Post Apocalyptic Villains break their silence

Hi All,

Sorry to have been so quiet. I had great plans for doing a year end review and then got busy and a cold. So to kick off my first post of 2014 I'll share my second themed entry to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge which you can also see here.

First I'll give you the fluff I wrote, just a bit of silliness.

My villains come to you from a dark future. After the big crash things became desperate. No one knows who was the first deploy the nukes, but as soon as one did it didn't matter anymore. In an instant, huge swaths of the once great super powers were laid waste. Out of the ashes a new society struggled to be reborn. In it you were either a viking or a victim and those brutal enough to eke out a living preyed upon the weak and the just. These are just a few.

Gargantua & Pantagruel and the Warrior of the Wasteland come to you from the Warlands range produced by Aberrant miniatures. They are 1/72 (20mm) scale. I was going for a grungy and, in the case of G & P, oil soaked look which I think I achieved. The Flesh wash on WW was too heavy but I'd like to think that it makes his skin look a little raw and burned. From radiation perhaps. Both of these models came in three parts. For G & P I just painted them and then super glued them together. WW I had to drill and pin, using some Testors contour putty to fill the gaps at the shoulders. This is really the first time I've really filled a gap as I always shied away from conversions and most of my previous pinning was standards and riders.

I essentially did all the work on them since returning from my holiday trip and all of the painting in the last two days. The method was base coat, wash, drybrush. I tried to add some color on the base, but I think I covered it with flock and static grass.

I hope you enjoy them, and I hope to incorporate them into some Post Apocalyptic gaming this year.

Obviously these guys represent Master Blaster and The Humongous from Beyond Thunderdome and Road Warrior respectively. The Humongous ( or Warrior of the Wasteland as I called him) was a right pain in the ass to put together. The arms came separate and they are very different in size. The right arm, with the big leather pad on it, looks atrophied. Again this works for the PA feel but was a little weird. I chose to give him pants as the sculpting of the legs did not look muscled at all to me. The leather diaper over the rolled up jeans and steel toe doc martens looks weird, but he'll shoot you in the face if you make fun of him.

The reference to Rabelais with the other guys makes me look far more literate than I am. I am somehow familiar with the characters, even before my father named his dog Pantagruel. However I can't recall ever reading the story.

Photography wise I just set up my black construction paper background and used flash and every light in the room on. I did use the Aperture priority setting on the camera and dialed it up to f16, but these guys were in the same plane and close together so I don't think that made much difference. I'll continue to experiment with settings and let you all know what comes of it.

Before I forget, I'd like to welcome two new followers to the blog:

Shaun McTague from Watching the Paint Dry. I haven't had a chance to look around his blog yet, but it appears he paints figures. Thanks for following.

Pulpcitizen from Pulp Citizen and Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer as well as Anima Tactician. I've come across your blogs before and am following 2 out of 3, not too bad eh?

And lastly, some of the silly things you find when seaching Google images for reference pictures: