Tag: horror

10mm miniatures, Miniatures

10mm Fantasy: Vampire Counts Skeleton Unit

Apparently, the holidays broke my damned brain. That’s the only reason I can figure that I would have broken down and tried to paint God’s Forbidden Scale again… I swore I would never touch 10mm again, and yet, here I am, brush in hand and ridiculous grin plastered on my stupid face, painting incredibly tiny skeletons.

And, truth be told, I had a better time of it this time around. The trick to tricking my brain into not shutting down this time was painting with the suggestion of color instead of actually painting the models. The details are so small that you’ll just lose your hair if you approach these like a 28mm model.

But, wow. The finished result is actually pretty spiffy. I love the look of two ranks of boney bois, just shambling up for a scrap! I had so much fun with these that I’m already working on a command unit for these troops, and a commander model for the army!

And, just for fun, here’s a picture with a US penny for scale!

Miniatures, Warhammer 40,000

Let’s Throw That Color Scheme OUT THE WINDOW

When the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000 came out, I fell into a trap that I tend to set for myself. I jumped head first into a horde army, knowing full well that my sensibilities are far more skirmish game sized.

I painted up a Carnifex to test a color scheme I had percolating in my head for Tyranids, and it’s pretty neat, right?

Thanks. I loved it. And then, 25 minis into that scheme, started to hate it. Loathe, even. The type of loathing that I tend to reserve for B Movie villains and bad barristas.

I moved on to another color scheme, and while it was spiffy to look at, I was faced with the same problem. Painting the same color scheme, over and over and over and over and over a hundred times is no longer something I have any patience for!

Slowly, something began to dawn on me. Why on earth was I painting a horde of space bugs a uniform color scheme? How about if the colors the bugs end up has more to do with what biomass they consumed than some Grand Color Scheme from the stars?

So, here we are, with my new, easy to follow and replicate color scheme for Tyranids. Yes, it’s ALL THE COLORS. And I think I love it, hahaha!

More to come as this project comes along!

Malifaux, Miniatures, skirmish games

Malifaux: Woe Crew

You know, the kind of guy that planned things and had a strategy for his blog posts would have realized that his December crew for Malifaux would have made an amazing post for Christmas day, but I am not, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be that kind of guy… so here’s my Woe crew, led by the always charming Pandora!

This crew has everything. Freaky Scarecrows. Dememnted Teddy Bears. Evil, stabby babies.

Baby Kade was a challenge, babies are not a thing that come across a painting desk that often, and I wanted his skin tones to be smooth and buttery, which is kind of the opposite of how I paint!

Iggy leads three Aversions, and they’re a ton of fun! Puppets, brain removal, and nose picking, woohoo!

The sorrows are also pretty neat, and really lend themselves well to oil washes.

The Poltergeist is last of the traditional Woe crew, and I painted it up like the Aversions and Sorrows:

Now, because Baby Kade needs a teddy, one is allowed in this crew!

And we’ll round out the Woe crew with The Carver, one of my all-time favorite sculpts from Wyrd!

This crew has been successfully re-home through my wildly popular catch and release program, which allows me to keep painting miniatures without filling the house to divorce levels of crazy little figures.

Miniatures, Workbench

Malifaux: December Crew

I’ve had to institute a “catch and release” program to keep the massive collection of miniatures that I’m amassing in my studio from overwhelming my house, so I’ll be keeping a keeper warband from each game I like, and setting the others free via Ebay. Don’t shed a tear for me, though, the painting is almost 100% of what I love about this hobby, so being able to paint a group, capture it on film, and then move on to the next without stressing out about storage is pretty liberating!

This December crew has some older models from Wyrd, but I love the overall vibe of the crew! This Rasputina in particular is pretty spiffy, and captures a lot of that mid-2000-teens steampunk energy that Wyrd was leaning in to!

The rest of the crew is December Acolytes and monsters!

The Ice Gaimin are transparent blue plastic, so they look pretty neat when the light hits them right. As is the giant ice golem!

Snow Storm is one of my favorite models out there, it just screams menace and intrigue!

I’ll be sharing quite a bit of Malifaux over the months to come! It’s probably my favorite game IP, and I’ve been painting a literal metric ton of these amazing models!

Miniatures, Workbench

Turnip 28: Starting a Fresh Batch of Troops

I was just going through some old projects that I had started a while back and never got back into, and came across this Turnip 28 trooper that I put together about two years ago, and maaaan, I need to do more! This was really fun, I hope you enjoy checking it out as much as I enjoyed stumbling across it!

The first step was finding an old figure that could be the base, and this old 3D printed zombie fit the bill. It’s from about 2020, and the detail wasn’t great, but it’s a good base to start with!

I sketched up some ideas, I want him to have a pseudo plague doctor look to him, and a flaming turnip for a sigil on his shield.

I cut out some rings from a styrene rod to be lenses on his mask, and a larger ring to be bent into shape for the base of his beak. The beak started out as a cone of Epoxy Sculpt that was fit into place:

Then it was just a matter of sculpting in the details on the mask:

I also sculpted in some tubers growing out of the back of the mask to make him look freshly sprouted:

The shield was next up, and I wanted to keep it simple but still have some fun with it!

And here he is all painted up:

This was a really fun project and only took a few hours, I’m going to dig back into the box of bodies and see what else I can scrounge up to base more Turnip 28 troopers off of!

Miniatures, Workbench

Nighthaunt Project (part 2)

The second part of the Nighthaunt project is this pair of ponies, which turned out waaaay better than I was hoping for!

I used my airbrush to blend a nice earth tone brown into an eerie green, then pulled out some ethereal highlights with a light blue gray. Then some rust effects for the metal, and I’m calling them good to go!

Next up, I’ll share the leader of this motley group! I have a ton more Nighthaunt I should finish up, they really are a lot of fun!

Workbench

Nighthaunt Project part 1

I’m not a huge fan of Games Workshop these days, but I do have a weakness for about a third of the catalogue. The spin flier, weirder, and more far fetched the figure, the more likely that they’ll end up on my paint bench.

The Chainrasp Horrors weren’t the first Nighthuant models that I bought, but the were the first I finished! I employed a unique (to me) color scheme, and really had a lot of fun painting.

The weapons all got some fun rust effects, and a little dark glaze pulled the paint together! The bases were from a Patreon that I support, and the end result put a smile on my face!

Next up, ghost ponies!

monsters

Hide Your Skyr! Here Comes Skyrgámur!

Starting on the 19th of December, Skyrgámur descends from his mother’s volcanic cave and wreaks havoc on the poor, humble folk that leave their Skyr unattended. Skyr. Mighty cultured dairy product of the gods. It’s like thick yogurt, but less intensely flavored.

skyr

Skyrgámur, like all of the Yule Lads, loves to menace the common folk. His prefered brand of menace seems a little passive compared to, say, Stekkjarstaur, who loves to harass sheep. Skyrgámur just likes to break into people’s houses and eat all of their skyr. His name literally means Skyr-gobbler. I’m starting to think old Gryla was running out of ideas for terrible deeds for her sons to commit by the time Skyrgámur came around. Then again, he does have a brother who licks spoons, so maybe Gryla just has a skewed sense of menace.

Still, I imagine if Skyrgámur came calling with his assembled brothers and that infernal Yule Cat, things might get a little freaky.

skyrgamur
Image from Brian Pilkington’s the Yule Lads