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.

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.

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.

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.

More Splintered Light comparison shots

Happy New Year everyone. I had hoped to have a few more posts for you but the holiday travels left me tired and I just didn't have it in me.

One question that did come to me was a comparison of the Splintered Light 20mm figures with Zvezda English 100 Years War.

Fladnag, four English and the two SLM Bugbears

 In the above picture we have our friend Fladnag from the Caesar Adventurers set. The next four are the Zvezda 100 Years War English Infantry and then the SLM Bugbears. The Zvezda figures are a tad larger, but not horribly so. You may recall that I always thought the Bugbears should be bigger.

With SLM Lizard men

 The SLM Lizard men look small net to the Zvezda guys, maybe more like skinks in Warhammer.

Beastman and Minotaur.

 Again the SLM Beastmen are a little diminuative, but the Minotaur looks right.

SLM Goblins

 I'm not sure if this shot with the goblins are helpful, but I think they work.

With SLM Kobolds

 I really like these Kobold sculpts, a lot of character. Little and nasty looking.

Hill Giant from SLM 28mm Range.

 I got this 28mm Giant to use as a Troll for 1/72. I think he looks great but I will put him on a sheet metal base.

Caeser Goblins, SLM Goblins and Kobolds.

 Here's a comparison shot with the Caeser Goblins and the Splintered Light Goblins and Kobolds. A little smaller but you could put a layer of something between washer and integral base to match the thickness of the Caeser integral base. It doesn't really bother me.

Caesar Troll and SLM Hill Giant

I thought that this 28mm scale Hill Giant would make a good 1/72 Troll. I'll base him on my galvanized roofers tin, I think he'll look good.

Hope you found these comparison shots useful.

Bugbears from The Painting Challenge.

Hi All,

Here's my first entry into the Analogue Hobbies Vth Annual Painting Challenge. The link to my specific entry, should you be a glutton for punishment, is here.

I added this size comparison shot to show how they scale with other 1/72 (20mm) figures. Fladnag is 28mm from the bottom of his base to the top of his hat.

Yesterday was the first day since the challenge started that I have not painted something. I went on a class field trip with my son and then had to rush to the gym not long after we got home. More volunteering today may cut into the hobby as I also have to get in a run, take my son to karate and go to San Soo class tonight.

Don't forget the Splintered Light sale code xmas14.

Splintered Light Miniatures Sale

Hi All,

Even with the best intentions i seem to have trouble posting as frequently as I would like.

I wanted to draw your attention to a sale going on over at Splintered Light Minatures. In addition to some sale items on the front page you can also enter the code xmas14 at checkout. If I recall correctly it will give you a 20% discount (I could easily be misremembering the amount, but a discount is a discount.) I've got my eye on some 20mm Kobolds and Goblins and am considering the Hill Giants from the 28mm line.

Check them out. As you know I'm a fan of their sculpts, I wish they had more 20mm versions of their 15mm stuff.

In Painting Challenge news I'm going to varnish and flock my entry today. I've been good about painting every day, something I lacked last go round. For me it's color choices and technique that really hold me up. I seem to be unable to lock onto a palette before I begin. I only had to paint over a couple of areas that didn't work. But of course I also came up against the issue of "that moment when" the flesh color I've painstakingly mixed and layered, ends up looking like I painted it with another color straight out of the pot. :p

I hope to get on a bunch of figures for the next steps in the challenge. I have one outstanding order that I need to track down.

20mm Size Comparison - Splintered Light Fantasy

Hi All,

There was a post on the 1/72 - 20mm fantasy miniature group on Google+ about how some miniatures that Splintered Light had recently acquired measured up to the 1/72 plastics currently available.

Since I have some other Splintered Light minis, I thought I'd show what I have.

For scale I have included an IMEX American GI who stands almost exactly 25mm tall. Next to him is the familiar Fladnag, the Wizard from the Caeser Adventurers set. I have placed them all on washers to start at the same zero.

DRRE07 Rat Warriors 1