dude

Here is the mini I painted up for Brumbor in this year's Spring mini exchange.

I also got mine this weekend. It's a good one, though I haven't read through the articles yet.

I want to add my thanks as well! The tour was great, as was the selection of minis on the walls. But then, you would expect them to have a good selection of minis in their own store, right? I watched a few people paint for a minute, but I really didn't have time to ask a lot of questions as I was playing in the tournament. Next time, I'll block myself some more time. Thanks for giving up your breakroom for us to have a tournament!

Any chance you guys will make plastic bases without holes so that I can slap a DHL mini on it after trimming off the cauliflower base? Pretty please?

Here is my most recent scroll/book work. For this one, I used brown mixed with flesh on the edges, a darker brown wash to get between the pages, and flesh-tone with just a little brown for the center of the pages. I like how that particular combination worked for my parchment. I have a few scroll caddies from the KenzerCo line that each have several scrolls on them. I'll post them try to post them this weekend, if you'd like.

The one-hour paint job is truely stunning. The camo and the weapons look great! Skarre isn't one of my favorites of yours, to tell the truth, but it's probably just the model. The sgt. looks great, but the light green hand grenades are throwing me off. I thought they were supposed to be dark green. I'll agree with you on the tree not looking like a bonzai, but the mini and base are the best in this bunch! I hate the dervish mini, but your paint job is A+, as usual. That base is very nice. It has a middle-eastern or even egyptian quality. I'd like to see a mummy or some of the egyptian pharoah type minis on a similar base. Thanks for sharing these, Jester. These are good inspiration for me to get off my behind and paint better.

Hiya, I'll be making the road trip up to Denton this weekend for a HackMaster tournament and was wondering when the store would be open, if there is one on-site. Thanks!

I would also like to know. This weekend, for the first time, I cut off the base of a mini and put it on a 1"x1" base. (see my recent post on the Halfling male thief) I used some clippers that came in a tool set I got years ago. Bit by bit, they cut the base around the feet farily well. The bottom of the feet was a bit trickier, and the halfling now has 4 toes instead of 5. With a little more practice, I can probably avoid more mishaps like that. At any rate, do most of you guys use a drimel for such work? Edit: Sorry to hijack your thread, FF.

Mailed mine on Saturday morning, so it should arrive this week. For shipping, I put my mini between 2 pieces of ~1" thick foam. By compacting the foam a little bit, I squeezed it into a small plastic box I had. Finally, I went to the post office and used one of their padded envelopes. Envelope and stamps cost about $2.00. Not that bad.

Put me in this category as well. I prime the clean, prime the mini, and attach it to a thick piece of poster-board on day 1. Paint on day whenever. I had a 1/4" thick poster board with foam in the middle that I cut into strips 1.5" wide and 3" long. They hold the mini's pretty well and can be used 3 or 4 times before they have to be thrown away. No real issues here. Sometimes, the glue comes out from under the base and is visible on the side of the base, but it peels right off. A little touch-up paint after taking off the poster board is all that's needed.

ThePolo and JoeGKushner, Frustrated father said earlier: I've seen some of their stuff at Fantization, I believe. A bit pricey, but they appear well made.

Due to popular demand (this thread and my last miniature post), I will switch all future layouts to a light grey tone. Thanks for that feedback. On the mini, now that you mention it, his face is a little plain. I used 2 shades of skin tone on his face, which show up a little better in person, but I now wish I had used a dark wash to get in the recesses of his face. This mini has a lot of character and I missed out on some of that. Ah well, live and learn. On the base, I will try to just use sand next time. These rocks I'm using don't stick to the superglue that well. During handling, some fell right off. I may also try using watered down white glue next time. That might do a better job of filling in the recesses on the bottom on the rock, holding it in place better. Any suggestions are certainly accepted. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

The gold and steel on this mini is awesome!

Here's my most recent miniature. I cut it's base off and used a Reaper 1"x1" base. I added some small rocks and static grass for fun. Tell me what you think!

That jedi looks great! I finished mine last night and should be mailing it this weekend. Sorry, can't get to the post office any sooner than that.

That's one flippin' awesome mini! Great job. The face just seems to jump off that miniature. Thanks for sharing. How does the scoring system there work? Is it an average of the scores from all of your minis and then you are ranked against everyone else?

