Musings of a Wandering Game Mage
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!
I just realized today that I haven’t actually posted pics of most of the Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures that I have painted up, so I’m going to have to make a change to that!
Valkyrie, though, is a newer mini that I finished up this week. The box art shows her in her classic comics version, all Nordic and blonde. Nope. I’m a big fan of Tessa Thompson’s portrayal in the Marvel movies, so I opted for a darker skin tone and black hair.
I kept everything else pretty straightforward from Valkyrie’s classic comic look, with the purples and vibrant blues.
The first building is finally finished, and I could’nt be happier with how it turned out!
After the flock and shrubbery was secure, I added a couple of plastic railroad trees that I was able to twist in extremely twisty ways by soaking them in boiling water.
The rest of the piece was just a matter of concealing joins and gaps with shrubs.
After all of the flock was set, I poured clear resin into the moat for a water effect.
It’s a really fun piece, and will make for a thematic center-point for my games!
Last week, a purchase I have been wrestling with making arrived on my doorstep. It’s a purchase I have had mixed feelings about for months, but isolation and work stress (I work in the mental health field) from COVID-19 finally won.
I bought an Elegoo Mars resin printer. That model you see up above was my first print, and the reason why I finally gave in. He was, to be frank, too cool not to have in my collection.
I have been conflicted for a long time on this technology. Initial prints that I had seen from extruded printers didn’t really impress me, and resin, until recently, has been really expensive. Now, you can get a good printer with a liter of resin for under $300.
My other big issue has been what I see as a disruption effect on an industry I care a lot about. Good prints made at home could be the death of small game stores, but after all of the printing trials and fine tuning I had to do to get things going, I don’t think we’re there… yet.
There is a lot you have to learn to make resin printing effective, and mistakes can be costly and messy. I messed up the FEP film almost immediately, and my garage was too cold for things to work right. But I am stubborn as hell, so I dove into research mode, and now I’ve been getting amazing prints without fail for a couple of days.
This handsome gent is Gino, and he was one of the awesome models Artisan Guild had available in March. $18 a month, and March had more than half a dozen badass dwarfs, including one mounted on a Griffon. I didn’t really have a choice.
Once I trimmed the supports off, it was time to get Gino primed, and start laying on the paints:
I really had a ton of fun with this model. He’s brawny, puffing on a pipe, and he’s stepping on some poor monster’s head. It wasn’t until I was almost done painting that I realized Gino had knocked a bunch of this dude’s teeth out before chopping off his head. Such a great model, and I think he cost me about .50 cents worth of resin to print out.
The final product is stunning! I’m still working my way through the rest of the offerings for last month, but Gino is ready to kick some ass!
We’re self-quarantining through the apocalypse, but I also work in social services. So, I really can’t stay home and completely avoid human contact. So, I’m building a little escape.
My spare time is wide open, so I’ll be building a village to play games in when the End Times are over. And I want to test myself in the process.
I have built a lot of terrain in my life. This time around, I’m going with peeled foam coat as a base, and using hot glue to bind everything. I already love this as an alternative to glue!
I used a pencil to carve in the details, and an emery board to smooth things out. I decided to use wood glue to seal the foam, which I mixed with black paint so I could see if I missed anything.
After getting the test piece done, I decided to paint up the front to see how it looked… and I’m really, really happy!
I airbrushed a light coat of white from an angle, then washed the whole front with a simple glaze made from cheap paint, airbrush thinner, and acrylic floor polish. I went over certain areas with a similar glaze made from green ink to age things up a bit!
Next up I’ll go ahead and finish up the base since the experiment has made me happy!
Something fantastic happened when I went back into the behavior management field—- I am suddenly in a position to just paint for fun!
When my friend Brody was getting excited about some Beastmen for Warcry, I told him I wanted to paint them. I got to paint some cool minis, and there wasn’t any worry about commission. I was doing this for fun!
I just love the facial expressions on these guys. They look like they take things way too seriously, especially for goat dudes. It was also a really great excuse to play with patina and corrosion on the gear!
I’m working on a Nighthaunt Warband for Warcry, too, and I’ll make sure to share the carnage when these two forces face off!
About two years ago, my family was in crisis. We owned a restaurant that was doing its very best to sink any possibility of us having even a drop of financial security. So, I dusted off my miniature brushes and started accepting painting commissions again.
Turns out this was a massive mistake. Trying to keep a freelance business organized while your actual livelihood was crashing and burning around you? Not an easy thing to pull off. And I in no way pulled it off.
My friend Jeff hires me to paint a bunch of Pan Oceania minis from Infinity. He payed up front, which is something I try not to accept. Why? Because I might flake out, maybe screw up and not finish the job for a couple of years or something.
Now, it’s not all bad. Jeff actually hired me to work at his awesome game store, and it’s still the most fun I’ve ever had at a job. But I painted a lot of Pan Oceania minis while I was there. Probably more than a hundred. I started having nightmares about the particular blue Jeff liked.
Now it’s nearly two years later, and I finally finished the last of that commission. It’s sad, though, because Jeff is a friend and I should have finished this months ago… and I’m not entirely sure if these are all his figures to begin with!
These might be the last Infinity figs I paint, too. I’m pretty burned out on Infinity. The models are amazing, but I always feel dumb when I play the game. And Corvus Belli made some funding decisions that I’m not a fan of, so back to the stuff that I really enjoy painting!
Then again, they really are sweet looking miniatures! Gah! Indecision is tough!
Here’s more of Anthony’s Aleph army!
I’m really excited about these drones, this is the first time I’ve been comfortable enough with my airbrush to do the majority of the figures with it. Practice really does pay off, and the gradual shading makes me very happy! 
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!
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