Ogres, Drifters, Zombies, oh my! Updates Galore!

Its been far too long since I've been able to update this blog... and I'm sorry.  Good thing there's only like one or two people that see it. :)

Although I haven't updated, there has been plenty of progress.

I was a bit derailed... having started playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, the reboot MMO from a couple of years ago.  It is a wonderful game and I've spend quite a few distracting hours adventuring with my friends.  Haven't given up on FFXIV either, but it did delay some of my painting projects, but also provided me with a couple weeks of time off - to motivate me.  

Ogre Kingdoms project is very much underway.  Since the last post I have finished off the Mournfang Cavalry.  Not too happy with the results, but they are tabletop worthy, imho.  I may go back and do some spot touchups - also considering doing some more in the future to replace these.  I really think painting 4 at once hurt my progress and actually this is the biggest hang up I've had during this 2+ month hiatus from the blog.  Once I got back to them, I started rolling.  

The mounts themselves are what disappointed me the most.  I just couldn't really figure out a scheme that worked well.  The box art mournfang look so good... but have that animated feel to them.  I couldn't really pull it off, but i want to try again.  It might be that the airbrush work I did kind of clipped my wings.  Anyway, I got them to tabletop and moved on.  I am very happy with the way the banner turned out... see the pics below:

Shortly after finishing the Mournfang, I spent some time cleaning up my first Ogre Bulls.  I had started out painting Ironguts for the army and thought they were a blast, but I was pleasantly surprised that these weren't boring and actually a breeze to paint up.  

Also happy with their standard bearer - The Skull was painted entirely with the airbrush (save the straps/accessories hanging).  Wasn't too hard.  Some of these details are better done with light to dark technique.  

Spent some extra time on the champion, adding some chains to the improvised trap weapon.  Painted his beard a little lighter to make him look grizzled as compared to most of the other Ogres.  

Aside from the Ogres, I was finally able to spend some time on Wreck Age.  If you haven't checked out the game yet, please head over to their website.  Its really cool - I'm looking forward to spending some more time with it.  I love the post-apoc setting and miss the skirmish games from back in the day (Necromunda, anyone?)  Painted up this drifter below.  I don't have a lot of experience and practice with NMM, but thought it would look really good with this model.  Also hadn't painted a metal model in a while, so it was an adjustment (how I love plastic/resin)

And finally, I did receive my shipment from the Kickstarter of Zombicide Season 2.  Can't tell you how excitted I was before opening up the goods and the excitement was met by an even higher level of gratification once some friends and I cracked open Prison Outbreak and played through most of a mission.  The game seems to have gained some steam and the extra options and characters add a lot of flavor to what was already a highly enjoyable experience. Rose (The Zombicide equivalent of Angela Lansbury is a bleepin monster)

Unfortunately, after I painted Dave the Geek for the game earlier in the year, I didn't really go back.  Now, faced with an overwhelming number of Zombicide Miniatures, I decided to paint what was next on the block for this game - Wanda.  I will say that the new models seem to have more detail and thank God - Wanda was a little bit of a pain with the lack of definition.  Either way, happy with the results.  She pops on the board.  Sad that she and the other original survivors will likely be outshined by the new characters.  

For you fans, it looks like you can run a campaign of sorts with the new rules.... sweet.

Finishing up four sabretusks for the ogres now and then plan to jump to a couple of Ogre Characters and the Maneater unit...  I may have some more work for Wreck Age models as well, so I'll continue to post and update.  Thanks for reading!

Not much done since the last post, though that one was a big one.  Finished up some work last week before getting some things done outside of the hobby world.  My brother and I took a short trip up to Indy for our first GenCon.  I was impressed.  I think if I go next year I will spend two days and stay overnight.  Also need to do some studying to see if there are any events that I would like to participate in.  All in all though - I enjoyed it.  

Got some loot - picked up a copy of Super Dungeon Explore with the special miniature (been wanting to try painting these minies for a while), an Angron Horus Heresy miniature from Forgeworld and a Beholder D&D miniature (Eye Tyrant).  Hopefully I'll have some time to paint these things and post them here someday!  ha.  

As I said earlier, had to have my carpet cleaned the other day so I was forced to break down my painting area for a while, which impeded progress.  Set back up today and went to work on some of the grueling parts of the Mournfang Cav.  Mounted them (with temporary pins) on their bases so I could paint them without my grubby hands stripping them of all their paint.  

More will be done this week... Emperor's will be done or err... by the Great Maw... 

Two days chocked full of Hobby Progress!

Hey hey hey!  Haven't had much time to post, but that's only because I've been hard at work prepping and painting.  Trying to ramp up speed on the Ogre Kingdoms project and so yesterday I did some inter-painting prep with the Mournfang Cav by finishing up the flock on the bases and priming them. Since I also need to paint their Standard Bearer's arm seperately, I figured putting finishing touches on the metal parts of the riders was pointless if I could do it all at once.  So, with that in mind, I set the Mournfang aside for a day for drying and decided to prep some future work for the chopping block.  

