AHPC6 Entries - 28mm Character Figures

And the time comes at last for my final summary post of this year's Challenge entries - the 28mm character figures.

My opening salvo on the first day of the Challenge was this rather characterful figure from Hasslefree, whom fans of the original (UK) version of Shameless will recognise that I have painted up as Frank Gallagher (as portrayed by David Thewlis):

I wasn't the only person who had painted this figure for the Challenge - Anne painted him for her "Revenge on Ray" entry in the last bonus theme round. I think someone may have painted him last year as well for their AntiHero.


Moving on, my second entry of character figures was "I'll Be Max!" I had bought these two figures from Hasslefree, but they're now sold directly by Studio Miniatures.

It took a lot of effort (and trial & error) to make the black leather tones look right and different. For the Arnie figure, I also wanted to capture the pallid, dead flesh look from the first film. I think I got pretty close.


The fourth character figure was a bit of a departure for me - a High Elf rogue from Citadel. Quite fun to paint, but some of the details were tricky to access.

The fifth and final character figure was also my Curtgeld. The theme for this year's Challenge was "Risk Takers, Gamblers and Daredevils". I think that Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica) is an excellent embodiment of all three.

The figure I used is "Pilot Vic" from Hasslefree.


Phew - that's a lot of painting done in 13 weeks!

Challenge Day 13 - Rebs Day 2

"Shouldn't that be "Rebs Day 3"?"

Well, it should, but I ended up taking the day off from painting yesterday. I simply wasn't in the mood to paint the wood and metal on 550 tiny muskets and the wood of 22 flagstaffs.

My fourth entry has been posted by Curt. You can see it here, but here are some pics which I didn't include in that post:

The figures are 28mm from Studio Miniatures, although I got them from Hasslefree when they still supplied them.

Today I have done the Rebs' muskets and flagstaffs. It took about 4 hours (including some short breaks for coffee, smokes, etc). If I can face it, I might do the faces and hands later on. Here's how they look right now:

To help alleviate the tedium of painting the same tiny detail several hundred times, I've been watching/listening to videos on the scholagladiatoria YouTube channel. If you haven't come across the channel before, it has some quite interesting vids about weapons, armour and how they were (probably) used in days of yore.

I've also done a little bit more work on my super-high-top-secret Nostalgia theme entry. I'll do a little bit more this evening, then will put the finishing touches to it tomorrow.


Oh, and Happy New Year to you all!

Challenge Day 3 - To Be Frank...

Yup, time to post my first entry here as it's been up on the Challenge blog for at least 24 hours.

My opening entry was this 28mm figure from Hasslefree, based on a character from a certain British television series.

Frank is a hopeless case - a drunk, druggie, petty thief and all that, but he is one of life's philosophers and loyal to his family and friends.

Some more pics:

Anyway, this opening salvo put me on the board with a whopping 5 points. Just 995 to reach my target!

My second entry has been posted here - they take me 30 points nearer to my target. If I keep going at this rate, I'll soon find myself raising my target - better slow down girl!

This evening I've continued with the rest of the civvies. I've got 4 almost completed, leaving the final touches on them and the other two to paint fully tomorrow if I want them in before I leave London.

WIP pic:

Toodle-pip!

Saturday Workbench

Did you miss me?

No!

*sob*

Well, that was a long gap between posts. That's because until today I haven't had anything to post about. And that is mostly the result of me having to buy a new TV (the CRT on my old one decided to blow up after 17 years, on the day after my last post) which has a built-in DVD player. As I haven't had a DVD player since the analogue switch-off (I needed the SCART socket for my Freeview digital box) I decided it was time to watch a couple of box sets and films. First up was "The Water Margin" - great fun to watch but has left me with an urge to try to game it. I will resist...for now; maybe sometime in the future.

The smoking cessation is going OK now that I've accepted that I'm better off going for a gradual reduction rather than trying the cold turkey approach. I'm smoking about half as much as I was before and will continue cutting down over the next couple of weeks.

But this is meant to be a workbench post, so on with the pics:

That's right - I've resumed work on Salutesville PD's armoured vehicles and some Hasslefree figures.

Cyber-Scooby is actually finished apart from the base. I'm not sure whether to do a proper base or just transfer to a clean slotta base. Anyway, here are some close-ups:

If I ever paint one of these again, the armour will definitely NOT be white! There are a couple of minor slips, but they don't show up that much so I'm going to leave them. Not bad for a couple of hours work this afternoon.

I've also done some work on the armoured vehicles today, touching up the blue and black, and starting on the metal and wood details. I'll carry on with those over the next few evenings, alongside painting the other four Hasslefree figures.

Speaking of which, one of those is going to be for Dux as his prize for beating me to 1500 points in last year's Painting Challenge. Better late than never.

That leaves three figures which I've decided will be the prizes for my 750 posts prize draw. If all goes well and they are finished, I'll be posting that next weekend.

I have been doing some more prep over the past week and now have a substantial amount of prepped figures and vehicles for this year's Challenge.


Tomorrow is SELWG, so I'll be heading off to Crystal Palace bright and early. The only purchases I have planned are some Aztecs from Foundry and maybe a couple of paints. I have no doubts whatsoever that some spontaneous purchases will be made (probably from GZG and Brigade Models), but my plan is to limit those as much as possible. Hopefully I'll be bumping into a number of bloggers and other gaming friends.

