From ChrisW: A regular potpourri of stuff [172 points]

 

Fourth and final post for this week, it has been a good week. This week production was certainly helped by the missus being busy outside of the house thus allowing me to focus on a variety of projects. The down side of all this production is the pain in the neck that all this painting has caused. But hey, who really needs to be able to turn their neck, better to just move ones body.😫

Up first is a s scene from Chivalric romance story, a Dragon and a Knight fighting over a fair maiden, but who is the lady routing for? I ask because of the position of the lady and her expression she seems to be grinning while she watches the knight being attacked. I was given this vignette by a friend who found it in a second hand store. It sort of looks like a set from Thunderbolt Mountain, but it may just be some 'collectors' pewter set. When I got it they were all securely fastened to the base, but I was able to pry the knight off, which made painting all of them that much easier. 

Up next are 15 Pulp Figures Mud men. These are relatively new in the catalogue and to my mind are a welcome addition to my pulp collection. I have plans to do some Tales of the Gold Monkey island hopping adventures. From my very limited research of the real Mud men I tried to paint them as per images that I had found. I initially assumed that I would paint them in a mix of flesh and 'mud' but the pictures I found shows that the mud really seems to adhere to them. So I tried for a subtle approach with some shadowing and patches of flesh wash but mostly keeping the mud intact(except around the feet) The weapons were a challenge as I could not find many images of them with weapons beyond the bows and some clubs. I did find a nifty video that showed off the bows (palm trees) but any weapons that I saw were pretty rudimentary and with bark still on them, so I painted mine brown with green highlights.

Time to leave this section for now and journey to the True Crime section. In what might become the start of a new theme for me this year, I pulled out some primed Blue Moon Victorian figures and in particular one specific chap, Jack!

So, a good week that sees me reaching my target of 2000 points. Considering the rough start I had I am quite pleased to have achieved this so soon.

 So the totals

•   17 points for Vignette of 2x 28mm foot figures + 40mm dragon?
•   20 points for Romance section
•   75 points for 15x Mud Men
•   40 points for 8x Victorian foot
•   20 points for True crime section
  

Total 172 points

 Squirrels this post +2

Squirrels to date [16]

1. Hammers Slammers
2. Ikwen alien infantry
3. Hanuman (Alien) vehicles 
4. New Swabian league armoured vehicles 
5. Rats
6. Scarabs 
7. Mercenary Sci-fi vehicle
8. NAC Sci-fi vehicles 
9. Foo dog statues
10. Terracotta warriors  
11. NSL Bikes
12. Generic sci fi vehicles
13. Civilian sci-fi vehicles 
14. Egyptian cultists  
15. Mud Men 
16. Ladies of the evening (and Jack)
    

Just loving your work in this post Chris and I apologize for the late editorial comments. First, the knight and dragon diorama is great, it has a real old-school Ral-Partha kind of vibe, I really like it. The Mud Men are also very cool, Bob Murch sculpts are always great and you've painted them really well, the masks are so bonkers and cool! The Blue Moon Victorians are awesome and obviously you've put plenty of effort into them - I always find it challenging to paint these one-off individuals and you've made them look great.

I'll concur in your points calculation!

Dallas

From AndrewB: High Martian Adventure and a Casting Couch [High Adventure][Casting Couch] (158pts)

This is a rather larger installment, but here we go!  First off, in the idea of the High Adventure room, we’re venturing all the way to Mars with Victorian adventurers!  Starting off, we have 13 of RAFM’s colonial martians, who have joined with British forces against their planetary brethren.  There aren’t many sculpts, but I like them, and they paint up fairly well, even by a goof like me.  

Next, we have a stationary gun(RAFM), and a couple delightful vehicles that would make any Victorian scientist squeal with delight, both from Ironclad miniatures! I’m always torn as to how to paint vehicles from this setting, but with these looking like one-off experimental vehicles, we left them looking like raw materials.  

I’m not delighted with the base of the gun, but it will hopefully be mounted on a sky galley before long, using magnets like most of my other weapons of the setting, so the large cast-iron looking mount seemed appropriate for use as an emplaced gun or ship-mounted weapon.  

Last, and certainly least-  I was at a loss for a fun miniature calling out to me from a casting setting, but I ran across a very ‘casting couch’ looking small set of scatter terrain.  As the room is described as ‘discrete’, I figured we may as well look directly into the belly of that particular beast.  Here is my admittedly ruined version of the casting couch!

Not my favorite work, but it may earn the points through creativity and realism.  

Points total for this post-

13 28mm figures- 65pts

2 28mm vehicles- 40pts

1 28mm gun- 10pts

2 studios- 40pts

Crummy casting couch terrain- 3pts?  

Looking at a tentative total of 158 for this post!  Oh boy!  More coming soon!  I’ll get my map of the studio updated and posted with my next installment!

From TeemuL: Aaaand the third post from AndrewB for today! Victorians in Mars is a setting I'm not that familiar with, but I have seen posts here and there in this Challenge blog. Sounds interesting, but I'm resisting... Casting Couch is spot on for Casting Couch, if you ask me and the terrain points you suggest, seem about right. Very tricky to score these, but sounds right. Looking forward to see your map next week. ;)

From ChrisW: We visit Lune! Werewolf, Gypsies, peasants, adventurers & Zenda (245 points)

 

I just could not, not post on Tuesday, so I submit these Chaos in Carpathia themed figures. I am still working on the mountain and it will get posted up before the end of the challenge, but I had planned to work on these and the mountains almost derailed that plan.

So from Mars on Lady Sarah's yacht courtesy of mysterious lady...

...we arrive at the last planet that I planned to visit, Lune, planet of witchcraft & sorcery. 

Seventeen planets in total.

What better example of Lunar power than ... a werewolf! [1]

I was in a predicament with this post as I figured I needed a werewolf to tie in with Lune, but I had already painted all of my werewolves, or so I thought. Instead of substituting a rather aggressive looking wolf hybrid I fortuitously stumbled on this figure from Uncle Mike of Strange Aeons. I was never able to see much detail on the figure in its natural white resin state and constantly shuffled the miniature over to the miniatures to get done, maybe, eventually if there was nothing else to paint. But thanks to this challenge and my need for a werewolf this figure suddenly made it to the top of the list.

I really should have primed this figure years ago as it really is not that bad a figure. I readily admit my eyes cannot perceive details on unprimed figures, hell I sometimes have challenges with primed and/or painted figures too! I also have a challenge trying to figure out what some of the details are on figures. Sometimes cloaks, belts and other accouterments confuse me. Rifles, don't get me started on rifles are the barrels exposed or not, what make/model are they what colour wood it just never ends. I do not do enough (any) research on weapons so I only have myself to blame, but then again some sculptures do not seem to always accurately model rifles...

Anyways, where was I, oh yeah, the werewolf.  I do kind of like him. He is the only one I have that still has clothing on him, as if he just recently transformed, nice. He was primed black, then painted with craft charcoal brown (a nice black/brown colour) then multiple layers of different shades of brown were dry brushed over it. P3 Graveyard blue for pants with a reaper wasted jean blue as highlight did the job. The shirt was painted with a light grey then high lighted with GW graveyard white. Hands and face were whichever flesh paint came to hand. A brown wash was applied over the model.

Gypsies [11]

A mix of Old Glory/West wind and Pulp Figures gypsies to go with the werewolf. Most had contrast paints applied to them but were then highlighted with conventional paints. I find contrast is good to get colour onto figures very quickly, but I always follow up with other colours to clean up the models. I basically tried to paint them up as brightly as possible with a more or less similar palette. 

Esmeralda dances a counter curse to keep the Werewolf at bay!

Hunters and villagers[5]

All Blue moon figures, which I really like, very characterful. 

Revolting peasants [8]

Blue moon and Westwind revolting peasants done in dull colours to represent the down trodden nature of their existence...They are ready to confront mad barons and other evil or misguided creatures.

Zendarians and local police [16]

Again more Old Glory/West Wind figures they too started with a contrast paint base coat. A couple of shades of light blue brought out the coats, The dark pants are a P3 paint Ash Grey. The helmet are P3 Boiler Black   

 

Action shots

The points

• 20 points for Sarah's yacht
• 20 points for Lune
• 205 points for 41 x 28mm figures 

Total    245 points

Sarah's choice submission 

This weeks grouping, seven ladies.

 

So, at least one female character in every post, so far 12 posts, for a total of 107 female figures,

This is a collage of past weeks.

Squirrel points [12]

  Previous weeks

1. Super heroes
2. Epic 40K
   
3. Sci-Fi Robots 28mm
   
4. Dystopian wars
   
5. Dr Who                                                                                                                                            
6. Pulp
7. All Quiet on the Martian Front  
8. Back of Beyond   
9. VSF
   
10. Post apocalypse                                                                                                                            New this week
11. Victorian Horror/Chaos in Carpathia 
12. Prisoner of Zenda
    

This is a great collection of gothic horror figures. I like the Zendarians and police, but the gypsy musicians are my favourite.

Barks

From TamsinP: A Flashy Ending (5 points)

Well then, Lady, Gentlemen (and Ray) the time has come for my final post of this year's Challenge. I must say it has been a blast and I've had great fun, even during the stressful time of the "vanishing pictures bug". There have been so many gorgeous entries to keep us going and some amusing (and downright bizarre) tales being told.

But on with my entry. As you may recall from my previous post, I did make a very good start on this figure before I sidetracked myself into painting those bits of WW2 scatter terrain (which earned me almost twice the points that my much more fiddly to paint buildings had...). Today, in between minion duties, watching my usual Friday videos on YouTube and cooking up a big batch of chilli (enough for six large portions - one in the fridge for tomorrow and five in the freezer) I set back to work on it and got all the highlights and metal details done.

So here you go, a well known fictional Victorian British officer:

The figure is from Studio Miniatures, but doesn't seem to be available at the moment.


Scoring for this is simple - one 28mm foot figure = 5 points.




Before I go, it is customary for me to do my "Votes of Thanks", to:

My fellow Challengers for all your wonderful posts, and for your comments.

Sidney for creating the map of Challenge Island which has kept us all so busy.

My fellow Cabin Crew, ermmm, Minions for all your hard work getting posts up and for not messing up Miles' Spreadsheet Of Doom (TM) too badly!

To our Sponsors for the great prizes that some of us will be receiving.

To Lady Sarah, our heroic aviator, for being such a good sport, for putting up with us and (not to forget) all your kind and encouraging comments.

And finally, it goes without saying, to Curt, our very own Lord of the Snow, for organising this once again; for recruiting a great team of Minions to look after everyone; for organising the sponsors and for managing the Snowlord's Peak challenges and rewards.

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!


Oh, and "Toodle-pip!

TamsinP
Senior Flight Attendant, signing out.

_____________________________________

Ahh, Tamsin, what a great final post. Flash looks tremendous, what with his handlebar moustache and dashing uniform. I'm sure there will be more than a few Challengers popping over to Studio Miniatures to see if he's come back in stock.

I am sorely indebted to you, Tamsin, for all your help this year. Work commitments (and now the health crisis) have kept me hopping this year and it was often you who jumped into the breach to keep this crazy ship on course. I thank you very much. I look forward to having you either as a member of our flight crew or hard-charging participant for Challenge XI.

Now, I need a little bit to get my final entry done to close the show.

-Curt