I started by cleaning up my finecast Sabretusk models.  A super pain in the rear, but getting it out of the way will make it easier to sit down and paint them.  I also pulled out a recently purchased Ogre Hunter model that I planned to convert and began going to town.  Although the Ogre Project, when finished, should allow me to have tons of options, I've had my sights set on a list that includes a level 4 Slaughtermaster with Lore of the Great Maw and a Level 2 Butcher with Lore of Beasts...  With my Slaughtermaster complete (see earlier post) I didn't want to do another traditional butcher model with the guts and gore.  I figured a Lore of Beasts Ogre would look a bit more natural... feral even.  

I cleaned up the model the best I could (All thats left for him and the Sabretusks are some greenstuffing and filling) and began work on conversion. 

His club had to go.  To me, it just didn't speak "Wizard."  I decided to give him a staff.  I cut the club from his hand and drilled a hole, using a hobby knife to smooth the edges around his grip.  

Spare parts from my extra Mournfang Cav box proved useful.  I cut the Banner off of the Standard and shaved the pole down to make a staff (still trying to decide to leave the staff as metal or go for a wooden one - he's an ogre, right?)  To make the model more durable, I drilled a small hole into each side of the staff proximal to his hand as you'll see below.  

Voila.  Afterwards I added the dragon skull from the Mournfang standard to the end of the staff.  He's starting to look more wildmage-ish alreadY!

Now... I had these plans for quite some time (to make the Beast Wizard). While I was at Games Day last month in the hotel reading the new white dwarf and drooling over the lizardmen models, one particular bit stood out to me.  The Bastilodon with the Ark of Sotek and it's many snakes made me smile big.  For the reason seen below. 

Very, very happy with the way he turned out.  Can't wait to paint him.  I stuck some other bits on him you can't really see from these angles, including a sack and a rack of ribs hanging on his back.  Also, I shaved down the spears on his back to look more like staves with gem heads.  This will help him continue to stand out as a magic user, rather than a killy character (Hunters are terrible anyways).  

With all that progress in the bag last night, I shifted my focus tonight back to the Mournfang.  Another reason I paused in painting last night is because I had some more airbrushing work to do and I don't like airbrushing unless I'm doing a bunch of different things at once. Never tried airbrushing a banner before, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  Don't really have a step by step for you because I was concentrating but I got the most important pieces.  


Below you'll see the first step.  I drew a crude (Ogres!) stencil of the image I wanted on the banner.  Don't know why I picked what I did - kind of like the main ogre symbol (The Maw) with dot in the middle to make a sun.  Sweet.  Again, crude design on painter's tape with a pencil and then used a hobby knife to cut out the pieces

Now, an undercoat for the banner.  I had primed the banner white.  With the airbrush and blending, I prefer to start with a light or mid tone and then shade (as done here - some models work the other way).  So I painted the banner with Vallejo Air Scarlet red.  I did some light shading with the single color, hitting the recesses and shady areas a litter harder with the paint.  After that was dry, i came back in with Vallejo Air Mahogany and shaded much deeper.  Here you see the finished red base.  

So, Keith, you're painting a red banner?  No!  This is our base for the stencil.  I used a pair of tweezers to stick the stencil pieces onto the banner.  Now the real work begins!

Airbrushing with several layers, starting light to dark, I finished up the main colors on the banner.  Although I didn't do a step by step, it wouldn't have helped without a video.  The main thing is to pay attention to where the light would hit the model.  Where light hits - use your brightest color there.  When you come back with each successive shade, hit the underside of the banner, where it will be darkest.  

Practice makes perfect - I did go a little extreme with the bottom of the banner where it is tattered - to show that it is dirty/burned.  

Colors used in succession are all vallejo air:

White > Sand > Light Brown > Flat Brown> Light Camo Brown > Burnt Umber


After the paint - i used the tweezers to peel off the tape and Boom!  Heres your banner!  Now all thats left, hopefully tomorrow, is to complete the details on the pole and the dragonscales on the banner - then it'll be ready to reroll some 1s and unleash it's breath weapon!

Again - don't like to airbrush unless I have lots to do, so I did the airbrushing work on the Mournfang bases as well.  I'll hit them with a dullcote so that I can mount the cats on them and paint em up!

Progress shots for the week... Yes!  Going well.  

Had an active day.  Planned on getting some work out of the way and then doing some painting.  However, my day was sidetracked by this....

Needless to say I had a buddy help me change the tire.  I was on the way to the local game shop to trade some miniatures, so I feel its ok to post on the blog :).  

