Bill lives!

Lots of putty flying around today, so between sculpts used scraps to finish bill the half pony off.



Ironically (Well, in the Alanis Morrisette meaning of the word anyway) I also won a complete Bill the pony on eBay today. Hence a quick addition of a fringe mane.
That brings my total to five pack animals- for the raiding party game.

Kate also scored this little critter for her birthday- a converted Matakishi cat barbarian for her Amazon tribe. The original sculpt is by Aussie legend Mike Broadbent- trappings and base by yours truely.



Next to the cat is a 15mm sculpt of ghost rider I did whilst on holiday a few months ago. Sun, surf, sand, spa and a mobile sculpting kit! Bliss.
The little guy was my third crack at 15mm - this time I used paperclips for rigidity and hardened 2:1 white:black procreate. The white was hardened by leaving it out to air. This makes the perfect 15mm sculpting material as the resistance means You have to really MEAN each impression.
I am looking forward to doing more 15mm later in the year.( and before you ask -no, he is not being cast up!)

Bill progress

Thanks to a bout of allergy based insomnia, (try finding food without soy or sulphites in it) I found myself with a few hours to kill - too fuzzy headed on anti-histamine to trust myself to sculpt something for clients - so I got bill a little further along instead.





I deliberately made the packs different to the actual mini, since I may as well make him a variant since I am going to the trouble of building his missing half. I figure I may find one on fleabay at some point.
I have a preslotta donkey and pack mule heading my way from the uk, so that gives me four pack animals and a cart horse ready for his cart. Plenty for brigands to raid!

I am surprised by the lack of decent wagon wheels and bits available. Think I may have to make some for my mini range.

Finally felt drowsy by the time I got to doing the fetlocks- so back on the waiting shelf for ol' bill and the rest of his wagon train until the last project mutants are all done.

Frugal fruits of the foamy forrest: Making foliage for a couple of bucks

You know those times when your standing in the hobby store and you have that tub of scenic material and you know you really, really need it for your project but you just can't shake that little voice in your head that says 'Well gee willikers Mister, that's just a load of shredded foam they painted green - and by-golly thats just some sawdust dyed yellow.'  Yeah.  My inner monologue sounds like a 1950's TV kid.  Wanna make something of it?

I wanted to make something of it.  I wanted to make my own.  And golly gosh, gee... I did.

50c of cheapass gamer

 So armed with a discount store electric coffee grinder, some tubes of students acrylic and a bit of foam discarded from one of the many evicted backpackers furniture piles commonly found on any street curb in Bondi beach, I tackled my greatest challenge yet.  Make an unending supply of foliage material for the price of a single bag from my hobby store.  Coffee grinder included.

Step 1:  Rip up the foam into chunks.  Pop it in the blender and give it a few whizzes to get it into inch sized bits.

Step 2:  Take a screw lid pot, stuff in a little foam and add water.  Squeeze and stir in enough cheap craft paints to make about twenty citadel pots worth up.  Use the foam chunks to be your color guide- it will lighten up a tad, but not much.  Alternatively buy a can of house paint from the store- you can get their little computer to match a sample you already have.

Step 3:  Lay out a protective sheet of plastic in a warm, sunlit place.  Put some newspaper down on top of that.  Make sure there are no breezes or pets in your chosen location.

Step 4:  Stir in the foam chunks a handful at a time using an old kitchen utensil that has holes in it (a strainer is ideal).  Press the chunks against the sides to take out most of the paint without discoloring, then lift the batch onto the paper.  You want the paint to thickly coat the foam, so that it hardens when it sets.

Step 5:  Screw the paint lid down and store away for your next session.  Clean your tools, then go off and do something less boring instead.  Leave the foam for at least 24 hours to dry.  You can try using a hair dryer to speed up the process, but only if you want green paint and tiny bits of foam everywhere in your house.

Step 6: The foam should be crunchy dry now.  Grab that old grinder and pop the pieces back in for another whizz.  Now its crunchy, the blades will make a much finer job of shredding it up.  Make a few batches up of different sizes and mix them together for your final batch to add some natural variety.

Do not use the grinder for coffee now.  Well, hell, I am not going to stop you... its a free world after all (and if not free, certainly a lot cheaper world with this technique).  The coffee would taste like Starbucks if you did.  Always switch off a grinder before poking around inside it, even with a utensil, and never blame wargaming bloggers for dismemberment.

Skulldred Raid Project part 1

First up I have to apologise for the camera work this post.  My proper camera is not charged and I have only a short window to blog- buts since this stuffs all work in progress, it will do for now.

