Piles of rubbish

Well then, I've been quite sick. It has taken me out of the running for two weeks and I am still on pills to keep me 'sane'. Bad stuff. So what does one do when in bad stuff? Paint. I worked up these two piles of debris. They fill 2x2 squares of normal HA tiles. The idea is that I can whip these out to quickly put down rubbish, create a warehouse, a smuggler's cave, etc. It has boxes, wheels, skill, boxes, lockers, sacks of stuff, etc. I am going to add more version like a 1x2 and a 1x1 version. I am very pleased with the result.

And a picture of them shoved together a bit, so it's easier to see how it blends into one big pile of rubbish.

Next up: We have figured out how to make a proper diagonal wall, size wise, but unfortunately that isn't done yet. I am molding a simple normal piece wall first. I need a lot of those as well afterall. We plan to make molds for corner walls, round walls and diagonal walls in the direct future.

MoM: Monterey Jack

And thus we live in December. I am still working on Mansions of Madness, at least I should be. I have been very busy painting four, really big and detailed, fire giant Bones miniatures from Reaper. This directly translates into not having a lot of time for Mansions of Madness.

The people at the tale of the boardgame painter over at warseer managed to motivate me to at least slap out a quick investigator. So I chose the simplest one I still had unpainted and this is the result of less then an hour of work. Not half bad for a boardgame.

I am thinking of painting some crawling ones in December. Game on!

Monterey Jack

More dungeon furniture

Here is some recent dungeon furniture. Starting to be able to populate a room or two with this stuff. The cabinets take a lot of time to paint though. The beds are much easier!

The pirate court and caverns WIP

I got a thousand projects ongoing at the moment. Including four fire giants, which I have been documenting the process of. Expect a huge post sometime in a few months when I finish them. For now I have a in-action shot of how I use all these miniatures.

The pirate court

 

Welcome to the pirate court of Port Peril in The Shackles. The guy on the podium is the pirate king, with his girl. The players are surrounded by pirates, free captins and pirate lords presenting their loot so they can get a letter of marque from the Hurricane King.

Most of the crowd is just my cult, simply because those are the most humans I have! Note some pirates (and zombies) in the crowd as well though. Usually I set up walls, but not this time. Also note that I still need to paint some of that floor and that the floor that is painted is actually my old dungeon floor.

In other news I have been casting plaster like crazy to get enough to get to a decent sized cavern tileset. This is my casting setup at the moment.

Casting setup

 

In front the casting area, with bits of plaster drying everywhere. In the back the assembly line. I am up to 21 4x4 pieces now. Sounds like a lot, but isn't that much actually. I plan to add some extra detail by sculpting clay so it will look a bit more unique and not just repetitions of specific casts of plaster.

 

That's all for now! Carry on.

Gruff Grimecleaver and dungeon furniture

And on we go with updating. Here is Gruff Grimecleaver, a pirate 'cook' I painted for the Skull and Shackles campaign. Also up is some more dungeon furniture. I am starting to get quite a collection. Better get some more painted up.

Upcoming is a few bits on object source lighting and creating a modular cavern gaming set.

Gruff Grimecleaver

Bookcase

Candleabras

MoM: Update time!

So... I had a nice vacation and chose to not update the blog. And with chose I mean I was too lazy. I did paint a whole damn lot, so expect some serious pictures over the next few days.

Lets get started with Mansions of Madness. I painted two more investigators: Vincent Lee the doctor and Mandy Thompson. I also manned up and finished the dark young of Shub-Niggurath. I definately had some fun putting a sawed off arm on Vincent's base.

Vincent Lee

Mandy Thompson

Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath

MoM: Bob Jenkins (and a well of chaos)

And more painting has commenced! Another Mansions of Madness piece, the investigator, Bob Jenkins. A very easy paintjob. The suite was fun to shade. I usually dodge near-black, but it turned out fairly well.

