Very nice retrospective. You do amazing work on a wide variety of minis. Great job!

 Nevelon wrote:
Very nice retrospective. You do amazing work on a wide variety of minis. Great job!

I'm glad that you're enjoying it. It's been quite enlightening going back over the last 12 months' worth of models, as I've forgotten doing a lot of them.

My number for July were way down. I painted up a squad of Crimson Devils for Warzone, and finished off the Tiger Corps for Mars Attacks! I don't actually play either game, but the models are useful in any number of SF settings.:


August was more SF, including a few Broken that I did for the painting comp, a few robots for fun, and some Alternative Armies levies because one always needs more dudes with rifles. I also cranked out some 40K barricades and a landing pad made from a recycled plastic container:


September started with some classic Jes Goodwin Chaos Warriors (which won second place in the painting comp), some Deadzone Enforcers, and a couple of Barbarian wizards assembled by my son and then painted by me.


October started with more Deadzone, this time Enforcer Pathfinders with heads from Puppetswar. I followed up with some Oldhammer Judge Dredd models, and then some Blackwater Gulch models. I also painted up a wrecked resin car that I got with my Mars Attacks! Kickstarter, and some more recycled terrain:


November was pretty scattershot, with models for Deadzone, some Oldhammer goodness, and a few more Blackwater Gulch models:


And finally, in December I pretty much stuck with Deadzone, with a guest appearance by some Space Cops and a few more recycled buildings:


I ended up with a final model count of 133 plus some miscellaneous stuff. While that's not a huge number, I have enough models to field pretty much anything I would want in any of the systems I actually play, which frees me up to just paint whatever I feel like on any given day. Thinking ahead for the new year, I think I'll be scatchbuiling some straight ruined walls (as opposed to building corners) for Frostgrave, as well as helping my son with the Veer-myn I got him for Christmas. After that, I'll just keep following my muse.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on this blog. Your feedback gives me a little dopamine rush which keeps me coming back to the painting table. I hope to see you all in 2022!

A good number of well painted minis for the year. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll be painting this coming year.

Lovely stuff mate. Your Deadzone goodies are really inspiring.

Yorkright wrote: A good number of well painted minis for the year. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll be painting this coming year.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to much hobbying in 2022.

inmygravenimage wrote:Lovely stuff mate. Your Deadzone goodies are really inspiring.

Thanks. We're back on a Frostgrave kick thanks to the new supplement, but I have plans for a lot more DZ stuff as well.

An excellent year's work, Josh!

Awesome stuff dude

Love the deadzone minis and the mask on the Assassin

Really marvelous stuff, an excellent year of painting!

What an accomplishment! So many lovely and different miniatures with a really high standard.

Happy New Year!

Great overview shots and congrats on being able to paint what you want, because all systems have the models ready Excited to see what interesting mix 2022 will bring!

Slinky wrote:An excellent year's work, Josh!

Thanks, Slinky!

JoeRugby wrote:Awesome stuff dude

Love the deadzone minis and the mask on the Assassin

Thanks, JoeRugby! The mask is a little rough seen up close, but it works at arm's length.

The Red Hobbit wrote:Really marvelous stuff, an excellent year of painting!

Thanks, RH! Overall, I'm pleased with this year's work.

Ezki wrote:What an accomplishment! So many lovely and different miniatures with a really high standard.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you, as well. Variety is they spice of life, as they say.

Viterbi wrote:Great overview shots and congrats on being able to paint what you want, because all systems have the models ready Excited to see what interesting mix 2022 will bring!

It's quite liberating to not have to worry about getting an army finished. And speaking of an interesting mix, here are my first models of 2022-- Chaos Familiars!








I pulled these guys out of the box of unpainted Chaos models with the intention of painting them up, but they got pushed aside in favor of something else and then forgotten. I came across them as I was tidying up my painting station, and then just sort of cranked them out. I have dozens of models in and around my painting area, so I think I'll try to finish up some old projects alongside whatever I decide to start in the coming months.

Very characterful little models, I think my fave is the book with legs though, suitably bonkers

I always enjoy seeing the year end round-ups. It can be hard to remember just how much each of us did. Thanks for taking the time. You painted a lot of models this year.

Nice load of cool minis painted last year. Lots of diversity, too. Seeing those old familiars is a real hoot.

Incredible diversity and solid paintjobs all around. Best 2021 of anyone I know.

Slinky wrote:Very characterful little models, I think my fave is the book with legs though, suitably bonkers

Thanks. I think the jester is my favorite of this bunch, but the walking book was fun to paint.

Syro_ wrote:I always enjoy seeing the year end round-ups. It can be hard to remember just how much each of us did. Thanks for taking the time. You painted a lot of models this year.

Thanks. Your end-of-year round up was pretty impressive, in both numbers and sheer diversity.

youwashock wrote:Nice load of cool minis painted last year. Lots of diversity, too. Seeing those old familiars is a real hoot.

The descriptor "character" gets thrown around a lot, but I think it fits a lot of models from this era. None of these models really have an army list entry, but they add just a touch of wackiness to any army/warband.

DJJazzyJeff wrote:Incredible diversity and solid paintjobs all around. Best 2021 of anyone I know.

That's quite the compliment! I'll have to try to live up to it.

I made some walls for Frostgrave:


I already had a lot of corner pieces, but no straight walls. Now I can set up larger buildings with interior walls.

For the January Painting Challenge, I'll be tackling some Middlehammer Beastmen:


I'll be entering the shaman and the Khorngor for sure, and maybe 2-3 of the others if they turn out well enough..

Oh...old metal miniatures.

Cheers,

CB

Those beastmen look very intriguing!

And love the familiars. Those little buggers are always fun, I believe I habe the ones from Silver Tower lying around somewhere.

Love the familiars, particularly the little jester!

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

I think these guys are as finished as they're going to get:





I need to do something about my photo setup-- I just can't seem to get the light balanced-- photos are either too dark (like this set), or else washed out.

Looks solid to me, and some nice old metal there...

The Khorngor's axe is fantastic. Also great to see the classic elves.

They all look great but that rich blue is the best

What a fabulous bunch! Love the glowing eyes on the shaman's skull on a stick. Always happy when seeing such old metals painted by you.

I like the look of your latest painted minis, Josh. I agree the pics are a little bit dark (still better than I do), but I actually like the effect of it being a little dark. The backdrop for your photos is looking especially like storm clouds in these pics which goes nicely, I think.

Thanks, everyone. I do love me some Oldhammer. Speaking of which:






I think these Beastmen qualify as Middlehammer rather than Oldhammer, but you get the idea. I'm not really a big fan of this era-- between the wackiness of the pre- Realms of Chaos era, and the Great Leap Forward in plastic sculpting. The command models are pretty alright, but the troops are workmanlike at best-- not terrible, but not outstanding, either. Also, I may have reached Peak Brown on these models. There isn't a single color without some shade of brown mixed in.

Next up, for my entry in the January challenge:


The guy on the left is Fettuchini, from Citadel's Judge Dredd line. The other two are Rogue Trader-era Mercenaries: Space-Dout Sam and No-face Fargo. Remember when every model got a name? I used to know the names of every Eldar pirate model. Now, they're all just "Dude with lasgun" and "Dude with mohawk and melta-gun." Anyway, the theme is Age Before Beauty, and these guys are all old and not particularly beautiful. Also, soft, slighty greasy-feeling lead, so it's a good thing I'm in the habit of washing my hands a lot these days...

Wow. They are definitely the best...Igors! Amazing browns


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the classic dredd figs!

Love those beastmen. Great work on them, Josh. I have a stash of them I need to get to at some point myself.

Great looking beastmen, 50 shades of brown indeed
And I hope you paint the Dredd minis for February, for January you will need a time machine Excited regardless!

inmygravenimage wrote:Wow. They are definitely the best...Igors! Amazing browns


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the classic dredd figs!

This is probably the last Dredd model that I own, but who knows-- the Closet of Shame is deep and dark...

bbb wrote:Love those beastmen. Great work on them, Josh. I have a stash of them I need to get to at some point myself.

This quote pretty much sums up my hobby life-- a backlog that I need to get to. It makes for a lot of variety, at least.

Viterbi wrote:Great looking beastmen, 50 shades of brown indeed
And I hope you paint the Dredd minis for February, for January you will need a time machine Excited regardless!

January was before the State of Emergency was declared-- I wish we could go back to that.

I finished the first two models in my January pledge:

Fettuchini here has three eyes, so I guess he's supposed to be a Mutie, despite his tab reading perp. I tried to give him weird pink skin, but it just tured out like a really dark tan. Check out that shirt-- pulled up all the way to his nipples. I seem to remember cropped T-shirts being a thing back in the 80's, so maybe he's just fashionable...?




I wasn't sure what to do with No-Face Fargo until I decided he was wearing some sort of gas mask. Since he's obviously operating in a hazardous environment, I decided to put him in a hazmat suit:



There's one guy left in my original pledge, and I hope to have him done in a couple of days. That being said, I'm going to replace my origiinal pledge with these:


Classic banshees have become a sort of mini-comp, and I've decided to play along. I always loved these models, even if they underperformed on the tabletop. It'll be fun to revisit them and see if I can't do a better job on them than 20-year old me.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Remember when every model got a name? I used to know the names of every Eldar pirate model. Now, they're all just "Dude with lasgun" and "Dude with mohawk and melta-gun." Anyway, the theme is Age Before Beauty, and these guys are all old and not particularly beautiful. Also, soft, slighty greasy-feeling lead, so it's a good thing I'm in the habit of washing my hands a lot these days...

I do remember those days. Although I traded or sold all the Eldar that were named.

Good luck in the Banshee Scream.

Cheers,

CB

Nice Dredd minis, makes me want to redo my own...
In a Judge's eyes everyone is a perp...

Captain Brown wrote:

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Remember when every model got a name? I used to know the names of every Eldar pirate model. Now, they're all just "Dude with lasgun" and "Dude with mohawk and melta-gun." Anyway, the theme is Age Before Beauty, and these guys are all old and not particularly beautiful. Also, soft, slighty greasy-feeling lead, so it's a good thing I'm in the habit of washing my hands a lot these days...

I do remember those days. Although I traded or sold all the Eldar that were named.

Good luck in the Banshee Scream.

Cheers,

CB

I have inherited the Hoarder gene from my dad, although he collects cars rather than minis, so I still have pretty much all of my old lead Eldar. A few years back, I sold off a few, including the keybard-player musician, and regret doing so to this day. I plan to keep the rest until I am physically unable to paint, at which point I will lie die and embrace my own death, much like Aragorn.

Guardling wrote:Nice Dredd minis, makes me want to redo my own...
In a Judge's eyes everyone is a perp...

I wish I had kept the few Dredd minis I once had (see above).

Normally, I don't post WIP photos, because my process is so sloppy, but here are the banshees to date:


The effect I'm going for on the armor is not precisely Grimdark, but I am trying to avoid the clean lines I usually use with Eldar models. I tried mixing up my own Burgundy for the body suits, with middling results. I considered doing the loincloths in either blue or green to contrast with the burgundy and off-white, but my initial experiments were unbearably garish. Instead, I'll be doing them in a cool white, with darker blue-greay for the straps and holsters, and reserve the contrasting colors for their weapons.

I'll be honest, I love this. I am not always sold on super-clean Eldar; I think this is much more powerful and threatening. Classic Banshees remain some of my favourite models, and looking forward to the finished article. What colour are the manes going to be? Right now, I rather like the black.

Sounds like a good plan. They are looking sweet so far.

Love the Eldar! Always good to see some hobby experimentation

Thanks for sharing

Having this much more subdued look is definitely working well. Excited to see them developing, especially the blades.

I know there is a lot of "the Eldar range is soooo old and is in need of an update" but there are few models in the range that I find really needed a spruce up. I think most of the aspects really hold up well.

inmygravenimage wrote:I'll be honest, I love this. I am not always sold on super-clean Eldar; I think this is much more powerful and threatening. Classic Banshees remain some of my favourite models, and looking forward to the finished article. What colour are the manes going to be? Right now, I rather like the black.

Thanks! Pretty much every Jes Goodwin Eldar sculpt can hold its own against anything that came later. I'm still undecided about the hair/manes-- you may be right that black would be a good choice.

youwashock wrote:Sounds like a good plan. They are looking sweet so far.

Thanks. I'm a couple more painting sessions away from completion, hopefully I won't screw anything up.

IGtR= wrote:Love the Eldar! Always good to see some hobby experimentation

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for commenting. These models have been a lot of fun to revisit.

Viterbi wrote:Having this much more subdued look is definitely working well. Excited to see them developing, especially the blades.

I've just begun working on the sword blades. I hope I can get them to look like power weapons!

Archer wrote:I know there is a lot of "the Eldar range is soooo old and is in need of an update" but there are few models in the range that I find really needed a spruce up. I think most of the aspects really hold up well.

Agreed. These sculpts really stand head and shoulders over a lot of other things from the same period.

Slow down Josh, I am falling too far behind.

Black manes to contrast the while all the way. Also the classic scheme for these space elves.

Cheers,

CB

 Captain Brown wrote:
Slow down Josh, I am falling too far behind.

Black manes to contrast the while all the way. Also the classic scheme for these space elves.

Cheers,

CB

Sorry, Cap'n, I got carried away:










I thought I was finished, but looking at the zoomed-in gallery photos reveals a lot of little flaws that I can't unsee. I'm going to set them aside for a bit, and come back with fresh eyes and (hopefully) some better photos.

They have turned out lovely! The blades are all really good, but the Exarch's axe is stellar.

They look superb, great job. Ignore superb zoom, it's evil

Yeah they are really, really good. Would take pride of place in anyone's Eldar army. The blades are exceptional, really make it all pop.

youwashock wrote:They have turned out lovely! The blades are all really good, but the Exarch's axe is stellar.

In an ironic reversal, the axe looks better in photos than in real life, but I think I can do a little more work to get it right.

inmygravenimage wrote:They look superb, great job. Ignore superb zoom, it's evil

I agree, but in this case it has allowed me to find a few places that need touching up.

Archer wrote:Yeah they are really, really good. Would take pride of place in anyone's Eldar army. The blades are exceptional, really make it all pop.

Thanks. Overall, I'm pretty pleased, but they need a little more spot work before I call them finished.

I can only echo what they the others have already said: very nice work Josh! It's great seeing some of the original pieces painted up the way the best of them would have been done 'back in the day'. The blades of the weapons are excellent!

Seriously brilliant work bud.

Wonderful work! Brought the best out of those classics

Exalted the Banshees Josh, they are beautiful.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks for your kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane, while at the same time remembering why I don't enjoy paining units as much as individual models, like this guy:


Although his tab says "Army," he was released as Space-Dout Sam way back in 1988 (according to SoL). Above I wrote that I enjoyed painting this guy, but that's only half true. He is pretty well sculpted from the front and back, but on the sides (where the two halves of the mold would have joined), the detail is kind of blobby and indistinct. On the plus side, working on his armor gave me what I think will be a pretty good recipe for NMM gold.

Digging through my backlog looking for something to paint for the March Painting Challenge, I came across some resin scatter scenery I got with my Mars Attacks! kickstarter. One can always use more scatter terrain, so I cranked these things out:






I'm planning to try a game of Last Days over the weekend, so these things will come in handy.

Finally, for the Painting Challenge, I decided on these Martian Marines:


and have even made some progress on them:



Working on them reminded me why I prefer a black basecoat over white. To whit; having to go back and meticulously undercoat all the dark brown while trying not to ruin the blues. Ah, well, live and learn.

Great progress, love the scatter. Mantic are about to rerelease all the urban stuff so I may have to invest

The scatter terrain is spectacular. Would really trick up a battlefield.

inmygravenimage wrote:Great progress, love the scatter. Mantic are about to rerelease all the urban stuff so I may have to invest

Thanks. I really like the Terrain Crate stuff, but it's too expensive to get it shipped over here.

Archer wrote:The scatter terrain is spectacular. Would really trick up a battlefield.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to actually using this stuff some time soon.

The Martian Marines are finished:








I tried to play up the shininess/reflectivity you see in illustrations, and came pretty close. Painting these guys reminded me why I always prime in black-- it took a lot of time going back and lining everything so as to not have patches of white here and there, and that stage just isn't very fun.

I reckon these guys will see action in Deadzone as Mazon Labs troops. They'll fit the theme of science weirdos mutating and experimenting just to see what will happen. Next up: some Project:Z survivors for use in Last Days.

The Martians are incredible- the colors are absolutely perfect!

Ark-ak-ak!

 Meer_Cat wrote:
The Martians are incredible- the colors are absolutely perfect!

Ark-ak-ak!

Thanks! I really like the Mars Attacks! models, and now kind of wish I had gotten more when they were still available. There's an online retailer here that still has the core box, and I may end up getting that just for more models and terrain.

Wow - You've really nailed it there, Josh! As M_C said, the colours are incredible, especially the blue of the suits.

They look excellent, I did the Martian team for DB and getting those colours right is damn tricky. Excellent brains, too.

Amazing work and a very different kind of Space Marine The color for their "brain-faces" is spot-on.

Slinky wrote:Wow - You've really nailed it there, Josh! As M_C said, the colours are incredible, especially the blue of the suits.

inmygravenimage wrote:They look excellent, I did the Martian team for DB and getting those colours right is damn tricky. Excellent brains, too.

Viterbi wrote:Amazing work and a very different kind of Space Marine The color for their "brain-faces" is spot-on.

Thanks, all. I did these guys according to a tutorial I found when the game was new. The blue was pretty simple-- just a turquoise followed by a heavy glaze made from a Vallejo paint that separated and refuses to turn back into paint.

I got the first three Project Z survivors finished:





The first guy was inspired by Dennis Rodman, the second is in a forest ranger uniform, and the third (with his suit and sunglasses) pretty much had to be a Man In Black. All of these models and pretty tiny, possibly true-25mm scale, but they'll fit in pretty well with the Mars Attacks! survivors. The kit is far less versatile than I'd imagined-- each body come with one or maybe two sets of arms, and they can't really be mixed-and-matched. That said, ten men, ten women, and either four or six gangbangers will give me more than enough to play, and anyway I'll not be building a whole army of these dudes.

I also finished a crashed cop car that I got with Mars Attacks! all those years ago:





It appears to be a resin casting of a toy car that someone smashed up. It'll git in well with the street scenery I already have, as well as adding potential complications in Last Days. Finally, here's a group shot:


Next up: more survivors!

Aces. The resin Mars attacks stuff is nuts but so hard to get now.

I absolutely love the crashed car. Seems like a great idea for terrain. Maybe I should find some suitable scale cars and smash them up?

inmygravenimage wrote:Aces. The resin Mars attacks stuff is nuts but so hard to get now.

I put off painting these pieces for so long that I'd almost forgotten about them. I'm glad I finally pulled them out-- they were a blast to paint.

Archer wrote:I absolutely love the crashed car. Seems like a great idea for terrain. Maybe I should find some suitable scale cars and smash them up?

I think you should-- that's what whoever made these models did, and they're pretty fun. I seem to remember a website that sold wrecked cars to add to your houseplants/bonsai, and by all appearances they just took a hammer to a 1/35 scale car.

I really like that resin accessory scatter, lots of character.

The mars attacks stuff is absolutely ace.

Nice take on Marines for this months Painting Challenge JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks, everyone. Not having looked at my Mars Attacks! stuff in quite a while, I'm glad to see that the models are as nifty as I remembered.

Three more survivors finished:




The top is The Kid, which is a character type in Last Days. The middle guy is on the husky side, so I chose a head with a rounder face. His longish hair, mustache, and cargo pants made him seem like he was a working man, thus the tow truck logo. The bottom guy has a chainsaw. There may have been an alternate build, but really, he needed a chainsaw. The third guy has as pistol from the Mantic Enforcer sprue. This whole set is rather under-accessorized. The full boxed set comes with a second sprue for alternate weapons, but these are from the starter box, and thus have nothing in the way of side arms.

Here are all the survivors I've finished to date:


The remaining four are assembled, based, and primed. I hope to have them ready to share by the end of the week.

Excellent quality work.

Great survivors, and love your palette.

Camkierhi wrote:Excellent quality work.

Thanks kindly, Cam!

inmygravenimage wrote:Great survivors, and love your palette.

