And lo, there was wire!

After a long search for the missing camera wire, it appears our house has eaten it. Amazon has furnished us with a replacement, allowing me to post pics of stuff I received and painted a week ago...

Commander Vyper, being a rather nice chap, sent me some Mantic zombies when I bought some old copies of Harbinger magazine from him. Huzzah for zombies, -3 points to the tally...

...and yes, I am easily swayed by the motion of crowds. A whole bunch of chaps over on the LAF have recently started Star Wars projects, which reminded me of the number of plastic WOTC SW minis I own, and the fact that I'd borrowed the old SWMB rules from an old friend... Now, I love Boba Fett. But I do not own a prepaint Boba Fett, and they go for silly money on ebay, hence me now owning this dinky little 25mm WEG Boba instead. I haven't been able to bring myself to strip him yet (partially because I know how much I struggle to match colours when painting), but eventually he'll get repainted as Feskitt Bobb, Boba's slightly shorter cousin...

However, it's not just been minuses on the tally:

Strange Aeons



Rat King! A combination of Terry Pratchett's 'The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents' and the first Penny Arcade dnd podcast has left me with a bizarre fondness for ratkings... mini is from black cat bases, - I considered cutting him off of the sculpted base so that he'd fit in with the rest of my minis, but that was a lot of work that would have ended up with me throwing away 80% of the mini, so I didn't bother. He'll be a 'queen swarm' for Strange Aeons (from 'Shocking Tales of Madness and Mayhem'), which means I'll need another swarm for him to direct around - I'm torn between getting another swarm from black cat bases, and having two identical minis, or perhaps getting a dnd prepaint and rebasing it to give a bit of variety...

Zombies

5 Zombies from Copplestone and 2 ghouls from black cat bases (painted last monday, a full week ago, to my shame) take my total of painted zombies up to 65, I think (still never enough...).A couple of them have accesories from the Urban Litter kit from black cat, which I love (the zombie in the workout shorts looks sad that he's dropped his drink...)

Also, have a needless group shot:



Which brings us to a total of:

23 vs 13 = +10

Still in the green (and afaik, there's only four miniatures currently on their way to me in the post)! Not my most productive month though, as nosing through some old folders on the laptop I see that last august I painted 28 miniatures in a single month, which will be the new benchmark to aim for...

All quiet...

...so, no posts in a while now, as I just haven't finished anything... little bits are still getting done, and another twenty minis got hit with undercoat, so hopefully there'll be something to show in the near future.

That hasn't stopped me from being easily distracted and buying stuff though, which leads us to the main point of this post - an old Harlequin Davros dropped through the letterbox today courtesy of the electronic-bay (no size comparison pics with the MU daleks sadly, as the camera charging wire seems to have gone walkabout) taking the current tally to:

15 vs 8 = +7

Although I did just get a notification from ebay telling me that I'm a winner...

[via the magic of post-production:]

Davros! I thought I'd have to convert him to get him to look like current era davros, but I think I can get away with just painting his right hand silver...

and also:

He's a pretty good size next to a MU dalek, although I think i need to get some slightly larger bases for those...

Science!

In this economy, a lot of people are having to work two jobs just to make ends meet. Which is why these three, although Torchwood scientists by day, are pulling double duty as researchers for an Evil Genius by night...

3 scientists from Black Cat Bases - although I really like them, they weren't much fun to paint, as I just couldn't seem to get the paint to go where I wanted to (although that might have more to do with flu than with anything else...)

So with the addition of these three, the year's tally becomes:

15 vs 7 = +8

also making this one of my most productive months in living memory, and we're only a fortnight in... Having cleared some space in the painting queue, I've also cleaned up and based some more miniatures ready for undercoat, which might even get painted within a month of being prepared, which is almost unheard of!

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...

Westgate games update

Time for some sad news: my FLGS, Westgate Games, appears to be no more.

I went to nip in after work on Tuesday to pick up some plasticard, only to find the lights off. 'Fair enough, it's a bank holiday, they must have closed early' I thought (it was just atfter five, after all).

Today, getting out of work at half four, I try again, to find the lights off again, and further investigation revealed a note up in the door to the effect of 'this shop is now closed due to current economic conditions'.

Hopefully this is only a short term setback, but I fear the worst...

Can this daredevil pace continue?

Well, probably not, but I'm currently trying to build up a bit of a buffer so that my tally stays in the green. Only one miniature finished today, which is this:

Daredevil

The man without ears

(or something like that...)

Another heroclix repaint, it was a pretty crappy sculpt of a character I'm not overly fond of (although there's a weird dent in the back of his head, which you could charitably say is where his mask ties up, or uncharitably say that's where Wizkids used to snap them off the sprue). But hey, that's one less mini in the painting queue, bringing the tally to:

6 vs 0 = +6

As well as finishing off this chap, (among other things) I've also made a start on my first Hasslefree miniature (well, first Hasslefree miniature sculpted by Kev White) - at one point whilst basecoating the face, I stopped, turned to my young lady, and exclaimed 'crikey, this is well sculpted', followed by a bout of trepidation as I feared that I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Admittedly, it's looking rather nice already with just a basecoat on the flesh areas, and I think the quality of the sculpting would shine through even if I were to throw a bucket of paint at it from across the room...