Search the Community

After ~6 months of not being able to work on projects, I present my first finished project of 2018- an ancient skeleton horde! The goals of the project were to: (1) Start out with a bang in my goal to paint 52 minis this year (2) Add a good deal more skeletons for horde encounters in an upcoming tabletop RPG I am running (3) Get more practice with OSL in a setting that allowed me to try multiple techniques on similar models quickly (eyes) (4) Try my hand at verdigris, again trying multiple techniques to see what I like best (5) Try out doing weapons/armor chipping and weathering. Happy to say all 5 goals were met (just took a long time)! This was a tabletop-level project, so while they aren't perfect, they are "good enough". Please let me know what you think- I relish C&C as it is a critical step in making me a better painter. I also have a question: I need to seal these guys. I want to use a matte sealer for the skeletons themselves (you can see the gloss from where I used quickshade), but I don't want to dull the metals on the arms and armor. What matte brush on sealers does everyone prefer? Thanks for looking!

I've been working on these since last year, a couple figures at a time. I hope to eventually put together an entire army of them but redneck sculpts aren't that easy to find. The chronoscope zombie hunters/survivors and the new hillbilly are next on the list of acquirements. The car is a 1/32 scale 1970 Plymouth Road Runner from Jada Toys Fast and Furious line. Somewhat over scale, but it looks close enough and is easy to take apart. I resisted the urge to Mad Max it as I wanted it to be more along the lines of a car left in the barn for some years before TSHTF. I chose to use warmer colors to match popular 70s shades and to give it a hint of the General Lee. These two are the first ones I painted and the freehand flannel isn't the best but it give him the look of a regular farmer. The one on the right is a combination of Darryl from the Walking Dead and Rambo. Both are from Wargames Factory Apocalypse Survivors:The Men. Next are Westwind's Redneck Militia. They were fun to paint, especially the cans of Hamms. Berkeley was done as a homage to Ash from Army of Darkness. I freehanded more flannel on Billy Joe and it came out much better than my first attempt and the flag on his hat came out better than I expected. The flock on his overalls was an accident but I'm leaving it as it suggests the white lightning in his jug caused him to stumble a bit. I also am happy with the freehand on his rag. Bobby Jo is the one that I think came out the best. Eventually I'll get them another vehicle and some plasticville mobile homes.

This year the minis I manage to paint will all count towards the resolutionary challenge. As per the resolutionary painting challenge guidelines, I will post them here, and link in my post in the challenge thread. With the refurbishment of the old house complete and it now up for sale, I have at last some time to paint a miniature or two. It has been more than a month since I touched a brush smaller than two inches wide, and I have come to the conclusion that I utterly detest redacorating houses, especially everything that involves masking tape. So anyway, here goes: Starting easy with a bare bones miniature I posed this one to be wailing in its' existential pain, being somewhat of a pretentious poseur even in death. I have to look into building a light box, as the lighting I currently use (one desk lamp and the blitz on the compact camera) is far too harsh and serves only to highlight all the flaws. This one actually looks great in the flesh (oh, the Pun! The Pun!). Not so much in the picture. Might also have something to do with the mini being about an inch tall, and the picture magnifying everything, to almost filling the screen. This is one of the original Wargames Factory skeletons, from before they retooled them to have slightly thicker contact points. The skeletons are really nice, but are a pain to put together as the contact points are only a fractions of a millimeter wide. This also means that they are extremely brittle and often fall apart. Skeleton from the "Skeleton Warriors" box set Wargames Factory HIPS plastic 25 mm round base by Renedra.

It felt like I haven't finished anything these last couple of months so I decided to just do a very quick conversion and paint job to try and get back into the swing of things. The idea was to do something along the lines of a razor girl like glory from "Shadowrun: Dragonfall". Unfortunately all the claw hands I had were enormous so I had to settle for wrist swords from a Mantic Enforcer. Her body and head are from a wargames factory female zombie survivor. she also has a backpack pistol and knife from mantic. I'm not certain where her grenade came from. I was also playing around with using green to shade things. not as dramatic a contrast to the swords as purple or blue would have been, but it seemed to work decently.

To celebrate the PC version of GTA V finally being released, I speed-painted the trio that makes life in Los Santos so fun. All three are converted from the Wargames Factory Survivors kit. I may go back and fix their heads up a bit, and take daylight photos.

The second unit for the Mythical Greek army is the one shown below - made up of Reaper Bones Skeletal Spearmen and the starts of the show - the other half of the Wargames Foundry Greek Mythology Skeletons range. "Children of the Hydra." Unfortunately, the whole range is made up of only 10 models across two blisters - 4 with spears and 6 with swords. Within that only a few of them look distinctly Greek, so with 6 models needed to fill out the regiment, I decided to look elsewhere rather than order another pack from Foundry (I prefer fewer doubled-up figures, anyway). Their sister unit, armed with swords was finished some time ago, as was most of this unit, but some recruiting issues drew finishing this lot out for longer than I'd hoped. The metals from Foundry worked out well. I just wish more of them had more explicitly Greek gear. I replaced their metal spears in the end with plastic ones from the Wargames Factory skeleton set. The shield on this guy comes from Little Big Men, and was a real bear to apply. Apparently it may have come from a faulty batch, since the plastic film would just not come off, and destroyed two other transfers in the process/attempts... In the end to fill out the missing two in the ranks, I again turned to the Wargames Factory plastic skeletons. They're already Greek-themed to an extent, which is great. My only concern was how fine they are, and as such are very susceptible to breakage as wargaming figures - especially with spears sticking up everywhere. Still, with these guys towards the middle it should be fine. Again WGF comes to the rescue of the WGF-dominated unit. In the end, I decided against adding shields to the skeletons bracing their spears - mostly because there was no easy and effective way to attach them that would still look good. A bit of a shame, but c'est la vie. I went with the one skeleton coming out of the ground to help invoke the whole Jason and the Argonauts thing. A classic from our youth, (even if it was made before many of us were born, it was often shown late on Saturday Mornings here, as well as when VHS arrived. And now, The obligatory Finished Unit shot: And finally, an army shot of the Mythological Greeks so far. Not a whole lot yet, but it shows the two units of Skeletons along with the Foundry Bronze Bull painted earlier this year. The Mythical Greek Army begins to take shape.

Got 24 of these persians from wargames factory, and decided to paint some of them robin hood - ish. My first attempt at pingo-painting :) Painted in-between the painting competition kobolds, to do something a bit more quick. I struggled with the highlights on the cloath, any insights to that ? Any tips and feedback welcome :)