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A number of years ago, there was a KS from Defiance Games for a set of egg-walker powered armor suits - lower-tech suits that were driven, instead of worn, but not-quite up to the standards of Appleseed Landmates or the worn TAG systems of Infinity. Unfortunately, it ended up being ghostware - the designer never got paid, and nobody ever got any suits. Until, it appears, now. Following their recent trend of resurrecting minis sets from failed or partially-failed Kickstarters, the madlads at Impact! Miniatures have purchased the rights to produce these suits from the designer, Tim Barry, in all their hard-boiled fury! And if you're an original backer of the Defiance Games KS, they have a tier for you, to try and make things right. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impactminiatures/power-armor-hardsuits-and-27-mecha-minis-stl-and-physical/description (you can also pick up STLs of the WHISPER mechs they produce, or physical models, if you want).

A new kickstarter from Crooked Dice. I've been following the publicity for this and it really appeals to me. Lots of very colourful figures and most of them are a nice change from the usual predictable gun-toting heavies. I've collected plenty of Crooked Dice figures over the years and always been very pleased with the quality. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/c87-3/colony-87-wave-four-28mm-sci-fi-civilians?ref=discovery_category_newest

Shieldwolf Miniatures after having completed it's fourth Kickstarter is now preparing to launch what it's supporters asked during the last survey; the Imperium Desertum! Thank you once again for the consideration!

Shieldwolf Miniatures is proud to present the 3rd faction of our science fiction world, the Imperium Immortalis Launching soon! Thank you for your consideration.

Due to a certain person working up my interest in Battlefleet gothic, (okay, really all you have to do is wave a new ship under my nose, its not really a challenge) I went into my archives to see what I could paint to scratch the itch. So out of the archives I dug these ancients out of hiding to go from prime to painted. I am not really sure of their vintage but they are old enough to be something I bought when I was 15 and they are actual lead GW minis, which I thought didn't actually exist! Anyway, I thought others would enjoy them. They are the same color scheme as my favorite imperium fleet (I might have a few...) and I was trying for that sharp bright color scheme. I think I succeeded but to each his own. I think these are a pair of old crusiers and a battleship but if anyone wants to try their google fu and identify them, have at! enough said, enjoy a little fleet action on a Monday!

Hello again. Some time ago, during a game of Bolt Action, one of my friends told us about a campaign he was planning, focused on a fantasy setting using the rules of Frostgrave. As he and some other friends were working on a SciFi setting simultaneously, I thought of the possibility of creating an army that fits both settings – Fantasy and Sci Fi. But what kind of figures would be able to fit into my setting? Looking around, I got aware of the Blood Vestals by Raging Heroes. They seem to be perfect for my army and so I acquired a group of them and also got me some bases with ruins – currently I don’t have got the time to make them all by myself. There is only one problem – they are partially clothed … RATED N for NUDITY RATED N for NUDITY II RATED N for NUDITY III So … though a young woman in all her natural beauty might be quite a sight for sore eyes, I figured them to be a bit unfit for my idea. I mean - we are talking about Frostgrave. Frost. Cold. Quite Cold. Who would risk to get a cold by running around naturally dressed? So – best way for me to work with them might be to unnude them. I looked around a bit further, but couldn't figure a way to make the figures look like I wanted them to look like. To be honest - I don't even have an idea what I want to do. Bravo, Monsieur. You're quite something. Then by chance, I stumbled over the at concepts of NieR: Automata, which is a sequel to the critically acclaimed game NieR and includes some pretty artwork and figures. I already know the game, especially for the "AB" Diskussion regarding the clothing of main character 2b, but still never really thought about the design. Hm. Not bad. I somehow like the lolita concept. But it is quite modern, so there should be a change in design to make it more fantasyesque. Also having been a fan of the Valkyria Chronicles franchise since I came to know it (some 6 years ago or so), I figured that the clothes of Selvaria and Aliasse from the franchise would make a good addition. Sexy Lolita clothes, white and blue-white hair, red eyes and dark grey and golden colors? I am currently thinking about how to bring all those concepts together – but I am sure that the outcome will be great :-D Haha. If anyone has an idea on how to put all that stuff together, I'd be thankful :-D For the skin I took a picture from the internet, which I really liked: Quite a thought. I checked my bits box and found a fantasy figure I will use as the central figure for my army – the Crimson Empress or Witch or whatever. She will be the figure on which I test how the colors work together. Looking forward to seeing her finished … Well then - Let's start and see where this ends.

