#5 - Van Halfling

Today's instalment is the famed Vampire Hunter, Van Halfling, scourge of evil.

Scourge of the Undead!

I think that this is a great figure, lots of detail and plenty of character, it reminded me very much of the classic Citadel miniatures of the 80's and 90's.  It's one of a number I impulse bought from Heresy Miniatures a couple of weeks ago.

When the package arrived not only was there a hand written thank-you note from Minion Dan but also a packet of fizzers, top notch customer service and the detail and casting quality of the miniatures is excellent.  I've been looking forward to making a start on them and went as far as to taking the plunge and purchasing some resin bases to round him out.  No plain black finish this time.

Fizzer are an excellent customer service touch.

Back to Van Halfling, I was worried that with all of the brown he would be look too drab and I was going to try and add a it more colour but I think that by mixing between dark and light tones to create a bit of contrast did the trick and I could probably have got away with a brown hat and a darker feather but it does add a nice spot colour.

Presumably the feather was a gift from some rescued maiden, it doesn't really fit with the rest of the ensemble

For the coat I started with a Rhinox hide base, the boots, belt and straps are Mournfang Brown.  I then shaded the whole lot with Agrax Earthshade.  The layers were built up by mixing with the base colours rather than going straight to the next layer colour, this gave a more subtle highlight which I prefer.

No vampire is tall enough to avoid  a good stabbing of the ankles

The pouch and scabbard are Zandri Dust with a Ushabi bone highlight.  I thought that the obscured face had saved me from doing the eyes but painting the buckles and tip of the crossbow bolt more than made up for it.

He was pinned to the bases once painted

The base came from Fenris Games, they have their own website but it didn't have the Cthulhu bases on in so I used  their ebay shop instead.  I drybrushed Dawnstone grey heavily over the black primer and then stippled on some brown, yellow and green washes which you can just make out in the picture above.  I drybrushed Dawnstone again and then Administratum grey.  There was a final drybrush of Longbeard grey to bring out the edges.

This is my favourite miniature so far and I'm very pleased with the outcome, I'll have to look for a game I can use him in and more importantly I need to find him a worthy adversary.  I've been scouring ebay for old citadel Night Horror miniatures which I think would fit quite well.  I think a band of trusty comrades could also be interesting, maybe the start of a Mordheim witch hunter warband?

#4 - Rogue Dustpan and Brush

This is what happens when you mistreat your Roomba, in the Mega-City 1 it's not just the Citizens that go Futsie.  Another one from Mongoose, at some point I'll have to pick up their rulebook or at least paint a couple of judges to start keeping the perps in check.

This little guy has been swept up by the moment

There's an awful lot of green on this robot and to begin with I'd intended to just do a little edge highlighting on the bodywork leaving it a very dark green, in stead I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time using layering to build up to quite a bright almost yellow from a dark Caliban green base to try to give it the appearance of having a more glossy sheen.  I like the effect but instead of being a relatively quick job it really did take a lot more time than I'd intended, next time perhaps I'll just try some gloss varnish.

He is very very green.

I also tried a black undercoat for a change.  In the old days that would have involved applying several coats of the base colours to prevent them looking to muted or dark and in the case of lighter colours re-coating in white first so I was interested to see how the high pigment citadel base coat paints would do.  I've been finding them to be a bit thick for my tastes but in this case it took only one coat to get a good finish, they really do work well over black.  It does still mute the colour a little but now that it's finished I don't think you can tell.

I've also tried to paint a bit of a glow around the eye, the single red eye reminded me of HAL, if HAL happened to have been a robo-broom, I think adding a glow to lights is something I need to practise a bit more.

Not quite HAL

One last thing, I've got to say that looking at the photographs my brushwork looks as scrappy as I expect it to be but, sat on my desk, it's not so apparent, the model looks much better with the stippling giving quite a good blend effect which I'm actually quite pleased with it.  Maybe a trip to the opticians is in order.  That being said, from the pictures I can see that I do need to pay more attention to the consistency of the paint, thinning it more would hopefully help smooth out the highlights, best get off to the shops and invest in some Lahmian Medium.

#3 - Futsie

Suffering from 'Future Shock', Futsies have well and truly gone postal, this one appears to have gone off at the deep end while in the kitchen and demonstrates why you should not keep firearms with the cooking utensils.

Futsie

I've copied the catalogue colour scheme from over at Mongoose, my plan was to compare how I'd painted the highlights but the first thing is that I definitely need to take better pictures.  I'm using a light box with a couple of lamps purchased from Amazon but I'm only using the camera on my phone.  The upside is that I can claim that the paint job looks much better in person.

Catalogue entry at Mongoose Publishing

Cameras aside, the main differences are my highlights are not as smooth and my lines are a bit more scrappy, both things I need to practise and given the time taken, I need to speed up.

Here's a view of the other side.

The other Side

I wanted to try a more natural looking blonde hair and used a guide posted on the Dakka Dakka forum, the colours are from the old citadel  range and so I used this Conversion Chart also on Dakka Dakka.  I was fairly pleased with the result but it isn't the quickest technique and I think next time I need to be a bit heavier on the lighter coloured layers, too much of the darkest shade is visible.

A  close up of the face

Overall, I'm happy with the end result, there was a lot more extra little details to pick out and than the previous models and it has been a good confidence builder.

#2 - Owen Krysler, The Judge Child

I was not entirely happy with Sabbat but he was the first crack at this so I wasn't overly disappointed.  Next up is The Judge Child, Owen Krysler, a classic Dredd storyline which introduced the Angel Gang.  More importantly, it's quite a sparse figure making him pretty straight forward.  I copied the 2000AD colour scheme which is really only 2 colours, flesh and cloth making for quite a short painting session.

The Judge Child

I was quite pleased with the result, the skin tone is a bit darker than I'd intended, I stuck with Games Workshop Citadel paints and used Ratskin Flesh and Reikland Fleshshade followed by layers of Bestigor and Ungor Flesh for the highlights.  The robe was a straightforward yellow, so Averland Yellow, a Casandora Yellow wash and then layering up through Yriel Yellow, Flash Gits and then a spot of white.

Two down and 54 to go and my Ghostbusters Paranormal Exterminators have arrived from Crooked Dice.

#1 - Sabbat The Necromagus

Not the obvious choice to start with,  I wanted to paint a Dredd miniature and I wanted to buy locally, the only shop in walking distance that stocked any Dredd miniatures at all was 6s2hit and they had a very limited selection.  I've ordered game starter kit from them but so far no joy.  On the other hand the first copy of 2000AD I ever bought contained part 2 of Judgement Day, Sabbat was the the bad guy in charge, I think that's a good enough reason.  He also wears a cloak made of faces and I never really got the hang of skin tones.

Sabbat the Necromagus

I tried to copy the colour scheme from the comics rather than the catalogue page which was a good excuse to pick up a copy, in hindsight I think there's just too much skin and I should have gone with something darker for the cloak or added more variety to the tones I used on the faces, (sort of like the catalogue page...) as it is there isn't much contrast on the miniature and it looks a bit washed out.  Aside from that I was reasonable pleased with the final miniature, first one and I think I captured most of the detail, particularly the face, the wonky eye isn't too noticeable.

I stuck with Citadel flesh tones and used a base coat, wash and layer approach.  the citadel paint range has quite a variety of flesh tones available and I used quite a few on the cloak.  t's a vast improvement to the Bronzed Flesh and Chestnut Wash that used to belong to the original paint range.  I added a final drybrush of Eldar Flesh to the cloak to give it a bit more texture after all having your face stitched into a cloak must be bad for the complexion.

Perhaps I should add some zombies for him to command, on the other hand I came across www.crooked-dice.co.uk and their Paranormal Exterminators look suspiciously like ghostbusters.

First Post!

I have some new paint, a small stack of new brushes, a pile of miniatures old and new and am indulging in fit of wanton nostalgia.  I'm going to take some really bad pictures of the result and stick them on here.  It should help me spend a bit less time in front of computer screen or T.V. too.
Putting it all on a blog came about after a few false starts and after reading this one, the Judgement Day Challenge I thought it might help provide a bit of incentive to keep it up.

For the first post I've dug out some of the originals, these are from a time when Citadel Miniatures ruled the roost in terms of lead (well, metal at least) miniatures and Games Workshop produced many many different games.

Greenskins were my favourite and these are some of the last miniatures I'd painted as part of a failed attempt to assemble a Greenskin horde that could stomp across the Old World with impunity.

Night Goblin Musician

Night Goblin Fanatic

Unfortunately in their infinite wisdom Games Workshop decided to spend the last 12 months destroying the Old World so that they could replace the venerable Warhammer Fantasy Battle with  something else, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about it on the internet.  The horde never quite made it.

This next one is a BloodBowl Orc, the 2nd edition of BloodBowl was my first real foray into gaming and again it was Orcs all the way.

Orcland Raider BloodBowl Blocker

One last one, an Imperial Guard Lieutenant of the Tallarn Desert Raiders, this was just for fun, when it was first released it screamed Lawrence of Arabia and I think is one of the best paint jobs I managed.

Tallarn Desert Raider Lieutenant

I've set myself a target of one miniature a week.  I'd intended to make it an army project until I came across  these guys who stock another favourite supplied by www.mongoosepublishing.com/.  So the rules became :

• 1 miniature per week.
• Miniatures can come from any source.
• Squads and vehicles get a multi-week dispensation on a discretionary basis.*
• Base decoration is optional.
• I may hold back completed miniatures to make sure I have one ready for next week.**
• Game Scenery counts.

I've decided to call the project "Approximately One Miniature Per Week With No Overriding Theme".



* :- It wouldn't be fun if there wasn't an opportunity to game the system.
** :- I'm two miniatures up already, it turns out painting is easier than writing a blog post.