And a quick shot of the Well of Chaos from Reaper Bones. Nice, quick, dungeon furniture.

Bob Jenkins

Well of Chaos

Barnabus Frost and a familiar

We had a painting day this saturday. This gave me the opportunity to finish a more complex miniature. This time that is Barnabus Frost, Pirate Captain. I will be using him as a pirate lord in my Skull and Shackles campaign. I chose to go with a green color scheme, mainly because my reds suck and I see him painted up red a lot.

I also did another familiar. The cat this time. Easy peasy. I also finished a piece of dungeon furniture, but have not had time to photograph it. It is a piece from the Bones Kickstarter, putting me at 9 painted models for that.

I have also gotten my greedy little paws on the other boxed expansion for Mansions of Madness, so expect to see some of that in a few months. First painting up Call of the Wild. Bob Jenkins is alsmost finished, as is the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.

Barnabus Frost

Cat familiar

Familiar: Eagle (and a cabinet)

Its been a really busy week and I have barely had any time to do painting. Due to me being sick, busy with a wedding and several other things, my schedule of one miniature and one piece of furniture a week was in jeopardy!

Enter the Bones familiars (1 and 2) from Reaper. These incredibly small miniatures are my quick wins for when I simply do not have enough time to do a bigger miniature.

I quickly made some scenic bases out of cork and oxid paste and got to work on the eagle. Easy paintjob really, but he looks really cool. It looks like he is on top of some mountain!

In the furniture department I have a repaint of a cabinet from Thomarillion. Awesome update if I do say so myself.

Eagle familiar

Cabinet

Hajad, looting pirate

Painting up some pirates for Skull and Shackles. This is the fourth pirate I painted. He will be playing the part of Crimson in the campaign, but he is originally known as Hajad, from Reaper. He is a Bones miniature! This brings my Bones kickstarter painting up to 3 or some such, 5 if you count the pre-kickstarter Bones worms!

I also took the four remaining pirates from the Bones kickstarter and will be adding the pirate gnome from Stonehaven gnomes to it. I based them and set them up as my next paint project. That is until I get distra- Oeh look other minis!

Crimson / Hajad

MoM: Amanda Sharpe

So I had written up a nice blog post about Amanda Sharpe, from Mansions of Madness: Call of the Wild. It featured what my plans were, etc. Then I saved over it. Darn.

I don't quite feel like re-typing it all. So I will be brief. This is Amanda Sharpe. First model from Call of the Wild. Below you see progress on my Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. Have a good day!

Amanda Sharpe

Dungeon: Furniture

Time for something easy. Dungeon furniture! I aim to paint at least one piece a week in addition to my one miniature a week. Otherwise I will never get the dungeon looking good. A simple bed or table in the corner makes a world of difference.

These are from Hirst Arts molds.

Kerdak Bonefist

Here is Kerdak Bonefist, a.k.a. the Hurricane King! Pirate lord of the Shackles and soon to (potentially) be in the company of my PCs. Good stuff.

Painting him was a challenge. I took a lot more time then usual, and I think it shows. I liked working on the blending and highlighting for long times. I also spend a lot of time on the non-metallic metal sword. I am pleased with it. It is no masterpiece, but it is only my second try at it afterall.

Beware players! For the Hurricane King cometh!

Hellakin Goregutter, halfling rogue

Here is a quick halfling rogue, Hellakin Goregutter, from Reaper. He is, of course, a Bones miniature. Someone from one of the campaigns needed a halfling rogue. If at all possible ginger. I obliged. I always like playing in parties with fully painted PC miniatures at least.

This particular campaign I play in myself as well. 'Unfortunately' two more players need new miniatures painted for them. My life is so 'hard'. Ha!

Hellakin Goregutter

Fully painted Mansions of Madness

It is done! Here is the picture that shows all the models in Mansions of Madness, as painted by yours truly. Woohoo! Now I need to find some people to play a few games. Anyone!?

Regardless I am already slowly starting to paint Call of the Wild, Amanda Sharpe first. Bones painting is also starting up. Good times!

Bones boiling

I recently took time to boil all my new bones. Well the smaller ones that is, the huge dragons will get boiled in bigger pots at a later date. So what is this boiling? Its easy really.

Bones tend to come wrangled and warped. To warp things like bent spears back you boil it. Take some water, make sure it is boiling, then put it in a cup/pot. Then take some normal, cold, water and add a few ice cubes.

Now dunk a few of your Bones models (as many as can fit without being a hinder to each other) in the near boiling temperature water. I use some chemist tongs to put them in and out of it. Leave them for at least 2 minutes and watch the Bones material bend back to its original shape. You can't reliably reshape Bones this way, only unbend them to their original shape.

After the two minutes, take them out and dunk them in the ice water. This will set the Bones in the proper position permanently. Leave them in the ice water for another 2 minutes. And voila!

It took me an hour or two to do all the bend stuff from the Vampire box, and I have been pretty picky.

Dunking Bones!

Scrutiny: Secretweapon washes (part 1)

Its been a while since I've done a scrutiny so here is one I had been eagerly anticipating. The Secret Weapon Miniatures washes. I have had my eye on these for quite a while. It is a set of 30 washes (or less if you don't want them all) that should really help with the washing and tinting of miniatures.

The online experience was adequate, nothing bad at all. The usual Paypal option applies and shipping to Europe was not excessive, but not cheap either. It should be said that companies like these cannot compete with shipping costs like Amazon. Amazon loses money on everything they send, and they have a much better deal with the postal services due to their sheer size.

That's where things hit a snag. I waited for over a month, and no washes. I contacted them and was surprised by quick and really good customer service. They informed me that it should have arrived, that they 'have had a few packages dissapear recently to europe' and that they would re-ship it. They even provided tracking numbers for the first and second package. Good stuff.

I waited another bunch of weeks and had just hit another email at them (to which was responded really quickly and sincerely) when the second package arrived. Sweet! I got to unpacking, and look at these beauties.

Yes my precious washies!

This prompted me to quickly build another paintrack to dedicate solely to washes.

Starting to look like something

The colours themselves have colourful titles like 'concrete' and 'baby poop', but are actually quite descriptive. The set comes with all the strong base colors like very red, very green, etc. but it also has a great selection of things like dried blood, concrete, flesh wash, etc. Some of them are glossier then others. Nothing a good matte medium or matte sealer won't fix though.

Then came the actual testing. I shook every bottle thoroughly before beginning (some thickening was to be expected after such a long travel afterall). Unfortunately I ran into another snag. Pretty much all of the bottles seemed hopelessly clogged (27/30). I had big splotches of wash over my painting area twice. I started popping off the tops of the bottles to see what was up. This is what greeted me.

Not what I was hoping for

This was a problem. I tried mixing some of it back in, but I believe the actual intent of the washes was ruined. What I have gotten to use has been fine so far, but most of these were unusable. So I went back to mailing the Secret Weapon people. Once again I got extremely good customer service. They have since send out another package, with another 30 washes. They have personally inspected this shipment and apologized quite a bit. I almost felt guilty for having to knock on their customer service door again.

So the actual verdict will have to wait until the replacement batch comes in. In the meanwhile I can give these guys a rating on customer service. Also USPS? Please sell the company to some people that actually know how to deal with postal services. Idiots.

Customer service: 10/10

Last few Mansions of Madness models

I have finished my Mansions of Madness painting! Woohoo! Indeed. I have a few pictures of the models I finished last and I will also post a full set picture later on. I have been trying to get the hang of my new camera and your mileage may vary on these pictures.

Ashcan Pete

Shoggoth

Mi-go

Ashcan was a joy to paint, the shoggoth is much better then the first one I did, but the Mi-go are annoying to paint to the extreme!