Closer Than Expected

The holiday is looming so time is running out to finish the week's target. With a bit of luck and dedication I will probably get to the five figures per week. ALong with the rats being finished I am more or less up to date. If I get the time I may even make it to ten but I am much less certain about that. What I am seeing is that the week I get back I should make ten. This would leave me on target. Some days I really do think this is turning into Bridget Jones diary. Anyway, here are the clerics that are nearing completion.

Over the last few days I have been looking around for  a few ideas for projects. The Viking game has a major villain called Vetis Bane. I know it's not very Norse but it sounds really good. What I have lacked was a suitable figure for it. Whilst there are a few figures that would probably do the trick, my specific needs are a bit more complicated. What i wanted to do was create a range of figures something along the lines of the mummy in The Mummy. There needs to be stages of decay. Fully intact, a little zombified and skeletal. The plan had been to find a model to convert. So far the figures I have seen would be too difficult to convert. They have goods or are gripping onto something. Then I realised the answer has been staring me in the face for well over a year.

This is a Frostgrave Cultist frame from Northstar. If I take the right body from the frame along with skeletal and zombie arms and a human head and arms from elsewhere (not sure about the head)  but the arms can probably come from the soldiers sprue.

Maybe this is a project for when I get back.

Rats & Thieves

The rats that I started painting again last week  are now done, well mostly. Eight of the nine are now complete. I guess that counts as four figures done.

Now I have moved on to the thief miniatures that I have prepped over the last few days. I say thieves but most of them are actually mages they just look close enough to thieves. By that I mean no stupid mages hats or wands. These and a bunch of other figures had the flesh done yesterday. For some reason I have decided to change my usual flesh painting system so I am now worried that they are all going to look like game show hosts. So far I have made a good start of the base coat. With a bit of luck I should have the base coat completed before I go away on Saturday. With even more luck I might have gotten a bit further. Sorry if they are still looking a bit off but they will look better soon enough.

Whilst my head is on what I am going, my heart is telling me to go and work on the Dark Elves. What has been putting me off is the basing. I have almost run out of green stuff. However, I came across the basing tutorial to make glowing desert bases. The video is here and this is my attempt.

In the video it mentions that he got the idea from a lava base. That has given me an idea. In my game there are some dark elves on Muspelheim, the land of the fire jotunar and some on Svartalfheim, the home of the dark alf and dvergr. In Norse mythology there is little to say about each of the worlds but the seems to be pretty dark dusty worlds and possible have a connection to fire so lava is not too much of a stretch. This might be a project for tomorrow.

Gratuitous Work In Progress Shots

What chances I have had today I have spent painting. This should have been a good day for painting as my other half is out of the house for a few days. Trouble is the dog is missing her and has spent a lot of time going mental.

My first six Blood Bowl Human linemen are up. Progress on these has been quick but I have chosen a fairly simple colour scheme (Widnes Vikings' away strip). Compared to the Orc Team, these should be a doddle. Anyway, I have no pictures yet so I will do a bit more work and get some shots up.

The Troll

There is also the Orc Team Troll. This has taken a bit of a back seat for some reason. For a long time I have found large minis a little off putting as projects go (and horses to but I have got better at painting them). Whilst I haven't done much, I have taken the opportunity of having spare paint on my palette to add some details. This makes it officially a background project. The figure is hugely animated and will look really good when finished. My only gripe is that there is a lot of areas on the model that are hard to get to. When he is done he should make a nice addition to the team.

Speaking of background projects, I have three fantasy figures on the go. These are all Frostgrave creatures, a beastcrafter, a golem and an apprentice. These have been on the bench for the best part of a year so I figured that it was time that I at least made an effort with them.

Frostgrave "finest"

I guess the reason why they are taking so long to get done is that they don't current fill any needs, they are just things I like the idea of painting them. So the repeatedly fall to the back of the queue.

Gnolls Again

Although I am itching to get on with the Human Blood Bowl Team I am a little intimidated by the project. There is a lot of work in there and there is a few more figures to buy as well. Whilst I don't think that is going to stop me starting, it is going to give me the excuse to finish off what I already started.

Work in progress but nearly done

The gnolls were the last project I started before the laser cutting thing. So they have been sat there gathering dust for a while. This is one project I have been putting off because despite how the figures looked online, what I have been getting from the Frostgrave range has been a little below par. There was a lot of quite chunky flash and this seemed to my mind to be making them hard to paint.

