Two new pieces for Studio McVey

I can now show two of the commissions I have been working on for Studio McVey (yay!) as they havenow been previewed on their Facebook Page and website... Gilgamesh the ex-pit fighting Bounty Dog and a new version of the classic Vokker Dargu of the Firebrand Rebellion.

Gilgamesh:

Non-butchered pics can be found on Putty & Paint: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/4483

And Vokker

Who is also up on Putty & Paint: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/4482

I might have made the photos too large... his face looks all grainy... I dont remember him being like that IRL!

Vokker Dargu for Studio McVey

I am not a big commission painter - in fact I rarely take on projects unless they really grab me... but when Studio McVey approached me to paint one of their new Sedition Wars miniatures it was inevitable going to be one of those 'moments'! The miniature that fell to me to paint was a special piece from the Battle for Alabaster Kickstarter created as a 'thank you' for the backers' patience at the delay of the game launch.

He is an alternate version of the pistol-toting rebel Captain Vokker Dargu. As there was an existing paint-job of this guy, part of my brief was to paint him in the same colours as the original studio version. I struggled to get decent shots of him, so am secretly hoping Studio McVey might get some, but here are my photos:

Guess what just arrived...

More on this later!

Pretty awesome weekend

Wow, what a weekend... 650 miles on the clock, but most definitely worth it!

It all started on Friday when I started my long trek 'up country' to Mansfield. I decided to take a slight detour to my parents place and stayed there Friday night, which halved the driving I'd need to do on the Saturday morning (only 2 hours driving - yay!). And why was I heading to Mansfield from deepest darkest Devon?

Sedition Wars on KickStarter!

I'll admit now, this is pretty much the blogging equivalent of a re-tweet!

I've been following the Studio McVey Sedition Wars releases since the very beginning, and loved pretty much every one. I have a good handful in the limited edition resin, and you've all seen the diorama I put together for my Crystal Brush entry, so I can 100% endorse  the quality of the figures, and I trust the guys involved enough to support the game too.


Head over to Kickstarter to follow their progress, and hopefully you'll feel inclined to support them too!

What they've said on the Studio McVey Blog can be seen here: http://studiomcvey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/kickstart-us.html

And of course the kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

Dead End - my Sedition Wars vignette

With the Crystal Brush over, and now that I am back in the UK, I thought it was about time I posted up the completed photos of my diorama! The diorama category was ridiculously well attended at the competition, and I unfortunately didnt manage to place in the top three with this.... however, there was another category which looked at all the models entered into the whole competition focussed purely on narrative, and I was fortunate enough to win a Bronze in that category!

Sharro and other WIPs shot

Sharro is nearly complete now (yay!), but these photos have shown me a few areas which need a little more work (namely the left side of the face as we look at it and a few other things like her shoes). I have kept the orange and white scheme (it makes a change for me not to reinvent the model half way through with this project...!).

I have also just realised her hand in the air is supposed to be a glove - I thought it was just a poor cast. Might have to do something about that... and the forearm on the other hand is covered by an arm band too... And her eye-brows look huuuuuge in the pics - I thing some of that is the shadow from her brow, but it is something which needs to be fixed!

Decals and the start of the weathering

A quick update!

Decals have now been added to the base... just a few to add a little interest, but not too many to be overwhelming. I have also started to add some rust spots, oil stains etc and been adding very thin washes of colour to subtly change some of the tones. Next will be to finalise where everything should be positioned and drill some holes for the pins *gulp*

Easy like Sunday Morning

Nothing like a Commodores quote to start off a blog post, but I wanted to share the most recent changes to the McVey diorama I am working on. Been painting some incidental details for the piece and slowly pulling the rest of the base together.

Now we're getting somewhere!

The colours are really coming together now - its ended up a grey, black and yellow scheme which compliments the models rather nicely!

Take a look...

U-turn on colour choices!! (again!)

Sometimes you get to a point in a build where someone points something out and you have a bit of a 'moment' and you realise you may have gone down the wrong avenue. This was one of those moments...! It was brought to my attention that the colourful background was really competing for pride of place against the miniatures themselves, which was certainly not what I wanted.

