Wyrd Puppets

Well, normally I would post up some of these minis in groups, rather than having a single shot for each one.

But Janci couldn't resist getting a single shot for each and every puppet that I painted. So this is a more pic heavy post than I normally put up here.

So, here is a set of minis from Wyrd's Puppet Wars game.  Players of Malifaux will recognize Zoraida's voodoo doll versions of their favorite characters.

 





































 

Plastic Warbeast Kits

Privateer Press has been slowly rolling out their plastic kits since they first started them with the Exemplar Cinerators, followed shortly by plastic versions of the basic warjacks for each Warmachine faction (and plastic starter box sets).

Many of us were wondering if the plastic trend was going to reach Hordes very soon, but it looked like they had other plans.  Mostly, when we saw the Ravagore and Scythean many people thought it looked like they were making an Everblight plastic kit, but then the minis were released in metal.

Well, it looks like that's changing now.  In February, the Everblight plastic warbeast kit will be released:



 

Now, I'd like to point out that I honestly can't tell the difference between these photos and ones from the more expensive metal kits.  To the point where I'm not sure if I have the right photos here.

But the other factions will require a little more sculpting to create a three-in-one plastic warbeast.

Now, we have photos of the new Circle kit:



These are all clearly new sculpts, and are pretty easy to distinguish from their metal counterparts.  That's not necessarily a bad thing (although those feral and pureblood metal kits are some of my favorites).

But that does mean that they are pushing forward the plastic kits.  Honestly, the Circle minis would have been harder to homogenize than any of the others- Skorne Titan kits and Trollblood Dire Troll kits are certainly on the way too.

Squad Lorenzo finished

Well, I finally finished all of Squad Lorenzo from my own Space Hulk set. I get distracted away from these projects of mine, sometimes it really takes me longer than it should.



Frequent readers will remember Sergeant Lorenzo



Brother Zael with his heavy flamer and lots of flammable parchment.



Brother Deino- one of the more plain Space Hulk minis from this edition (not saying a whole lot there).



Brother Goriel- who it seems has been more successful in close combat than I'd usually give the marines credit for.



And Brother Omnio. According to the fluff in the rulebook, Omnio is actually part of Squad Gideon, and Brother Valencio is part of Squad Lorenzo. However, every last scenario calls for squad Lorenzo to have three marines with power fists and storm bolters, and always puts the chainfist in squad Gideon.

So, Brother Omnio has been conscripted.

Of Mouslings and Men

Ok, for anyone who might have missed them, for the past year and a half, Reaper Miniatures has been producing sets of some of the cutest little miniatures released this side of Super Dungeon Explore.

These miniatures are mostly sculpted by Gene Van Horne (although it turns out the initial run had some work by Bobby Jackson in it too).

Well, they started out with mouslings that looked like adventuring heroes:



But once all of the core character classes were all covered in the mousling world, well... they started getting pretty crazy with:



Asiago Jones Mousling



Zombie Apocalypse Mouslings (proving they have similar taste to me).



Space Mouslings



And happy drunk Mouslings



From all reports, it seems like Reaper is giving Gene Van Horne an open door for all Mousling minis. If he makes one, they'll produce it.

That's a great deal for him, as it means that he is free to create all kinds of outstanding Mousling minis.

Now I've mentioned his name twice, so if Gene Van Horne googles his own name, he might be reading this. So, Gene, if you are reading this, I'd like to put an idea into your head.

Football Mouslings!

I mean, I'd love to field a Bloodbowl or Elfball mouse team. And hopefully, you think that's awesome too.

Colette Du Bois Crew

Here is a Malifaux crew that I painted recently. I used some rather bright colors on this crew, so it was important to line all of the areas to keep the minis looking crisp.

For the stockings on Collete Du Bois and Cassandra, I decided that harlequin diamonds would be pretty appropriate. When I went to shade this freehand, I treated them similar to the way I would treat jewel effects (ie, highlighting up towards the bottom).

Another point of interest is that I actually lined the lips. I do not always do this because I often want makeup to fade into the face, but I found that in this instance it allowed me some added expression on the faces (lining the lips allows you to alter the line of the mouth to extend it in a number of ways that create an expression). That is something I'll definitely be doing more of.

Cake Topper Craziness

Ok, those of you who follow this blog quite a bit will know that I make cake toppers for people- and most of the ones I make are zombies or zombie fighters. I mean, nothing says we're in it for the long haul like "I'll fight off a horde of zombies with you."

I usually match the bride and groom, and make some zombies for them to battle. I was a little surprised when one of my clients decided to take this to the next level: the zombies are all members of the wedding party!

So, here are a few of the ones that I got to make for this group:







(Groomsmen)



(father of the bride)



The happy couple (it looks like he's taking on his new father in law)

Lining your minis to make them 'pop'

When I first started painting (many moons ago) I learned of a technique called black lining. Basically, when you have two light colors right next to one another, the boundary between them tends to get lost, and the mini looses crispness. So, back then, the plan was to put a thin black line between the two colors, which helps them to be distinct.

Now, if you think about it for a minute, you may realize that those same lines dividing your bright colors can be used to divide other colors in the same way. Sure, you may simply want to put your darkest shading at the borders of your color, but if you try it, you'll find that outlining each portion of your mini will work some wonders.

Here is an example of a mini without an outline.




All together, there's nothing wrong with any particular color- all of them have pretty strong contrasts and decent blending. But altogether, this mini doesn't pop- and the reason is because his areas all blend into one another. Now look what happens when we add dividing lines onto the same mini:





Altogether, the lines add a crispness that he was missing without them. Each of the areas is very distinct from the others.

Now, this mini's black lines were added after he was fully painted- and as a result the lines are thicker- giving him a sort of cartoon/comic-book look.

For more realistic looks, try lining as you go. With this technique, it becomes more important that you paint the mini in a proper order.

Think of it as dressing- start with the skin, then go to the next layer of clothing up, and continue from there.

Here is a mini that uses black lines in this way:



The lines on his cloak are probably still thicker than they need to be, but overall, the effect is working quite well.

Among the top painting meta, lining is one of those techniques people just assume you use (really, go check out Marike Reimer's gallery and try to find an area she didn't outline). Note that she doesn't usually use black, but rather uses dark versions of the colors she's lining. Lining with other colors takes a little bit of the edge off of the outlines- it helps the mini look less like a comic and more realistic.

So try lining a mini with dark browns, or using extremely dark versions of the color that you are outlining, or black if you prefer the comic book look. Ultimately, you'll find that all of those little bits on the mini really start to stand out and pop.

Super Dungeon Explore pre-orders are up

Although a lot of people had the opportunity to pre-order their copies of Super Dungeon Explore at Gencon and Pax, there are many more people who either don't go to the cons, or didn't pre-order there.

Finally, Sodapop Miniatures have opened up for general pre-orders. And if you did not attend the cons, this will probably be your only chance to get the limited edition SDE version of Candy and Cola.

For those of you who've missed the hype, Super Dungeon Explore is a miniatures board game dungeon crawler in the tradition of such classics like Space Crusade or Heroquest, with a bit more of a Gauntlet feel.

From their Gencon demo, I could tell that the guys at Soda Pop really know what they're doing- and they've made a dungeon crawler that doesn't take itself too seriously. The game comes with over fifty super cute chibi heroes and monsters, along with a fairly large dragon as a boss fight.