Now that I have been painting them again, this seems a little less of a problem. The figures are looking pretty good. These still have a bit of work to do but it is mostly detailing and some work on the base.

My main problem is that the Frostgrave stuff hits my particular gaming niche at least as far at tabletop RPG goes. Whilst these are more D+D, a game I don't really play, they do represent a race I don't have any figures for. As well as their more traditional use, I keep thinking they would do as an enemy race if I ever do get Titansgrave off the ground.

Going back to The New Cruelty, I am pretty much on target to get double the required number of figures

Blabbering

Not much done today. Well nothing that is tangible. After working on the SUnderdground background again, I thought it was time I did a bit more on the laser cutting front. I have worked out some more ideas. Having kind of gone overboard with the Fallout crafting thing, my mind keeps running back to the way they construct terrain. I have already worked out how to do some rickety looking post-apocalyptic fencing, I thought I would try a raised wooden platform. It took a little while to work out the geometry but that is done now.

This is a picture of one of the monsters that will populate my ruined version of London, Hogzilla. Although there are plenty of wild pigs running around London, hogzilla is something different. A true beast, more the size of a car than a pig.

The Walking Dead: All Out War - The "Heroes"

Although I haven't quite finished the characters from The Walking Dead box set yet, I am about ready to call them done. There are a few details that need highlighting, like anything that is black or dark brown but that is a ten minute job. I will probably put a bit of flock on the bases before spray varnishing and then I'll put on a few finishing touches. That said, I have just looked at the pictures and I am thinking maybe there is a bit more work than I think.

Carl Rick and Derek

The only real problem I have with this is that I want the figures not the fluff but the game comes with fluff. When the game was coming out they were talking about producing around one hundred and thirty figures. I haven't worked it out but I am guessing the current figure is closer to thirty than it s to one hundred. So I am waiting for some more to come out.

Sandra, Patrick and Liam

I have run out of zombie figures from the game now and I'm unlikely to get any more until the next time I go to a show. I have a couple of quick projects that I want to do but I am thinking that I would like to do some more zombies. I have a few Cold War Miniatures zombies to do and some zombie crawlers from a manufacturer I can't remember.It has to be sad that I don't really need any more zombies but what the hell.

The New Cruelty is going well. I have to keep to it going but it's not proving too difficult so far.

First Batch Off The Walking Dead Zombies - All Out War Are Done

I have my six The Walking Dead All Out War zombies done so just a quick post today. I have worked on them a bit and I have made fairly rapid progress here and here. The New Cruelty dictates that I have to finish five figures a week. This is six miniatures down and with a bit of luck I will finish another six tonight. I will probably touch up the black of the bases and add some clump foliage when they have been spray varnished.

All Out War part 1: The boys

They look okay. Just to look at the original resin I would have said the detail was just a little bit soft but the end result says otherwise.

All Out  War part  2:  The girls

The obvious next project is the characters which is the next probably target. I got some Blood Bowl stuff this week. As well as finishing off the zombies I have been putting together the orc team troll but more about that in another post.

Spiders Are Done

Anyway I have finished off the Reaper Bones Spider Swarms for Savage Worlds and Dungeon and Dragons. It's good to have something else finished. All the time consuming drying has been done already so it was a fairly quick process.

Maybe I am getting work done because I am naffed off that I am finding the urge to do something. The house is generally never cleaner that when I am naffed off and it is pretty clean today not to mention getting a load of jobs done around the house. The truth is probably that I am a bit naffed off with myself because of what I am doing or not doing. Decisions to be made I think.

I went with brown as the main colour with a little bit of a wash and a highlight. Perhaps it's not as menacing as black but I have just done the beetle swarm in black, blue wash and grey and I didn't want the two  bases turning out like carbon copies of each other (I am not sure that I like the phrase carbon copy any more, it makes me sound older than I feel). When I think back this model this is actually quite a pricey model. £7 of figures and a £1 of bases plus a few bits and pieces. It's certainly the biggest base I have ever used. Now I just need to figure out a way to transport them.

I have also done a bit more written work on some post apocalyptic stuff I have been working on. I have been working on it for a good long time now, you would hope it would be finished by now.

Still, I am tired now.

