Safe at home

I did almost nothing today, and it was wonderful. One of the things I did manage to do was put some red eyes on this minotaur, and do the base. Thats the last of the old school citadel minotaurs- as far as my plans go.



There are one or two more that I'd consider for collectable purposes if I found them at a reasonable price, but for now I've replaced the 3 crappy heroquest models I've been using for years, and I'm quite happy with the group as it is.

standing on the corner

I took a break from christmas projects and cleaning today and managed to wrap up two more terrain pieces for our Mordheim town. Both of these ruined corner sections are from the LotR Osgiliath set, and they paint up quite well once you get them assembled.



I also have been doing some closet cleaning, and listed a whole bunch of random stuff for sale including bits for epic, 40k, oop fantasy, talisman, reaper, mighty empires, and whatnot. If you're interested in any of that sort of stuff, have a look: http://shop.ebay.com/incal/m.html

3 is the magic number

3 sizes.
3 flavors.

A halfling and musclebound human adventurer, both from Red Box, and a classic Citadel minotaur. Small, Medium, Large, and a different flesh recipe for each.

The end of an era

About two weeks ago when I was removing a lightbulb from one of my painting lamps, there was sort of a grinding sound and the threads stuck, causing the bulb to break off in my hand. I was able to remove the bottom half with a pair of pliers, and it worked fine when I put a new bulb in. Friday that bulb went dead. I was a bit curious, given the short life span, but went ahead and put a new one in. Upon turning it back on the bulb flickered for a bit before it came on to full brightness. I suspected maybe the fittings were getting loose on the lamp, and then later that night it flickered again and crackled. Today I noticed that the lamp is giving off a 'Next time I make a crackle-pop sound it will be accompanied by bursting into flames' sort of smell, so I promptly escorted it to door, and into a rubbish bin.

None of this is noteworthy really, except that as I was bringing it to the trash I realized I'd had that lamp since junior high, if not elementary school. Who holds onto a lamp that long? I guess I do. I will be impressed if the $14.99 replacement I got at Target today lasts half that long.

I'll try to not write any more posts about my lamps any time soon.

a big mean elf

Another adventurer. Or perhaps an antagonist?




The sword is far smoother to my eye under a bright than it is to a digitial camera under difused light... *shrug* don't know what else to do about that. But rest assured.... it looks fine in person. :/

The minotaur got some fur sculpted on so he looks a lot better now. He and a few more adventurers will probably get primed tonight, but that may be the end of this little burst in production as this coming week will be mostly filled with family/holiday activities. I found the 2 figures I needed to complete my dwarf militia unit to do service with the empire. They'll probably be here by the time the holiday is done as well, so that group can get underway before too long.

I'm the hunter, I'll bring back the goods

Finished this lass tonight:



Another delicate RedBox sculpt with tiny eyes. TINY. I was prepared to not even bother, but I think I managed okay given that I'm not doing these to my highest standard. After doing two of these, and looking closer at the others I have in the queue, I don't think I'd ever take one of Tre's sculpts on commission. Tooooo tiny. I do like the figure though, she's a pretty great nordic ranger type it nice gear. Either quite successful at adventuring, or with a trust fund to burn ?

This and that

I got a great old minotaur in the mail today, sans axe. Since it was incomplete that helped me not have to pay crazy ebay prices for it, since it is from the out of print Citadel AD&D range - which usually means $$.

I've sorted the axe no problem, now I just need to get some putty into that terrible gap between the head and shoulders.


I have the next two adventurers underway as well. A brooding elf (that may have a case of gigantism)[Hasslefree], and a very well kitted out archer lady [Red Box Games]. I like both the figures a lot, but I have no idea what to do with the elf. :/



I also got all my dwarves put together- Quite a productive night!

and now for something completely different. . .

. . . a finished unit.

I finally finished the last 9 Reiksguard. Which means I've finally finished the entire reiksguard unit. Surely, such things are portents of the end being nigh.

So, here are the last 9:


And a selection of the cooler hose from the unit:



And finally, the way they now can appear on the table, at 30 strong:




Hell yes.

for the whom the bell tolls

. . . sorry, I don't know Slayer enough to make a good reference. Anyway, here is the next adventurer, a dwarf slayer from Hasslefree.



I've used this flesh tone before (the last dwarf, and the paladin's faces were both the same recipe), but this is the first time I've ever tried it on a big area, and I really wasn't sure it'd work. I had a hard time getting the hang of it, and that made me realize how much my own knowledge about painting flesh is really 'my own knowledge about painting flesh with /my/ recipe'. This became apparent when I did the flesh recipe guide a few months ago, but then the figures weren't /for/ anything specific ( I wasn't even keeping them) so it didn't feel like there was as much invested I guess. Anyway, it was a challenge. It wasn't until I started blocking in the rest of the figure with other colors that I began to be convinced that I wouldn't be totally unhappy with it. As it is, I'm pretty darn happy with it as a quick job, and I may keep this recipe when I get to my empire dwarf unit (though that may be a bit of a cop-out since they'll be almost all armoured, so I'll only have to manage faces). Incidentally, the recipe is Recipe #1 on the above guide. Maybe I should have looked at that picture to remind myself how to handle it. I don't normally go as dramatically shaded as this... I think thats part of what had me unsure of it.


Also, I finished the last stretch of feehand on the Reiksguard tonight... the banner. w00t! All that is left is to attach it, and flock the bases. I'm stupid happy about that.

green green green is everything I'm wearing

A couple little goblins of dubious trustworthyness. Are they there to lead the adventurers astray? Perhaps attack them? Who knows. All I know is my friend John gave me these two little dudes, so I might as well paint them up for adventures!

This one is from Hasslefree:



And this one I was pretty sure is either Copplestone or Spyglass.... but now I can't remember and I can't find it on either of their sites. :/ Anyone know for sure?

never shoot a shooter

While finishing the reiksguard shields the last two days I've been working on some more figures for my quicky RPG collection.

#2 is a neat little dwarven shooter.



I also have two goblins done, but the flock is still drying on their base. No use posting a WIP as I'll have final pics done tomorrow. :)

A dwarven slayer will make #4, and he's about 1/2 done. 4/5 of the shields are done on the reiksguard, and their bases are underway as well, woohooo!

light as a feather, stiff as a sword

Back to the reiksguard!

I finished all the plumage and weapons on these guys tonight. That leaves shoes, armor straps behind the knees, and some sashes on the back of the helmets, as far as general kit. Then a few bells and whistles, and they'll be ready for action. Oh, and a shield or two.

Paula Din

Paula here is the first of a series of single figures I'm planning on doing now and then for a table top dungeon crawl type thing I'm going to eventually run at the request of some of my non-gaming friends. The idea is to use a lightweight set of rules and GM it for some friends who want to see what this miniatures stuff I do is all about. I have plenty of bad guys for them to fight, but I thought some PC figures might be nice to have for them to choose from.

one a piece

I've finished the big bruisers- 50mm based ogre-sized things. One each for Ben and Brent's armies, and then an old minotaur I found on ebay a few months ago for myself. All 3 were done pretty quickly for gaming.

Thug life

Just a quick WIP shot of some WHFB thugs I'm doing for some friends' armies. For some reason my camera was having trouble focusing tonight, but hopefully it won't be too long before there are better pics to see.



I'm also painting the feathers on the reiksguard when I have appropriate colors out, so they are moving along a pace with these big baddies.

Is it a bird? No! Is it a plane? No!

Oh my gosh its Mighty Mouse. . a big griffon thing!

Well, the October experiment has wrapped up and the griffon is done. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for the amount of effort I put into. The design flaws were pretty annoying, but I can overlook that to a certain degree as I only paid $10.00 for the sprue. If this was a stand-alone kit, with the expected $50.00 or more asking price from GW, this would be a different conversation. But as it is, not bad for a box set kit.

If you like it, or perhaps there is an elf fancier on your christmas list, it does happen to be for sale :)

If you'd like to see higher resolution pics, the originals are on flickr

Tome Time

Aparently I received a package from Britain the otherday, but my wife didn't mention it, and I didn't see it sitting around anywhere. Finally though, it has arrived and I eventually was made aware of it. It is the new masterclass book from Kevin Dallimore & Wargames Foundry. About 2 years ago Kevin asked me to submit some work for this, and I am happy to say he eventually selected my stuff, and now there it is, spread across 4 pages of the book, warts and all.

As exciting as it is to see my work in the book, I have to say I'm less satisfied by the quality of the images than I had hoped. I thought I provided pretty decent photographs of my figures, but for at least a couple of them the color correction is pretty bad and the figures look washed out and kind of blasted out, which is rather unfortunate. I'm sort of suprised they would publish it like that considering in my brief scan of the book so far I haven't seen any other really obviously poorly edited images. Oh well.

If you have the book, here a couple of the originals to compare to:

http://www.madponies.net/images/WIP/book/DSC_6245.jpg

http://www.madponies.net/images/WIP/book/DSC_6273.jpg

Man these figures seem old now.

Lest it seem like I am unimpressed, that is not the case, It was still really nice of Kevin to invite me to contribute, and it is pretty neat and satisfying to see my work in the book.

Tedium from above

I like how this is turning out, but the lack of any physical details on the feathers makes for some odd painting. I'm trying to find a decent midway point between painting it all in on my own and not doing anything. I'm happy with it, but looking at the wings, beyond whats already on the body. . . *whew* thats a lot of feathers.

You know, for kids

When the warhammer v8 box was released the thing that caught my eye was the gryphon lord included as standard. Having such a monster right from the get go is quite a change from the last time the high elves were in a box set and they offered you 20 spearmen and 20 archers. That probably says something about the direction the game and GW are taking with the new version, but all I'm concerned with is the model.

I have no interest in high elves, but I do have an interest in nice monster models, especially ones I don't have in my own armies, and even more so when there are going to be tons of them floating around ebay when people buy the box sets for the rules and/or the other army included. I picked one up to see if it was worth using as conversion fodder for my empire army. I'm still not sure, but in the meantime I decided to paint it up and see what the market for decently painted gryphons might be (hopefully) before it gets saturated with them.

