Fear and Flame

He's a Bad Mother... (Shut Your Mouth!)

Currently on the paint-table is Randall "The Saint" St James from Funky Skull Games; being recast here as an eye of fear and flame from the 1e Fiend Folio. Between its covers the Ol' FF has an overabundance of interchangeable robed skeletons. A little creative licence seems warranted.

Besides, the notion of your run-of-the-mill, pseudo-medieval adventurers bumping into a severely anachronistic, undead dungeon-pimp tickles my fancy.

Russ Nicholson rules

The sunglasses are more than mere fashion, as our friend, however re-imagined, needs to conceal his eyes until the last moment.

Color-wise, I'm trying to strike a balance between pimp-gaudy and undead-somber. Accordingly, a lot of grey has been mixed into the purple, pink, and yellow to tone them down. The pink shirt/pocket square combo may (or may not) be changed to something more fuchsia-ish. Time will tell. Leopard-spots are probably mandatory on the hat-band and jacket lining. 

The highlighting needs to be completed followed by a liberal application of washes for the shading. It's been a couple years since I last completed a miniature. This guy needs to be brought to a successful conclusion posthaste.  

Something Newish This Way Comes

Three additions to the Red Ghouls are done. As the title suggests, the painting here isn't entirely new. The penanggalan was nearly complete last October while the boy and dog had their base colors blocked in at about the same time.

These, and a couple others, were intended for Zomtober '16. I'm either quite tardy with that or getting an early start on Zomtober '17.

All three miniatures were sculpted by the incomparable Paul Muller.

The Penanggalan is from Otherworld... a strange Malayan vampire that appears in the old Fiend Folio. The sculpt is a nice homage to the Russ Nicholson artwork from that book.

The boy/dog combo is something of an undead tribute to Dennis the Menace and his dog Ruff. I may be dating myself with this, I suppose. In my defense, I am rather old... cut me some slack.

Truthfully, it was mostly the sling that lead to this notion. My first impulse was to remove it so the mini would better match Otherworld's unarmed ghouls I'd already painted. Then inspiration struck... Dennis the Menace carried a slingshot... he was small in stature... so was the mini... he had a dog... I had a suitable dog mini languishing in the lead-pile. In short, one thing led to another and here we are.

The boy is from Reaper while the dog is from Wyrd's sadly discontinued line of metal miniatures.

The two were painted in the evil-clown scheme I've been using for the Red Ghouls; the only problem being that red hair was required while they were both bald. I addressed this by sculpting some hair on Dennis and, after rejecting red ears, painting Ruff's tail the appropriate hue.

Yes, Ruff is lifting his leg. Would undead canines need to relieve themselves in this fashion? Perhaps not. I guess old habits are hard to break.

PTS IV: Up to my Old Tricks Again

Table? Check. Saturday? Check. Paint? Negatory.

What I "should" currently be working on are an Otherworld Miniatures' halfling fighter and his anthropomorphized badger sidekick (a 15mm mini from Splintered Light). They're based and ready for paint... have been for a while.

Are we ever gettin' a coat of paint, or what?

Instead, I find myself distracted by a couple shiny new geegaws with Fiend Folio Project written all over them. The first is a cerepod from Otherworld which conveniently looks just like Russ Nicholson's FF grell illustration. Eleven parts, all of which need to be pinned. (That's 20 holes that need to be drilled by my reckoning.) This might take a while.

Caution: carpel tunnel syndrome ahead

The second is a new release from Fenris. A little conversion work will be involved. A gold star goes to the first person to correctly identify the FF monster I'm shooting for based on the picture below.

A sword. A lovecraftesque mummy. A base with spiders.

Paint Table Saturday II: Postcards from Siberia

If it's Saturday it must be time to lament how little I've done hobby-wise of late. Weather's been crap, work's been busy (in part because the weather's been crap), had a bit of a cold (likely due to the weather being crap), feels like I've spent most of my free time shoveling snow (definitely due to the weather being crap). Did I mention that the weather weather's been crap?

Luckily things aren't nearly as bad as all that. The right team won the Superbowl and some progress has been made on a trio of zombies. In keeping with PTS custom, a picture of my workspace:

Seen here are a doombringer from Studio 2 Publishing flanked by two Heresy zombies. For the purposes of the The Fiend Folio Project, they serve as a Revenant and two Coffer Corpses. In particular, the Studio 2 miniature's hooded cloak jibes well with Russ Nicholson's Revenant illustration from the FF.  

A more detailed WIP of the three as they now stand:

An earlier WIP of the Revenant with just the base colors laid down:

A 28mm pinkie; easily the smallest thing I've ever sculpted:

Right on cue it's started snowing again. No lie. Like I said, the weather's been crap.

Fiend Folio On Kickstarter... Almost

Ah, Kickstarter. The perfect outlet for me to rid myself of unwanted cash.

I'm backing Center Stage Miniatures' current Tome of Horrors Complete Kickstarter campaign. I'm unfamiliar with the ToH series of books that serve as the source material, but seemingly the first volume is chock-full of refugees from the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual II. The prospect of some new minis of old Fiend Folio favorites (flumph included) is too good to pass up.

Some of the artwork appears to be re-interpretations of the originals, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The before-and-after of the jaculi serves as an example: a fair difference between the two but I like them both.

I'm keeping a close eye on which sculptors will be involved on which minis and am mindful of the fact that I already have conversion projects in mind for some of the subjects involved (and I do like conversion projects).

This campaign has real potential. Definitely worth a look.

No Respect

In the early eighties the subject of today's post was described as a "frog-like humanoid with huge eyes that shine like searchlights". I refer not to Rodney Dangerfield following a tragic industrial accident, but rather to the blindheim; a creature found in 1981's Fiend Folio. Like the late, great, Mr. Dangerfield, the blindheim (and for that matter, the entire Fiend Folio) is notable for receiving no respect.

As evidence of the blindheim's standing, I present exhibits A and B.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I fail to see why the little yellow guy deserves such scorn. Seems like a perfectly workable concept to me. When I came across Valiant Enterprises' oni demon I saw the opportunity for a straightforward conversion project.

Right from the blister the mini has some issues: 1) static pose: It looks like he's trying to surrender. 2)eye line: Why is he staring at the ceiling? 3)ears: I kinda like these but they're anything but frog-like. 4)teeth: These are a bit slab-shaped in spots and lack definition between themselves and the gums.

Nothing too serious. The pose and eye-line were addressed through some considerable bending. The ears were removed and the teeth reshaped with files and a hobby-knife. The addition of a tongue from Otherworld's giant frogs helped to accentuate further his inner amphibian.

What I wound up with has not two eyes but four and is slightly larger than described but hits all the important notes nonetheless (frog-like, large eyes, vicious bite).

His other vital features (yellow coloration, glowing eyes) were handled with paint. The yellow was achieved with P3 sulfuric yellow and heartfire, GW dark flesh and casandora yellow shade, Vallejo umber shade, and Reaper linen white.

I went with a vivid purple tongue because purple sits opposite yellow on the old color wheel.

The eyes are my first attempt at OSL.