Two Weighted Companion Cake Toppers

Here are two cake toppers that I created for clients who had the same basic concept for them. I think it is a good example of how much different they can turn out with the details about the couples factored in.

 Here they are:

 

The Tardis Can Always Fit In- Anytime, Anywhere, Any Setting

There's something special about the Tardis. It just seems like no matter what sort of setting it shows up in, it never seems wrong. It could make an appearance on the Enterprise or drop in at Hogwarts, and it just always seems like it isn't out of character. Here's one of our Cosplaying Cake Toppers from a couple who knew the Tardis always works.



 

Chibi Kingdom Death: The Butcher

Ok, for Thanksgiving, we finished off our Kingdom Death Monster campaign with an epic battle against the Watcher. It was pretty glorious.

 We played with all the Chibi conversions of KDM minis I've made, and the survivors were all heroes from Super Dungeon Explore. Princess Ruby was pretty awesome with her bone darts and monster tooth necklace.

 Now that I've admitted to finishing off more Kingdom Death Chibis than I've shown off, I figure I'd better get to posting them. Here's the Butcher:

 






 And if you don't know what Kingdom Death: Monster is, you should probably have a look at the outstanding Kickstarter that they're running right now. The fact that it got to 3.5 million overnight is not overstating the quality of the game- it is fantastic on pretty much every level.

Cinder and Dragon Pup

Here's a fun little set of dragons that I painted up. Both minis are Reaper Bones plastic. I believe I made the base from a mini CD (they're exactly 80mm wide, so they work really well at this size).

 I had a lot of fun with this dragon- I'm always fond of painting dragons in non-standard chromatic colors.

 


 

Sitting Cake Topper pose

Here's a couple who wanted a topper very similar to the other Kissing Gamers that I've made. But this couple preferred the idea of sitting on the edge of the cake holding their video game controllers.

 I tend not to have a cake lying around for photos, but here they are on a stand that will work well enough for the pictures:


 

Kingdom Death Starting Survivors

Among the Kingdom Death's great lineup of minis, one set that I'll always be fond of is the four starting survivors.

They're all beautiful sculpts that really grant an opportunity to do nice skintones. For these four, my client wanted something similar to what is suggested in the Kingdom Death artwork- except that Erza was definitely not to have blue hair.

 Here they are in all their glory:

 
Zachery and Erza

 
Lucy and Alister

Action Pose Wedding Cake Topper

Here's a couple that had a very clear idea for me to work with. He's a painter, and her occupation involves wine- and here they are in their glorious combat pose.

 This pose is more 'three dimensional' than most that I do. The design suits a cake that is displayed in the center of a room, rather than to one side. As such, they need several angles to really show them off.

 

The Princess In Black vs. the Big Blue Monster

There's something about Chibi miniatures that makes me want to create fan art out of them. Fan art for many things- Kingdom Death, Siege of the Citadel, Final Fantasy, Borderlands- the list seems to go on and on.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise when I want to create characters from one of my four year old's favorite book series- The Princess in Black. She's a princess who is secretly a super hero who fights monsters with her ninja skills (I really love these books).

 In the books, she looks like this:

And here's my version of her, and the Big Blue Monster that she sometimes fights:

 

Cake Toppers Battling Zombies with Mjolner

Here's a coupld that I made who had very specific ideas about their weaponry for battling zombies.

The bride has a wand and scarf, and the groom decided he needed a massive short-handled war hammer. Ok, it doesn't quite match any other version of Thor's hammer, but it definitely gave me a sort of thunering impression. The stone head and weight distribution will clearly require a lot of strength to wield.

 The bride also worked very well aiming her wand.

 

Kingdom Death Dragon Tyrant

Kingdom Death has a truly remarkable line of miniatures. The resins are among the very top tier of what is available in minis, and the plastics are astonishingly faithful to the resin lineup.

This is one of their plastic minis that I got to paint up for a client- so far as I know, he's one of the few Kingdom Death monsters that has never been released in resin.

 I really love the pride the sculpt presents- his Apathy and condescension really worked for me.

 

Reaper Gray Maidens

I did these two minis a little while ago. I do often get to have a second chance to paint some minis, but in this case I actually got to paint them at the same time.

 My client in this case is a collector who wanted this mini done up in two color schemes. Here are the results.

 

 

Halo Master Chief Cake Topper

This is very similar to a cake topper that I made before. This couple wanted a minor things altered from the original- mostly the green of the Master Chief's armor is a little darker (the color varies just a little from game to game- in the first one it is shiny and almost metallic).

 

Lying Down Cake Topper

One thing that I really love about making wedding cake toppers is all of the original ideas people come up with.

 This one features a pose that I had never considered for a cake topper before. The bride sent me a photo of the two of them lying down and holding hands (and both of them wanted to be wearing specific boxing gloves and shoes).

 Here's how they turned out:

 

I've never seen a pose like this for a cake topper before, but I really think it turned out great.

Ogrun Bokur

This was my entry for the P3 Grandmasters this year.

 I didn't want to push myself as hard to improve my painting this year- mostly because I was dealing with the sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn. I did, however, want to push myself in terms of basing, and I think that I succeeded there.

 I went with a very battle damaged look. I think that if I were to do it again, I'd go for a bit cleaner look- still add some damage, but not nearly so much. As is, there's hardly an area on him that isn't covered with some sort of nicks and scratches.

 

Super Kingdom Death Explore!

So I really like board games with cool minis. Two of the board games that I've spent the most time playing are Kingdom Death: Monster and Super Dungeon Explore! Both are great games with fantastic minis- although the tones each use could hardly be farther apart.

 The developers of these games know each other, and When both games went to Kickstarter, they took the opportunity to do a cool cross over. So means that we got a really cute chibi of the Twilight Knight.

 She makes a great mini, and I'd have been happy to leave it off there, but the fluff on her card implies that if those super cute Super Dungeon characters go into the Nether Rift, they end up in the brutal and bloody hell world of Kingdom Death.

 So I got to thinking about this, and decided that I really needed to expand on this idea of the cute little chibis on the Planes of Faces.

 

I first imagined that I'd create a diorama of this concept, but before I made the minis, I realized that I really wanted them to be completely playable. So this first diorama features magnetic bases, and the minis can be removed so that we can actually play Kingdom Death or Super Dungeon Explore with them.

 

The Twilight Knight is a brilliant mini. After Kingdom Death came out, I considered using one of the base inserts for her, but soon realized that she needed to be standing on large Chibi faces for this to look right.

 



The lion comes from Impact! Miniatures, and has only had some slight mods made to his hands and neck (so that he could turn far enough for the diorama. I brought this to Gencon with me, and Adam Poots asked me if he could display it at his booth alongside his beautiful studio minis.

Celebrating Fandom Wedding Cake Topper

For the wedding cake toppers, I offer to make practically anything as a prop for the couple to be holding.  Because of this, I often get to create things that I had really never considered before.

 Here's a couple that chose to show their fandom off in a really fun way. I also loved making her elaborate dress and the colors she dyes her hair.  



 

Post Apocalyptic Vault Dwellers Cake Topper

I feel like a lot of the toppers that I create are really expressions of "Together Forever No Matter What." Whether the no matter what entails zombies, dragons, werewolves, goblins ow what have you.

 In this one, I think it expresses "Together Forever, even if nuclear holocaust forces us to choose between living in vaults or fighting through a mutant riddles radioactive wasteland."

 And I've got to hand it to them for style.

 

 

What is THAT THING?!?

I love the tradition where I get minis that my daughter picked out.

 This is one that she described as "a Squid-Octopus." Also "He looks like he's gonna eat me." I believe he's supposed to be one of the stranger D&D creatures (a sort of stalagmite that eats the rare creature to walk into a cave- sort of like a carnivorous plant, except larger, deadlier, and living in environment that doesn't have plentiful creatures to support it.

Naturally, we had to incorporate it into our Mouslings game, and I found this encounter was my favorite moment as a GM.

 - Mouslings are at sea

GM: You hear singing. It sounds like children waying come and play with us. Make a will save. (4 Year old makes will save, fails. Her mother passes. GM considers saying something about being compelled to believe the voices, then thinks better of it). Yep, you hear children singing "Come play with us."

 4yo: We need to go play with the children! Let's go right now! We get out of the boat to find the children.

 Mom: Maybe they aren't really...

 4yo: We go play with the children!

 - The mouslings disembark, and are attacked by a strange tentacled monster that was impersonating children singing

 4yo: (with astonishment) He lied!

