The (Mini) Details of Dr H: Now: Messerschmitt Bf 109 in flames.

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**Gitsplitta**

Audrey II (or III?) never looked so good!

**Dr H**

Thanks for popping in Graven', Gits'.

It's now ready to feed on any careless Italian plumbers that happen by.

As I've finished this one well in advance of the actual birthday in question, I'll share it here for you all now, just keep it hush hush.

Place your bets on how long it takes me to get around to posting an update on the Raider in my other blog...

**inmygravenimage**

Love it. May I make one tiny suggestion? Paint the pot green, so it's a pipe. Or (gulp) even put a cylinder of card around it for the full pipe effect. As you're finished early... (ducks, hides)

**Dr H**

Thanks Graven'.
I did consider straightening the pot to make a pipe and then painting it green. Partly because it is a little unstable with the rounded edge at the bottom and the fairly heavy head.

It would have been worse if the head wasn't the thinnest layer of putty over foam (even those lips have a foam core).

However to change the pot would mean there was no point in using what I did for the pot: an old aluminium ramekin-alike (no longer usable due to corrosion inside). It has a nice plant pot shape, and would be a shame to lose it.

Plus, if it were green, that's a lot of green in one space for a household ornament, with the green stem and green leaves.
And when I googled for references, it's almost 60:40 with green to plant pot. Especially if you're looking at prop's and toys.

This way, it looks like a houseplant. Which is good for a present.

Yes, I have been thinking about this the whole time I've been building and painting it...

**Guardling**

The piranha plant looks ace!

**Gitsplitta**

I think that's outstanding. Sorry for not getting the Mario reference... it's a bit before my time (I'm aware of it of course... just not in my wheelhouse of games.)

**Dr H**

Thanks Guardling.

Thanks Gits'. No worries, as I said with the first tease post for this project; I expected everyone to fall into the 2 camps of "Little shop..." or "Mario".
And I am not one to be able to throw stones for not getting references.

I do have more of the "pots" available, so an Audrey II is possible for the future (as is possibly a little Groot).

Post incoming on my other blog...

**Dr H**

Life happens, some good, some bad, all... not much of this hobby.

Skip this for building below:

Spoiler:

...So I have been playing many PC games.

However, we did have some Birthdays, and for one I used one of the old models I acquired a while ago from the garage clear-out.

This Spitfire was built ~60 years ago by a teenager and then packed in a box and left in a garage for most of that time.
I tidied it up, swapped the canopy around (it was on backwards), and removed the undercarriage.
This is an odd thing, the shape of the closed undercarriage was moulded into the wings and (I assume) the instructions were to paint that shape black if you were to add the deployed undercarriage. So I decided "wheels up" was the way to go.
Therefore a flight stand was required and I decided to hide it in a cloud.
The propeller needed repair and I ended up installing it in a way that it can now spin.
The surfaces were sanded, the (majority) of the decals were removed, and then it was primed.

And this is what it looks like now, after the re-paint.

And now I'm working on some Dice Towers as this year's Christmas presents (we play a lot of games as a family, and some of those games use dice).
The basic structure for each of them is identical. I followed a design I found online a long time ago, but modified to make them wider, but shorter.

Then the idea was to cover the exterior to make each one unique.

From left to right:
Old castle. Made with individual card rectangle "bricks".
Fantasy "Disney" castle. Made with strips of card with the bricks scribed on (to make them more regular than above). Plus corner towers.
Sci-fi / cyberpunk. Bits and pieces, hexagons and angles.
Alien construction. Trying to lean more towards "Eldar" alien than "H R Giger" Alien. Odd shaped bits of card with putty to merge it all together.

They are all primed now and I plan to make use of the Airbrush to paint the bulk of them.
Plants for the gardens will be painted onto the walls, rather than be "real" things that will be damaged by the dice and rouge hands reaching for them.

**Gitsplitta**

Very creative Dr H. Love them. Sorry about your computer issues but I'm glad you got it sorted in the end.

**inmygravenimage**

Great to see you back. I did wonder if you'd got locked in your vault, guess now we know :/ loving the dice towers!

**Meer_Cat**

Very good to see you again, Doc. It seems the 'close-knit community' that Alexander Graham Bell speculated upon when the commercialized the telephone has instead resulted in a level of isolation that Torquemada might have envied: we have the ability to instantly speak with someone on the other side of the world, but it takes weeks with a major, established goods provider to resolve an issue (for a not unsubstantial amount of money to boot). I'm very sorry you had to go through all that, but glad that at least now it is resolved and you're 'underway and making weigh' again.

The dice towers are very neat and it's amazing the variation you've produced using a very simple design as the base!

**Dr H**

Thanks Gits', Graven', and Meer'.

You were going to get this yesterday, but DDakka was not accepting pictures.

The Dice towers are complete, but I'll spread out the reveals over this week rather than post them after Christmas. Maybe they'll get more eyes on them this way.

First up is the Castle dice tower.
It was the test piece for the design and the inspiration for the whole project.

The brickwork was made from rectangles of card stuck on to the foamcore structure, with a sprinkling of fine "basing mix" for grouting and texture.
A single Gamers Grass fern is tucked into a corner, but the rest of the plantlife is painted onto the walls of the courtyard.

In other news:
I'm now on Mastodon, if any of you are on there, you can find me at @DrH@warhammer.social
I'm also nuking my Twitter account, on account of it going down the drain due to a rich idiot.

**inmygravenimage**

That's excellent. I love dice towers that look like terrain.

**Gitsplitta**

That turned out really well.

**Dr H**

Thanks Chaps.

But wait, there's more...

Fantasy dice tower.

As with the Castle above, card was stuck on to make the bricks. But in this case, to make the lines neat the horizontal rows are a complete strip of card and the vertical lines are scribed on to the card.
The corner towers are milliput-covered foamcore with a roof of hole-punched card pieces with a milliput cap.
The grass is painted towel material (which was also used in some places internally for sound-reducing in some of the towers).
The stained glass is just blobs of paint in a "looks like stained glass" pattern but no aim at an actual picture.

**Dr H**

And the third...

The Sci-Fi dice tower.

Odd-shaped plates and blocks of card and foamcore (with putty), various cables and some odd bits were all used to give this one a future / Sci-fi / cyberpunk feel.
Coupled with bright colours and transfers.

Also, I threw on some dice-related markings, 1, 2 and 6 as stencils (just cutting the numbers out of paper and dabbing a stumpy dry-brush-like brush on them.
And then 3, 4, and 5 as dice-like dots as icons.
And, of course, the large "DIE" as in singular of dice. (crossed out so nobody thinks I'm implying anything about their health)

**inmygravenimage**

That's tremendous fun.

**Dr H**

Thanks Graven'.

The final dice tower is way-out-there in concept and execution.

While the other 3 were all pretty set from the start, with solid concept/idea and there was little interpretation required to detail them in building/painting, this one went through a few concept ideas before even being built.

Originally, I thought of a HR Giger alien concept,
That then became generic alien / Tyranid thing (think of the digestion pool/tower thing),
Then it was briefly an alien beast thing with claws and teeth (imagine dropping your dice into an open mouth),
Then I wanted it to be more "construction" than "organic", so that it matches the other 3,
So I pivoted towards more Eldar like,
And that became more "unknowable" alien species construction...

I present the Alien dice tower:

There was a lot of experimentation in the painting too, using all my iridescent and colour-shift paints. These, however, don't show up well in photos... or IRL even in some cases...
While it follows the same construction of the others: Crenulations around the top, doorway, courtyard, windows on each side...
It deviates in an alien way (is the aim); so the windows became the many holes/pits/features, also instead of the construction being blocks with small gaps, it's gaps/holes with surrounding ridges.
Instead of smooth, plain, surfaces it is a riot of shapes and colours.

Also, the random icons all over it. Think Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Those are all representations of numbers, mainly from historical or from around the world.
Ranging from 1 to 20... because dice...

It rides a fine line between amazing and hideous.
It could have been better with more planning and multiple concepts.
But this is where it wanted to go and you can't fight that.

So there you have it.
4 unique dice towers.

Thanks for continuing to follow along.
Have a good Christmas break everyone.
See you next year, will I ever finish the Raider...