The link isn't working for me, now, but I saw this one yesterday. I think you did a great job on this one. This is one of my favorite sculpts. You can use it for a monk, a wizard-type, or some dude you met on the road with whoopin' stick. Good job! Now go do the eyes!

Young wizards and adventurers, ala the traveling monk: See how he's young looking? Many, if not most, D&D or other games start their careers in the early 20's. Why do most of the mages have such long beards? Dwarven Women with beards. Female dwarfs have beards. Accept it. Sculpt it. Some bald half-orcs. A dwarf with a receding hairline. A monk dwarf. An elf in a knight's armor. Full plate with a big butt sword. An elven king. Gnomes. Any gnome. More half-ogres. Smash kicks butt! Give us more. Peasants. Holding fishing poles, carrying bails of hay, drinking from tankards, using a scythe, and so forth. Craftsmen. Woodcutters, blacksmith, butchers, fishermen, torch bearers, scroll caddies, shield bearers, and other hangers-on. Edit 1: Hey! This board changes the word "butt" to butt! Edit 2: Hey! It did it again! Edit 3: Last, but not least, warriors with open hands so that we can pick a weapon from one of the weapon packs to put in that hand.

I really like the shading on the clothing and the gem on the dagger. Your basing looks like mine did the first time I used medium. Paint the "ground" next time a brown or other earth tone and put the grass on top. Also, I found that I get better results with the static grass than with that version (I can't recall the name, but I seldom use mine anymore). Also, I recently started putting a little grit on the base and putting the static grass around that. This mini doesn't have a lot of room to work with on the base, so it won't take much material. Thans for sharing and great pain job!

April 22nd? Ha! My Birthday is the 23rd! And mine's the 21st! Congrats, dude. Best of luck to you and your wife. I won't be taking that plunge for a while. Be sure to send postcards.

I am really liking the gold on the weapons and the work on the clothing. Great job. Very smooth. Edit: Just noticed the comment: "I think they were about 2 hours each..." Amazing. Those are some excellent minis to have been done in that short amount of time. It really isn't fair.

It comes that way. It's a "Lewd Beholder." It's prolonged facial lick does 1d6 damage. Definitely. This mini has a lot of bad mold lines and flashing, which I barely touched on the first go-around. This time, I cleaned it better before priming it and tried to add a more subtle wash in the recesses between the "scales", if that's what they are. I wanted to do a flesh colored beholder the first time, since I hadn't seen one painted that way. I'm also not happy with the eyes on the old one. I think it looks better without the white in the eyes, I think. On the newer one, I did the eyes similar to some dragon eyes I had seen on this site. I used this beholder as a bit of training for a blue dragon I'll be working on next. While the shading and highlights on the beholder are better, they're still not what I want the dragon to have. I may work on some lizards next so I can practice a bit more. I don't want to screw up the dragon.

Yeah...a little. I was trying to copy all of the cool painters who put their mini's in a "frame" when they post here. I'll try bright green or chartruse next time. That shouldn't be distracting. Thanks for that. I've been working on shading with the last few miniatures and I don't know when to stop. I want there to be contrast, but I don't want it screaming at me. I'll push myself one more step on the next mini and see how it goes. Smash, Mash, you're still going to be a wet spot on the road when he meets you. Self Critic: Yeah. The static grass doesn't look anything like I wanted it to. After putting it on, I immediately wished I had done something similar to the Dwarven Cleric in the other post. Some texture to simulate earth/rocks and then scattered grass. The base on this half-ogre is laughingly small. You barely touch it, and he does a rather nimble summersault. Since all of my minis will see some table use, that's a problem. I rebased him on cork, which is more stable, but I made no attempt to mask the oridinal base or provide some uniformity between the two. Lesson learned there.

Thanks for the feeddback, guys! I thought about going lighter on his complection, but I worried about him being too light. Perhaps if I had made the base coat on his skin a little darker, I could have gone up to the current color, giving more contrast and definition?

That rule was recended when they stopped making miniatures. However, it was never enforced at any of the tournaments I'd heard of, anyway. Just in home games of crazy GMs. Brad Todd 2004-2005 Secretary of the South East Texas Chapter of the HackMaster Players Association and Home GM of the 2005 National Championship Team.