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Ok and here's Libby! I didn't get quite the yellow I wanted on her tunic (accidentally covered when glazing with Linen White) but otherwise I'm pretty happy with her. And exhausted! But I still have lots of basing touchups and a movement tray to create, plus that dropped bow by Bren. Nevertheless, I think I'm going to be able to enter my unit after all! Here is she is for C/C: And the party: Thanks for looking, Heidi

Well everyone, the long battle is finally won! I just put the finishing touches on Sadie (erm... Sophie) Stormcrow and took the pictures! I'll wait to put her in the show-off section or on my FaceBook page until after her big reveal at Genghis Con, but I couldn't resist showing her off to all of you guys! Thank you so much for all of the excellent feedback and advice; she is definitely my best mini to date by quite a bit, and I couldn't have done it without your help! Genghis Con here I come!!!

Well, here we go with another installment in my Ral Partha Forgotten Realms Miniature Set, Wulfgar son of Beornegar. For the Icewind Dale fans out there, I realize now I could have gone with my same basing method but changed the color to white. Here are some links to previous characters I've finished from the set [Bruenor] [Alias] [Elminster] Thanks for viewing.

Sigh.

Alright, lazy monday off is good for hobbies. In addition to Shepherd the Druid and Asher Narrowrrot the Ardent we have another players completed character. Tiberius Lightfoot, or halffoot...or some other dumb halfling last name. Seriously though, nuts to halflings. So Only 1 and half more characters to do before our entire D&D3.5 party is complete. I have started on our groups paladin which so far involved replacing "77089: Halbarand, Cleric"s warhammer end with the with axe from 77061: Kord the Destroyer luckily it pinned without too much worry. Downside is this involves a mighty cloak and a perfect mini for NMM armor. Two things I am terrible at so we will see how he turns out.

Ive been wrestling with tinley here for the last few days, nothing is coming easy on this piece. Her right hand looks deformed and lumpy, her dress I'm getting happy with but it is still not there yet and like wise her skin is coming along but oh so slowly. Its fun but frustrating, fu. Because I can see the improvement, frustrating because it is slow. Also, velvet is hard to paint.

Okay, I lied, I ended up getting some painting done due to insomnia (yay). I did the shade color for her gloves and boots with 2 drops Grass Green + 1/2 drop Pure Black. It's not terribly visible, but it's enough green when compared to the Brown Liner that I'm satisfied. Then I decided to do the jewels on her sword and crown, just because. I started with dots of Pure Black on her crown (I didn't bother with that on the sword, because the Brown Liner works just fine), followed by a small dot of Pure White in the direction that I want the shininess to be coming from. For the color, I decided on blue, so I used a thin layer of Clear Blue, followed by tiny shine dots of Pure White. Now, here's where the downside of using a magnification visor with a light on it comes into play. See, they all looked just fine and dandy and beautifully blue under the visor light; however, when I turned it off and snapped pictures...they didn't look blue AT ALL. NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. (the bit of blue you can see on the pommel in the third picture is only visible...in the picture. Trust me.) So, I'm going to have to redo all of them, probably with Sapphire Blue, since that's the only other bright blue I have. BLAH. Oh well, at least it will give me a chance to re-position the left and right jewels I freehanded onto her crown; they're kinda crooked, and a PC mini deserves better! It also gave me a chance to carve off a wee bit of flash that was making the pommel-stone kinda lopsided. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D