**Camkierhi**

Merry Christmas bud

**Gitsplitta**

They are all fantastic. Really cool and creative work.

Merry Christmas Dr H!

**Dr H**

Thanks chaps. Hope you had a good holiday... 6 months ago.

Hello. Yes, remember me?
I got sucked in to driving around in Assetto Corsa, putting my new controller and graphics card to use.
Not done any model work worth speaking of... until now.

This is the last of the Mithril miniatures, miniatures: Beorn.

I've held on the him for quite a while as I've been looking for a companion miniature for what became the below diorama.
Beorn, for those of you who need a reminder, is met in the Hobbit.
And he's that chap wot turns into a bear.

How to represent a larger than average man that changes into an even larger black bear, in a model?!

I had the idea to have him and a bear mini' stood back to back on a round base so that you can rotate it and he would transform.
But I had to find the right sort of bear mini' to use;
a) that was the right size compared to the beorn mini'
2) that wasn't too warewolf/warebear looking
c) but was stood up and looking ferocious.
d) and wasn't too expensive and was available.

And this year I found Fenris games' Bjornhilda that ticked all the boxes.
But delivery was lost(?) and it was a while before I got it. So the wip is of the display base building which was all done before the bear arrived.

As the bear mini' is holding an axe in a way that I can't completely remove, and I didn't want to use the comically large axe head in this piece, I decided that it would become a tree trunk.
And as beorn is holding an axe I can have a felled tree stump on the base that can be the source of the bear's club.
But I can't just have a tree stump, so I also needed a tree.

Starting from a multi-wire electrical cable, exposed the wires at one end and splayed them out.
The cable becomes the trunk and the wires become the branches.
Wrapped them all in thin wire to give them some odd shape, and to add some extra branches, plus it gives a good key for the putty to stick to.
Thin layer of milliput, add texture.
Then add foam for the foliage at the top.
Mirror the tree's position with a stump and position Beorn.
Paint it all and wait for the bear.

The base is just some plaster, plus polystryrene foam bits, as an experiment.

Spoiler:

And that's it.
Once the bear turned up I cut off the axe head and extended the club's length and matched the textures.

And now it's all done.
May I present Beorn the skin-changer.

Close up of Beorn the miniature.

Close up of Beorn the bear.

I have another project already done, but I'll wait until I've handed that over to the recipient before posting here (~next month).

Now back to brum brum screeeeech...

**inmygravenimage**

Well, it's lovely to see you again. And that's quite the tree.

**Dr H**

Thanks Graven'. Good to see you still around these parts too.

Usually, I'd coat my trees in tissue/PVA, but I wanted this one to withstand knocking over, so Milliput/GS mix was used (with a wire base to the structure, it should bounce).

**Gitsplitta**

That's a lovely job on the diorama! Excellent work on the tree by-the-way...

**Camkierhi**

Nice.

**Dr H**

Thanks Chaps.

And, as promised, the other project I finished and can now show.

A Motobug.
As seen in Sonic the Hedgehog.

Kind of a companion to the Mario Piranha plant I made before.
Made in a similar way; polystyrene foam coated in plaster/putty, then some details.

The layer of putty in this case is very thin to keep it light enough for the magnet to be effective.
Yes, it has a magnet in the base of the wheel.
Why? The magnet was laying on my desk as I started building and I thought "why not".

There's a metal disk inserted in the base for it to attach to, but you can stick it to anything metal (of the ferrous inclination).

Work in progress shots.

Finished (with added screenshot for reference).

Thanks for sticking around. I will get around to looking at your blogs someday (do know that I feel guilty so some degree...)

**amazingturtles**

It's an adorable little bugbot.

**Gitsplitta**

LOL! Very cute.

**Dr H**

Thanks, amazingturtles.

and Thanks Gits'.

Update incoming on my other blog!!!!

**Dr H**

To pair with the previous Spitfire repair, I mentioned I saved another of my Dad's old models from the "materials" pile, and have now repaired and re-painted it.

Here is the Messerschmitt Bf 109.

But I couldn't just have it flying peacefully along with the Spitfire.

I'm sure you all agree.