Orctober - First Orc - Plastic Black Orc

Hi All,

Here's my first entry for Orctober 2015:

You may all remember this figure, I want to say my brother gave it to me, but I'm not sure why he had it. It came out okay but the way I color blocked it originally may have obscured the detail. That baby skull on his belt was particularly problematic. After looking at some pictures of real horns I'm glad I tried grey colors for the horns this go round.

This is what he looked like before I started him this go round:

Scary! Again reminds me why I hate white undercoat.

Hopefully I'll have more soon. I want to finish those half done 20mm (1/72) Orcs now.

Zom(b)orctober 1

Well, I'm either a day early for the second week of Zom(b)tober or 6 days late for the first week.

Perhaps I used too much blue on the figures to use a blue background. I also reverted to no EV compensation, as I wanted a darker look to the photo.

I base coated these Burnt Umber using Liquitex Spray Artist Acrylic. I had actually started these with some Krylon and hated it. As you may recall I dislike spray primer as I feel like I almost never achieve full coverage while also end up covering detail. The liquitex had none of those issues and I would recommend it to anyone. It is expensive $11.99 per can, but if I can speed up my prep time it's worth it to me. Note to self - Don't spray prime at dusk. It is really hard to tell if you missed a spot.

I then wanted to work with a modified grayscale technique. The idea was to build up highlights in gray and then glaze colors over that. I feel like the drybrush was not wholly successful as it got that powdery look, associated with overworked drybrushing over surfaces without much detail. I then was hit and miss with thinning the the paints. I also used two different blues on the male zombies that didn't look that different. The flesh was glazed with Italian sage, which is a light green grey. The female had a green skirt and yellow shirt. For the skin I did a modified grunge wash of 4:2:1 Green: Burnt Umber: Black wash. The rest was my standard Grunge was 4:2:1 Raw Umber: Burnt Umber: Black. I tried to be subdued with the gore. First I used a little Tamiya Clear Red mixed into some sepia ink wash. It was too brown and lifeless. I then reapplied the clear red over those areas and that helped it pop a little more. The matte varnish may have taken the shine off the clear red too much.

They came out okay but I think I will mix greys into my color palette to achieve the look instead of painting in grey and glazing. I was working on a survivor at the same time but the techniques weren't doing it for me.

Next are the Orcs.

I drybrushed up the skin on these guys and I don't think I will do that again at this scale. These guys are 1/72 scale from the Dark Alliance. Set 1 I think. As usual I played with Bronze, Copper, Gold and Silver on them, just to make them more interesting. The eye motif on the shields is my fall back. On the Bronze shield I did it backed by Burnt Umber, the steel shield is backed by black.

I also felt like trying out a little vignette with these Orcs:

Fladnag and De La Warre lead their men to fight off the green menace.

I bumped up the EV to +1 to make it brighter and adjusted the aperture to f16 to try and get the forward figures in better focus. I used digicamcontrol 1.2 to help take all the photos. I must admit to rushing this shot. I should have played with lighting and position more.

I'd also like to welcome the two latest followers:

Tiny Basement of Tiny Basement Wars and pw, who does not have a blog listed in his Friend Connect profile. TB is doing some fun Oldhammer gaming with his kids and has a great Comic style report of his Space Hulk Dungeon Bash mash up. And if pw reads this and has a link just let me know.

Hope y'all like the latest. More to come, I hope.

Zom(b)Orctober

So I've signed on to do Zom(b)tober and Orctober this year.

I add a b because it's Zom B's!

I think I signed on to this last year, and then produced a big fat zero in the painted Zombie department. So I'm going to throw my hat in again and try to get something done. I think I saw it first on Eclectic Gentleman Tabletop Gamer and am listed 10th there, while I'm also listed on Brummie's Wargaming Blog where I'm listed 20th. I also followed Brummie's Blog today as it was one I thought I was, but actually wasn't.

I see that Brummie and EGTG each have their own logo image with the text tying it together. Using What Font Is I found it was Bloody. The only thing I don't like about FFonts is they try to get you to download their installer. I ended up doing the zip file after it downloaded the installer.

So in keeping with the whole make your own banner thing, here's mine:

I am also fully aware that I am the outlier in spelling it with a B.

Next up Orctober.

By Zhu Bajie

You can join in at Erny's Place and there looks like there's even a prize to be had.  Of course the real prize for me is actually painting all the stuff I've had lying around since 1992.

So throw caution to the wind and join one or both of these. Your lead pile will thank you.

Orky links

Since I haven't been able to work on my orcs because of prior commitments I wanted to post up some links to orc things that I find interesting. This is somewhat of a place holder but I hope will be of interest to others and possibly start some sharing on thoughts about orc kind.

First, aside from the Caesar fantasy set, what are some other 1/72 (20mm) options for goblins? 1/72 Multiverse had a good pos ton the subject here. To me the Alternative army orcs look like they would fit the bill. Perhaps talking about goblins in a post ostensibly about orcs is bad form, but an orc army without goblins just seems wrong.

Although not strictly Warhammer, Orcs and Teiravon give some good overview of orcish society. For Orc deities I like this wikipedia entry as it comes from the AD&D books that I poured over as a kid. Forgotten Realms Wiki has a little more fluff here.

While the Orcs website has a name generator there is a fun one that uses your name as an input at The Land of Shadow here. Watch out for the music. Or you can use the Inspiration Pad Pro file I made from the name generator in the back of the Mighty Empires rule book. My files page on my lame google site here you want to download the file named MEGoblinoidNames.ipt

I'll also have to look around and see if I can't find my notes for when I was on about conlangs and structuring a conglomerate orc language combining Tolkien and Warhammer. There was a great program called Langmaker, which is sadly no longer supported, that allowed you to make word banks and a sort of dictionary. You could also generate languages with it.

Well, sorry for the ramble. We are off to take the kids to a costume party while we have a "date" night at IKEA picking up an armoire that we can't seem to order online for delivery.

I hope to opine on stats and books in future posts as well as play out my next battle in Talomir. There have been some goings on there and two of the four battles for this season have taken place already.

I promise to have some pictures next time.

Orctober

So Erny, over at Erny's place has come up with an idea to get Orky in October. Or rather Orctober. He's doing this by having a giveaway here and 25 days of featuring Orcs.

I am definitely in for the plastic Orcs, they'll fit in nicely with my batch.

My 10 plastic Orcs. Looks like I need shields.

I thought I'd take it one step further and use this month long (or 25 day long) celebration to motivate my finishing up some orc figures. I have plenty of 28mm and 1/72 to work on.

1/72 Caesar and Dark Alliance

Dark Alliance and Ironwind Metals Wolves

Straight from the Ukraine, I'm not sure why the picture will not display horizontally.

Of course I still have to finish my Talomir forces and play out the battle.

I've had a few new followers to the blog so welcome to:

Phil, your blog is not listed in your friend connect but I'm sure it is the blog Association - Les Riflemen. A very nice blog with well painted figures and good battle reports. It has the plus of an inline English version of text for those of us who are Francophonically challenged.

Dennis Hutchinson, I don't see a blog listed for you either. Let me know if you have one and I'll post a link.

wKfB5nhpy8kvEj44APoPXM7nHFixHoKE, I have to say that I am troubled by your name. I can't tell if I've been butt added (sort of like butt dialed or butt posts to facebook) or if you are real. My apologies if you are real. You also do not have a blog link. Let me know if you have one you would like me to link to.

My kind of maid service, after the break.