Yes, all of you Blood Bowl fans out there should know the Impact Miniatures line pretty well. For the past decade or so, they’ve been doing more for Blood Bowl than Games Workshop, and by quite a long shot.
They do have their own game (called Elfball) which they support pretty well, but they also have no qualms about doing a little bit of everything.
They’ve just unveiled the beginnings of a new elven team: the Timberline elves. So far, they’re looking pretty good. Sculpted by Patrick Keith, I think these go to show just how much he’s been improving. I can’t wait to see the rest of the team show up.
I have to say, I’ve been very impressed by the way that Fantasy Flight has treated their license to create Warhammer 40,000 role playing games.
From the brilliant artwork and the tone of each of the books, you really do get a strong feel for the rich universe of 40k- and it is honestly more rich and worked out in the RPG books than it is in most of the 40k force books.
One interesting note, though, is that there isn’t exactly a line of Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader minis. Deathwatch has plenty, since marines are the iconic centerpiece of 40k, but there are so few women, and even fewer non-military humans that finding good minis for a 40k RPG often takes you outside the line.
Dark Age has a good line of minis in trenchcoats, and a lot of them would work brilliantly as Rogue Trader characters. Another place to look is Reaper’s Chronoscope line, where pretty much anything goes.
Here is a character I painted for a Rogue Trader campaign. She originally came from Anima Tactics, but she has so much character that she was just screaming to be role played:
The guys over at Project Good have been working on a miniatures game system that incorporates every miniature you could possibly own.
It would seem that your two foot tall Vizeralyn the Oracle Dragon mini can go up against your Epic 40,000 imperial guardsmen. According to the rulebook, you can even use rocks or fruit if you are sad and don’t have minis.
Anyway, as part of their beta testing, they put the full rulebook up online for you to download. You can play and give them feedback to help them create a better game, or you can just play.
When I first started painting miniatures, I had a hard time with color recipes. Early on, I found an issue of White Dwarf with some of the old ‘Eavy Metal tutorials in it (mostly from Mike McVey). It was a huge help, and got my painting on track, but it also limited me quite a bit.
For example, I found a tutorial that gave me the color recipe for Khorne Red armor (a dark red, highlighted to a lighter red and then an orange). Well, that was my red, and it was my only red for quite a while.
I’ve come a long way since then, and I’m quite a bit beyond making my own recipes. One of the things I’ve learned is that you don’t always need to stick to even similar colors when you’re shading and highlighting.
For example:
This mini has quite a bit of different shading to her. Although the white armor was done pretty strait forwardly (it has just a little bit of blue in its shading) the rest of the mini was shaded in a dark magenta.
You can see it a little in her face, her green belt or on her grey sleeves, but there’s just a bit of a dark magenta beneath those colors. The red creates an interesting warm pallet even with colors that are not normally very warm.
Here’s a more extreme example:
I used a fairly standard human flesh tone for this Satyr’s skin, but I shaded it with several different colors. Parts of him are shaded with green, parts are shaded with purple, and other parts with red.
It is also easy to see the red shading in the loin cloth color, which is highlighted up to a light blue-grey color.
The highlighting has the same variety to it. Some parts are highlighted with lighter flesh tones, but some are highlighted in blue.
Actual objects in nature often have coloring this dynamic to them. For example, the coloring we see on a face is going to be a combination of pigments, blood and anatomy under the surface and the light- both from your lightbulb and a little coming in the window. All of these things are different colors, and there’s a lot of complexity to it.
Go ahead and experiment to see what happens when you shade your red with a green or if you highlight your grey with a pink, or if you shade your ork’s flesh with a red color. You may find you like the results.
Just a little while ago, I got a nice commission to paint an Eldar Avatar. I’ve painted a few different Avatars over time, this one is based a little more on the studio color scheme than previous ones that I’ve done.
The trouble with the Avatar mini is that he can very easily become too gaudy. His lower body really demands a lava glow effect while his upper body is adorned with all kinds of ornaments and detailed armor plates. If you choose a too bright color for the mane or tabard, it can get out of control.
For this mini, I used a darker color on his mane, and balanced the white tabard with a white rune on the Avatar’s head. Overall, I think it has worked pretty well, without really deviating from the studio scheme.
A little while ago I received a commission to convert and paint some themed chimeras for a Praetorian Imperial Guard force.
One was meant to be the chimera for an Ogryn unit. This one shows battle damage from the inside, since the Ogryn, it seems, are afraid of the dark. You can't see it quite as well from this photo, but the back door also shows signs of abuse:
The second chimera is for the psyker squad. Rather than show the extra battle damage, this chimera is covered with scrolls, purity seals, rune plates, a few books and even a couple of eyes.
I'm still not sure if those embellishments are meant to protect the psykers from warp energies, or if they're there to protect the rest of the guardsmen from the psykers.
Object source lighting (normally called OSL) is a pretty impressive technique that isn't too difficult to pull off. With OSL technique, you are trying to create the illusion that the mini is actually being lit by something on the mini rather than being lit from above. While there are several ways to do a strong OSL mini, each one gives you a different kind of light interplay.
The most straight forward OSL type is the strong, colored light. With this technique, you are trying to simulate a mini that is surrounded by darkness, with only one source of light- and that light source creates all of the color on your mini.
You need very few colors for this type of mini, and you will essentially be painting your mini in greyscale. It is sometimes best to only use two colors on a mini like this (black and the light's color). However, I prefer to use at least three colors (black, white and the color of the light) . That way, it is easy to have a very saturated color of the light without making the mini itself seem too dark.
Your color for your light source should be the lightest thing on the mini (I generally use a mix that is close to white- even for colored lights). The base coat for everything else is black.
After that, you need to highlight up toward the source of the light. For this, think of light as a particle rather than a wave. It only travels in straight lines, so take a straight tool (your brush will work) and try to draw straight lines from your light source to other parts of the mini. If you can't get a straight, unobstructed line from the light source to a certain spot on the mini, then that spot is in the shadow.
From there, the highlighting technique isn't very different from normal highlighting except that rather than highlighting towards the top of the mini (representing light from above) you are highlighting towards the source of your light. It sometimes helps to turn the mini sideways with the light source at the top so that highlighting in this way can feel more natural. Make sure that your highlights get lighter as they approach the source of the light.
When highlighting, you'll want to make sure that nothing is as light as your light source. That is an important part of the illusion you're creating. The source of light has to be lighter than the things that it is lighting, or else the eye won't be fooled into thinking that he's looking at an actual light source.
After you've done the more simple version of this with fewer colors, you might want to try out the same technique with more color. Try adding some color to the base colors on the mini (so that the flesh, metal and cloth are all a little different in color. You'll notice I did a little of this with the infernal above (his face has just a hint of purple to it).
But with the diorama below, I used quite a few different colors, and several sources of light (including moonlight coming from outside of the mini). The armor, flesh, cloth, rock and the hydra all have different base colors that were mixed into the highlighting (and all of them were highlighted toward the yellow light from the candles.
Also, since I used multiple sources of light on this mini, you'll notice quite a bit of different shadow interplay. It looks far more complicated than it is- I still used simple straight lines starting at the source of the light and highlights that got lighter as they approached the light source.
Overall, this is a technique that looks far more difficult than it is. Don't be too intimidated to try it out, you may find you're very pleased with the results.
Ok, so this is one of those commissions that I have to share. A client of mine created one of the coolest reposes for the Dire Troll Mauler that I've ever seen, and had me paint it up for him.
The colors are based on an example mini that he painted (there was a little room for interpretation). Overall, I thought this mini was a fantastic one to paint.
Just to make sure I'm giving credit where credit is due, I did not convert this mini, my client did. I only did a little bit of green stuff work in small places.
Victoria Lamb is a wonderful miniatures painter, and if you aren't already familiar with her work, you probably should go and have a look.
Ok, done there? The news is that she's just set up shop to sell her own line of miniatures. She's only just put up her store, so she doesn't have a lot of different minis yet. But the ones she has look pretty neat.
I'm particularly partial to the goblinoid fairies.
David Carl put up a post on Privateer Press' Insider blog, and talked about their playtesting process. One of the things he mentioned is that after the Warmachine and Hordes Mark II field tests, they decided to keep some of the playtesting groups as standard.
Honestly, I think that seems like the best way to find new groups.
Since they'd like to have more playtesting groups out there, and can't find them through another field test, overall it looks like the best thing to do is to make up some crazy new rules and see who can give them good feedback.
And that's where the unicorns come in. Yes, he posted rules for the Uniherd faction- with Rainbo as the warlock, and three warbeasts (Essence of sugar, Essence of Spice and Essence of Everything Nice).
Doesn't that make you want to start modelling unicorns? No, that's probably just me.
While at Gencon, I got to stop by Crocodile Games and speak with Chris Fitzpatrick (who is responsible for a lot down at Crocodile- most impressively he's sculpted most of their great minis).
The interesting new is that there is an official skirmish rules set for Wargods coming out. Currently, players who wish to adopt Wargods into a skirmish setting are forced to use a homebrew version (although you can find some fan made rules online).
Overall, I think that's going to be good news for players and for Wargods. I personally find the games miniatures and rules set to be quite good (the activation rules are especially original). But it is a little difficult for me to get into a rank and file formation game.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Wargods, the rule set simulates event happening in real time, where you decide what each unit is doing before any activation begins.
It may sound like it wouldn't work, or be very complicated, but the rules really are quite elegant in the end. With a few counters, the game becomes a nice balance of meta-thinking strategy- you need to guess what you're opponent will do, and at the same time look for your own best options.
Aside from their booth, Crocodile was hosting their own awards for the Gencon painting competition, hosted the finals of their world campaign, and had set out a lot of their own brilliantly sculpted miniatures.
So, Privateer Press have put together quite an impressive painting competition at Gencon. Since it was started, it has continually attracted some of the best painters in the world (several of whom attend Gencon anyway).
The categories look roughly like the Golden Daemons- there are single mini, a warjack/warbeast, a battlegroup, unit and diorama categories.
So, sometime last summer, I decided that I wanted to attend Gencon with one entry for every category. It seemed very doable when I had a year to go, so I took my time, and worked on the Gencon pieces here and there.
Of course, I wasted so much time that I was scrambling to get them all done, and finished the last of my entries at 2 am the day before my flight left. That's procrastination for you.
There was something new and interesting this year. In every previous year, the P3 judges handed out Skully trophies to the first, second and third place entries in every category. This year, they completely scrapped the second and third place trophies in favor of a medal system instead.
Each entry was judged on its own merits and given either no award, or a bronze, silver or gold medal. The best in each category, and the best in show were awarded trophies as usual.
Each of my entries was awarded a silver medal. In two categories, this would have translated directly into third place, and in another it was possibly third place (each of those only had one gold medal awarded without a trophy). In the single miniature and warjack/warbeast categories, this didn't exactly translate into anything (there were several gold medals awarded to entries other than the winner).
So I have some mixed feelings about the new system. While I would love the bragging rights that you get from getting a bronze skull trophy, getting awards for some of my entries and not others makes it seem like my painting is hit and miss. In this system, it is plain to me that my painting was at the same level for all of my entries, and it just happens that some of the categories were more competitive than others.
Ok, so enough about that. Here are the minis I entered. I'm sure I'll do a blog entry for each one soon, so I'll just give you a pic of each here:
It seems that Privateer Press has become the big dog at Gencon. Their booth was always full, their tables always had plenty of players, and their staff always had someone distracting them with questions.
Privateer Press launched quite a few things at Gencon this year. First and foremost, the newest of the Extreme Sculpts, the inestimable Titan Gladiator Extreme was first unveiled online before the release at Gencon. We all looked at that monstrosity of a mini (Jason Hendricks has really outdone himself with this one, man that thing is crazy).
Those who picked one up at the con will have noticed a couple things bout it. First off, it really is as detailed in person as it looked on the web, it absolutely doesn't fit onto its base, and perhaps most astonishingly, it is made from gray resin.
Yes, this mini is the first time we've received any kind of resin from Privateer Press. The fact that they did not reveal that online beforehand makes me think that they must have wanted to do what they never had the chance to do with the plastic minis- reveal the mini first and only after everyone is sure they love it, reveal the material it is made from.
Of course, resin is pretty commonly accepted as a better material for minis than normal plastic- and especially with some of the strides forward it has been taking recently, we've been seeing more and more resin minis. And with this mini looking so nice, I suspect we won't be seeing any more metal extreme sculpts soon.
Another part of the new releases they had were the new Warmachine Battleboxes. Meant as a $50 starter box, these were announced as completely plastic kits - contradicting earlier statements about how PP was going to keep their characters and warcasters in metal. Well, it turns out that the warcasters included in the box sets were all metal minis.
For those of you who took the time to look, Matt DePetrio was painting up a new minion warlock- this one was a Gatorman. I got a pretty poor snapshot of the unfinished mini, but the style is nice.
Of course, we have no idea how he plays, but he's definitely increased my interest in the upcoming minions faction book.
Oh, and today, you can just check over at Privateer Press' website to see a 360 shot of the finished mini (also, with better photography).
Another interesting even they had was their Iron Arena. Meant to reward players who spend most of their Gencon time exploring Privateer Press events, the Iron Arena gave players points for games, and rewards for playing (if you played enough games, you even got an extreme sculpt of your choosing).
One of the best parts though were the crazy characterful scenarios that they had set up on their tables. For example, you could set up a 100 point- two warcaster force against this monstrosity of a warjack. He's huge, crazy powerful and can usually defeat a very large warmachine force without much trouble.
I heard that there was one Cryx player who beat him, but I only saw the mammoth 'jack win.
Of course, my favorite PP event was their painting competition, but I'll have to leave off blogging that until tomorrow.
Their booth featured a Con exclusive Sophie (as it always does) along with some prereleases on new chibi-mouse warriors that they'll be releasing soon.
In their case, they had a few upcoming miniatures that were featured in the Warlord expansion, The Savage North. Some were greens, some were pewter, and all of them looked great.
Now, I'm all kinds of in favor of getting a Frost Giant faction for Warlord, and I don't even play their game. Man, but those minis are fun to paint.
There were people playing Warlord in the tabletop areas too, and altogether that would have been enough for most miniatures companies. But Reaper goes just a little bit further.
Reaper had a table set up for their sculptors to sit and demonstrate their work to con goers. I had a chance to talk to plenty of industry sculptors, including Bobby Jackson, Patrick Keith (who is responsible for the Dwarf/Giant on the left) and Drew Williams. Great guys, and all of them were eager to share their secrets.
One thing that makes Reaper such a great company, though is that I'm not sure that Drew even does sculpting for them.
Reaper has really demonstrated that their dedication is primarily to the hobby, rather than to themselves. They're really dedicated to expanding the hobby in all directions.
They provided quite a bit of support for the Gencon open miniatures painting and sculpting competitions, as well as several painting events.
Of course, they had their full line of miniatures and paints available. But since they're Reaper, you can always find them at your local game store. Of course, at the con, there were people acting the part of the figure finder, and that was pretty cool to see.
There was quite the showing at the Wyrd Miniatures booth at Gencon.
For starters, they had quite a few new releases for Malifaux, including two Gencon exclusive miniatures (one is an alternate nurse, another is an oversized alternate version of an upcoming master). The new book, Rising Powers, does quite a bit to deepen the game of Malifaux, including introducing Henchmen, and a slew of new scenarios to play (along with some adjustments to older scenarios).
They also had something on display that looked eerily like their new Terraclips game tiles. I was pleased when I found that this was made from a fairly sturdy card stock (it wouldn't just break after a couple games) but the bits didn't fit together quite right.
Then again, if you asked anyone from Wyrd or from World Works about it, they'd give you quite the rant about how the manufacturer used a thinner card stock and glossy finish, which just won't do. They'll be releasing those sometime later.
They still used them for all of Wyrd's tournaments and game tables, so there's something that worked out.