Well, look - you seem sincere and a pretty good dude, but... When it comes to personal communication on crowdfund projects, and this is something I've seen a lot of (too much of, if we're honest), the real skinny is: It ain't personal, it's just business. Absolutely none of your personal credentials speak to the potential success of this project. And absolutely none of Otherworld's personal problems excuse the extreme lack of professionalism in that campaign. We're not talking cool people hanging out and having fun here. We're talking money here. You're not looking for a few bucks from a friend, you're asking strangers to finance your venture. To invest in you and your project. To be blunt, I don't care about you on a personal level. I didn't care about anybody from Reaper on a personal level, either, until we had many fruitful years of monetary/goods exchange. Your association with Otherworld, whatever your feelings towards them and however much you are willing to cut them slack, professionally taints your project. That's a bad sign, and all of these people are right to treat it as such. Is it fair to you? Probably not. It may even offend you on some level. But it is reality. This is capitalism, and the number one rule of capitalism is: money is always serious business. That's the message you need to convey, and that's the whole of the message you need to convey. Because when people have confidence that you're serious about their money, then they'll have confidence that you're serious about delivering. Everything outside of that isn't worth a cup of coffee. This is doubly crucial now that the shine is wearing off crowdfunding for a whole heapload of people because they've been burned and dissatisfied. I see your passion for this project, and that you believe in its merits. But that's still only part of the program, and if you're partnering with Otherworld you have double the work cut out for you because by association you have to make up for their poor reputation - just to put yourself back to even to promote your own goods. I cannot possibly emphasize how critical this is for your success, and I cannot possibly emphasize how much this association means your campaign begins at a deficit. What this means, and again we're dealing with hard truth here, is that saying you're willing to cut OW slack seriously harms your credibility. It's as good as saying "this partner company is costing me investment money, and I'm okay with that". You should not be surprised if this leads people to be skeptical about how serious you are about this. You should be prepared for that so you have an answer ready that will satisfy people with this legitimate question. Because right now your message is for people to have faith because you have faith - and that's simply not enough to float a business on. You should not be willing to cut OW slack. You should be prepared to use all of the influence and clout you can muster to make sure they deliver or you will be on the hook for it if they don't. People who back you are going to expect, and quite rightfully, that you are willing to fight for them to make sure they get what's promised. You need to show them that you can, and that you will.

I was enjoying it until the Tolkien-is-a-racist BS showed up. Sorry, tLotR is NOT racist, and neither was The Professor. Modern critics prove their vast ignorance and just plain idiocy directing a modern lens and post-Freudian/modern imperialist revisionism at what is clearly and in the author's own words, an attempt at creating a mythology for Britain. Tolkien was born around (and as a child, rather adored by) people of color, and was quite fond of Jews, once replying to the question of whether Tolkien was a Jewish name by saying he was "honored" somebody would think of him as belonging to the Jewish people. He was on the whole, a rather gentle man. Sorry to derail, but that violently jarred me out of what was until then a quite enjoyable little piece.

This is my favourite post in the whole thread. So much is said by that single sigh.

Ah, yes Cash Wiley, the unforgiving camera.... So some more work done on these. Took me forever to work more on their hair. The female barbarian type mage has as her base walnut brown, old Conan's cousin has black hair. I did the Norse most boring miniature in the world as a blond, and started out the thief's hair with tanned leather and painted those two together, just going deeper and lighter depending on how blond I wanted them. I painted the cleric's moustache white, because I wanted him to have a bit of age to him, and wanted his hair to contrast his darker skin. The challenge was the female cleric, and now as I look at the picture, I'm not satisfied with the hair at all. With her really dark eyebrows I decided I wanted to do purplish shades in there, so started her hair off with dark skin, then threw in some purples and walnut brown, and then highlighted with lighter shades of a few different purples. I don't see the contract I really wanted though, so I'm sure I'll have to continue working on her. What I decided with the clerics, is it's four different clerics, two "good" and two "evil" so I'm going to give the female cleric and the one with the flail, darker most menacing (hopefully) colors, and the clerics with the crosses I'll do in normal metal and white with red crosses probably unless something else inspires me. Anyway, enjoy, always love criticism.

You need a Samsung! It's just as aggravting, but it can take a punch!

BlueJays? that sounds like Bluejays. I had some swallows visit my porch years ago. They would pull up sharply and 'jettison' any excess weight they might be hauling just as they zipped under the eave. Kept leaving little white splats all over my blue front door. So to discourage this I bought an Owl. Not a real one. I am much too lazy to be feeding an Owl. Probably not legal anyhow. I brought a proper fake owl, made of realistically tinted and coloured plastic. I planted him up underneath the eaves looking at the front door and overlooking the usual approach pattern the swallows were using. I got to see it work once. A swallow cruised down my sidewalk, pulled up sharply (apparently empty; there was no splat) he pivoted to land on the ledge opposite the door and then... Panic!! Emergency vertical dive! pull out almost on the deck, full afterburners, zoom and flee !!! But they got wise to it. A few weeks after seeing the panicked swallow I noticed they had built a nest right at the feet of 'their buddy' the owl sculpture. After observing them a bit more I learned that they were common Barn Swallows and that they eat flying insects. I detest all flying insects. So, I let the swallows have their way and just didn't use the front door much.

So when I was a kid I'd safety pin about any long cloth item around my neck and be pretty sure I was superman with a cape. At some point I was given a long black sheet and I cut it into a rather large Batman cape. One day I was going to go in the house to get a drink (or whatever I did when I was about 8) and for no good reason I pinned my black cape to the tree in the front yard. A little while later when I came back outside, there were about 100 crows in my front yard all milling about and looking at the 'cape'. I don't know if they thought it was some sort of crow messiah, or just liked the look of it, but the image has stuck in my head all the years since.

