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Hard to believe, but I actually got a few hours of painting in the past couple weeks and finished some minis. Most to toy box standard for my Kids Hero Kids adventure. I am probably going to add some flock/bushes to the base of a couple of them. I was sloppier on the Bones minis due to the dang mold lines and soft features. First a group shot. For the scenery a Bones Candelabra by Bob Ridolfi (77138) and some portals for Massive Darkness (I have around twenty treasure chest I need to finish the trim on as well….soon) These two minis have been base coated for a while. The weakest of the group, but good enough for the adventures. 14329 Street Thug, Mercenary Grunt by Bobby Jackson and 30026 Pirate with Treasure Chest More Bones. 77140 Townsfolk Village Rioter by Bobby Jackson. 02583 Female Server from Townsfolk 1 by Bobby Jackson. 77396 Olivia Female Cleric by Werner Klocke (I like this mini, but not the paint job I achieved). 77206 Friar Stone Human Monk by Tre Manor (this one suffered from Bones due to a bunch of extra bits of flash. Even so I like the final product and wouldn’t mind getting this one in a better material in the future). 02950 Townsfolk VII Clergy by Bobby Jackson. And the easiest is Knight from the 77673 Knight of the Realm by Tim Hill. A nice sculpt that filled in as animated armor. And some metal minis for Frostgrave from Osprey Minis. I really like the FGV343 Ballista II Construct. The two FGV303 small constructs will probably be gifted to my kids characters for saving the wizard when his constructs went rouge.

This one has been on the desk for awhile to receive paint as there was extra on the palette. I decided to finish him off last night. Added highlights to the cloak and skulls. Shaded everything, but the cloak with Army Painter Dark Tone. I didn’t add any highlights or shading beyond the basics as it isn’t a great cast. But, I think it turned out great for the toy box.

Another one bites the dust….😆 One of my favorite sculpt…but in the old Bones plastic. I put a little extra into the base, otherwise it was a pretty straight forward zen of Bones quick paint job. Overall I like the scheme and it has given me ideas for when I paint my metal version. Not sure about the green face and the blue glow under the rib cage is too subtle. And as an aside …..the quality of Testors Dullcoat is not nearly as good as it was a decade ago. The newer formulation continues to give me a semi gloss finish. Oh well.

My 8 year old son painted these shortly after his birthday last spring. I actually liked his colors and the pattern on the Carnotaurus. Mostly I was over joyed that he didn’t glob the paint on for once. A few weeks ago I decided to paint the eyes, teeth, claws, and base for him. Them a coat of sealer. I think they look great for the toy box. Here are my crappy before and after.

Another zen of Bones…i.e. not a lot of effort and didn’t remove all the mold lines, but it is good enough to play with. The colors are a tad washed out using the Reaper portable light box. I thinkI am going to spray paint the inside black to quit messing with the exposure on my iPad. Anyways, here he is. C&C welcome. Cheers-Mike

Bad photos, bad Bones cast, and tabletop paint job of Balto Burrowell the Gnome Wizard. Painted this one up as my sons kid character in hero kids. Fuego is a young kid who can cast some fire spells and has survived three adventures and he was on his own in the last one. I am really beginning to loath these older human sized minis, but this is the closest I had to a human child for his character. Fairly simple base coat, washes, and highlights. I was having a lot of problems with my skin tone paints being too thin (even after several minutes on the vortex mixer). I guess that is the pit fall of no painting for months outside of terrain.

This one has been on the desk for a long time. I really like the sculpt, but the cast is a pain as I find most of the older human sized Bones models. The Face was atrocious. Luckily he has a big hat. The photos are washed out but give a good idea of how he looks. He is too shiny for my tastes as the newer Testors Dullcote doesn’t seem to work as good as it used to. Unsure how I ended up going from a coal black duster to green, other than I had too much green paint out for the Marines I was trying to get off the shelf of shame. One down and thousands to go! 😀

This is the Guard House / Toll Booth from Kiernan Billings’ Wizards Tower Expansion Set. IIRC this was printed at a 150 micron layer height using my Anycubic i3 Mega printer. I tried smoothing out the print ridges using Polycrylic before priming. It didn’t seem to make a difference on the print lines. This is a two piece print (building and roof) with a simple paintjob of dry brushing, washes, and matte coating. I think it turned out great for the game table. If I wanted something for display, I think I could get the quality necessary on my UV resin printer at higher resolution . The photo doesn’t show the bluish purple of the roof very well, but this is generally a good representation of the work. I have not decided if I will permanently attach the roof or not. Now I need to paint the couple dozen pieces I have printed of the Wizards Tower and Bridges. C&C welcome. -Mike

I was using this to try a different skin color which I like and I believe I was going to do a bit more detailed TMM but got side tracked. After several months of no work on him, I decided to get him "done" to tabletop level. Here are some shaky iPad photos. C&C welcome.

The Dragon Hatchling sculpts are cute, but the Bones casts are terrible. Due to this I didn't try to clean them up well and just put them on new bases. Either way it is two more models off the bench and painted to an acceptable toy box level...and so what if I painted the geen one red and the black one green! btw I touched up the splotchy black base rims after I took this picture. Comments encouraged, Mike

This guy was always intended to be toy box level painted. Basecoat, dry/damp brushing, and a light wash of Army painter mid-tone. But I actually really like the way he turned out.

This guy was to experiment on achieving realistic light colors on a fairly smooth surface (the apron in this case). After several different tries I was happy with the result...then like normal he sat on the paint desk for months. So I decided to finish him to low tabletop level and wash him in ArmyPainters midtone shade which led to a big tied mark. But he is good enough for my sons toy box. C&C appreciated.

