End Of The (Most Productive) Week

This week has not really been about  painting 28mm miniatures. It's been about  me finishing of what I have started. Whilst I haven't finished off every half painted figure on the bench, I have come pretty close. Some are abandoned rather than finished but not in bad condition all the same.

A couple of years ago I got these Grenadier tribal type figures from a bring and buy. There are fifteen of them in all so these are the first batch. I am not generally a big fan of repainting figures but I thought at the time I could maybe strip them. Upon close inspection I thought that the paint might be enamel so I decided against it. Repaints rarely turn out especially well (see the Grenadier figures a few weeks ago) but these didn't turn out especially badly. From a distance they look okay.

The Blood Bowl troll has been sat around since the beginning of last year. I have fiddled with it every now and again. So in the spirit of what I am doing I decided to add some finishing details. I could go a lot further with this figure but I think it is time to call it a day.

There is a whole load of scatter terrain to finish off from earlier in the week. This is what I have finished so far. Most of this is relatively recent although I think the well was brought in the mid nineties. Some is Ainsty, some Scotia, some Midlam and some Ristul Market. Just glad to have them done really.

The stone monster (golem or construct) is a Reaper Bones mini. I have painted one of these before. It's a nice easy paint job. I got this at the last show I went to in December.

The de-bearded carrion crawlers came from a D&D boardgame that I got at a fete for a pound a couple of years ago. Realistically I think these were the only two figures worth having from the set and I suspect the rest of the game, with maybe the odd exception. The type of plastic is a bigger to paint but I have learnt a few new tricks since starting on this.

I painted four actual fantasy miniatures this week. Three dwarves and a human priest. The dwarves are two from Midlam and one from Northstar and I think the cleric is from Gripping Beast. Some of these were not actually on the bench and the blacksmith and king had only been started recently but in my head they still count. I guess none of these are more than three years old.

The Ver'men (not Skaven) priest was started this week. I found myself with some paint to spare. Just a quick no frills paint job. I have a few more of these guys hanging around and I am not sure that I am that inspired to paint them but I can see them on the bench already. I think I got these last year or the year before.

Finally there are four Cold War Miniatures zombies. Nice minis but a little bit small compared to some. They do however fit with a lot of newer minis and you cannot fault them for character. The figures are probable ten plus years old and have been on the bench for at least five years.

As far as The New Cruelty goes this has been my best week for ages. I would argue that I have completed the equivalent of twenty five figures this week. I have done a fair bit of exercise this week including my first 5k run in over 7 years. I have kept up on the less vigorous exercise and kept to my step count. I have played one boardgame and I have even managed to do a blog post every day this week, for the first time this year I think. The New Cruelty is satisfied. Ish.

Accidents

Not the major kind. More the fortunate (ish) coincidence kind. I made a determined effort to get the cultists done today. They are still not quite done and there is a little bit of detailing to be done on them. They would have been finished but I got a little sidetracked. This happened when the spot of paint I was trying to squirt out to touch up spots on a couple of arms became a rather large blob.

I hate waste. So I decided to use the blob for something else. There was probably enough paint to put a flesh base coat down on just about all the faces and hands of the figures I currently have primed. What I did see were a bunch of Macrocosm Immature Ticks. The way they are painted in the webshop gives them a distinctly alien vibe that is very reminiscent of old GW Genestealers. Whilst this is not a bad look I did want something different.

Having a big blob of skin tone paint gave me an idea. Genestealers were part of a life cycle so why not make these creatures part of the lifecycle of something else. So using regular caucasian skin tone was a good place to start with a couple of different colours for a bit of variety. My plan for a while has been to get some more of these. It would be an easy job  to give them some slight variations on the skin tone as well.

Whilst these were brought as an Opfor for the Titansgrave game, I can see a number of uses for them. Using them as a kind of genestealer esque creature has some and that this would probably work for X-Com and just about any post-apocalypse game. I don't really have a firm plan but I can see a number of ways of making this work.

On the plus side these should be a quick and easy paint job. There are a dozen of them so if I finished them by the end of the week I should be ahead of the curve for the first time this year.

The Start Of Zomtober Week 4

The good work continues but this is going to be another hard week.

More Mantic The Walking Dead: All Out War stuff. Zombies from a variety of sets.

Zomtober Week 3

Really the title of this post should be Zomtober Week 3 - as far as I got.