This is why it takes me so long to paint :) I estimate 12 hours just on the skin for the efreet. This is another reason painting with thinned paint is good, I put a lot of layers on but didn't obscure any detail. Dontfear had good advice which worked out well on the cloak. You had pretty heavily covered with the purple and needed more intermediate steps between two drastically different colors. Stick with it, try not to get frustrated (I do all the time!) and remember to focus on paint consistency and brush control.

Sir, Please understand that people are intested in your project and sympathetic to your goals, but are uneasy about the involvement of Otherworld, which has shown some instability of late. To be concerned about the business prospects of a crowdfunded project is not an attack. Buglips*the*goblin is a long-term member who has shown himself to be thoughtful in his analyses and careful in his descriptions. He is respected in this community as someone who tries to see things with a clear eye. I understand that criticism can sting, but in a business situation it is important to know how reliable the businesses are. Your support of your colleague is commendable. But please be aware that those who have dealt with him are concerned about his project's fulfillment. You have the community's sympathies and interested attention at the moment. We do wish you the best.

Whats a SBS? Funnily enough I tried something out of the left field just now with basing. I have a painted Gibbering Mouther / Faceless Horror that needed basing. Note that this is the metal version. I got out a flat 50mm base and put down the model in the middle of it. I then cut down a pair of skulls from my Tomb Kings army and positioned them on the base. Then I added some texture like the skulls were sort of 'drowning' in the stuff that the Mouther was standing in. Then I coated that a really dark purple and washed it down even more. Then I did something really silly and experimental. I painted a pattern of purple and teal and highlighted that a few times. I painted the skulls to be basically skulls, but then threw some teal and purple on them as well. The result is ... VERY funky. Did try something new. :) I sculpted a really quick cobblestone base for my next 'project', which is Marie Antoignome. The regal gnome from the stonehaven kickstarter. Oh and I finished a wolf animal companion from Bones. Will get a few pictures in later.

Mostly because fictional characters didn't hold me down everyday through two years of middle school beating on me while the handegg coach casually walked by but did nothing. We didn't have any organized football team in school. Had a girl's Rugby team, though. I used to get beat up by them a lot, but I rather enjoyed it in a puerile, asolescent way. In later life I got on well (very well) with most of them - one in particular went on to become a stunt co-ordinator. I will consider myself invited to all of Bryan's sparkle parties if I happen to be nearby. That's like everywhere I want to be. I will be positively radiant, and we can singalong to some Cyndi Lauper and Nena. It'd be an interesting switch to do it with other people around. I may have said too much.

I just had a brilliant plan. We get a boat, it starts in Newfoundland and heads south, picking up folks along the coast. Turns around Florida, stops in Galveston and snags Reaper's mobile HQ, then continues south around the cape. Our central and south American friends join the party barge, and we continue this pattern to Australia, north to California then up the coast to Alaska before turning back to Hawaii. You might think the flaw in this plan is that it has to begin now to make Reapercon Hawaii 2016. But really, the problem isn't that, nor is it the danger of sailing a craft overloaded with Shiner Bock and pewter around the southern tip of the western hemisphere. The real problem* is that this all starts in Canada, in a place where the only viable captain for this voyage... ...is Buglips. *if you call it that. I, for one, would find it highly entertaining to watch a goblin jump overboard to catch a penguin for dinner, only to realize he'd just voluntarily taken a bath. So, Bryan. Are you aboard for the Buglips Party Barge?

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/egyptian-harem-miniatures-iii/x/3798092 "Welcome to the third Egyptian Harem Indiegogo Campaign! This is by far the most ambitious of the campaigns with a large selection of original and beautifully sculpted miniatures."

In my show-off thread (here), I was asked to share how I paint faces by robinh. Disclaimers: - I have been painting for less than a year, and do not claim ultimate knowledge. I'm hoping people here will give me tips for better ways to do things. - I'm taking pics with a cheap fish eye on a rubber band strapped to an iPhone - In the interests of brevity, I'm going to leave out the "IMHO" or "most of the time except" or "there may be better ways but...". I mean all of those things, but I'm not going to type them over and over. - Most of these techniques were tips given to me on this board by much better painters than me. I don't own them - just sharing all in one place which tips worked best for me for faces. Our subject will be a PC named Libby, Reaper's Melantha, Female Halfling. She has a tiny but well-defined face, and the cast I got was flawless. I paint faces first, when I still have a lot of energy. Also, once the face is done, it feels like the mini is mostly done, and that is very motivating. 1) Prep mini by removing seams, priming (if metal, like Libby is), and washing with slightly thinned Brown Liner: I love Reaper's Brown liner as a base coat for Bones so much I even started using it on my metals after priming. You'll see why below (it's my favorite cheat). I either pin the mini's feet and stick them in a cork or glue the mini to its base so I have something to hold while I paint. Libby is on her base. 2) Examine the face and strategize: The first awesome thing about starting with a wash of brown liner is that it really helps me see the details of the face. You can see Libby has an eye half obscured by her hair. I'm not going to attempt to paint the part of the eye behind her hair. I don't have the skill and I think that part should be deeply shaded anyway. I don't know if it's the way the liner wash settled or the sculpt, but one cheek appears to be more prominent than the other. I'll try to use paint to make them look more even, since Libby is supposed to be pretty in our game, and symmetry is part of beauty. She has eyebrows in the sculpt. I think sculpted eyebrows that are unpainted look weird, so I'll have to deal with that. The corners of her lips are not really sculpted, so I have a choice to make her smile or frown a bit if I want. I'll deal with her neck and chest at the same time as her face, and with her head turned, the muscles in her neck are very prominent but also very shaded. I'll have to decide how much highlight to give them. Her eyes are well-sculpted and large for her face - even though she's tiny, I think I'll be able to paint them OK. Part of strategizing is choosing the colors for her face. For me this depends on 1) the color of her hair 2) the other colors I'll use on the mini, and 3) her lifestyle/background. In this case I'm using Corporea's gorgeous Tinley as inspiration for Libby's hair and dress, since Libby is a druid and Corporea's paint job pretty much defines the spirit of nature for me, even though Libby's clothes are very different from Tinley's. I'm in luck because Libby is also blonde like Tinley. But I don't think Libby would be quite as pale since she's not very delicate, so I'm going to go with Reaper's MSP Golden Skin Triad with a basecoat of Reaper's HD Suntan Flesh: As a tip, for me darker skin is easier to make smooth than lighter, so you're in luck if the P/NCP isn't caucasian. If you can find an excuse to give your mini a tan, use it! Golden Skin is pretty medium in terms of Reaper's options. I know this is a lot of text about a specific mini, but I wanted to show you how much thought and planning go into a face before I start painting. This is mainly because the detail on faces is shallow and will quickly fill in with paint if I tried to just keep piling on paint until I got it right. Which still sometimes happens. But this gives me a better shot at avoiding that. 3) Basecoat, but leave brown liner as "pseudo-lining" This is really different from what a lot of master painters do, but I like to paint my basecoat not quite up to the edges of sculpt details. SInce I've used brown liner as a wash before painting, this leaves a nice dark line between the edges of things like her skin and hair, around her eyes and lips, and next to any clothes. For me, this is easier than lining after I've painted (my favorite cheat). Since Libby has eyebrows, I'll try to avoid getting basecoat on them altogether. This is way easier than painting the eyebrows back on later, after a layer of paint has made it harder to see where they are. Areas that are really deep and therefore deeply shadowed may not get any basecoat at all. This is an easy trick to help achieve the "darker shadows and higher highlights" I'm aiming for. A tip for trying this: use a slightly thinned basecoat so that the transition won't be so abrupt between the very dark brown liner and the basecoat. 