The secret to my unique palette is that I'm trying not to add any more paint to my wet palette, and using the residue that still hasn't solidified. It's not exactly glazing, certainly not wet-blending, and it's almost certainly not very efficient, but it yields interesting results.

I finished the last four male survivors:





The first guy's coveralls reminded me of an auto mechanic, and GIS gave me this particular uniform. I feel like the crowbar and Molotov cocktail combo may not be the most efficient game-wise, but he'll almost certainly keep living opponents away. The second guy is wearing a short-sleeved shirt and tie, so he's either a middle-manager or an engineer. The third guy is probably supposed to be another MIB, but I already painted one guy like that, so I fell back on my trademark Paint Everything Brown for him. The fourth guy has a T-shirt that is too short and shorts that are too large, exposing both his belly button and his plumber's crack. He's also wearing flip-flops. I figured the Zombie Apocalypse caught his by surprise, and he had to grab whatever was closest, which I decided to lampshade by making all the colors garish and mis-matched.

Here's a group shot of this set:


and one of the whole set of ten:


I'm still not entirely certain why Warlord went with a hard plastic sprue for these guys. They're essentially mono-pose models, they probably would have worked just as well in metal or restic. It's not like anyone is going to build an army of Survivors, so they can't have anticipated a huge volume of sales.

Also, whoever sculpted these really leaned into the fabrics-- everything clings to and hugs every curve, like you see on sexy female display models wearing diaphanous materials. Check out the shapely butt and calves on the guy with the baseball bat. It's like he's wearing sheer silk trousers to fight zombies! I got is some good practice painting shadows on cloth, but I think maybe zombie fighters would want to wear something a little tougher.

Next up, some bikers, also from Project: Z.

Slinky yeah, I have a bunch of the females and they're a bit cheesecake. But your survivors look damn nice regardless.

IIRC these are the Wargames Factory survivors. They had a long gestation process in the WGF forums and with their online voting thing (sort of a forerunner to Kickstarter). They were supposed to be good for any sort of armed modern civilians from zombies, to post WWIII, to riots.

I got the men and women and was disappointed, the poses didn't seem natural and they weren't as modular as they should have been. I really wanted to like them but ended up giving them away.

The modern weapon sprue was nice though.

inmygravenimage wrote:Slinky yeah, I have a bunch of the females and they're a bit cheesecake. But your survivors look damn nice regardless.

Thanks. I haven't really started on the female survivors, but the female bikers are very much pin-up models rather than hardened zombie fighters. I'll still paint them up, but I suspect that I'll feel like a creep while doing so.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:IIRC these are the Wargames Factory survivors. They had a long gestation process in the WGF forums and with their online voting thing (sort of a forerunner to Kickstarter). They were supposed to be good for any sort of armed modern civilians from zombies, to post WWIII, to riots.

I got the men and women and was disappointed, the poses didn't seem natural and they weren't as modular as they should have been. I really wanted to like them but ended up giving them away.

The modern weapon sprue was nice though.

Hm. I kind of like the variety of outfits for the men, but was a little disappointed at the lack of choice for each model. Northstar plastics have their problems, but kitbashing is not one of them. I'm not too sure about the women-- I wish they were dressed for the occasion, for example-- but I can see myself using them. I'll not be buying a second box of either, though.

The group shot looks great, even if the minis weren't that satisfying. But love all the different colors to differentiate the models.

 Viterbi wrote:
The group shot looks great, even if the minis weren't that satisfying. But love all the different colors to differentiate the models.

Thanks. Since these models are essentially modern-day civilians, and each dressed differently, I don't feel obligated to paint them in uniform, as it were.

After finishing the Male Survivors, I broke out the Biker Gang sprue:




The first model looked like Rob Halford, so he got the black leather treatment. The other two are generic enough that I went with jeans and T-shirts.





I'm still having a hard time getting the camera in my iPod to focus properly. I'd use my phone if it were easier to upload photos from it. First-worl problems, I know. The women are a lot sexier than I like for gaming pieces, but that's what comes on the sprue. The first of these three is just a tough woman in jeans, the second one is wearing a thong with a$$less chaps (there aren't enough fully-clothed parts on the sprue to not use these legs), and I added a head from the Female Survivor sprue to make the third one a badass.

I also painted up four zombies for this month's Dakka Challenge:





These guys were fun to paint, although they have the same problem as the Survivors-- lots of parts, but not many options.

Next up, more zombies, this time with more gore.

Love the chubby guy with his IV. But yeah, if every sprue has one of these it's going to get pretty tired pretty fast.

IV guy looks great. Biker gang turned out well too but I do find their female sculpts end up a bit static.

Somebody had a close enconter with a jean-stealer!

M.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Love the chubby guy with his IV. But yeah, if every sprue has one of these it's going to get pretty tired pretty fast.

If I were younger and had a smaller backlog, I might be tempted to build a little unit of these dudes.

inmygravenimage wrote:IV guy looks great. Biker gang turned out well too but I do find their female sculpts end up a bit static.

The catwalk stride doesn't seem to fit the setting. Two of them are wearing pants, at least.

Miguelsan wrote:Somebody had a close enconter with a jean-stealer!

M.

OK, I laughed out loud at this comment. Well played, sir!

Well done JoshInJapan.

You are churning them out a prodigious rate.

Cheers,

CB

 Captain Brown wrote:
Well done JoshInJapan.

You are churning them out a prodigious rate.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks, CB. These models have been simple and quick to paint. There's not a lot of bling to pick out, so they take just one or two colors each (not counting skintones). I spend more time waiting on glue and/or paint to dry than on the painting itself.

Four more zombies for the horde:






I painted the first guy in simple colors so as not to distract the eye from his half eaten face and his guts hanging out. The second guy looks like he's about to bust out some sweet zombie breakdancing moves. The third guy is wearing the summer uniform of a local rail line, and the fourth guy just refused to get in focus.

Three more zombies from the male sprue, and then it's on to the females.

Can't say I'm much of a zombie stuff fan, ut the clothing on those guys came out great, and like Captain brown said, you're just banging 'em out.

Honestly, realistic clothing is *key* to good zombies, and you've been nailing it consistently. Great job!

Vejut wrote:Can't say I'm much of a zombie stuff fan, ut the clothing on those guys came out great, and like Captain brown said, you're just banging 'em out.

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:Honestly, realistic clothing is *key* to good zombies, and you've been nailing it consistently. Great job!

Thanks, guys. I'm treating the zombies as chaff, as is appropriate for the genre, so I don't agonize over them like I would for a character model. That said, the sculptor really went all in on the clothing, which makes it easy to paint well.

Here are the final three from the male zombie sprue:



The guy on the left was based on a GIS search for "stylish young man," which gave me these color combinations (minus the ragged arm, of course). The middle guy was probably a member of the biker gang I shared a while back, and painted appropriately. The guy on the left was based on one of the great horrors of the 21st century to date-- that time an American president wore a tan suit.

I also started on the female zombies:


I'm not really a fan of this set-- they were marketed as Zombie VIxens, with lots of bare midriffs, boobs, and "sexy" clothes, but they are still flesh-eating undead monsters. They are also a lot less crisp than their male counterparts, making them more difficult to paint. The one in yellow was particularly difficult to figure out. She's either wearing hot pants and a bra, or else workout shorts and a sports bra, but the flanks were so poorly sculpted that I couldn't really tell which.

Here's this set all together:


I have a few more female zombies in the works, and hope to be able to show them in a few days. Then I have to narrow the lot down to five to enter in the monthly challenge. I'll likely be consulting my loyal readers for help deciding.

I'm really liking these. I think your female zombies are schlocky and trashy in all the best possible ways. Don't agonise, as indeed you're not, and embrace the zombsploitation.

Say what you want, but that is not a healthy skin color on those zombies... so well done All looking great so far.

Been a little bit since I looked in here, and you have certainly been busy. Zombs look good, and the survivors turned out pretty good too. I actually have a set of the matching female survivors that I picked up before Warlord started selling them (can't remember what company they were from before, but they went belly-up). Cool sculpts and good for any kind of post-apocalyptic game.

 Viterbi wrote:
Say what you want, but that is not a healthy skin color on those zombies... so well done All looking great so far.

Probably they didn't have a healthy skin color when they were alive either.

M.

inmygravenimage wrote:I'm really liking these. I think your female zombies are schlocky and trashy in all the best possible ways. Don't agonise, as indeed you're not, and embrace the zombsploitation.

Thanks. I have sort of reconciled myself with their "sexiness." In fact, there was a deleted/bonus scene in Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead with some college/fraternity types daring each other to get it on with a mostly naked zombie wearing boxing gloves and a football helmet. That's the spirit with which I'm approaching these models-- as on of the many reasons the zombies always end up winning.

Viterbi wrote:Say what you want, but that is not a healthy skin color on those zombies... so well done All looking great so far.

Good skin care is important in all stages of life.

ZergSmasher wrote:Been a little bit since I looked in here, and you have certainly been busy. Zombs look good, and the survivors turned out pretty good too. I actually have a set of the matching female survivors that I picked up before Warlord started selling them (can't remember what company they were from before, but they went belly-up). Cool sculpts and good for any kind of post-apocalyptic game.

I'm planning to start working on the female survivors next. They are also pretty sexed-up, but since they aren't dismembered/disfigured, that won't be so dissonant.

Miguelsan wrote:

 Viterbi wrote:
Say what you want, but that is not a healthy skin color on those zombies... so well done All looking great so far.

Probably they didn't have a healthy skin color when they were alive either.

M.

See above

Here are the last of the female zombies:


A corporate-type and a non-specific dead person. Both are wearing pumps, but the one on the left has lost on of her shoes.



Still having trouble with focus. The one on the left seemed kind of sporty, so I based her outfit on the Japanese Women's Volleyball uniform. The one on the right is wearing a swimsuit, so I felt that I had to give her the flotation device. I'm not sure real lifeguard wear thong swimsuits, though...



What a terrible photo of some not-very-good models. It was really hard to tell what was supposed to be clothing and what was supposed to be skin. I did the best I could. The red and yellow was inspired bu the Sunnydale High cheerleader uniform.



These two are my favorite of this set. I based the waitress uniform on Flo from the sitcom Alice. The one in white is obviously supposed to be a nurse-- the uniform and frumpy shoes are dead givaways-- but despite the extreme specificity of these sets so far, none of the heads have a nurse's cap. That seems a wasted opportunity to me.

