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Here is the Hippocampus optional figurehead for Sophie's Revenge. I wanted a more warn wooden underneath, but ended up unable to restrain my love of shiny paint! I may work this over more once I have th ship ready (so maybe next century....)

Hi there! I've started a diorama project, and I thought it would be good to post my progress here. This is my first diorama attempt- I have just been trying All The Things to see which ones I like best!- and so far, so good, I suppose. I'm one of those folks who learn best by doing, so here goes. I'll be using Reaper's 03172 Hippocampus and Pegaso's Nymert, along with some Morland Studios Sea Accessories. I've built the base from scratch using Excalibur casting stone poured into a laser-cut plywood disk, along with lava rock, bark chips, and some hydrostone...so far. I'm going to need to add some Milliput along the edges to finish the angle, and do a bit more work with the Dremel before priming. I was having a hard time envisoning how the figures would interact, despite sketches, so I decided to go ahead and start attaching the one element I'm certain of: the hippocampus. After cleaning him up a little and using the Dremel to modify his base somewhat, I glued it in. I tried to twist him a little, to give some spiraling motion that would match the nymert, but this is one tough seahorse. I am going to do a little torquing when I pin to the tail, but that's it. The nymert was a little tougher; she'll have to be pinned to a coral tower in the back, so I had to add an extra pin. I did it before cleanup, and I am crossing my fingers that I can get it to look natural in the end. As I was deciding on the final placement of the nymert figure, I realized that I hadn't thought enough about the most important element of the dio: the story. No matter how I placed her, she looked like she was attacking the hippocampus! Not what I want! So I need to add a third figure, some sort of baddy for the two of them to be fighting. But there's very little room in this design for any additions. Soooo..... Tentacles. This is a Fimo armature for what I hope will be a few evil-looking tentacles trying to trap the two figures. I sculpted it onto regular armature wire, attached it with CA glue and 2-part epoxy, and carved back into it to whittle it down a bit. I will use green stuff to sculpt the final tentacles, maybe more wire if necessary. (Also, if you look closely, you can see the hole I drilled into the lava rock 'coral' for the nymert's pin. More of the lava rock drilled out than I wanted- it basically disintegrated- so I'll need something fairly sturdy to fill it when I'm ready for final assembly. Maybe Durham's. Or more 2-part epoxy or JB Weld.) And that's it! That's how far I've come. Next week I'm going to mount the hippocampus and the nymert, I think, even though painting will get trickier; I can't really finish the tentacles until I do. Fingers crossed....

So I got this guy from the melt bin during Reaper Con, and right now am doing a tutorial using his base ( http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/62033-sea-floor-base-tutorial/ ) But when I get around to painting him himself, that progress will come here Here is how he was at the start of the tutorial (he's not this color scheme anymore) and then I decided i didn't like his texture and tried my hand at giving him new scales with green stuff. I gave him new fins too, and gave him more of a belly so he isn't as snakey thin I"m going to be doing this color scheme, with a bit of variation (more yellow along the underside so that it's not entirely pink all over

I had a bunch of new figures arrive the other day. I am trying to decide which set to paint up first. Any thoughts? Here are the new fishmen, a mind flayer, and an evil cleric of the sea: I'd like to paint up this guy to be a green and/or bronze dragon: A storm and a cloud giant: Two more dancing girls: A marid and a hippocampus chariot: So, which one first?

This is my Secret Sophie to Klarg1. He asked for some monsters he could use in his campaigns. I thought it would be neat if he could have something for land and sea so an antkeg and a Hippocampus was selected. unfortunately the Hippocampus would not cooperate and come off its working plinth so it is a little more of a showpiece than playing piece. I hope he doesn't mind. For me at least, the hippocampus has to have one of the most challenging textures to work with, both in finding a way to give it life and just being hard on the brush. I know I killed at least one brush on the sharp edges of that surface. for colors i tried, with some success, to copy Hiesler's color scheme from here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/59839-impact-miniatures-hippocampus/?hl=hippocampus the antkeg was much easier to select colors for and i really like how the piece came out. It should suffice to give the players a scare and the floor drops out from under someone and they find themselves in the loving embrace of that scaly monster! Anyway here are the pictures from the two minis I sent to him. hope you all like them!

Not sure if this qualifies completely as a diorama, but it's the closest definition I had for the thing. It was made as a special project for my best friend to help her wife surprise re-decorate the bathroom for her this weekend. She LOVES the beach and all things sea related, so this was the mini her wife chose for me to paint up. It was a good thing, because I was (and still kind of am) intimidated as heck by this mini, but at least I pushed through and did it. I'm overall extremely pleased with the end result, only finding two things that really glare at me. One of them is there could have been better blending, but in order to make it a viable piece of room decor, I went super bold. The other is I could have put it together a bit more smoothly. That was one heavy mini, and I was afraid it would break, so there's some lumping I would do differently if I had it to do over. I failed at getting a reasonable shot of the whole thing. If the light was bright enough to see the fishyhorse, it glared off the bowl. If I didn't glare, the mini is too dark. I included them to show the perspective, and then added better pics of the bits. Oh, and you can't tell fully in the pics, but if the room is dim he looks more blue, but with the lights all the way on he shimmers silvery. C&C is always welcome, it helps me get better!

So this is from a company called Windstone Editions. They are hand-sculpted and then cast to make copies. Pre-painted ones are their main business, but they sell paint your own ones too. These are what I painted before I began painting miniatures ( http://s33.photobuck...el/library/PYOs<<< those are all the ones i've done, most have been sold) Even the smallest of these is bigger than most miniatures (the smallest one i've painted is the size of the Bones pathfinder Red dragon) maybe that's why it's easier for me to paint the big miniatures =P i'm used to painting big stuff

Well after playing with a bunch of soaps and primers, I had a number of the new Impact ponies primed and ready to go. And since they are relatively fun to paint, once again my WoK minis got pushed back by another kickstarter (this is why they are supposed to come in at different months...) Anyway, to review for those who missed it in the kickstarter forum: In an effort to get a smooth coat of paint on these minis that will actually stay put, I have tried a number of detergents to remove the mold release and a number of primers to get one that will actually grab the resin and hang on. summarizing my work: washing the miniatures is required for anything to stick, and I have used Dawn dish soap with success. (our "natural" dish soap didn't have much luck getting the mold release off.) 1) paint on primers don't work. I have tried reaper and GW 2) Acrylic primers don't stick (I have tried Rustoleum and Krylon for plastic) 3) Krylon primer for metal and plastic works 4) Rustoleum self etching primer works I have not tried the paint and primer combo cans because I like the tooth on the pure primers. (you're on your own there ) The first 2 will pull away and bead up on the mini. You can force them to make a smooth coat by repeated applications but it will be like a skin on the miniature that you can literally peel off in sheets later. With all of that said, here is my first of the new Impact miniatures ponies kickstarter, and one of the cutest! Comments and Critique is always welcome.