eMauler Assembled

Just a quick update. I snapped a couple pics this morning of the assembled eMauler before I primed him just to note where all the greenstuff work ended up. There wasn't really a bunch of sculpting to do, just filling in gaps and some bonding work. Still though, it gave me alot of practice with smoothing greenstuff which I sorely needed. The two pins in his feet are just temporary for now while I primed him. The bugger is so heavy that when I set him in the block of wood that holds pinned models, the pins started bending over. No matter, he's primed and drying at home and if I can sneak out of work at a reasonable hour tonight (which would be a miracle) I can start getting some work done on him.

I haven't really thought alot about color schemes at this point, but I'm heavily favoring either a dark blue (like the first mauler), or a medium green. I'm not very fond of the pale blue studio colors myself, and I love the look of red spines. There was a really badass eMauler on CMON but their site seems to be down right now so I don't have a link. The highlight of it for me was that the whole model was painted to draw the attention to the face, and the mauler's eyes were painted like gems.

Bokur 2

Finished my second Bokur tonight. He isn't as good as the other I think, but I'm still pretty happy. I did alot more experimentation on this one with battle damage and shading and conversion work. The flesh work on this guy was the most fun to do. I'm eager to see how good the P3 flesh wash is once they finally release it.

Also, the eMauler is completely assembled (except attaching him to the custom base). I'll probably prime him tomorrow, but I'll try to snap a pic first.

Stupid Time Changes

I hate the time changes. It always throws me off. I'm super sleepy at 10:30, but that could also have something to do with helping a friend move this afternoon. In any case, the Bokur is still about an hour from finished, but the eMauler is down to 5 seperate pieces now. I feel like I'm getting a tiny bit better at working with greenstuff after doing all the work on the eMauler. I'm doing alot of joining using both greenstuff and superglue and it seems to be making for an incredibly strong bond. Anyway, time for sleep.

Weekend Progress

I've made alot of progress on both the Bokur and the eMauler. The Bokur probably has about an hour or so more of painting needed and then he's done. I used sort of a reverse scheme from the first Bokur in terms of brightness and I like the look overall. The big challenge has been doing black leather. It looks ok, but in general I don't like the look of shaded black. I should prowl through CMON for examples of black that I do like. In any case though, this guy is nearing competion.

The eMauler on the other hand has been reduced from 12 pieces to 9 pieces now. I've decide to assemble the entire thing except for attaching it to the custom base before painting, despite the potential challenge of painting it that way. He's taking longer than expected anyway just cause of all the greenstuff work to smooth out join points.

Yesterday I got a small set of drawers on wheels and a second arm lamp which has dramatically reduced the amount of junk on top of my desk. My wife actually suggested getting a smaller desk now that I don't need as much desktop space, so I might use this as an opportunity to find a really cool desk. I saw a table at Ikea yesterday that had enormous potential. It was a plate of glass on top, and then a space of about an inch and a half below the glass where stuff could be slid under. If it was a bit bigger, it would be perfect to stash paints out of the way and yet easily see them. Oh well. The search for a perfect desk will have to continue.

Late Night Status

Got a bit more work done on the Bokur, mostly just painting skin. I used primarily the midlund and khadic flesh colors, blending them lighter and lighter. I'm thinking that it needs a slight wash of slightly darkened Khardic flesh to really give it proper depth though. Also started cleaning and trimming the eMauler bits. I'm hoping this weekend will be productive. Anyway, very sleepy, so no pics or anything coherent.

Painting Leather

I was trading emails yesterday with a couple friends of mine that also paint and I suddenly realized that I haven't been blogging about the techniques I use. So, in the spirit of sharing ideas, here's a first technique description.

The leather I did for Doomshaper used a new technique that I just tried out and I have to say that I like it quite alot. Before I was always using inks to deepen the look of leather on miniatures, and it's a look I very much like. However, inks tend to create alot of glossy reflection and that is just not natural for leather. So, for Doomshaper's leathers, I painted on Vallejo Matt Medium (slightly watered down) right on top of the leathers themselves. I did it this way rather than mixing it into the inks at first. This worked pretty well, although I did also try mixing in the matt medium into the inks themselves and that worked satisfactoraly. I'm working on my second Bokur now, so this will be a good chance to try it out on another model and refine the technique, but so far I like the preliminary results.

Hopefully next time I do one of these, I'll have some pics to go along with the description.

Loose Ends

So I have a bunch of loose ends on random models that I never finished up. I'm hoping to deal with those before I order another wave of models. Here's the quick list:

• chains on the Harbinger (and pics for the blog)
• replacement hoses for the Castigator
• re-glue chains on 1 Wrack (unfortunate transport damage)
• ink tall grass on several models
• touch ups on the first Bokur (before posting him to CMON)

Eventually I need to snap a whole new set of pics of all the old stuff as well, but that's a weekend task I suspect.

Extreeeeeme!!!

My Dire Troll Mauler Extreme showed up today, and he is huge! Here's a pic of the 12 pieces, including the sculpted base. There's alot of trimming and cleaning to do. I also want to handle all the joins with greenstuff as best I can, which will require me to expand my skillset.

Acupuncture

Last night I had my second session of acupuncture and it was moderately magical. In addition to feeling super relaxed, I'm also riding a nice wave of snake-like tension where I'm tense enough to respond quickly to what's going on around me, but not overly tense as to be stressed or rigid. It's sort of like being made of water I guess. Anyway, I'm hoping that in addition to helping maintain a low stress level, it will also help me to be more steady and patient with my painting. We'll see how it goes.

Freshening up the old blog

New template for the old blog. I like this new template better. It's more Menothy, if that's even a word. I'm also adding categories to posts where appropriate to make it easier to find related stuff.

In other news, I ordered a Dire Troll Mauler Extreme today as well as picking up No Quarter #11. I realized that I really enjoy painting Trolls, and now I'm thinking I might get some more to paint. Protectorate are just getting tedious to paint at this point. Time to mix it up I guess. I still have 2 models left (not counting today's order), so we'll see how long much longer I hold out before ordering more models.

KoL: My Dirty Little Secret

Pretty much the only computer game I play anymore is an online browser-based game called The Kingdom Of Loathing. Not only is this game comical and entertaining, but it is well suited for me in that it only gives you a limited number of actions each day. I'll spare you a bunch of details and point you at the Casual Gameplay review of it. Also, here's a link to The KoL Wiki with a pile of game information, which is mostly useful once you start playing it. Ok, I feel that my last computer gaming obsession is properly confessed. Back to painting!

Wandering Eyes

Been checking out some interesting sources for perspective and object-source lighting examples... here's some of the highlights:

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

http://www.coolminiornot.com/22939

http://www.coolminiornot.com/111965

http://www.coolminiornot.com/85011

http://www.coolminiornot.com/139456

Shaping Up!

Sorry... bad pun. Doomshaper is done! 9.5 hours of half torture, half fun. The photo is ok, but the raised rune details on the leather armor got washed out. I used the P3 Blighted Gold on them and they have sort of that mild-metalic look to them that reflects differently at different angles. I totally love the look of it, but it does have a tendency to not show up on first glance, as the photo demonstrates. Anyway, with the finishing of Doomshaper, I now have all my troll models painted, and I'm a mere 2 models away from fully painted!

Draggin Out Doomshaper

Over 6 hours of painting on him so far. For being a model I'll probably never field, I'm spending alot of time on him. It's turning out pretty good so far though. I'm really trying to work my blending skills to the max, and practice being preciese on edges where possible. Remaining parts to paint are: stone at the end of the staff, scrolls on his back, toe/finger nails, face warts, and the numerous scroll straps. Anyway, again, time for sleep. Hopefully I can finish him in the next couple days.

Doomshaper Disaster?

I've never had a model give me so many problems before I've been taking every precaution I normally would, but I've managed to drop Doomshaper 3 times now. One time his right arm broke off, and another time his left arm broke off. Fortunately both were at the glue points, but still it's incredibly frustrating having to re-glue and touch up paint that gets chipped. Fortunately in another half hour of painting I can glue him to the base and make him a bit more stable. In the mean time, I'm actually trying to do a primo painting job for my skills as best I can. I could probably do better, but the details on this model are pretty intense which make it hard to detail every bit, especially since I've tried to paint him fully assembled instead of in pieces. Anyway, time for sleep.

CMON

I created a CoolMiniOrNot account last night and posted the pic of Alexia. It will be interesting to see how some of my figures rate on that site. Overall it doesn't seem too terrible for how they rate minis, but really, it's just a rough gague and I don't plan to take it too seriously. I just figured since I won't be making it to KublaCon this year for their painting competition, I might as well enter the CMON arena.

I haven't touched a brush since I finished the Mauler. I'm starting to get the shakes!