Here is this batch all together:


And all 23 zombies in one big horde:


Now I have to decide which five to enter in the Painting Comp.

Next up: who knows? The theme for May is Mayhem. I'll dig though the backlog and find something appropriate.

I actually really enjoyed the 7 hour Snyder supercut real-time Dawn of the Dead: Daybreak
As a horde, they look totally fab. As for dodgy photos, I think that they just look like archive footage

Fear the zombie horde! Great work all around. And the lifeguards I've seen so far definitely err towards normal swimsuits, but your mini is sure to have come from Outbreak: Baywatch, so it fits

Very good work on the horde there JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Nice work, the green skin will really set them apart from the survivors and make gaming easier, as well as having the vital "ewww-factor"

inmygravenimage wrote:I actually really enjoyed the 7 hour Snyder supercut real-time Dawn of the Dead: Daybreak
As a horde, they look totally fab. As for dodgy photos, I think that they just look like archive footage

7 hours? I'm not sure I could handle that...Also, thanks for the kind words. While individual models are kind of hit-or-miss, the whole shambling horde works pretty well en masse.

Viterbi wrote:Fear the zombie horde! Great work all around. And the lifeguards I've seen so far definitely err towards normal swimsuits, but your mini is sure to have come from Outbreak: Baywatch, so it fits

Thanks. I'm stll not a fan of the sexy zombies, but after the first few I just went with it. They'll work well enough for enemies on the tabletop.

Captain Brown wrote:Very good work on the horde there JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks, CB!

Slinky wrote:Nice work, the green skin will really set them apart from the survivors and make gaming easier, as well as having the vital "ewww-factor"

I used my go-to zombie recipe-- AP Necrotic Flesh, AP Soft Tone ink, and then some simple highlighting. They won't win any awards, but you can tell at a glance that they are zombies,and that's what's important.

Since last time, I have finished these three Survivors:



The models are based on illustrations from the Last Days rulebook, and are made byTemple West. The hands were a little bit of a pain to drill and pin, but the models are hand-sculpted and full of "character," that most elusive of qualities.

For the Dakka Painting Challenge, I've decided to paint up the Mutant Team for Dreadball:


In 1E/DBX, I think these were the Plague Team, but have been rebranded for the new edition. Essentially, they are hulked-out Frankensteins, allowing you to mix and match parts to make custom players. I even finished the first two:









I like how the Nameless-dude's tentacles came out, but his pose made painting his uniform pants difficult. The Z'zor-dude's uniform worked better, but his pose makes him top-heavy and prone to falling over.

Here they are together:


Next up: more Dreadball!

Love DB, and your Nameless mutant wouldn't look out of place on a regular nameless team

Looking good *and* cranking them out fast.

inmygravenimage wrote:Love DB, and your Nameless mutant wouldn't look out of place on a regular nameless team

Thanks. We go back and revisit DB periodically, and enjoy it every time. I don't have the Nameless team yet, but it's on the list.

Arakasi wrote:Looking good *and* cranking them out fast.

One advantage is (relatively) bling-free models is how quickly they get finished.

Four more Dreadball Mutants finished:



Their mutations/grafts are, from left to right:
Grogan head with Sphyr tail, Teraton Arms, Yndij legs, Yndij legs with Asterian head and Judwan arm. The Yndij bodies have a sort of mane running up their backs, but it ends at the neck. It looked weird enough that I added some more Kneadatite hair. In fact, all of these models so far are getting a lot of gap-filling/blending because the joints are so rough. This represents a great departure from my standard "Do No Cleanip" policy for restic models of this vintage.

Here's the whole team to-date:


And here's a shot of some garbage cans that I painted but forgot to take photos of:

They look excellent. I really like your take on the mutant skintone, and extremely impressed you could be bothered removing all those damn restic mould lines

 inmygravenimage wrote:
They look excellent. I really like your take on the mutant skintone, and extremely impressed you could be bothered removing all those damn restic mould lines

Thanks, dude. The skin was a lucky accident. Some leftover paints on my wet palette ran together and I liked how the mix looked. Also, rest assured that I removed the bare minimum of mold lines. All the bumps on the models hide my lack of effort quite nicely, I think.

I have finished the strikers for the Dreaball mutants:





Sorry for the crummy photos. I need to play around with the camera settings on my new phone. I also finished the captain:






He leans so far forward that it's proving difficult to get a good shot of him. Finally, here's the whole team:



Overall, I'm pleased with how they turned out, but I'm equally pleased to be finished with the project. I don't enjoy army-style painting, with multiple models repeating the same color scheme, and I was pretty tired of green, red , and white by the end.

Next up, more Project: Z survivors!

Yeah, looks great. I like the winged judwan particularly

Hi Josh, am I reading the poll correctly that you won the monthly painting contest? If so, congratulations!

Great work on the Dreadball minis!

inmygravenimage wrote:Yeah, looks great. I like the winged judwan particularly

Thanks. The wings don't seem to blend very well with the body, but that's due to my lack of effort than the model itself, I think.

Syro_ wrote:Hi Josh, am I reading the poll correctly that you won the monthly painting contest? If so, congratulations!

It hasn't been declared, but it looks that way. I'm really surprised, because there are quite a few better entries than mine.

bbb wrote:Great work on the Dreadball minis!

Thanks! I'll have to find some time to play.

Nice work there JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

 Captain Brown wrote:
Nice work there JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks, Captain Brown!

I managed to finish the first three of the female survivors:





The leftmost survivor reminded me of (a slighty-sexified) Dan Scully, so I put her in more professional white and grey. I used a black glaze to give her stockings/pantyhose, and it worked well enough to tabletop distances. The little girl is in her Easter dress-- she comes with a helmeted head option (like Newt from Aliens), but it looked weird with the dress rather than overalls. I gave the rightmost model a checked shirt, which works pretty well from the back, not so much from the sides and front.

These first three are a lot less sexy than I had feared, but the next set kind of makes up for it. I hope to have them ready to share in a few days.

Great builds, nice work!

Congrats on finishing the mutant team, winning the contest and turning out a great trio of survivors! Not-Scully looks dead-on.

These look like good generic mutants, I like the contrast with green-grey and the orange pants.

Keep at it JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

More good stuff, well done! What little girl doesn't want a huge revolver for her birthday?

inmygravenimage wrote:Great builds, nice work!

Thanks, although I can't really take credit for the building of the models-- they're essentially monopose models with zero options on the basic sprue.

Viterbi wrote:Congrats on finishing the mutant team, winning the contest and turning out a great trio of survivors! Not-Scully looks dead-on.

Thanks. I'm pretty happy with that particular model, although I didn't quite nail the sheer stockings. One more skill to work on.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:These look like good generic mutants, I like the contrast with green-grey and the orange pants.

Thanks. I went with the white and red-orange pants because these are supposed to be a sports team, and also because the models would have been really boring to look at without some color.

Captain Brown wrote:Keep at it JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Will do, Cap'n!

Slinky wrote:More good stuff, well done! What little girl doesn't want a huge revolver for her birthday?

Thanks. I find the contrast between the little princess outfit and the oversized firearm delightful.

I cranked out the last of the female Survivors. I based this first one on a Pam Greer movie poster:



This one is described as The Survivalist in the assembly instructions, although she seems a little underdressed for that role:


This is more sensibly dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. I need to take care of that black spot on the face:


Bazooka Jane is based on that male survivor with the plumber's crack, with the addition of a bazooka/RPG launcher.


This one originally had a golf club, but it snapped off when I was priming the model. The head I chose gave me a Martha Stewart vibe, so I replaced the broken arm with a cleaver. That said, the colors I ended up using for the outfit remind me more of Steve Irwin. I would have liked to see a crossover show with those two:


This one is supposed to have a tennis racquet, but that seemed to ridiculous, even for this setting. I gave her a chainsaw instead:


Finally, Linda Hamilton makes an appearance. I had a really hard time with the shoulder straps:


After the sexed-up female zombies, I was wary about this set, but they were better than I thought they would be. In general, they seem inspired by Linda Hamiltion and/or Carrie Moss, badass ladies rather than cheesecake models. Here they are all together:



Between the Project:Z and Mars Attacks! survivors, I have enough civilians for any type of near-future post-apoc game I want to try. Next up, in honor of the release of Firefight 2ed, I'll be painting these Mantic Rebs:


Who don't actually have an army list in Firefight. They've been languishing in their plastic bags ever since Deadzone v1, and it's time they see the light of day. I'll be choosing my favorites to enter in the Painting Challenge for June.

Excellent ladies, and hurrah for Rebs!

Great work as usual.

Thanks, fellows.

I cranked out the first two Rebs:



As always, I struggle to get my phone camera to focus. I spent more time than I normally would cleaning up the mold lines on these two. I kept their colors simple, as I assume that Rebs wouldn't want to be too visible in the Deadzone.

I have a couple of Yndij started, and hope to have them ready to share in a day or two.

Bazooka Jane "cracks" me up

Rebs Rule! love it

Thanks, Graven!

Two more Rebs finished:

Nice Yndij! I always planned to do some blue as Na'vi.

inmygravenimage wrote:Nice Yndij! I always planned to do some blue as Na'vi.

Never having seen Avatar, that never occurred to me. Way back when I first got into Deadzone, I mostly stuck with the studio paint jobs, and now they're grandfathered in.

Two more Rebs finished-- this time Grogans:


They are both supposed to have ammo belts, but I could only find the one. I replaced the missing one with some wire to simulate a power cable. For some reason, these guys opted to stay in focus.

Next, I have some Zee scavengers, and after that Shayo SIlverback, a super-intelligent gorilla who acts as a reb leader. That will be about as much as I can get done before the Challenge deadline.

The Rebs are going well, I like the muted palette.

Very cool bud. Nice jury-rig.

Nice change of pace with the rebs and very no-nonsense look.

The mini painted as Martha Stewart is a stroke of genius

Slinky wrote:The Rebs are going well, I like the muted palette.

Thanks. It's a slight variation on my traditional Paint Everything Brown technique

inmygravenimage wrote:Very cool bud. Nice jury-rig.

Thanks. I'm pleased that it turned out well.

Viterbi wrote:Nice change of pace with the rebs and very no-nonsense look.

The mini painted as Martha Stewart is a stroke of genius

The rebs are a really fun faction, with lots of options in their Force List. It's been fun going back to them after so long. Speaking of which:



Zee Scavengers are genetically-altered chimps of the future. They are sneaky and give no VPs to your opponent for killing them. I remember complaining about the first set of these models I painted years ago, and I'm going to complain again. They're tiny, like 15mm tiny, and being restic, they were a PITA to clean. And being so small, it's really difficult to see all the work I put into them. Ah, well, they're fun in game.





Shayo Silverback is a Reb leader. His command ability lets models break away from combat without having to fight. I think he's supposed to be a super-intelligent scientist-type character, so I painted his suit in PPE colors.

Here are all the rebs I've painted this month:


There are a few more days left in June, and I may finish off a couple more models before the week is over. My Painting Challenge entry will be the best 3-5 models from whatever I finish in June.

Dang it I now really want to get the Rebs for Stargrave been putting it off as I hate restic lovely job as well.

Really excellent. Zee's are indeed a nightmare so I feel your pain. Big ape is a great job. Cracking mate.

Llamahead wrote:Dang it I now really want to get the Rebs for Stargrave been putting it off as I hate restic lovely job as well.

I agree that restic is unnecessarily difficult to work with, but the models themselves are nice, and painting to de-emphasize the unremovable moldlines seems to do the trick.

inmygravenimage wrote:Really excellent. Zee's are indeed a nightmare so I feel your pain. Big ape is a great job. Cracking mate.

Thanks! One good thing about the Zee models is that they paint up fast, so the pain ends quickly. They are fun in game though.

I finished this Sorak a couple of days ago:


I have a Kraaw warrior in the works, but he won't be finished in time for the Painting Challenge. Here is my final entry:


For the time being, I'll be continuing with the Rebs. After that, who knows? It depends on what the theme for July's Challenge ends up being.

Great job on the Sorak, they're tricky figs at the best of times.

Nice job on the Boss Ape! That's a snazzy band of Rebs.

inmygravenimage wrote:Great job on the Sorak, they're tricky figs at the best of times.

Yeah, he probably would have been easier to paint before assembly, but he needed some serious hot-water bending to get his arms to fit.

aku-chan wrote:Nice job on the Boss Ape! That's a snazzy band of Rebs.

Thanks! I'm generally pleased with how they are turning out. Not award winning paint jobs, but they'll look good on the tabletop.

More great work JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Love these latest few. Really nice vibe going on.

Captain Brown wrote:More great work JoshInJapan.

Cheers,

CB

Camkierhi wrote:Love these latest few. Really nice vibe going on.

Thanks, fellows! I finished a few more Rebs at the end of the month, but have just gotten around to taking photos:


This is a Kraaw warrior. Their wings act as jump packs, they're pretty fighty, and their gun does no damage, but scatters every model in the target cube in random directions. My son doesn't really speak a lot of English, but one of the words he uses quite freely is "irritating." This is, of course, because of this particular model.



Rebs use Survey Drones to capture objectives. They aren't terribly durable, but they can Evade if shot at and don't give VPs when they are killed. Again, "irritating."

Finally, I finished a few Asterian Marionettes:


I have a GSW roller that I use for Deadzone bases, but I'm out of putty. I'll rebase them when those are ready. I wanted to make them look shiny, without going full NMM. It didn't really work, though. I have some ideas that I'll try out on the next set.

Personally, I love that Rebs are irritating. It fits the theme of the army so well I'm tempted to pick up the Mazon Labs Command pack so we have an alternate choice for our GCPS. They look fun too. Your marionettes look great, I like green energy for them a lot.

Solid work there JoshInJapan.

I like the subtle green glow effects on the Asterian Marionettes.

Cheers,

CB

Love the Deadzone models.

Thanks for sharing

Thanks, everyone!

I finished some more Marionettes:


I kept the darks, er, darker than on the first set of five, but I don't think i've quite nailed the reflections.



I forced myself to go up to pure white for the highlights, and it kind of works. I think I need to do some more research and trials to really master Shiny. I'm pleased with the green glowy effects, though.

I have three drones assembled and primed. I hope to have them done in a day or two.

Great stuff, really fun seeing all these Deadzone factions, they look really interesting.

Marionettes look fine to me and as has been said before, the greens are great!

Excellent work bud, love the look you have achieved.

Thanks, gents.

I finished three drones:


Each sprue comes with the parts to build three drones (L to R: Communication drone, cloaking device, gun drone), but only one grav platform to mount them on. I could probably kitbash something using parts from the Bitz box, and will likely do so when I can find some time to dig thru, but for now, the Marionettes are finished:



I have five more that I painted a while ago, but they don't fit this particular aesthetic. Repaints are pretty low priority, though.

I also finished this Rebel Teraton:







The NMM on the blades looks a lot better in these photos than in real life...

Having spent the last two months working on Deadzone models, I'm ready for a little change. I have some Perry ashigaru models mostly cleaned and filed, ready to fill some holes in otherwise complete units.

Well, I've really enjoyed your Mantic diversion (great job on the teraton and Asterians as a whole), sure your Perry footsoldiers will be just as fun!

That Rebel Teraton looks awesome!

inmygravenimage wrote:Well, I've really enjoyed your Mantic diversion (great job on the teraton and Asterians as a whole), sure your Perry footsoldiers will be just as fun!

Thanks. The Deadzone stuff has been a lot of fun, although it is kind of painful to compare this latest batch to the ones I painted when the game was first released. It has also been fun to revisit the samurai-- I haven't painted any in years.

The Red Hobbit wrote:That Rebel Teraton looks awesome!

Thanks. I'm quite please with him.

These guys are essentially finished:






I picked these models up years ago to fill in some holes in a couple of Kings of War units. The models themselves are somewhat dated, with their LEGO hands and rather weird feet, but in a unit they'll work just fine. I actually painted the highlights on their helmets, but it's kind of hard to tell in some of the photos. That may or may not be a sign of success. I need to add either tufts or some static grass to their bases, and then some magnetic strip so they stay on their movement trays. Also, the rifleman may or may not get a back banner.

Next up: who knows? I have some scale model mecha that I've wanted to work on for a while, but the pull of the samurai is strong. We'll have to see what inspires me.

Awesome work. Like the figures. I might have to get some just to steal the feet. Been after feet in thongs for ages.

Very nice work on the entire Deadzone force.

Cheers,

CB

These guys are finished:



I added a little static grass to the bases, but otherwise haven't done anything since I last posted. The solitary guy flat-out refuses to take in-focus photos.

Also here are a couple of photos with these models as parts of the units they are meant to fill out.



The teppo dudes are at least ten years older than the ammo bearers, and it really shows, at least in these photos.

The muse has been nearly silent in the last couple of weeks. I have a few Asterian Kalyshi (essentially Witch Elves) in the works, not I'm just not feeling the inspiration. Hopefully, once the September Challenge starts and I step away from them, I'll get back in the groove.

Hope you feel the mojo, cus you are knocking it out of the park at the mo. Those bearers are brilliant.

That's a fine regiment of Ashigaru there.

Very fine Japanese types

The theme for the Dakka Painting Challenge for September is "That's not a gun, THIS is a gun." In keeping with the theme of Big Honking Guns, I painted up this Jotunn Heavy Cannon for Deadzone/Firefight:







Working on this model reminded me that I'm not really very good with vehicles/machines. The model would probably benefit from more/better weathering, but I'm kind of tired of working on it.

Well, it's not Brokkr, so it's not covered in mining filth. The forge Fathers do keep their gear in pretty good nick, you know? Think it's fine as it is.

Never seen that model before (but don’t really follow Deadzone) but it is awesome! Really dig the paint job I think you should be very happy with the result.

Excellent work as always, love these models. Off to check Mantic again....

For whatever reason, I've not been super-motivated to paint recently. That said, I have finished a few things:





A while back, I started buying mecha models with the intention of using them for Gamma Wolves. My enthusiasm kind of waned when I realized how much space the game would require (for storage and play), and the models sat gathering dust for a while. I pulled this one out and gave it a Gundam rifle, to be used as a Strider for the Rebs in Deadzone. I started with Tonka truck yellow, and just sort of slapped paint on it here and there until it looked dirty enough.

I also painted up a couple of Kalyshi:


Kalyshi are speedy, underdressed close combat specialists in the Asterian list for Deadzone-- not unlike Dark Eldar Wytches. They are cast in the typical Mantic alloy, which is both soft and brittle. That makes drilling and pinning easy, but someday quite soon, both the bow and the glaive will break off. This is inevitable.

Here they are together for a scale shot:



I have three more Kalyshi in various stages of unfinished, and then I'll be working on my entry for the October Challenge, which will probably be Wights for Kings of War.

Oh, that's very cool. Nice Kalyshi too, they're tiny skinny things.

That mech is just WOW. Love it. Really dig the yellow. Nice job.

LOVE that mech!

Great dirty yellow, I could believe that that’s an industrial machine repurposed!

inmygravenimage wrote:Oh, that's very cool. Nice Kalyshi too, they're tiny skinny things.

That they are, and the men aren't much better. I predict a lot of repairs in their future.

Archer wrote:That mech is just WOW. Love it. Really dig the yellow. Nice job.

bbb wrote:LOVE that mech!

Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll wrote:Great dirty yellow, I could believe that that’s an industrial machine repurposed!

Thanks, all. I can't take any credit for the design,, but I'm pretty pleased with how the painting worked out.

Gotta echo the others that yellow is awesome!

And love the resignation with the other minis and that the weapons will break off as a matter of cause

Yeah OK, you nailed the yellow bud, fantastic. All looking brilliant.

I like how the mech is basically carrying an upscaled human-carried rifle! I'll echo what others have said in that the yellow turned out great!

I can only add my compliments- it's a nice mech, good articulation and great design. And the yellow screams "I said stay in the left lane!"

Nice work, Josh, that will really work nicely as a Strider!

Good luck with the motivation/painting mojo

Thanks for all the comments, everyone. It's quite gratifying that the mech is so popular.

For this month's Painting Challenge, I have been working on this Shub Niggurath model from RAFM's Call of Cthulhu line:







She is essentially finished, but I feel like the model lacks something. I'm playing around with contact cement for slime effects, but I'm not certain whether that would improve the model or not. I have a week or so before the deadline, though, so we'll see what happens.