I asked around a bit for more opinions and I came to the decision that something needed to be done. So over the weekend, I had a marathon session to flip the 'reset switch' and lay down some new base colours for the scene.

Getting the colours down

So I have really started to get some colours down on the scene itself now.

Ignore the mess, I made the schoolboy error of painting the pipework (as they were metallic) BEFORE painting the wall behind. The pipes will be totally redone :P The following photos should give you an idea of my colour scheme. I am hoping it will contrast nicely with the pinky yellow of the strain as well as the orange accents on Sharro.

The yellow stripe on the corner will be yellow and black hazard stripes, and these will feature in a number of other areas too. The red stripe will follow through all the way round the scene. I am currently thinking about using a mid grey for the door.

In other news, we have actually hit 40 followers! Thanks for your interest guys :)

A messy WIP

Layers and layers of green over a black undercoat.... why do i do it to myself? I reckon it would have been much easier with an airbrush, but ho-hum!

It's going through the 'messy' stage at the moment... Its going to have a two-toned wall with green at the bottom (nowhere near this saturated by the time I am finished) and a light coloured two-thirds at the top.

At the moment this is a neutral grey but I am more and more tempted to change it to a light khaki brown. I will weather the green in one area  to help me decide.

Studio McVey competition over at Platoon Britannica

As part of the ongoing 'Best of British' event that we are running over at Platoon Britannica, we have just announced the second painting competition in the series - the McVey McLovin'. In essence, anything by Studio McVey (Sedition Wars or Collectors Series or a mix of the two) is game, and we are pleased to announce that we have managed to get hold of the increasingly rare and now out of production Kara Black models as top prize (the original one with the big gun)!

It would be really great to see what you come up with!

The diorama sprayed black

Ok, I think I'm at a point where I can start to paint the base!

It feels like a real milestone, and I am looking forward to tackling it. I think I will do it next, even though Sharro and the revenants aren't 100% complete as I can then make sure all of the components come together cohesively.

Sharro gets a lick of paint

Good evening campers!

Started painting Sharro today... lovely little mini, and very different from the other two models I have painted for this scene. To contrast with the gribbliness of the Strain I have tried to keep this girl really clean and sharp, and also gone for orange as the accent colour rather than the blue of the boys.

A little progress

So, the weekend brought more progress on my diorama. The scene itself is pretty much done (more about that in a moment), and the two Revenants are coming along nicely. I have spent a fair bit of time on the flesh tones of the first one I painted to make it match the other one more closely, and the trousers of the second one to  match those of the first!

Strain Revenant - flesh done!

Blimey.... February already??

Flesh is done! Made a bit of a faux pas with the trouser colour, but that can be changed... I am thinking of making it blue and yellow like the first revenant I painted. The grey here seems too desaturated for the rest of the model throwing it out of balance. It almost makes it look like I just haven't painted the trousers at all...

The second Revenant - much better so far!

After the previous attempt, I decided to try something a little different... in fact the reverse of what I did last time. Colour first and then shade!

Toosh reminded me of a really lovely Nurgle Demon painted by Bohun where he really went to town on the colour (he was determined to move away from the stereotypical green Great Unclean One). Using that as inspiration I have gone for oranges and purples for the wounds over a yellow ochre base. So far I am still on the 'colour' stage, but it is already looking much more interesting (to me at least). What do you think?

Learning Curve... a steep one! (AKA the first Revenant)

Well, sometimes in the pursuit of that next technique/style you have seen on t'interweb you sometimes leave casualties in the field... That was me this weekend...

I had got myself into a position where I wanted to really go to town on painting models for my small vignette this weekend, so I spent one of my few remaining annual leave days on a day off on friday. The intent was to get to a point by the end of the day where the Strain Revenant that I had prepped was painted. This, however did not really go according to plan...

As I wanted quite a lot of lividity to all the wounds on the revenant, I decided that it would be best to paint in almost a greyscale and then add all the colour afterwards. This may have been a mistake as the glazes I used didnt really sit well over the top of the shading and I didnt get the effect I was looking for. It ended up rather 'muddy' and not as neat as I had hoped.

I will start at the end for anyone who just wants to see where I finished.... after the break I will go into more detail about what I did. This is the revenant NOW: