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.  

Thank Heaven for Little Ghouls

Pieface

Joey

Here follows a very short post on the current state of Pieface and Joey, the two smallest additions to the Red Ghouls. (Those are 20mm bases on both.)

Two creepy little dudes. It therefore seems fitting to riff on one of the creepier songs in popular culture for the post's title. An unsettling ditty if ever there was one.

As per my usual practice, all the basecolors are blocked in. This will be followed by highlighting, shading (with washes), and a whole lot of adjustments & touch-ups.

The colors are muted except for the red and the fleshtone of the infant Pieface holds.

It's interesting to see how light falls on Joey. The miniature has a turned head, forward-leaning stance, and an enormous teddy-bear tucked against the right side of the body, resulting in deep shadows in some unusual places. Having seen this, I'll keep the picture handy as a reference while painting.

Finch Lives

Eh, close enough.

I'm back.

Yes, this is indeed the dreaded I'm still alive post.

2016's hobby efforts, which began with promise, ended with a resounding thud as my Zomtober participation fizzled. It was all downhill from there.

Rather than dwell on past failure, I choose to emerge back into the light and move on. To that end... some work-in-progress pictures seem appropriate.

Spurred on by some rather nifty textured rollers from Green Stuff World I got for Christmas I'm easing myself back into the hobby.

I've seen these in use by James Wappel on his blog for some time. They did not disappoint.

While Mr. Wappel uses modeling clay run through a pasta-maker that is then baked in a toaster-oven, I gave simple plumber's putty a whirl. Unlike green stuff, plumber's putty is brittle when cured. It also sets very quickly and thus allows a limited window where it's workable.

I kneaded the two components together, rolled it out like so much pie crust (on a plastic sheet cut from a freezer bag), rolled the desired texture into it, and called it a day.

When fully cured, I peeled off the plastic and attacked with plyers.

Two unpainted refugees from the aforementioned Zomtober debacle have been based using the resulting fragments.

The larger of the two is from Gamezone. The smaller (he's still pretty large) is from Heresy with its original weapon swapped for a mace from a Reaper miniature. Its left foot was attached to the putty fragment first, then the resulting subassembly was attached to the base. It seemed much simpler to do it this way than to try to get the angles right on the base before attaching the miniature.

At this point convention dictates that I tease what's coming in my next post. I'm tempted, but given my recent track record convention must be tempered by reality. I'm gonna take this one day at a time.

Zomtober 2016/3: A Boy and his Dog

I'm a day late and a dollar short this week with my Zomtober efforts. Two minis are in the works and should hopefully be completed in time for next Sunday.

The kid with the sling is from Reaper while the rude puppy is an OOP metal mini from Wyrd. Both sculpted by Paul Muller. The tufts of hair behind the ghoul-child's ears were added with green stuff to allow the red hair motif to be followed. My only option with the dog was to paint the tail red... we'll see how it goes.

Zomtober 2016/2: Making Headway

I nearly finished on time... nearly.

My contribution to this week's Zomtober festivities is Otherworld Miniatures' Penanggalan. An unusual mini and a triple threat: 1) Zomtober appropriate, 2) Sculpted by Paul Muller, 3) Found in the Fiend Folio.

The Penanggalan is from Malaysian folklore. A bizarre beastie to be sure.

This has been painted in the same scheme as last Zomtober's red ghouls. More to follow.

Disc World

 

Zomtober looms but Mortal Arrow's War Snails have not been forgotten. I recently got some 3 1/2" (about 90mm) acrylic discs through eBay. After roughing up the top of one with sandpaper, I set about building it up as needed with putty.

The green is green stuff (no surprise there). The grey is plumbers putty which has a short working time but, unlike green stuff, sets rock-hard and can be sanded. This quality allowed the edges to be finished cleanly.

 
The snails enjoyed an extended stay in a solution of Dawn and water. I followed this with a one hour soak in a 50/50 mix of Super Clean Degreaser and water as suggested by  Steve Gabriele (AKA stormbringer72). This had the unanticipated effect of softening the resin. I had stuff from four manufacturers in play: two (Scibor and Secret Weapon) were unaffected, Studio McVey was slightly affected, Mortal Arrow was heavily affected.

Cut to the chase: it seems that the material eventually regains much of its original hardness once removed from the solution. No harm, no foul.

While it was soft I was able to easily remove various resin bits that were a byproduct of the casting process. In particular, a lot of extraneous material was removed from the spiral shell's interior, allowing it to sit properly on the body.

