Running out of Patients Pt 4

Posted on 22/03/2011 by sho3box

The final batch of patient zeds, this time painted in that familiar greenish scrubs colour.

There were quite a few of these guys in this batch and I was getting sick of painting zombies (it does happen to me from time to time).  But I persevered.  I also left this gown colour to last as I thought that it would be the most evocative and therefore satisfying to finish.  That in turn would help to spur me on through the last few figures.

It has been a while since I painted a batch of figures as large as the patient zeds.  I am not in a hurry to do it again.  While the end product is very pleasing to me as I like how they came out quite a bit, some of it was a slog.  So much so in places that it almost burned me out a bit.  So its smaller batches from here on.

The green came out quite well in my opinion: it looks pretty much exactly as I think it should.  The green guys and the blue guys worked the best I think, but the others look fine too.

Here is a shot of the whole lot of them, with Patient Zero from early 2010 plonked in too.  His gown doesnt look as nice as the gowns on these guys (in some ways his colours were a test run for these figures).  They look good as a group I think.

The end of a trying but ultimately satisfying sub project.  Comments and criticisms all invited 🙂

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Da Krusher – Forty Shades of Green

Posted on 17/03/2011 by sho3box
Six Thousand Teef Ork

Krusher

I finished this figure while tipsy in front of the TV last night.  I am currently experimenting with different ways to paint ork flesh, hence the forty shades of green thing.  How that for a tenuous link to St Patricks day?

The figure is Gorillagon from Ramshackle Games.  I bought it to serve as a “Da Krusher”, a special character from Gorkamorka who has had so much bionik work done to him that nobody knows who he really is anymore, least of all Da Krusher.  This of course leads to a number of screwy rules relating to the models effectiveness in-game.  Hopefully much hilarity will ensue.

I modified the model slightly during assembly.  I added a slightly smaller gun barrel into the soup-can calibre weapon in his right arm.  I also added a top mounted magazine from another ork weapon, as it looked a little too much like some oddball energy weapon without it.  I didnt do very much work to the gun though.  In-game it isnt that special (Krusher is a close combat type mainly) and I didnt want the gun to be misleading.

+BEEP+ +BEEP+ THIS ORK IS REVERSING +BEEP+ +BEEP+

As befits the characters solo status I didnt tie its colour scheme to any faction of orks that I am currently painting.  I did however try to paint the largely metallic looking model from a white undercoat.  Generally I would approach a model like this by spraying it black and drybrushing it with metallic paints.  This time I sprayed it white and alternated drybrushing of metallics with ink washes.  I did this in the hope that I would end up with defined looking metallic areas but that the figure would not look too dark overall.

Also worth noting is that I didnt bother even to highlight some of the cabling and other detail, all in the interests of getting the figure finished so that I can get working on some more stuff.  I will let you be the judge of whether I got the balance right or not.

As regular readers may know I am currently experimenting with quick ways to paint ork flesh.  I tried another approach with this figure.  I like some of how the green areas worked out, but as usual other elements of it irritate me.  This is compounded somewhat by the fact that the organic areas of the figure are not brilliantly sculpted, so that the huge arms look a little like green tree bark or something now.  On the plus side, I do think that it will look much better on models with better sculpted physiques (like the plastic ork figures).  So I will go in that direction with my next batch or orks.

Finally here is a picture of da Krusher standing alongside a gretchin, a human and an ork, just so that you can see that he really is a pretty big monstrosity.  He also looks sort of sad I think, like he really just wants be friends, like in a sappy Disney movie.

Right, I am off to shatter a national stereotype by spending the day drinking cheap Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon instead of stout.  “An bhfuil tú ar meisce fós?” and all that “top o’ the mornin” jazz.

EDIT 21/03/11:  I forgot to note in the the post that Da Krusher is supposed to have a pair of Steel Horns.  In game terms these make him more effective when charging into combat.  I considered adding a pair to the model during assembly, but I thought that they would spoil the brutal, rounded shape of the figure, so I scrapped that idea.  Presumably the incarnation of Da Krusher above charges teeth first into his opponents, with much the same effect as a pair of horns.  Just in case that sort of thing bothers you.

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Running out of Patients Pt 3

Posted on 16/03/2011 by sho3box

A post regarding the authors penultimate batch of patient zombies, where a twentieth century attitude to the wearing of pink garments by men is revealed.

Although I am sure that many real life male patients are forced to wear pink/peach arse-exposing gowns whilst in hospital, I wasnt going to subject any of my male hospital zombies to that.  They have been through enough already.

So as the Mantic zombie and ghoul sprues dont feature any double X chromosome corpses, I mainly used Studio ladies in this lot.  I also added a disproportionate number of gender-neutral-from-the-waist-down (?) Mantic legs with bloody spinal cords, just to increase the amount of figures in this pink batch.

After painting these figures I played the Left 4 Dead “No Mercy” hospital based campaign on Xbox 360.  Then I played the House of the Dead: Overkill “Ballistic Trauma” hospital level on Wii before I went on to the final batch of patients.  Im all about the research.

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Gorkamorka Project

Posted on 10/03/2011 by sho3box

CLICK HERE to see all of my Gorkamorka related progress since I wrote this post… boyz, vehicles, forts, buildings, terrain etc

Gorkamorka is a skirmish game system that GW brought out in 1997.  It has very similar mechanics to Necromunda but with the notable addition of vehicle rules that involve a little bit of risk management and a lot of shouting “Yahtzee!”

The game is strongly influenced by Mad Max II: The Road Warrior, except that instead of featuring Mel Gibson, actors from A Country Practice and pervert biker rapists it features orks.

Gorkamorka occurred during an awkward adolescence for orkoid development in 40K.  As a concept they had lost their way at some point before Gorkamorka was released, becoming gaudy buffoons rather than a proper barbaric menace.

Although Gorkamorka definitely didnt wipe that image out (I mean the game is called Gorkamorka for crying out loud), it certainly laid the groundwork for the single-minded, homicidal galactic plague that they became in 40k the 2000s (and which they seem to be moving away from again these days).  A lot of that was simply due to the top class miniatures sculpted by Brian Nelson for the GoMo range which took them from comical to monstrous.

As a GW fanboy I bought GoMo (as it seems to be called online these days) when it came out.  It sounded like fun and I had enjoyed Necromunda, which was largely an identical system.

Unfortunately at the time I didnt have many opponents willing to get into GoMo so it didnt get much table time, just an afternoon or two.  I bought some of the GoMo miniatures back then but they stayed in storage, until I sold on all of the orks to pay for a weekend boozing and clubbing in 2000.  It was the right decision at the time.  At least I kept the Mutie figures.

Zip forward a decade and MT, SOS and I have a weekend of GoMo planned for June.  I dont play 40K any more, MT plays a teeny, weeny bit and SOS is getting back on the 40K scene having played in a weekend long tournament in January, which included painting even more Orks for his already vast, epoch spanning greenskin collection.

We all have a lot of 40k (and other games) under our belts and we are all pretty familiar with the basics of the GoMo system.  SOS already has enough miniatures assembled and painted to field numerous mobs.  I have existing suitable terrain and the enthusiasm to make some more (like the ongoing Fort Grayskull and the recent Foam Rocks).  I am also looking forward to painting some of the nice ork figures that have come out in the last twelve years or so.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, MT is a bit of a wild card this time.  Often he is more reliable when it comes to getting a project finished for a deadline than SOS.  This time SOS has more than enough models ready to go before he starts and MT is in a something of a painting slump (a familiar thing to most figure painters I think).

Even if MT doesnt get his mob painted (it looks like even odds to me right now) he will still be able to use SOS spare figs so it looks like the project will materialise fully.  Hopefully MT will get to play with figures that he has done himself though.  He has had a Space Marine Land Speeder with wheels added to it knocking around for nearly a decade.  That really should get its time in the sun and if not now then when?

The GoMo rules system is familiar and will be quicker to play than Necromunda (its less fiddly for a few reasons).  We have also agreed on a handful of very straightforward streamlining house rules.  They should hopefully help us to get enough games in to watch our mobs gain skills and the like and for us to experience the over the top and hopefully entertaining intra-game Gorkamorka elements (visiting dodgy car mechanics and over enthusiastic doctors with a penchant for amputation).

All of this means that many of the hurdles often encountered when we try to get some gaming off the ground have already been passed.  Hopefully that means that we can concentrate on having fun rather than on rules intricacies or other tedious slog and just have a few giggles.

That in turn means that barring something serious that some GoMo will definitely be played this summer.  So I will be putting my progress on it up here for the foreseeable future, starting with the as yet unnamed ork and his gretchin buddies above.  Here is a picture of one of the grots standing in the mine entrance part of the Fort Grayskull project next to a Copplestone figure (Dr Leghorn), for scale.

In the interests of getting the project finished in a reasonable timeframe the ork and gretchin were painted quickly, with some areas getting simply a base coat and a wash.  Not too bad as a prototype models I think, but I have decided to try a different approach overall.  More on that at a later date.

Comments and criticisms welcomed as ever 🙂

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Running out of Patients Pt 2

Posted on 09/03/2011 by sho3box

Back in mid December I put up a post showing my first batch of Studio zombies and Mantic ghouls and zombies painted to look like modern hospital patients.  They went down well and encouraged me to finish the remaining twenty or so over the following period.  I finished the lot at some point in February.

The first of the remaining three batches is zombies in white.  As the zombie flesh that I have been painting is pretty monochrome, I felt that the gowns were blending into the flesh a little.  To remedy this I added a thin wash of old GW Purple Glaze over the flesh tones on this batch.

Its pretty subtle, at least as far my painting goes anyway.  I like strong contrasts that are visible at the distance from the viewer to the game table, rather than beautifully executed blending that is invisible at a distance.  Still, the batch didnt turn out looking like Barney or anything, so it worked out fine.

I find painting white to be a chore and these guys were no exception.  I think that it came together in the end though.  There is a GW component used in the group shot above, which makes it the only non-Studio or Mantic component used in the entire “patient” project.

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Chapter Relics

Posted on 12/01/2011 by sho3box

I found these figures in the attic of a relatives house last summer.  I painted them while I was living there back in 1990 or so when I was fifteen.  They are painted to match the colour scheme of my first Space Marine army.

The miniatures are the same seriously dodgy Terminators that were supplied with the original Space Hulk box.  The figures are undeniably clunky, but have a very functional charm as gaming pieces, from my nostalgia ridden perspective at least.  Being as devoid of animation as they are, they are as obviously boardgame pieces as something like the top hat from Monopoly or even a pawn from a cheap set of Snakes and Ladders.

I also found a painted Terminator Librarian from the Deathwing supplement.  Another goofy early GW plastic.

I got a kick out of finding these figures and I dusted them off ready for a game of Space Hulk or Advanced Space Crusade or something similar in the future.  While the paint jobs are a scary twenty years old, they are perfectly fine for gaming with.

Funnily enough when I traded on Boardgamegeek for a set of 2nd edition Space Hulk back in 2008 I painted up another batch of the same sculpts, visible here and here.

At the time I was going through a sort of minimalist phase in my figure painting and I was trying to see the smallest amount of work required to do to a figure to get it finished well enough to game with.  This was mainly in an effort to try to make a serious dent in the lead and plastic mountain and to get some projects (like Space Hulk, Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel and Descent: Journeys in the Dark) finished for once, at the expense of paint job quality. I found it curious to compare the figures painted in 2008 with the same figures painted eighteen years earlier.

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Farseer / Archon Yuminor

Posted on 29/12/2010 by sho3box

Todays figure from the vaults is the leader of the Eldar army that I painted in 2002, the Eldar from the Iacon fleet.

The army was made from GW parts from a variety of sources but mainly from a mix of Eldar and Dark Eldar parts.  At the time I played using the army chosen from a Craftworld Eldar list, but I wanted to be able to field the figures as Dark Eldar if desired too, even though I never did in the end.

The background for the army plonked the Iaconian Eldar somewhere between the Craftworld Eldar and the Dark Eldar in philosophy.  The idea was that rather than base themselves in a craftworld after The Fall, that the Iacon fleet had assembled for safety in numbers.  As a result the fleet contained ships of many sizes along with occupants with their own agendas.  Obviously this was loosely based on the concept of Battlestar Galactica, although the remake wasnt around at the time.

Another influence was a vaguely Egyptian theme, mostly added so that I could tie the figures to some cheesy decorations that I had been collecting with a magazine around then (visible in a game here).  It also helped to focus me on some of the visual elements of the army such as colour and some of the decoration.  Everyone is familiar with the concept of “Space Egypt” anyway due to Stargate.  Funnily enough I didnt like the Stargate show (because it is shite), although the look of the tech in the movie was cool.

Farseer/Archon Yuminor

Yuminor above is assembled exclusively from plastic parts: Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar jetbikes, High Elf arms, a modified pair of High Elf spears, Dark Elf torso and helmet, a bit from a Falcon grav tank, some old shuriken catapults, some styrene strips and a Bretonnian helmet crest.  I think that the cape is High Elf too, but it might be from a Chaos Warrior, I cant remember.

The circular thing stuck to the back of Yuminors head is a part of a Falcon kit.  It is supposed to tie in with circular gold Egyptian decorative elements that were used to venerate Ra, representing the sun.  The piece of plastic that I used was just a bit too thick and so looks a little odd (or maybe just a little bit foreign and alien if I am feeling charitable).

Jetbike Canopy & Singing Spear Detail

Just about visible in the shot above and easier to see in the photo above it is the hand painted glyph in the side of the canopy.  Each unit in the army has their own unique glyph inspired by both the existing Eldar look and Egyptian heiroglyphs.  Obviously they dont mean something specific or anything like that but they do give a nice element of detail on the figures, Yuminor included.  I find that one area on a miniature brought to fine detail like that can help to give a sense of scale to figures.  When it works the figures start to look a little less toy-like and just a little more real (as far as space elf sorcerers on jetbikes look real, but you know what I mean).

Another element that I carried through the larger models in the army was a phoenix-y bird type motif.  The main reason that I did that was because there was a suitable crest on the High Elf sprues that I had in sufficient numbers to put on all of the vehicles that I had planned for the army.  The bird on the jetbike canopy above however is a Bretonnian knghts helmet crest with some styrene strips making a sort of tail.  That shot also shows the High Elf Spear which I made double ended because I think that it looks good like that.  It also looks a bit like Prince Nuadas spear from Hellboy II now that I look at it.  That cant be a bad thing.

The Entire Model

I like this model a lot even though as I mentioned in a previous Iacon post the paint scheme was laborious in its execution.  Still, Yuminor (name inspired by a character from the super cool Ulysses 31 cartoon) is one of my better examples of a unique figure used to represent an army leader.  Yuminors career didnt have the same gaming span as my Nurgle Chaos Lord but he still stands as one of the better examples from my own corner of the hobby.

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Harlequin Troupe Leader/High Avatar

Posted on 22/12/2010 by sho3box

I painted this guy up in 1993, when I was seventeen.  The paint job is far from perfect but it is still good enough for me to be quite happy to use the figure in any of my games that require it.

Harlequin Troupe Leader

As my Harlequin project never got any further than that Troupe Leader (or High Avatar as it was called back then) I still have a few lovely old Harlequin figures knocking around that tempt me from time to time.  If I do get around to painting them I may tie the scheme in to resonate with this figure in some way, just for fun

I will probably avoid copying the hairdo that looks like a decorated Xmas tree though, I am not so keen on that.  It does however make the figure a little more appropriate for an Xmas post.

Festive Head

I hope that all of you guys get the nerdy stuff that you want under the tree this year.

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Randolph

Posted on 19/12/2010 by sho3box

Randolph

(To the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)


Randolph the zombie reindeer,

Caught the virus from his clothes,

And if you ever saw him,

He would try and bite your throat,


He hated the other reindeer,

And so he ate all of their brains,

They never bet poor Randolph,

Would enter a state of prion induced cannibalistic living death that would result in their souls being drained.


100% Polyester

Randolf is my favourite figure from the Studio Miniatures “A Christmas Nightmare” pack.  Like the majority of Studio Miniatures stuff, the figure is very nicely sculpted.

My painting worked out well here I think, as I was concerned that Randolphs costume would look like the appropriate horrible, cheap and sweaty material rather than actual fur.  Having spent a couple of hours in a Sylvester the Cat outfit many years ago, getting that part of the painting right was a priority.  I can still remember the smell, and I wasnt even dead.

Happy Secular-mas.

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Running out of Patients Pt 1

Posted on 14/12/2010 by sho3box

Out Patients

I had two zombie miniature related problems.  One issue was that the Mantic zombies and ghouls that I owned were going to be hard to make look like modern figures.  The second problem was that I didnt have any figures that I had specifically designated for use as fast/rage zombies in games.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone by theming my fast zombies as hospital patients.  That way the slightly odd toga like clothing could be painted to feasibly look like hospital gowns.  Thematically, the idea that some sort of “cure” administered in a hospital could have backfired and had a negative effect that created a more hyperactive version of the infected works for me.  You could call it the “running” out of patients maybe, but Id rather you didnt.

Having recently picked up the Studio Miniatures Big Zombie Deal I also decided to add the patients from Zombie Mob 5 who also fit nicely with my Patient Zero figure from last year.  Hopefully the “proper” dead patients lend some authenticity to the Mantic stuff.

In keeping with how I am basing my zombies for gaming, fast zombies have a hex-base, while regular zombies have standard round bases and so on.  Just in case anyone is wondering about why the bases vary.

As ever the figures are painted to a decent enough tabletop standard and definitely not as display pieces.  This is the first batch.  I have a few more batches coming up with similar skin tones but wearing different gowns and the like.  There will be twenty eight or so when the sub-project is finished.

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