End Of The Week - Not My Best Work (15)

Earlier on I was expecting a much busier day. The time of year and the end of daylight savings time, with some lack of sleep made and with what I was expecting to be doing today made time look a little short. Sunday is usually the day I do any last minute work to finish of my plan for the week. So I was was relatively happy when on the way to a jog I tripped over the curb, skinned my knee and fingers and did some damage to my foot. With all plans out of the window it was back home to put my leg up. And paint.

Despite some misgivings I have achieved my plan and surpassed my expectations. The New, New Cruelty is happy. I have tinkered about with some terrain and got along way through the prepping process for a load of figures. Not a bad week.

Some of the figures this week have been a bit entertaining to paint. The Rebels and the Star Saga scientists suffer from some flatness of detail. Nothing wrong with this but it is difficult to make them shine. The three Malifaux figures were good fun to paint. Lots of nice detail. At the end of the process I was quite happy with what I had done with them. Although looking at them now I can see there are a couple of missed details. These were for the Viktorias crew and until this week one of the Viktorias was missing. Now that I have found the figure I remembered why I didn't do it at the time I got them, one of the figure looks almost impossible to glue together (with any hope of the bits staying on and being apparently impossible to pin). Lastly there is a lonely cowboy which I started last week. Despite being on the table for over two weeks it was the last figure to get finished.

Next week is looking like a freeish week. Currently I plan to go to Salute next weekend. This will be the first time I have been to the biggest show in the country. Painting wise, I have a couple of figures that I have been using as background projects. Background projects have not figures highly just of late so I think I might grab some figures for that purpose. As for the main working objective I want to work on some Blood Bowl and I suspect that there might be a range of odds and sods. Some cowboys, the odd modern figure and post apocalypse seem appealing. Maybe some terrain might make in there somewhere.

Distracted By The Weather And Other Stuff

It has been a busy week and I am now doubting I will make my target for the week. It's all been good stuff but I hope I can get on with painting now. Whilst looking for my passport I have found a load of figures I really need to paint right now.

For the first time in ages it has been good weather for priming. I put some effort into getting figures prepped. Although a lovely sunny spring day here.

Still At The Blobby Stage

Work is going well. I think. Maybe. 🙄 It's Wednesday and I hoped to be a bit further along. The four genres of figures are more interesting than others so there is differential progress. The Malifaux stuff is currently my main focus which is why they are already looking a bit better.

With the Star Wars Legion rebels I want some a bit more rag tag. More like freedom fighters than a regular army. What do you think? I have another three sets to do yet and I am open to suggestions.

I was given another one of the GW painting handles as a present last week. I like the first one I had but I don't like switching between them and my usual paint pots. Now I have two of them I feel the urge to try them out again. If I had more I would probably use them all the while, I just don't want to pay for them. Maybe I should try and cultivate some more gifts?

Quick Start

Another week of working hard looks like it is in the offing. Already I am getting static from all quarters and I need to find even more paperwork. Still, enough griping as I also have some painting to do.

So another mixed bag this week. Last year I was all about getting blocks of stuff done. This ended with big queues and feeling just a little demotivated. At the moment, this really is working for me. So four more Mantic Star Saga figures are on the table. I did a little bit on these last week. There is one Artizan Designs cowboy which has been hanging around as well. the biggest chunk will be the Star Wars Legion Rebels. These have been staring at me for a few weeks now so probably time to crack on with them. Lastly there are three Malifaux figures. I plan to spend some extra time on these and get them as perfect as I can. It's about time I did something with them. They cost enough when I got them and they have been gathering dust for ages. Maybe it will push me into doing something practical with them.

End Of The Week - Too Tired To Stand Up (25)

I have managed to make most of my goals this week and exceeded a few of them. So all in all I am quite happy with myself. This was going to be a simple week. I was expecting to be busy. I was. Tired now and ready for bed and it is not yet 9pm.

