Friday, March 13, 2020

More Chibi Kingdom Death

Here are a couple more Chibi Kingdom Death minis that I’ve created.

This first one is a Watcher. For the watcher, I feel like black robes are pretty standard, even though the artwork for him was in brown and blue. Since I had previously made one for a client in black, I decided to do this one in the brown.


I also got to create a Dung Beetle Knight and Dung Ball for a client.


The Dung Beetle Knight’s anatomy is rather strange to begin with, so I couldn’t use a lot fo the same basis minis to convert him. Ultimately, though, I think he worked out very well. I’ll need to make one for myself as well.





Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Adeptus Titanicus

When I first started collecting miniatures, Games Workshop had two scales for their Warhammer 40,000 universe- there was their normal gaming scale (about 28mm) and their Epic scale for games like Space Marine and later Titan Legions.

The cool thing about the smaller scale was that the games could include the absolutely massive giant robots that stalked the battlefields of the 41st millennium. The only issue with this scale was that it was VERY small- too small for some of the details we would like to paint.

I’m not sure exactly what motivated it, but the introduction of the Adeptus Titanicus gave rise to a new scale- something in between. This scale is nice because the huge Warlord Titans are about the size of Imperial Knights, and there’s enough room to really add some cool detailing.

And in the setting, they really love to add murals to their giant robots.





Thursday, January 2, 2020

Screaming Antelope

The Screaming Antelope is one of the core monsters of Kingdom Death: Monster.  And the fact that you can get so many fine resources from it makes it one of the most hunted creatures in the setting.

For this paintjob, I wanted to move away from both the grey standard color scheme for the antelope and away from the red "skinned antelope" look I've often seen.

All together, I feel like this came out really well.

The base is constructed from apoxie sculpt and green stuff.




Friday, December 6, 2019

Kingdom Death Butcher

Kingdom Death miniatures remain some of the very best in board games- even the older ones from the core box set.

This is the Butcher. While he is normally painted in a very dark color pallet, I chose to use some lighter colors on him (especially for his fur). Overall, I think this worked quite well.

I also created the base of faces for him.



Friday, November 8, 2019

Looted Titan Claw

Orks are terrific, aren’t they? While the aesthetics and logic behind most 40k factions tries to toe the line between Full Blanche and minimally plausible weapons of war, the Space Orks just embrace the most absurd logic (a red paint job actually makes it go faster).

This conversion was created by my client- and I really love it. Orks looting vehicles from Imperial factions is always great, but there’s something especially amazing about looting the claw of a titan and turning it into a tank.

For the paint job, the titan claw is meant to look like the Orks painted over the original Titan’s color scheme. To this end, some of the scratches in the red show blue and imperial insignias and patterns underneath.



Friday, October 25, 2019

Modest Medusa Miniatures

I got the chance to paint up some miniatures for a project to bring the Modest Medusa webcomic into the minaitures world.

These were all sculpted by Brian Phelps, and I think every one of them sculpts is super cute. I'm going to get to do some more of them for backers, since the project is pretty nicely overfunded.

Anyway, here are all of the very cute Medusa minis I painted for them.







Friday, September 20, 2019

Chibi Kingdom Death Manhunter

I created this mini a little while ago, but for some reason I missed showing him off.

This is my chibi version of the Manhunter nemesis monster for Chibi Kingdom Death.  The core mini started its life as a cowboy robot from Rail Raiders Infinite, so he's come a long way to get here.

For the base, I wanted to create a chibi version of a base that I had previously made for the proper Manhunter mini (here's what it looked like).



Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Stuffed Fables

I've been playing Stuffed Fables lately- it is quite a nice dungeon crawler.  One of the things that drew me to the game were the fantastic miniatures.  Most of them are in that sweet spot between cute and creepy that comes out just brilliant.

When I'm painting my own sets of minis, I tend to avoid the official color schemes and instead look for ways in which I can reinterpret the sculpts with color.  For Stuffed Fables, I decided to try and make all of the stuffies and enemies look worn, dirty and used.  I think this fits in with the Velveteen Rabbit's concept of stuffed animals- they're real when they're stained and worn.  Overall, I feel like this made the minis look a little more like Wyrd's Malifaux minis than most versions of Stuffed Fables that I've seen.

The game is a dungeon crawler in which the heroes are stuffed animals trying to protect their little girl from the nightmare monsters in the night.

So here they are.  I made these photos very large even though the minis are quite small (especially the Stuffies themselves).































