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 gobert wrote:

Nevelon, Crimson Fists were the only choice for that extra blast of nostalgia! I hadn’t seen that new version of him, I might have to track him down. My version of the set were painted as Blood Angels too, but I’ve no idea what happened to them. I like how the camo chap has a flamer in his power fist, it must have a HUGE grip and trigger!

The camo guy is from when we were playing RT as an RPG. Tried to keep things WYSWYG for our characters. It’s supposed to be a hand flamer, kit bashed out of sprue and a lasgun. Didn’t have a very deep bitz box in those days.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I am a proud owner of a plastic WHFB dragon

BONUS it came with asarnils original banner. All I need now is to get the rider bits..

Plastic? Lucky dog. Back in my day, we had METAL dragons. Build this guy before I heard about pinning, much less knew how to do it. He’s held together mostly by habit. Every time I fielded him, or even touched him, I expected him to explode in a storm of shrapnel. Never did. <knock on wood dragon>

You want to try mounting it four inches up a chunk of tree root without mako the original square base any bigger!

I can't even blame the folly of youth for this one, I was at least 30!
It totally raises the centre of gravity as well as the probability of a fall from high enough to knock something off. But, you know, rule of cool and all.

Also, Nevermind that caterpillar, he was just a bit hungry.

 theCrowe wrote:


You want to try mounting it four inches up a chunk of tree root without mako the original square base any bigger!

I can't even blame the folly of youth for this one, I was at least 30!
It totally raises the centre of gravity as well as the probability of a fall from high enough to knock something off. But, you know, rule of cool and all.

Also, Nevermind that caterpillar, he was just a bit hungry.

Love the diorama with the caterpillar! And you are mad to build it like that. Sheer folly. Looks amazing though. And probably fixes the problem with that dragon as there is ZERO way you were ever able to get it into base contact with anything the way he is stooped over.

 theCrowe wrote:
Also, Nevermind that caterpillar, he was just a bit hungry.

The hungry, hungry caterpillar!

Crowe, that is positively vertiginous.

Slight delay on my end. Raided my dragon stash and failed to find much in a displayable state. Some assembly required, and, in cases, stripping.

 theCrowe wrote:
You want to try mounting it four inches up a chunk of tree root without mako the original square base any bigger!

I can't even blame the folly of youth for this one, I was at least 30!
It totally raises the centre of gravity as well as the probability of a fall from high enough to knock something off. But, you know, rule of cool and all.

Also, Nevermind that caterpillar, he was just a bit hungry.

Holy crowe, that's an impressive dragon! What a fun way to elevate (pun intended) a classic model.

Might be a bit rich posting Grenadier models in a thread of OOP miniatures, seeing as Mirliton snapped them up and are still pumping out a lot. But hey, it makes collecting a bit easier, and there's still a list that Mirliton don't have in production at this time. Particularly some of the dragons sculpted by John Dennett. He produced most of those about a couple of decades before I stumbled across the hobby, but he's one of my favourite dragon miniature sculptors. (Up there with the likes of Julie Guthrie, who'll also feature here in future) He put in a feeling of movement, weight, organic realism and attention to detail that I think very few fantasy miniature sculptors can match. It seems to me he knows his animal anatomy and knows how to tweak it to fantasy it up.

I hope I can show you what I mean. I have some scrubbing and pinning to do for most of my examples, but here's one ready to go: the Grenadier sea dragon, from 1985.

It's a beautiful model. I can only imaging how good it would look in oceanic greens and blues, with a hint of iridescence on the scales.

Thanks for sharing Vermis, and I really appreciate your write-up. It occurs to me that a secondary purpose of this thread can and should be to showcase the sculptors that made all of these lovely little things. Maybe I'll edit the first post to ask people to include the name of the sculptor, if possible.

Does anyone have good links to some reading I could do to figure out who did which sculpts in my collection? Was that usually listed in the miniature catalogues?

Vermis wrote:bear in mind that this was designed and sculpted to be a relatively flat, one-piece mould.

SergentSilver wrote:It's a beautiful model. I can only imaging how good it would look in oceanic greens and blues, with a hint of iridescence on the scales.

Don Qui Hotep wrote:It occurs to me that a secondary purpose of this thread can and should be to showcase the sculptors that made all of these lovely little things.

I made a goof: I already knew the sea dragon wasn't a one-piece mini. My copy's missing two tendrils from the chin. I think the point still stands, but to kill three birds with one stone,
here's the complete mini, painted in greens and blues, on John's own site.

Does anyone have good links to some reading I could do to figure out who did which sculpts in my collection? Was that usually listed in the miniature catalogues?

The GW catalogues on The Stuff of Legends are usually good about crediting the sculptors, and you can glean names from couple other manufacturers and wikis, but it can still be a job for some things. I don't know about asking around on facebook and what have you.

What is it about dragons that everyone wants to buy and paint them, despite their being so difficult to fit into an army? Here are a couple from my collection:

Citadel's Lava Dragon, sculpted by Nick Bibby. A really difficult model to photograph;


RAFM's Necro-drake, sculpted by Bob Murch:

I'm jealous you guys... I want them!!!

Here's another shot just for the craic.

That is an impressive balancing act. Did you bend the toes around the branch or did you have to chop any off?

One of the toes on the left foot had to be chopped off and repositioned, but then the log that the left foot stands on had to be removed anyway. Both feet are pinned into the wood as is the left hand and the right wing also tests against the wood and is glued in a couple of spots for extra support. There are also four wires up through the corner of the base Into the wood to hold it up. And yes, balance is the word.

Well I'm afraid I don't have any dragons to share, but I do have a bunch of old Inquisitor scale models that I'd like to share! I just finished a cross-country drive back to my hometown to chill with my family during the pandemic (benefits of working remotely for the foreseeable future), and my brother and I have been reliving a lot of gaming fantasies from our youth. I've got quite a few Necromunda and Inquisitor models that I'd like to repaint, but there are a few that I'm pretty happy with - one of which is our dear old Gregor Eisenhorn. According to the Warhammer Community article announcing the 28 mm sculpt, this model was sculpted by a chap named Brian Nelson. A quick google shows that he's done a few models that I quite like, including revamping Ork boyz for GorkaMorka. Note also Uriah Jacobs, Kyrinov, and the old CSM Sorcerers were all Brian Nelson joints. With all appropriate attributions, here is my teenage paintjob.





If I were to redo it today, I'd like to use a darker palette for the robes and a try and create a glow effect on the Runestaff and Barbarisater. I remember at the time being very proud of how the skin tone had turned out. If people like I'm happy to share a few more Specialist games over the next week or so.

 Don Qui Hotep wrote:
If people like I'm happy to share a few more Specialist games over the next week or so.

Absolutely. Especially any other Inquisitor minis. That range was a great and characterful look into the 'back alleys' of 40K. Gregor Eisenhorn is a particular high point. Thanks!

Grenadier dragon the second: John Dennett's pond dragon.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JoshInJapan wrote:
What is it about dragons that everyone wants to buy and paint them, despite their being so difficult to fit into an army?

I was cleaning up that pond dragon and thinking it could fit into a little Dragon Rampant HE Avelorn army I'm working on. It could be half a lesser warbeasts unit by itself.

On the appeal of dragons in general: if I could pinpoint that I could bottle it and sell it. I think they're the quintessential beast of racial memory: large predators, soaring raptors* and deadly serpents rolled into one. Huge, dangerous, majestic, devious, reprehensible and enviable. And because they're not real, they're a bit like when you only see glimpses of the monster in horror films: your imagination makes them a bit more huge and dangerous than what you can see, makes them fly, makes them breathe fire and venom. They embody the mystery and peril of the world as seen through imagination, moreso than any other mythological creature, to the point that the signpost into 'faerie stories', as Tolkien defined them, is marked with 'Here Be Dragons'.

* This kind of raptor.

Citadel's Lava Dragon, sculpted by Nick Bibby. A really difficult model to photograph;

I believe you! Nick Bibby made some characterful models but there are times he could've had someone at his shoulder saying 'come on, now'.

Love that pond dragon, could be right off a 60ies scifi/fantasy book cover, with the reeds on the base and the overall organic weirdness!

Here are some ancient harlies by Jes Goodwin - the ones above are from the 1988 RTB6 Box set I bought and (partially ...) painted as a teen in the 90ies, the ones below come from a blister I got off eBay this year and painted up for last month's Dakka challenge.





Well. I guess I was a bit more adventurous in regards to colour schemes in my youth, but then again my concept of shading seems to have been a black wash over everything, and my concept of metallics a black wash over unpainted lead
Also, bright green bases, heh.

Wild old dragons, =][=, and Harlequins. This thread rules.

Ive got some of those old harlies chopped up and mounted on old plastic jetbikes. Ive had them languishing as an unfinished project in a box in my garage for years. But you know, they're such classic minis they just never grow old. They may as well be triple distilled and aging in oak smoked barrels out there, just getting better by the year. Or I could pull my finger out and get them painted up.

I think my old hariles are the only Eldar I don’t have a good picture of. When the light is better I should grab a snap. They are horrible.

The mighty Captain Shortsword, mascot of my terrain blog:

Gorkamorka outrigga repurposed as a snotling pump wagon.

MobileSuitRandom wrote:Love that pond dragon, could be right off a 60ies scifi/fantasy book cover, with the reeds on the base and the overall organic weirdness!

Like something from the opening credits of Gentlemen Broncos?



Lovely Goodwin Harlies. An example of something that's maybe not as crisp as modern CAD plastics, but chockful of personality. Great painting on them, the checks are tops.
And weren't green bases a rite of passage in the 90s?

theCrowe wrote:They may as well be triple distilled and aging in oak smoked barrels out there, just getting better by the year. Or I could pull my finger out and get them painted up.

Been feeling that lately.

Nevelon wrote:When the light is better I should grab a snap. They are horrible.

Can't wait.

Some old Orks...

Metal Nobs.

Second version of Ork bikes

Metal and mono-pose Gretchen (although with some head swaps to create variation).

Old metal Nobs in Mega Armour

Original FW Ork Battle Wagon


Cheers,

CB

My 54mm Inquisitor Chaos Magus:

Those Brian Nelson orks are glorious, Cap'n.

Cap, I love that you have the old Battlewagon. You never see that one anywhere!

The 54mm chaos magus is awesome, that's what I hoped GW would do with kill team, make it a game about kitbashing models
that draws your eyes trying to dissect the model to its original parts.

I really need to just set up my lightbox and cycle everything through it. The problem is it would take a month and probably cause my camera to explode a/o melt. Anyway, here is a fuzzy picture of some old orcs.

And yes, those are tinboys in the back.



Edit:
Woops, already posted the orc pic. Thread’s getting long, I forget what I’ve already done...