had been previously lead to believe.  Yes, 1979 was the year of the Dragon... but unfortunately chinese new year falls after my birthday.  I am a child of chinese 1978.  Year of the... uh, rabbit.
In fact, my birthday is more cuspish than I thought according to one researcher.  I was equally horrified to find out that, according to my wife, I actually fall into Gen Y.
Gen Y?  Are you frikkin serious?  I watched reality bites, curtain haircuts, Nike Pumps and had to sit through Nirvana whinging about royal tea or some other depressed bollocks.  Gen Y?  Do I look GEN Y?  Look at my hair?  Not foompy!  I know how to navigate using a map and compass... look, see?  I dont live on Facebook!!!!  GEN Y?  NOOOOOOOOO.

Hell.

1979 is not a transitional year.  I say, the moment John Lennon was shot... that should be the moment the generations switch.
The only way to rectify this is with retro denial.  So here I present what was lurking in jar numbers... oh wait, jars 7 and 8.  How many of these things have I got?

Spot the cool 80's figures!

Yeah baby!  Now we are talking some seriously cool 1980s lead here.  Lets kick off with the first ever Chaos 'treacher' marine, the first ever Space Dwarf (aka Squat), The Dwarf With No Name, The Complete Adventurer (mark 2), Talisman Orc, AD&D Stirges and one of the two Female Space Marines.  Yes.  Space marines once had equal rights.  One of Bob Olleys space pirates also lurks above- a great line because they where the last gasp of 70's Starblazer style space opera- check that cloak.
You may also notice a Grenadier Hunting Dragon- which I grabbed because not only is it a nice figure, but it graced the Grenadier advert that used to run in GM magazine- which was the independant role playing magazine back in the 1980s.  You know... when big peroxide hair was in (isnt that right Wayne?  You know who I am talking about)  Jes Goodwin himself sported a pretty good and tall mullet back then, which appeared in a great deal of his work.  Check out the chaos sorcerers and the elf spear weilding wardancer in this pick.  Dungeon Punk at its best!
As you can see, I collect a wide range of figures.  My main motivation is getting those peices I always wanted as a kid.  Not sure what I will accomplish by this task.  One day I will open up a Jiffy bag from the UK and... game over... I will have them all.  What then?  I wonder what feeling will come with that.  Still, its a long way off.
I am waffling.  Heres a close up!

Iron Claw Space Pirate, 40k Navigator, Treacher Marine, Female Marine
Space Dwarf, Chaos Sorcerers, c100 Space Marine, Undead Carrion Rider, Dwarf with No Name
Grenadier Hunting Dragon

So thats this weeks stripping experience.  Sadly its into baggies and into storage for most of these, until one fine day when I have time to paint them up and blog them.

Hey, another window I have up whilst I type this tells me that I share the same birthday as Janis Joplin, Tippi Hedren (the chick from The Birds), Martin Luther King (no relation) and Edgar Allan Poe.  Star signs are right... we have so much in common.  Oh wait, I just noticed the actress who plays Peg on 'Married with Children' and Dolly Parton also have my birthday.  They actually are a lot like me when I wear heels.  Spooky.



Well folks, that is probably me for a few days... I expect to get nicely drunk tomorrow and achingly recover for a few more.  I have a theory that its not birthdays, but birthday celebrations that age one.  Maybe if I go hard tomorrow I will creep into Gen X where I belong.  Move over Winona... Daves on his way!

Later lead fans.

Pledge 2012: Purchased: 1.2 squillion Painted: 0

Welcome, welcome to Kingsminis 2012, and what a year have I got planned for you, dear readers!
First, to some unfinished business of 2011- namely, bragging about how frikkin' many frikkin' Reaper minis I aquired for frikkin' dirt cheap in the recent Tin Soldier stock sell off.  Uh... Frik.
Ahem.
So I promised a picture of some of my recent Reaper wind-fall, and here, courtesy of my lovely wife standing on tippy toe, risking life, limb and the ever present danger of chipped nails, is a picture of me sorting through the boxes and stacking by doubles.  I had to get these filed, logged and safely locked up in storage (except for a few choice figures I plan to paint this month) before I posted because... well... even I would consider breaking in to my house to get this lot.  Mind you my alignment is chaotic good, so hey.

No.  I do not have enough Reaper miniatures.

As you can see, I am literally giddy with joy here.  Thats my giddy face... see.  It is a lot like my other faces I must admit.  I am probably the only man in history outside the company to own 9 packs of Reaper giant battle frogs.

Also, due to time constraints I finished last year with more rants than pictures of retro minis... something I plan to rectify as part of my new year rez-a-lead-shunz.  Here we go!

Citadel Wizard aka Chaos Wizard.

Kicking off the year is a loving reproduction paint job of a citadel classic wizard that I always drooled over as a kid, as it magically appeared in the corner of a Colin Dixon Diorama in a 1980's White Dwarf 'eavy Metal article on Colin himself.  Ahh, vertical dioramas... remember those?  I used Cote D'arms paints for this- and as you can see the orange is exactly the orange from the 1980s Citadel acrylic range.  I highly, highly recommend them.  If they where in dropper bottles they would be perfect!  The reason, I think, such figures capture my imagination, is that they where unobtainable at the time.  I would spend hours pouring over old White Dwarf magazines (we are talking issues probably ranging from 45- 99 to put this in perspective) and seeing images of figures that where unlisted in the then modern catalogue.  Thank heaven for the internet!

Dave Andrews drew the floorplan to my imagination

I was recently delighted by the arrival of a beaten up box of Games Workshop Caverns floorplans fresh from fleabay.  What horrors lurked within?  Well, it was at least two sets of caverns, and all manner of floorplans from other sets all in one box.  Score!  Dave Andrews loving pen and ink added the flavour you just do not get with modern digital art floorplans, especially the D&D ones which try to emulate video games.  Tsk.  The best I have seen are inked adventures, but still not a scratch on the old card buildings and floorplans for old world atmosphere.
Speaking of which... here is a work in progress of my McDeath Skirmish set.

McDeath Skirmish work in progress:
Citadel 1980's Knight of Harkness,  Banquo

Yes I could not resist the lure of collecting the whole McDeath tribe and painting them faithful to the game art.  If anyone has a Sandra Prangle, McDeath or a Lady McDeath I suggest they may be bad for your health and only I can save you by removing the threat from your household, coating them in paint and placing them in a secure location next to all the other McDeath figures on my shelf.  Down spot, ye daft beastie!  Och, he's doon toasted ma wee limited editions agin!  Nae Dwarf Haggis for ye tonight!

The Harkness shield was done using this technique

It is also stripping week this week- where I take the spare hours of my night and scrub, scrub, scrub til the lead doth shine anew.  Pics next post.  Be warned, they may contain images of spacefarers, citadel original first run giants, chaos sorcerers, Ral Partha Giants, first edition Eldar and judge dredd minis!

Wae Hae!

Happy new year!

Thanks for reading my blog this year- 2012 is promising to be a more relaxed year for me, with a lot of projects wrapping up and general headspace clearing, so plenty of old school mini pictures in 2012z
I wanted to go out this year by showing my last eBay arrivals- a brilliant lot of old school goodness- starting with a visual feast of minifig rococo elves, a citadel TSR dungeons and dragons minotaur, a grenadier hirelings set and a rogue trader era citadel space Zoat!
Old school goodness! Thanks to all my traders who made my collection possible.

Come back in 2012 to see these all lovingly restored and painted!

My wife got me a wonderful Games Workshop weapon smith monkey thing, the red box ad&d and a box of grimey wortshop flagellants which I had fun drunkenly assembling whilst my brother in law, made up some space wombles for his complete set of original chapter marines. Geekmas. I actually found assembling the plastics really restful, and maybe will have a crack at assembling some more mainstream GW stuff in the new year.

Tonight was spent joyously unpacking and filing Reaper minis from my recent wind-fall into keepsies and tradesies.
There are some amazing figures in there- three colossal spiders, two goroliths, three huge dragons too- very few doubles, though if your after Neanderthals, mummies, giant killer frogs and orcs I am your man to trade with! I guess I will post trade pics next year.
Well off to curl up with some apple schnapps and the new Conan movie- (I am merrily set with low expectations and lots of schnapps- yay!)

happy new year!

Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Last year I swore an oath to paint some limited edition citadel christmas minis for this Yule tide blog.
I only managed to get Sanity Claws, missing out time and again on bids for the other merry miniatures such as Christmas Marines, space Santa et al.
I think to do him justice I should build him a little rooftop base- so with other sculpting jobs coming in I found myself pushing it back and back. Bad me.

King oath breaker- I hope that doesn't mean I have to hang around haunting my lead pile looking like a member of the frighteners waiting for Aragorn marks to show up and release me.
Geddit... Eh, eh?

I collected my recent windfall of reaper figures from the warehouse the other day, and am exceedingly pleased with the assortment. I have a dozen of the same figures - giant killer frogs, giant hunter ghoul things, mummies and orcs- but the rest where all individual and not a single figure I already had. Photos of me swimming in reaper blisters early next year!

Oh so much great stuff to paint next year!

Well happy holidays everyone, I hope santa brings you lead and painty things!

Daves in DARK HEAVEN

Have you ever wandered around a game store and thought, dammit, I wish I had all of these miniatures.  And have you ever, after several visits, looked at the same old stock and thought- you know what, I picked up this figure last time and the time before... I bet one day I will get over that little mental hump that stops me buying it.  Yes, some deep part of you says... you know your mine, and I know your mine... soon...  soon....
I don't know how many hours I killed in the city bending over the Reaper shelves of my game store, mulling over the figures.  I developed calves squatting down to root through the blister packs- probably the only think saving me from deep vein thrombosis was my love of miniatures.  You know, deep down I knew I would have to pretty much own them all if I ever was to be happy.  Such is lead addiction, as you all know.  Is it a curse?  Is lead addiction a cause without hope?

Turns out, Nope.

A weird thing just happened to me in the last half an hour that I though blog worthy.  A client who owed me some money from a long time ago paid up inexplicably.  Ten minutes later whilst nosing through the huge backlog of emails I found an email warning me of an liquidation auction.  I checked, and it was closing in ten minutes.  Ten minutes later I was the proud owner of almost the entire liquidated stock of Reaper Dark Heaven and Pathfinder miniatures from my now defunct local game store.  The total cost?  The exact amount paid by my client.  Spooky.

It just occured to me that a lead addicts dream has come true...  I quite literally am the owner of all those figures.  Mine.  The lot.  Bargain price.  Ridiculous price.  It's like... like... Christmas has come all at... oh, wait.... Oh wait.

Crap.  I also just realised that totally throws out my purchase:painted pledge ratio for the... millenium.


Stiff drink needed.

Life is really, really weird.

Cote sniffing

Hello Ladies, how's the flower arranging this week?
My cote d'arms shipment arrived recently on the same day as my deluxe ceramic dimple palette- so an evening of old school painting commenced!
For those who do not know, Cote d'arms and citadels first line of paints are one and the same! Made by the same company, same formula, same colors and even the same dinky little pots. The same company makes p3 paints too- yay them!
When I discovered this little fact recently I immediately jumped online and ordered a set- since these where the paints I remember from before my huge mini hiatus- I vividly remember the smell and properties as if it was yesterday.
Well, the first three bottles smelt different - an almost alcohol tinged smell, but the black is exactly the scent I associate with The Monster paint set!
I was hurled back through time on the giddy wings of my nostrils to 1983.
Man, our clothes sucked.
The paints are brilliant- I highly recommend them, both on value and pigment. The deadly nightshade, blazing orange, titalating pink and goblin green are fabulous colors. The nice thing is a lot of the colors are toned down from the garish shades citadel switched to in the 1990s- and the cool/warm versions of colors are more exaggerated- so with the goblin green you get a pleasantly muted bluer green- perfect as a cool partner to the warm citadel camo green. The blazing orange is more akin to that which you see classic John blanche figured get their skin and sun shields- cooler and a little more towards the magenta hue than citadels current Chinese made brand.
It's shamefully cheaper for me to buy a big batch of cote d'arms and ship it 12,000 miles than it is to buy a smaller equivalent of citadel here, which will surprise no one.