 

 I went for a fleshy appearance, rather than making it look like an inorganic stalagmite. It just seemed more horrific a creature that way.

 The base I made for it was based on some Kingdom Death bases that I've made. For some reason, this creature just strikes me as so extremely strange that it fits right in in that hell dimension setting. Plus, I had made several of these Plains of Faces bases for clients, but I hadn't had a chance to paint one myself yet.

Black Dress Wedding Cake Topper

I suppose that a lot of my clients are going for something not quite straight laced at their wedding (although I have done one strictly traditional cake topper and a number of toppers that are a subtle enough to fit in with a traditional atmosphere).

 Not all of the brides I work with will be wearing white gowns. The first one I made was for a bride wearing a red dress. My wife wore a blue panel with a dragon print on it for our wedding.

 Here is one such topper where the bride is wearing an elegant black dress. And they're defending their new home against the zombie apocalypse.

 

Pumpkin Golem

My wife took my four year old to the game store right before my birthday. This has become quite the tradition for us, and this time she came back with a pumkin golem.

 I guess she had been listening when I mentioned that my wife always seems to claim the pumpkin characters. He's already appeared in our weekly mouslings campaign- he was actually an ally npc who just happened to have an extremely creepy voice.

 And his name was John- he doesn't go by Jack. So here he is:

 

Zombie Dog Combt Wedding Cake Topper

I make a lot of zombies for wedding cakes. A lot of them are simply zombies, and I get to decide the details. Many of them are designed to match specific people- most often the bridesmaids and groomsmen as zombies.

 One time, I even made the father of the bride as a zombie. This couple had an idea that was completely new to me- they wanted to be fighting off their pet dogs as zombies. Altogether, I think they turned out pretty awesome.

 

Daemon Prince of Nurgle

I was given a fairly open project a little while ago- just take a daemon prince kit and make sure he ends up nurgle aligned.

 With the daemon prince kit, I've found that a head swap goes a very long way, so I chose a head from my bits box- it comes from a Crypt Horror. It isn't exactly the same size as the normal prince head, but I think that actually helps it out- it makes it seem less like the original mini (since the head doesn't look more deformed than the core mini. After having him there, my client let me know that he preferred a winged Daemon Prince (ok, the mobility adds a lot of utility on daemon princes).

 If I had realized this from the start, I'd probably have used the normal daemon prince wings, but I really loved how the back spikeds looked with the fleshy-nurgle scheme. So I opted to use another set of wings from my bits box- from the same kit as the head, even:

 

Shattered Sword Paladins

Here are a couple Relic Knights minis that I got painted up a bit ago, but for some reason never got around to posting them.

 Navarre Hauer and Rook

 

Zombie Hunter Wedding Cake Toppers with Silent Weapons

I've read the zombie survival guide, and while I haven't necessarily started stockpiling arms and watching the news for signs of outbreak cover-ups, I've definitely made myself familiar with what makes a good anti-zombie weapon. Accuracy and silence.

 As almost any non-head shot will result in a maimed zombie at best, it is important to use something that can reliably hit the target.

 And silence. The advise against chainsaws seems good. The heavy gas powered weapon can quickly make mince meat of any immediate zombies, the noise is guaranteed to alert any nearby zombies to your location. Fire arms tend to have some of those noise troubles as well- the much lauded AK-47 is a noisy weapon after all.

 Here are some cake toppers I made for couples that know how important silence is during a zombie outbreak.

 The crossbow is an excellent weapon- nearly silent, but quite accurate (at least if you've practiced enough with one).

 

And melee weapons tend to work well. A sword is a classic so long as you can find a quality blade. On the other hand, we have drumsticks. But hey- a weapon you're familiar with is often better than a superior weapon you've no experience with.

 

Zombie Survivor Cake Toppers- Improvised Weaponry

Zombies don't really announce that they'll be coming back from the dead to eat you (unless you count the horrific groans that herald their craving for human flesh).

 While many of the cake toppers I make represent people who have planned ahead- who have an M4 and plenty of ammunition around- every once in a while, you just need to grab whatever heavy object is closest and start bashing heads.

 At least no one is trying to throw vinyl records at them (yet).

 I think the thing I like most about this little set is that I know for certain that the couple owns the guitar that she's using: