Happy Year of the Rat

Hi All,

Today is the Lunar New Year, so Happy Year of the Rat. Around our house we say 恭喜发财.

So I thought this would be the perfect time to get myself together and paint those Skaven that have been sitting in the lead pile for far too long.

You've seen these guys on the blog before. They are the Rat Ogres from the Isle of Blood Box. Somewhere I also have their handler and a Reaper Giant Rat painted. Of course I couldn't find them for this photo.

Some of the Skaven from the Advanced Heroquest box. I have a few more, but you get the idea from these. I also need to paint up all the adventurers and Men at Arms.

Some Plague Monks. I may have more lurking around. Who knows. In fact I'm pretty sure I have a few with a knife and scroll somewhere. I'm so disorganized.

Somehow I won a shrink wrapped Screaming Bell on eBay. Every now and then you get lucky.

Some more of the Isle of Blood Skaven. Again I'm sparing you the pictures of sprues, I have more.

Random assorted Skaven I've bought over the years in peoples basements and parking lot exchanges.

And last, some 20mm Ratmen from Splintered Light Miniatures. The big boy at the back that I'm using as a Rat Ogre is a 28mm scale figure from Highlander Miniatures? I forget. Anyway a cool sculpt.

So that's it for me, another project on top of the others, we'll see how it goes. Next will be to set them up and figure out what sort of "army" I have. Then print out an Army Builder list and get cracking.

Thanks for looking. I hope you find something in your pile that you feel inspired to paint.

The Fall of Tropilium over at Talomir Tales

Hi All,

The latest Battle report is up on Talomir Tales here.

I've got a ton of news to share with you all, but I'll parse it out over the next few days.

Thanks for looking.

Finished Ogres and Rat from last Saturday

Hi All,

They are up on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge VI here. As usual I am posting all the same pictures here on the blog.

In the main I like how these came out. I used the Reaper Golden skin tone set, but only the shade and mid colors, followed by a wash with the shade. Looks okay but I think it needed some dark lining for some of the transition areas. I didn't see it at the time.

I'm also not liking the yellow skirt with his skin color as much. The greens were a couple of new colors I bought at the craft store.

I really liked the faces on these two. I thought the picture was sharper than it is.

This giant rat was a fun sculpt. The various spaces between his legs and under his head were a little tricky to paint though.

I don't like how his fur came out but the flesh and boils are nice. This figure proved to be rather popular on the challenge.

So here are the four 20mm scale Ogres from Splintered Light and the 28mm scale Giant Rat from Reaper.

Here's a shot of how I'm trying to play with off camera flashes to get better lighting. I feel like all my shots are under exposed so I'm trying to figure out different ways to light them up. These shots still needed some level adjustments in GIMP, so they're not where I want them to be yet.

I'd like to welcome Kitrock aka Robert Kurcina to the blog. I don't see a blog link in your Google friend profile so let me know if you have one and I'll link it.

And on a final note I've started seeing a slow bleed off of followers over the last couple of days. About 7 so far. I'm wondering if this is what some of you were talking about. I have resisted G+ integration of comments and circles on the blog because they insist on forcing so much integration. I personally like to compartmentalize my life and am not particularly interested in bombarding my non hobby friends with pictures of little men. Call me weird.

Paint Table Saturday 116 - Ogres nearing completion

Hi All,

Nothing completed as of yet, here's what's on the table.

These four boys are very close to being finished and you can make out a bunch more 20mm fantasy in the background. I should be doing more Sci-Fi too. I'm taking an absolute beating in the side duel.

Not much else to report here, I survived the laser tag birthday party.

Studio shots of vacation figures and Bertok size comparison

Hi All,

So I tried to take some better shots of the first three entries into the AHPCVI. This is just using my usual desk lamp lighting and laptop control of the camera on a tripod.

I think the layers show up a little better on Bertok. In the previous picture I had to use flash to get enough light.

I probably could have posed these a little better and lit them a little better, again no flash. It was hard to get these guys grouped and in focus on an 8.5" wide background.

Same for the Gladiators. Also the two huys hunching forward just don't photograph well.

L to R: Eeza Ugezod, Troll, Bertok, The Merchant of Venus XII

Finally you can see how massive Bertok truly is. Because he had a non slotta base I mounted him on the thinnest plywood base I could get from Litko. All the others are your standard ~3mm high plastic base. So yeah Bertok towers over a troll. Maybe I should have based him on a 40mm base.

Anyway thanks for looking and thanks to Armand for linking my last post on TMP.

2nd post of the AHPC VI - Little Goblins

Hi All,

You can read the post on the challenge blog here.

The green paint I use was having some pigment issues, so it was a struggle get an even not chalky layer on them.

I thought I had painted the spear wielders before, but didn't notice their hats at first.

I phoned it in on the fur bikini briefs but like how the colored loin clothes came out in general.

I need to update my painting challenge log. I have 76 points on the board right now and should have another 5 on the way.

We went to see the new Star Wars movie last night and we all enjoyed it very much. If you're a fan of the series I don't think you will be disappointed. It left me wanting to see the next one.

We're in that post Christmas lull, we'll see if I can get anything else finished before Monday.

First post of the Challenge - 1/72 Gladiators

Hi All,

Finally got in my first submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge VI, here. I'll show you the same pictures on the blog, but I do recommend checking it out for all the other submissions. The themed rounds are especially good. I haven't decided if I'mm gong to participate in those yet or not.

Anyway, here's the Gladiators.

As I tagged in the labels, these are a mix of Italeri, Pegasus and Orion figures. Each set has it's strengths and weaknesses. The main issue with the Orion is the amount of flash and the rubbery plastic that is hard to trim cleanly.

I mixed in a lot of bronze and brass with the silver metallics, to keep it interesting. I also used the Reaper Dark and Golden skin triads in addition to my standby, Tanned skin.

These lads and lady (and bear) gave me 36 points. I'm trying to be a tad more consistent this year, we'll see how that goes.

Just a look behind the scenes. I didn't bring a variety of backgrounds with me so I thought I'd try using my tablet as the background. I probably should have wiped the finger prints off the screen.

I should be posting another batch of figures to the challenge later today.

Vermember and gearing up for Curt's challenge.

Hi All,

Not a whole lot of hobby actually occurring as I horde more lead and plastic. I realized I'm running out of time to finish a Skaven figure for Vermember and a little bird told me to look out for an announcement about Curt's painting challenge on the 20th.

So I realized I need to get serious about prepping more figures.

While I do have a few of the old Plastic Regiments Skaven, I acquired an Isle of Blood box not long after Age of Sigmar came out. So above are the Rat Ogres and packmaster alongside a 20mm Splintered Light Rat man that had a void in his shield that needed filling. The plastic models have a lot of nice detail, but the sprue attachments didn't cut as clean as I would like and were a tad difficult to clean up on some surfaces.

They were all two part, so I had to glue them together. It's not clear to me if they were meant to be snap fit, but they were hard to test fit and then pull apart to glue. They also were a bear to fit tightly and I had to green stuff the gaps.

I used Vaseline to keep the green stuff from sticking everywhere but the model. That works much better than water for me. Spit as non stick, yuck. I also had terrible timing. I started gap filling at 10AM and had to be somewhere at 11AM. I tried freezing my ball of green stuff and found it was still usable at around 6PM when I had time to finish. I didn't use it all up so refroze that. I'll check on it later this afternoon after my errands.

I'll try to do some posts about the Kickstarter loot that's rolling in, and maybe about the insane amount of stuff I've been dealing for on Facebook.

PTS 104 - The finale of Orctober 2015, Talomir Tales and Orktober?

Hi All,

Not super productive but finished of these 20mm(1/72) Orcs. Mostly from Caeser, but one from Dark Alliance.

The usual process for me. I'm going to start trying harder to blend my layers on 28mm figures, I don't think I'm ready to do it on 20mm. The hand motif on the banner was a real pain. The sculpted folds, as you may already know, make it hard to paint a defined shape.

I also wanted to draw your attention to a battle report I did for Talomir Tales here. My terrain and the photos are pretty crap but the battle went pretty well. My son helped me roll dice and push soldiers around, it was quite enjoyable. He still hasn't totally caught the bug, but he asked me when the next game was.

I'm running out of time for Orktober, barring a cheeky rephotographing of that fantasy Black Orc on a star field background. I've revised down and will try to bang out the Gretchin Army Standard bearer whose tab says Runty but I have seen called Makari.

Lastly I'd like to welcome 4Graffiti to the blog. They appear to have several sites about products for Graffiti artists. If you are looking for such things you can look up their profile in the followers section. If there is a wargame hobby blog link I missed from 4Graffiti, please let me know.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Some one else actually likes my work!?

Hi All,

It's official. Those Bugbears I painted up are now live on the CP Models website here. You'll have to scroll down a little to see them, they're the second item. FBB2.

Here is my original picture:

I'm noticing some flaws in the photography right now, but overall, ok.

So if you like 20mm fantasy these are fun little figures to paint. They are about the same height as other 20mm(1/72) figures, so don't expect them to tower over other figures in this scale like the size comparison art from Dungeons and Dragons.

Note: These were formerly Splintered Light, but the range was sold to CP.