I also finished two more Kalyshi:



These weren't particularly fun to paint, but they're finished. The dude with the mohawk broke off at the ankle when I was cleaning mold lines, and I had to drill and pin it to keep it in place. Only one more in the set, and then I'll never have to paint Kalyshi again, until I get around to the Dreadball team, at least.

Here's everything in a group shot:

Monster is looking ace, and I'm always a sucker for abs. Sucks theu were such a pain to work with though.

While I’m not quite sure it’s appropriate to say that your Shub Niggurath is lovely, the paint job at least is!

Valete,

JohnS

Monster is horrid, well done

Nice job on that monster, very toothy!

That monster looks like he'd make a great Nurgle Chaos Spawn or maybe a Beast of Nurgle in 40k; really great paintjob! The Kalyshi turned out good also.

Vejut wrote:Monster is looking ace, and I'm always a sucker for abs. Sucks theu were such a pain to work with though.

Abs are overrated. I prefer the natural abdominal armor I have built up over years of beer and sedentary hobbies

cygnnus wrote:While I’m not quite sure it’s appropriate to say that your Shub Niggurath is lovely, the paint job at least is!

Valete,

JohnS

Thanks. I'm sure a mother with 1,000 kids would appreciate being called "lovely," though.

Slinky wrote:Monster is horrid, well done

Thanks!

aku-chan wrote:Nice job on that monster, very toothy!

I love the teeth on this model. The original sculpt has pointy teeth, but I like these blunt, almost-human teeth even more.

ZergSmasher wrote:That monster looks like he'd make a great Nurgle Chaos Spawn or maybe a Beast of Nurgle in 40k; really great paintjob! The Kalyshi turned out good also.

I have a few tentacly monsters that I plan to use as Nameless for Deadzone.

I sat down, bit the bullet, and cranked out the last Kalyshi:



She was kind of difficult to photograph due to how dynamic her pose is. The bow arm and the bent leg were separate pieces that required pinning to keep in place (thank you, Mantic, for using such a soft alloy!)

Here's the whole unit:


They weren't a lot of fun to paint, but they are finished. Hopefully they prove effective in game.

I spent some time playing with contact cement, trying to make slime on an old Gnoblar model I had sitting around, but what I ended up with looks more like spider webs. I'll keep experimenting, but I'll be submitting Shub-Niggurath as is.

They look tremendous. I hate them, they're fantastic in game

 inmygravenimage wrote:
They look tremendous. I hate them, they're fantastic in game

Thanks! I have only used Kalyshi once, but my son's Enforcers shot them to pieces before I could get them into melee. I'll give them another go sometime soon.

Continuing with my Big Weird Monster theme for October, I cranked out these models from https://www.oldschoolminiatures.co.uk/:



This guy is The Stranger, from OSM's Wasteman line. I got him (along with the following models as add-ons when I backed their Giants Kickstarter. The original model doesn't have the mane. I was at a loss as to how to pinat such a derpy model, until I realized his floppy, soggy arms and weird hands were perfectly Muppet-like, at which point everything fell into place. I tried, and failed, to replicate the fluffy feathery hair that so many muppets have, but the mane works pretty well, I think.



These guys are Mawmen. I tried to give them a sickly greyish skintone, using GW Minotaur Brown and AP Ash Grey, but in retrospect I should have use AP Necrotic Flesh instead. This big open mouth may get some strands of saliva, and if I do go that route, I'll add some updated photos.

Here's all three together:


These will be my last models for October. I have a few more monsters in the painting queue. Also, the Challenge theme for November is Snazzy, so expect to see some samurai models.

Fun looking monsters.

Great stuff! Those monsters are pretty cool, even the derpy blue one

All sorts of monstrousness. I really like the Muppet yeah, I make it a point to obliterate Kalyshi at the fort opportunity 😂

Weird and wonderful and bloody amazing paint work.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. The monsters were fun to paint, and quick, too!

The theme for the Dakka Challenge this month is "Snazzy," and few things are snazzier than fully armored samurai. So:





This first model is Toyotomi Hideyoshi, second of the Three Unifiers of Japan (after Oda Nobunaga and before Tokugawa Ieyasu). He's wearing a suit of armor that he later gifted to Date Masamune, and which is on display in Sendai, about an hour by Bullet Train from where I live. It's white and silver, which was rather a challenge to paint. It looks better in real life than in Dakka Superzoom.





This is Toyotomi Hidetsugu, a nephew and retainer of Hideyoshi. As his only surviving male relative, he was positioned to take over after Hideyoshi retired or died, but that changed when Hideyoshi's concubine finally gave him a male heir. A lot of ugliness followed. This armor is currently on display in the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, which is much farther away, which in turn is why I've never seen it in person.

Here are the two together:


There are a few more models in this set, none of whom are named. This will give me a little more freedom in how I paint them up.

Very nice work.

Excellent stuff. I like Hidetsugu's mempo, and are Silver armour has come out really well on Hideyoshi.

Those Samurai look great!

Great models and I appreciate the history lesson!

Camkierhi wrote:Very nice work.

Thanks!

inmygravenimage wrote:Excellent stuff. I like Hidetsugu's mempo, and are Silver armour has come out really well on Hideyoshi.

Thanks! The silver doesn't look silver up close, but the effect works at tabletop distances, which I'll count as a win.

ZergSmasher wrote:Those Samurai look great!

Thank you, sir!

KidCthulhu wrote:Great models and I appreciate the history lesson!

Thanks! The history is decidedly surface level, but knowing a little about who I was painting kind of helped me decide where to take the models.

Two more samurai finished. The first is a high-level retainer, based on the ornateness of his armor:



This much lacing requires a lot of time and effort on the part of the maker, and so only higher ranked samurai would be able to afford something like this. Because of all the little holes required for the lacing, the armor itself is not as strong as cheaper, solid metal plates worn by lower-ranked samurai, and right about the time of Hideyoshi, even rich samurai would start to opt for protection over decoration.

His backbanner is cast in the same metal as the rest of the model, but I replaced part of the shaft with brass wire so it wouldn't snap off. I couldn't quite get the drill straight, which is why it's at such a steep angle.



This guy is carrying the helmet that goes with Hideyoshi's armor. The bassinette is covered with bear fur, with two war fans as decorations. I'm still struggling with NMM gold, but these turned out OK. Fun Fact: the fans as sculpted are completely flat, but my highlighting makes it look like there is a ridge in the center. Serendipity.

Here are all four together:


I have a few more models in this set, but these will likely be the entirety of my Painting Comp entry.

I like the retainer with sashimono. Particularly snazzy

Great stuff as always!

Valete,

JohnS

There are three more models in this set, but for whatever reason, I could only find two of them. I finished one of them:]



I'm reasonably pleased with how he turned out, but I should have mounted the standard pole before I started painting. As it is, it spins pretty much freely in his hands.

This guy is proving to be problematic:


The standard bearer was pretty straightfoward, but the banner topper (the gourd-looking thing) is frustrating me. My son assures me that Hideyoshi generally preferred gaudy regalia, so red and gold is the correct choice, but I just can't figure out the lighting for the double spheres. I'll try to finish him before the month is out, but for now I'm setting him aside. Here is the completed group:

Absolutely cracking, love the standard. The GSW (I think?) basing stuff sets them off really well too.With the gourd, I would take a high powered lamp or similar and paint to the light spots directly, maybe?

Samurai looking very snazzy

Thanks for sharing!

Loving the samurai, reminds me of playing total war: Shogun, where some of the cavalry units have those big balloons on their backs

You are working at a whole new level lately, fantastic work.

The Samurai set is really cool, you have such a way of painting natural cloth that is super effective.

inmygravenimage wrote:Absolutely cracking, love the standard. The GSW (I think?) basing stuff sets them off really well too.With the gourd, I would take a high powered lamp or similar and paint to the light spots directly, maybe?

Thanks! Gamer's Grass tufts are great-- random shapes instead of perfect circles make them feel more natual.

IGtR= wrote:Samurai looking very snazzy

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Samurai armor is terribly fiddly to paint, but when I get it right the results speak for themselves.

Slinky wrote:Loving the samurai, reminds me of playing total war: Shogun, where some of the cavalry units have those big balloons on their backs

Those balloon things are called "horo," and supposedly they were used to protect the riders from arrows shot from the rear. As armor improved, they were used more to mark messengers (I think. I haven't really reviewed my samurai history in years).

Camkierhi wrote:You are working at a whole new level lately, fantastic work.

You are too kind!

Archer wrote:The Samurai set is really cool, you have such a way of painting natural cloth that is super effective.

I feel like I struggle with cloth, so your comment really makes me feel good.

The theme for the December painting challenge is Open Round. I decided to paint up this old Grenadier Dragon:



I bought it new back when I still lived in the US, but left it behind with a lot of other stuff when I moved over. Periodically (i.e. Xmas and birthdays), my dad sends me some of the random stuff I left at his house, and this model arrived last Christmas, which I think makes this a holiday-themed project.

I'll be painting this for display rather than gaming, so I spent some time making a scenic base for it:



The bark, sand, and stones all came from the side of the house. Once the mod podge is fully dry, I'll hit it with the gesso and start the painting process for real.

I spent some time on the scenic base, and this is what I came up with:



With this model, I've decided to branch out from my usual hobby paints. I'm not quite patient enough for oils and their long drying times, so I'll be painting this model with gouache. I'm trying to mix everything up from primary colors (red, blue, yellow), with white to lighten and a couple of darker browns for when I get lazy. I'm pretty happy with how this stage has turned out. I'm thinking the dragon will end up turquoise (There are some really pretty lizards to use as inspiration) to contrast with the red-orange rocks, assuming I can figure out the proper mix of blue and yellow.

This is VERY exciting

The base is fantastic- it looks like real sandstone has been shaped to form the diorama. Very well done!

The texture of the scales on the tail of that dragon look quite realistic. Very keen to see it finished off.

Thanks, everyone!

The dragon is pretty much finished:



Inspiration for the colors and pattern came from the collared lizard. I kind of feel like the wings a missing something, but given how deep the folds are, I'm not sure I can do anything that won't turn out weird and lopsided. After I seal the model, I'll start adding vegetation to the base.