This is a boss character from the skirmish game - Wild West Exodus. At some point I need to get round to painting more of these.

This is Patrick Keith's 50246: Marie, She-Bot, famous from the old Fritz Lang movie "Metropolis," and two other robots Johnny Lauck sold adjacent to his sci fi Salvage Crew. I painted them up in less than an hour. WIP thread here.

So my husband is running a game this Saturday and he asked "Do you have any robot figures?" and I said "Ummm, let me get back to you." Happily, I had on hand a copy of Patrick Keith's 50246, "Marie She-Bot" familiar to film aficionados from Fritz Lang's seminal "Metropolis". I also had a handful of little robots from Johnny Lauck's Salvage Crew. So I glued them together and primed them and painted them very simply with metallic paints. The whole thing took less than an hour. For metallics I use the principles I learned for gilding: Everything has a color underneath it, usually a rust-red for gold and a black or grey for silver (or aluminum or palladium -- I never could bring myself to gild with something that could decay as fast as silver leaf). I originally planned to paint the Metropolis robot gold, so I primed her with Red Iron Oxide. Then I did the same with a little monkey-robot from Johnny Lauck (ignore the two little guys to the right; I didn't get further than this with them and I plan to paint them like plastic anyway, if I get to them before Saturday). Then my husband pointed out that if I painted the Metropolis robot silver she could stand in for a Moonsilver Alchemical later on. D'oh! ... Okay, so now I was going to see what silver paint looks like over brick red. For science! I washed over the two red robots with dark paint to bring out the details: Burnt Umber on the little monkeybot, as is normal for under a warm color like gold. But then I used straight Carbon Black on Maria She-Bot since she was going to be cold silver, and black generally looks cold under other colors. I notice that she looks just like the Chinese lacquer sculptures I've seen around, a point worth remembering to try some other time, perhaps. I also painted black primer on the servo on the left, another Johnny Lauck 'bot. I had to glue that one to a fender washer as it had a tendency to topple over to its left; otherwise its base had been the same size as the other Lauck robots. That's also why it appears now; its glue was setting while I was priming the others. (Once again, ignore the two on the right.) I then took my good #2 Winsor and Newton series 7 brush and drybrushed silver metallic paint onto the armed servo Lauck 'bot and Marie, She-Bot. ... I find using good brushes helps give a lot of control and evenness, even for this. This wasn't the really scrabbly kind of drybrushing anyway, more like stroking tiny amounts of unthinned paint over the high points of a countoured surface. Anyhow, you can see the different color effects based on what went under the silver paint, black on the left and brick red on the right. You can also see the detail level difference between Johnny Lauck's sculpt and Patrick Keith's. Then I did the same thing, only using gold metallic paint, to the Johnny Lauck monkey robot. I painted their bases solid black. Normally I like a base with at least a neutral grey with shadows, but I was in a hurry and the black contrasted better with their metallic shininess. I also added a few details, red eyes on the Lauck robots and a glowing yellow inside the armed Lauck bot's gun barrel (Which I see I didn't take pictures of. Need to fix that for the Show Off thread). And there you have it. Really really fast quick and dirty robot painting. Total painting time: About forty minutes. (With prep time, work time is probably an hour, or a smidgen more)

Somewhere around here, I saw an article... rather good one... where someone took a Reaper monk figure and made a pretty good looking Jedi figure out of it. I've found myself thinking about Star Wars figures as of late, and I have found myself wondering: What figures does Reaper make, Bones or otherwise, that would manage a reasonable or easy conversion into Star Wars characters, or even generic space opera folks? Ideas? Suggestions? Pictures?