I painted a classic masked citadel wizard based on one in a Colin Dixon diorama and I have to declare my love for the paint. Matching classic paint jobs is now so much easier now I have the same paints!
New pics when I get some time- I am blogging this on a bus between meetings. (sigh)

Repainting Dungeons and Dragons minis, The Guild and Windows.

Yay.
Installing my entire computer system again.  As a digital artist who has been around the block a few times, that means a lot of software packages that all need nursing, registering and whatever...  Point is it was a long hot day with boredom and task bars.
Fortunately for me a package of D&D plastics arrived for me to tinker with whilst watching endless spinning gifs telling me my pc maybe hasn't crashed just yet.

So the good news is you can easily take off the paint.  Nail polish remover on a cotton bud and in a few minutes of gentle rubbing and voila.  Bad news is that there really isnt that much detail underneath to clean the mank off of.  Those figures may look like they are clogged up with paint... really they are just a bit smooth.

I was actually quite impressed with how some where painted- certainly good enough for playing Dnd- which is mostly in darkened living rooms with a map a few feet from you.  I would certainly consider them as a gaming option- especially now they are going to be rereleased in non-random packs.
Personally I would love to see them release unpainted styrene versions- even if just available via mail order.  But anyway- there you go.

I stripped down an Everfrost ranger, but it really wasnt worth the trouble IMHO.  I think the stripper may have taken off a little detail, which was superficial at best.  Spray primer and undercoat, and it was back to looking rubbery and gluggy.

So for test figure 2, I tried overpainting.  Rather than use spray primer, I washed the figures in soapy water to clean off any grease, and using a big brush and Vallejo dark grey gently drybrushed the model.  After this dried, the thin dusting of paint gave the next overbrush purchase- and voila, the model was nicely covered and ready to paint.  I would recommend this method to undercoat- perhaps only stripping really gluggy trouble spots using gentle cotton wipes.

I grabbed a hook horror, Lightening Lizard, Digester and Giant Carrion Crawler too- and the bigger creatures are much better than the human sized figures- the horror itself is excellent.  Grabbing plastic versions of really, really big nasties is a great solution- but I myself would run to Reaper for my player characters personally and Otherworld for all other monsters.

To get rid of the plasticy look on some of the monsters I first filled the gaps and then stippled Vallejo Plastic Putty using a pin and a sponge.  This put some fine texture on the smooth surfaces.  Green stuff sticks perfectly well, so details can be popped back on if you can be bothered.  I think I will write off the everfrost ranger as a bad experiment- but I can see my Hook Horror appearing in many a Skulldred game.

That was my hobby time for today.  Oh, and if you have not seen the delectable Felicia Day's hilarious websode series on MMOG addiction, you MUST watch the guild.  Every bit as great as the original Red vs. Blue.

Linky:  THE GUILD

HEROQUEST challenge

Wayne Ashworth commented he was thinking of tackling the Heroquest game on an old blog entry and it got me thinking.  Of all the projects- thats the one isnt it?  Thats right up there in our collective gaming consciousness that sits like a dark cloud.  Very few of us have painted the whole Heroquest box.  We all wanted one... but how many of us had the patience to repeat and rince all those figures?


I got a fair whack of the way through my heroquest figures in a few days... though as I do not have the game so I did not have the motivation.  I found mine in a flea market, looking desperately played with.  I had to rescue them.  Here they are some of the undead so far...

Brains... and corn...

I have to confess that I have only ever played one or two games of Heroquest at highscool.  It reminded me of Guantlet, but with more waiting.  ;)
  I actually found a mint, unopened Heroquest I found in a dusty old atiques store and sold it on ebay for squillions and bazillions a while back.  I now live on an island and drink ice tea all day.

THE CHALLENGE

Anyway, the challenge is this.  Todays the day.  Go dig it out your heroquest from your attic and fetch out the first batch of figures.  Today is the day you start your COMPLETED heroquest project.  Yes you are... stop complaining.  Your going to feel FABULOUS when you finish.