That's extremely snazzy. I like the wings, but maybe a solution is to bring the highlight up even more OR take it up to the green?

I reckon this is as finished as it's going to get:







This is the first model I've ever none entirely in gouache paints. Everything is custom-mixed from red, blue, and yellow, with a little white and some raw umber here and there. I'm not sure I would go this route with human-sized models, but it works pretty well for something at this size.

Absolutely awesome. And very lizardy.

Very nice, love the base!

Glorious! I feel like I'm looking at a dusty tome from the 80s

Amazing job! Love, as always, how you nail the naturalistic look, but still bringing in some fantastic coloration that fits. Really, really cracking diorama!

Valete,

JohnS

Marvellous, well done!

The colors are just brilliant on it.

Thanks, all!

Next up, a creepy monster:






This is the Avatar of the Bloody Handed God, from RAFM's Call of Cthulhu line. The main tentacle is supposed to be point up rather than down, but that would have made the model too tall to fit in the case, so I reversed it and added some sub-tentacles made of kneadatite. I chose this model to experiment with custom mixing colors and with using gouache paints. Every color on the model was mixed up from yellow, red, blue, and white. I didn't quite achieve the flesh tone I wanted, but otherwise he turned out OK.

As the end of the year approaches, I'm finding myself lacking in inspiration, so I think I'll be grinding through the half-finished models sitting in my painting area. Hopefully I'll have something to share soon.

That's disgusting. Well done. I was trying to figure out which mythos gribbly it was from the pics!

Wow, I didn't know RAFM made a third version of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue Nyarlethotep. That's a really interesting interpretation with the paint scheme and converting that is suitably gruesome!

Definitely something an investigator doesn't want to meet in a dark alley!

Merry Christmas bud

inmygravenimage wrote:That's disgusting. Well done. I was trying to figure out which mythos gribbly it was from the pics!

Thanks! I'm pretty sure this monster was created by Chaosium, but he seems to be based on Nyarlathotep.

KidCthulhu wrote:Wow, I didn't know RAFM made a third version of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue Nyarlethotep. That's a really interesting interpretation with the paint scheme and converting that is suitably gruesome!

Definitely something an investigator doesn't want to meet in a dark alley!

There are three? I have one other Nyarlathotep model from RAFM, but I have no memory of a third.

Camkierhi wrote:Merry Christmas bud

And to you, buddy!

As part of my painting space cleanup, I managed to finish four more models, all intended for Frostgrave. First, a Neo-Bedouin shaman from RAFM:



Based on her kung-fu pose, I painted her like a Shaolin monk, and will be using her as such in game.

Next, a halfling druid:



Many years ago, I was playing in a D&D campaign with a couple of other foreigners here. All three of us players were combat heavy, and our DM decided that we needed a healer. He made a halfling cleric, for which I bought (but didn't paint) this model. Shortly thereafter, we all sort of broke up and went out separate ways, and this model languished in the back of my paint station ever since.

Here's an official Frostgrave wizard:



The model is based on the cover art for Perilous Dark. I emulated the colors from the artwork as best as I could. She came packaged with this apprentice:




Traditionally, FG wizards and apprentices dress pretty much the same, but having already painted the previous model, I wanted to do something a little different. I took the colors from Gabrielle (from Xena) before she learned to fight.

Here are all four together:


I have a few more models in various stages of incompleteness, but probably won't get them done before New Year's. My final Year To Date total is in my signature.

Thanks to everyone who looks at and comments on my work. Your feedback really inspires me to keep painting and playing. Have a safe and wonderful New Year, and I'll see you all again in January!

 JoshInJapan wrote:
There are three? I have one other Nyarlathotep model from RAFM, but I have no m
emory of a third.

My bad; I was thinking of the Grenadier one:


Whenever I saw the pic of this guy in Dragon Magazine, I always thought it was RAFM.

I love your Frostgrave crew, BTW I'm all for mixing model ranges as long as the scale is close.

Oh, wow, that is a cool model! I may have to track one down...

One of the many things I love about Frostgrave is that it's truly model-agnostic. All the soldiers are generic fantasy types, so anyone with any kind of variety in their collection can find something to fit any role.

We ended up having a stay-at-home New Year's holiday-- my wife and son were planning to visit her mom, but they day before they were supposed to leave, my son developed a cough and runny nose, and came back with a positive Covid-19 anti-body test. He isolated in his room for a few days, everyone went masked for a week, and thankfully nothing worse than that happened. Normally, I use the alone time I get to start a large project (and I have made a start, but almost no progress), but I did manage to clear a couple of things of the painting station:



These are the Shinobi Sisters, from Bad Squiddo's Fuedal Japan line. I don't know why the photos are so blurry.



This model is from a Grenadier boxed set of wizards from 1980. I bought it new at about that time, and this guy has been following me around every since. He's made of a pretty soft lead alloy, so some detail has been lost to wear (the right hand looks more like an oven mitt, which is why I painted it to match the imp on his shoulder), but he was kind of fun. He's also my last model for 2022.

Here are all three together:


This brings my final total for 2022 to:

116 human sized models, plus eleven pieces of street scenery, a wrecked car, a Big Gun, a Mech, two Eldritch Horrors, and a dragon.

See you all in 2023!

Nice work, Josh. I watched a lot of Xena and Hercules back in the day. Had a huge crush on Gabrielle, definitely a nice source of inspiration. Frostgrave looks like a lot of fun. I have the book, but don’t have the minis to rock all of the troops and monsters necessary to play a game. Guess I’ll have to get more minis.

What a great total for 2022. Onwards and upwards in the new year!!

Thanks for sharing, and for doing so incredibly consistently

Haven't checked in here in a while; it seems you've been busy! You've had a pretty great year, and I hope next year is even better for you.

I love how your Shinobi Sisters turned out.

Everything looking great. Inspiring as always.

Nice stuff! I like the shinobi sisters and the samurai look very snazzy indeed.

DJJazzyJeff wrote:Nice work, Josh. I watched a lot of Xena and Hercules back in the day. Had a huge crush on Gabrielle, definitely a nice source of inspiration. Frostgrave looks like a lot of fun. I have the book, but don’t have the minis to rock all of the troops and monsters necessary to play a game. Guess I’ll have to get more minis.

I remember being pleasantly surprised that Hercules was as good as it was, and blown away by Xena. I haven't gone back to revisit either show in the years since, as I'm not sure they'd hold up.

Frostgrave is a lot of fun, and being truly miniatures agnostic, you can use any fantasy models you have, as long as you can remember what everything is. Or, of course, you could buy some more models-- I would never tell a fellow hobbyist not to...

IGtR= wrote:What a great total for 2022. Onwards and upwards in the new year!!

Thanks for sharing, and for doing so incredibly consistently

Thanks for commenting so frequently. It's nice to know that people are enjoying my work.

ZergSmasher wrote:Haven't checked in here in a while; it seems you've been busy! You've had a pretty great year, and I hope next year is even better for you.

Thanks for stopping by! I'm running out of places to store the models I paint, so I'll likely be slowing down a bit and trying to push myself to improve.

KidCthulhu wrote:I love how your Shinobi Sisters turned out.

Thanks! I'm sorry the photos are so fuzzy-- they looked sharp enough on my phone, but not on the computer screen.

Camkierhi wrote:Everything looking great. Inspiring as always.

Thanks! Your scratchbuilds are just as inspiring to me.

Flapjack wrote:Nice stuff! I like the shinobi sisters and the samurai look very snazzy indeed.

Thanks! Samurai are a lot of work to paint, but I'm generally pleased with the results.

The theme for January's painting challenge is Ascension. I decided to revisit some classic Ral Partha models:


According to my cursory Googling, Ral Partha released a whole line of 3-stage character models around 1986. I only every picked up two sets-- a wizard that I sent to someone as part of a Secret Santa thing via FB, and this anti-paladin here. I got them just about the time that I started getting into WHFB, to use as Chaos Marauders-- they are more fully armored that Citadel Chaos Thugs, but smaller than Chaos Warriors, so they fit a niche that didn't have any official models. I decided to leave them on 25mm square bases because that's what they have always been on, and I didn't want to snap them off at the ankles just to rebase them.




I decided to give this guy bronze armor rather than silver/steel to sort sell the evil, as well as to match him with all the Chaos Warriors I've repainted in the last few years. I thought about straightening out the horn on his helmet, but thinking about how he couldn't find a matching set for his helmet made me grin, so I left it crooked. I feel like I need to make the dark bands on his shield darker, but I'll come back to that later.




Here he is as a mid-level character. He lost the robe, but gained some chainmail. NMM chainmail is proving difficult-- it looks grey, and refuses to highlight well. Originally, I painted the runes on the sword green, but it was too close to the blue of the blade, so I went back and re-did them in red. I don't know why the front views on both of these models are out of focus, while the rest are so clear.

Here are the two side-by-side:


I see a lot of places that need touchups, and I need to spruce up their bases as well, but for now I'm going to set them aside and start on the third stage.

Lots of fun there, and great interpretation of the theme. Anti-Ascendant!

I think the anti-paladin is finished. Here are the first two stages, in a little better focus:



I'm not entirely happy with the tufts, and may either move them or else replace them with some loose static grass. I'm not wholly certain why my phone camera decided to focus on the base instead of the rest of the model.

Here's the final stage:




I have the same concerns with the tufts. I'm pretty happy with how the NMM bronze turned out-- I think I finally hit my groove on this dude-- but the silver/steel is a little rough, especially in Dakka Superzoom. The scalemail skirt was particularly difficult, although it looks better in hand.

Here's a group shot:



I need to take some better photos for my painting challenge entry.
---

Remember this model?


For whatever reason, it shows up a lot on the Gallery front page. A few days ago, a new Dakkanaut left this comment:

"This looks alot like AI generated art"

I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a compliment or an insult, but then I noticed that he rated it "Painting 1/10, Coolness 1/10," which made it pretty clear.

That seems like a reflection of their own ignorance. I love that model. Try not to dwell on someone else's insults, it only leads to angst and insanity ;-)

 JoshInJapan wrote:


"This looks alot like AI generated art"

This looked like an AI generated comment !
Brilliant mech, and great frostgrave work as well !

I learnt a long time ago to ignore the feedback unless it comes from those few you trust. The gallery is a place of unspeakable jealousy and stupidity. I have had competition winning work get ridiculous scores. I know I am no painter but 3 out of 10 for a comp winner! What amazes me more is comments like your friends, does he have any idea how long it would take to do a piece like that on a computer. Way longer than to model it.

Your work is amazing, trust in that bud.

The dude joined Dakka on 1/11/23 and posted his comment on your image on 1/11/23. It's almost like he created the account just to trash your image. Some people are just weird trolls.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone! To be clear, I wasn't fishing for votes (but I appreciate them!), I was just rather surprised at the random negativity. I see a lot of that at work (I teach high school), but almost never here on Dakka.

After some feedback on the challenge thread, I replaced the tufts and managed to get some in-focus photos of the anti-paladin:






I also got some solid painting time yesterday, and did up a wizard and apprentice for Frostgrave:

Love the nun aesthetic of the wizard and apprentice. Are ally cool spin on the whole wizard appearance. Never seen anything like that before.

Really dig the color choices too. That blue really pops.

That wizard and apprentice combo are really quite amazing! As always I love your color palette. But the wizard herself just really popped for me. Great job!

The Wizard's cloak is especially impressive dude.

Archer wrote:Love the nun aesthetic of the wizard and apprentice. Are ally cool spin on the whole wizard appearance. Never seen anything like that before.

Really dig the color choices too. That blue really pops.

cygnnus wrote:That wizard and apprentice combo are really quite amazing! As always I love your color palette. But the wizard herself just really popped for me. Great job!

inmygravenimage wrote:The Wizard's cloak is especially impressive dude.

Thanks, all, for the kind words. The wizard model is based on the cover illustration for The Frostgrave Folio. I chose the teal/turquoise over green for the robes because that was the color of the employee scrubs we used back when I worked in hospitals.

I'm really loving those wizards. Teal is extremely hard to pull off well.

I've only just recently purchased my first Frostgrave kit thanks in part to a lot of the cool FG models you've painted, Josh.

 KidCthulhu wrote:
I'm really loving those wizards. Teal is extremely hard to pull off well.

I've only just recently purchased my first Frostgrave kit thanks in part to a lot of the cool FG models you've painted, Josh.

Cool! Which kit did you pick up? I look forward to seeing what you do with them.

I picked up the Wizards II plastic boxed set. I won't hijack your blog, but this is what I've started:
Those are multiple magnetized arms for the same model, since she will be the protagonist of my next comic project.

The wizard kits a really cool-- you get so many extra parts that you could make a whole army of wizards if you combine with the various soldiers sets. That said, I have yet to build anything from the wizards II sprue.

Lovely blue robes on those wizards!

Excellent work on the paladins aunty. The wizards are beautiful. Great stuff as usual.

aku-chan wrote:Lovely blue robes on those wizards!

Camkierhi wrote:Excellent work on the paladins aunty. The wizards are beautiful. Great stuff as usual.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm quite please with how both sets of models turned out.

As I've mentioned here in the past, I'm at the point where I have more than enough models to play any game I would want to, so I just paint what I feel like. My first choice is something for the monthly painting challenge, and then I hem and haw for a while until I decide what to do next. This past weekend, I remembered that I do have a game with zero painted models, and so for the forseeable future, I'll be revisiting Battletech:



I started with the Griffon and Wolverine from the Beginner Box. The griffon was originally just a military green (GW Waagh flesh-> AP Army Green->AP necrotic flesh), but that was too boring, so I added some camo stripes. I painted the wolverine in colors inspired by the comics character's costume from the mid 80's. That was kind of fun, but I don't want to have to agonize over how to paint each and every mech (at this point, anyway), so I switched back to camo for the Shadowhawk and Battlemaster. Once I get back into the swing of painting microarmor scale models, I'll probably add some variation.

Behind the spoiler tag are some more oddly-focused photos of the individual mechs.


I feel like the mechs need one more point of interest, like a unit insignia or something, but I haven't decided what or where. Any suggestions?

When painting my Cav Iwent for blue triangles (I was not going to try to paint aquilas on 6mm vehicles). More usefully they should go on the top and sides somewhere visible as they are IFF symbols D-Day invasion stripes are an excellent example. I like the red and white stripe thing and using that on a top plate or in some other areas would work well.

Honestly, I'd suggest using the red or a color with contrasting tone for the cockpit glass, as the current one is pretty close to the camo stripe color, but more use of the red/white flash would probably also work, on a knee or shoulder plate maybe? Still a nice set of color schemes

I agree with Cam about the valuable feedback being from comments from friends and people you respect, not faceless votes that probably aren't honest. That's why I set everything in my gallery to not allow voting, the comments on my blog are what's important to me.

I'm excited to see you revisiting Battletech. It's a game I have been tempted to pick up, but since I already have so many miniature games that I don't get to play, I have decided not to. If you have already played the new version, or get to in the future, let me know your thoughts

When painting mechs I go for the laser muzzles, PPCs and heat sinks as PoI. You can add insignias on the legs either a transfer or free hand if you feel bold enough.
Also antenas add a lot of character.

M.

Also there are no Griffons in Btech, only Griffins

Comments are what matter, for sure. Muzzle burn and heat sinks are especially battletech-y so go for the burn there.

Llamahead wrote:When painting my Cav Iwent for blue triangles (I was not going to try to paint aquilas on 6mm vehicles). More usefully they should go on the top and sides somewhere visible as they are IFF symbols D-Day invasion stripes are an excellent example. I like the red and white stripe thing and using that on a top plate or in some other areas would work well.

Thanks! The red/white patch is supposed to be a unit identifier (I foud it by googling "Tank Markings." I want to add something else, but not repeat this same mark. I'm still thinking...

Vejut wrote:Honestly, I'd suggest using the red or a color with contrasting tone for the cockpit glass, as the current one is pretty close to the camo stripe color, but more use of the red/white flash would probably also work, on a knee or shoulder plate maybe? Still a nice set of color schemes

Hm. These models have my default canopy colors-- AP gunmetal with a heavy coat (or three) of Soft Tone. I went back and redid the canopies as shown in the new models below.

Syro_ wrote:I agree with Cam about the valuable feedback being from comments from friends and people you respect, not faceless votes that probably aren't honest. That's why I set everything in my gallery to not allow voting, the comments on my blog are what's important to me.

I'm excited to see you revisiting Battletech. It's a game I have been tempted to pick up, but since I already have so many miniature games that I don't get to play, I have decided not to. If you have already played the new version, or get to in the future, let me know your thoughts

I'm too old the really care what some stranger on line says, and it wasn't so much the low marks as the unnecessarily nasty drive-by comment. In my experience, Dakka is almost entirely free of that.

I'm having a lot of fun painting mechs, and I hope to get in a game this weekend. At first readthrough, the rules don't seem to have changed much since the 80's. Just some tightening up here and there.

Miguelsan wrote:When painting mechs I go for the laser muzzles, PPCs and heat sinks as PoI. You can add insignias on the legs either a transfer or free hand if you feel bold enough.
Also antenas add a lot of character.

M.

Also there are no Griffons in Btech, only Griffins

I'm not confident enough in my OSL skills yet for energy effects.

inmygravenimage wrote:Comments are what matter, for sure. Muzzle burn and heat sinks are especially battletech-y so go for the burn there.

That's an idea, but would it be visible at this scale? Maybe I'll give it a try.

I finished a couple more 'mechs a few days ago. First, a Thunderbolt:



As per Vejut's suggestion, I changed my default canopy color from sepia to blue, so as to stand out against the green. The blue is Vallejo Stormy Blue, which is irreversibly separated-- the pigments are in a solid block at the bottom of the bottle, leaving the medium in a state akin to Contrast/Speedpaint.

I also painted this Locust:



Dakka SuperZoom does the model and it's paint job no favors...

Here they are together:


I have four more 'mechs from the AGOAC box in the works-- two are finished apart from the base rims, and two more are waiting for camo. After that, I have four lance boxes that I got in the last KS, as well as some Robotech Tactics models that I picked up on clearance. I'll probably do the RT models first, as most of what I have done so far were Dougram, and I want to try a different aesthetic.

Lovely locust mate. Always a fave.

You don't really need to go OSL for weapons. As mechs are so small usually I only bother painting a dark red as the base for most of my lasers and then a spot of bright orange on top for contrast.
Try adding a line of lighter blue to the Locust as you did to the Thunderbolt for extra coolness.

M.

inmygravenimage wrote:Lovely locust mate. Always a fave.

Same here. I've always been partial to chicken-walker mechs-- the Glaug/Marauder has always been my favorite.

Miguelsan wrote:You don't really need to go OSL for weapons. As mechs are so small usually I only bother painting a dark red as the base for most of my lasers and then a spot of bright orange on top for contrast.
Try adding a line of lighter blue to the Locust as you did to the Thunderbolt for extra coolness.

M.

Do you have photos? Also, I didn't paint anything on the T-bolt's canopy, that's just how the paint settled.

My latest batch.I base on a dark blue, then paint 2 lighter shades aimed towards a corner.

M.

Love the mechs. Camo pattern is fantastic. Always managed to resist the urge with this lot, but you and Miguelsan's have me looking again, damn you!

Really nice, loving the hex bases too

Nice mechs.

One problem with camo is that it does its job. Don’t be afraid to pop out the other aspects of the mini to make it more interesting as a sculpture/gaming piece. Brighten up the canopies and put some silver highlights on the guns, for example. How far to go depends on how “real” you want to end up.

You guys are making it real hard not to grab a couple of lances and rulebooks.

 Nevelon wrote:
Nice mechs.

One problem with camo is that it does its job. Don’t be afraid to pop out the other aspects of the mini to make it more interesting as a sculpture/gaming piece. Brighten up the canopies and put some silver highlights on the guns, for example. How far to go depends on how “real” you want to end up.

You guys are making it real hard not to grab a couple of lances and rulebooks.

Join the cult, join the cult!

@Josh It's incredible how we two gravitate to some games. One day we'll meet to play, and it will be glorious.

M.

Very nice! Definitely puts our Battledroids/Battletech models from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s to shame.

Love that you have a camouflage scheme that is realistic but not muddled.

I do still like the older sculpts, but they seem to have gotten over some of the very ugly designs they’d been producing.

Valete,

JohnS