Tabby!

...is gonna steal all your stuff... (Click here for the theme tune)

I love Nextwave, so to the casual observer it might be strange that I’ve taken so long to work my way through painting miniatures of them (8 years and counting currently). I’m getting there, slowly but surely!

There are a couple of variations in how her costume appeared, but I used this image for reference whilst painting (although I used the more metallic design from other pieces of art for her flight belt).

I painted the back of the miniature too, as is the convention. Not my finest work, but looks good at tabletop height!

Which brings me to another point: I used my new Foldio photo booth that I got for Christmas, which comes with pros and cons - 

Pros: better pictures, so you can see a truer representation of the colours (although I’m still not quite there yet with my miniature photography - according to the literature that came with the photo booth, there’s a Foldio photo editing app available that I might download and try)

Cons better pictures, so you can see every little flaw or mistake - she looks fine at arms length, but blown up and lit like this I start to notice things like the patchy bit on her skirt, or the sloppy painting on her coat. Eh, I’m paining these for fun rather than profit, and I can live with that!

Finishing her means I get to cross another item off of the 2019 Challenge list, which is something that’s happened very infrequently this year!

• Finish something  old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game of Blackstone Fortress with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pic

• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

I also picked up the limited edition Grombrindal miniature this week:

Because as well as it being a cool miniature, I thought a Squat Tech-Priest would sit nicely in a radical Ordo Xenos warband alongside a Howling Banshee. That does mean that there’s no movement on getting the Tally into the positive before the end of the year:

38 vs 43 = -5

I also took the opportunity to try out my new Citadel Paint Stick, and undercounted some miniatures. Fun fact - it’s very difficult to attach miniatures on non-GW bases to it, as they have a shallower slope and the elastic bands tend to slip off of them - coincidence of planned, I’ll let you decide...

Monica!

Is gonna microwave your ass (to once again reference the Nextwave theme tune):

She was in the Avengers, you know.

This was quite a fun miniature to paint, even though I'm not normally a fan of painting white, and colour matching something existing rather than just making it up as I go along (the jacket, in this case) is also not one of my favourite things. I was tempted to try and paint some 'sparkles' on the 'whoosh' effect on the miniature, but thought better of it...

Finishing Monica means that I'm now past the half way point for completing the Nextwave squad (and it's only taken me five and a half years). Once I've finished Tabitha and Aaron, I'll see about getting some Doombot heads to splice onto generic suited thug bodies to make some mooks for them to punch out. Plus, another fringe benefit of Nextwave being such a mad series is that I could dig through my stashes of Heroclix, pull out multiple Wolverine models, replace all their heads with telephones, and call it good for a random Beyond Corporation weapon...

Tally:

1 vs 0 = +1

But what next? I think I might stick to my guns and try to clear off my painting table to make space to make some terrain, truth be told...

Elsa!

Is gonna speak with an accent! (As per last time, see the theme tune for the reference). I was half-tempted to throw in a Frozen reference, but managed to reign in my impulse...

So yeah, four and a half years after the first one, I've finished another member of the Nextwave squad!

Elsa, British sass monster and general all-around badass.

This miniature is another good example of the variability of the quality of heroclix sculpts - while she has some nice touches, her face is a little flat, and her coat, oh her coat! Painting coats and capes and drapery are a funny thing for me - sometimes, I get super into the layering, and it just seems to flow, and I really enjoy it (case in point: the Hellboy heroclix I repainted some years ago); this coat was not one of them:

The layers just felt wrong, so I'd glaze the whole thing with the base colour to try and knock it all back and start layering highlights again, and it would feel wrong again, and I just kept working on it until I felt I couldn't do anymore...

Maybe this is why it's taking me so long to paint the Nextwave squad, they're all wearing trench coats!

Finishing her brings the Tally to:

19 vs 360 = -341

If I continue at this blistering pace I'll have the rest of the squad finished by 2030...

(Which will give me plenty of time to sort out some Doombot heads to pop on generic suited miniatures to make broccoli men!)

[side note: I was lying in bed, finishing off this blog post and almost ready to publish, when I suddenly realised that I'd forgotten to paint the Bloodstone choker, the things that gives Elsa her powers and her name, as I'd planned to save it for last... Dammit, it's nearly one in the morning, hopefully I get the chance to finish her off tomorrow after work and then sneakily go back and replace the first picture in this post! So this should have been posted on Saturday rather than Sunday in the end, and that's why - fun fact: the post-choker picture looks almost identical to the original picture, you pretty much couldn't tell the difference. Ah well]

The Captain!

...his name is The Captain (see the Nextwave theme song here if you don't get the reference)

So yeah, several years after originally planning to do Nextwave in miniature, and only a couple of months after suitable Heroclix minis came out, I've actually finished painting something!

The freehand "Heartstar of the space between the galaxies" isn't perfect, but his sneakers look nice from this distance, so hey, it's a win overall I guess. I've got the rest of the Nextwave squad in the painting queue in various stages of completedness, but who knows when my fancy will swing this way again... (although, I yesterday discovered that Heroclix have made a Dirk Anger fig... but if I get that, I'll need to convert some wacky figs, like windmill-faced Samurai, apes dressed as Wolverine, and cuddly koala bears of doom...)

Finishing The Captain brings the tally to:

98 vs 270 = -172

Only a couple to go to break a century! I wish I had better focus. Once this post goes up, I'm planning on going back to painting my 3rd edition Blood Bowl Human team. However, it's entirely likely that I'll get distracted and start painting the 11th Doctor and Amy Pond, a not-Ash (of Evil Dead fame), or even Judge Dredd.

But don't quote me on that, I've got a load of miniatures ready for undercoating...