Spider Swarms And Making Progress

I have come very close to missing the post tonight. Having posted at least daily for three months now I really didn't want to miss the deadline. My other half tells me the clocks are going forward as well which really would have cut into me time to post. So I just made the deadline which still counts.

Time is never on my side and I haven't had much time today. My other half has been hit by another illness which has meant she has been out of commission most of the day. Worse still she has needed a huge amount of attention along with family commitments. I did manage to find the time to sleep through two films. No great shakes as I have seen both of them already. This is after another night of sleep broken by outside forces. My current plan is to put the dog on tranquilisers and lock the cat in the kitchen.

Despite all that I have done a bit of work. The spider swarm base and it's two sub bases is just about finished. The texture I have used on the base is now curing and when that is done, I will get it painted. I am still not feeling the love for this model but it has been sat around, in kit form at least, for a while now.

Once I have finished that I have done a bit of policing up of stuff on the desk. I have done some trimming on another one of the X-Com Cyberdiscs and played around with a couple of the cars. Small steps but definitely progress. The blog is helping me focus.

End Of The Swarm

I think this is just about finished. Add some more highlighting, a little more texturing and a bit of flock later and this is about it. It looks okay to me.

Looking back at the process I think I got things pretty much right. Maybe I could have built the lip up around the smaller bases a bit more. If I had a laser cutter I would probably cut out to layers of thinner MDF. If I was more into playing D+D I would probably made a couple of 25mm/1" bases in the gaps. This would allow the D+D bases to be made up of 1" bases so that it could morph shape.

With a 28mm X-Com trooper for scale

The next task is probably going to be making the next swarm base which is spiders. I have said a couple of times that I am not so struck by the models. This is kind of putting me off the idea but I have already half started the base. I am still looking for some Reaper Bones rats but I am guessing that I will have moved on to something else.

Swarms Again

Today has been hard work but at the eleventh hour (well the tenth hour to be accurate) I decided that I had to do something. This is probably down to the power of the blog. If I am going to post every day then I should have something to post especially as I figured that tomorrow is going to leave me a little bit discouraged.

I looked back at yesterday's post and I think I have achieved everything I thought I would but nothing more. Actually thinking about it I added an extra step. I didn't think I was going to like the end result on the bugs so I decided to give them a blue ink wash hoping that it will give them a bit more depth of colour.

I was hoping for a good nights sleep. The situation has conspired against me and now it's an early start followed by a long day. It looks increasingly like I am not going to get much done tomorrow. I hope that is not the case.

Ever Sustaining Circles - XCom And Vikings - The "Not" Skyrim Game

Going around in circles again today. Not as bad as it sounds because I  have done some stuff today. There has been no way I was getting anywhere near the work bench during the day and in the evening I have just been too tired. So I have had an evening in front of the lap top. I have done a little work on the X-Com game but again most of what I have done today has been on the Viking game. I am trying to create something that has the Epic feel of the Skyrim computer game. A strong mythology of it's own and weather you can feel.

I did a set of trading rules for the game not long after I started. Due to an inbuilt ufpcuk with Open Office, I lost it all just after finishing it. As I basically cobbled it from basic old school Traveller it has not been too hard to reassemble but I did put a lot of work into the flavour side of things which is taking it's time to recompile.

I have also worked on redoing the cover. The original had a picture of Travis Fimmel as Ragnar in Vikings. I thought this was a little too much of a rip off so I thought I was do something different. As part of what could be called the second edition, I converted the document into landscape format so I really need a new picture. This is it. What do you think?

Another Busy Day

Although I feel that I haven't had that much time today, it seems that I have done a fair amount of work. Having had a terrible nights sleep it was really late when I got up. I woke up in the middle of the night and had a dizzy spell and almost fell out of bed. Then my uncle brought some books back and I took my mum out. On the plus side I got some cheap gloss spray paint which I used to spray some more of the cars. Now I have stripped all the labels off the cars I now have. I still think I need some more of those plastic cars. This may become a habit. I can see another three or four boxes of the cars arriving before the week is out.

Then I got round to filling some holes in the roof of the cars. Then I found out I had some left over greenstuff so I ended up using that on some Lizardmen for Titansgrave and an Reaper bones frost giant. I really thought I was going off target so I got back to the scatter terrain which, for the most part, is now finished. I found some more pipe sections when I was cleaning up the bench so I had better get them done soon.

Now I am working on some more scatter terrain. I am doing some tree trunks, probably better that I show them when they are done. It will look better when you see the final concept. I did a bt of painting of some of the scatter terrain that is already in the queue. Then I thought about some model brick piles I saw so I thought I'd have a go at them. These are still to wet to handle so I will take a picture of them when they are closer to being finished. It's just a foamcore topper scores to look like bricks with some more layers of foamcore to give it the look of having layers. then I got on to the idea of having some packaged items that are covered with tarpaulin. For both I used kitchen roll. I am hoping that the texture of the paper will be noticeable when they paint dries. These will do for a variety of game environments and even genres.

So all in all, not a bad day. I am driven to do the blog at the moment which is driving me to do the work. I have posted every day for almost two months now. If I keep that up, I will have posted as many times this year already as I did in the whole of last year. I would like to make this the big year for the blog so I want to post as many times as I can and hopefully beat my posting record. That would take at least another two months of posting at this frequency. I am about to hit five hundred posts which seems like a good milestone to be hitting and my hits seem to be healthy too.

With Added Stream Of Unconsciousness + Some Terrain

I was feeling great. Less dizzy and running around getting things done despite a bit of a wobble earlier. For the first time in a while I am more or less being left around. Everyone is out or in their rooms. Time to get something done. In pretty short order I started feeling dizzy so I have stopped again until I feel a bit better. It's looking like YouTube for me for a couple of hours at least.

So I thought I would do some of the laser cut terrain I got. rather than just pictures of what I had, I thought I would put them together. So I started with the park benches. They are by far the easiest build to do. They fit together well and look good when put together. They are now in in the primer queue.

The US post boxes are not complicated but a bit more fiddly to do. Although I want plenty of scatter terrain, I will probably only do one as expected. The other will either be a post-apocalypse slightly damaged one. I am sure it would fit in with the Fallout vibe. Or, I could give it a different paint job rather than the standard blue. Some older post boxes were blue and red, I think and I have even seen a picture of one painted up as R2D2 so they could look like anything. Although they are listed a possibly being bins, I have a different idea for them. Looking at the completed model makes me think I should fill in some of the gaps over the top at the back. 

Friday The 13th

A good title for an okay film?

This morning I had a good plan. Get some painting done. Not exactly a new plan in fact it's a one size fits all kind of a plan. It ended up with me not starting painting till 2pm. By the time I had picked up a brush it was time to finish. Then there was the school run. Then I had to tidy up before visitors arrived. Then I had visitors. Then house work then dinner. 

Now I am coach potatoing as I am completely knackered. In and out of consciousness expecting to get a take away in the next hour or so and I won't have to cook dinner.

So in the round I guess I was a bit optimistic when I got out of bed this morning. I seem to remember that there is a phrase about no good plan survives contact with the enemy. The more I think about it, no good plan survives.

Tidied Up?

Other than tidying up the bench about three times, I spent a fair amount of time painting. I don't seem to have gotten very far. This might be the multiple coats of paint for  light colored pants. This worried me for a bit as I thought they were going to end up look more like the Washington Redskins than the Gouged Eye. Even though the trousers aren't quite perfect yet, I think I will see how it looks after washing and highlighting with the hope that this process will bring them around. I am hoping that I should have all of the team (the ones on the table at least) done by the end of the weekend with all of the main colours blocked out by the end of the day. That said, I have a few things going on today that might get in the way.

There is one little detail I have decided to add. There is an old tradition in Blood Bowl about colour coding bases. I think this dates back to second edition when the game was released with identical figures for all positions with only rings around the bases to differentiate between them. I know some players still follow this. With my memory it couldn't be anything other than useful. I am not normally into aesthetics but I don't really want brightly coloured bases. Then I noticed what I think would be the loops on the back of the shoes. I had eventually planned to paint most of the boots with a black or dark grey loop and maybe paint the odd pair orange or lime green. I have decided that instead of the black for all I am colour to paint the loops at the back of the show that appropriate colour.

The last picture is of paint. Not even paint drying. Thrilling, right. I just thought it would be a good way of reminding me what colours I used just in case I wander off and do something else rather than finish the last seven figures off.

I am not sure that this has been the most interesting sequence of posts I have ever done. It is true that I am just doing this for the sake of having something to post. It makes me feel a bit better that I am not yet half way through January and I have manged to post nearly as many times as I did in the whole of 2015.