The gaming project I have decided to work on first is my Skulldred family battle board- the one I play my wife on.  I decided to complete everything associated with that core game first.  That means some choice scenery items, player models and tokens for things to rescue and loot.

So the project kicks off with a baggage train for adventurers to protect and raiders to raid.  My pack mule collection was rather thin- especially since I picked up a boxed set Bill the pony without reading the text and found, well... something out of The Cell.  Turns out the boxed set was incomplete by one half of bill.  If you ever list things on ebay that are incomplete, I think its polite to write that in the title for lazy people like me in general and specifically for me.  :)

Citadel packhorses- adventurers boxed set and bill the pony... uh, make that half a bill.

Fortunately for our little Demi-Bill I can rebuild him.  I have the technology.  A pointy implement, paperclip and some epoxy putty.
That leads me to a great tip... I have been using 5 minute epoxy putty to do armatures and building understructure for bases.  Its like having a slightly smelly, milliput that understands my patience is limited and behaves accordingly.  The brand I use is Knead-it.  Though it should be called Knead-it-wearing-gloves-or-you-get-a-nasty-rash.  Great stuff.
Once I get some sculpting time (commissions at the moment) I am going to place the model in front of a mirror and sculpt the B side using a bit of green stuff.  I probably will stick my tongue the corner of my mouth whilst I do so, just to enjoy the cliché.

I also started tacking down some resin treasure items to poker chips, but think I will post them once their are done.  Besides, I ripped them off from Phreeds treasure tokens on his blog.  ;)

The Adventure Ends
Citadel FS28 Slain Adventurer, Grenadier Death Giant, Citadel WF6 Aggressive Aardvark (Cerebus)

Last to begin but first to finish is my slain adventurer token, played here by a citadel FS28 slain adventurer.  The cause of his situation is Citadels, well, shall we say blatant 'omage to Cerebus.  I have decided to rebase him.  I realised he really should be on a bar room flagstone base standing on a pile of dead folk and spilt tankards.  I am also going to strip and resurface him like I did the pack mule above -he is just too rough and will look great with smooth blending and some properly defined fingers.  Still, no time for that right now, so I will leave him be- and perhaps get some Skulldred sessions in with the little guy first.
The Grenadier Death statue is is inspired by the recent Citadel Garden of Morr statue.  I realised I had just the thing for my scenery, so a quick repaint later and voila!  Again, it needs rebasing on a stone plinth methinks.  I find many of these figures on ebay that are broken.. thinking I may make a bunch of these at some stage for the table if I can get these cheap enough.

Now the progress on the main stars.  I am going to do myself a bandit warband, though since I do not have the figures I need, I decided to finish off the small Realm Of Chaos warband I started so I can game with them.

Kats Amazons rebases.  A mix of Reaper and Citadel figures
Daves Chaos raiders:  Mainly converted and Augmented Citadel 1980's chaos champion figures

So these are the best ones so far- rebasing them took the majority of time here, but I have pushed the painting along a little on my team, and scratch sculpted a chaos shield for the horned champion and blended in the new Reaper weapon swap for Big Bertha.  Lots to do still.
A spike backed chaos warhound arrived the other day, which I think will make a great addition to the team.

Well thats my hobby time all used up.  Back to sculpting figures for other people.  Hope your enjoying the blog so far.

Matakishi is the man

 
Matakishi is one of those I am happy to call a 'legend' in the games hobby.  His blog, Matakishi's tea house is a must read for any gamer.
It was at the tea house I learned how to make a smooth miniature surface- a huge barrier I had to overcome when I first started sculpting minis, and its from the tea house where I got my latest revalation about the hobby.

Matakishi is a projects man.  He makes small, contained projects, then works them through to completion.  Scenery, figures and often rules too.  A playable game table with everything on it finished to a good, if not excellent standard.
My collection is a sprawling, seething mix from which I pluck models to paint based on whim.  As I paint some barbarians, I know there are more in storage and more on their way from the land of ebay.  My goal has to paint complete collections of sets that interest me.  Worse still, I have several figures I want to paint really, really well... so they remain unpainted of course.
Well, readers of my blog will remember the dead energy projec, where I took some figures that, well, they where not my favourites... and I painted the living hell out of them?  That project really released some hobby karmic blockage, and I followed it with a painting spree that really dented my lead pile!

Matakishi focuses on game projects.  Small, doable and inspiring.  That ideas really got me primed up.

I am next going to attack my collection with the goal of making two finished themed warbands for Skulldred, along with finished game items to play some simple scenarios.  Everything on the table finished and to a good standard- including tokens, goal markers and a few choice scenery items.
Now... the question is what scenario?

Demonette

Jes Goodwins Chaos Familiar Demonette

A quickie but a goodie.  Jes Goodwin's kinky little demonette from the Chaos Sorcerers range- recently re-released by GW as part of the famous familiars.  Remember the beastman with the chaingun that had this girl growing from his head with her pubic hair woven into his goaty braids?  John Blanche did that little bit of 1980s Realm of Chaos Gold- you can find it in his Ratspike book along with other great conversions.  I grabbed an extra set of familiars just so I could shred them up for similar conversions.

This lass is going to have resin poured into the pool in front of her... though I may transfer her to another base first.  Not decided yet.

Realms of Chaos divide!

I really do not like square bases.  I realised my army of vintage chaos figures are just going to sit on the shelf unless I did something about it.  Inspired by Donvoss of Berlins brilliant 6 man warbands for Realm Of Chaos recently posted here on Lead Adventure I decided to move it across to 30mm round bases for Skulldred.  You can see my rant about how brilliant I am finding my new bases in previous posts.

Daves 'Eavy Meddlers -Skulldred Warband
Converted citadel warriors, Chaos Champion

Remember this conversion?  The spikey club (aka Dil-dorr- wrecker of retreats) unfortunately was just not strong enough to stay on such a heavy model, so I am replacing it with a suitable metal weapon from Reaper minis.  Needs some milliput to form a rigid support and perhaps a chain to tie it all together.

Original Chaos Warrior - Big Bertha conversion

The other conversion is just a headswap- taking the modern chaos sorcerer head and situating it on an old chaos warrior and dressing the join up a bit.  Think I will add some severed heads to that one to really tighten the look up.

The brilliant think about skirmish gaming is you really get to focus on your individual models more.  Huge armies look great, but a skirmish warband is real narrative delight.  With Skulldred, I am focusing on making a game that can play smoothly with around 20 figures per side.

Asgard, Hasslefree, Rarities and my new 30mm Ply Bases

I got a few hours to base up and partially paint Hasslefree minis Svala and dynamic kaylee-For one of my Skulldred demo game warbands (aka the orange team!).  Kev White, as usual, rocks my socks with two awesome figures, understated details, fluid, dynamic and paintable as heckaroonie on a stick.  Yep, well worth your cash - get em here.

Hasslefree Svala and Kaylee (converted) WIP paint jobs

I lightly converted Kaylee, shaving off her chaos symbol and replacing it with a grinning monster face, as well as adding extra fabric to her arms to give more space for her team colours.  All this was done with greenstuff.  I then decked out her base with mushrooms, creepers and leaves to make use of all the new space on my BRAND NEW BASES!!!!

So the story with my bases is that I really needed some extra room around my figures so they dont bump up against each other in gameplay.  I also like decorating them, so having the extra room is great.  I made a bunch of lipped deep dish bases, since I hate the way you cannot pick up lipped bases, but have had issues with leeching oils through the resin- clearly my resin is out of date :(
I decided to try out some laser cut 30mm ply discs and you know, I love them!  I am sorely tempted to move my whole collection across to them now.
What can I say?  Cheap, roomy, easy to pick up, easy to modify, light, have a little bounce to protect the figure, soak black paint up so they chip black, and look the business.  At 30mm, they are the exact same footprint as Malifaux or Warmachine bases, but without the annoying lip.  You know, I am totally sold on this.  Very surprised, considering my experience with plywood bases for HotT has been less than spectacular.

Converted Hasslefree Kaylee framed with some Asgard gems- Lizard man and Poisonous Stalker
Kaylee's shield sculpted by me.  All Work in progress paint jobs.

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Kaylee vs. Lizardman wips - playin' Skulldred, naturally!
The lizardmans pokerchip base gives me room to sculpt a torn apart
adventurer using procreate.

 The figures shown are all part way through painting, really needing neatening up and a bit more shading.  The next ones are even more WIP...

Citadel WF6 Aggressive Aardvark, LE-4 The Black Dwarf and DL2 Hobgoblin shaman
Primed and ready to be drooled over.

So you can see the raw wooden bases onto which I have mounted some dead sexy rare citadel gems- including the 'other' black dwarf (see my earlier posts for the Jes Goodwin masterpiece from Asgard).

The only pain with the ply bases is that the laser scoring around the edge needs sanding off.  I found if you use two grits- course to get the lines off and a really fine to polish it really shiney, it looks just like plastic once painted.  Using a diluted chaos black wash allowed the paint to soak in- making the base absorb the paint deeply and so it chips to black- which will keep my collection looking a little less played with hopefully.  The underside, being perfectly flat, also looks nice when you flip a model on its side too- no ugly slottabase grooves.


I do worry about acids from sap in the plywood leeching into the model and causing leadrot.  A few really old models I have prised off wooden bases show damage where they contact the wood.  I have kept a thin layer of epoxy around the figures to protect them, and sealed the surface with superglue here and there.  That ought'a hold it.


I think its about time citadel allowed 30mm bases for 40k- the models have scale creep'ed to a point where they could really do with the extra stability and protection.  Don't you agree?

Victoria Lamb

Had a brilliant night on Sunday hanging out with the Ozpainters crew.  I finally got to meet the one and only Victoria Lamb.  I have been a big fan of her work for years, and have to blame her influence for the Sisters of Battle collection I have tucked away somewhere.  Check her site out and see what I mean.
We got to sit for a few hours and trade tricks and I got some sneak peeks at what she is working on.  Subjects included about all things green stuff, and I naturally asked her if she cuts her toast with her slayer sword. I know I would.
I also got to check out some minis painted by some real pros- Andrew of Aetherworks fame (and no slouch in the golden demon trophy department himself) has a brilliant collection featuring work by such luminaries as Jeremie Bonamant Teboul, Jennifer Haley and Anya. You think they look good on the interweb- you should see them up close!

I am talking about the miniatures. Sheesh.

Of course this means I have to up my game a bit - hanging out with the ozpainters sure is going to drive that.

One tip I did pick up is that my sculpting tools are just not fine enough. I got me some needles and made a new set today using a gas stove, hammer and diamond file. Tried them on my lead adventure sculpts and found I got much more control over the finer details.

Daves back... now with the awesome power of bleach

Yes.  Bleach.
So my 'real' job is 3d artists, as you may know, and this month has been crazy busy crunch time.  Result- no miniatures stuff, but my bank account is healthier (in theory- freelancers tend to get paid months after work).

Today showed a little chance to get something done, so I decided to tackle the most urgent problems in my collection- bloom.
Bloom begets leadrot which begets, well, lead poisoning and angst as your classic mini crumbles like a Skeksis Emperor sitting on the Something Wicked This Way Comes merry go round.

The solution is alkali.  Lead+ acid = sugar of lead = leadrot.  Alkali neutralises the acid.  Yay Alkali.  Up until now I have been using bicarb, but someone on some forum somewhere suggested bleach.  Turns out, its pretty darn strong alkali, and pretty darn good at cleaning up minis!

Harpic bleach gel.  The result, 24 hours soaking later

A soak overnight in some thinned bleach and the figures turned from ash grey to murky brown.  Wearing gloves, I brushed this with a soft copper brush and it came up dazzling shiney.  Not minted new shiney, but the sort of shiney that gives you confidence that the figure is risk free, and certainly a nice painting surface.  Take a butchers hook at these three...

FS7-1 Naked Girl Bound Hand and Foot, FA11-2 Illusionist
FS22-2 Victim hanging from Gibbet.  Bases detailed in procreate.

They are some of the earliest citadel figures, and as you can see are nice and shiny now, awaiting a tickle from the hairy stick.  I just love how politically incorrect the range was then, from stoned druids though to one legged bondage babes.  Oh and look, not a skull in sight. Though I was too young for miniatures when these originally came out, as I have collected citadel figures I have been drawn more and more to the very beginnings and now find myself with baggies full of spacefarers, fantasy adventure and fiend factory figures.  I think because they where 'anything goes' and the citadel clichés had yet to be established makes these figures stand out from the throng, plus the delight in getting an old, cruddy looking thing and trying to make it stand up to modern standards.

Anyway, bleach gets my tick of approval and joins in ever increasing box of foul smelling bottles in my tool kit.

I am looking forward to some free time soon, I have to finish up a bunch of sculpts and I am back to painting things then blogging them... yay!

Enamels: Seriously oldschool

The moment I opened the bottle of mineral turpentine I was transported back to 1986. My bedroom at the farm where I grew up, with it's seventies carpet and rainbow patterned walls left behind from when my sister owned the room.
That smell was the smell of early miniature painting. Sure, Citadel had released a range of acrylics at that stage, but all the back issues of White Dwarf and Heroes for Wargames all talked about enamels. John Blanche and Aly Morrison both swore by them, though both admitted to using anything that would go on a brush- including nail polish.
Mineral turps. Mmmm.

My resin base project slowed when I found resin leeching through my acrylic paint- turning it to mush. Obviously I needed to let the plastic set longer, but time is precious and I want my bases now! Plus, as I was cash short this week from eBay Kung Fu, buying black resin was off the menu. So how would I get stable, chip resistant paint on my gaming bases?
Enamels!
It hit me like, well, the smell of mineral turps. Enamels are bulletproof.
If you strip minis, you will be familliar with dunked enamel. Kids using newsagent quality brushes as thick as a licorice stick to apply humbrol the thickness of whipped cream to some poor unsuspecting mini. Tough stuff indeed.
Enamel seemed like the solution. So off I popped for a tin of matte black humbrol and a bottle of turps.

The smell of turps reminded me of so much- a metallic blue chaos warrior I painted- a minotaur and.. Fraser Gray. I remembered the reason I got into enamels in the first place. Fraser is, unquestionably, the father of smooth blended clean style mini painting. How did he do it? Enamels, mentioned an article (I think it was in fantasy miniatures). Back then I tried to emulate this using John Blanches instructions but failed to get Frasers amazing results. I wrecked brushes and a couple of chaos hounds. Back then I did not know of Dettol, so paint strippers where the only way to remove paint. It barely worked, so the dogs went into the failed pile.

Fraser Grey Art- enamels never looked so good.

I remembered this in the midst of the fumey daze and decided to try again now my painting skills are a little more mature. Fortunately I had some white and grey lurking in my paint box from art school and by Jove it was still fresh!

Wow!

I applied a grey base coat to a paranoia troubleshooter, let it dry, then applied a thinned, fresh coat with a fine brush. This time, I know brush flow control, and tapped off the excess paint onto a paper towel. Then, using thinned white and black I worked in some shading, and washed my brush out in turps. Then tapping off the turps, danced the brush over the area to blend in the shading.

Did I say wow? I meant WOW!
I nailed it- A perfect smooth blend ala Fraser Gray. My inner child jumped for joy (though, looking back, it could have been dinner).

I actually enjoyed painting in enamels! That really surprised me.

Going to grab some more colors tomorrow if I can- try getting that brilliant Orc and Chaos Dwarf skin effect he used, and the matte blues and reds I need for the troubleshooter with laser.

Anyone else use enamels here?

End of an era. Start of a display.

Bookstores, sadly, are going down the toilet one by one. Strangely huge mark ups have not saved the Borders chain here, and our favorite after work hang out is shutting it's doors.

Sigh. I am very sad.



Anyway, on a brighter note I just bought me a whole bunch of the shop fittings from the admimistrator. Partly as keep sakes, partly because clear acrylic risers would make great display stands for my minis! Plus a mile of black plasticard! Nice.
I am sure the feeling of being a vulture will go away shortly... Perhaps leaving the faint tinge of remorse.

Declutter your studio. Declutter your mind.

I have been trying to sculpt in a very cramped, very dusty room- and yesterday it suddenly got to me.  I snapped.  I had to do something, right then and there.  A massive clean up started at 2pm and went through to the wee hours.  However, unlike my previous attempts at cleaning (think Scott Pilgrim drying his hands), this was a controlled attack based on strategies garnered from a declutter your life book my wife bought to help dig herself out of our dining/library/sewing/piles of random crap room (easily confused with our bedroom/library/piles of random crap room).
The thing I wanted to share in this episode is a few tips on clutter and the psychological, nay, spiritual impact of filing away unpainted minis.

Triage
I first went through my shelves and picked out the unpainted and unstripped figures onto a tray. Anything still to be stripped of paint was taken out of the collection and put into a tray ready for the dettol jars.  All unpainted minis where bagged by category and set aside.

Tip of doom 1:
I then created a filing cabinet (of sorts) for my Lead Pile.
  I took two clear stackable storage tubs and divided them into two with foamcore.  The tubs where then broken down with divider cards, and all my minis where bagged, tagged and entered into the correct slot. Look at all those little cards! Fiend Factory, Fantasy Adventurers, Lotr, Paranoia, Rogue Trader, Chaos, Things with Big Heads from Bob Olley, Jes Goodwin Ogres, AD&D - ahhh, the deep, strange enjoyment a mini collector you probably understand.
  The good thing is now I can quickly flip to a section and check to see what I have already got- I have been plagued with doubles of late.  Seriously, part of my brain says I do not own a female night horrors vampire.  I just keep buying her!

Side note:  Space farers- what's with the sudden ebay rush this week?  Months go by, not a single one, then boom- the entire lot every way you like- painted, job lot and still in bag- your choice of these teeny, tiny little sci fi kitch range!

I store my minis in plastic baggies- NEVER store old figures in wooden or cardboard boxes- sometimes these have acids in them, over time these react with the lead in the figure and you got yourself a lead rot nightmare situation.

Tip of doom 2:
I then blue tacked my figures to black pieces of foamcore and board all cut to 3x6inches.  This allowed me to pick up my whole display collection, dust it and move it from shelf to shelf in batches of 24.  A large nylon painters brush for the figures, a damp cloth for the shelves.  Again, no cleaning products- lead rot is such a curse!

Tip of doom 3:
Box of doom.  When de-cluttering, and this tips a corker, rather than moving stuff around endlessly, just carry a box around with you.  Anything that does not belong on the place your working on goes into the box.  This stops you endlessly circling junk around.  This is the best tip ever for me!

Tip 4:
Be merciless.  Little bits you have been meaning to use for scenery, scraps of material, weird tools from gameforce you never actually use... paint pots with a little bit left- just a little.... screw all that its time to ditch them.  You got minis to paint and need that mental energy.

The Dust settles on the aftermath...
The net result of this onslaught is two shelves of neat, painted minis and a floor I can actually see.  That's the physical difference.  The mental difference is suddenly I do not have a thousand unfinished projects glaring at me from every corner of my studio nibbling at my mind.  What I now have is a neatly boxed collection, and a display of finished, and mostly finished figures.  Clean.  Zen.  Achievable.

Tonight I am going to hoover the ever living crap out of the studio and finally transfer the remaining citadel paints into Reaper bottles and ditch the containers.

Once I have the LAM mutants finished its back to Kingsminis business as usual- pictures of old school figures tickled with a hairy stick!

Go on.  You know its time to clean your studio.

Airbrush fun

Tried out an old airbrush I had laying around to see if it was actually useful for mini painting before I invested in a pump and a decent airbrush.

Turns out, quite handy I think.  I base coated the flesh tones for a citadel giant, twenty barbarians and thrud in no time.  If just for that, it would be worthwhile.  If I was rocking a space marine army, or war gaming in general- it would be a must have.

So what are your thoughts and experiences on airbrushes?  Worth getting?  More fuss than worthwhile?

Lipped bases for sale?

I have had a couple of folk ask if I intend to sell my deep dish lipped bases.
Thats a thought, though they would have to be top quality- something my home resin kit isnt really set up for.

So, since the idea has been mooted  I am looking into professional resin casters in Australia to see if someone can vacuum cast them for me.  I am also getting some prototype digital printed masters done with a few extra features that could be integrated into the base for extra handiness.  I dont sell tat.  :)

If you would be interested in such a base system, with reversable base cappers (in metal), deep cappers (in resin) and seperate lips that can take a regular 25mm round base, either temporarily or be glued in- drop me a line or comment below.  If enough people are keen, I will add them to The BeDerken line.

It would be uber cool to get the base made in black plastic- but none of the companies I have spoken to are willing to take the punt.  Shame really.  Resin it is.

F'Nurgle old tat

Since I have not had a chance to post some finished work in a while, what with being far too busy with sculpting work, I thought some old tat would suffice.  Here are a couple of old photos I took of some paint jobbies I did on my brother in laws Nurgle army a while ago.  Yep, my bro' is a big 40k mythos fan- though he never plays the game itself.  He buys me figures in exchange for painting and assembling his.
Now he gave me a chirurgeon back pack to add to another figure, but when I tried it on the early 1990's Plague Marine, it was love at first sight.  He looks made for it, and so fiendish I have to make myself one first chance I get.

Forge world aero bars and my fave plague marine conversion

I call them Aero bars because they are full of bubbles.  Note the dude with the speakers gun arm and wire pipes- practically all that had to be rebuilt from scratch after breakage from under the surface bubbles.  The pipes where virtually non existent to begin with.  Really a shame, because these two are some of the coolest looking minis GW produce.  Hopefully once all the issues with finecast is ironed out, they may transition over to the main range.

Two more early marines.

Damned grenade!
WIP of one of Ed's, modern Legion of the Damned
I like these minis.  One of the better releases of modern times.

I actually painted my original plastic marines as legion of the damned back in the 1980s- I think its a bit of a shame how the mythos has changed them to a pop in special unit.  Never mind, not like I am playing the game any time soon.
I do have some placcy marines laying around that one day I may paint up.  I think probably original mentor legion- back when they had the owl logo.  Then again, maybe I will go get a life instead.

Hardcore base traitor

I am a traitor. Yes, it's true.  After dedicating many hours to gluing sand to hex bases in honour of olde skool righteousness, I have, dear reader, fallen in one night to the charms of the "modern lipped base".

Faced with a very short amount of hobby time this weekend, I decided to push on with my c100 kill team charlie project by running off a few more resin bases.

Yep.  I make my own resin bases.  Hardcore huh?

Since I made only two moulds for the original hyperbole base, I realised it would take a fair while to base all my c100 figures up.  Hmmm.  The only route to getting this project done was to bite the bullet and make a mould that could churn out a whole mess at once. This meant blood.

My deep dish bases are made by hollowing out a plastic base- very fiddly, as a single slip can snap the rim. Or, az the case was, a finger.  Carving out nine of the bloody, and I mean literally bloody, things was a big decision. Better than manually casting bases one at a time though.
So, ten bases, three blades and a huge vertical cut on my right thumb and my new mould was complete.  A quick foamcore box, pinkysil 2 part silicone and a can of mould release and voila...
1x 40mm, 9x 30mm, and 5x20mm bases from one pour.  My master is reusable, so I can run off another silicone mould and do two lots very 10 minutes.

Silicone mould, resin bases(black), resin cappers (white),
Citadel Chaos Dwarf, C100 Space marine (converted)

So you can see the bases I made are hollow and deep, with a wider mouth.  As you may know from my previous rants about bases, this is so I could sculpt base detail on a ten cent coin to be cast separately.  These 'cappers' just snap in.  It saves making lots of big moulds for base styles I rarely use.
My gripe with plastic lipped bases are they are too shallow, which makes them hard to pick up- especially on heavy metal figures. I deepened mine by gluing a disc of plasticard to the masters and sanding them down to a smooth edge.

However, (and here is the beginning of the end for my Hex cult membership), the first batch came out so well I immediately saw the potential that the deep dish gave me.
I could rebase minis really quickly- I need only clip off the sides of the slottabase and I could transplant the whole base decoration onto the lipped version onto a ball of 5 minute epoxy putty.  (Note the poor little chaos dwarf in the above picture suffering this fate).
  The second feature was that preslotta bases could be glued in and their feet would be level with the lip.  Hmmm... this could be good indeed.


My skirmish rules Skulldred (see links) plays best when figures have the larger bases, since figures get into base contact a lot- scratching was occurring on my fave gaming figures.  Lipped bases seemed a good idea.  I decided to base up some of my new chaos Dwarf ebay acquisitions as a warband and see if I liked it.

[Insert suitable Top Gear style pregnant pause...]

I liked it.

Works in progress.  Citadel Chaos general (Earl Harkness from McDeath), Bederken Dwerg,
Citadel Minotaur, Citadel Perry Bros. Chaos Dwarves and the orc from the White
Dwarf Boxed Set

I ended up getting all the above bases out of the first mould.  A ball of 5 minute epoxy, and twenty minutes later I had all these guys done.  Procreate stick putty is brilliant for making rocky textures- check out the chaos dwarf on the raised stone.  That took, literally, ten minutes to make and cure.



All that remains now is to save up my pennies to get some clear resin and a black resin colourant- and I can make nice, pretty, chip resistant black bases.  Lovely.

So that's it. Hexes no more.

Once the feeling of treachery wears off, that is.

eighty one today!

Hey, I passed the eighty reader mark!
Lets celebrate... you grab yourself a drink from your fridge!  Mail me one whilst your at it.

When you start a blog, you kinda feel like your shouting into the void.  But your mossy stone keeps a rolling... and before you know it your linking up with the coolest droogs from around the world!

Sculpting has taken up my hobby time this week, so no pictures to celebrate the 80 mark.  The good news is that I should be finished sculpting the ten Mutants for Lead Adventure Miniatures shortly, then, once I have finished basing the new releases for Bederken, its mini time and the next episode of 'eavy dave.  :)

Right now I have a warband of dwarves on the go which I will be posting soon.  Great fun.

Anyway, its late and I have to go.  Enjoy your celebratory drinks- and thank you for your readership!

15mm madness, Stick Putty, Kill Team Charlie Update

So now a break from the normal, after another food allergy related fit of insomnia, I went to the light side of minis and attacked some 15mm scale figures I have had sitting around forever- and you know, darn it, I really, really love 15mm figures!  When they are well sculpted, they are total gaming joy.  Nil time commitment, no fussing over details and repainting, basing and converting takes minutes- you can pack your whole game in a lunch box!

At about 2 am, I decided sleep was not going to be an option, and decided to go play with the stick putty I got recently.  Stick putty is a new product from procreate, and its supposed to glue together minis.  I tried it on a Ral Partha Djinn, and it does work to this end quite well- about as strong as superglue.  However I probably wont use it for this purpose much - its just begging for basing and armatures!  Why?  It has a 5 minute cure time.  Yes!  Five minutes from mix to a firm, but flexible set.  And its utterly brilliant for filling and gripping minis to bases, and blocking out mini armatures.  I will be buying lots of this stuff.

5 minutes.  5 freaking minutes.  Awesome.

Once set, you can tear up any left overs it to get nice ruined concrete effects for bases- so there is no wastage.
Now if you think its going to replace your sculpting medium, think again- five minutes is just too short to do much work, so cut off small amounts (I use artists palette knife) and do it in stages.  Now if you mount on washers, procreate stick putty is your beotch!  It fills the hole and sticks the model onto the surface, and rounds the edges so your scatter does not show that little integral base give away that makes some armies look crappy.

Now the down sides.  It smells awful for starters.  Keep the clam shell it came in to save your nostrils.  I am not allergic to epoxy putty usually- milliput, that little rascal has no perceivable effect on me- however this stuff is nasty.  As part of the test, I used bare skin.  My palms have been itching like mad all day.  Short story- wear gloves.

I decided to base up my post apocalypse road outlaws, and if sleep denied me after that, paint them  I managed to greyscale two packs, but only painted two- but it was delightful!  Definitely going to build a post apocalypse game board when I have some time.  By the way, if you want to be able to write little names on the side of a 15mm base, paint a white stripe, then using a 0.005 technical pen, etch in the negative space of the letters.  Far easier than trying to paint the letter strokes.

Khurasan Road Outlaws (15mm scale)

 I feel I am getting much better at 15mm- my first attempt was for a small Gauntlet style dungeon bash... I grabbed these minis from 15mm.com.  They need some baddies to fight now- but I have yet to find anything that floats my boat- it may be time for Bederken to release some 15mm!
For my 15mm I decided to use non metallic metals and work up strong contrast, so they pop off the table.

15mm.com dungeoneers.  In... er... 15mm scale.  Strangely.

If you have been wondering about my other projects, Kill Team Charlie has progressed a little since last I posted, though I just have not had the time to clear my sculpting desk to get the hyperbowl bases cast up- so its stalled until I finish the Lead Adventure Mutant Sculpts (which, btw, are soooo going to be part of this game set once I have finished).
Here are some work...

Kill Team Charlie progress continues!  C100 forever!

For those who missed earlier posts, these classic C100 space marines are mounted onto home made custom resin bases featuring a modular detail insert.  The actual outer base forms a deep bowl for scenic features such as deep puddles, hatches etc- and the sides have been extended so you can easily pick up the model by the base.  The bowl has been widened to fit a 10c coin, which is what I sculpt all my inserts on.  The whole lot is cast in resin.  I only have one polished and finished here, the others are pretty crude at this stage.
The Kill Team features mostly natural C100, and converted C100 models (20 odd at the moment), some early rogue trader era figures and a host of scratch built and converted figures from Reaper and Hasslefree- do check out the earlier posts!
I am also moving my Judge Dredd collection onto the same basing system- but thats way off in the future!

Hope you enjoy these!

Tower of DOOOOM!!!

So hey, how you going?  Have been busy as hell of late- the only things I have been able to paint have been some production models for Bederken- you will get to see those when I launch the new range.
However I have finished one little task thats been nagging me for a while, a new paint rack.

I lashed out on one of those four level carosels, and I have to say... really not impressed.  The 'American craftmanship' the box proudly states equates to wobbly, with plastic trays too big to grip a citadel pot, and too tight to allow Vallejo or Reaper paints to comfortably sit.  That, and the thing takes up one hell of a lot of space.  I tried to love it... put brushes in the little holders... rebuilt it with different heights...I guess it suits some people, but for me, I just wanted to see everything at once and have my desk space back.

So, one night, armed with nothing but a packing knife, a metal ruler, lollypop sticks, some bostick glue, sticky tape and a bunch of MDF sheets I use to make wargaming scenery, I knocked up the TOWER OF DOOOOM!

Total cost, about ten bucks.

Its alive.  ALIVE!!

I am calling this one a prototype in a thinly veiled attempt to hide my lack of craftmanship.  Cut twice.  Measure using thumbs.
So this is the entire four level carousels contents.  As you can see, plenty of room left and I am taking up about an eighth of the space.  It holds seventy dropper bottles and slightly less citadel pots.  Two of these should do the trick, unless I get seriously addicted to collecting paint.  Hmmm....