4) Paint the eyes: BEFORE you put a lot of effort into blending skintones, do the eyes. Unless you're a genius eye painter (and I'm not), it will take several tries to get the eyes right and during those tries you'll slop colors all over the skin and need to use basecoat to clean it up, ruining any blending you've already done. Eyes are an exercise in screw-up recovery for me. I have to decide how much repainting is required to cover mistakes, but I want to minimize extra layers, so it's important to know what my end goal is as I go along. In general, if I make a mistake on her face, I won't fix it until after the eye is finished, but sometimes I have to just to see the shape of the total eye. I like Reaper's Walnut Brown for pupils and Linen White for the whites: Since the brown liner has already conveniently filled in the eye sockets with dark brown, I start by adding the white: Uh then correct the brown: Then do the white again: I've found eyes seem more expressive with a fairly thick line of brown and very little white, so I'm conservative in adding white. I do, however, try to go close into the corners, since once I add the pupil I will want some white in the corners showing. I want Libby to look a bit young and wide eyed, so I've done a thinner line than one some of the recent minis in the noob thread (linked above) After the white, I fill in the pupil usually with walnut brown until only the corner whites are showing: I stop here a lot. But Libby's big eyes tempt me to try some color, so I put in a dot along the bottom of the pupil (which is green and hard to see in the photo but will show up more once her green dress is painted): Then I add just the tiniest white highlight near the top of the pupil: I clean up any basecoat boo-boos and try to stay away from the eyes from now on! 5) Thin your darkest skin color, and start highlighting skin: I paint from darkest color to lightest, just because it seems easiest to me. Another strategy I've tried is going straight to the mid-tone and washing in my shadows, but I find on faces and using fleshtones, washes can make a face look dirty, so I've gone away from that. Choosing highlights is a huge part of giving the mini expression. I use top-down lighting in my imagination, so I know that the top of her forehead, her nose, and her cheeks are going to be pretty bright. Her chin and top of the lip is also bright but maybe a bit less than the others. But since this is my shadow color, it's going to go pretty much everywhere the basecoat did, trying to leave a bit of the basecoat showing where brown liner is still exposed to have a color transition there. Exceptions might be creases where it wasn't quite deep enough to leave it as brown liner, but it is deep enough to leave it as basecoat. Keep in mind that deep shadows in creases will make the mini look older or rougher. Libby is young, so while I want a lot of contrast on her face, I'm going to avoid dark creases around her nose and mouth and leave most of the dark areas to the edges of her face, under her chin, and in the creases around her neck. I THINK I use glazing when I do faces (not sure if that's correct terminology) because I will be applying layers of paint that are thinned almost to wash consistency but applied like a layer. I will thin more and more as my colors get lighter, since light-colored pigments can easy ruin the blend if applied too thickly. I'd put a nice technical description here about exactly how much to thin, but I'm still messing that part up, so I don't know how to explain it. Trial and error. 6) Thin your mid-tone even more, and continue highlighting skin: This time I'm painting a lot less area than with the shadow color. I do several layers, each slightly smaller than the last, to get a nice blend/glaze. The more layers on an area, the brighter it looks, so very quickly I build up nice "highlights" even though this is not labeled a highlight color. I think mid-tones in most of the MSP skin-tone ranges should be the bulk of the highlights on the face. Important tip: if you screw up and make the line to abrupt, go back to your last darker color, thin it out a bunch, and layer it on the transition line. You can ALWAYS go back to a darker color and fix your brights position and transition. I do this a lot, though I ran out of patience taking pics of the iterations. 7) Thin your highlight a lot, and finish the highest highlights: An important tip here is to be careful how much thinned highlight you load onto you brush. If it runs everywhere like a wash, scream, superquick rinse and dry your brush, and use the bristles to suck the paint out of the crevices. Or keep a slightly damp brush next to you during this phase for this purpose (totally dry bristles won't have as much capillary action as slightly damp ones will). Or you'll be starting over. You can maybe skip the scream. Highlights in skintones are the hardest to blend. The light colored pigments easily look too abrupt or chalky, so the trick is to really thin them, load your brush carefully, and apply thin thin layers very precisely. Another tip is to limit the area you use your highlight color on, to minimize your suffering. If you did a lot of nice layers of midtone, each smaller than the last, you'll already have a nice highlight on the face and should just be touching the highest areas. On Libby, that's the top of the nose, top of the cheeks, and the top of the forehead. Very very small areas. Uh and since I did end up mucking up the eyebrows, I paint them back on: 8) Paint the lips: Even on males, I use a different color on the lips, or I think they look weird. If I don't want to emphasize the lips, my favorite color is Reaper's Rosy Shadow with a bit of Rosy Skin as a highlight. For Libby, I want a peachier color, so I'm using Reaper's Bright Skin Shadow with Bright Skin as a highlight: Note that painting the upper lip is usually a bad idea - it gives a weird fish lip impression. For males,or here for Libby, to give the lips less emphasis, don't leave much of a line around the lip. If you've got a bombshell-lip, a liner around the lips works nicely, like on Dalla. 9) Dance with joy! You're done! Here she is with some friends to show you some other faces done using the same steps. You can see finished Libby (maybe later today, maybe this weekend) back in my noob thread (linked above). I'd love any feedback or tips or to hear other approaches to faces, and I hope this was helpful to someone! BTW if someone knows how to do rosy cheeks without making it look like a clown, I'd love a link! Thanks for looking, Heidi

No it's still a bird feeder. The appropriate food was found for the bigger bird.

Better off than my drunk neighbor who passed out getting off the toilet, gashed her face open and fractured her orbital ridge. I knew things weren't going to end well when they were drinking beer while I was shoveling the driveway. At 2pm.

I see, there was something in the back of my mind telling me that Egyptian headdresses featured red and blue a lot, but I had no idea about the specifics. I'm okay with musclely legs, anything else and I'm lost! With the Mummy Warrior I cheated by giving him an all-over shade wash of brown. Thanks. Unfortunately I've pretty much obliterated the detailing on her wings, changed my mind too many times on what colour I wanted them to be. I'll have to try again if/when a non-limited plastic version is released. The really cool stuff always jumps up my painting queue! It helps that I'm struggling to assemble most of my Imbrian guys so there's not too much choice at the moment. Already finished my Mummy Warrior:- Unfortunately my lamp died, and the spare I'm using is pretty dim, so bad pictures for a little while. Despite not taking much time over him, I'll rather pleased with how he's turned out. So what's next? I've decided to rethink this whole 1 Bones a week thing. While it's working, the fact that I've only been happy with 2 of the last 5 I've painted makes it fairly pointless. So from now on, every other week is Bones week where there are no Goblin Knights or Winged Pregnant Ladies on the table to distract me. If there's a point where I can't work on that weeks Bones (or I finish early), then I'll spend the time on a larger Bones mini. That's where this guy comes in:- 'RAWR! Frost Giant King smash puny Internet users!' So now I'll be painting him until Saturday when it becomes Other Minis week, had fun drybrushing his cape today:-

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.

Finally some time to post. I prepped a legion of metal men over the weekend. The front 4 are Reaper Cyber-Reavers, the back 5 are West Wind members of the Clicker faction for Empire of the Dead (the humanoid ones, the insect like ones are gonna take some time to figure out how to assemble...). The bad part of all that assembly is that I broke my favorite drill bit, the one that is the perfect size for the paperclips I was using....now I have to go figure out what size it was and track down some new ones. So the Cyber-Reavers are to be the baddies in my diorama. I'm starting with 4, but I have a backup pack in case I need to bump their number. I also picked up a pack of XAIRobots, thinking I might use the large one as a heavy weapons unit, but I'm holding off on him for now. I primed the 4 Cyber-Reavers and got them base coated yesterday. That's just a base coat of AP Uniform Grey, then a coat of Shadowed Steel on the bots, with adamantium black on the the guns. Today should just be a black or armor wash (Have to see what's in the drawer) and then maybe do the eyes if I have a good bright colour here that would work. I'm thinking green or blue. Want to avoid red due to the red OSL that I'll be doing later. Robinh came through on getting i-beams and h-columns and pipe bits I was wanting, so hopefully tonight I can find some time to start planning out the base.

Or to put it another way We like your project, we like the book, we like the minis I suspect several of us would have handed over some cash by now if the OW name was not associated with this the whole reason we keep posting is we really wish we could participate (but we're to scared to) (projects nobody cares about get posted then sink without a trace) I don't know if you can change things to reassure people at this stage even if you chose to (maybe not handing over all the cash to OW upfront, but keeping a significant portion back until you have all the casts in hand if your contract with them allows this, or publicising the fact if it's something you're already doing)

So I made some progress on my Bad Boy, its hard to to see in this photo but the cloak and pants are pretty much done. Lots of hard work left to do on this one however.

Turcules was planning to buy a boat, but now they're having a kid instead. I suspect the kid would be very difficult to navigate and likely not hold many passengers. If I'd had the money, I'd have bought the Lyubov Orlova when nobody wanted it. The cannibal rats sealed the deal for me. Really I'd have been buying them and the ship would have been a freebie.

I don't do much basing, but when I do I play with Woodland Scenics stuff. Mostly this is also to learn the product for eventual employment* on some sort of model railroad (not necessarily mine, I have volunteered to build a layout for any of my friends, at my own expense, with space for one and an interested kid). With regards to expense of the WS stuff, I would point out that a $10 shaker of something is a huge amount that will do a great many bases for a long time. So it's definitely, considering the price of minis and paint, an extremely good deal for volume vs. outlay. *Employment of the stuff, not of me being hired by the model railroad. While that would be awesome, they would pay me in tiny money I could not easily spend and I imagine the engineer's seat would be a tight fit. On the plus side, buying a house would be real cheap.

FireMan attacks ShadowRaven with MagicSword but is repelled by the Power of Physics! Oh no!

And just imagine how many derails this thread has headed off from other threads! Sorry about your bug, OneBoot. If it's bad enough to be compared to appendicitis that's pretty bad.

Thank you Dontfear, and also ub34_n3rd for your valuable input. I have been finishing up on Mason. I put several layers on and am going to call it done. I could do more, but this has been a great learning experience for me. I've made notes in my "Solutions notebook".. I'm going to move on to another challenge. Not to sure which, but I will be using "Buglips the Goblin's" Technique, since I no longer will do the "Deluge Wash" technique anymore. This has taught me to stay away from that. Cost a week of cleanup, and other headaches. So here is Mason at the state that I am calling him done.

Been off for a while. Busy life! But had some time for some painting to relax...

Shibe - I've been using the brown base coat idea on all my minis after the goblins (page 7 of the noob thread). My basic process is something like: - remove mold lines/flash. In Bones I mostly use an exacto knife and plastic files. In metal I mostly use an exacto knife and jewelers files. I only go to the level of detail doing this depending on the quality paint job I have planned. Some minis, I don't bother. - wash mini - if Bones, maybe boil mini to straighten bits out. - If metal or larger Bones figure that comes in pieces, decide if I'm going to assemble the mini before painting or after and assembly now if that makes sense. I make a similar judgement call about any mods/sculpting I'm planning. If ANYTHING is going to require pinning, I drill the holes now when I can grip the mini tightly without rubbing off paint. BTW I don't enjoy pinning/modding/sculpting very much and avoid it if possible. I know this limits me creatively. - Mount mini/bits to something to paint on. Usually for me this is the base. Sometimes I'll put pins on the feet and put it on a cork. Sometimes I use some poster tack and stick it on a bottle cap. It depends on what I want to do for basing. If possible, I typically leave the broccoli/integral base on, and will fill in with some wood putty later to finish the base. Sometimes I remove the integral base using clippers. This is way easier in Bones than metal. - If metal, paint with Reaper primer - Wash with brown liner, including base if base is glued on already. Pay attention while I'm doing this on what bits are hard to reach. ALL OF THE ABOVE IS "MINI PREP." it can take very little or a lot of time, but I don't count it as painting time. I have a hard time painting when I'm tired, so mini prep is usually a weeknight activity for me after work. - Paint face including eyes. - Figure out order of painting rest of mini, using info from when I painted with brown liner. I use an "inside out" approach which usually goes something like skin, hair, clothes, weapon handles, cloaks, then any fancy outer details like belts, buckles, pouches, etc. However, if a mini is wearing a cloak, sometimes bits of that are all over the mini in really hard to reach places (under an arm, behind a leg), so I'll frequently basecoat the cloak early on. - Paint mini. I usually paint each part of the mini to completion, rather than basecoating everything and going back to highlight/shade. I usually paint from the darkest layer up. I rarely use washes anymore, except on leathers and metal. I rarely use dry brushing because I haven't figured out yet how to do it well. (Waiting on the rest of Buglip's tutorial.) So mostly I paint all my blends and highlights deliberately, using some combination of layering, glazing, and (lately) two-brush blending. Feathering and wet-blending don't work well for me since it's so dry here unless I use something to extend drying time. - If not done already, finish assembling mini or gluing it to the base. Touch up paint. - Do basing stuff, which for me is mostly gluing stuff on and giving it a rough dry brush (my skills are almost good enough for basing. - Seal, if I'm doing that - Dullcoat, if necessary - Take pics, resize, and post for C/C. - If someone has a brilliant idea to make it better, so that. Otherwise I usually don't go back to minis I've finished. ETA Forgot to address brush size question. I do the bulk of my painting with a W&N series 7 size 2. Some with a size 1. Both have a great point, but I prefer the size 2 because the belly of the brush is bigger, holds more paint, and does not dry out as quickly (things drying quickly in Colorado is a big deal for me). I usually switch to the 1 only if I can't get the belly of the 2 into some crevice. I have a ton of crappy brushes I use for painting rough stuff like terrain. I will say that for Libby i relied more on the size 1 because her face is so small I had a hard time SEEING around the 2. ETA one other tip regarding faces and tiny details. Sometimes staring straight at a detail I want to just dot or put a short stroke on doesn't work very well for me. Maybe my depth perception is not so hot. I'll turn the mini sideways so that I can see the brush tip approaching the surface of the mini for this. I think this helps a lot.

So, a quick wash and 8 robot eyes, how long could that take? It must be psychological...they aren't even really eyes, just little circles of colour (Alien Goo over Pure White if you were wondering)? Why did it take me at least 20 attempts to get 8 decent blobs of green?? Anyway, I think I'm done with these guys until I get the base designed so I can figure out where the highlighting and shadow needs to go.