Paint Table Staurday (Friday Night) - You must WIP it!

Hi All,

Well it's Saturday in certain parts of the world.

I've been busy/mopey. Found out I'm going to lose my tooth and then they were worried I was on the verge of having a heart condition because of my left shoulder, side of face issues.

Clear bill of health, normal EKG, although there was an unpleasant conversation about the effects of Brain tumors on facial nerves. But we seem to be in good shape.

Sorry, your here for pictures of little men. Right!

Above are those 40mm zombies. I missed last week for Zombtober, seems to happen every time I start to assembly line paint. There are not finished,but are a wash and a couple of details away.

Basing gunk on the 20mm metal Lizard men and remaining 1/72 plastic goblins.

I decided to was on sprue the plastic 28mm GW zombies I got from Stevo. The are underneath a spreu of Gripping Beast Celts I'm planning to paint up as Thugs for my Tzeentch Warband.

I figured, while I had the tub out for the zombies I'd wash the High Elves and Skaven from the 8th Ed. WFB box set I bought awhile back. I thought it was a good deal for the figures and figured to capitalize on the purge due to AoS before these became "rare" and "OOP".

I also received my first big box Kickstarter in the mail today. Blood Rage. I'll show it off soon.

Another Cross Country meet in the morning for the boy. Wish him luck.

EDIT

I keep on forgetting to welcome Brummie to the blog. He runs Brummie's Wargaming Blog and is also running the Zombtober festivities. Go check him and the other Zombtoberers out.

/EDIT

Paint Table Saturday 101 - Still Zombies and Little Orcs

Hi All,

Not super productive this last week.

Asecond layer of grey on the zombie flesh and then I got out all the various 20mm greenskins in various levels of completeness.

Hoping to get at least one Zombie and or Orc done tomorrow; but I have a kid party, track practice and a lot of tidying to do to set up for my Talomir game.

Happy painting.

Paint Table Saturday 99 (on a Sunday, again)

Hi All,

Just finished those Bugbears I've been taking way to long to complete.

I'm mostly happy with how they turned out. A few things here and there I'm not completely jazzed about, but they look pretty good. I'll work on a better photo shoot for the various poses tomorrow, when I have time.

We're getting ready to go to track practice this evening. The boy came in second in his division at the 3K he ran yesterday.

Thanks for looking.

Paint Table Saturday (Week 38)

Hi All,

I see some prople put up numbers for PTS somewhere in the 90's, but I have no idea what the "official" numbering system is. So I'm going by numeric week of the year.

This week I'm going to show you what I've done thus far up to today. I'm hoping, in this way, to keep you updated but not delay my post until I forget.

I decided to play with doing a rust effect on their silver metallics. I think the sword is a little much, but the axes and mace look good. I'm hoping a wash will bring it together better. I'm noticing that the focus got a little soft around the edges, I'm not sure if that's a lens limitation or if I need to adjust the positioning of the figures or the aperture. I changed it to 6.3 from 5.6 when I noticed some out of focus areas on a 28mm figure I was photographing. I've also stepped the flash compensation back to 0.0, I'm not sure if it's too dark now. What do you think.

I'll be posting about my plans to use the old board game Kingmaker as a campaign map for a War of the Roses game.

Later.

Bugbear painting and photo progress

Hi All,

  I'll apologize in advance for the minutiae I'm about to present to you. One of the things I'm trying to do is get back to keeping a painting log so that I can jump back and forth between projects and not have to totally relearn/ wing it in order to match the previous figures.

  What I'm trying this time is to dab paint on a note pad and jot down the color and what it's for, taking pictures at every step. Well almost every step.

Above we have the mid layer for the flesh, Reaper Intense Brown. This is over the shade of Ruddy Leather.

Comparison against the previously finished figure. The Highlights have been added. Reaper Oiled Leather. It looks a tad lighter but doesn't have the grunge wash on it yet.

In this last picture I've added some green cloth, earth and leather straps. Home made Vallejo 896, Anita's Earth Brown and Folk Art Nutmeg.