Things as they now stand:

Snail Mail

The United States Postal Service has been good to me of late.

The arrival of a big box of Tome of Horrors goodness from Pacesetter Games has produced much happiness here in the paint cave. LINK Justifiably so... it was a delivery three years (and many dollars) in the making.

While cause for jubilation, it must not overshadow a package that arrived several days prior from Mortal Arrow. The contents of said package? Snails, giant snails.

To be more specific, they are the War Snail, Flogging and War Snail, Ferrying, sculpted by the inestimable Pedro Navarro. Pedro's sculpts can be seen on his blog: Link Link

These were generously provided by Mike at Mortal Arrow so I could paint them for the website. Their completion will be a priority.

For starters, they look great; chunky resin brutes with detail galore. Each consists of an interchangeable shell and a body. The Ferrying Snail's body is a single piece, The Flogging Snail's is three.

Ferrying Snail

Flogging Snail

The shells each have a substantial lug of resin on their underside. I immediately set about removing this bit from the spiral shell for the scale shots above. 

4" Base Mockup

3 1/2" Base Mockup

I intend to base these and, as the largest base on hand is way too small, something suitable must be obtained. From the cardboard mockups, 3 1/2" is the winner.

The size of the base allows ample space for a little scenery so I tried out some broken column bits. I may want to play with the elevations as well (sm column frag low, snail slightly elevated, lg column frag slightly higher still). We'll see.

I'm relying on the method described by Miniature Tim for removing any residual mold-release. (My first foray into resin miniatures so fingers crossed.) They are therefore currently taking an extended soak in a solution of Dawn and water.

Next up: order some 3 1/2" disks.

A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

It's been hot lately...  hot and humid actually, in the finest New Jersey Summer tradition. Without the benefit of air-conditioning, strapping an optivisor to my forehead and crouching over a sizzling hobby-lamp, brush in hand, quickly looses its appeal.

Yes, I'm attributing my recent hobby drought to global warming. It's very much in vogue to blame stuff on the scourge of climate change; seems right that I get with the times. Perhaps I should apply for a a government grant or some such thing.

That is not to say that no progress has been made on my never-ending project: Fractured Dimensions' Bearded Devils. In fact they're just about done:

Mostly touchups and some work on the bases remain.

To further pass the buck... Asslessman at Leadplague diverted me from the task at hand with a post about an app called Prisma.

The picture up top is a product of said app. Fun, simple, and impossible to put down once one gets rolling:

   
 For comparison's sake, the original WIP pic:

In other news, a package arrived yesterday from Mike at Mortal Arrow Miniatures:

Much more on that shortly.

PTS XV: Wash Day

Copious washes have been applied to FD's bearded devils. In the shaded basecoat technique this is done to establish and intensify shadows. The trick is to do it without simultaneously obliterating the mids and highlights from previous steps (damage, yes... obliterate, no).

I used two different washes (a GW Violet/Greenshade mix and Vallejo Flesh Wash) on the shield. These were allowed to run together while wet for a grungy, rusty effect.

I quite like the result. Now to see if I can avoid slopping paint on it going forward (fingers crossed, everyone).

Next up: touchups and refinements to the aforementioned mids and highlights.

Halftime Highlights

Progress is progress and always preferable to no progress. So says the glass-half-full crowd. The opposing camp, being less charitable, wonders why FD's bearded devils are taking so damned long to complete.

Patience.

Painting time's been somewhat limited lately. Even so, I hope to finish before the snow flies ;-).

The next step in the process is complete. All the highlights are done. Now come washes to establish the shadows (the shaded part of James Wappel's shaded basecoat method).

Mold-seams magically appear,  requiring  remedial action

Lattice pattern on kilts needs special attention

Some pink is added to the vertical portion of the kilt

Block Party

Too late for a Paint Table Saturday post, the next step on FD's Bearded Devils is done. All the colors are blocked in. As with Bael and Ashratu, Reaper Cinnamon Red and Vallejo Vermilion are the stars of the show. The fluorescent orange beards are a new wrinkle.

My technique borrows heavily from painting guru James Wappel. He advocates getting all the base colors in place straight away and that's what I've done here. It really helps to see how (and, for that matter, if ) all the colors relate to one another.

When watching Wappel's videos his speed is enough to make a plodder such as myself feel ill. Suffice it to say that it took me a while to advance these three to this point.

Next step: work on the highlights. Onward.

It seems that while Mortal Arrow is no longer FD's distributor, they're still selling whatever stock they have on hand. At last check there was some neat stuff remaining.