So here is my advice on painting your set using regurgitated pictures from my blog to illustrate.

First.  Treat it like a bunch of small projects.  Today, tackle your cleanup and priming for your skeletons and mummies.  Cleaning them up is a vital step, because we are going to be using a lot of drybrush and it will show up any seams.

Skeletons and mummies are the easiest figures to paint- any monkey with a pot of Bevlan mud citadel wash can do them in no time.  Here is tip 2.  Dont look at the other figures.  Put them back in the box.  They do not exist until your skellies are varnished.  Having the others lined up waiting like a factory line will suck hit points out of your morale.  Small, bite sized chunks of awesome gets the job done.

I strongly suggest priming with tamiya grey primer before you spray your undercoat.  The plastic they used is kinda shiney- so if you just put wash directly onto the model it will bead and look awful.  The primer will act as a strong glue between your undercoat and your model- so heavy gaming will not chip the paint off easily.  Here is a test.  Take a model that you sprayed chaos black.  Rub it between your hands like its a cold day.  Now look at the mess you have.  Now, do the same with something sprayed first with primer.   You will never look back!  By the way, dont clap... throw money.

I use a black undercoat to keep the lining strong.  For the skellies you may like to go white and shade down with washes.  Whatever floats your boat.  A soft drybrush of a lighter grey or white over this will bring out the details and make it easy to see what your doing.   I use vallejo model color deep sea blue for this.

Tip number 3.  The important trick when painting mass armies of figures is to minimise steps.  And, dear reader, handling time is a major step.  Though you probably don't notice it, you spend a great deal of time picking up, looking for and reaching for and placing individual miniatures.  Sticking your models on a strip of wood in batches saves you a massive amount of steps- at least for the bulk of the stages.  Yay.

Strips.  A factory for fiends.
Citadel 1980's Elric, Moonglum, Norse Dwarf,
Rogue Trooper Nort, Judge Dredd and Anderson

Tip 4.  If you start with the undead, your going to get a big morale boost early on- they are easiest by far to paint, and are pretty much entirely bone color.

Start by going from this...

To this... is a real morale boost early on

  I recommend base coloring all the colors on all your models first, before shading and detailing.  This is not the modern 'Eavy Metal way- but it will really help you feeling like your getting somewhere.  There is a big difference between a figure thats unshaded, vs one thats got great trousers but is otherwise jet black.  Both take the same amount of time, and a slip up will not mean distaster- you can easly fix a base coat- but not a richly shaded section.

Start with the skellies bone first, then do the mummies, then metals, then browns, then flesh.  Once thats all base coated, your most of the way to having your undead army sorted.  Put away the mummies.  Focus on the Skellies shading.  I used Devlan Mud and Gryphone Sepia mixed with a little water.  A couple of washes and then a few gentle drybrushes and I was pretty much done.  The nice thing with having all the base coats done first is that the brown wash can pretty much go across everything on the skelleton.  This cuts out steps, and as you know, we are all for that- right?


Once you wrap up your skellies, the mummies bandages can be done with the leftover mix.  I went blue/green with my skin so they would stand out from the skeletons and orcs.

Since your models are always kicking around a dungeon, it does not make much sense to put a flocked base on them, or even grit.  I have seen a few like this and it just doesnt work with the game board.  Now I went a bit swish and remounted mine onto round bases, then sculpted on some pavers in procreate.
The fastest way to tackle this problem is to buy some resin dungeon bases.  All you need to do then is slice your model off its base using a gentle rocking action on the blade (wear goggles)- and drill and pin the figures on.  This technique will allow you to paint all the bases for all the figures in one go.  Stick them all on a pole using bluetack.  Prime.  Black spray.  Grey drybrush.  Light grey drybrush. Spray varnish (gloss), spray varnish (testors dullcoat)  Done.  Drill your holes as and when you finish the models.  Having a prepainted base waiting for it is a joy.

Once you have finished a set, put them up on display.  This will help lift your morale enough to complete the box.  Leave your heroes till last as a treat.

So these tips should help.  Post up links if you take the challenge!

Parsley, sage, flock and time

Some folk just cannot seem to understand the joy of miniatures. For them painting little figures is just so repetitive and boring.
Last night I found myself using a diamond file to sharpen thirty odd spokes in a parsley shredder. Why? To shred foam and sawdust to make fine flock scatter, of course! It's surreal moments like these you often catch yourself in whilst engaged in this hobby that the aforementioned folk miss. Some hobbyists too- if you find yourself blindly laying down cash to solve problems without looking closely at what your buying and trying to come up with cheaper ways to solve the problem.

Hence my parsley mill, now adapted with all the glee of Gomez Addams sharpening his fence, solves the problem of nil resistance my budget coffee grinder foliage maker cannot overcome- once your chunks get to a certain size, they no longer shred because there is nothing to stop them moving out of the blades path. The chunks are perfect of tree foliage and bushes but for basing you need that extra find grind to turn it to flock.

The parsley shredder came to my attention in Canberra during the 1990's when my friends introduced it as the 'Mull-o-matic'. Though the herb they where shredding was not destined for scenery, it struck me as a nifty tool. I filed it in the back of my mind.

Teenage mutant ninja turtles!

 I grabbed one this week for ten bucks. Unfortunately the blades are more like lumps if steel- so it is no good for tough materials like foam, it jammed instead if sliced unless you put in more effort than I could care for.
Not any more.
Bwa ha ha.

Diamond files.  Fun for all the family.

 
After a hood hour of filing and contemplating the unusual nature of my hobby the blades where Dexter approved sharp and the foams resistance proved futile. In a few minutes I had a Chinese take out container full of grade A fine flock.
My timing is bad though- today is big object garbage collection day so all those thrown out backpackers couches will have been collected by the government to recycle into some other generations problem.

So foam shreds into perfect flock.  Leaves, too, shred nicely- though remove the stalks or you will wreck your shredder.  The funny thing about scale is that the resulting leaf scatter, which is made from real leaf scatter, does not look rich enough.  I look out my window and see the fallen leaves that I gathered the material from, but on the base it looks nothing like it.  So, I put a few drops of sepia ink and a squidge of glycerine (to help preserve the leaves) into a shaker pot and shook up a perfect batch of forest floor scatter in no time.


MORE ON AD&D SKIRMISH

The AD&D battlesystem skirmish book from last episode has me all excited about terrain again.  All my feverish need for mounds of flock will be revealed in the Skulldred project, by the way.

Speaking of which, I fished through my collection and was pleased to find the Ral Partha stone giant and the rare Marid where in my possession. These both appear in the book and are lovely figures. I was tempted to sell the Marid, because it gets upwards of 50 pounds on eBay, but damn it's charming.
Strangely this sent me on a bit of a d&d spin. I was looking at some of the larger preprinted plastic minis by wotc last night for a good basis to repaint and convert some big classic monsters. The forums seem to think stripping them is nightmarish. May have to experiment. Some of them would be great if only they released them unpainted.
Strange business model. All the power of hasbro behind it and rather than look at the successful GW business model, they choose the prepainted plastic pokemon model and cut away a massive chunk of their market.
Imagine if they turned to making unpainted themed hard styrene dungeon packs instead? First level box of Kobolds, treasure, doors, skeletons, orcs and bugbears with swappable parts, scenario booklet and floor plans?
Instead you have to hunt down enough kobolds to... Oh wait, no... It's a githyanki... Damn, won't be able to play that scenario this week.... Hmmm, reaper do packs of five...Otherworld whole warbands...

Waste.

Is it okay to steal someone elses nostalgia?

This arrived for me in the post yesterday, a solid chunk of old school goodness...

My new precious

The AD&D battlesystem's little punk kid skirmishes.  I grabbed a 2nd edition copy for small change, as I wanted to check out all the Skirmish systems out there and see how my pet project Skulldred was holding up.  The moment I started flicking through the book I remembered just how horribly technically over complicated AD&D was... even trimmed down for skirmish play, such horrors as thac0 (to hit armor class zero) and saving throw vs. petrification tables dwell within.

