Ral Partha Ettin

This Ral Partha Ettin is by Dennis Mize, and has evolved extra long arms in order to snap off enough times to make 80s kids learn how to pin limbs properly.

Blink Dogs

AD&D Blink Dogs

This month I have been entirely focused on sorting through my storage and rebasing all my figures to Renedra 25mm bases.  Boring stuff.  So I thought after two trays of the sodding things that I would actually paint something up to get a feeling of progress.

These four have been in my collection for many years, and I had given them a base coat of official DnD Blink Dog brown (very similar to mokey shit brown) and left it for a rainy day to complete the shading.  Naturally, years passed and I kinda got sick of looking at the bloody things and thinking "yawn, shading those is gonna be boring" before finding something else to paint.

However, I came up with the idea of painting them in various states of phasing in and out.  Et Voila.  My Blink Dogs suddenly became the most exciting thing on my painting table.

I achieved the look by glazing between the naturalistic Rottweiler parts to the green glow via Games Warpshop Sotek Green, which, I might add, I will die on a hill saying that it is blue.  It is goddamn blue.  Case closed.

I am a bit of a sucker for glazes.

AD&D Ogre wip

A quickie session today got me thus far on a Jes Goodwin AD&D ogre.  My inquisitor set required dry weather to spray, so I am back to fantasy.

  I read the 2nd edition Monster Manual again for the colours.  Though commonly yellow through brown, it says they can come in purple.  Perfect!  I also added the orange teeth, fingernails and white pupils on purple eyes and made sure its warts where 'of a different colour'.  I like how my AD&D minis are coming out very colourful... Much like the cover art of the era.

The skin still needs unifying glazes (where an extremely translucent colour is brushed over the whole area to tie the shading together) and work on metals and base.

I may do a little waterfall at the back too... that could be cute.  A little stream through the caverns.

I lost my mushroom maker in a studio reshuffle, so I will have to make a new one before I can festoon my collection with them.  I plan to go mushroom mad. Maybe even some snails and other critters too.  :)

Stirges suck

I only had an hour of hobby time today.

Stirges fall into the 'uhg, flying base... I will do that later' category, so these little blood sucking bastards have been loitering for a long time in my collection.  I had planned to use clear plastic rod, but the holes where just too small to make a strong connection.  I opted for blackwires, not because I like them, but because I wanted it done.  The skulls are a spare from The Skullchucker kit.

I used the colours from the AD&D 2nd ed monster manual from the time.

The photo is bad, the paintjob unfinished, but it charts my progress.  I want to do a second pass on these to add more contrast and highlights to the wing ribs.  The bases will get shrooms too.  Possibly baby shrieker mushrooms.

Last night I based and primed my entire Skaven horde, my remaining Talisman figures, and every last citadel AD&D minis bar the carrion crawler, which I need to find a nice base for before I glue it together.  All in all, a pretty good session.

Long way to go but it's gonna be a fun ride.

Three in progress

The recent onslaught on my backlog continues, with great progress on my Citadel AD&D collection.  Shriekers are FUN to paint!  I may need to get more :).

It is amazing how much you can achieve with a little focus and setting aside the need to be perfect in favour for 'good enough'.

Three very nearly finished figures drying off.  Just little details and a little edging to go.

The first is a Satyr from the Citadel Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series.  I find satyrs in greek myth boring- so made mine a form of forrest Fae.  It's funny how a paint job can turn a least liked figure to a fave.

Next up is The Inquisitor from The Talisman series, a true favourite of mine.  I painted one of these back in the eighties and it was the first I painted that managed to impress my friends.  Ain't that right Mr. Passingham?

This time around I varies the solid red with a cluxish white mask, which makes him scarier.

Finally is The Gypsy from the same release.  Again, I stayed away from the solid blue dress in the paint job in the advert, mainly because gypsy skirts and blouses are usually separate (pfff, girl brain, you know).   A touch of turquoise hints at magical powers.  Coz magic is turquoise... K?

 

Beauty is in it

Limited edition Beholder for half price?  Yoink!

Not my fave sculpt of this type of beastie to be honest, that prize going to one of Julie Guthrie's eyeballers.  This one kinda looks like a lounge lizard saying something like 'hey baby, did you fall from the heaven?  (If so take 99d8 HP damage.)'.

I have the citadel one somewhere, probably in a bag marked 'sod fixing these eyestalks for a laugh'.

I suppose to follow up my sphincter beasts I will have to make A Behinder?  It is a large bum with dozens of little bums on stalks, each with their own magical abilities.

Repainting Dungeons and Dragons minis, The Guild and Windows.

Yay.
Installing my entire computer system again.  As a digital artist who has been around the block a few times, that means a lot of software packages that all need nursing, registering and whatever...  Point is it was a long hot day with boredom and task bars.
Fortunately for me a package of D&D plastics arrived for me to tinker with whilst watching endless spinning gifs telling me my pc maybe hasn't crashed just yet.

So the good news is you can easily take off the paint.  Nail polish remover on a cotton bud and in a few minutes of gentle rubbing and voila.  Bad news is that there really isnt that much detail underneath to clean the mank off of.  Those figures may look like they are clogged up with paint... really they are just a bit smooth.

I was actually quite impressed with how some where painted- certainly good enough for playing Dnd- which is mostly in darkened living rooms with a map a few feet from you.  I would certainly consider them as a gaming option- especially now they are going to be rereleased in non-random packs.
Personally I would love to see them release unpainted styrene versions- even if just available via mail order.  But anyway- there you go.

I stripped down an Everfrost ranger, but it really wasnt worth the trouble IMHO.  I think the stripper may have taken off a little detail, which was superficial at best.  Spray primer and undercoat, and it was back to looking rubbery and gluggy.

So for test figure 2, I tried overpainting.  Rather than use spray primer, I washed the figures in soapy water to clean off any grease, and using a big brush and Vallejo dark grey gently drybrushed the model.  After this dried, the thin dusting of paint gave the next overbrush purchase- and voila, the model was nicely covered and ready to paint.  I would recommend this method to undercoat- perhaps only stripping really gluggy trouble spots using gentle cotton wipes.

I grabbed a hook horror, Lightening Lizard, Digester and Giant Carrion Crawler too- and the bigger creatures are much better than the human sized figures- the horror itself is excellent.  Grabbing plastic versions of really, really big nasties is a great solution- but I myself would run to Reaper for my player characters personally and Otherworld for all other monsters.

To get rid of the plasticy look on some of the monsters I first filled the gaps and then stippled Vallejo Plastic Putty using a pin and a sponge.  This put some fine texture on the smooth surfaces.  Green stuff sticks perfectly well, so details can be popped back on if you can be bothered.  I think I will write off the everfrost ranger as a bad experiment- but I can see my Hook Horror appearing in many a Skulldred game.

That was my hobby time for today.  Oh, and if you have not seen the delectable Felicia Day's hilarious websode series on MMOG addiction, you MUST watch the guild.  Every bit as great as the original Red vs. Blue.

Linky:  THE GUILD

Keeping the Karmic Wolves at the door

Today I broke my painting drought with a full on onslaught of my leadpile.  Many fell to my mighty brush this day, (I hear America has been scoring pretty good on their own to do list today as well), and I discovered one really good trick; and that trick is this... kill your karmic blockers.
There is, I dare say, one or two figures hanging around your collection like a bad smell, never being painted and draining your enthusiasm just looking at them.  For me, its been a half orc (I only have one) loitering around the fringes of my orcs, an elf archer, a samurai warrior (I do not collect Oriental fantasy figures as a general rule) and a dire wolf, the hobgoblin and the Chaos Warrior from the brilliance that is the BC2 Monster Starter Set.
  Having these figures is not good for your hobby soul- they accumulate at the fringes of your collection, gathering as a clogging sense of dissatisfaction that taints the whole.
  Today, being sick with a cold and generally unmotivated to sculpt, I tackled those figures, and the rush of vitality that returned when they where finished was astounding.  Invigorated thus by the fall of my karmic blockers, I stormed ahead and got 90% of the way through 28 figures- completing a handful of those to my liking.  Count em.  28.

Set aside a day of pain to tackle those ones, and you wont believe what it will do for your lead pile.     Kill your karmic blockers today.

Citadel FA19 female fighter with sword, Dwarf Adventurer, Talisman Necromancer,
C13 Lesser Goblin, ADD OH2 Samurai, Wood Elf

The dwarf and Lesser goblin here are what I call 'soft targets'- things I know I can paint really quickly.  On days I do not feel like a challenge, I bee line for these.  I love the old lesser goblins- I have a bag of them somewhere and now I have the smaller 20mm bases I may do up a tiny, tiny warband.  The Samurai here was the biggest karmic blocker in my collection!
I decided to go really far out with the Talisman Necromancer- slapping on a Wizard of Oz makeup to match his cartoonish look.  The FA19 female fighter is one of the best faces on any citadel miniature ever.  EVER.  Its so subtle, and such a joy to paint.  It would have made a great starter character for D&D.

Citadel BC2 Monster Starter Boxed Set 90% complete

If you have been a fan of my blog, you will know my fondness for the BC1 monster starter set.  Here you can see I am almost done painting it- just little things like shading boots and jazzing up the bases to go now!  I remember the first time I painted the dire wolf, I just painted it black with red eyes.  This time around I was determined to go realistic with the fur and really make him pop.  The hobgoblin is now a favourite of mine, having totally ignored the box art and struck out in vivid green lacquered armour instead of the run of the mill copper scales that where making me yawn just thinking of painting them.  I have a second vile goblin, and will be painting him lime green with dark blue trims and black armour me thinks.  Oh, and yes, I have the BC1 complimentary heroes boxed set now... will have to wait for a dry day to prime them up.

(left to right) C22 Creatures Chaos Hounds 1 & 3,
Unknown Vintage Wolf (middle), Reaper Wolves (top right),
BC2 Vicious Giant Wolf

So one thing you can do to get through your lead pile is rack up a bunch of figures all at once.  I hunted around my collection and found all the wolves I had, and saved myself a heap of time by mixing the colours up at once.

Mystery wolf, BC2 Vicious Giant Wolf

If anyone knows the mystery wolf, I would be glad to have it identified.  Its pretty stiff and old looking, but cannot find him on any citadel collectors sheets.  I thought he was the FF giant wolf.

I also managed to knock down some chaos familiars, Norse Dwarves and a couple of Asgard beasties- but they will have to wait for a later post.  I am tired as hell with cold!

Unkillable cheap scenery

So, dear reader, I am a gamer cursed with no suppliers of that dense pink foam everyone uses to make scenery.  Being Australia, the land of the robber barons, it would probably cost a fair packet to0.  But I no longer care- I have found a technique to make UNKILLABLE scenery from recycled expanded polystyrene. Free from any household buying a plasma screen in your neighbourhood.

The problem with styrene is that it has no strength.  Apply any weight to it and it will snap.  Drop a metal mini on it, and it will dent.  That, and it looks like crap when you paint it.  It does.  Stop doing it.  Thats an order.

To fix the first problem, I turn my styrene into super sized, super cheap foamcore by sandwiching it between two sheets of paper using PVA glue and pressing it under heavy books overnight.  This distributes the energy across the whole surface and makes it really hard to snap.  To make larger pieces of scenery, I first sculpt them using a foam wirecutter (a must have tool)  and assemble them using cocktail sticks to pin the layers together.  Once I am happy with the cut, I mark the edges with a pen so I can align them again, take them apart and sandwich them individually.  Finally I reassemble with PVA glue and wooden skewers to add strength.

To fix the problem of denting and overall look crapness, I use the holy grail of mini scenery making.


Pollyfilla Woodflex.  Oh yeah.

King's Un-killable combo.

Now woodflex is not as cheap as whacking sand into PVA glue, but the results are so, so much better.
Woodflex does not crack or flake, is slightly rubbery and has a perfect texture for stone, mud and rock straight out of the tub.  Not having sand glued to the surface means its less likely to sandpaper off your paint job too.  It forms a rubbery skin over the surface that will distribute any force across the whole model- so no dents or snapping!

I thin mine down using demineralised water.  I use a palette knife to smear mine on.  Leave it ten minutes, then shape it.  Leave it over night to dry.


If you want to get some brickwork effects I suggest a two step approach.  Do a base coat and use a damp sponge to stipple down the surfae, let that dry overnight to form a tough skin.  Applying a second thick coat, give it fifteen minutes to dry then score in the brickwork or cracks.  Use the sponge again to tamp down the scratchy lines and give a natural effect.  The stairs in the next picture are unpainted, but you can see its a great look.

Citadel 1980's Runequest duck.
Converted Reaper 'Callie' female rogue and Converted Citadel 1980's AD&D Female Thief

The polyflex gives a great rocky look, and forms a skin that protects the polystyrene.  Its a really cost effective way to make unkillable gaming scenery.  More pics of my finished gaming tables later on!  With luck I may have a Skulldred table at CANCON or MOAB with some pretty scenery.

Hope that helps... comments as usual below.