Another bust in progress - Uncle John by Infamy Miniatures

I have been working on a little something alongside all of my recent commissions. A 1/10 Steampunk bust by Infamy Miniatures... This is 'Uncle John' the leader of 'Uncle John's Animal Circus'

"There are few things more terrifying than the opening of London Zoo's gates. The beasts roam free with Uncle John at the head of the procession rounding up a crowd to witness his fabulous animal circus. None of the men, women and children who are captured and dragged screaming into the zoo are ever seen again."

He is a fabulous digital sculpt which is actually just part of a full figure being released by Infamy at some point in 30mm. Quite disturbingly, it has Uncle John performing some kind of surgery on one of his bionic chimps...!

This bust is a beautiful cast too... but enough of me frothing, let me show you some piccies.

 Look at the cute monkey's face... I used a photo of the monkey from Prates of the Caribbean for reference

And one with his other friend, the Macaw

He's still got it...

I joined Cool Mini or Not back in the annals of time (2002 to be precise), and back then for me it was a real eye opener into the wider hobby outside of the Games Workshop universe which many of us cut our teeth on. So, I've been a member for a very long time, (not to mention met my better half) and through all that time, the one constant is that the top scores have got progressively more difficult to obtain.

I last had a new miniature in my CMoN top 5 (the number of minis that go to make up your personal rank) back in 2011 (Wolf, my mini which won be Best at Show for Salute), but the others are all 2005-6... a VERY long time ago...!

But today, I noticed a very welcome sight... the Crazy Ivan bust I painted suddenly jumped in the number of votes it received... why? It had made its way onto the top miniatures of the last 7 days! woop woop!

Not only that, but with a score of 9.4 (long may that continue) it inserts itself onto my personal top 5!

So that brings me up to

I've still got it!

Crazy Ivan by Forged Monkey

Forged Monkey is a small mini company by German Miniature Maestro Raffaele Picca (of Massive Voodoo fame), and they produce an eclectic mix of miniatures and busts designed with the painter in mind. I have a number of their busts, and being a big fan of painting flesh tones, this Knucklehead bust really screamed out to me to get painted.

On the suggestion of my mate MrDee I went for a Russian gangster theme... unwittingly following a similar path to Raffa himself... bit of a scary prospect that! Fortunately I didn't realise until I was finished and wanted to see if anyone else had painted him... (Raffa's paint job >>here<<). Actually, before you see the master's work, here's my interpretation:

Each of the tattoos has a specific meaning, some less savoury than others. For example the tattoo on his chest shows a Russian cathedral, where the number of domes shows the number of convictions. The bulls on his back signifies a fight for leadership in the criminal environment.

Better pictures (and an opportunity for members to vote) can be found on Putty & Paint here: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/4529

Just added this guy to Cool Mini or Not too: http://www.coolminiornot.com/356205

Votey-vote vote-vote :)

Wamp award nomination!!

Wamp award nomination!!

Well, as starts to the miniature year go, this one has been pretty good. Spent some good painting time on a new commission which is shaping up to be one of my best, I have a new compressor which is looking like a fantastic investment and I am well on my way to putting together a small Imperial Fist (yellow Space Marines) 40K army.

The cherry on the top of this positive start is that it turns out that I have been nominated for the best Steampunk paintjob in the 2013 Wamp Awards! What is Wamp? Wamp is a large community of hobbyists on a forum run by Brett 'Darklord' Johnson. They are a great, and pasisonate community who hold frequent online painting competitions which are always heavily subscribed and really well supported by the industry, with oodles of prizes up for grabs.

The Wamp Awards are a peer nominated set of awards rather than a painting competition much like the BAFTAs with a number of different categories and then voted on by the community. It is my favourite Ork bust Einstein which has been shortlisted - thank you to all who thought of me/him for this category :D

The rest of the shortlist is as follows:
Best Painted steampunk (this is a link to the category with all the images and the voting)

Kitty Reimer - Morsi
Einstein - Peter Bell
Time - Fesechko
Al Capone - Fabrizio Russo
Tallulah Belle - Javier González

More details of the other categories etc can be found here: Wamp Awards

Don't forget to go over to Wamp and have a look at all the categories and vote for whatever takes your fancy - lots of eye candy to be had!

Congratulations to all who were nominated!

So, the competition is stiff, and there are some BIG names in my category, but whatever happens, I am really chuffed to be included alongside these people!

Einstein does seem to get about a bit ;)

'Editors Choice' on Putty and Paint!

Now, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but the Orc bust is doing me proud - he has been picked by the bosses on Putty and Paint to be one of their 'Editors Choice' minis and shown on their homepage! (woohoo!) The extra visibility seems to be helping the number of votes he's had too, as in just 4 days, he already has more votes than any of my other entries on the site. You can take a look and see how he is doing here: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/1666

He is also doing quite well over on Cool Mini or Not - the best I've done for quite some time, and is currently in my top 5 of all time. Hopefully he will stay there as I am really very pleased with the way he has turned out. Any of you crazy voting types can do that here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/329241 (6 more votes until the magic 50!)

For those of you who want to see the pics here, rather than on P&P or CMoN, here they are:

Enjoy!

Orc bust back on the workbench

In my usual hap-hazard way of working on what really grabs me, I spent a good bit of Thursday working on 'Einstein' the Figone Orc bust from back in February, and have actually got some half-decent photos of him! And what a photogenic lad he is too...!

On the workbench - Figone Orc Bust

Whats next on the table?

An orc bust by French company Figone - he has been thoroughly enjoyable to paint so far, and I have some ideas for the rest of him to try and get some different textures on there. Thick, worn leather apron and a white pin striped shirt.

Not very Orc-like? It'll fit a lot more when I have attached his brass and steel goggles. I wanted to take the sci-fi orc and make him a little more steampunky. I have attached these two pics... the first one is much sharper (from my actual camera) but the second one is definitely a better colour match - its all a lot richer.

Gladiatorc (minus plinth)

I think I am definitely bitten by the painting bug at the moment... I haven't even considered playing anything on the PC... Diablo has been left lonely and the various other MMOs that I've been playing are sat forlorn, and disappointed at their lack of game time. I, however, have been painting like a demon (for me at least)! My usual slow plod through miniatures has been sped up significantly by my current enthusiasm.

So, moving swiftly on, other than sorting out a plinth, this bad boy is done!

I have started painting the Gladiatorc

I sculpted an orc bust last year, I don't know if you saw the post. It was an Orc Gladiator, or 'Gladiatorc' as I lovingly called him. I spent a lot of time preparing to cast it - bought all the ingredients, resin, rubber the works. But I never got round to making the mould... I bottled it! So I still havent actually had a go at casting anything... doh!

However, I do have some good news! Gladiatorc has actually been picked up by Model Display Products (MDP) to add to their range of fantasy and sci-fi busts. What a result! Look out for it on their website soon!

Avelonian recruit

This bust by Alkemy/Kraken was my entry for the large scale (54mm and above) category in the Crystal Brush competition at Adepticon.

I think this may well be the best technical painting I have done and although I didnt receive an award for him at the show, I am still really pleased with the way he turned out. All acrylic and 100% brush painted, I was pretty chuffed with the smoothness of the flesh tones in particular, but I also like the way the painting has helped emphasise the haunted look on his face.

Avelonian bust

This is the bust as it stands now. He needs a little "je ne sais quoi" so I am going to head over to The Basement and see if any of those talented buggers can point me in the right direction! Obviously he needs a plinth and I really want to do something with the helmet that originally came with the model., maybe present it on the plinth...

More WIPS - painting one bust and sculpting another!

So, next up are a couple more WIPs - the Avelonian bust is heading rapidly to completion (although I keep looking at it wanting to add some kind of freehand), and a Pirate Orc Bust a 'Jolly Bodger' so to speak...

The Avelonian:

The Pirate Orc has been sculpted in my usual 50:50 mix of Super Sculpey firm and regular and has a ball-bearing eye. I used a different technique to stop the sculpey from separating from the armature this time though, and it made a massive difference - I added a procreate core to the armature and before it had cured I started adding the bulk of the sculpey. Then I left it to dry before continuing the sculpt.

This is it now, after the first bake (as you can see, thos one is more GW in style than the last Bonner-esque one):

Avelonian Recruit bust - a new WIP

Made a few changes to the blog recently, most notably the image 'slider' at the top of the home page, and the removal of 'jump breaks' to show the whole post on the home page. I hope you like them, and that there isnt too much 'guff' at the top of the page before you get to the posts! The sliding images will link to the most relevant/important blog posts like recently complete minis or major WIPs.

Model-wise, I have started the Avelonian Recruit bust by Alkemy. Its really nice to try something in a different scale - from the top of his head to the bottom edge of his chest he is almost exactly 40mm tall. A good size for a bust to paint for fun, and this guy seems almost to be painting himself.

I have added some more colour to him tonight, but only some green and a little more leather-work on the strap that is on the left side of his chest (as you look at it). As it stands right now, the green needs darkening, but it makes him look almost like a character from Robin Hood...!