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.

Coolmini Space Marine Competition

Ok, Cool Mini or Not hosts a lot of painting competitions. I generally think of Coolmini's site as a painting competition that's always open. But it doesn't have any declared winner. (If it did, it would be Fabrizio Russo... and well earned).

When Coolmini does prize supported competitions, usually you have to buy a specific miniature- usually something new by a smaller manufacturer. I've never looked at one of their contests and said, "Oh, I already have one of those that I wanted to paint."

Except for this time. To generate buzz over their new Space Marine videogame, game developer THQ is sponsoring this competition. The best Space Marine, Chaos Space Marine and Ork are going to be awarded special edition copies of the vidoegame.

Sure, that doesn't compare to the prize support from thing like the P3 Grandmasters, Gencon Open or Crystal Brush- but you also don't have to travel to a convention to enter. And if you've been a painter for a while, the chances are that you already have a Space Marine or two you could be painting up.

Entering is free, and you can enter as many times as you like, so there's really no reason not to. I happened to be working on a few marines, so they'll be entering into the contest.

So head on over to the competition page, vote on your favorites and enter your own.

Sergeant Lorenzo

Here's a mini that I painted recently for my own Space Hulk set. For the colors, I went with a dark magenta rather than the cadmium red that I normally associate with the Blood Angels. I mostly did this to have a big change from the Space Hulk sets that I've painted for commission.

After painting that up, I realized that in order to really bring forward his composition, the other colors needed to be rather light.

The jewels especially worked well to this end. Most of the time, when I paint jewel effects, I use pure black as the darkest shade. This time, I decided to use a bright base color as the darkest shade, overall giving the jewels a much brighter look.

I really feel that this helped all of the many details on this mini to pop.

Sedition Wars rules are up

For those of you who stopped by the Coolmini or Not booth at Gencon, you will probably have seen Mike McVey demoing his new game.

For those of you who don't know, Mike has been in the business of miniatures for a long time- his resume includes quite a bit of time leading GW's 'Eavy Metal team, miniatures art direction at Privateer Press, and designing several of the industry standard paint lines, as well as sculpting for several major companies.

My favorite contribution might be the painting tutorials he's done. I actually got him to sign the first one that I owned (from a White Dwarf in 1992).

Currently, he's started up a company with his wife Alison called Studio McVey. They've been mostly releasing a line of limited edition resin minis that are easily among the best minis available. I could even argue that some of them are the very best. Please, go check those out. I'll wait.



Back? Yea, pretty awesome stuff. Now they're starting a line of science fiction minis, and they're starting on a game to go with it. Right now the game looks similar to Space Hulk, but with some pretty interesting infection mechanics (one of the starting factions reminds me of Halo's Flood- in a good way).

The thing is, they're releasing the super-early beta rules online, and hoping to get a lot of feedback as they continue to create the system. It is hard to say how it will eventually turn out, but if you want a say, go download the Sedition Wars rules and Map.

Dark Harlequins with a splash of flouresence

So, a little while ago, I received a commission to match some harlequins to an existing Dark Eldar force. My client, in this case, was very specific about the colors- mostly they would be in black and white, but they were each to have one bright color on them (selected from one of the bright colors on the Dark Eldar force).

Otherwise, the designs were up to me. I actually highly recommend treating harlequins this way. Aside from being some of the best minis that the Citadel range has to offer, they really do give you a free pass to go wild with your freehand. Reigning this in with tight color control is a terrific idea.

Since I don't play Eldar or Dark Eldar, I'll have a little more trouble finding an excuse to pick up some of these minis for myself. I do play Space Hulk, though, and I've seen some pretty strong rules for them that could easily be updated into 3rd ed. Still, they'll have to wait until some of my other projects are finished.

So, here they are:

Wyrd at Gencon

Wyrd miniatures had a few nice things going for them at this past Gencon- they were revealing a new board game based on their Malifaux setting, and some pretty impressive new items for their rather successful Malifaux line.

First off, lets talk about Puppet Wars. Malifaux players will recognize all of the minis as voodoo doll versions of their characters. I didn't get a pic, but the Baby Kade puppet is actually a little larger than the Malifaux character.



The game itself features a hex board with a Master puppet leading each side. The most interesting mechanic is that you can actually disassemble a puppet (living or dead) and use a "work bench" to upgrade another puppet using the leftover bits.

And of course, the minis are this terrific blend of creepy and cute. Mostly, because that's what Wyrd does well. Good stuff.



Attendees will probably have noticed that Wyrd's prize support this year was rather fantastic. Tournaments were often rewarded with Limited Edition nightmare minis (available at the con, and online during the event).

Now, all of the new Avatar minis were spoiled on the web, and I didn't get pictures of all of those. However, there were a few others that I hadn't seen:







And last, but not least, we have Sonia Creid- alternate and avatar forms together. At some point during gameplay, she's rather likely to learn to breath fire. Or breath firey dragons. At any rate, most of the new avatar forms are pretty crazy like this.

Sodapop is doing some great work

Ok, I've been home from Gencon for a week, and everything that I now am ready to post is probably old news- especially with the speed of the internet.

Still, I do want to talk about some of the very exciting things that I got to see at the con. So, we'll start out with my pic for the year- Sodapop Miniatures.

Sodapop have been giving up some great anime inspired minis for a while now. At their booth, they were taking pre-orders for Super Dungeon Explore (they had some production hiccups and couldn't release the game properly at the con).

If you haven't been following it- Super Dungeon Explore is a terrific line of cute little chibi miniatures and a vidoegame inspired dungeon crawler board game.

They also had some minis from an upcoming expansion on display. Check out the turtles:






Now, I've been following Super Dungeon for a while now, and I wasn't really surprised by the mechanics at their demo. It was really everything I wanted a dungeon crawler go be (kind of harkening back to Space Crusade, Heroquest, or Mutant Chronicle's Siege of the Citadel). It looked to me as though the game designers had played a lot of those games, and knew what worked about them (and what could be done better).

Something I knew would be at the con also were the rules for their new Relic Knight game. I play a lot of demos of miniatures games, and I am most often let down when nothing really stands out about a game. Relic Knight is the opposite of that- everything about it stood out as unique.

First off, there are miniatures. These are the anime-inspired minis we've been seeing from Sodapop for some time. Oh, and the internet doesn't really express how large Sebastian Cross' mech really is- they made an 80mm base just for him to prevent players from having to do this:



They were actually releasing a new faction at the con as well (the female demon is the first "Questing Knight" for the game. That basically means she's the first leader character without a mech). This pic is courtesy Beasts of War (because mine didn't turn out).

The game itself works off of cards- but in so many ways unlike Malifaux. The Relic Knight deck is filled with different color mana cards, and each character's card has a list of abilities and attacks that they use with the different colors. Skill numbers (like attack or defense) allow characters to draw more cards (making success more likely). But that's it- no dice at all.

They've also worked in ways to innovate the turn sequence along with everything else. This is really an exciting new game, and I'm convinced it will be taking off.

Zombie Wedding Photos?

When I make cake toppers for people, I often get emails of appreciation. Sometime, I get photos of how the cake toppers turned out on top of the cake.

This one caught me by surprise- they actually recreated the scene on their wedding cake. How cool is that?

This photograph comes to us courtesy of Paper Dolls Photography, Houston Texas (and they do some great photography, too).

Unique Wedding Cake Toppers

Well, a lot of people are aware that I make some pretty crazy wedding cake toppers.  It's something that I do quite often, really.  And the majority of toppers that I make include zombies.

I don't think that's a bad thing, by the way.  I love zombies.

But I thought that this cake topper- one with no blood effects or splatter in it at all- was a pretty cool idea too.  Here, we see the newly married groom getting totally pwn'd by his bride.



 

I also recently had a chance to do some more specific kind of zombie cake topper, recently.  In this one, the couple decided to use the zombies to represent aspects of themselves- so we have one zombie in a 50's style for the dance they met at, and the other one is wearing the groom's marine uniform.



 

There are more angles on both of these on the Wedding Cake Topper Gallery.

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out I painted a lot of those...

Many of my clients have me paint large forces, but the majority of them give me only a few minis at a time to paint.

That's totally understandable- painting up an Apocalypse force all at once would be pretty killer (both for my schedule, and my client's finances). But I'm pretty sure that some of my clients are playing apocalypse games with the forces they've had me paint over the course of time.

The force below is one that I've never been able to see all together- they're an enormous force of Praetorian imperial guardsmen.

Honestly, my hat is off to anyone willing to collect that many limited edition minis that haven't been available for more than a decade. That is a feat, by itself.

Then, fitting them all onto one table looks like it was another feat. The only mini that's missing from the photo is the Armorcast Titan (also no longer available, and epic enough to have his own gallery).

So, here are some pics of the whole force together:



Now, it that's too much to take in all at once, here are some broken up shots: