Kickstart my ass

I am toying with the idea of using kick starter to help me dedicate some time to my minis and games business.  I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon as the hobby is flooded as it is, but being pulled all over the place by work really inhibits my plans.

Here are the hovering projects I have.  If there is a kickstarter here holla in the comments:

*Dwerg series 2- artillery- modular troops and war machines.

*Skulldred core rules, toad minis, skully mini, portal minis, resin dread tokens, lasercut sticks and tokens.

*Dundred RPG:  old skool dndesque game with modern rules

*Dundred lairs:  Floorplans for 30mm bases, + card buildings ala 3rd ed.

*McNastybeastie: shakesperian scots minis.  Laird, lady, helldog, clansmen, spear girl

*Dungeon Noobs boxed set: rpg foolish minis on their first dungeon raid

*Stardred skirmish:  Skulldred with blasters!  80's style future minis action plus minis inspired by the era.  Space helmets, cricket pads and laserguns anyone?  Think eagle, future shock, starblazers, Druillet and Mobius.

*Missing bitz:  replacement proxy parts for classic minis such as early citadel giants and wheels for war machines.

*chaos halflings.  'Cause.

*Steampunkish/creepy cyber robotic spiderlegs and limbs to fit any minis.

*Amulet spell toads.  15mm versions.  28mm versions are awaiting production molds and webstore.

*restoring classic minis web book- kind of a heroes for wargames 2 style thing.

After these I was thinking of entering the resin kit market, getting stuff cast in europe and distributed from the UK, adding modular gaming thingies to augment my aussie made metals (I hate metal modular minis hence resin).
This would allow me to put into practice some of the ideas I have explored within my blogs.  I am, after all, a pro digital character sculptor and have all the same software and haptic hardware citadel use- no reason not to explore my own 80s scifi universe in an affordable modular way, right?

Kickstarters have worried me in the past because of my health- particularly my sudden chronic energy drops - it seemed random... however I am now diagnosed, am on the right diet and getting treatment, so thats not an issue anymore.  I am shiney and new and ready to go!

Anyway, I would love to hear you thoughts on Kickstarting Darkling games.  Its all about you folk after all!  Now back to Skulldred editing!

What-would-you-dohammer?

My nephew asked me what I would change if I was put in charge of warhammer products.  Fun question huh?

Okay, so here is my main thoughts...

1: remove 20mm bases from fantasy.  All troops on 1" bases.  All larger bases clean multiples of inches.  Launch a new set of low profile, non bevelled bases in clear, brown and black plastic with magnet sockets.

2: refocus kits, designs and rules to focus on more multiple sales of the same kit.  For example, a 'dark eldar' troop kit that lets you build six or seven types of units from the one kit- rather than four or five kits that focus on one or two types.  Imagine a single space marine squad kit that could make light, heavy weapon, veteran, command, or jet pack squads.  Shops would have less redundancy and it would be easier to buy gifts for players, and GW would greatly reduce packaging and tooling costs.  Resin bitz would be streamed out to fuel the new release hunger instead of kit after kit.

My 'more sales of same kit' drive would likewise see the crossing of 40k and fantasy kits ala chaos demons.  A zoat kit with fantasy parts, future weapons and bloodbowl helm bitz anyone?  Whats that?  Youll take seven?  Thought so!

Slan heads in the Kroot troops boxes anyone?  Fantasy weapons for kroot?

3: I would also make the huge change of making 40k a 30mm base standard. Lets face it, the minis are getting too big for 1". Starting with snap on adapter bases and moving to low profile clear and black plastic bases for all new releases.  Of course selling cheap packs of bases so you can upgrade is a must.  This would also mean wider, more dramatic stances are viable and true scale marines are go.  Yes.  I would relaunch marines true scale.

4: I would ditch the huge rulebooks for boxed sets of rules (with no minis in it).  The box would have a seperate book for rules, armies, fluff and hobby.  That makes lugging it around optional.  The rulebook itself is free to download.   Its the fluffbook/armylist book thats the premium bit.  Focus money making on minis not rulebook tomes- this encourages new players.

5: merge chaos back together into one.  Add 'evil sorcerer' as a new empire option (and add evil options to empire kits ) and allow crossovers of undead in both.  Skaven, beastmen etc can intermix.  The goal is to make players buy a mix of kits rather than single army focus.

6: race variant modules.  Tau could have been a head/weapon swap for eldar- fimir could fit orc models... slann on kroot... rhinomen on ogres... barbarians on chaos thugs... a few simple modules can enrich the universe and give players more options without more army rules or kits.

7: end wave releases.  Each month release a little of something for everyone rather than eldar month, then orc month... new variant modules, new characters... it would make WD much more appealing as a subscription.   New unit rules appear in WD and are added to website for download.  This does not need to be a whizz bang power thingie... resin head swaps or alternative weapons is enough.  Enrichen... enrichen... enrichen...

Well thats my thoughts... care to wade in ?  Comments below peeps !

Realms of Chaos era Warband: Nurgle

All this cryx stuff has made me pine for old school realm of chaz and dave.  Some demons require a summonin'

Pappa Nurgle!  Pappa Nurgle!

Oh happy days.  I finally glued together my greater demons of Nurgle.  Boy I am knocking those painful tasks out this week.  Its making me all confident and stuff.
I always coveted these, especially after Mike McVey pulled of a masterfully blended deep green pj in a white dwarf article.  After decades, I am about to fullfill the childhood wish to paint one up.  Twice!
This is the spirit of what drives us... that need to fill the voids white dwarf burned into our souls.
That little beardy gold grabbin git.

The three nurgle champs front and center I owned back then, did my best paint jobs on ever and promptly gave them away before migrating to oz.  I am excited to paint them again after all these years!

Later down the road I have me a plague Ettin, two mounted nurgle lords from different eras, and a cthonian larvae that will double as a beast of nurgle (til I get one).

I have some slaanesh stuff bagged up still, but not one tzeenchian chap to my name, strangely.  I will have to rectify that... anyone got a lord of change or two they fancy swapping?

Group shot

Here is a fun little iphone snap of some of my collection (in various states of completion).

A three color skaven

Damn amine intolerance.   Could not sleep friday night, so did boring things for a bit. Rebasing is my ususal go to in times of antihistamine dazed nights, but after six chaos warriors got new treads I felt that itch to paint.  Something unimportant was required.
I decided to be-slap a skaven about the head with my hairy wand.  No touching up of orcs tonight.
This poor (skaven)blight-er was one of those I recently repaired from the deep morass that was my broken minis tub.  I stuck the legs back on this chap with a couple of pins, during which time I noted that, much like Tom Cruise in interview with a vampire, he was somewhat miscast.  Perfect!

I had visited Steve Deans website a few days ago, and decided to try the old 'three shade layers over black' technique favored by historical grognards, with crisp contrast, strong edging, deep black parting and no blending or glazes.
I knocked him out quickly and finally got tired and went to bed, pleased that one more figure had risen from the lead pile to take its place on the done pile.

As you can see by the picture- he is not so crash hot up close but boy he reads well on the gaming table- much better than most of my figures do.  I can easily make out his rope weapon at five feet- which is surprising.
I must push my brightness and contrast more in general.

Oh, and he is standing on a newly finished hill module for my Skulldred table.  Thats one more thing that was lurking un finished in my studio done.

Cobblestone tutorial

Great little tutorial on making cobblestone stamps...

Here

Dire Chicken

Undead Robochicken Privateer Press

I realized my plan to add spider legs to my Cryx chickens put them in the too hard basket and would mean my force was not ready for my nephew's arrival...  so...

Nothin I fancy... just a straight forward pj to get the job done.  I used cork tiled to build up the base, hardened this with thin superglue and pinned on my robo chicken.

Whilst chained to my desk I also magnetized my plastic warjack using the old dremmel and greenstuff technique to fix the magnets in place.  I am not looking forward to painting all the parts separately, and have a dreaded feeling that some of the heads may disappear under the table never to be found again.

I reread the warmachine rules again last night and, well, to be honest I am not filled with excitement.   Admittedly its not the latest edition,  but it seems due to the special rules combining forces that a major portion of playing the game is in army building and deployment, the actual mechanics of battle seem hella complicated for the end result.  But, as I always say the proof of a game is in the playing.

I am tempted to do a war golem skulldred expansion now.  Once I finish the main book!

Virtue is a virtue

Yes dear reader, I am feeling virtuous.   I have taken a tablet and hope it will soon pass.  All this virtue is making me virtually giddy.
I forced myself to up end my 'to fix' tub and actually fixing stuff therein.
You know all those things that arrive in the mail with a weapon snapped off and your like... uh, pinning... Ill do that later.

Well tonight was that later baby yeah!

Citadel miniatures:  Aly Morrison Hobgoblin (reaper banner), Broo, Chaos
Centaur, Drum and Drone Ulssen Chaos Dwarf, First Slotta Chaos Warriors,
Adventurer Starter Box fighter with Chaos Familliar

So picture my evening.  Drill, pin, fill... rinse repeat.  Yaaaaaaaaawn.

I figured it would be a good warm up for getting back into mini sculpting.  I was right.  After that pushing putty feels exciting again.

Deneghra converted from her sister

So another crappy iphone picture- this time of a motley crew including some early beastmen (broo), early slotta chaos warriors, a hobgoblin or two from Aly Morrisons nifty fingers and a starter set adventerer with an evil puppet.  Along with this stash was three cavalry figures and a half dozen more simple drill and pin jobs.
I also found Deneghras witch barbs in my bitz box and liberally, (if not wantonly) applied said barbs them to 'er back with this amazing stuff called glue.  Cracking ride this episode, innit?

Next episode is a cliffhanger,  with thrills, spills and more lead with paint applied.  Hang onto your seats readers...  excelsior!

Scrap tokens

Any old Iron, Any old Iron, anyee, anyee, anyee ooooold eye-ronn.

I picked up a crappy looking rubber battletech loader mech the other day for two bucks.  Tonight it gave its life for scrap tokens, and surprisingly I got five out of it.  Bargain.
I just tore up the model and voila. Excellent junk.

These tokens will come in handy for a variety of games.  I have some copplestone bikers on my shelf that will no doubt get to shoot out over these at some point.  Pchoo, pchoo!

On other project fronts... I *finally* landed my last Dwarf for the Undead Assault project.  Mimbrim is on the way!

I am still missing some skellies, but they are suddenly going for silly money on eBay at the moment.   Weird how it goes in waves like some insane stock market with no apparent rhyme or reason.

I am not feeling up to tackling big things right now, so the castle and mushroom forrest scenery will have to wait.  I may just focus on creeping along finishing off long time incomplete figures til then.

Touching some orcs up

Tonight I touched up some orcs whilst the varnish dried on the last batch of Cryx.  These lovely old school figures are from Ral Partha (iron wind metals these days).

I just spent an hour or two on them, and want to go back in for some ink washes to make them pop a bit more.  Excuse the shitty iphone snap.  Couldnt be bothered setting up the camera.  Still not 100% clearly.

Anyway, lovely old school minis.  Enjoy.

Ral Partha Orcs.  Fun to touch up.

Cryx in the neck

A big shout out to my nephew Matthew, who inspired me to finally put some effort into my warmachine figures, which have been sitting on my shelf since... well, before lady ga ga heard a madonna record.  Matt is in Tasmania right now, and is heading to the mainland to reap and plunder shortly.  Its been years since I have seen him, so very exciting.  I have been a dutiful uncle in the meanwhile, and made sure he was well topped up with 40k minis at every chance.

Turns out Matthew is also a Cryx fan!  Whats not to love?  Angry undead robo pirates FTW.

