Itsy Bitsy Spider

The last time my family all went into a game store together, my two year old loved looking through the Bones minis. She even selected one for her mommy and one for me. It was cute (even though we didn't get any of them at the time).

But it turns out that her mommy was paying attention after all.  For my birthday, the two of them went back and picked out a mini for me. And it turns out that she was humming "itsy bitsy spider" all the way to the counter.

 Of course, I had to paint it up immediately. I let her select the color scheme (purple is very important here, and pink was also requested as a secondary color).
 She's really been thrilled that her itsy bitsy spider is in the miniatures case next to the Balrog.

Dressed Down Grooms

The tuxedo is definitely wonderful apparel, but it isn't always suited to every situation. As an example, here are some cake toppers I've done with less formal wear for the grooms:

 

Ar Finel

This Studio McVey mini was quite intimidating to paint. I am always in awe of the sculpting talent of Jacques Alexandre Gillois, but sometimes the details he's able to pull off are so very tiny.

 And the casting was so crisp.  Honestly, she's a wonderful example for the superiority of resin for detailed miniature casting.

 I painted her up using a five color limited pallet, which I think worked quite well to provide her with a mood. Anyway, here she is:

 

Super Dungeon Explore Pumpkin Patch

Well, I've been spending quite a bit of my hobby time with Super Dungeon Explore minis, and I've got a few more to show off.

 My wife painted up her coven witch and skull bats first, so I felt that I needed to come up with something different for them. I decided that I preferred to freehand the stars and moon on her hat, and here is the result:

Pulp City new edition on Kickstarter

For those of you who haven't seen them before, Pulp City has a pretty groovy range of super hero minis. They've been around for quite a while, and really have some of the best range of supers out there.
 

 

They also fit in well with the super heroes from Reaper's Chronoscope range- for example:

 

And they're currently Kickstarting the update to their game. As we would expect from established game creators with a solid following, the game is already well over funded, and they're going to be ramping it up for the next month or so.

 I've had the opportunity to paint up a quite a few of their minis, and they're all pretty nice pieces. I think my favorite set were Virus and his Ape Bot:

 

Gamers make great spouses

I've had quite a few cake toppers over time that express a couple's interests in videogames. And I'd like to share a few with you. We'll start out with one where she's got the upper hand against a zombie horde:
 
 
And there's a design that I've started calling kissing gamers. We have quite a bit of variety, but all of them couldn't put down their controllers to kiss.

 




And to top them all off, I had a couple who had me base their cake topper on characters they play in an online game:

 

Fairy riding a turtle

This is a mini that started life as a resin statue. I've done a few of these, and I find that they can turn out pretty nice.

 For the record, the original simply has a bronze colored drybrush on it to create a sort of patina look. I also had to do a little re-sculpting on the base (there were some spots where the detail wasn't cast right).

 

Charsaug, Colossal Magma Dragon

A few years ago, I decided to run an Iron Kingdoms D20 campaign in which our characters were all epic giants (from Bemoth) who were fighting against the godlike dragons that the world features. It took me a while to find dragon minis that were big enough to be IK dragons- they're all larger than Colossal sized D&D dragons.

 I eventually found three figures that I used. The first two were statues that I got from an Asian Gift store near here (repainting statues from there's become a habit of mine). They were very large, and not terribly expensive.

 But I wanted one of them to be truly special, so I ordered Viszeralyn, the Oracle dragon- a massive two foot tall dragon sculpted in fine detail by veteran Sandra Garrity. Well, it turns out that all of that detail is pretty intimidating a project. And wanting it to be special, and this massive helps me to put off painting it for a while. While the mini did come out to play a part in the Giants campaign, it was simply primed at the time.

 But now, after a number of false starts, I finally have him finished. I decided to go with one of my favorite Iron Kingdoms dragons for the color scheme: So, here is Charsaug.
 

Meg Man Board Game on Kickstarter

Ok, I'm a huge fan of the Chibi miniatures that we've been seeing from Soda Pop and Impact! I really love painting them up- the style is so new and refreshing.

 So, I've been excited every time I've seen a preview of the Mega Man miniatures from Jasco. Well, they're done with those previews, and started up their Kickstarter. And it is going pretty well for them.

 

I'll be keeping my eye on these. I'm not excited about the pre-painted stretch goal, but so long as I can do my own painting on top of theirs, it should work out ok.

Blood Bowl Minotaur Conversion

Here is a Games Workshop Minotaur mini that I converted to play Blood Bowl. The colors match the rest of the Chaos team he plays with. Here he is:

 
 

Swords at Weddings/in the Zombie Apocalypse

The theme today seems to be swords. I have a few friends who had swords at their weddings (it is traditional to arm the best man, to warn off would be kidnappers). Unfortunately, they were all married before I started making cake toppers.

 There are so many different kinds of swords one could bring (either to the wedding or to the zombie apocalypse).

 The Machete seems to be a standard weapon in the zombie apocalypse. I wouldn't blame anyone either- it is the largest full tang blade I keep around the house (for gardening...).
 
 

Katanas are always nice as well. As long as you keep it sharp, they might be some of the best swords around. http://www.gardenninja.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/zombie-fighters/sword-and-gun-1.jpg This guy is disproving the notion that the Marine Saber is only ceremonial.

 

These two are fencers and use their Rapiers. Good Toledo steel.

 
And these two armed themselves with different sabers:

 

MMO Cake Topper

This couple had me create cake toppers to look like MMORPG characters. I love these kinds of original ideas, and the elf ears add a lot of fun. Have a look.

 

Malifaux minis revealed and Heroquest Kickstarter

his is quite the eventful time in miniatures, isn't it?

 At the moment, I'm watching closely Gamezone's Kickstarter for a 25th anniversary edition of Heroquest.



 

Gamezone has been making some pretty nice fantasy minis for years, and have a pretty large line of minis to their name. Apparently, they've secured the rights to produce Heroquest in Spain. So, they'll be producing games in Spain in a number of languages and mailing them out all over the world.

They've stated that they've been in contact with Hasbro (which owns the Heroquest property) and are not using any of GW owned works (mostly, GW owned the miniature sculpts themselves). All and all, this is a great time to be a Heroquest fan.

It is easy to see that Gamezone isn't exactly an English as a first language company. Even with the troubles they're having on that front, the Kickstarter has raised over half a million in its first three days.


So, second piece of news I'm super excited about. Wyrd Games just announced that they're having a Black Friday sale, and revealed a number of goodies that they'll be selling as pre-releases.

Among them, there's a new rules manual for Malifaux 2nd edition. I was afraid we weren't going to see one of these.

 

And there are a number of new kits of characters that have recently become plastic. Among my favorites is the Latigo Posse and Body of Evidence:

 



Anyway, happy Thanksgiving.

Space Hulk Squad Gideon

Well, I posted up my squad Lorenzo as I painted them up. But when I finished off Squad Gideon, they didn't get photographed right away. So, here they are.

 I had a bit of a block going into this set, as I wanted to have something subtle show the difference between the two squads, without making them look like they were from a different chapter. In the end I chose to make all of the jewels a different color (Lorenzo's squad has blue jewels, rather than the green ones here).












Also, I updated my Librarian Calistarius. I had originally painted him with metallic metals, and without dark lining. Last thing I did on the set was paint him in Non metallic metals to match the rest of the Space Hulk set.

 

Romantic Ninja Across the Threshold

Here is a Romantic Ninja cake topper I created a little while ago. I really love to see some of the details that my customers find for me to match. Here, I think it was the shoes that really excited me.
 And ninjas are always fun too.