I am sure its fun enough, but it leaves me cold, and I never really liked the expressionless and stiff looking Ral Partha figures.  However, ten minutes in and I couldn't help but get nostalgic.  What??  How could I get nostalgic about something I never had or was into?  Is this sensation psudeoonostalgia? or some form of nostalgia reflex my brain kicks into when it sees something just a little bit crappy and old?  Hmmm.  Strange.
It may have something to do with the spray fixative I have been zapping my board with.

Anyway, if you see this book, grab it.  Not to play... oh heavens no... just for the chockablock old school looking minis and a vibe that's really 1980s (even though, somewhat embarrassingly, its a 1990's publication).  There is just so much charm oozing from the pictures, and there is not one illustration in sight... its all colour photos.
So here I am, inexplicably, drooling for old Ral Partha and full of inspiration for scenery and a fresher look at base decorations.

It has been just the ticket to set me back onto my righteous path of completing my skirmish board and wagon raid project... though at the moment its looking more like a game of 'nick the donkeys'.

Anyway, back with more painted old school goodness soon.

Don't Noch it... Or rather... Do.

Just glued down my Noch grassmat onto my board and was itching to update... It's awesome. Total board coverage in seconds- close to GW grass( though summer grass looked closer). The grass stands up and I have lots left after coating my 60cm square tile- certainly enough to do raised banks.

Wish I tried these ages ago.

Noch should pay me for advertising. :)

***update***

Having stuck down my mat I have a good tip - leave excess and fold it over and glue underneath, rather than trimming to the edge. This gives a neat transition between the panels and stops the edge lifting.

Noch grassmat and next project

I am getting a bit sick of painting pack mules and hunting for cool wagon carts online, so I am thinking of having a short break from my main 'caravan attack' project for a brief journey into the depths of the future.... Woooo cue spooky theremin music!

I just got my first Eldar pirates arrive in the mail today, and some Sulaco bases from Fenris- so it prompted me to tackle some of the backlog of rogue trader era 40k minis, paranoia figs and Judge Dredd goodness loitering in my filing cabinet of lead. I will need figures to playtest Stardred with.

Pack mules can wait a few days.

However not abandoning the project, no sir, in fact I armed up for more terrain board love today!
I had to pop into the city for passport photos, so naturally I gravitated toward the model store for some tickling of my credit card.
I came away with a Noch spring grass paper roll, which is destined to form the major playing field of my next board segment- and probably be the star of my next photo tute since folk seem keen to see how I did that board. Always happy to tute!

The Noch sheet has two benefits that I can immediately see. Fear and surprise. Surprise and fear... No, wait, four, four benefits... Fear, surprise and cheapness and sticky uppiness.
I picked up a roll at a major mall hobby store, so not the cheapest way to buy one, but at 12.50 it's still cheaper than a tub of glade grass from Greedy Weasleshop and covers more flat terrain, plus it stands up properly like grass. Man I really want a static grass sieve.... Really, really badly.

Not bad enough to pay for one though.

Tsk.

To help blend the mat into the board I grabbed Nochs matching loose flock which is soooooo much cheaper it's worth re covering most of my terrain bits to match.
Unlike the brilliant GW battlemat (a really good and well priced bit of kit) Noch mats are glued to paper, so it does not feel like blasphemy slicing it up. Mix pva with dish washing liquid to break the surface tension and minimize warping- slather it on, then press it in place with another board and some heavy books.
Before I do my next board I am going to glue a thin sheet of plastic wrap down with lots of pva and weight and clamp it- this should create a stretchy layer that should help stop the upper layers warping the wood. In theory.

Noch also charge like wounded bulls, but consider my shopping list so far....

MDF boards $30
Pva glue. -$5
Left over tea - (free)
Craft paints- $10
Grass sheet 12.50
Static grass 13.95
Cork chunks -free
Flex filler $14
Cheap brush (for making long grass tufts)
Other scatter $10
Wire $6
Foamcore $10
Foam from old chairs (free)
Coffee grinder (20ish)

I am floating around the 100 dollar mark, but of course most of this stuff I had spare or could replace with stuff found in bins- and I still have leftovers.

This gives me a pretty good board, complete with a near infinite supply of trees. I consider that a win so far...

Dave