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Hello all, and welcome to my first ever painting, modelling and terrain building blog. Here I'm hoping to show off my work on my Malifaux crews and the Worldworks terrain board I'm building for my gaming group. Comments and critique are most welcome, as I'm always looking for ways to improve my work.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Malifaux, it's a skirmish game played on a much smaller scale than 40k or WHFB. Crews (armies) tend to range from between 5-12 models at most, and rather than dice, a deck of cards is used to provide the random element. If anyone wants to know more, feel free to ask questions - I'll answer to the best of my ability.

My first crew was going to be from the Neverborn faction (think demons, nightmares and things that go bump in the night). However, due to shipping delays I ended up picking up a crew from the Outcasts faction (the name says it all for these guys). I present to you: Leviticus and his Steampunk Abominations!



The man himself, my crew's Master - Leviticus, Steampunk Necromancer. I've only just started working on him, as I'm sure you can tell - a few base coats and starting to pick out some details. I've got a thing for green, and plan to use it to tie the crew together.



A Hollow Waif. These little ladies act as a tether, letting Levi come back to life if he's killed. I still have some areas I'd like to touch up on her - some more highlights on the hair, cleaning up the skin, detailing the shoelaces - and obviously the base needs finishing. However, she's one of my favourite models I've ever painted.



Two of my four Steampunk Abominations, just basecoated. There are two others in my gallery if you'd like to see the others. These are my general foot-troops, and will end up being painted much like you'd expect an unholy blend of flesh and steel to look like.



Rusty Alyce, Levi's assistant. She'll be my next project after Levi, but I'm still not sure how I want to paint her.



A Convict Gunslinger. This guy is a mercenary, hired to make up for the crew's relative lack of ranged attacks. I quite like the way he turned out, but would appreciate comments on whether his skin tone looks right or not.

So there you have it - the start of my crew. I'll hope to keep you updated as to how their painting is coming along fairly regularly. Next time I post, I'll be showing off the first 1'x1' corner of my terrain board.

Thanks for reading!

Great start! I personally love the skin tone on the gunslinger, it has a very realisic reddish shade to i.

Looking forward to that terrain!

Cain

Cheers Cain, it's great to get some positive feedback:-)

Well, to make the title of this blog accurate, I thought I'd better post up some shots of what I mean by terrain. Worldworks is a company that makes PDF, printable terrain that can be very easily constructed out of cardstock. Lightweight, easy to transport and very replaceable - I'll let you be the judge of how it looks^^ I should add that the way I've built this is a quick and dirty method - the Worldworks site can show you the proper way, which does lead to much cleaner looking terrain. Unfortunately, I've been unable to source foamcore, which is required for the 'correct' method.



This is a basic layout of the first 1 & 1/2 feet of game board (out of a 3x3 foot game area, the standard size for Malifaux games). Each of the squares you can see are 6 inchs square. They can be fitted together (in this case, slightly inelegantly:-/) in various configurations, making an easy, modular gameboard. Making these squares is pretty simple:



This is a 6x8 inch canvas tile, available from most art shops. Slicing off 2 inches gives you the perfect size of tile. Combine that with:



A printed terrain section of your choice. Some cutting and gluing to fit, and you have a square of terrain. Now, obviously a flat board is a little dull to battle on, and gives anything with range a giant advantage. Thus, we fill it! Or at least start to.



This is a view of what the board looks like with some of the pieces of terrain I've built so far. These are just cardboard with printed terrain - I plan to make a bridge across the canal soon, which those stairs are leading up to, so when I do I'll show you how they take shape. The models are there to give you an idea of scale. Here's some close ups:




So there you have it - the start of my board. Opinions would be welcomed and I'll hope to update around midweek, work and study permiting:-) Thanks for reading!

It's looking promissing. Though I don't play Malifaux, and only have one half painted crew, I still love it. subscribed.

Nice work so far man, looking forward to seeing Levi done.

I like the hollow waif's eyes being just plain white, gives a really unsettling look to the mini, although I think the skin on the face looks a little flat - I think a (potentially thinned down) wash applied to the recesses could help bring it out a bit. I used Gryphonne sepia on my space wolves' faces, but I believe GW does do a flesh wash which would probably be better as I don't think you want to darken it that much, just maybe bring out the shape of the mini a bit.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at a 3' x 3' Malifaux terrain board sometime - something modular so you can put it together in different ways each game - I don't have space to do one for 40k, but I might be able to handle that. But I've got my cyberdaemons to do and I should really get a crew before I start making terrain Turns out you're lucky on that front - Nowhere up here seems to have it, and so far from what my searches on the wyrd forums have turned up, it seems like Aargon is pretty much the only FLGS in the country stocking the minis. I found one mention of someone having run a demonstration to drum up interest in the game, but other than that Auckland seems to be a Malifaux-free zone :( Vagabond has heaps of 40k, WFB, Hordes, Warmachine, and even a box of Infinity figures at half price because no-one seems to buy them, but no Malifaux.

I'm not sure what foamcore is, but I've seen some people making terrain out of foam stuff similar to the stuff those fancy mini cases are made of, and if that could do the job then the Para Rubber store down there sells foam in a variety of thicknesses and firmnesses.

Anyway, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your blog here, and hopefully starting one of my own, even if I have to ship in minis from overseas to do it.

The terrains looking great and the paintings coming along nicely always good to see mmore malifaux love.

@Scrazza: Cheers^^ I'll try to keep it looking good.

@Codgod: Glad you like the white, the soulless look is what I was going for. I have tried to wash the face to bring out some detail, but as you've suspected, the trouble is how much it darkens the face. I plan to make a trip to Aargon and see what the lightest possible wash I can locate is, and see how thin I can get it - I'd like to have some variation in skin tones.

I love it - you're already thinking about terrain:-D As you can see, a 3x3 modular board isn't too hard to put together - I'm reasonably certain that given a couple of free evenings, I can have the board layout down. Then I just need to fill it. I was thinking that it wouldn't be too hard to do one for 40k - I'd work in 1'x1' squares, and since it's modular it stores and transports like a dream. But hey, one thing at a time^^ So strange that no-one up there stocks it, it's a real shame. Hopefully you can start to spread the love^^ If you can, buy from Wyrd's online store, since being a small business (relatively speaking) they'll love the direct custom.

I'll look at ParaRubber, but at least for now I'm happy with the non-foam version.

@Llamahead: Thanks for the kind words:-D I must admit, one of the reasons I posted this here and not over on the Wyrd forums was the hope of spreading more Malifaux love.


RE: The crew - it seems I need to learn to read, as I failed to realise that due to one of Levi's special rules, he can't take the Convict Gunslinger:-/ Farewell my friend, we scarcely knew ye. On the plus side, replacements will be coming soon from the Wyrd store, which means that by the time I'm done the current crew I'll hopefully have some cool new stuff to start showing. My goal by the end of this week is to have all the board tiles done, then start planning what kinds of terrain will be required. Stay tuned!

Yup, good to see more kiwis doin it too. Your stuffs looking good man.

There's a supplier down here in Wgtn, Wargames supplies, they didn't have a lot of stock the last time I popped down there, but at least it's a start.

Keep it up mate!

Nice work , love the minis and the terrain .

@Perplexiti: Hey, always nice to see another Kiwi^^ Cheers for the kind words man.

@Neil101: Thanks, I'm glad you like them:-D

Short update - it was going to be longer, but after seeing what kind of pictures my camera takes at night (examples below:-/) I've decided to hold off till I can take some daytime shots tomorrow. However, here's a shot of the Waif's face post-wash: I think it's made some difference to the depth.