I'm about this far on it:



I'm still trying to work out a nifty base for it. Perhaps some chunks of ruined walls? Or sections of a tumbled column or two? I'm sure I'll think of something, eventually, but I'm certainly open to suggestions too.

home is where you hang your lion. . . er dog. lion? dog?

Liondog. Sure.

These probably won't see tons of action on my table, being that it is mostly generic fantasy terrain, but how could I not do them? I think there is a scenario in the Mordheim battle lists that calls out one gang's turf being invaded or somesuch. If that ever comes up, I'll certainly be able to use these to clearly mark their stomping grounds. If not, they'll look nice on the shelf at least.


Resin lion-dogs by Fenris Games.

Ambush from ten directions!

And lo it did come to pass that the wuxia warband was finally finished!

Considering how many other things I get up to in a summer I'm pretty pleased that I finished these by September after first laying paint to them in April. I'm also incredibly happy both with the results, and to see the the end of the project. Possibly more so than I have been at the end of any other miniatures project in fact.

So here is the final round up, in 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back.

Monks:



Youths:



Fighters:



Hunters:



Hired Swords:
(assassin & pitfighter)



Characters and Hired Sword:
(1st fighter, captain, warlock)



Bear and bear-master:



Attack from Ten Directions!:

Astute readers may notice that the bear-master is new to this thread. I had originally converted a copplestone figure for that job, but then I was unhappy with her face after I got it primed. I tried a head-swap, but everything I tried didn't match well proportionally. So then I naievely tried to put her original head /back/, which didn't work. I was near just giving up and deciding that one of the green-clad fighters would take the duty, and then I remembered this awesome leaping assassin figure I've had on my shelf. I painted him a few years ago, and he's just been on display as I had no real use for him. What a perfect fit for the gang! And already painted in white to tie in with the bear. So I dusted him off, painted his belt and his facemask green to match the rest of the team, and voila. Awesome bear-dude to round out the gang.

Also, it looks like I missed a spot on the bear's shoulder and some brown is showing through. I'll go fix that later.

Final manufacturer list for this warband:

Perry Brothers

Wargames Foundry

Alkemy

Helldorado

AEG/Clan Wars

Assassin Miniatures

Reaper

Guild of Harmony

100Kingdoms / Black Orc Games

Most of the weapon conversions were from The Assault Group, or scratch built.

Resin bases are all from Dragon Forge Designs

A panda's progress

This has been on my desk in various stages of completion for months. It has been the big finish for my wuxia gang that I wasn't even sure I could pull off. The last ~2 weeks or so I finally started the sculpting in earnest and figured out that while I am miles away from being competent with the medium, I can manage a little bit on a subject with few details and fewer crisp edges.

I started with this 'dire bear' from Reaper:


And after rounding out the head, bulking up the body,and new ears and eyes, I finally got to something I'm pretty amused by and happy with.

I still have more clean up to do, and the base obviously, but after keeping this under wraps from all but my local friends, I have to share it now that its nearly done.



A couple more images.

The reiksguard are coming along nicely too:

1988, the crime rate in the U.S. increases 400% . . .

. . .The island of Manhattan is turned into a maximum security prison.

I did this for the latest paint-swap over at Steve Dean's painting forum. A difficult figure to assemble, but pretty fun to paint.

Equinoxious

It has been a pretty productive couple days around MadPonies way of late. Maybe its autumn making rumblings around the North West, or maybe its just me, but for some reason I have the fever. The sit and paint fever. The get it done fever. It is probably a function of the length of some of my projects as much as anything.

For example, I think I started my Reiksguard unit something like 10 years ago. Then I started them over maybe 3 or 4 years ago. It is exciting to be seeing the end of that project finally.

I may need to go back and do some touch ups and a bit more shading, but by and large the main stage of the armor plates is done. Trim and weapons should be next.

There is no solitude greater than that of the samurai unless it be that of a tiger in the jungle... perhaps...

Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase: Form is emptiness.

So, A while back I decided I wanted to do this zombie hunter figure from Hasslefree. Sometime after I bought it I decided that there should be a miniature of Ghost Dog and that I should use that figure as the basis for the conversion. If I was going to do that, why not a miniature of Jef Costello from Le Samouraï too? I was somewhat surprised that I was able to track down a suitable candidate. The noir hero from Rattrap Productions actually has glasses, which the character didn't wear, but his hat and downward angled head hide them enough that its okay.

I did this nerdy little side project in about 4 sittings while other things were drying and curing.



The last batch of Reiksguard is currently underway, as is another modern Hasslefree figure I'm painting for Daywalker for the 2nd painting swap over at Deano's.



In other news, I got my metallics order in so I am not longer out of TinBits, hoorah! This means I can now get started on that griffon lord . . . um. . . paint some stuff with metallics.

Men in tights

There are still a few more of these to come that are yet sitting in Simple Green and soaking off their encrustations of aged paint, but here's what I have in front of me to begin the final push toward finishing this unit.



They will be awesome.

I can see all obstacles in my way

And there are a bunch of new ones.

Barricades and obstacles for Mordheim etc:






These rubble pieces are intended to mark breaches in the walls for siege games: