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| source: WolfSkullJack |
A very merry Christmas and adjacent holidays to you all. May 2017 treat us all a little kinder.
Sunday, 25 December 2016
Friday, 23 December 2016
Frostgrave: Two more for the Frozen City
Hi folks! In a change to our scheduled programming we're taking a seasonal plunge into winter cold and fantastical locations. Yep, we're back in Frostgrave.
This time I'm bringing a knight and an archer to the party. I decided to keep the Dark Age feel going with the knight and realised that a repurposed Rohan captain would pass muster. I always wanted a mix of fantasy races in the warband so another LOTR figure - the dwarf with the deformed eye - joined up as well. Let's start with him.
In addition to a mix of races, I wanted the warband to have a rag-tag feel rather than a complete mercenary company with uniforms. As a result I'm just choosing whatever colours that I think will suit the model. In this case, green would stand out nicely against the more russet knight and the tartan infantryman already. The pale under-tunic is stone grey which I also used to highlight the green. Helps tie the colours together and gives the whole model a consistent tone.
The knight needed a bit of thought. With the horses on the shield, I needed to stay a long way away from the greens of most of Rohan. Decided that reds and russet browns would be my go-to on the knight. Vallejo Hull Red made a really, really nice russet brown for the cloak, shading with carroburg crimson, over-highlighting with a bit of bone and then knocking back to red-brown with a mix of chestnut and red inks. It's not quite as shiny as it seems. Sadly, I've got to wait for better weather to get some dullcote on there. The rest of the model pretty much used all the brown tones I usually have lying around. The end result, a nice, muted knight, not flashy, a "professional".
With those two - fairly quick - paintjobs done, my warband is almost 50% complete. Three out of seven (well, 11 if you include the zombie and three demons I need to paint) is an agreeable bit of progress. More soon! Until then.
TTFN
This time I'm bringing a knight and an archer to the party. I decided to keep the Dark Age feel going with the knight and realised that a repurposed Rohan captain would pass muster. I always wanted a mix of fantasy races in the warband so another LOTR figure - the dwarf with the deformed eye - joined up as well. Let's start with him.
In addition to a mix of races, I wanted the warband to have a rag-tag feel rather than a complete mercenary company with uniforms. As a result I'm just choosing whatever colours that I think will suit the model. In this case, green would stand out nicely against the more russet knight and the tartan infantryman already. The pale under-tunic is stone grey which I also used to highlight the green. Helps tie the colours together and gives the whole model a consistent tone.
The knight needed a bit of thought. With the horses on the shield, I needed to stay a long way away from the greens of most of Rohan. Decided that reds and russet browns would be my go-to on the knight. Vallejo Hull Red made a really, really nice russet brown for the cloak, shading with carroburg crimson, over-highlighting with a bit of bone and then knocking back to red-brown with a mix of chestnut and red inks. It's not quite as shiny as it seems. Sadly, I've got to wait for better weather to get some dullcote on there. The rest of the model pretty much used all the brown tones I usually have lying around. The end result, a nice, muted knight, not flashy, a "professional".
With those two - fairly quick - paintjobs done, my warband is almost 50% complete. Three out of seven (well, 11 if you include the zombie and three demons I need to paint) is an agreeable bit of progress. More soon! Until then.
TTFN
Thursday, 15 December 2016
The Future Belongs to the Mad
Hi folks, yes, the Fury Road reference in the title means that it is our fourth and final vehicle in the Post Apocalyptic car commission.
This one, with it's girt hench engine, I decided was the personal transport of some important gang member and thus has nicer paint and less damage than the others. It can outrun anything else on the road so sees less combat... or something.
I'll be honest, I think this one is the weakest construction of the four. I was trying to get a Zinge engine designed to replace ork trucks (approximate scale 1/35) into a 1/43 scale vehicle. It was just farcically vast and simply would not fit in any satisfying way. Eventually I broke out my post apocalyptic scrap mechanic head and figured a cut-and-shut job on the front would "work". I added an extra set of wheels mainly to hide gaps and did some welded on plates to stabilise the build. Unfortunately I just don't have the scratch building chops to do what I could see in my head so this had to do. Some Russian submachine guns in the headlamps and a random bit of stowage helped the overall effect.
The only classic car colour I hadn't really used is that lovely red that you see on Morse's car. Finding that shade can be tricky but thankfully there is a paint that fits the bill and is good for this one job. Vallejo Model Colour "Red". Just "Red". Nothing else. It's a horrible paint that dries very different to the colour in the bottle and is very, very shiny. I've found no other use for it (it came in a multipack)... but for this, it was perfect. So as usual I rusted the hell out of the car, put the red on and was feeling good.
I decided that the business end needed some fancification, plus, the steel plates down the side needed to be linked to the rest of the build. Black flames that lap over the plates seemed to fit the bill. The tarpaulin on the top gave me some pause. Initially, I thought to have one of those cheap blue jobs, but the blue would have looked horrible against the rest of the scheme. So a camo tarp like you see on survivalist webpages worked better.
And here they all are. I've enjoyed this project, been a lot of fun to flex my converting muscles and with Fury Road being one of my favourite films of the last ten years it's inspired me a bit. I'll almost certainly return to a post apocalyptic setting at some point. I think I want a gang of road warriors of my very own some day. But for now, that's that. Final few Shadows of Brimstone models up soon. Until then
TTFN.
This one, with it's girt hench engine, I decided was the personal transport of some important gang member and thus has nicer paint and less damage than the others. It can outrun anything else on the road so sees less combat... or something.
I'll be honest, I think this one is the weakest construction of the four. I was trying to get a Zinge engine designed to replace ork trucks (approximate scale 1/35) into a 1/43 scale vehicle. It was just farcically vast and simply would not fit in any satisfying way. Eventually I broke out my post apocalyptic scrap mechanic head and figured a cut-and-shut job on the front would "work". I added an extra set of wheels mainly to hide gaps and did some welded on plates to stabilise the build. Unfortunately I just don't have the scratch building chops to do what I could see in my head so this had to do. Some Russian submachine guns in the headlamps and a random bit of stowage helped the overall effect.
The only classic car colour I hadn't really used is that lovely red that you see on Morse's car. Finding that shade can be tricky but thankfully there is a paint that fits the bill and is good for this one job. Vallejo Model Colour "Red". Just "Red". Nothing else. It's a horrible paint that dries very different to the colour in the bottle and is very, very shiny. I've found no other use for it (it came in a multipack)... but for this, it was perfect. So as usual I rusted the hell out of the car, put the red on and was feeling good.
I decided that the business end needed some fancification, plus, the steel plates down the side needed to be linked to the rest of the build. Black flames that lap over the plates seemed to fit the bill. The tarpaulin on the top gave me some pause. Initially, I thought to have one of those cheap blue jobs, but the blue would have looked horrible against the rest of the scheme. So a camo tarp like you see on survivalist webpages worked better.
And here they all are. I've enjoyed this project, been a lot of fun to flex my converting muscles and with Fury Road being one of my favourite films of the last ten years it's inspired me a bit. I'll almost certainly return to a post apocalyptic setting at some point. I think I want a gang of road warriors of my very own some day. But for now, that's that. Final few Shadows of Brimstone models up soon. Until then
TTFN.
Tuesday, 6 December 2016
Shadows of Brimstone: Part Four
Hello there happy people, we're back with another whistle stop tour of progress on the Shadows of Brimstone commission!
It's going to be a bit whistle-stop because these were (with the exception of the scout) some of the, how to put this politely, less exceptional sculpts... So I don't have a huge amount to say. These were all either possessing odd proportions or strange fabric flows, some had anatomy problems, most had disappearing details (belts that start on one side and vanish on the other). There's only so much you can do with that sort of thing, so here we are.
We'll start with the best of the bunch. The scout (who I could not get properly in focus, rackum frackum grr) was the nicer of the four, although even she had a levitating rifle necessitating a rock under it and a face that was way more "standard white girl" than Native American. Using this as another occasion to play with my skin tones palette, I checked some references and set to. Given that "tanned but rosy" would be how I would describe the average tone, Bugman's Glow seemed the ideal starting point. This was shaded down with Reikland Fleshshade and then highlighted with increasing amounts of Cadian Fleshtone with a dash of Kislev Flesh for the final highlights. Then I glazed it back down with a thinned Seraphim Sepia. The buckskin clothing was various sand tones and I finished her off with the details from the picture on the card, warpaint, belt etc.
The gunslinger was another "alright" model, face was a bit weird, eyes almost missing. This one was painted to match the card and as a result doesn't work quite as well as a miniature, because artists can choose how their paintings are lit it doesn't matter if you have dark hair, dark hat, dark jacket. It all just works. With a miniature, you'd normally want to change up the tone a little, have some contrast breaks in the overall effect. She looks fine in person, you can see all the changes in which black I'm using, in photography? Not so much.
The Marshal is pretty much a twin of her sister model from back in part one. Just with physics defying coat added. Seriously sculptors. Look at the hair, look at the coat, look at the hair, answer me what is wrong with that picture... Again, colours from the card but this time a bit more mini-friendly!
This last one, the outlaw, I'm including for a sense of completeness, do not like this one at all, bizarre sculpted coat (although at least hair is normal), eyes in the wrong place on the head (nothing I could do about that). The only one of the whole lot of models I just have to say: Bad about. Considering the amount of complaining I've seen about the models online I'm surprised she's the only one. I will say that the casting is not great on a lot of them - the six that are last all have holes in really critical locations, one on the face and all need sculpting to fix - but people seem to be grumbling about the sculpts when it is the cheap casting that's at fault. Except for the outlaw. She's just bad. End of grumble.
Sorry this one seems grumpy, this batch has been somewhat trying so finding nice things to say can be tough. Promise I'll be cheerier next time! Until then.
TTFN
It's going to be a bit whistle-stop because these were (with the exception of the scout) some of the, how to put this politely, less exceptional sculpts... So I don't have a huge amount to say. These were all either possessing odd proportions or strange fabric flows, some had anatomy problems, most had disappearing details (belts that start on one side and vanish on the other). There's only so much you can do with that sort of thing, so here we are.
We'll start with the best of the bunch. The scout (who I could not get properly in focus, rackum frackum grr) was the nicer of the four, although even she had a levitating rifle necessitating a rock under it and a face that was way more "standard white girl" than Native American. Using this as another occasion to play with my skin tones palette, I checked some references and set to. Given that "tanned but rosy" would be how I would describe the average tone, Bugman's Glow seemed the ideal starting point. This was shaded down with Reikland Fleshshade and then highlighted with increasing amounts of Cadian Fleshtone with a dash of Kislev Flesh for the final highlights. Then I glazed it back down with a thinned Seraphim Sepia. The buckskin clothing was various sand tones and I finished her off with the details from the picture on the card, warpaint, belt etc.
The gunslinger was another "alright" model, face was a bit weird, eyes almost missing. This one was painted to match the card and as a result doesn't work quite as well as a miniature, because artists can choose how their paintings are lit it doesn't matter if you have dark hair, dark hat, dark jacket. It all just works. With a miniature, you'd normally want to change up the tone a little, have some contrast breaks in the overall effect. She looks fine in person, you can see all the changes in which black I'm using, in photography? Not so much.
The Marshal is pretty much a twin of her sister model from back in part one. Just with physics defying coat added. Seriously sculptors. Look at the hair, look at the coat, look at the hair, answer me what is wrong with that picture... Again, colours from the card but this time a bit more mini-friendly!
This last one, the outlaw, I'm including for a sense of completeness, do not like this one at all, bizarre sculpted coat (although at least hair is normal), eyes in the wrong place on the head (nothing I could do about that). The only one of the whole lot of models I just have to say: Bad about. Considering the amount of complaining I've seen about the models online I'm surprised she's the only one. I will say that the casting is not great on a lot of them - the six that are last all have holes in really critical locations, one on the face and all need sculpting to fix - but people seem to be grumbling about the sculpts when it is the cheap casting that's at fault. Except for the outlaw. She's just bad. End of grumble.
Sorry this one seems grumpy, this batch has been somewhat trying so finding nice things to say can be tough. Promise I'll be cheerier next time! Until then.
TTFN
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