There is still a few bits to do on the paint work. Across all the figures, there is plenty I am not happy with. There are also a few bits that are just not done. The basing still needs to be dealt with to. This is probably going to be put off for a bit.

The New Cruelty is not happy. I am not happy.

Well except I am. I have had a bloody good day, a nice evening meal in a restaurant and I have managed to put as smile on one of the lads faces on his birthday.

Next week...Zombies.

Progress, In A Lot Of Different Directions

Well I have had a blip for a few days but I seem to be over it now. Somewhere along the line I have managed to get a solid three hours of painting in today. Whilst I am not speeding through the work, I am at least making progress.

A little bit of everything here

What I am lacking is a bit of focus. For a while now I have been wandering off part way through projects. Tonight for instance, I have worked on all of these miniatures. I think I've worked it out. Maybe. The carrion crawlers (without the beards) have been on the bench the longest. Well they were cheap. The troll and the female mage have been around for about a year. I'm not sure where the mage came from, might be Northstar and the troll is from Midlam. The Blood Bowl figures of the last of the human team I started earlier in the year and The Walking Dead stuff I've had for a couple of weeks now.

A while back I made a decision to improve my painting skills. Feel free to comment here. Part of this involved using thinned down paints and a wet palette. It seemed logical at the time to switch to dropper bottles. This seems to have saved a lot of paint, whilst there is more waste on the day it means that the paint doesn't end up drying up which usually happens to most GW paints because of their either stupidly designed or cleverly designed (depending on your point of view) bottles.

In practice, occasionally, if not frequently, I put more paint on the wet palette that I need. Having been brought up to waste not want not, I figure that I should be using the extra paint. If there isn't something I can use it for, then I find something I can use it for. Or something on the back of the bench that gets one step closer to being finished. I have always had what I call Background Projects. These are something that doesn't take over (that's why they are background) but I can work on them when glue or wash is drying.

The background is becoming a lot more foreground. During Zomtober I have had more zombie figures on the bench. This has helped me keep on track. This week however I have run out of stuff  that is prepped and primed.

So now I am thinking I need to do some more prepping and priming. I was reading a blog post somewhere that somebody was doing just that in readiness for winter. They live in Canada where there is a chance that there might be one foot of snow. Here in the UK we might get one inch of rain but the problem remains the same.

Zomtober Week 2

This week of Zomtober has been focus on the The Walking Dead's All Out War expansion, Days Gone Bye. It's another six figures, four survivors and two zombies. The zombies were getting tinkered about with last week and it is the survivors that I have been "concentrating" on. It has to be said that my focus has kind of gone towards the end of the week and there are probably a few details that still need addressing.

These are two of the most characterful zombies in the game. I love these figures and they are ones that are likely to feature a lot.

The four survivors, all from the Atlanta Camp have turned out okay. Some of the hands look a bit out but I think this is down to the moulding rather than the paint job. I am always a bit disappointed when I look at the pictures on Mantic's website and compare them to my paint job but I guess that the pro painted one are early run and have better hands and have fewer mould lines.

The shading on the collar on the figure in the red shirt has turned out really badly in the picture. It is better in real life but I will give this a bit more attention in time.

Anyway, the week ahead is probably going to be some form of the Miles Behind Us expansion. It's aither going to be the full box set or I might just try and concentrate on the Green household (with a couple of extra figures) and if I am feeling do the two zombie figures for the set as well.

The Walking Alive

There is not so many zombies of the bench this week, mostly survivors. Whilst one of the zombies is waiting for just a few more details the other needed a bit more work. The real work is on the four survivors. There is a good coat of paint for them ready to be highlighted. I did play about with the shirt of one of them. It's a bit more effort than I would normally put in but it is kind of what it looks like on the in house model. My reason for not doing more is that if it goes badly, it goes very badly and means a restart and repaint, which never ends well.

The colours seem quite bright at the minute. Part of that is down to me trying to emulate what's already on the web and part is I know they are going to get darker pretty quickly. Yellow is definitely not a colour I normally use for hair, but the one on the mantic site seemed to work out okay.

Zomtober - Week 1

The plan for the week was to finish off all the minis from The Prelude To Woodbury set.

The Governor, Brian Blake, was a fairly easy paint job. Whilst the mini is crisp enough for a good amount of detail, there is actually a limited amount of actual details. This is down to the simplicity of the images from the comics being easy to draw rather than a flaw in the figures.