The only decent photo I managed to get tonight - the (unglued and untidied) start of my bridge:



And some shots of Leviticus, though I hope to have a better quality version up tomorrow:





Unfortunately most of the highlights have been washed out by the quality of the shots, but hopefully you get some idea of how he's looking. I've also completed 1/3 of my terrain board tiles, and hope to have that at 2/3 by the end of the week. If anyone has any tips for improving photos taken under room lights, please let me know - most of my free time is in the evening, so I'd like to be able to take good photos then. As always, thanks for reading!

From what I can see, the face does look a bit more defined. Looking forward to the daytime shots.

As far as taking photos is concerned, I have a "natural light" bulb in my desk lamp which mimics the colour of natural light, which I use for both photos and painting, which I've found reasonably good. was around $6 on trademe.

Also with minis I don't know about your camera but I've found I can't use the zoom at all on mine, but have to just set it to macro mode and hold it quite close - if I use the zoom it can't focus on something that small. I don't really know much about your camera but if it has a macro mode (I think the symbol for it is usually flowers) then try using that without zoom and seeing how close you can get and still have it focus nicely. May not work with your camera, but figured I'd mention my method. The pic of Alice looks like digital zoom has been applied which makes it a little blurry around the edges - digital zoom is pretty much like zooming in on a computer image, you lose detail.

Beyond that there are a few articles here on dakka which you might find some nice tips on, although some probably go further than what you're looking to do: http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/categoryhotography

Back to the models, very much liking Leveticus so far, the hair in particular stands out as looking quite nice. Hard to tell form the pic but it looks like you've done the gem effect ont he end of his staff, which from seeing your wraithlord I know will look awesome - you're really good at that.
And I like the basing as well. Are those the bases Wyrd makes, or something else?

Great to see some Malifaux on Dakka, they make some absolutely amazing minis and I think you're going to do them justice.

@CodGod: Yeah, I had to use zoom on the waif to get any kind of close-up of her face at all - camera just didn't want to focus. I have been using macro mode, but today I tried it without zooming at all and I think I got some decent photos out of it, some of which are below. I'll definitely try that bulb idea for night shoots^^ Glad you like the hair - I was a little worried about doing white hair with depth, but I liked how it came out.

@BishopGore: Thanks for the vote of confidence:-) The minis are definitely fantastic, and I find that the more I work on any given mini, the more it's character appeals to me and the more I start to like it, even if I wasn't too keen on it to start with. Wyrd have done very well.

Well, I had a small setback today, as the stores I've been getting my tiles from were both completely out of stock>< Shouldn't take more than a few days to get more in, but until then, my terrain work is pretty much stalled. I did manage to get some painting done today, so here's some of the results.The photos are thankfully a little better than last posts^^

Firsly, a decent shot of Leviticus. I quite like how he turned out, though perhaps he could use some more work on vest highlights:



Secondly, one of my finished Steampunk Abominations. CodGod was kind enough to mention me in his Cyberdaemon blog and mentioned these guys, so I thought I'd better put up a shot of them. Plus, I love this guy's intestines^^



Next up is my WIP Rusty Alyce. She's one of those models I like more the more colour goes onto it - doing the arm for her helped a lot:



I mentioned a few posts ago that I had to drop the Gunslinger due to misinterpreting the rules, and thus needed replacements. Meet the Necropunks:



These little guys are slightly more self-aware than the Abominations, and thus can contest objectives, something I currently lack a lot of. Plus they're just adorable. I've started to paint one up to see how they'll look with colour, earning one of them the immediate nickname of Mutant Papa Smurf:



So that's all for now - apologies for the lack of terrain updates, it's definitely something I'm going to need to catch up on quite soon. Comments and criticism would be very much appreciated^^ Thanks for reading!

Abomination is awesome

From going to the gallery page and zooming in on the pic, it looks like Levi has some buttons or something on the vest which would look nice picked out to add a little more detail.
I really like how you've got more than one kind of metal on his leg, keeps it from looking too samey.
Alice is definately coming along nicely as well.

Keep up the good work.