Skeletal Elite

Finished the first small unit of skeletal elite. Only two fit on a base, which is fine. As long as they appear to have the same "mass" as the other formed units, I'm OK with that. I ended up going back and "dusting" the bottom of the robes, and giving the the edges of the armor & weapons a bit more detail. I like the way they turned out, and think they will look good with the army. I may do another set like this at some point in the future. But I've still got plenty of other stuff I'd like to get done first.

I have been re-thinking the "good guys." I already have some metal (Front Rank, Grenadier, Perry) and plastic (Perry) late 15th century medieval figures that I am considering using as my starting force of militia/levy/men-at-arms instead of my old WFB army. I like this idea for a few different reasons. The landsknecht style figures can still be introduced later on as mercenaries, and I can continue to paint them as my mood dictates.


For now, I should probably finish up the Undeadish and skeletal cavalry that are still sitting on my painting table first, though.

Heavy Skeletal Infantry Test

Quick paint test for the heavy skeletal infantry. Obviously I did leave the excessive paulrons off, and swapped out the skull from one of those I got from Secret Weapon. Pretty pleased with how it looks.

This was also a bit of a photographic experiment as well. I used my phone and a pretty well rounded online, Flash based image editor called Pixlr for the photo editing.

While I was cropping the photos, I also noticed some of the extra stuff in the perephery of some of the photos and thought I would post this tiny peek at other parts of my desk...

Cleaning up a Bane Thrall

I attempted to clean up and assembled one of the Bane Thralls, sans pauldrons. I set them up next to the figure so you can see how huge they are. They look like pieces from a segmented sewing thimble! You can see that the platforms on which the pauldrons are supposed to sit could look like more modest pauldrons on their own, if I dressed them up a little. So I might just try that.

I need to go back and spend some more time cleaning up mould lines, especially on the fingers. I can't say I am a fan of whatever this material is. It's like they used something that combines the worst qualities of lead/metal and polystyrene. Filing the stuff leaves a lot of texture and "fluff" that needs cleaned off, similar to styrene. Normally I use an knife on the styrene, which did seem to work better with this stuff. But it's a harder plastic/resin, so it doesn't cut/scrape as nicely. This one looked like it had a gate/tab/sprue/whatever on the collar that had been cleaned off, but left behind a pretty rough, chunky surface. That and the fingers were the worst parts to clean.

In spite of that, I still like the sculpting, aside from the head and pauldrons, and they are nice designs. You can see in the pic that they are much smaller than those old, monstrous Citadel skeletons. But they're bigger than just about anything. I think the Bane Thralls should fit well with the Mantic stuff, which is good since I have a big pile of their skeletons to work on eventually! In fact, I think I will also look into using some of the Mantic skeleton heads on these. If I can get my hands on some of the current GW skeleton heads, those might also fit.

Bane Thralls

Earlier this week I received a box of Warmachine Bane Thralls. I've been looking for an option for some armored "elite" skeletal troops. I had been considering a few different ideas, and these were on the list but I kept resisting because I think the shoulder plates (pauldron?) look ridiculous, as do the bits of someone's iron fence they are wearing on their backs. The latter are easily left off. I had considered clipping the shoulders, too, as illustrated by my quick photoshoppery to test the idea...

So now that they're in my possession, I can see that the square "pads" on which the separate shoulder plates sit might look like decent, if someone bland, armor plates on their own, with the exception of the "champion" figure who is designed completely differently. I could just leave his on, as above. Honestly, though, I think the plates look less ridiculous in person.


Other observations about these figures.... they are sold as "plastic" but they are not polystyrene. Maybe a lightweight, hard resin? Not sure the shoulder plates will be nearly as easy to trim down & clean up as if they had been polystyrene. The detail seems OK on most of the figure, but the skulls look pretty disappointing. I was already on the fence a bit when I saw close-ups of the skulls in photos. In person they are even more caricatured with pretty soft looking detail. Looks like there will be a little cleanup, hopefully this plastic isn't too tough to work with.

I'll withhold final judgement until I've actually worked on & painted these, but at first unboxing I find them a little disappointing given the regular retail price.

Beast-09

End of 2008

The end of 2008 and here are a few things I've been working on over the holidays (and before.)

The hunter was actually earlier. I just haven't got him back to the friend for whom I was painting him. I didn't paint the lion tiger things. I just based them to match the Hunter.





The Khador figures are more commission pieces for the same person for whom I've previously painted Khador figures. I've got one more (Beast 09) to finish, so another pic coming in the next couple days when he's finished.






And finally an orc I started a year or two ago. Since the photos were taken I've painted over the blood splater. I'd like to try a better second attempt at it, but we'll see.

More Khador pics

The two commission figures are done.




Mine are just about finished. I need to decide how to finish the bases. I was going to do something rocky with snow, but now that I've done the basic texture & painting, I'm not sure about the snow. My fear is that it will blend in with the rest of the base too much.

More Khador

I worked on the previously posted Khador figures for Warmachine. As usual, you should be able to click on the pics to enlarge.


First up is the one who's furthest along, Drago. He's almost done, though I've got a bunch of tiny detail work I want to do on him.





Next, my two warjacks, um, Jack and Jack. I guess they don't have proper names. I don't even know the generic names off hand. I suppose I'll need to invest in the reference card deck if I'm actually going to use them. (Again, the two below are mine, the first pic and the last pic are commissions.)




And finally the Devastator.




My plan is to finish up tomorrow or Sunday, depending on how the weekend goes.

Warmachine - Khador

I do occasional commission work and have been sporadically painting a few Warmachine Khador figures for one person in particular. Recently I picked up enough Khador figures for a small starter force for myself, as mentioned in my last comments re: Loot.

So I've started working on 4 big Khador warjacks this week. Two on commission and two I picked up for myself. My plan is at each step I'm using the latter as a testing ground for techniques to use on the former.

I've done all of the steel portions so far, though I think they will get one very thin wash before I move on. I've used a similar technique to one I recently read about on the Too Much Lead blog. The difference being that I reverse the first six stages or so. But I am working with small details where that article is dealing with edges along larger areas.

What I've done is start off black, then a sloppy coat of a an orangy-brown mix. Then I start drybrushing a mix of the orange and/or brown with some dark steel metalic, then just some dark metalic, then I start feathering on some lighter metalics & silvers along some of the edges and spots I want to look scraped or clean. So I end up with weathered metal with a bit of rust in the recesses, but cleaner looking steel on the edges and areas where it would be more likely to have rubbed off.





The top pic are my two figures, the bottom two are the commission pieces. It may be a bit difficult to see the details of the "rust" in the photo, but I think it gives the general impression. (As usual, click the photos to enlarge them.) After I paint the rest of the "painted" surfaces & details, I'll probably go back with some very thinned down orange and add some rusty streaks where they make sense. It may not show well, though, since the "painted" surfaces will be red.

I forget the names of all of the above warjacks except the twin-axe wielding loonie, who's a unique warjack named Drago. He was about 25 pieces and one hell of an assembly job. The two I bought were already assembled, but were glued together pretty sloppy. I'm hoping the weathered look & rust helps hide some of the sloppy glue.