Special thanks to my girlfriend though - she kept encouraging me to paint though the tire incident kept me out of the mood.  Worked some more on the mournfang cavalry riders.  Got them pretty far - a couple more washes on the armor and then some detail work will finish them out and then I'll switch to the cats.  

I did try some serious freehand work for the first time and i'm happy with it.  Painted an eye on the shoulder guard on the unit champion.  Wanted it to look like a "creepy wild eye."  I think I pulled it off.  Probably needs a gloss coat to make it pop, but I'll take it.  

Not much progress this week.  Spent a lot of time at work and plan to spend a lot more time there over the next couple of weeks.  However, I forced myself to get some progress done on the Mournfang Cavalry.  

While I was painting the faces on the first couple mounts (see previous post), I noticed that I was rubbing some of the airbrushed fur off of the miniature.  I'm going to highlight the strands with a brush so it doesn't matter much anyway, but I'm also nervous about the horns getting scratched up, so I wanted something to mount the mournfang on. 

So, as you'll see below, I started on their bases.  Glued the main cork pieces on tonight and figure I'll cover the rest with sand/rocks tomorrow or Sunday.  

With that in the way, I started working on the riders.  Didn't realize how much more armor was on them than the regular ironguts.  So I got some base colors down and most importantly, the base metal.  Next, make sure all base colors are down and start the wash work on the metal armor.  

Trying to figure out any other cool details to try.  There is a round spot on one of the shoulder pads that I'm debating on doing some freehand.  (Note: I don't do freehand).  But, with my persistence on raising the skill level, I'm going to have to try it sometime.  

Also, I still need to prime the standard bearer's banner arm.  I'm also continuing to deliberate on how I'm going to detail the banner.  Glad to have progress, but much more to go.  

Over the next two weeks, I'm going to be super busy at work.  So there will not be much time for progress on my Mournfang Cavalry.  However, before the rush begins, I wanted to share what I do have.  

Love the horns :)

Started painting the faces - not sure how I feel about it, but it might be growing on me.  The styling of the sculpt is a bit animated, but I'm doing my best.  This one looks better than the first... so maybe I'll have it down by #4.  

Welp - heres to hoping I can get these done in the next two weeks!

Back from Memphis!

So, this past weekend I took a trip down to Memphis for Games Day North America.  This is my fourth Games Day, having gone in 2003, 2004, and 2012 to Chicago.  This is my first trip to Memphis however, and I was pleased.  

It also marks a first for me - entry into Golden Demon.  Went in with little hope, thinking I'd get lucky - maybe low number of entries or the fact that the year has been 40k heavy and my entries were fantasy.  There was plenty of competition!

So the first night, Games Workshop held a Bar-B-Q at the Memphis World of Battle, their North American HQ.  Me and the girlfriend went to another restaurant, which was delicious and so we didn't partake in the food, but I was blown away by the World of Battle and its displays.  Plus, they had a cool inflatable Space Marine outside!

Let me tell you that while my expectations were low, it was really cool to make first cut and see my miniatures in those glass Golden Demon displays.  Again, I've been to these events many times and usually I'm the one standing in awe, peering into the glass at the talent.  It was an accomplished moment for me to be on the other end, watching others look at my work.  

My Ironguts in the back left corner

The Slaughtermaster faced some fierce competition, but he looked damn cool in the case!

So, the time dragged on, as I was ignoring most of the other events and just nervously awaiting the end result of the Golden Demon.  I happened to go by to check on the judging and they had pulled three miniatures from the Warhammer Monster glass to take pictures - the one you see int he picture is my Slaughtermaster.  You can imagine at this point (and my girlfriend was laughing at my face) that I'm very excited.  I'm thinking they have selected their winners and took pictures to put up on the screen....  

Unfortunately, they took pictures of everything.  Haha.  My Ironguts barely fell out of the last cut - placed below the top three on the top shelf... But the Slaughtermaster made it into their little judges tent with some of the top monster finalists... but when the guy came out to put the winners in the top shelf, my miniature fell into the next rung.  

Disappointed, yes, but the talent on display was humbling for sure.  I did receive this nifty medal below for being a finalist - something that will motivate me to sharpen my skills for next year.  Went to a couple 40k GTs last year and did well - thought that was a rush - now I find myself a competitive painter - at least in my own eyes.  Good thing about painting, no jerks across the table - haha.  

So now I'm back in Louisville and busy at work - my real job that is.  However, at night, I'm prepping the next thing on the chopping block.  Very bored with the Imperial Guard and eager to play some Ogres, I've prepped the Mournfang Cavalry below.  Tomorrow night I'll finish cleaning them up and then prime - ready to start painting on Friday or Saturday (Saturday I'm having an all day group painting session).  Done for tonight - going to turn in and think about entries for next year!