Mystery miniature

aka Uncle Johnny fights the tally...

An old rust monster (because I loves them. Also owlbears. And Myconids.); some Aliens (from Leading edge); a WEG Darth Vader (because we love the Wars) some zombie ogre looking chap (because a while back I mentioned that I was looking to make some sort of ogre unit filler for my eventual Zombieslayer project); a Warzone chap of some sort (because John gave me several baggies of them a while ago); an awesome mummy that I'd been after for a while (is it an old citadel one?); the chap from Heroquest that always gets painted up like skeletor; and a mystery monster because I like 'weird' miniatures:

Anyone have any ideas what he is or who made him?

This little care package takes the tally to:

68 vs 170 = -102

It's still doable!

In other news, I still have as of yet to make any progress on my Path to Glory warband, mostly because I've not yet been able to unpack my tools (I did open the box with my WIP conversions in, thinking I'd packed the basics in there, but it turns out I was too organised and actually packed all my tools away...)

[Brief diversion]: The one good thing about moving? Getting to read all the odd comments and comics that I'd previously written on various boxes whilst sick of packing:

They're like a gift from past me to future me (who is now present me).

(a picture as non-sequitur as that last sentence...)

However, Rob did drop in some Chaos Warrior heads for my planned Marauder conversions though, so as soon as I've got access to knives and glue again we're good to go!

Speaking of conversions, I'm sure I mentioned a while ago that I couldn't find any pictures of a couple of old chaos spawn conversions that I was thinking about recreating... Turns out that whilst they are not anywhere on the internet (well, they probably are, but nowhere I could find them), they were in fact in an old White Dwarf in Uncle Johnny's library:

Barbarian + wolf + spawn bits conversion I was originally considering...

Slug body Spawn! As it's a Nurgle warband I'm making, I think this is the one I will use for inspiration. Unfortunately, this is the conversion that isn't included in the article, so if anyone has a copy of the 'Citadel Miniatures Modelling Guide' you could make me very happy...

Also, if anyone has the beast of nurgle that the slug body is from that you don't want anymore, let me know...

11th Doctor, companion, and some more D&D...

Painting, I have been (apologies for the more crap than usual pictures):

The 11th Doctor, ready to join his two predecessors that I'd previously painted. Nicole (my previously alluded to young lady) had a look at all three together:

and judged them somewhat harshly: 'the ninth one's rubbish, it looks nothing like Christopher Eccleston. But it might just be your painting...'. She's lucky I love her so much. She also complained that the 11th Doctor looked like a zombie, but in my defence I hadn't finished painting him at that point (and yes, that second anecdote was added when she leant over and complained that her complaints had not been properly noted).

But what's the Doctor without a companion? (other than more interesting, if the tail-end of the tenth Doctor's run is anything to go by)

The Heresy Amy Pond. I love Karen Gillan, but I really hated painting this mini's face (and yes, as soon as this post is up I'm going to go back and fix the smudge under her eye). But with the pair of them painted up, it means I can do things like this:

On the non-Who front, I've finished a trio of miniatures:

A gaoler type from Heresy. Don't ask why he's based on a square base, or exactly what I was trying to achieve with his basing, as I think I originally started this particular miniature somewhere in the region of three years ago, before there even was a dnd project, when I bought the miniature because I fondly remembered the intro adventure to my generation's 'Red Box', the 'Black Box With A Big Red Dragon On The Front', where your character wakes up in Zanzer Tem's dungeon under the baleful glare of a fat gaoler...

The other two finished miniatures are an unlikely pair of bedfellows:

A Dwarf Fighter, originially a Heroquest mini, that was a bit of a nightmare to paint as some of the detail was a bit stretched (apparently back in the old days all plastic miniatures suffered from this, due to the limitations of technology at the time - sometimes we forget how spoiled for quality we are these days...)

And a Goblin Sneak (well, I guess he can be a Rogue for now, until I sort out a proper Rogue mini...), that was originally a character figure from Mage Knight Dungeons. Odds on if I ever play Keep on the Shadowfell he'll make a funny little Splug stand-in...

Well, that little lot brings the tally to:

111 vs 285 = -174. All I need to do is sell 175 miniatures and I'll be back in the positive! Or, more realistically, wait until the New Year for the count to reset to zero...

Plans for the near future include cybermen. Lots of cybermen. However, if I can't get the last couple I need for conversions, or if said conversions are less fun than I envision, it's entirely likely that plans for the near future will include Judge Dredd (because Dirty Frank in 2000AD at the minute is the best it's ever been), my Blood Bowl Team (Humans if I can finally get a Mighty Zug, or maybe Orcs, since I just saw an awesome Orc Coach conversion over on another blog using a Games Day miniature that I'm sure I own), or maybe even something like some of the Firefly project miniatures I keep getting out of boxes, looking at lovingly, and then carefully putting back away...

Oh Mummy...

...because that's what I painted:

Well, I say painted, drybrushed and washed would be a more accuate description. Don't click on the picture and look at it bigger, if anything you should stand at least two feet away from your screen to enjoy it correctly! I'll probably end up painting another one of these based for Strange Aeons, and I'll try harder then I promise.

Also finished were this pair:

although I realised whilst I was uploading the pics that I'd forgotten to paint the chap's belt... but I'll have to finish that tomorrow (well, today technically). This lovely pair is from Hasslefree, and yes, I did have to do a Google image search to remind myself what colour the chap's trousers should be (which was fortunate, as I then realised that I'd also forgotten that he wears a striped tie). Painting the eyes on these were a nightmare, they're tiny! A bit of hand wobbling resulted in the girl getting some unexpected eye makeup (bam, do the same thing under the other eye and voila, with the aid of handwavium, it's explained away as intentional!)

And just to prove that I do paint the backs of my miniatures:

Hmm, her hair hasn't come out looking that great in this picture... and yes, I will clean up his collar when I come back to paint his belt ;) - I hate painting white, as I'm sure you can tell from the state of the chap's shirt. Worthy of note is the gold Casio he's wearing though, modelled after the watch I got my young lady for christmas (and yes, I did ask her advice on what colour to paint the girl's headband - always keep a young lady to hand for miniature fashion enquiries!)

So, these three finished (well, they will be finished, so I'm counting them) brings the tally to:

12 vs 7 = +5

Yesterday: false starts and secret projects

Well, the first package of the year arrived:

from Crooked Dice, two sets of their new minions (armed and unarmed, with human and alien head sets), and their casually dressed not-Amy Pond sculpted by Andrew Rae (which I thought I'd ordered when it originally came out, but then could find no trace of said order). Lovely stuff, and great service from the chaps at CD HQ as always, but these have already been filed into the Star Wars shoebox where I'm keeping all my recent miniature purchases (which is a lot more organized than my previous system of 'in a massive pile on my desk') until it stops raining long enough to undercoat some minis.

The arrival of these took the year's tally to:

6 vs 7 = -1
my first dip into the negatives (and not my last, I'm sure...)

So I cracked on with some painting, and finished the following;

Faceless Firefly NPC

Quite literally 'faceless', in this case, as she was originally a Star Wars prepaint (I forget which), and there was only so much my meagre brush skills could to in the way of reconstructive surgery. It's also quite sad that the first finished mini for this project is a randomer, but hey, progress is progress.

Dungeons and Dragons

You remember in an earlier post I mentioned that I may have forgotten some projects from the list? This is one of them (as is Afro Samurai, but we'll come back to that if I ever do anything about it). At some point in the future, I'd like to play dnd 4e. No specified timeframe, or definite plans, but like most of my great ideas I leapt in feet first and started buying up all sorts of generic fantasy minis, digging out old copies of dnd boardgames, and then not doing much more.

Which brings us to these two: the sludge monster was originally a Mage Knight prepaint (from a Ral Partha sulpt, iirc), and to look at it you wouldn't believe how many layers and washes went into this paintjob (it was something along the lines of 'apply layer; apply highlight; apply glaze; frown; wash; frown; repeat'). The wizard is from Heroquest, and came from an ebay lot that I bought because I wanted the Heroquest mummy (which is currently still half finished in the painting queue), and was nicely nostalgic to paint, hence the use of so many primary colours. That, and he got blue trousers because it looks like he's wearing jeggings. Metrosexual wizard FTW!

Taking the tally back into the green at:

9 vs 7 = 2

huzzah!

Which brings us to today (these were finished at around one in the morning, and I didn't fancy typing all this up as well). An excursion into town via the sorting office so my young lady could pick up her new camera led to the acquisition of this from Poundland:

One of those dinosaur skeleton kits that seem to pop up all the time on various forums, shown here with the Doctor and a companion for scale - I'm thinking a few quick cuts, a base and some gravel, and voila, perfect scenery for pulp, VSF, or any number of other settings. However, saying how quick and easy it will be doesn't mean I'm likely to get it done any time soon...