Ok, but here's the big news from Wyrd. They're working on a new game called "Puppet Wars." All we currently know about this game is that it will use the new Puppet Deck of cards (which works just fine for Malifaux too) and will features this creepy and cute set of miniatures:
I have no idea if the rules are even finalized yet, and we really don't know if it will be in any way compatible with Malifaux. From the minis, it looks like they're starting up something pretty outstanding here.
Wyrd is still setting a high standard for creepiness in minis. More power to them, I say.
Ok, I got back from Gencon, and I've got tons of things to share with all of you.
First off, I've got to say that the GNinja award for best booth goes to the team over at Coolminiornot.com. The Coolmini team was representing Dark Age miniatures, Soda Pop, Scibor, Enigma, Studio McVey and tons of other great lines.
And aside from inviting one of the world's greatest mini painters to do demos for all of us (Natalya Melnik, by the way, is great) they also had two demos going and a number of outstanding announcements.
For example, I got to see the Black and White proof for the new Dark Age rulebook. The new edition of the game will be converting everything into inches for us. Also, just so that you know, they've decided to post the quick start rules for free download (containing 36 pages out of their fairly short rulebook) along with the new force lists (from a second, very large forces book). Pretty nice stuff.
Not to be eclipsed, Soda Pop miniatures announced two new games- one for their existing line of anime inspired miniatures, and one to support a brand new line of chibi minis.
The new line of chibi miniatures is called "Super Dungeon Explore." Honestly, if you have ever wondered why there weren't minis that look like Link and Zelda, this is something you need to check out.
The booth had a demo of a more rough ruleset for Super Dungeon, but the Sodapop guys are much further along in their other game, called "Relic Knight."
Relic Knight will be a small scale skirmish game, and after picking the brain of one of Sodapop's owners, I found out that it is really going to move. They wanted to simulate the way that combat in anime often moves very quickly, with some of the characters bouncing off of buildings and tearing towards each other at crazy high speeds.
Honestly, in the end it will all depend on how strong the finished rules actually are. But it does look like Relic Knight will be bringing something to the table that no other skirmish tabletop game is, and that's exciting.
Wyrd Miniatures has revealed that their booth at Gencon will be featuring two exclusive miniatures for us. One is Miss Pack (an alternate nurse miniature for McMourning) and the other is an alternate version of their new Master "the Dreamer and Lord Chompy Bits."
This alternate sculpt is called the "Nightmare version" which right now looks like it follow the example of Privateer Press' Extreme Sculpts line. He's too enormous for Wyrd to just put him on sale normally (he weighs in at $60 as is) and he isn't game changing- he's more like a collectors' item.
I've heard that he will work in gameplay just fine- pretty much exactly like the Extreme line, but I don't have confirmation on that just yet.
And so far, we don't actually know what the normal version will look like.
A lot of films these days are adaptations of other properties, but one of the things we're seeing right now is something strange and new- adaptations of miniatures games into film.
Anyway, I think it is completely up in the air as to whether or not this semi-small project about the Warhammer 40,000 universe will be any good or not. I'm interested, mind, but it could easily end up looking like Mutant Chronicles in the end.
On the other hand, it looks like there's actually a little bit of work going into the Monsterpocalypse film. There is confirmation that Tim Burton is actually involved in the project, and likely going to direct it.
This isn't 100% confirmation that we'll ever see a Monpoc film from Tim Burton. I mean, Tim Burton got payed a million dollars for a Superman film way before Superman Returns. But Burton's involvement does mean that if it does happen, it will probably not look like the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
All of this talk about a Monpoc film made me start thinking. Why on earth would Burton want to adapt that material?
I mean to say, Monpoc has less of a story or even a setting than most miniatures games. I mean, the fluff is 100% an excuse for giant monsters to throw one another into skyescrapers. That's not a bad thing for the game, since it just accepts that that is what it is, and presents it as such.
Ultimately, Monpoc is a kind of weird to adapt because it is based on a genre of old cheesy movies. And that's probably what attracted Burton to begin with.
Tim Burton has a sort of fetish for old cheesy science fiction films. He's thrown in small tributes to them in many of his films, most notably Mars Attacks. In a Monpoc film, what we're most likely to see is a similar tribute to the Godzilla franchise.
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