It's difficult to put extra detail into some of the figures. When all you have to work with is a shirt and pants it is difficult to make the figure really shine. These are actually pretty nice figures and they have painted up pretty well.  The zombie having a snack was a bit more fun. When I first looked at the figure I thought the"snack" was actually handcuffs.

The three female figures look like they have come straight out of an office. Although this is quite normal clothing, it's difficult to make normal shine. A grey business suit is not going to stand out from the crowd. I always think the female miniatures need to be better colour coordinated than male ones.

Anyway, this is week one done. The New Cruelty is more than satisfied. Next week is going to see me paint the Days Gone Bye. More survivors and fewer zombies.

Zombies Take Charge

Of my work bench at least...

Primed and ready to go

The eBay purchase of an All Out War Kickstarter box and Miles Behind Us arrived this morning. The day has been pretty much been all about that. I have prepped some stuff for Zomtober. The plan is to go through some of the box sets starting with The Road To Woodbury and moving on from there. I have done a few basing details on what I have started so far and made a fairly good attempt at the Brian Blake figure.

Moving Swiftly Along

Despite having a week where I seem to have slept more than being awake, the figure painting is moving ahead briskly. The initial plan was to finish the horses I started at the beginning of the week and make a start on the the riders and their dismounted versions. Other than a few bits of detailing, the horses are now pretty much done. The riders and dismounted characters are pretty close to having a base coat done and even had some detailing.

If all goes to plan, the weekend might see me finish everything off. I have FabLab tomorrow. This is probably not going to get in the way too much as I don't normally start painting till late in the afternoon. So...The plan had been to finish off what I had started before moving on to the next project, which was going to be a figure for Zomtober. I am starting to think that I might just be able to get five or more figures done for the October the First.

If I can manage six figures a week, that would make thirty done by the end of the month. There are about fifteen in the house at the moment but I have a big delivery on the way. There are going to be some that are the same a what I already have. I'm not sure that duplicates of Ric and Carl  (not to mention Patrick, Liam Dennis and Sandra) are not going to stand out like a sore thumb but I might get round to selling them. I might keep hold of the zombie but I suspect they will get painted. It's easy to give one zombie a different paint job to another.

The Opposing Forces

Conflict is the driving force behind most games. This is why games are called Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Villains & Vigilantes and Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes and not Accountants & Academics. Right now the only real conflict I am interested in is Man vs Flu.

The RPG I was going to start running again (using Savage Worlds) involves fighting the army of a Necromancer (assuming they don't go off at a tangent). This means that I need a bad guy and his allies as well as a force for the good guys. There are no end of fighting types in the boxes upon boxes of figures I posses.

Big Nobs At The From The Battle Of Hastings

I might be a bit light on cavalry but I doubt this will be a problem as armies tended to be cavalry light if they had any at all. The bad guys, being an undead army, will be mostly skeletons and zombies with a few extras. I might need a few more but I think I have enough. There are a few skeletal cavalry still it bit form in a draw on my desk. I might get round to making them up. I need a few character type figures for the bad guys. The good guys should be easier. I'll still need a few banner men. The heroes will be whatever the characters pick. In the round, these should be easier to get ready. Either way, there should be enough figures to get some testing done later in the week.

eBay has been good to me again, if you can call it that. I have managed to get The Road To Woodbury expansion for The Walking Dead: All Out War for a good price. This will give me a chance to practice the rules and more importantly a chance to have some more figures to paint for Zomtober. Zombie games have been a big thing for me for years. I haven't run a game in ages and I am feeling the urge to run one at the moment.

End Of The Week, Maybe A Little Late

As the end of the week has been and gone, I thought I'd better show you what I had been up to. The New Cruelty demands five figures per week and  that is what I managed. With a bit of effort I even managed a bit more than the five.

The main aim for the week was to finish some more Human Blood Bowl team players. When the week started, things were going well but I had a little injury time so things slowed up for a few days. I finished them off and gave the bases a couple of coats at the same time as painting the bases for the precious Human Team players and the seven Orc Linemen from the week before.









There have been a few figures on the workbench for months. Some rats and a frost wraith for Frostgrave and a spirit of some kind from reaper. The rats have taken a few steps closer to being finished. The frost wraith is pretty much done.

The spirit was a bit of an experiment. This is a figure I have had for probably fifteen years. It was an impulse buy and it has never really gripped me. This has allowed me to experiment with it a little. Still a bit of work to do on this one.






My shopping trip yesterday saw me get some Blood Bowl Goblins. Whilst I have no immediate urge for a goblin team, some goblins are needed to cover all the bases on the Orc Team. I think I might do a Goblin team and an Underworld team at some point so these will do for that. Some special players and a few more goblins would be nice to finish that lot off.  So four Goblins have been glued up and based. Just need a Varag and the team will be all but complete.




My mind is turning to what is going to get done next. My mind is a little all over the place at the moment so I am not really seeing a next step. Whilst I am enjoying the Blood Bowl thing, the Goblins, the Human Catchers and the Ogre are not really doing it for me. An old fave of mine was a RPG called Conspiracy X, my mind is being drawn towards this. Some more fantasy stuff that would fit in the Viking game would be a possibility. The Frostgrave stuff I have done recently has been done because it was there, not because I have any real urge to paint. I was having a fling at Malifaux on eBay during the week. There are some figures I might tart up a bit. Still I don't have a clear direction for next week.

X-Com Marpat and MRT/Multicam

A slower day today in terms of output. I think I was enjoying the building of the figures more than I am painting them. Well maybe a little. Think I have enough figures to be going on with. Some Catachans might be nice but that would mean more money, I think I worked out that I have enough bits for fifty to sixty figures plus I have more bits on the way.

Still today I have done a little painting. The first is this figure. This is meant to be MRT/Multicam. I am not sure if this is a British or American figure yet. It looks a pig close up but from a distance of 12” it actually looks pretty good. I had a scan around the net for paining guides. The one I settled on suggested putting the light grey down first. in hindsight I am not sure this was the best course as I spent the rest of the time trying to hide the grey which really stands out. That said, it made a nice light base for the rest of the paint job. It looked pretty stark at the end so I gave it a bit of a wash. Not enough to leave shadows but enough to wash the colours out. 

The next figure is definitely an American (unless they have a fetish for wearing marines gear, not heard that about wannabes in America but you know all that time alone at sea and wannabes in the UK). This was harder to source ideas for and in the end, even though there were a few ideas on the net about how to paint it, I gave up at looking at them. In the end I looked at a few pictures of it and went what the hell. I think I put too much of the light tone in. Not by best so far but it was pass on tabletop.

X-Com Zombies

How could I not love a game with zombies. These ones don't want your brains, they just want your body (for a host for their larval chryssalids). This makes a total of four completed zombies. I should probably do another one but I am thinking if things have gotten that bad the players are pretty screwed anyway. I probably need a few more corpses as well.

I am getting a little lazy with the building of them now.

Wolves

Another fairly recent purchase from eBay were some part (poorly) painted GW wolves. There were quite a few of them and probably more than what I wanted. This is what happened to the excess. I was hoping I could take them apart and re-glue them. Sadly that was not to be. Whoever put them together must have used a whole bottle of superglue...per figure. They say the camera never lies but a wobbly hand and poor auto focus makes you doubt that.

Well they were cheap. I have others and they were planned for a one shot scenario and will have a different paint job. Someone I know had a few of them in a display case and I liked the look of them, I am such a kid looking into the sweet shop window. I am generally not a bog fan of GW and their current incarnation especially, Not that you would know it from a number of recent posts, but every now and again something comes along that fits my needs,

For repaints, they didn't turn out to badly. Especially as there were a few that I had over from the other canine project which is coming. I didn't spend much time on them. So cheap and cheerful all the way round. Not sure I'd like paying full price for these but as cheap stuff from eBay, They'll do nicely.
They are really for fantasy games with the Skyrimesque viking game being their main reason for painting these. I can also see them as being useful for some post apoaclyse stuff to.

100,000 Hits And Some Work

A few people have hit milestones this week. Mine might be so grand but I think I am doing okay. I guess that I am happy enough that the blog is not a total flop.

I think I have spent more time on eBay in the last few weeks than I have spent painting. Somewhere along the line I have purchased a 28mm ECW army in plastic for what seemed like a great deal. I have managed to get hold of some figures that I was after for the still in the distance, X-Com game. I got hold of some plastic Dryads which are planned to be used for the not so far in the distance, death by trees game. There is a lot more besides. Aside from the ECW stuff, I seem to have a lot of GW stuff all of a sudden. I think I have purchased more GW stuff in the last fortnight than I have in the last ten years.

I have been painting stuff that I could see because my magnifying lamp has been US. I have now figured out a way to use it, involving a lamp base and a wedge so I should be able to do some detail work and finish what on the table, if I don't do the ECW army first.

The workbench before the ECW stuff arrived

Whilst I have been sat around, I have been working on some ECW rules that I have been playing around with for ages. They are now ready for play testing, I just need some figures based up, which now that I have the army, might actually happen.

There Really Is A Difference Betwen This Post And The Last One

I've had a bot of time on my own today. So between chores, power outages, dog walking, house cleaning, child wrangling, I got some stuff done. Again, not much actual figure painting but there was a little bit. I have finished the last of the Army of the Dead which leaves with twelve including those seen here. When I have access to a better camera than mine, I will post the pictures. I've also done a little bit on the dwarves I started at the weekend and yet to finish. They are all but done, I think I just can't let them go. then there are still some Saxon/Vikings to finish off. They only need the shield transfers putting on, another task I love to avoid.

I have done some work on the bases for the Kobolds but in all honesty, they haven't progress much. I got a huge batch of eBay several, maybe even ten, years ago. I almost finished half of them (twenty one) some time ago and went on and forgot about them. I was going to finished what I had started and then start on the untouched ones but the colour I used last time has dried out. If anyone has a tub of GW Scab Red they don't want, please let me know. So I guess they may just have to wait around for a bit. I'll see if I can pick some up on eBay or at a show.

So after yesterday's blood, sweat, sand and glue mission, I got round to painting the bases. I've dry brushed some of them and put some texture on a few. I might get round to doing a bit more to give them a bit more colour. This again became a bit of a mission so lots of stuff got dragged into the bash. Most will need a little bit of ink to give the base some depth and then I might get some static grass out.

The next project looks like it will be some casualty figures. I am planning to use these on the table in the Viking game. It will give the players something to move around and maybe trip them up. Just a tabletop complication. I haven't made up my mind f I am going to do a proper paint job or just do something very simplistic. I've like what been done for some zombies on Carmen's Fun Painty Time
 so I might give that a try.

Birthday Elves Again

This is just an update of what I started earlier. I wanted some "white elves" or light elves because they are part of the Norse myths. There is nothing much that really says what they look like out there so I thought I would try to make them multi use. The "white" bit is about their fairly pale colouration. This allows them to be used as wood or sylvan elves which are a bit more mainstream. They do have the radiant and beautiful "fairer than the sun" vibe. These figures also have a bard like figure which I feel fits in very much with the background. They have a nice haughty look which makes them useful as a bad guy as well as a player character if I decide to let them in as a player race.

Birthday Elves

Never start thinking you are on a roll when you are blogging. The self confidence makes you a bit cocky. Family arrive, puppies poop all over the kitchen and suddenly you remember all sorts of bits of work that need doing. I haven't done much but I do have a bit of work in progress to show.

I've even managed a conversation from a bow man to a wizard

They just look haughty (uppity maybe?)

I haven't done much since my birthday, hence birthday elves and no, not the kind that leave well packaged presents at the foot of the bed. I started doing some painting on these elves for the Viking game. These are actually some old grenadier miniatures and not the Mirilton recasts. Since starting these, I have ordered a batch more from Mirilton. Some more elves and a lot of bits and pieces. They fit the world I am planning. Whilst they look a little wood elf like, they have a bard (or musician if you like) which is very Norse. They are destined to be white elves from Norse mythology hence the platinum blond look.

 As a Birthday present I ordered some more stuff from Gripping Beat and got some stuff at a wargame show. I'll get round to posting some pics of what I got and a bit more brain numbing dialogue soon. I think I am feeling the Berserkers as the next paint  job although I have a few bits and pieces to finish. I got some more at a show a while back but on closer examination I really didn't like them much so I'll stick with the gripping beast stuff. I have seem some nice paint jobs done of these on line as well so I am quite hopeful they will turn out okay.

More weapons than I will ever need

What's On The Workbench

 This is one of those posts where I don't have too much to say today. I've done my Zomtober bit for the day but still feel the urge. Work has not progressed much but I feel the urge to blog about something. The work bench is looking very distressed at the moment. On the plus side I can actually see some green so I have some surface to play with. It's probably time that I had a bit of a tidy up or maybe just add some more shelves so I have less to complain about.