Tuesday, June 25, 2019

I've been blogging for 8 years?

Hi All,

Well it's the blog's anniversary, bloggiversary if you will, and I had no idea that I've been writing this thing for 8 years now.

Seems like I should have more to show for it. Oh well.

So perhaps a trip down memory lane is in order:

2011

 My most viewed post was Post Apocalypse 28mm which was talking about a Ganesha Games release and some figures from Lead Adventure. Looks like I hot linked to the images (sorry) and they are now gone. I never ended up getting those figures. This post has 3376 views, probably because of the title. It's not a great post.

My most commented on post was Welcome Followers, with 7 comments. Early on I decided that I wanted to welcome my followers and try to respond back to all comments. Of course it looks like I forgot to respond back to most of the comments I got. Anyway, I like to try and make my blog like we are having a personal conversation. Just not too "personal", if that makes sense.

2012

 Most viewed was Another Post Apocalypse err.. Post. I was still blathering about post apocalyptic gaming, but not actually doing any. No clue if Apocalypticum became Mutants and Death Ray Guns.

Most commented upon was 10,000 hits prize draw. Makes sense, you had to comment to win something.

2013

 Most viewed was Sexy (Sexist) Miniatures debate, and it still gets hits occasionally. I think this is a "problem" that is never really going to go away. I also am probably showing my age with my likes and hangups, but there you have it.

Most commented upon was 2nd Bloggiversary Giveaway. Surprise, surprise, another giveaway. Coincidentally, I think Asslessman of Leadplague won the prize.

2014

 Most viewed was New Talomir Tales post and Welcome, the post itself is just a link to a report I did on Talomir Tales. Perhaps I cross posted it on TMP or something. I had a lot of fun playing in that campaign, although I did fall into the trap of never completely painting my forces.

Most commented upon was 3; 152; 323; 2209; 115158. I thought it was due to the enigmatic title, but alas no. It was another giveaway post. I'm sensing a trend here.

2015

 Most viewed was To the Strongest, Dragon Rampant - News you can use. I have played neither of these rule sets and have misplaced Dragon Rampant almost as soon as I got it. I really want to play TtS. I need to just do it, as the kids say.

Most commented upon was 4th Bloggiversary for Sean's Wargames Corner, sigh, another giveaway. Although I do have some Oldhammer Orc Archers I finished posted up.

2016

 Most viewed was  Abdul Goldberg, the most infamous Rogue Trader. Thank God! This figure is probably the single most thing I am proud of since I got back into the hobby. I didn't win the competition, but Rick Priestly said nice things about my offering ans it was something that I had an idea for and was able to execute. Yay me!

Most commented upon was, wait for it, Obligatory Year End Post Pt.1 - Painted in 2016. I'm just as surprised as you that it was not another giveaway. It beat out the Abdul post by one comment. It's actually a pretty good post as it shows what I painted for the year. I didn't paint a lot, but I liked most of what I painted.

2017

 Most viewed was Shadow War: Armageddon - 3 Way Loot Battle, this was the year that my views ballooned, many posts in the thousands. I wonder if it was some kind of bot traffic? Anyway, putting the title of a rule set in your post title seems to get a lot of hits. It's also a good comic report.

Most commented upon was Paint Table Saturday 204 - Ok I know it's Monday. A Dragon Forge Scenery piece and some IG. I miss Paint Table Saturday a little bit since the demise of G+, but I didn't want to go to a new platform to continue it.

2018

 Most viewed was Paint Table Saturday 219 - Chevaliers D'HHonneur metal blocked. Still on the weird uptick of views, over 3000, they would fall back to normal 100's later in the year. This post is pretty meh.

Most commented upon 1000 point-ish Bretonnian Army. I'm glad this one made the list because this was a big part of my 2018. I felt quite a sense of accomplishment getting this army finished. I then got to use it in a massive game here.

2019 so far ...

 Most viewed is Banners by numbers - The tutorial no one asked for. A decent post, if I do say so myself.

Most commented upon is Amburger Hill a comic report of a game I had here in Phoenix where I had my ass handed to me. We have a game coming up here in a couple of weeks and I'm way behind the curve on getting my list together for that.

Anyway, thanks for looking. Although this blog is sort of a catchall for my random train of thought, it's the interaction with you all that makes it interesting. So thanks for putting up with my ramblings.

Paint 'em if you got 'em.
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Monday, June 17, 2019

Countdown to BOYL: 44 days

Hi All,

Is it time to be terrified yet?

I'm wrapping up the OWAC2 but also madly trying to prepare a bunch of figures for BOYL in August. My timeline is a few days shorter than until the actual event because I have so much travel time to get there. Something like an 11 hour flight, followed by a 2.5 hour drive. Ugh.

Any way, here's some stuff. (Sorry for the bad pictures.)


9 Humans. I realize now that they had the extra arms attribute. Whoops. I'll pretend they have baby T-Rex arms under their jackets. I also really need to dust.


The grave guard, or whatever, that I'm using as Grim Reapers for OWAC2.


The Renegade, Orks (Extra Joints), Beastmen (Irrational Fear [color]), Assassin (I like the way he came painted, just trying to fix him and texture his base.) Two candidates for the Terminator Game/ Strontium Dogs if I can weasel my way in. And some skellies mixed in. Also the Zombie plague cart that needs to be built. Not shown are the Ash Waste Racer, Great Gargant and Space Marine Terminators that have yet to be built. Right now I'm also thinking I will assemble my adventurers for the Temple of Rigg from already painted Fantasy stuff.

So I think I should be worried.
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Thursday, June 13, 2019

Our WFRP Campaign on Youtube.

Hi All,

Sorry for not posting in awhile, life has a way of getting in the way of hobby stuff. I've been meaning to share this list of youtube videos from our WFRP campaign. Michal has given me permission to post them here and I will set up a page to post the links for easy reference. I joined the group somewhere towards the end of the "Heralds of Woe" campaign. I'm not sure which session yet. The sessions are about 3 hours each. I've toyed with the idea of stripping the audio and editing them down to 1 hour chunks for a podcast format. But honestly I don't know if I have the stamina for that.

Any way, here's the list:

WFRP - "Pretty Things"
"Pretty Things" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "Everybody's Talking at Me"
"Everybody's Talking at Me" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "A Secret Inheritance"
"A Secret Inheritance" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "Heralds of Woe"
"Heralds of Woe" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "The Haunting Horror"
"The Haunting Horror" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
"The Mystery Adventure": https://youtu.be/43iMZLjjf5o
WFRP - "A Rough Night at the Three Feathers"
"A Rough Night at the Three Feathers" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "Terror in Talabheim"
"Terror in Talabheim" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "Chaos in the Rye"
"Chaos in the Rye" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "The Thousand Thrones"
"The Thousand Thrones" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
WFRP - "The Lord of Lost Heart"
"The Lord of Lost Heart" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist…
Session 03 (BOTCHED VOICE): https://youtu.be/DgaHoPG2mms
So there you have it. Let me know if you readers want the notes for any of these. I fell off giving recaps here somewhere in the "Terror in Talabheim" adventure. No artwork and not remembering everything to fix what appear to be errors in the notes.

Thanks for looking and tell me about your gaming if you're doing some.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2019

My OWAC2 post for May

Hi All,

Just a quick post because I've been terrible about blogging this month.

I finished a couple of figures and posted them over at the Old World Army Challenge here. You should really take a look at all the entries, but if you only have time for one you owe it to yourself to take a look at Tom's Dwarves.

Anyway, here's my guys.


My leader, Zazad the Eternal (thanks random name generator), and the standard bearer for my skeleton troops.


Death, from Skull and Crown's Triumph of Death, came with two arm options.


I wasn't able to decide on the arm options so I tried magnetizing. It worked more or less. I also inadvertently changed the head position after breaking his head off before even prepping him.


I last minute decided to give him a sword after looking at the box art.


My posing has left him a tad unbalanced so he needs to be placed carefully to not fall forward and to the right.

June is going to be hectic, so we'll see if I can get the last two units done, in addition to my BOYL and local gaming projects.

Thanks for looking.


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Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Banners by numbers - The tutorial no one asked for

Hi All,

No rest for the wicked, so hobby time has had to take the back burner again this month. I did promise I'd share how I did my latest banner, so here goes.

If you are like me and have lots of ideas but not the talent to execute them, making banners can be a frustrating task. As I was learning to use GIMP I realized that I was pretty good at cutting and pasting in the software and that I could build my banners from the elements that Games Workshop gave us to make banners in the Army books or White Dwarf Articles.

So I picked a banner from the Undead Army book.


You probably recognize this as one of the Skeleton banners presented in the Undead Army book p32


I did a lot of this first in Photoshop, I couldn't get it to look right, so I returned to GIMP. Turns out it was the final stages printing it out that were the issue, not Photoshop. So the main thing I did was get rid of the design, I just wanted the banner shape. I made a copy of the banner then erased the design and then painted in white to get a blank canvas. You could probably just skip straight to painting over the design in white.


I added a banner scroll that I belive I got from openclipart.org, as its own layer.


Then I added a trace of some artwork for the main banner graphic. In both of these cases I could have used elements from the other line drawings from that banner page in the Undead army book. I just had other plans.


So here's where you may not want to copy me. I latched onto the idea of doing a "Tarman" inspired banner. If you haven't watched Return of the Living Dead, stop everything and do this immediatley. Anyway, I found a T-Shirt and ran a filter on it in Photoshop to alter and simplify it a bit.

This is the original image. I forget what the filter was, but I think it was watercolor.


I then ran a greyscale filter on it because I was more interested in tones than actual color.


Then I selected areas with the magic wand and stroked the selection with a 1px black line on its own layer to give me my outline. I tried to figure out a simpler way to do this but ended up with this method. It just took a lot of time.


The final problem was that, no matter what I tried, the banner would print out in weird dimensions and very pixilated straight from either GIMP or Photoshop. So I pasted it into Open Office Writer, Set my ruler to mm, and scaled it there before printing out.

I then just painted in between the lines and used a tiny technical pen to write "more brains." As you can see the varnish smeared the lettering slightly.


Thanks for looking.
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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

My April Submission to the OWAC2.

Hi All,

Well I finally got my skeletons and Zombies finished.

Here they are.


10 Skeleton "archers" from Skull and Crown: Triumph of Death


And 20 of the plastic boxed set of Zombies from Games Workshop. Which they still sell here.


I thought I'd give you a close up of the banner as well. In the next few days I'll do a post on how I did it. I call it paint by numbers, as I can't draw very well. It involves stitching together various line art in GIMP or Photoshop and then printing it out on paper and coloring within the lines.


The skeletons were once again base coated white and then slathered in a mix of yellow and brown ink before being drybrushed with the Reaper Bone Triad. The zombies were base coated grey and painted with Reaper's Undead Skin Tone Triad. I tried to use some color desaturated with grey, it was so so in my opinion. I also painted some areas that were intended to be flesh as cloth, such as the banner bearers legs. The exposed muscles and guts got a wash of Purple and Red ink, with the guts getting an additional light highlight, I think of slate green.

Anyway, I'm glad to see the back of these. I will be working on the Plague Cart and Grim Reapers for May.

Thanks for looking and commenting.
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Friday, April 12, 2019

Blogging and Banners

Hi All,

We seem to be at the time of year where I realize I've let things slip. It seems like usually in the hobby I get frustrated sometime around February or March and my productivity and posting go way down. This year appears to be no exception.

In the OWAC I had to declare a Mulligan for March as I just hadn't quite gotten the figures for that month finished. They were close, but I kept on seeing glaring errors that I just couldn't ignore that were fiddly and things that kept me from calling the figures finished.

I also just hit a mojo rut. I have a lot of varied things to paint but I just got stuck and stopped sitting at the painting desk. One of the things that is causing a mojo block is the banner for the Zombies. It's been awhile since I've made a banner one post is here. I did finish those banners and they are still on my Orcs. As you can see, I'm not a very good drawer, but I was fairly good at using GIMP to give me custom banners made from elements of the line drawings provided by GW.

Fast forward about three and half years. I'm using photoshop and I can't seem to do it. Frankly I'm baffled. The resolution is squirrely, the size seems to be way off when I eventually print it out. So I'm going back to GIMP to get things in shape.

I've been working on getting this month's OWAC submission finished and going back over the previous submissions and fixing a few errors and putting matte varnish and some flock on.

I'll also be working on some other upcoming projects, like my renegade warband and Rogue trader Imperial Army.

Welcome to donjondo, thanks for following.

Sorry about the lack of pictures in this post, not much to show except piles of partially or completely unfinished stuff.
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