The week began with a plan to paint ten figures. At some point I added one on the quiet because I thought it was going to be easy. Most of what I planned to paint this week was from the Star Saga game by Mantic. From the first time I saw it I liked the idea of buying it. It was the right price, there were plenty of figures and a decent amount of usable terrain. There were many sci-fi games they would work for. I had some ideas for the X-Com game that has been on the gaming burner of a low heat for about two decades. Mostly at the time I thought they would be good for what I had planned for Titansgrave: The Ashes Of Valcana, a game I really like the idea of but doubt I would get too many players.

Anyway the first set of figures I decided to paint were the security guards. I played about with the fleshtones a bit and I think they came out ok. This is despite the detail on the faces being a little soft as they are plastic figures. In the end I was okay with them. Not my best work but acceptable for tabletop standard.

Then there were a couple of hero figures. Most of the heroes don't seem to work with many of my ideas but I think I will come round to doing them eventually.These models were, to my mind at least, nice to paint although the face on the female warrior could have used a but more details.

In my head there were three more dark age figures to do and I thought I planned to paint the three. I could only find the two though. I doubt the horn playing musician will get used a lot so I didn't put a huge amount of work into it. Some work went into both but not a huge amount. They came out alright though.

Another one of the big plans at one point was to run a superhero game. Whilst there is plenty of Heroclix stuff out there but the models, to be fair, a bit kack. Really what I wanted was to go for nice metal figures at around the right price. At about £5 this model from Reaper was not the cheapest figure I have ever brought. It did work out okay though and I am very happy with it.

By Wednesday, with eleven figures painted, it was all pretty much done. There was a few bits of detailing to do but not enough to keep me busy. So I had a rummage. Having enjoyed painting the guards I thought I would have a go at some of the others. So much for an easy week.

During the process of rummaging I some military types from Star Saga to do. These were an easy enough paint job. There were some mould lines that were hard to get out and so I ended up leaving them.  A simple paint job with mainly shades of green (I think five in total) and that was most of them done. These are pretty good for hard sci-fi and I can already see a number of uses for them.

Somehow I didn't stop there. What do you call these figures? Well I have no idea. Some sort of failed (or possibly successful) experiment. These are big hulking figures (with the faces looking not entirely unlike the big green wrecking machine).

 
So in the end there wa a total of twenty five figures done and dusted. This sounds like a lot but there majority are plastic figures with limited details so relatively easy to complete. Along the way I worked on some more terrain. For a while I have been wanting some standing stones. These are not yet finished. On top of that I have done a little bit of work on five of the fifteen figures I have planned for next week.

Working Quickly

It's a bit of a mix today Wargames Foundry, Mantic, Black Hat, North Star, Artizan Designs, Reaper, Gripping Beast, Fantasy Flight, Grenadier, Malifaux, Mirliton have all been primed. I am sure there are a few others in there as well. At least I have future proofed my painting schedule for a bit (well primed some figures for work in the future).

There has been a bit of painting done. One of the advantages to painting a wide range of figures at one time is that you can paint a lot of figures in the same colours without everything in the final genres looking the same. The superhero figure I spent a fair bit of time on to get right. The security guards took a little bit of time but I didn't want to put too much work into them. They may come out on tabletop but really there are there for a board game. They are already pretty closed to finished, just a few more details.  Maybe if I get back into Titansgrave or other Sci-Fi stuff they might come out. The giant robot is nice and the power armour looks good to. If would be nice to make a bit more of him but I don't see how I can make him look too impressive.

Attack Of Opportunity

It's a bit melodramatic for a blog title I guess but somehow it seems to represent what I have been up to today. I have been expecting really bad weather for most of the week but today the weather got up to just about tolerable standards for priming. Assuming of course that I warmed up the paint first and took the figures in almost immediately.

Despite the break I didn't manage to get everything I wanted to done but there was more than enough to go on with. It does mean that I have figures to paint. yet more of the last of the Vikings. A superhero and  a bunch of guards, a giant robot and a woman in power armour from the Mantic Games board game Star Saga. I liked the game when it came out and I have only just found the figures from it. If nothing else there is a good few weeks of painting especially if you include the terrain