Fresh off the paint table, some Rogues from the Stars from...well, "Rogue Stars". They're very retro, and would definitely work for "Slipstream" or "Rogue Stars" as well. The assembled Rogues: The Captain (though he strikes me as more of a Rogue Trader: The Rogue: The Lionman: Sniper-Bot: The Floyd-Bot: Big Bot: The Dominar...er, Crime Lord: Security Officer: The Pirate: Turtle-Turle:

Hi everyone! I just started a second Trash Bash Bits campaign on Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847163926/trash-bash-bits-part-two Trash Bash Bits were created to make the crafting of wargame buildings faster and more fun by eliminating the need to scratchbuild doors and windows to add to projects. The first Trash Bash Bits Kickstarter campaign was very successful and helped to create five designs of science fiction doors and windows. Trash Bash Bits 2 will add to this collection with five new designs! The castings of the first TBB campaign were enthusiastically praised by backers for being sharp and clean. The detail on the final castings actually looks sharper than on the prototypes! Plus they are lightweight and have flat backs so you can glue them easily to plastic, foamcore, styrofoam, or any other common modeling material. Don't throw away your time. Use Trash Bash Bits!

Never mind the joke that George R.R. Martin is not on Twitter because he killed all 140 characters. The man is righteous. So maybe you knew that the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention just wound up this past weekend in Spokane, Washington. That's the venerable SFF convention that gives out the venerable and prestigious Hugo Awards. (Article about that and this here: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/ ) In 1976 Martin and Gardner Dozois organized a Hugo Losers' Party to cheer and console those whose works were stellar enough to be nominated but didn't manage to land the big rocket. This became a tradition, although other people later hosted the parties. This spring there was some hanky panky about the Hugo Award nominations, leading to some hurt feelings (it's covered in the Wired story and you can also find news about it in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the New York Times, NPR -- it's a big deal). After the Hugo ceremony (which turned out better and cheerier than expected), Martin, who has been doing very well off "Game of Thrones", invited all participants to a party in a rented historic mansion nearby. There he gave rubber coneheads to the Hugo winners to wear. To others he gave out trophies, "Alfies", named after edgy early SF author Alfred Bester, made from vintage Chevrolet hood ornaments shaped like rockets. Martin presented Alfies to the people who were left off the ballot entirely due to the aforementioned hanky panky, people who in a normal year would have been in the running (The story doesn't say, but I do hope one was Eugie Foster, who died so very young last year and whose brilliant story "When It Ends, He Catches Her", a favorite for the awards and her last chance at a Hugo, had been pushed off the ballot). He also presented them to Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos, who had withdrawn their nominations when they learned they had gotten onto the ballot through others' shenanigans. Finally he presented Alfies to Eric Flint, who has been a voice of reason and calm during the whole business, and to Robert Silverberg, who is just awesome. Martin did a lot to bring cheer and celebration to a sad situation. Good for him, I say.

OK well it's time to try this again. Our last Kickstarter did not go the way we wanted it to, and we listened to out backers on why it did not work. We are now back at it again trying to get this off the gorund. This is a dream of ours and we are not going to stop till we get this thing on the gorund becasue we feel we have somethign very special here. So I want to reintroduce you to our Kickstarter MidKnight Heroes Season 0 Reboot! What is Reboot!? Reboot is where we went back to the drawing board and redesigned our idea. We changed for a set idea to a per miniature idea with our primary miniature Leonide as our main miniature. We added more value to you pledges and even redesigned two of our characters the was not very popular, Oda and Hanna. Our Funding level is much smaller, $2000 (Bare bones) that our last Kickstarter and we now offer free shipping to all US backers. Stop by and take a look and hep make our drream a reality! Our Miniatures will be sculpted by Robby Crawforth and Fancagne Didier and will be cast in metal. Our current Stretch goals: go to our website at www.midknighthereos.com to see all our stretch goals. Natakue and the MidKnight Hereos Team. "Thank you for supporting us!"

This year my husband got me some resin terrain from Itar's Workshop, including some sci-fi pieces. One of these is IWS-IND-003, "Engine" and one of them is IWS-IND-001, "Power Generator", but I can't recall which is which. Here they are with Reaper's Dee Dee, Astro Girl, for scale. Please pardon my ignorance. I don't know know if these are true-to-life or pure fantasy, so I decided to paint them how I liked. I didn't take pictures for the earliest stages. First I primed them with titanium white (Golden matte fluid acrylics) with a very little flow improver added. Typically I wash over this with burnt umber to bring out details before painting. But for these pieces I wanted elements to glow as if lit from within. I have found that lighting effects work better over a pure white base, so I added them before the umber wash. One of them is going to have a cold, green glow, like fluorescent lights. The other has a shaded violet glow from above. Both have a bit of warm gold light. The mixes are simple. The green was just a touch of phthalocyanine green with titanium white. The violet is the same with the addition of some quinacridone magenta. The yellow is simply yellow iron oxide with white. (Reaper colors = Clear Green (almost), Pure White, Clear Magenta (probably), Palomino Gold) Anything painted on white looks deeper than it is. These colors are pretty light, and to show how light, here's my half-painted Reaper frost giant next to one of the resin pieces. For the last preparation step I washed some burnt umber over the pieces, brushing only lightly over the lighted areas to leave the recesses brightly colored. I may have missed a cranny here or there which I will fix as I go along.