Monday, October 29, 2018

MidKnight Heroes epic Damien

This is the Damien mini from Midknight Heroes upcoming Kickstarter (this is a 3D print of him that I got to paint).

With his whole demon aesthetic, I decided that he might fit with my Kingdom Death set.  So I made him a face base, and painted him in the color scheme of the Dark Paladin artwork.

While I didn't convert this guy at all, I did consider what his bits might be good for.  I'm going to have to grab a couple more when they come out.  I've got a few ideas in store for him.

Friday, October 12, 2018

Chibi Gloomhaven- First Four (non-spoiler) PCs

Lately, I've been playing Gloomhaven quite a bit, and I decided that it is a game that could use some Chibi minis to replace the hundreds of standees that come in the box.

Thankfully, most Gloomhaven enemies match minis that I've already got in chibi form (Zombies, Skeletons, human archers, slimes, etc).  But for the PCs, and for the more distinct races, I felt that I needed to create some minis.

Here are the first four PCs that I made.  They're all starting classes, so there's no need to worry about spoilers.


The Inox Brute.  This was the first Chibi Gloomhaven character that I finished.  I was very excited to make him.  The body comes from a Cyclopes from Impact! Miniatures.  The head is mostly my own sculpt- although I did have some plastic horns leftover from various GW kits.


The orchid spellweaver was a really fun one to make.  She started life as two separate ninjas from Ninja All Stars (head and body).  I really liked sculpting all of the crystals on her.



The Vermling gave me a bit of trouble.  I needed something between a goblin and a Skaven, that could also fit in with the chibis I'd been making.  I looked around for ones that would fit the style well, and eventually discovered that the Wiz-Kids Pathfinder Goblins were close to perfect.  They just needed their ears fixed and tails attached.



THe last one is the human Scoundrel.  I made here eyes glow to match the artwork (my wife played this character, but it definitely took her a minute to recognize that the character was, in fact, human.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Chibi Kingdom Death Tyrant

My entry at this year's Reapercon was the Tyrant that I made for Chibi Kingdom Death.  The Tyrant is probably my favorite Kingdom Death character (at least so far).

His construction was fairly complex, using a combination of quite a few parts from various different minis, but none of them were prominent enough to be a "base mini" for the conversion.

While I was making him, I went back and forth on how to portray the markings on his head.  On the official mini, they're sculpted in relief, and I've seen them painted as scars, tattoos or even gold inlay.  I actually started sculpting them on my tyrant, until I decided that they'd look best as freehand tattoos across his head.

Overall, I was quite pleased with how he turned out, and the judges at Reapercon gave him a gold award.

Chibi Kingdom Death Tyrant

Friday, September 14, 2018

Paelyth Niar- Elven Skirmisher

Here is a miniature that I finished quite a while ago, but I never got around to posting him.  He's from Studio McVey's stunning LE resin line (shame we haven't seen anything new from it for a while).

I painted him up for an RPG, and I think he came out rather nicely.  For most of my minis, I prefer to use a black undercoat, but I decided to try white on him instead, to see how I liked it.

I discovered that I didn't like it at all.  While the painting over the white isn't significantly different from painting over black, I found that it was more difficult to tell if my composition was working as I went- the bright white of the unfinished areas made it very hard to tell.  Conversely, with a black undercoat, I can usually tell whether I've highlighted an area light enough and if my overall composition is working out.

The advantage that you get from a white undercoat is that you can more easily see the detail on the mini before you paint it, but that's not something I struggle with.  While some people claim that your colors will turn out brighter if you're painting over white or black (yes, I've heard this claimed about both) I find that if you're doing enough layers to get a solid base coat, there's no way to tell if you used white or black to start from.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Armorcast Reaver Titan

Here's a very old Reaver Titan that I got to do recently. It was made by Armorcast way back in the day- and was essentially just an up-scaling of the old Epic scale titan from the time. That makes these old titans into a bit of a challenge. Just the size of the rivets and general lack of smaller details makes it hard for them to fit in with more current 40k minis. They can very easily end up looking like an old action figure more than a 40k mini. The trick I've learned is that having some small details added in the painting- especially with the battle damage- goes a long way to making them fit in with a force.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Ladies of Kingdom Death

Here's a commission that I did a while ago- these are quite a lot of ladies of Kingdom Death. I think most of them were resins (except the Black Friday Ninja). Kingdom Death does some fantastic sculpting and the concepts are always really interesting. While none of these were made to fit into the board game, most of them work just fine in that regard.