Since Matts going to want a game or ten, I figured what better excuse to drag my sorry ass back to the painting table, then to at least get my figures all painted to table standard in readiness for his arrival.  Its nice to be back behind the brush, my illness sucked all my energy out, (no doubt converting to energon cubes and storing it under a dam) it was really nice to be back to the stage I can comfortably sit and paint.

Early Work in Progress- King's Cryx Horde  (Privateer Press)  30mm plastic bases by www.hurlbat.co.uk

So let me chat about what's in the pic.  Coz dat iz wot I doo.  First up, I dont play Warmahordes, so I just bought cool minis.  I am sure I will correct this error later by filling out my ranks, but since I figured they will probably be used for Skulldred, the 'oh, that looks cool' method of building forces was selected.

In addition to this I have a placcy Reaper Warjack, and two ebil chikenz wiv tuskz and Goreshade- coz he looked badass.

So I am about halfway through the painting of this little lot.  As usual, I got them table ready first, then plan to go back and glaze on some magic later.  I confess I got ahead of myself and started gluing on the basing material before the paint job was done, but hey, I was sick for yonks and missed base decorating.  I want to find some nice little cogs at some stage.

The unpainted model (Top right) is my stand in for Deneghra.  I cut my original model up to use in some conversions, so her sister Victoria Haley got a quick makeover and is doubling her til I get my filthy, diseased fingers upon an epic wavey dynamic witch caster model... the other Deneghra poses are stiff and a bit blah.  This one will do for now.    I used a dremel to etch her blade into a more cryxy style, and blocked in her helmet with procreate/Apoxie mix.  She still needs a detail pass.  I still have the witch blades from the original model, so plan to retrofit those to this one shortly.

Now my cryx chickens are another story... I hate the two legged look, so am thinking of giving them creepy spider legs perhaps using some canopek wraith bits.  If anyone has spare bits and want to trade up, lemme know!  I like the idea of having my chickenz more like steel pirahnnas- and have been thinking of scratchbuilding something along those lines.

I landed some nice plastic battletech figures at the local flea market today for a few bucks, so they are destined for scrap markers.

I am looking forward to finally putting a big 'check' next to the life goal of painting up all my cryx figures, since they have lurked in my collection for soooooo long.  I also have my eye on a few other figures in the range... perhaps put that on my cryxmas list.

As for making my cryx playable, I decided to keep my basing and coloring style compatible with all my other figures- though I originally wanted to do classic cryx grey greens for everything. They all work so well with my weird war, dirz and inquisimunda style figures, so they can tripletime on my table.

I was also thinking of filling in the gaps of my cryx force with proxies from my reaper collection.  Why fork out for satyrx raiders (not greatest models in the faction imho) when I can call upon the mighty range of reaper demon lasses?  Bane thralls are easy to make too.

Anyway, hopefully I have this lot done by the time he arrives... feeling much more energy lately, so that bodes well.

Later peeps!

A pox on multilistings

Multi listing miniatures on ebay is just fucking annoying.  Dont do it.  dont encourage it.  Message anyone you see doing it and tell them to stop it.

That is all.

Not dead. Just ill!

Hey mini fanciers,
  No I am not dead- I just have been a teensy bit ill this past few months.  Nothing life threatening but very, very exhausting.   I wont go into the details as the only illness this blog is about is lead addiction!  Plus a little mystery makes one interesting.   :)

So I am recovering as we speak... so to speak.  The good news is my mini mojo is coming back and I will be back behind the brush shortly.

In the meantime here are a few shitty pictures from my smartphone.  All are works in progress.  Enjoy!

Ranger retouched and rebased

Just a quickie today.  I did a quick touch up on an old ranger with the goal of dotting I's (or, eyes in this case) and crossing T's in my mostly done painted collection.  Even with my workload I can fit in one mini to polish and wind up at a time.

The photo is crappy, but it's more about charting progress.

In the years since he was first painted, I have learned a great deal, and I thought it worth noting.
First thing I did was thoroughly dust the mini and give it some lahmium medium coats to matt the surface down ready for new paint.
The main upgrade in my technique is using strong contrast between shadows and highlights to make the model pop on the gaming table and in dim light. Though he was originally subtly shaded, I kicked him up a notch witha few simple glaze passes and some edging.  Deeper washes punched out the flesh and seperated the fingers.
The base was decorated with rotten wood, tufts and leaf litter to really sell the outdoorsy aspect of the character.

Rustoleum magnetic primer

It works!

I applied Rustoleum magnetic primer to the inside of a box file and it actually works!

Eight coats, stippled on with a sponge and voila-  Enough grip to keep my minis still even with a good shake of the box.

Great!

Lead addiction getting to me

Working on my Cancon aquisitions, Skulldred photo minis/boards and Hawkmoon sculpts all at the same time is seriously crunching me for space and mind juice.

My mistake was to base up and prime all the cancon minis I could like a conveyer belt factory.   It works too well...  This ate up several meters square, and prevented me from filing them away in bags like the rest of my collection.  Now I am going NUTS in my little workspace.  Lead addiction can, apparently lead to claustrophobia.

Owning a cat has also forced me into a much smaller space.  I cannot have both windows and the door open as she likes base diving out (1600 in vet bills) or jumping onto my collection.  She destroys game boards too.

No space.  No air.  Going... NUUUUTS!

To tide me over a stop gap until spoon' tells us his secret storage tricks, I have been blutacking my based minis to foamcore and placing them in box files so I can regain control of my office.  You get about 70 x 30mm bases in an a4 box, not bad.

Spending last night reboxing my 'painted' collection has unforunately highlighted that most of my minis are not finished to my liking.  Many are painted but not detailed, or have been rebased but the base not painted and finished.  A great deal of minis are base coated and washed, but not highlighted and worst of all, lots of them have naked shield bumps.  Yep.  I usually plan to do this kick arse shield and set the mini aside for later while I finish his mates.  Its sad that I have so many figures mostly done only to stop near the goal posts.

I have to do something about this!  But not now.  Too much work to do and too little space to do it in.  Box up everything then get Hawkmoon done and dusted so I can get back to Skulldred.

So all this made me think about my goals hobby wise, and I realise I have to divide my hobby into three parts to deal with my addictions impact on my living space.

First there is collecting minis.  Easy to curb, jusy stop buying.  The need to get that rare mini to complete a set is one part of lead addiction, and you always fight the feeling that your missing something amazing on ebay.  But its not too hard to fight the urge.  I soothe this ache by sitting down and sorting through my unpainted mini tubs.  Really enjoyable and relaxing.

Second, painting minis.  This is not top of everyones addiction, and to many lucky souls just owning is enough.  I want mine painted, and painted well (well, for me anyway- not to golden demon standard).  Worse, I like blended minis with crisp outlining.  I do not like obvious brush marks. I blame Fraser Grey.
This ultimately means my minis take a long time to finish.  I can kick out foundry style 'three shades to game ready' minis in no time... but finished to my personal tastes is time consuming.
Here I have to learn to curb my perfectionism, which is painful to an artist type.  That brings me to hobby division 3.
Gaming.  This is the part of my hobby that requires finished varnished minis and terrain.  I want, for example, a warband for each race.  That means a lot of minis painted to game standard at least.  If I can focus on a small number of Skulldred warbands, say four, to begin with, and get six key models done, I can relax and game with these for a while.
The terrain aspect is also a concern.  I love making it, but have no way to store it, especially now my Cat attacks it.

Order of initiative:  Daves new plan

So first things first, I am boxing away the whole collection, dusting down the shelving and getting the studio back into shape.  I need to clear several square meters to set up a Skulldred photo board and a space I can use dirt and sand away from my painting and sculpting space.

Once thats all done I can start trickling my projects through.  My John Blanche Undead Assault proj is taking up several shelves on its own, so breaking that up into sub projects will help.  All my GW plastics boxes I got for christmas will go into storage.

I think I may have to sit down in the future and prepaint a whole array of shields so that I can check off a load of figures quickly.  I am inclined towards making some flat centered shields ideal for painting and getting these cast up rather than filling citadel plastic shields.

Maybe I print off some paper banners to begin with from my oldhammer resources too.

I am thinking of setting up a 'totally finished only' shelf.  No varnish, no tufts... your not coming in!

Critical Mass

Okay, so heres the thing, dear reader.  My push to base up and paint all my minis has been violently successful in the first months of the campaign.  The thing is... well, if you take N number of miniatures that occupy S space in baggies, stored in boxes, then attach them using G glue to some very nice 30mm MDF (B) bases you get this forumula...

S(B x 30) = 1A+ (G+B+fingers =Z7 debonder)

1 being 100% and A being my arse.  Yes, the mathematics proves it.. I am up to my arse in minis.

By basing things I have increased their surface area, and that is a greater area than I can deal with neatly.  My current tubs method is not working as they dicontinued my 3 litre tupperware tubs, and you cannot store 30mm based and painted minis economically in take out containers.

Therefore I am up for suggestions on how to store my preciousnesses in an economical way.  Right now, I am leaning toward box files with magnetic sheeting... but a decent box file costs about 20 Australian bucks (or in Canadian Dollars Aboot 20 bucks).  An a4 sized bit of rubber steel sheet is pretty pricey out here also.  Australians are getting screwed badly with pricing.

I dont want to lay them down in foam trays... in my experience thats like rubbing sandpaper on your paintjobs.  I want to go the 'standing up with magnets' route.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Rebase-age groupshot

Its been a while since I did a group shot.  My blog started with lots of groupshots of minis on black.  I kinda loved that, so I did a quick phone snap after decorating some bases with flock in what little hobby time I had.

  Terrible pic, but hey...

Most of these I have posted earlier, but remind me in the comments if there is any I haven't and I will snap some proper pictures with the digital camera rather than my phone.  I know the beastman, mordheim dog and ludmilla loinripper are new.
Once again when I have a moment on the PC (wife is using it for an urgent lolcats update), I will put proper captions and stuff in.
Tired.  Long day.  Need a cup of tea.
Somewhere the tea is getting cold...

Citadel minis:  All and sundry!

A legion of eight!

A legion is, last time I checked, slightly more than eight... but as these are Greater Skeletons, maybe their like Chuck Norris, who is a delta force of one, after all.

This is a brilliant boxed set- very characterful, realistic take on skeletons that predated the Perry cackling whacky teeth skeletons that dominated my early years.  I really dislike citadels current plastic skeletons... I dunno, they look like chunky halloween decorations.  These Skeletal figures are beautifully sculpted and much more realistic in their proportions, but if I can put on my critical hood for a moment, come from the era in Guthries early work which was very stiff in its posing.  That said, all of Ral Partha releases at the time where stiff as hell, holding weapons in a weighless way like you see a king holding a sceptre in a medieval painting.

   By the way, I think Julie's modern minis are breathtakingly fluid in their posing- the summoning miniature with writhing nymphs is a masterpeice of figure work... so hey, hard to fault the lass!  My first sculpts make me cringe and I have only been doing it for a few years.  I am just saying that I realise these figures may look a bit flat and stiff to modern gamers.

  But, what they lack in depth and dynamics, they make up in old school charm, are a pleasure to paint and I do have a soft spot for them.  The Undead Balrog, hound handler are really strong designs and classics of their type.  Plus the assembly of the Balrog is genius... one of the easiest multipart models to assemble ever.  I gave his neck a gentle bend to give him more depth.  If you havent done this before, its actually quite easy.  Wrap the part in tissue to distribute the pressure of your pliers and make small, slow gentle bends.  A quick bend will shear the model at its weak spot.  I suspect heating the model would help, but rarely find a problem reposing.

WIP:  Julie Guthrie's Undead rising from the grave

It was a hot, dry day today, so I rushed through some 'nearly there' minis to get them to varnish stage... but ran out of time.  So, I guess I am about fifty percent of the way through this lot...  The further back, and more unfocused, the more unfinished.  I think they need 'shrooms on their bases.

Another reason I am hurrying these ahead of my Undead Assault Project is that the boxed set I received was sealed, but on opening I found them just starting to tarnish.  So the faster I get them well and truely sealed, the more likely they are to survive the next decade.  My priming didnt get into all the cracks, so I was eager to varnish them.  Fingers crossed for next week.

By the way, the great news is that Iron Wind Metals still produce all the figures in this range.

Yay!

The bad news is that (at the time of writing this blog entry) they are individually listed and scattered throughout the fantasy sections of their webstore.  Most are in fantasy armies/skeletons, but some are in roleplaying and supernaturals if I remember rightly.  Its no biggie, I suppose... whilst hunting through you will encounter lots of cool old school classics, so it is time well spent.

I must confess I am starting to burn out painting bone and zombie flesh.  Even the Splintered light stuff for Skulldred is undead.  I may hoff break and do something really out there next.  Maybe some Realm Of Chaos or Malifaux for a change... oh... no my Malifaux figures are all undead too.  Hmmm.

 

Female magic user

A parcel arrived today with a couple of minis- one of which was this Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User.  She turned out to be the mid level of one of the three stage figures ral partha put out for dnd gamers.  Sculpted by Tom Meier, it features his trademark 'too fine to paint' details.  Bloody impressive is our Tom's steady hand, as he proves here by sculpting a raised pentagram on her belt buckle using nothing but green stuff and inhuman patience.

Occasionally I get a mini that just needs a bit of sprucing up rather than stripping.  This one was neatly undercoated and base colored, but the pevious owner seemed to have stopped mid way (perhaps the low level version of her died and he no longer needed the mid level!) and heck, such a nice shade of pink too.

Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User.  Sculptor:  Tom Meier.

Whilst my wife was enjoying a double bill of 'my big fat gypsy wedding', I decided to see if I could knock out a figure on the same day it arrived.  I took some photos along the way.

First I needed to address the flash.  Almost all minis from the 80's have the remains of flash under their paint jobs.  Kids where not clued up on cleaning this off I guess... or too lazy.  This one was reasonably well cleaned on the outside, but a chased off some flash under her arm  and had to re shape her wand arm, which was poorly cast and had a thick nub of metal on it.

As she arrived, mounted on a 30mm x 2mm MDF base by 'Warbases'

 

Next I re-established the base colors, painting over the scuffs and bringing her to an even, matt finish.  If your trying to get good at mini painting, the first thing you should try and do is just base coat neatly and evenly.  It takes a bit of discipline, and it is not how your shown how to do it in white dwarf or painting guides these days, which focus on completely finishing a section before moving on to the other- but I suspect this is mainly due to making it easy to illustrate, rather than being the best method to actually paint.  John Blanche (who?) mentioned this in a Blanchitsu a while back... he still gets all his base colors down first before shading.

  By the way, I firmly believe you should paint your gaming miniatures with their base colors before playing with them.  Undercoated or raw minis are dreadful to play.  By at least getting all the colors in, your minis look good at a distance- at which, lets face it, most games are played.  Once colored in, your good to game.

My current base painting technique involves the brilliant, BRILLIANT Liquitex Burnt Umber- which provides deep rich soil colors when applied in varying thicknesses.

So I kept the shading and detailing very simple, as I wanted her finished in one sitting.  I used slightly thinned black ink to edge all her details- flow aid helps here.  I also used a few glazes, which as you probably know, I thin with matte medium and flow aid.  Here I used an old bottle of Titilating pink from the monster Citadel Boxed set.

Varnished and ready for Skulldred.  "A wizards staff has a knob on the end"

A rear view.