We have a lot of crows in our area and they often leave bones, fruit pits, and other assorted leftovers from their scavengings on our roof which eventually clog the rain gutters. I think it's merely a safe place to be for them to examine and consume their ill gotten gains.

Actually LB, it's called a MURDER of Crows, so they are probably trying to get inside...

Thanks Sanael. I think I'll try to highlight each scale again in combination with deepening the shadow. I also want to rework the eye section. In general I tried going for a "smokey" face, considering that the dragon breathes out fire, I thought it should leave it's mark on the head. In the meantime I painted this.

Thank You Cash ! I follow your advice about the thin paints, and brush control constantly. I tend to add lots of layers and build up my color. Part of the problem with the Mason Thornwarden was the choice of purple, I've never used it before! The tendency of some paints to turn chalky was also frustrating me terribly. The advice from Dontfear and UB3R has been EXTREMELY helpful. The support from the entire forum is astonishing, and really says a lot about the folks that paint miniatures! Great People.

Pictures! Life has decided that I am not allowed to sleep. But I finally got the chance to take pictures this weekend! I am absolutely in awe of the amazing paint jobs that Leapardpixie achieved, and the bases are just amazing as well! So, here is what I received: All together this includes 3 painted minis, a bones Fire Giant Queen, and a happy seppuku stamp. I cannot express how happy these make me. And here are pics of the individual pained minis. Thank you so much!

This is my favourite post in the whole thread. So much is said by that single sigh. So very true. Pingo expresses whole encyclopedic volumes in that sigh.

Coming from Oregon I felt the same way. It's only through happenstance (and cousins providing a place to crash) that I was able to. Part 3/3 is up now! http://ravenminis.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-tour-of-reaper-miniatures-part-3.html Thanks to everyone who's read & responded. ~Muninn

That's exactly what I meant. I'm well aware that the forums have many friends to the north...but not so many with such easy access to the coast, or with such comedic ramifications.

Sanael, I have to admit that the childish paint job on that ghost is mine... I tried to make him look like he was a couple of different shades of green/yellow/white as he phased in and out of existence. Some of the chocolates and the Chukar Cherries are all made locally here in Seattle. I ran out of time in my rush to get it out before the deadline so I was unable to get more local treats like I had wanted to do. You had also mentioned you wanted monsters and things your fellow players could fight, so I thought you could never have too many goblins and men-at-arms/guardsman. I also thought you might be able to paint them up a bit better than i could :) I hope you enjoy them all!

Thanks! You guys really motivate me, especially when I'm feeling down, as I was. I know these aren't quite at competition level, but they're not embarrassing either, and I'm very happy to actually be entering something. Of course, after I take 7 classes at the convention, I'll probably want to change a bunch of things, LOL! Also, I think my gaming group will enjoy them, even if I do end up painting a different mini for Libby. I think I'll take a break for a couple days and then get to work on the movement tray. Maybe keep refilling realistic water each night. I can't believe how much that stuff shrinks, even after several layers! Ah well, learning water effects was one of my 2014 goals, so it's all good. Thanks again for all your encouragement! Heidi

Oh, I tried the GW stuff. It's TERRIBLE by comparison. Not nearly as much texture, and not available in different consistencies. I love my "Coarse" Golden Pumice Gel, and it has much larger bits than the GW product. For those of you that don't know what Sanael and I are talking about, have a look at my werewolf here: http://www.reapermini.com/InspirationGallery/baugi/latest/ That base is a 2' wooden disc from Michaels, coarse pumice gel, bits of cut up plastic (actually the little pull tab from P3 bottles) for bricks, and paint. Like 50c in materials.

I woke up with a hurt back, then I had to go see my lawyer (the money grubbing so-and-so! ) and then I thought I'd relax by blogging about how I create characters in fiction... When off on some tangents, let me tell you. I also had to go to the store and I have to go again, and then there's dishes and laundry that has to be done soon... Sigh. I really don't like being an adult sometimes... Edit: Oh, yeah, hey this is page 404 of randomness. We really have a lot to say about things.

SEE!?!?! Ooooo you are in for it now Froggy!

hmmn- I went the google route and had a touch time, but this may help: I think maybe going a dark rim on each of your edges to get the contrast- like you'd do your shadows for NMM but with red or brown or even purple? It looks like you've started that already in the first pic? I love the idea of a molten sword!