Salute 2011

Posted on 17/04/2011 by sho3box

I went to Salute yesterday. In between resisting the urge to add to the lead mountain and simply adding to the lead mountain I took some pictures, shown below.

I didnt have time to document which games were run by what groups and the like, but I took photos of the ones that interested me in particular.  I also missed a few that I wanted to photograph but managed not to see them on the second pass through with the camera (the first and third passes through the hall being reserved for shopping and drooling).

The standard of the shots isnt great, but they should give a feel for some of the games being played.

I think that the players were playing Infinity on the table above.  I have always liked the idea of a set of snow terrain, but never made anyway because it doesnt really mix with any of my existing stuff.  It would be like a brand new scale or project all of its own.  Cool looking though.

I dont know what was being played on the table shown above, but it looked great the rocky (cork?) mesas made for a very nice looking table.  I love the high flying aircraft.  A lot of games at the show had flyers mounted quite high.  It looks great, but strikes me as being impractical for people who play at home (plus the usual problems with storing that sort of thing).  I could be wrong though.  A lovely looking game.

Judging by the sign at the top of the above photo I suspect that this was the table showing the Gripping Beast historical plastic kits.  Shedloads of nice and (to my eyes at least) authentic looking figures.

Another nice looking historical table.  The amount of love and attention individually paid to so many figures in a single big hall can be a bit overwhelming.  If this display was at some of the other shows that I have been too I would have pored over it for ages.  At Salute there was so much to look at that I only got to take a quick look and snap.

I loved this table.  Its from Taban Miniatures showing off their large 30mm post apoc game, Eden.  The table is an abandoned fairground complete with roller coaster, bumper cars and merry-go-round, all exquisitely rendered and very evocative.  The Eden figures are absoultely beautifully sculpted and the display paint jobs are so good as to make me want to give up my feeble attempts.

I didnt buy any Eden figures though as the 30mm scale is just a bit too big for my tastes and existing figure collection, plus the figures are not cheap.  I may buy one of their samurai exo-suits/robots at a later date, assuming that some get-rich-quick scheme eventually has me rolling in dough.  Until then though…

I am on a bit of a Judge Dredd kick at the moment, with some Mega City One stuff in the project pipeline (I bought a few Judges, Holocaust suits and the Angel Gang from Mongoose yesterday).  As a result the table from Antenocitis Workshop was 100% up my street.  Its brilliant to see a 28mm sci-fi city that isnt 1) gothic, 2) ruined, 3) a small town or 4) shitty looking.

AW make some lovely stuff but it tends to be expensive.  I had to avoid their display of sci-fi street furniture after seeing it early on show yesterday.  I knew if I went back that I would buy stuff that I just cant currently afford.  Ho hum.

Another shot of the boner-inducing Antenocitis Workshop G.O.T. table…

…and another…

…and the last one.  As you can probably tell this was one of my favourite tables.  Its not realistic for me to ever think that I will have a table as nice as that at home, but it is inspiring all the same.  I can just imagine all of the Judge Dredd, Bladerunner, Star Trek etc games that could be played on something like that.

Thank Christ I dont play 15mm sci-fi, I have enough figures unpainted already.  If I had my time over again though I would consider ditching both the 6mm (Epic) stuff and the 28mm (everything else) and just stick to 15mm sci-fi.  Its a great scale for tanks, mecha are totally feasible and the infantry is super cheap in comparison with 28mm.  I dont know who was responsible for this cool looking table, but I wish that they were my neighbours.

Modern stuff here from an unknown party.  Another table that was improved a lot by being able to see the helicopters above it from a distance.  In the context of a gaming hall it looks fantastic.  At home I think that its too hard to get that sort of perspective going (unless your game room is as big as a basketball court or something, in which case I am jealous).

I *think* that this table was hosting some Car Wars style game.  I liked the base boards ( I think that they are laser cut prefab bits form somewhere that I saw a few years ago, but I could be wrong).

More cool helicopters on a dramatic board.

The table above was very realistic looking to me.  So realistic in fact that the realistically camouflaged miniatures blended in almost perfectly.

I honestly mean no disrespect to the guys who put this really impressive table together, but I think that most of their hard work couldnt be seen, which is a pity.  My own tastes prefer that the figures stand out a little, being the heroes of the little narratives that are developing (even though that can end up gaudy and horrible really easily too).

The above shot was from a simple (by the standards of the show at least) display of  what I *think* was Flames of War.  I took the photo because the table made me hum Ride of the Valkyries.

An impressive Stalingrad sort of game (at least, thats what it looked like to me).  The more that I looked at this the better it got.  Ten different kinds of awesome smothered in rich creamery butter it was.

More Eastern front cool-ness.

A not great shot of a cute looking game above.  The game is “Twilight” (note: not the horseshit about vampires who look like diamonds when the sunrays trickle through their obscenely overworked hairdos and glistens on their tennis court sized foreheads.  Its a different, Brian Froud-y, Dark Crystal-y “Twilight”).

Cute figures for this, but being fantasy I doubt that I will ever get into it.  They do have little guys with mechanical exo-suit looking legs that remind me a bit of “sligs” from Abes Odyssey on PS1.  I could see myself picking up two or three of those for gaming AE bounty or similar sometime.

More exquisitely painted, beautifully sculpted expensive figures on display here.  Freebooters Fate is about pirates, but features goblins and the like.  A really cute table for their display games I thought.

A very impressive hu-u-ge game here.  It looked like VSF flying dreadnoughts to me.  Another game that really wouldnt be practical to run domestically and therefore ideal for a show like Salute.

More lovely 15mm sci-fi.

Even more 15mm (maybe 10mm?), this time playing in the snow again.  I suppose it must be vast exposure to The Empire Strikes Back that makes wargaming giant robot walkers on a snowy planet so appealing.  Whatever the reason, it floats my boat.

An impressive post apoc or simply bombed out warzone here.  This table grabbed me with the little bits of ruined furniture etc in the buildings.  Very much lived-in structures rather than bombed out shells. Lovely.

A close up from the table above.

This was a table for showing the  7TV rules.  Having watched the tables construction evolve on the LAF forum over the last few months it was nice to see in in the flesh.  Obviously its is a James Bond type game set in a underground lair, complete with rocket and associated paraphenalia, “Little Nelly” style gyrocopter and cells from which incarcerated interloper can easily escape via the modeled in ventilation shafts.  Nice.

Another beautiful historical table.  I thought that the poppys were a nice touch.

This was the table AKULA (of AR:SE fame) has been documenting on LAF (and Frothers I suspect).  Its a cool table based on the Battlefield Bad Company Xbox game.  As I was rushing to make a flight at this stage I unfortunately didnt have time to say hi and thank him in person for the use of his rules.  Next time.

More of the above game again.

I think that this was the Frothers Cthulhu/Cluedo game, but as I was rushing at this stage I cant be sure.  It looked cute though and like something that would be a lot of fun to play.

I used the opportunity to meet up with fellow miniatures blogger and commenter TheAngryLurker yesterday too.  At an early point in the day we met to say hi and to press the flesh.  Thats TheAngryLurker on the rear left with me on the rear right.  In front (and behind the camera) are three of the “Rejects”, TALs gaming buddies.  It was cool to meet up with the lot of them for a few minutes and it added an extra element to what was already a fun day.

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20+ Years of Painting Orks

Posted on 13/04/2011 by sho3box

I have recently been painting orks again, primarily for use in a Gorkamorka weekend planned for the summer.  I spent a bit of time deciding how to paint this new batch, trying to find a balance between speed and quality that suits me.  I also wanted to make sure that the finished figures looked as I imagine them to look: inevitably slightly comical but mostly brutal and savage.

With all of this paint scheme and concept development going around in my head I thought that it would be a good time to take a look at the other ork/orc figures that I have painted over the years, starting with my first mob from the late eighties.  If you can imagine Jason Donovan and Jive Bunny being in the charts then you will get a feel for the era.  It may also make you suddenly need to go to the toilet.

 

40k Orks -1989

The Evil Sunz boyz above are from the first GW plastic ork kit.  Quite primitive by todays standards, it was still a big deal back in those days.  The ork Klans were a big part of the background then and each had their own dominant colour and look.  Obviously the Evil Sunz chosen colour was red.

I painted the Evil Sunz mob in the same colour scheme as my 6mm Epic orks.  As I had all the klans painted for use in Epic I had made some decisions regarding secondary colours for each of them at that point (extra important at that scale to distinguish the units).  Thats why these guys have a lot of white in their outfits.

I went with quite a dark skin tone compared to the standards of the day.  As everything that I painted back then had GW Goblin Green bases (I rebased the above guys recently, although I cant even remember doing it…) I thought that it would be better to use a darker colour for the base flesh tone.

 

Blood Bowl Orcs -1994

Five years later Chaka Demus and Pliers were oozing from the speakers in the shopping centre when I picked up a copy of Blood Bowl 3rd Edition.  On a whim I decided to paint the orc team supplied, rather than the older BB figures that I still had knocking around unpainted.  All of the models in the shot above are plastics from that box, with the exception of the metal goblin on the pogo stick.

I spent ages on these guys.  I dont know if it is apparent from the photo above but I put many, many layers of wet blending into the skin tones (although the darker recesses do still look a bit “inky”).

At the time I was seeing if I could paint up a showcase project that displayed the highest level of painting that I was currently capable of.  I think the fact that that particular team is still unfinished says a lot really: I dont have the patience to paint a lot of models in that way.

Ignoring the technically dodgier areas (the red in particular is poor) I dont think that the figures look that much better than if I had approached painting them in a faster and dirtier way anyway.  As gaming pieces they could do with heavier contrasts that are visible at a few feet away (at a gaming distance, if you know what I mean).  Generally I feel that that sort of contrast serves a gaming miniature better than carefully graduated highlighting.

The uniform chosen is particularly un-orky.  Thats largely because I wanted to ensure that the figures looked like football players, rather than scruffy Warhammer Fantasy figures.  Its still too clean and antiseptic looking though.  I would approach painting an orc team very differently these days.

Gorkamorka/40k test figures - 2011

It would be a staggering seventeen years before this fatter, crankier and jaded painter sat down to paint another ork/orc.  Thankfully I havent a notion about what music is in the charts (or even if there are charts) anymore, so the intervening years havent been all bad.

The figures above were an attempt to rationalise my ork painting process again.  If the interim between orks has taught me anything its to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

So I did some research on quick ways to paint orks.  The video tutorial below proved to be quite cool, although the finished product wasnt at a standard that I was happy with when I tried it.  Its a pretty great way to get an army painted though, and I found that some of the techniques used inspired me to try some new things.  Its worth a look if you have ten minutes.

So taking some elements from the above tutorial I sprayed the above batch white, washed the whole lot with the ubiquitous Devlan Mud and applied the base skin colour as a mix of paint and ink.  This translucent layer let the shading from the Devlan show through it, although it did mean that the base flesh colour was a bit patchy.  This generally got easily camouflaged with the simple one stage Game Color Off White highlight though.

The final result is ok.  The skin is quite pasty, somewhat reminiscent of my Patient Zombies, which isnt to everyones taste for orks, but I dont mind it.  Two things made me decide to abandon this colour scheme and painting technique though: 1) it was a little more time consuming and fiddly than I was hoping it to be and 2) the orks didnt look as gritty, threatening or Mad Max II for my liking.

Gorkamorka/40k Orks - 2011

So I tried a completely new approach again and got a look that I am happy with.

If you will excuse the brief lapse into GW Orkspeak “Da Bigdogz” above came out to a level that pleases me, but without taking so much time that I will never get the project finished.  I worked up from a black undercoat with mainly drybrushed base coats followed by one layered highlight.  The metal areas got a few washes too as I like the way that it makes the metal areas appropriately dull.

These guys are a few from amongst the first that I have finished.  I have thirteen sitting complete in the miniatures cabinet at the time of writing which at least means that I am able to get through them reasonably quickly.  Thats a good thing too as I have another thirty or so figures that I want to paint before I finish up with the orks.

The paint scheme has the high contrast that I favour with gaming figures these days.  Although close inspection will reveal errors and hasty shortcuts the payoff of the quick turnover is worth it to me.   The Bigdogz also look sufficiently Mad Max for my current tastes so I regard the project as quite successful so far.  There will be more Bigdogz going up in more detail here over the next while.

Thats my potted history of ork painting done.  Over twenty-five years condensed into one page, and at no extra cost to you the reader either.

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Going to Salute!

Posted on 07/04/2011 by sho3box

Salute is one of the best regarded miniature gaming shows in England.  Lots of cool looking display games and an abundance of things for nerds like me to blow vast quantities of cash on.  Retail therapy times a thousand.

I am lucky enough to be flying to London on Friday April 15th to go to an art exhibition with Mrs Sho3box, swanning boozily around for the evening after dinner and then attending Salute for a few hours on Saturday.  We fly home that that evening after what I hope to be a small but perfectly formed trip.

I have my small shopping list made out and I hope to pick up some odd bits and pieces that I might never get around to buying online.  Seeing some great game displays in person will be inspiring too.

I will be bringing my camera and I will be putting some photos up here on Sunday 17th with a bit of luck.

If anyone reading this is going to be at Salute and fancies meeting up and/or experiencing the heady thrill of having their photo taken avec moi then let me know 🙂

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Fort Grayskull Part 3

Posted on 06/04/2011 by sho3box

Parts 1 and 2.

After the previous days extended session, the following day I was lucky enough to have nothing terribly grown up to attend to (the first time for ages).  So I settled down for a nice long glue filled afternoon stint. Continue reading →

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Fort Grayskull Part 2

Posted on 30/03/2011 by sho3box

Continued from Part 1.

I am going to attempt to give some post-apocalyptic va-va-voom to toy castle components that look like those above.  Left to right is a tower, a wall, another tower and a gate section.   In total I have four gate sections, twelve wall sections and sixteen towers.

All of the pieces are made from expanded, beaded polystyrene and so are very light, but unsuitable for spray painting, which will melt that material.

As noted earlier, the parts were hand painted with a mix of black emulsion (latex) paint and some filler back in the mid 1990s.

The first step in 2011 was to decide what colour to hand paint the castle.  I didn’t want a pedestrian and realistic brownish grey as I wanted to remove the the look of the finished product from that of a real castle as much as practically possible.

Blues, greens, purples and the like would give a finish that looks a bit too fantasy for my tastes, a bit too concept album cover, a bit too “Heavy Metal”.

I considered a yellowish/brown but the board that I play on is black with a drybrush of Raw Sienna so I feared that the castle would blend in too much if it was the same or similar colour.  I also wanted to crudely “weather” the bottom of the castle walls with the game board colour once the fort was complete.  That wouldn’t work if it was the same colour to start with.

So after some indecision and in a weird bit of parallel evolution with the foam rocks that I chopped up and sprayed on the same day, I decided to go for a red oxide colour.  This rust like colour fit with some of the notions and references that I had in mind with a large amount of rusty scrap and wreckage materials involved in the forts imaginary construction.  I hope that it works out, but at this point it is too early to know for sure.

Therefore I overbrushed the whole thirty two sections with a Red Oxide acrylic.  I then mixed the red oxide with a little emulsion off white and drybrushed some of the upper areas a little, just to give a small bit of contrast.

I had trouble taking photos that show the colour properly.  Indoor, night time and artificial lighting made the whole thing look a lot more orange than it does in reality Im afraid.  Therefore the work in progress shots are all going to look a bit off.  Hopefully I will be able to get some halfway decent shots in once it is complete.

At this stage I took the cloth off the table and set up one quarter of the fort on the gaming surface, just out of curiosity to see how it looked against it.

The colour doesn’t look brilliant with the table I think, but I think that it is within acceptable parameters (plus it’s a crappy washed out photo).

Not that I had any choice at that stage: I was unwilling to to repaint the whole thing yet again.  The emphasis here had to be to finish a project that had been in various half finished states for years, by hook or by crook.

The look of the final model will hopefully be quite different anyway, between a wash or two here and there and the addition of some other elements to break up the redness.  Fingers crossed.

Also at this stage I set up all thirty two castle pieces as a perimeter wall with bastion.  I did this mainly because I think it looks cool and I wanted to see what it looked like now that it was brownish red.  If nothing else it should give readers an idea of the area that the fort occupies.  Due to the number of towers it reminds me a little of a shot from the Assassins Creed video game.

The table that the model sits on is 4 x 8’.  Also bear in mind that the little grey thing in the foreground is an EM4 plastic trooper.  Fully assembled the fort occupies approx 3 x 3’, which is quite big in gaming terms (as an aside I tend to think in terms of imperial measurement when looking at gaming tables and metric for everything else.  That’s Warhammers fault).

That was quite enough terrain work for one Saturday afternoon (as I made the foam rocks that day too) so I went to bed.

To be continued.

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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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