Musings of a Wandering Game Mage
Here are the rest of the punch-ups on Jeff’s Shock Force army! After these, I will be finishing up the rest of his army from start to finish. I am especially happy with the Dragoes, it’s such a wickedly cool looking Mech, and it really wants you to paint it well!
Jeff recently commissioned me to punch-up some Pan Oceana miniatures he has. He already did some really solid color work, which made layering in the shading and highlights a lot of fun.
I intentionally saved the most fun part of Chris’s project for last: the Airspeeder has been one of my favorite Star Wars vehicles since I first saw it in a long-since-demolished theatre in 1980. I took a little extra time on the weathering to get that “beat to hell but still flying” look just right!
Here’s Chris’s last squad of Rebels, another AT-RT, and one hell of a speeder!
Anthony recently hired me to paint up some of his Aleph miniatures for Infinity! The first batch of the project was total paint work from start to finish:
Sadly, I failed to take good pics of most of the first batch, but I did get these two bots to hold still a minute:
Next up were some detail punch-ups on some figs Anthony already had. I’ve faced Ajax before, so it was nice doing something with this model that didn’t involve me wincing as it wiped out my troops! First up is the big man himself, followed by Achilles:
My FLGS has a big Infinity event coming up in May, and I have been part of a team putting together a Yu-Jing based board for the tournament. It’s been a fun project, but I want to put a table together featuring alien terrain.
I picked up a big sheet of blue insulation foam, and started carving it up with a knife. Lots of shaping later I ended up with this:
That’s a pretty cool chunk of rock, and I sealed it in a couple of coats of Mod Podga and black paint.
Next up, I started layering in bright, alien colors, aiming for a classic Star Trek look. I also ordered a big bag of plastic aquarium plants, which really added to the overall cool factor:
Now I need to work up enough of this stuff to cover a 4′ by 4′ table by May 10th!
Here’s a few more shots of Aaron’s Caledonian commission:
One of my most recent commissions brought a fun new challenge with it: Tartan!
The Caledonian sectorial for Infinity has a lot of kilt action going on, and I haven’t ever painted plaid. Now that I’m a few figures in, I’m getting it down! Plaid is fun, and it looks fantastic!
The first set of Frostgrave minis I picked up was the multi-piece plastic kit from Northstar Miniatures. I have always been a sucker for multi part miniatures, and for $35 you get 20 little beasties to build and paint. That’s a really good value, and you get a lot of hobby time for the money!
My first gnolls just weren’t cutting it for me, though. You can see the paint job on the banner at the top of the page. They look fine, but something was missing. I was watching Planet Earth last week, and it dawned on me; these guys are hyena peeps, and hyenas have masks. I broke out the paints, and after a couple of hours of work and a few washes, this is how my gnolls look:
Now that’s more freaking like it! The big bruiser with the shield and spear is one of those AD&D cheapo pre-paints, but I like the fig and it can be painted up Real Purdy in very little time. The other 5 pups are from the Northstar kit. I have 15 more doggos to paint, but I’m going to get some color variation in there to break up the band visually.
The Frostgrave gnolls can be ordered at just about any FLGS, or you can contact the awesome peeps at my favorite store, Shiv Games here in Salt Lake City.
Hero Forge is a cool concept; you use the Hero Forge interface to design a custom miniature. You have a lot of control over pose, build, genre, and costume, and can select different races like cat people or lizard folk. I have always been curious about the miniatures, but never got around to ordering one.
Maren and Josh commissioned me to paint up the figures they designed for their D&D characters, and I have to say I am impressed with what Hero Forge can produce. The figures look really nice, and there is a lot of detail packed into the miniatures. Maren has an Elven Ranger character, and she wanted her to have some aquatic details. Josh has a Dragon Born gunslinger, with black scales and yellow eyes.
Impressions? Maren and Josh opted for the high detail plastics, which look great but are incredibly brittle. The figures have a little bit of artifacting from the printing process, but there is not a single instance of flash, since there aren’t any molds used to cast the figures. I decided to cut the bow on Maren’s Ranger and reinforce it with a metal rod, because I KNOW that figure is going to fall, and that plastic is far too brittle not to break. The miniatures take paint really well, and paint up just like any other miniature.
Downsides? Only a few. There are areas of the miniature that are next to impossible to reach, like the inside of the Dragonborn’s coat. Since the figure is printed from the base up, the coat hangs just like a real coat would, and getting a brush up behind a character’s legs is pretty tricky. Also, for $30, I would hope for a more durable plastic. There is a stronger miniature from Hero Forge that costs less, but the detail is chalky and looks pretty rough.
The gallery below highlights the first half of the painting process, I will post the finished figures tomorrow!
Grimmleigh's Lab 