And now a word about the photographs. I have spent a lot of time trying to learn how to use my camera better and can get some pretty good shots when I take a lot of time and control most of the variables. What was frustrating to me was that I was finding it more and more difficult to get decent pictures when I used the presets and just did point and shoot, as most workbench pictures are of necessity. Anyway I was getting more and more frustrated by what seemed to me to be too dark or just not representative colors with the presets and couldn't seem to get the various manual settings I was familiar with to compensate. That is until I tried this:

Several things got me thinking as I tried to photograph these black primed figures that were coming out too dark. Blue had asked me if I was using my flash with diffuser and I told him I wasn't. But I got to thinking, was there a way to adjust things so that I could use the flash and get the images I wanted. With Auto I was getting no flash due to the direct lighting I was using. In portrait I was getting flash but it looked too harsh. In the various manual modes you can adjust the flash, exposure and white balance but I had the aperture and shutter speed set up for remote activation and smaller aperture. It dawned on me that I should try to copy the shutter speed and aperture of the Auto setting with my lighting and exposure tweaks in full on manual mode. In M mode the little thumb dial changes shutter speed, I dialed it to 1/100 sec. Then over to A(perture priority) to thumb the dial to F5.6. The Flash was bumped up to +1.0 from something else I had tried, I forgot about it, and the exposure value was bumped up to +1.0. If that hadn't given me what I wanted I would have played around with that more. I figured that since I was using the Flash I should white balance for it. Again, if it hadn't worked out I would have noodled around more.

So thanks Blue.

Paint Table Saturday (on Sunday)

Hi All,

Lazy weekend thus far. I did manage to swing by a local hobby shop to pick up some supplies and found a model railroad backdrop for $6 or so that might prove useful. I won't show you that this time, but go on to what's being painted.

I seem to be having real trouble covering all the little nooks and crannies in these Bugbears I bought from Splintered Light. Someone else has bought the range and I'm trying to get them painted up so they can use them as product examples.

I really had to tweak this photo, the dark brown shade layer on the flesh is hard to make out against the black primer. You may recall, when I painted the first two, that I had originally mixed up a custom skin color. You may also remember that I thought all that work ended up looking a lot like the Reaper leather colors. So this time I'm using stock Reaper Browns.

In other news, I'm back on the eBay adding a few models here and there to the Orc army. I've also been quite a bit more active, for me, on the Oldhammer Trading Company. So far all purchases, not trades, but I'll put up my trade stuff as I get more organized (believe it when you see it.)

Gotta go finish up dinner. Cheers.

Workbench, Welcome and reviving old projects

Hi All,

  I've been puttering around a bit the last week or so, but I just haven't had the blogging mojo. I meant to post to the Paint Table Staurday G+ group but decided that by Monday it was just too late. I'll try to post there this upcoming Saturday.

  On the workbench right now is this:

Terrible lighting, sorry. The Burnt Umber primed are 20mm Ratmen. The Black primed are (foreground) 20mm Bugbears, (next back) 20mm Ogres, (smack in the middle all the way back) 28mm Reaper Barbarian dude, (with skin painted) 28mm Gunthor from Black Scorpion (I think).

In the bucket for cleaning we have all my current Sci-Fi figures. These are the Colony 87 figures plus the Oldhammer 2015 special figure and a Judge Dredd Psi Judge. I'm waiting on those Foundry RT figures. I also supposedly have the Space Raiders Kickstarter coming at some point, but I forget what the hold up is.

Welcome to Suber of the very nice blog Oldschool Workshop. He's got some nicely painted figures and a great comic book project he's thinking about rebooting. Go check him out.

Speaking of reviving old projects, I dug out my old Mighty Empires campaign and retyped the journal so that I can sex it up into comic book or other presentable format.

  The thought is to try and recall what was going on and fast forward 20 some odd years in game time to be a source of scenarios for me and possibly others to play out in this alternate Warhammer world. I brought in a lot of AD&D Deities & Demigods fluff for the Orcs and had them be the main threat to humankind instead of Chaos. One thing I've noticed is that my 24 year old self seemed to like run on sentences, a lot.

Cheers everyone. Off to the gym tonight.

Devil's Run Kickstarter, only hours left.

Hi All,

I'd been watching this one for awhile. Finally caved and signed up for it this morning.


You can find it here. I think I need to stop funding kickstarters, it's become an addiction.

Potion Pilferers (part 1), A Knight's Quest Adventure

The game mechanics are mostly the same from the last time we played. I should have made myself a quick reference sheet o remind me of key things that come up a lot. As I showed in the comic I forgot to apply the small attribute and remembered the vicious attribute for the orcs, but then jettisoned it when they started to get the upper hand.

Losing a hit 50% of the time when you use magic seems a little harsh. So far my use of magic has not been very effective. I also need to play the monsters a little stupider. While the Imps should be shifty and try to gang up on people I think the Orcs holding back so they could lure the knights into unfavorable situations was too hard for the boy.

Sorry for the dodgy photos. I tried some  presets and they stunk. I finally settled on using manual settings and they got clearer, but only realized I needed to fiddle with the white balance on the last photo. I will also play with the EV more next. I'm always trying to strike a balance between documenting and playing. Playing usually wins out.

I hope to wrap this up this weekend, see Mad Max, and get the Talomir battle started.