Finally Getting Back To Painting

Well, it's been a good few weeks since the Challenge ended so it's bleedin' well time I started painting again!

I'm breaking myself back in gently - a single 28mm "fun" figure rather than a mass of figures. I'll be doing that next week as I've got 24 Bulgar cavalry to paint up and base ahead of Campaign for the Avar army I'll be using.

Yes, I'm taking part in a tournament again, but only doing the Sunday - someone else from the club is taking the Saturday games. The rest of the figures we'll be using are my Sarmatians. I'm picking up the Bulgars on Saturday at Salute.

I guess you want to know what the "fun" figure is. Well, here you go:

This is H4ML37 - the cybernetic Hamlet supertrooper from Hasslefree. So far I've just done base colours and a quick dark grey wash over the armour to get shading into the recesses. The armour will be tending-to-white when I've finished, with some coloured elements.

Challenge Day 104 - I Don't Know About You, But I'm Having A Ball

Progress update - Last night I finished painting the 6mm ACW infantry I was working on and got them stuck onto their bases. I had a whole bunch of spare skirmishers, so I decided to do something with them. You'll have to wait for them to be posted to see just what I did. This evening I've added the basing texture. That will need to dry overnight, then tomorrow I will be doing the dry-brushing, flocking and adding flags. This little lot will put me past my 2500 point target.

Back before Christmas I very sensibly booked tomorrow off in case I needed to finish off projects before the deadline (Friday 6am for us in the UK). That means I still have some free time to paint a few more figures. Again, you'll have to wait and see. I will throw out a couple of teasers though. Thus far I haven't painted any females (OK, the NSL Panzergrenadiers did have some female figures in the mix, but I'm not counting those) so I'll need to paint at least one to be eligible for Sarah's Choice. I also haven't done any mickey-taking entries. However, I have found a way to combine the two - I'll leave you in suspenders.

But you guys and gals want some pictures of painted figures to drool over. So on with the post.


Entry 23 - My "Curtgeld" Antihero Figure

Afficionados of Sin City will have recognised the quote I've used as a post title. It's delivered by Marv whilst driving and holding a victim's face against the road.

When I saw the theme for this year's Curtgeld (as we Challengers refer to the entry fee figure w e paint up and send to Curt) was "Antiheroes" my original idea was to paint up an Elf figure as Elric. I found the perfect figure by Hasslefree, but it was out of stock. I was also getting some figures for my 3rd Blogday giveaway (which may now be combined with my birthday) and for myself and saw the perfect antihero figure. So much so, that I wanted one for myself. So I bought two.

The only downside of choosing Marv as my antihero was that to do the figure justice I would have to take a journey into the mad and scary world of painting in greyscale. I'd been putting it off and off for weeks and finally mustered the courage, took the anti-psychotic meds and dived in on Saturday. It turns out that I didn't need the courage or meds; it was actually quite easy once I got going.

But that's enough blurbiness, here's Marv:

Yes, I did paint some red blood spatter onto the vest in homage to the graphic novels and films. It sets off the greyscale quite nicely.


Oh, and here's Marv again:

The second figure was posed differently and I realised it would look a bit of an odd pose, then hit on the idea of him stepping across a victim's body. The victim is a Dixon gangster casualty. I'm assuming he's one of Senator Roark's minions.

Oh my dog! There's two of them!

Curt had a choice of which one he wanted as the Curtgeld - he's decided to take Marv and Victim.

I'll leave you with some Marv quotes from the 2005 film:


Priest: ...ask yourself if that corpse of a slut is worth dying for. 
Marv: Worth dying for. 
[shoots priest] 
Marv: Worth killing for. 
[shoots him again] 
Marv: Worth going to hell for. 
[shoots him again] 
Marv: Amen.


Marv: I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad. 


Cardinal Roark: Kevin? Is that you? 
Marv: [holding up Kevin's severed head] What's left of him, anyway. The dog ate the rest. 


Cardinal Roark: What the hell do you know... 
Marv: I know it's pretty damn weird to eat people. 


Marv: I check the list. Rubber tubing, gas, saw, gloves, cuffs, razor wire, hatchet, Gladys, and my mitts. 


Marv: [Marv is walking in the back door to Kadie's] 
[voiceover] 
Marv: Walk down the right back alley in Sin City... 
Bouncer: [the bouncer throws someone out the door] Leave your hands off Nancy! 
Marv: [voiceover] ... and you could find anything. 
[Marv steps over the man on the ground and walks right up to the bouncer] 
Bouncer: That coat looks like Baghdad. So does your face. Take off! 
[Marv jabs his thumbs into the bouncer's eyes and walks him backwards through the door] 
Bouncer: Urrrghh... aaahhhhh! Ahhh! 
[Marv throws him into a corner booth] 
Maeve: [watching the whole thing] He's new here, Marv, he didn't know. 


[Marv's last line, blood pouring from his mouth, after the first shock from the electric chair] 
Marv: Is that the best you can do, you pansies? 
[They shock him again] 


And one more which sums up the figures:

Marv: That there is one damn fine coat you're wearin'. 



Toodle-pip!