Paint Table Saturday (7/26/14)

I missed last week's update due to being out of town and away from my computer all day. In the interim, my table's been filling up! Let's take a look:

Starting from the left of the frame, we see my growing WarmaHordes Skorne force. I finished up my Titan Gladiator this week (and will be posting photos soon) and am moving on to the others currently in my collection. This progress has stoked my enthusiasm for this project, and I've already started adding more figures, with some more on the way.

Moving to the right, we see a couple diorama projects I'm working on - a foray into 40mm scale that I'll be posting about at some point in the future, and then an RPG-related project for the King Arthur Pendragon campaign I'm working on.

Then, we've got my two Ronin factions that I pulled out today, figuring I might as well get a start on them.

Finally, peeking in from the right-hand frame, my remaining Legio Metalica titans for my Epic40K collection. They're half-painted at this point and waiting patiently for my Epic muse to return. Right now, I'm pretty gung-ho on the Skorne, and so the Skorne shall continue to hold my attention for the time-being.

As always, photos of completed models will be forthcoming as time allows. Til next week!

Paint Table Saturday (7/12/14)

I didn't have many free nights this week for painting, but I did manage to make a start on the first figure for my WarmaHordes Skorne force, a Titan Gladiator. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm trying out a non-conventional color palette. I'm going for a sort of irridescent scarab beetle effect on the armor plates, and I'm quite happy with how it's turning out. I'm going to try and get it a little lighter and shinier; hopefully by next week, it'll be in a state where I can take some more detailed shots. In the meantime, here's a teaser...

(I'm also already considering popping my Skorne off their regular bases and putting them on clear bases - my Malifaux crew keep winking at me from the cabinet, telling me to do it.)

(In the background there you can see a General Chuikov figure I'm planning on painting up for a larf, as he's one of my favorite WWII generals. There's also a bagged figure that I won't go into detail about just yet, but it's another display project.)

Paint Table Saturday (7/5/14)

As alluded to in my last post, I've decided to make an effort towards more regular posting here by way of the "Paint Table Saturday" meme. The idea is that every Saturday you snap a picture of what you're working on that week. I think it's a great way to keep a record of how projects slowly come to fruition, and I'm looking forward to generating a nice backlog of pics. (Although I won't be so optimistic as to think I'll manage to post a picture every Saturday...but we'll see.)

At any rate, on with the inaugural picture!

Having wrapped up my Malifaux project, I'm going back to painting more titans for my Epic40K collection (on the left) and am planning to get to work on my nascent Skorne collection for WarmaHordes (right).

As I'm a bit sick of painting reds thanks to all my Legio Metalica titans, I'm going to go with a non-standard color scheme for the Skorne. At the moment, I'm planning on trying to pull off a sort of iridescent scarab beetle pattern, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to do so. But what's the fun of painting miniatures if you don't challenge yourself from time to time? We'll see where things stand by next week...

Malifaux Crew - Complete!

Holy Christmas, it's been a while! I need to start doing that whole Painting Table Saturday thing to encourage me to make a little progress every week, as well as break my reluctance to post WIP shots.

I have finally completed work on my Malifaux crew, which consists primarily of figures from the "Hired Swords" boxed set. This has been an unusual experience in a couple ways, actually.

First of all, I believe this is the first time, or at least the first time since I was just getting started painting minis some 25 years ago, that I've painted up a set of miniatures prior to knowing anything about the game I'm intending on using them with. I don't even have the Malifaux core rules, let alone read them. I did use the online Crew Creator to give me an idea of what to buy, but that was it.

Secondly - and this is the reason it took me so long, I think - I can't remember the last time I had a painting project that was this varied. That is to say, apart from laying in flesh tones, there was no uniform approach to painting the figures, no way to do "assembly line" style painting. I had to approach each figure as a unique entity. Each figure required me to figure out a new color palette, a new look. While this was a fun change from the usual (particularly in terms of painting WWII figures), it was also strangely enervating. Having to come up with a fresh look killed my momentum each time. But I persevered and, if just to get the figures off my painting table if nothing else, finished everything off in a big push last week.

A quick word on the sculpts: Malifaux figures are quite spindly and delicate by 28mm standards. You'll find no GW-style bulkiness here, particularly in the latest plastic ranges. One figure had separately-molded suspenders. Yes, that's right. Suspenders. Strangely, though, for all their delicacy, I often found the plastics lacking in depth of definition. Depressions and indentations were universally shallow on the plastic figures, which did nothing to add to my ease of painting. It wasn't anything terrible, but it did somewhat surprise me. And yes, some of the figures were a real bear to assemble.

At the end of the day, though, I'm really pleased with how everything turned out (well, except the photographs, but what can you do?):

The whole Crew (L-R): three Ronin, Hans, the Viktorias, Desperate Mercenary, Student of Conflict, Taelor.

For all my bitching about the plastics, I love the new sculpts compared to the 1E metals.

The Ronin. I gave them kabuki-style face makeup to tie them together on some level at least.

The Desperate Mercenary and Hans are the only two metal figures in the crew, and were also a joy to paint.

On a final note, you'll have noticed the clear acrylic bases (as well as the fact that I need to dust my photobox!). I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Viewed side-on, as in these pictures, they're fairly visible, but from the average "table-top" vantage point they really do disappear. I don't know if I'll wholly convert to clear bases, but they're definitely a new arrow in my quiver, as it were.

[Epic] Warlords Complete!

Well, complete enough, at least. I posted pics of my Legio Mortis Warlord Titans a while back, but shortly after taking those shots decided I wasn't satisfied with how the banners had turned out. So I went back to the drawing board - literally: I drew up banners on graph paper, both for the Mortis Titans as well as my loyalist faction, Legio Metalica. I drew them oversized so that I could paint them, then scan and reduce. I changed up banner pole configurations, as giving a banner to each Titan made them a bit "samey" and I also added a few extra details, like hanging chains for the Mortis Titans, which seem suitably "bad guy" and totally metal.

I'm quite happy with how everything turned out. The full parade is on display below. The back banners came out a little washed-out due to the way the light was hitting them, but you get the idea. . .

As I said at the top, there are still a few small details here and there that I may come back to, like extra symbols on the leg plates and possibly punching up the basing a bit (although I'm mostly going to be gaming on urban rubble boards, so there's not a whole lot extra I could do - maybe add a bit of a ruined building or a rusted-out hulk of some sort?). But this is close enough for rock and/or roll, and I'm moving on to the next phase in my Epic 40K project, which is...well, more Titans! Two Reavers and four Warhounds, all Legio Metalica.