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@muette: Thanks very much! I've been working on the army since 2017, this is just the latest batch. It's vast by now.
Finished something to display at Comic Con this weekend:
Last week at that other event I realized that the Gundam and the Zaku II looked a bit lost, sharing one full level in the display cabinet, so I added an RGM-79 GM (Shoulder Cannon, Moroccan Front version). This time it went much faster than with the first two, most of all because I had more of a clue of what's to do, second because the kit is flawless. The Gundam is the Gundam, the Zaku II is THE iconc bad guy (the Orc of the gundam universal century universe, if you will), the GM, Earth Federation's first mass-produced mobile suit, based on the Gundam, but cheaper and simpler made, might be comparable to the imperial guardsman in 40k? They're often used just to show how mighty and powerful some new foe is.
BUT again, I love the design, and the kit itself is just magnificent. This time I used oils instead of straight-up acrylics (after the first basecoats of lacquer), and oils are just tons of fun. Couldn'tdo too much because the chap had to be finished within a few days, hope the oil paints are as dry as they felt.
And now I gotta get stuff prepared for Comic Con. Set-up in 2 hours.
Video doesn't seem to work but the images are gorgeous. I'm still nervous to try oil paints on miniatures (or even oil washes, but that is a phobia I need to move beyond.
Excellent work on the two Gundam kits. Which painting techniques did you use? I hand-paint mine, but compared to your work here my colours lack depth and I always have trouble with the paint fouling the moveable joints.
The weathering on your Gundam itself is really well done without being excessive, and it makes the stickers blend in completely. The detailing work on the Zaku is a big improvement on the stock kit. I love the toffee-apple red colour scheme, and the gem eye glows nicely. If you can find them, the "Gundam The Origin" and "Requiem for Vengence" High Grade kits of the Zaku are both more detailed straight out of the box, though what you've done here is easily as good.
Also good work on the Orks, googlie eyes strike me as something that Orks would find funny.
Edit I didn't see that GM before I posted. Very nice. Your gunpla work is easily competition-level.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/11/24 12:38:53
blockade23 wrote: Video doesn't seem to work but the images are gorgeous. I'm still nervous to try oil paints on miniatures (or even oil washes, but that is a phobia I need to move beyond.
The video works, you just have to click where it says "Watch On Youtube"
@blockade23: Thanks very much! Yeah, I think youtube may have gotten pickier about being embedded somewhere. Watching the thing on youtube should work. Oils are a bit messy, but great fun. I don't really paint with oils much, but I use them for weathering or some washesor colour modulation here and there. And it's really not that hard. Get some oil paints (preferrably better-quality ones; they'll be less grainy when you thin themdown), get something to thin them (I got several sorts of media, but mostly just use White Spirit) and have at it. For me, drying times are the biggest obstacle, but I'm slowly getting to grips with that as well.
@Gitsplitta: Thanks, that is big of you.
@Turaxa: Thanks very much for your kind comment! I prime and apply the base colours on the armour plating using an airbrush (things like machinery parts I do by hand, so just like you I have to be careful not to clog up moveable parts with the airbrushed primer or the hand-painting later on). Yes, the Gundam and the Zaku were rushed purchases at a con this July. It's a bit of a shame I picked exactly the least detailled Zaku kit in the world. On the other hand it gave me an opportunity to add some details myself, learn more about panel scribing and so on. The Origin Zaku I just saw yesterday at Vienna Comic Con, where I ran into the rather recently founded Gundam Society of Austria. They liked the gunpla kits I brought along. Very nice people. The whole Gundam The Origin HG range of kits seems to be great. I'll have to look up the Requiem of Vengeance Zaku as well. Would be nice to have a regular green one as well. The GM I did this week (very, very quickly so I get it done in time for Vienna Comic Con) probably is my favourite so far. I like the older-design 'grund suits' a lot. Apart from a Zaku (and maybe a Z'Gok. And maybe a Dom. ), I'm very tempted to get a Guncannon suit. But first I still have a GM Sniper II to build and paint once I find time. I also bought Chuchu's Demi Trainer (because I really like the pragmatic, industrial look of the demi trainers. Not quite sure what I'll do with it, but it's a fun little kit.).
Heyhey, here I am again. Happy second Sunday in Advent!
Just like last year, there won't be a real report from the Vienna Comic Con, because there's just nothing really exciting to report about in terms of tabletop gaming. I didn't get away from my table at all on either of the 2 days. There was just so much going on. I had a great place as a figurehead (or bait) for the lovely WoW/Keepers of Dice Club Vienna. They also had very lovely tables, especially the Dungeonbow table was great. But between chatting and painting workshops, I didn't have time to do anything really (let alone drinking or eating).
Setting up and dismantling went extremely nicely too. Which isn't exciting news to many people, but as an exhibitor, it's just so valuable. The evening before, I was at least able to take a short walk around after the set-up, but I didn't see much really. Except for the Knight Industries 2000, which was pretty cool. The only thing I found a bit creepy was that they put a Michael Knight cardboard stand-up in there. Apart from that, I caught a few seconds of the Smash tournament here and there over the weekend as I walked past. It's so crazy that this one video game is the undisputed king at these events, and that's Smash Bros. I certainly haven't played it in 4 or 5 years, but my brother and his buddies were way into those games up to a short while ago. Good game.
If the people at these cons are exhausted from all the Smashing, they play Mario Kart or even Street Fighter for a short time, but then it's usually back to Smash. Which is all fine, because allof these are cool games.
Oh, one very pleasant thing happened, and it happened several times: people showed up who had already taken part in painting last year and wanted to join in again. That was very nice.
Apart from that, there's not much else new to report. I'm swirling around in the end-of-year maelstrom, but slowly there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I've got the RGM-79 SP “GM” Sniper II into a state that I consider “finished enough”.
A slightly later, performance-enhanced version of the gray guy from 2 weeks ago. Funnily enough, an older kit (think 2012?), and a little less glorious, but also very nice. I've tinkered with it a bit again and added a few details and so on. Basically at this point I just want to get a few models ready to play with. Because I'm not just doing this for fun, there's a PURPOSE behind all of this!
Not even sure if wargaming with these 14cm monsters (which also aresupposed to be pretty mobile, as the name suggests) makes any sense at all. But I have to try it. For this I also need terrain, of course. The extremely inexpensive Cityscape from Dropzone Commander caught my eye. Maybe that's a nice compromise. Possibly reinforced with a few MDF buildings from TTCombat. Who knows.
Well, so much for the news. Hope you like the robot toy!
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/12/10 13:32:32
Super(-cute)-size, fun-size and bite-size Chihuahua, donning a sombrero, pink ribbons, a yellow dress and equipment. It's this years last-minute "could you paint that real quick before christmas?" project. This sort of project always crops up. But it's okay. A very personal project to the gentleman I painted these for; the sculpt was made based on his little dog (whom I actually met) who was a bit sick last year, but pulled through. The sculptor worked her favourite toys into the sculpt (the gentleman who commissioned the piece gave me photos of various chew toys for reference). A fair bit outside of what I usually paint, but it's all in the mix. The two larger ones (18cm and 8cm tall overall) are for display, the small one (about 17mm tall overall) is for gaming, hence the different base.
Hope you like them!
Here an Orc lineman tackled himself into the picture.
Of course this isn't the 28mm version we all know either, but a resin cast of the original 3-up master. I do get to paint the coolest stuff. He's not quite finished yet.
@Warboss_Waaazag: Cheers! Yeah, the gentleman whom I painted these for gave me the three, said he only needed the big one and the small one and the middle one later on, so it just made sense to do them all at once. Very interesting project, not only because of the theme, but also it showed so very well how different sizes of figures require some different approaches to painting.
Heyhey, I bought a copy of Wiley Games' Battle Suit Alpha. Yesterday I spontaneously put together a test game. You can read a battle report of that as well as a review of the rules here:
First time I used those robot toys for wargaming; also the first time I used the newly-acquired Dropship Commander cardboard city terrain; all a bit rag-tag (one of the robot suit isn't even finished!), but had to be done. Hope you like the review and find it useful!
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2024/12/28 14:30:01
If you wanna read something "fascinting", read up on the development histories of the Gouf vs. the MS-08 Dom. Two ever-competing arms developers/manufacturers trying to out-do one another for the follow-up mass production type of the MS-06 Zaku II. Visually, I'm more 'team Gouf', but I really like the Dom's cross-shaped face.
Anyway, this one's a lovely kit. The Gouf looks like a really mean boss Zaku (which he basically is). Look at those spikes! In Ork terms, he's like the Goff among the Zaku suits. What I changed from the kit as it comes in the box is that I did the usual adding of some details, I added some panel lines, gemstone lenses and painted the fella. The kit is still fuilly posable (and you can almost fully disassemble the chap too! I actually had to take the whole upper torso apart in the end to put the orange clear plastic bit in his chest in.
Next we have the MSM-06 Z'gok Commander Type (which basically became the mass-produced type after a short while):
Again, super interesting development history and pretty much the only successful Mobile Suit type developed by MIP. But a success this one was. The Z'Gok was an excellent heavy MS (albeit complicated to pilot due to the mass and having to learn to steer the thing under water and on land).
To contrast the gumball-machine aesthetic (it's designed for underwater/amphibious use), I used an extra-militaristic looking colour scheme (very loosely based on some of the few submarines with camo paintjobs) and chipping, scratches, rust and water marks.
This is what the Z'Gok looks like swimming! (or being shot out of a cannon)
I just enjoy the look of that chap. Very fun, very cool.
Hope you like them!
Btw, Bandai just announced a tabletop wargame featuring Gundam models at a much smaller scale. I presume 1/400th.
In the annual “I've got to paint some of my own stuff!” panic towards the end of the Christmas holidays, I came across a Polish NCO that's been sitting around the edge of my workspace for about 2 years. So I painted him, and then looked in the box with my Sharp Practice project to see what else was missing. The leaders for the Poles are the main problem (more precisely, their absence). So I did something about that:
Some of them were already started, now they are finished. Not perfect, but game-ready. From left to right: colours guard from Murawski, NCO by Eagle Miniatures (Lovelfigures. First time I worked with them.), junior officer with flag, also by Murawski and without highlights and shading on the blanket wrapped around the chest, as I just noticed. That still needs to be done. Flag of the 8th Infantry Regiment. Then we got an NCO officer by Front Rank, and you can see that - beefy, but handsome. Until recently he was intended to lead a group of Voltigeurs (and of course completely out of place for that job, because of how tall and wide he is). An NCO by Eagle Miniatures will take over the job, or the plastic man further down once he is finished. And the bulky Front Rank chap will get a light blue pompom on his czapka.Then we have an officer, drummer and another officer by Murawski in the very right another NCO from Eagle Miniatures as a leader for the voltigeurs.
Then I had another look at what's in the box and begs to be finished:
...and found the plastic box that was released by Perrys last year. Delightful; I never thought that anybody would ever make plastic Poles.
And such an incredibly good box it is too. I'll write a review about it, but I can tell you this much already: It's great. Sure, assembling plastic figures is tedious, but there's so much in it, it's crazy. So with the review article in mind, I built another NCO for the Voltigeurs, a sapper (you NEVER need one unless someone writes a scenario around it. But he looks cool.) and a group of 8 grenadiers. Just got started on those plastics. Also two Austrian officers (one on horseback, one NCO), both from Eagle Miniatures, but from a different scuptor than the Polish officers.
Well, so much for that. So basically I have enough to play Sharp Practice now that both sides have enough Big Men. Maybe I can arm-twist somebody to give the figures their baptism of fire.
By the way, I noticed that I don't have enough Austrian line infantry now. LOADS of Landwehr, but they weren't really present for that campaign. If I remember corrrectly. Gotta get back into my notes on that. That's the problem with dipping in and out of periods only once every few years, isn't it.
@Cosmic: Aye, cheers! They'll see their baptism of fire in 2 days!
I got to paint another BB team again; this time it's Black Orcs, and - most amusingly - they're blue again! And they feature goblins, a troll and Varag Ghoul-Chewer.
Hope you like them!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just a quick little fun thing because I had the background and the trees out:
A little backstory: Back in 1997, I travelled to the LGS (one hour back and forth each), wanted a beastmen shaman, they only had the one with the lowered axe. Oh well. But it always irked me that I never got the one with the raised axe. Two years ago around christmas I gave my old beastmen a very swift re-do, and somehow a friend of mine must have picked up on the sad story about the shaman. So this year, when we did a christmas miniatures exchange thing, he gifted me that shaman. A really good present. So I had to get the chap painted swiftly (because over christmas I always get this frantic "omg, I got time off of painting figures. Now I have to paint lots of my own stuff really fast!" panic) and took a funky picture. Frame is from my own copy of the Realm of Chaos (5th edition) book, with some photoshop tinkering.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/01/15 22:44:44
Poles look delightful. I always enjoy looking through the P&M threads to find new companies to explore. Not that I normally do historicals but proxies are always fun in many ways. I'll be checking out Eagle Minis.
@blockade23: Yeah, the funny thing is that their ranges seem to be by different sculptors. The newer sculpts certainly are great; older ones are a bit chubbier and more characterful. They certainly all aren't big, more on the slight side, but with very good proportions. If you're out for proper joy though, I suggest trying some Front Rank figures.
Right friends, here's my first Sharp Practice battle report featuring my 28mm collection. We're going back to the April of 1809, right in the early hours of the Vistula campaign as Austrian troops cross into the Duchy of Warsaw to rendez-vous with a spy who has been gathering intel and drew some maps in the past months.
Automatically Appended Next Post: In other news - here's the boats from the Cruel Seas starter box!
German S-38 and S-100:
British Vosper MTB I and II:
All 1:300th scale, so juuuuust smaller than 6mm. I managed to get hold of a pack of Kriegsmarine and Royal Navy crew each too, which is nice. The crewmen come in threes, so I had to snip them apart and place them all over the boats. The rigging on the British boats is more fantasy than fact I suspect, but it looks boat-y and is in accordance with the reference pictures the gentlemen who asked me to build and paint these gave me. Note how the different types of boats got different camo and flag positions, so they could be told apart easily on the table. In that sense it's very useful that the British put one torpedo tube on each side of the MTB I and two on each side of the MTB II, at least in the configuration as depicted by the models here (there's also examples of an MTB I I think which got the torpedo tubes affixed to the front for a commando raid, which looks seriously bad-ass. Like a Battlefleet gothic torpedo cruiser ).
I didn't have much time for research into the topic, even though I find torpedo boats to be a very interesting topic, even to me as someone who tends to favour the land battle over naval stuff. But it features enough chaos and people running around, and I'm fairly certain that if you read into the histories of any of these fast motor boats / torpedo boats each of them has a pretty individual biography, especially when it comes to British and German boats in the channel, not to mention Soviet boats in the East.
Anyway, hope you like them!
Oh, I also painted some test figures for a Stormcast Eternals army for Age of Sigmar.
...and for myself I built a RX-77-2 Guncannon. The HG Guncannon (Doan Cucuruz Island version).
Built it very quickly, because these kits are a breeze to put together (but very relaxing), then it lay dormant for a few weeks and then I finally did some modifying by adding bits, scratching panel lines, etc. the usual.
The RX-77-2 was the Earth federation's first mobile suit, developed in conjunction with the RX-78-2 Gundam and the RX-75 Guntank (which is a model I'd love to own as well, because it looks similarly daft ). Hope I get to paint it soon!
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/02/04 16:12:53
Right, here's a bunch of WIP things. I sure hope they get over well so I can proceed with the figures swiftly. Those, as well as 15 dudes on foot (some of which have to be built and haven't even arrived yet) will have to be finished in a week.
Napoleonics were my first tabletop wargaming interest (Península British) so I'm particularly taken with your Wurttemburgers, really well done and fun to game. I find it interesting that there are certain conventions in common with the Brits (and this before they got knocked out of the war and, after they came back on the side of the Allies were receiving a lot of their kit and uniforms from the British, so the Duchy came to these decisions on its own) like the bugler having reversed coat colors and the busbies on the 'Jaegers' who aren't carrying the obligatory carbine to reflect their 'hunter' status- they'd rather be considered heavy cavalry!
Always a pleasure to see what you've been up to here.
"He fears his fate too much, or his desserts are small, who will not put it to a single touch; to win- or lose- it all."
@Meer_Cat: Thanks very much for the lovely comment! Yeah, reversed colours were quite the thing on musicians; certainly for the earlier part of the period. As for the Jägerness of the Guards Jägers - I suppose the "guards" part weighed heavier than the "jäger" part. It's also quite possible that they technically were armed with carbines and just ditched them, or the figure designer decided to leave them off.
Heyhey, friends. Here's some more WIP pictures of the Stormcast Eternals. Palladors (almost finished) and infantry (still heavily WIP):
Still got until Friday to finish the whole "army". Phew. Hope you like them so far!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/02/16 19:19:20