Mauled

And then there were 3... The Dire Troll Mauler is finished! He was about 7.5 hours of work total. Using Lance's distance rating scheme (which is basically the distance at which the model still looks like a good paint job), I'd rate this guy as between 12-18". He was alot of fun to paint, similar to the Ogryn Bokur, due to having alot of muscle and skin to blend. It's not a super paint job of course, but it was fun and good practice anyway. The base was a slightly different experience for me. I pretty much fully assembled the base (painted, grass, leaves, etc) before mounting the Mauler on it and it worked out pretty well.

Today's lesson is, don't stay up till 4am playing some stupid computer game just because it feels like the game is almost over. Stupid game. I got a pretty minimal amount of sleep and it left me with a headache and feeling mildly sick all day. This bothers me mostly cause I think of how many hours I spent playing that stupid game instead of painting. I could have literally painted an entire model instead of playing that last mission of that stupid game. Anyway, lesson learned, moving on.

3 models left till fully painted! I'm expecting to cave and order new models before I finish all 3. Next on deck is Hoarluck Doomshaper, and the second Ogryn Bokur is sitting in bits waiting for a vision of how to convert it to strike me.

Victorious Defeat!

I played in a coin tournament at my LGS on Saturday. There were only 6 people in it unfortunately. It was a 3 round, 750 point Steamroller 3 (beta) set up. On the minus side, I only won 1 of my 3 games, and one of those I got completely humiliated. On the plus side though, I got a Protectorate coin (since I was the only Protectorate player there), and 2 of the 3 games I played I got the pleasure of very fun and friendly opponents. Here's the sum-up of the rounds:

Round 1: Assassins - Opponent: Cryx (Skarre). This one came down to VP's, and I basically pulled it out something like 9 to 6 by totally wrecking the Deathjack in the last round. Severius' feat and Eiryss were a constant threat to the Deathjack, but it was Gorman and the remaining Zealots that buried it in a single round. My opponent was totally civil and fun to play against though.

Round 2: No Man's Land - Opponent: Khador (eVlad). This battle was actually quite close, but eVlad and the Uhlans were pretty humbling. They wrecked a guardian and a castigator in a single charge assault. On the flipside though, they are totally a one-trick pony (no pun intended). After their charge I killed 3 of them and they broke and turned tail to run off the board. I think I got rolled a bit by not knowing all the calvalry rules, but it wasn't that important.

Round 3: Uh, the 3 control point one - Opponent: Cryx (eSkarre). This was the totally humiliating battle. I got utterly crushed. It wasn't even close. I lost something like 26 to 4 on VPs. My opponent was fun to play against though and I felt like I got defeated by a clearly superior strategist. His army was very slick and he executed very well. I didn't get suprised really... he just outmaneuvered me and neutralized my army's strenghts. Despite the total smashing I received, I enjoyed playing this game alot since it taught me a number of important lessons.

In the end, I had a great time, but I also feel like I need more troops to be able to compete better at a tournament. 2 squads is just not adequate at the 750pt level. Sorry no pics. Maybe next time.

Madrak Finished!

4 models to go! Madrak was about 6 hours of painting. Rather than the storyline version of him that makes him an albino, I decided to try out a green skin scheme instead. He's ok, but I could clearly have done better in the details department. There's a lot of fanboyism on given them scottish patterned sashes which I've clearly departed from primarily because I just don't like it. Actually, as I look at the picture again, I did a pretty decent job of blending. It's just the little details like the ax highlights, the teeth and nails, and the "warts" or whatever those bumps are that could have used a little extra effort. The funny thing is that after doing the Harbinger, Madrak felt like minimal effort. Blending color is so much easier than white and black.


I started the Mauler last night. There's some unfortunateness with the join points, but I'm not really very concerned. He'll be big and blue and badass. He'll probably go faster than most large bases since he's 80% unobstructed skin. I did however fully assemble him (except for a base) before starting. I'll probably regret it, but I can always paint another.

The Push To Fully Painted

My buddy talked me into going for fully painted before ordering more miniatures. The primary motivator at this point is that since I am NOT going to KublaCon this year, I have no pressing need to paint models for an army list that I'd be fielding in May. So, in order to gain a little respect with my wife, I'm going to finish painting the remaining models before ordering new ones. It's really not that much left. Here's the list:

• Ogryn Bokur
• Madrak
• Doomshaper
• Dire Troll Mauler
• Vlad (special Katrina edition)

I started Madrak the other night and am probably 30% done already, depending on how much detail I put into him. The Mauler is on deck and ready to be primed already. Vlad is probably going to end up as an experiment and be turned into a Thrall Warrior for Alexia. Poor Vlad!