I was reading Smokestack's wip on his assembly of the HMS Hermione pirate ship from the Renaissance Miniatures Pirates Kickstarter. This inspired me to build mine and it seemed like a good filler project as I could do a lot of the work in the living room while watching/playing with my kid....but hobby ADD kicked in. On top of the laser cut wood ships was a giant pile of laser cut lumber from the Renaissance Miniatures Castles and Siege Engine Kickstarters...so I built another castle The walls went pretty quick and then the KruleBear cub saw what I was doing and he requisitioned things as I built them and moved his LEGO minifigures into the castle. i finished 95% of it in the two day weekend. I really like the modularity of the system, but they leave a little too much connecting tab in the sprue. I went through 4 x-acto blades just cutting the pieces out. I also have three more sets of hoardings to build, but they are on hold as they are not as modular as the rest of the castle and really should be glued in place which I don't plan on doing. I will either buil a clip system for them, magnetize, or not use them at all. The one on the tower and wall in the picture are held in place with rubber bands. So what do you think? Should be cool for gaming with, but not detailed enough to waste time painting up any nicer. ....now where do I store all this terrain I am making

Hajad is another sacrife to the toy box level painting (ie. ignore moldlines and any advanced techniques) in my quest to find the "right" zombie skin tone. This time based with 50/50 MSP Vampiric skin and VMC Basic Skin Tone. Covered with a wash of Army Painters blacker colored Dark Tone Ink. This is getting closer to what I want and might be right on with a wash using a brown ink like Strong Tone. I am going to find another sacrificial mini to try a 50/50 mix of the vampiric skin with VMV Dark Fleshwith a brown wash. I think that will give me the grey undead color I want ith enough caucasian skin to look like a fresher conversion to the zombie lifestyle. I like this model, so will need to look at getting him in metal at some time. For now this one will be used as a ghost pirate in a Hero Kids adventure with my four year old. Thoughts and comments greatly appreciated.

Duplicate

I am still not happy with the skin tones I have come up with for my basic Zombicide zombies... Most have been too green. So I wanted to try something more of a pale skin to grey color.. And believe it or not I am out of Bones zombies and that's to experiment on. So I found Goldar who is my proxie zombie. What do you guys think? I am actually happy with this one for two reasons: I painted him I about two hours total and I think this skin tone will work for my standard Zombicide zombies. It is VMC 2 parts basic skin tone to 1 part sky grey. Then a light wash of Army Painter dark tone Ink. Btw... I am going to stick with their ink since it dries in less than an hour, rather than two days for their quick shade dip. Once I get a Caucasian zombie skin I like, then I will have to work on an African zombie skin tone to add some variety.

I tried taking a Zen of Bones approach to this bunch (Thanks Buglips!). These are part of my 4 year olds "Toy Box" minis. I only took lage flash off and pretty much pretended that tne mold lines don't exist. They got a zenithal prime and the 4 year old painted the bodies. I painted faces, clothes and bases. These were treated with Army Painters mid tone quickshade (first time using it). I then played with my static flock generator which worked fine on the mummy bases (which I didn't catch in the photos), but was sad on the Ghast bases. either way they look good enough IRL. Photos are poor as I didn't put much effort in them either. Enjoy! And before the quick shade.

So last weekend the KruleBear Cub wanted to paint his Bones zombies green (apparently Scoobie Doo dictates Zombie colors). So I took this as an opportunity for some bonding time and to try out some ideas for the Zombicide zombies. I did these using the zen of Bones...i.e. no flash or mold removal. Washed in soap and water, glued to bases for stability, primed, and then set up to base coat the skin. I painted the three on the left and the 4yo painted the two on the right. His skin looked as good or better than mine. The one he painted three different colors....as I learned from him that converted them from bad guys to good guys! I then base coated the clothes, hair, and bases. I slathered on Army Painter Dark Tone Wash (not the poly dip, but their corresponding water based wash). Once dried I rimmed the bases in black and put offwhite on the eyes. One of them I did a light drybrush of the base skin colors. All coated with clear poly followed by DullCote. I am happy with them....except for the flash and mold lines which would have taken a couple hours to clean up. I think I will use this method to start painting my Zombicide zombies to get some color on the board. This was a fast paint for me...probably 2.5 hours total including cleaning a kid and not including drying times.They are sitting on a Hirst Arts castle I have been building. Finally the Cub has been helping me punch out tokens for the five different Zombicide game versions I have and wanted to play zombies and good guys....we compromised to get a zombie game that was more age appropriate to a 4 yo....I introduce you to Candyland Zombicide where the good guys are protecting the various destinations!

My tabletop version of the Bones Burrowing Horror done to table top. http://www.coolminiornot.com/400782 C&C appreciated.

Been playing with the Bones Agramon for awhile now in my WIP. Finally got him to a point where I'm happy enough with it. C&C Welcome. http://www.coolminiornot.com/390239​ Edit to fix photos.

With limited time to paint I needed to get an easy win, so I tackled the Large Fire Elemental a couple weeks ago and finished him up last weekend. I was hoping to make the face standout, but the details were messed up and to fix with paint at my skill level would have wasted the translucent properties of the Bones material. After prep I coated the mini with a layer of Tamyia clear yellow. Added saffron yellow to the dark crevises and pure black to the tips of the flames. The opaque paints left a stark change between their location and the untouched Translucent material, so I coated the whole thing with the Tamyia clear yellow again. This caused the differences to disappear. The base was made with a Happy Seppuku stamp, black primer, grey dry brushing, and yellow saffron drybrushing for the osl. Protected with spray clear coat and brushed matte sealer on the base. C&C welcome.