So, this afternoon, I been paintin' Martians. I love me some Mars Attacks. First heard about Mars Attacks back in the seventies. Found a magazine at the drugstore devoted to science fiction. These didn't turn up as often as I would have liked, being as I lived out in the distant reaches of south Texas (I loved Famous Monsters, but they only turned up about every second or third month), so when they DID turn up, you bought them. Fast, before someone noticed a flicker of color and creativity on the magazine rack, and disposed of it in favor of Rancher's Monthly, Quilting Today, or Dull Periodicals. And this particular magazine, some small press thing I can't remember the name of, had an article on Mars Attacks, the infamous 1962 trading card set. They included illustrations of several of the cards, and talked about how due to the rarity of the cards and the weird chord they struck with kids of the early sixties, these cards were now worth a zillion dollars each, and that an art production outfit out of New York was reproducing the art as poster sized prints for way too much money. I devoured the article with avid interest. I was a sucker for fifties style science fiction, I admit it. Still am. Hell, I can still watch and enjoy Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, and one of the great pleasures of last Halloween was finding Robinson Crusoe On Mars showing on TV that evening. And I still get a kick out of giant bug movies. Because when I was a kid, I soaked this stuff up with abandon. The Black Scorpion. Invasion Of The Saucer Men. Invaders From Mars. Earth Vs. The Spider. Mars Needs Women! And now I was reading about this so-called series of trading cards that seemed like they were MADE of this stuff... albeit, a tad on the gory side. These were not your Ray Bradbury crystal spires and toga Martians. THESE Martians did NOT mess around. None of this "Peace In Our Time" nonsense. And they were PROPER equipped. They had death rays, heat rays, disintegrator rays, shrink rays, and freeze rays, as well as the growth ray, which they used on Earth bugs in order to make about a third of the card set be about gigantic bugs eatin' civilians and snackin' on soldiers and tearing up the Eiffel Tower, among other things. They had flying saucers, they had giant stompy robots, they had everything you'd expect Martians to bring to a gunfight. It was ON! Washington burns! Panic in Parliament! Moscow is gone! China is attacked! And that humungous caterpillar can't be doing Paris any good, even after he's full from eatin' the Eiffel Tower! And best of all, they didn't have to do any of this "mind control" or "possess Earth bodies" silliness to save money on costumes, makeup, and special effects. No, WE don't need no steekin' MIND CONTROL and endless talky dialogue! We just bring out the DISINTEGRATOR RAYS! I was downright disappointed. This stuff had actually existed, and here I was finding out about it fourteen years too late! The article went on to explain how the card set never got national distribution, and was yanked from shelves on the East Coast after the local parents and moral guardians found out about it, adding to its rarity... which had added to its popularity... which had led to the insane prices collectors were willing to pay for the original cards. Finally, Topps, the company who'd printed them originally, did a reprint set in the early eighties, which apparently totally went nuts at the card and comic shops, leading Topps to actually publish a line of Mars Attacks! comics, which would eventually lead to MORE card sets, and finally, a Tim Burton movie. I dunno what it is. I mean, these cards were printed before I was born, but there's something about them that completely awakens my inner ten year old and makes me wanna play toy soldiers and giant bugs and big stompy robods with Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers on the DVD player in the background. What IS it about these evil, green, brain headed, skull faced sadists from the Red Planet that has this effect on me? And apparently a lot of other people, for that matter? My fondness for bad science fiction movies has led me to study the matter. The fifties was a heck of a time. The psyche of most of the human race was still recovering from the horror and insanity of WWII, and since PTSD hadn't been invented yet, all the sol'jers who were suffering from it were just expected to suck it up and get over it and get on with getting a job, buying a house, and raising the kids, bringing it all back to normal. And a lot of those kids... my own parents included... were old enough by the 1950s to start spending money. What could we sell kids and teenagers in the fifties? Well, movies were a big thing... and cheap, lurid films were in big demand as drive-in movie product... and, then, there's our old friend, the Atomic Bomb, the great symbol of science as savior, ender of war... as well as a pandora's box that might have some pretty scary stuff in it. The film THEM!, which was about giant mutant ants caused by the original A-bomb tests, is laughable nowadays... but was nominated for an Academy Award in its time. It was vurra serious stuff, and gave birth to the entire giant bug genre. And what about those flying saucers that Col. Mantell supposedly saw scooting around the southwest, where all those secret airbases are? There was plenty of real stuff to be scared of; the Soviets had the bomb, and they had Nikita Khruschev, and they had better missiles than we did at the time. What better way to forget about real terrors than by going to the movies and immersing in the fake ones? By 1962, this was all the stuff of cliche, a bunch of established tropes... ready for assembly and use. And Topps did exactly that. They assembled every old hackneyed trope and cliche into a cohesive whole, and launched it as a set of bubble gum cards. And oh my, did they start something. I discovered this stuff back around 1976, and I've had it with me ever since, part and parcel of alien invasion movies, giant bug films, and the great and wonderful and chaotic world of the really awfullest science fiction of the fifties and sixties. We're well into the new millenium now, but weirdly enough, the horrors of giant spiders and the evil of brain-headed invaders remains with me, a set of villains to be fought that remains far more appealing to the child within than Nazis or stormtroopers or the terrorists of COBRA... living relics of the pulp sci fi of the fifties. Reaper and Gene Van Horne aren't immune. They did a lovely line of Alien Invaders a few years back. Snagged every one of them, some in multiples. Still regret the lack of bubble helmets for them. Mantic did this when they released their Mars Attacks! miniatures game earlier this year; bubble helmets packaged separately, to be carefully glued into place after painting. Anyone else have memories and/or reminiscences of the Martians and their spawn? Bad movies? Giant bugs? I'm curious to see who else on the forums gets charged up with the flipping of this particular switch...

In this thread I'll post about an experimental, speculative project about 28mm Science Fiction soldiers. These troopers are a sort of air cav/paratroopers but in space. The first part of the project was to figure out a design. I was mostly concerned with it having a coherent look that was practical and aesthetically pleasing. As part of the design process I sculpted and painted this 1:35 scale prototype / design sketch. There are more details about the project on my Blog. Next I might do some sketching, start a couple of 28mm armatures, do another 1:35 sculpt or all of the above. Comments, suggestions, questions and critiques (especially) will be met with deadly gratitude.