Blood Bowl Rumours

It seems that I might have been wrong about the goblin team. They might be the next one out on the shelves after the dwarves. This is probably going to coincide with the next Death Zone season book some time around Spring/April. It would follow that all the goblin specials would follow. there is a lot of them if I recall. There is some suggestion that there will be new secret weapons goblins as well

Speaking of the dwarves (and presumably the other stuff that has been seen recently as well) they will probably be out around the end of the month or the beginning of next month. There seem to be some dwarven  star players too.

There is talk of an extra skaven booster pack. If I could I would have picked up two skaven packs yesterday so this might save me some money. There are possibly some skaven star players too.

There was also talk of a skaven/dwarf pitch. Judging by how quickly that one ended up on eBay for £100+, I had better get in there early for that.

I would also guess that the elves are coming. They are in the Death Zone Season One book as are their star players. This is a shame as elves suck :( Others are saying that some of them might even be next year. Some of the figures might be in resin MIGHT be in resin later down the line

Finally the next Death Zone is likely to have the underworld and chaos pact teams and more special play cards have been kind of confirmed.

XCOM Again

After I sent a lot of time farting around the other day I did eventually get some time to do some work on my figures today. Although I had intended to prime the Blood Bowl Orcs after I had green stuffed the gaps I was going to base coat the orcs but it seems that the only times it hasn't been raining today is when I have other stuff to do. Then when it did stop raining I thought that maybe I hadn't left the putty to dry for long enough. Even though it is only a thin layer I was thinking I should probably leave it overnight.

X-Com wounded, zombies and a sniper

It wasn't that much time but at least it was something and the X-Com project was part of my Plan for 2017. It seemed that I managed to glue on a few heads and pieces of equipment and do a little bit of painting after that. Small steps but steps forward. They have become what I call my background project. The job I turn to when I can't work on something else. When the glue or ink is drying mainly but sometimes I pick them up when the muse strikes me This happens often enough for me to give it a name. At some point I am going to have to crack on with them to get them finally done.

I am still thinking this cold be an RPG project that I could get of the ground this year. It's down to the figures. I tend to plan things in terms of trays of figure (about 36 standard sized figures) The good guys are on the table. The bad guys are going to be the next project. I can see some more bad guys and civilians after that but I guess I could do those as the game starts.

Pontification/Procrastination

My workbench is still tidy. It is probably tidier than it has ever been. Everything is in it's right place. Even my storage draws are in some sort of order. I have even made space for more stuff, should I happen to buy it, ahem. The problem is partly about procrastination. Every time I sit down to do something, something happens to stop me. The phone, my other half, the school run or my mum. I should have plenty of time, as long as I can use that time in five to ten minute slots.

So on the workbench are a few projects. The X-Com figures, still in need of some work but getting closer to being complete. Some rat men, almost done but need a final bit of detailing. Some Titansgrave saurians (converted plastic GW saurus) which are probably going to stay there because I need some more to finish the project. Finally some GW dryads, glued together and based but other than that, nothing done to them.

What should be on the workbench are the new blood bowl figures, some animals for RPG games, "some" Frostgrave stuff and even more stuff for Titansgrave.

I might have a chance to nip out and buy some stuff tomorrow, as if I needed it.

This isn't procrastination, it's planning.

Renewing The Workbench

The new year is well under way now. Looking forward to getting some stuff done. Before the bench gets covered with stuff I thought that I might work on it a bit to get it up to scratch. Probably just work avoidance. That said, it would be helpful if I could get near my work bench in the first place. I am always tinkering with the bench so I guess this is nothings new.

One of the big problems with this setup is the fact that the second-hand Ikea writing /computer bench is black so lighting it is a bit of a pig. So I have  decided  to make sure that  at least  some of the  area is white. I have tried relfectors at the top in the past which didn't do much good and the stuff on the side used to catch in the table mechanism. So that leaves me with the surface so I think I might try sicking some paper down on it but then I have always intended to paint the whole of the inside white.

I need more light. There is some LED strip lighting which isn't very good. I have a magnifying lamp which is greater and a floor lamp which is the main source of light. The desk is in the living room and my other half does not like the main light on. Space is tight so nothing by the workbench and nothing on the floor so I am hoping that I can find some clip-on lights. Brighter the better (up to a point). Maybe I will make a quick trip into Ikea (despite me not much liking what I have seen online) as I am at bit of a loss where else to go.