Sunday 2 December 2012

Shoot First, Unmask Later - VII

Slow progress is better than no progress!


Decals on. tidying up, black lining and much much more still to do...

Sunday 18 November 2012

Shoot First, Unmask Later - VI

I finally managed to find a couple of hours alone with the airbrush, frisk film and gloss varnish. This is still WIP, it needs some touching up and black lining but finally I have the basic contrast colours in place.

Work In Progress

Saturday 20 October 2012

Shoot First, Unmask Later - V

Next up is Daphne. Note how no matter how difficult things get she still manages to stay stylish with colour coded army boots and pistol holster.




Comments and criticism always welcome...

Sunday 14 October 2012

Shoot First, Unmask Later - IV

After the disaster that was the Mystery Machine this morning, I turned my attention to Shaggy




Here we see Shaggy as both befuddled comedy sidekick for Mystery Inc and also transformed into a fire-axe wielding vietnam vet!

Shoot First, Unmask Later - III


Words cannot express how this feels....

Sunday 7 October 2012

Shoot First, Unmask Later II

Another week, another update to my  'Shoot First, Unmask Later' Diorama.  Apparently there are only 10 weeks to go until the entries in the Unofficial Diorama of Doom Need 2012 to be finished and photographed...

The centrepiece of my diorama is The Mystery Machine. The de-facto vehicular transportation of choice for Mystery Inc.

Iconic Styling

 My van is a resin casting from Armorcast (quite nice people, although American so we wont point out the missing 'U' in their company name!. They call this model ''Clue Contraption Hippie Van'.

Awww so cute!

Here we see The Mystery Machine in its pea-green base coat, with the windscreens suitably airbrushed. Masks have also been drawn, cut and applied, and the shiny 'globby' stuff is liquid mask ready for going back in front of the airbrush for its blue coat.

I'm happy with the green but the masking is worrying me.

Following that, a couple of coats of varnish and it will be ready for its home-made decals (water slide transfers) printed on paper from Antenocitis Workshop

Faithfully traced into a vector image from the top image.

In other news, I've managed to base coat the scooby gang skin, but not much more.


Anyway, I'm off to cover the van in blue... wish me luck!

Sunday 30 September 2012

Unofficial Diorama of Doom 2012

Those Nice folks over at The Forum of Doom are having a new painting competition. The Unofficial Diorama of Doom 2012 is being organised by my good friend Inso on behalf of the forum.

The last time i entered this competition (and indeed its the only painting competition I've ever entered) I came second by a whisker. So I have some sort of title to defend! Ha!

The theme of the 2012 competition is ADVERSITY .

I have a couple of ideas for this competition, my first is based on the Hasslefree Miniatures "Scooby Gang" miniatures. showing them 'before' and 'after' Adversity (or as it is more commonly known, 'the Zombie Apocalypse').

This is my picture showing that on the 23rd September (start date of the competition) my figures were cleaned and primed but had no paint.

We wuz robbed!

I came up with a name for this piece:

"Shortly after Mystery Inc discovered that the Brain Devouring Zombie of Hawkins Manor wasn't Old Man Jacoby the Caretaker in disguise, Velma instigated the 'shoot first, unmask later' protocol."

I suspect this may not fit on the base though, so I'll probably shorten it to:

"Shoot First, Unmask Later"


Anyway, things improved this weekend...


... and i managed a little painting. This is an almost complete 'Before' scooby.



... and this is tooled-up Scooby...



Here we see scooby sporting police-issue Canine body armour and equipped with Infra-red goggles.

Apologies for the slightly out of focus pictures... my fault not the cameras, things will improve for the next update.

As always comments suggestions criticism or even abuse that demonstrates you read this and care, is appreciated!

Friday 21 September 2012

Have I over done it?

One of my very long term aims (around 24 years) has been to run a very large (trust me I mean VERY) Dwarf vs Orc/Goblin game using the old Fantasy Warriors rules and Grenadier Fantasy Warrior Sculpts by Nick Lund.
They may be old sculpts but to me they have enormous nostalgic value.
In what now seems to be an annual event, I've been sorting out my painting space and figure storage. There is a vague risk i may paint something! In doing so I started to pull together Chronicle Chariots (sculpted by Lund for his own Chronicle Miniatures which was later bought out by Citadel).
I thought. Only had 1-2 of these collected over the years. Turns out I have 8! Or certainly the bits to put together 7. I blame e-bay! I'm thinking of putting these into two units of three chariots each and using them as two-wolf light chariots.




Oddly I seem to be 10 wheels short. Anyone have any idea where I can get 18mm diameter lead or plastic solid or spoked wheels?
Note I also have three of the much large Grenadier Orc War Generals Chariots with 4 wolves apiece which will make up the heavy chariots division.
So, it begs the question, how much is too much?

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Fancy a new car?

I've only just seen these new 28mm resin sci-fi vehicles from Antenocitis Workshop, and I have to say I love them.
Is it just me or does one of these look like a BMW and the other a Mercedes? At least we know what the Bavarian automobile industry will be churning out in 50 years.


Saturday 15 September 2012

More cool Grymn

Updates on the work of minion posted over on the lead adventure forum. A similar but lighter colour scheme to the one I chose, a little more cartoony and a damned sight better painted :(









Saturday 19 May 2012

Cool grymn

Don't panic! I haven't gone and actually painted something. These are some very cool, slightly cartoony, looking grymn from the brunches of "Minion" posted overOn the Lead Adventure Forum





I will be following these with interest.

One of the issues that presents itself with these miniatures is the yellow block on the gun and the red visor. I think it makes the figures "pop" and does look slightly like a comic style. However I can't imagine why you would make a military weapon yellow?

Hmmm I'm clearly conflicted.

Monday 9 April 2012

Yes, I'm still here!

I've had a few queries asking if I'm still in business. The simple answer is YES.

Also due to being very let down and messed about by a partner I am unable to attend the Salute show this year, and am somewhat out of pocket.

Updates here have been limited but I do have further plans for new products but they will be slow.

Rest assured, the store is open and the stocks are correct.

:)


Thursday 16 February 2012

Mobile Landing Pad - Revisited

Those of you who have been following my blog for some time might well remember my first foray into laser cutting. The idea was to build some modular vehicles based on Old Crow 25mm resin vehicle chassis. As a starting point I designed a mobile helipad and had a couple of prototypes cut.


Soon afterwards I was contacted by Dave Adams who is also an old crow nut and I sent him one of the prototypes. At this point I should apologise to Dave as it has taken me an inordinately long time to post the following pictures of his work and also to thank him. I think the pictures are wonderful and really made me smile when I saw how well his model has turned out.


 
  Thank you Dave!

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Inspirational pictures - IV

Saw these new buildings from Kobblestone miniatures and it so depressed me I almost cried and gave up laser cutting.









Monday 13 February 2012

CD Case - I

Hmm so I know all I'm posting at the moment are some apparently random images of household waste, but I really do have good workable ideas for all this stuff. What I don't have is time, so please be patient with me!

CD Case roof anyone?



Monday 9 January 2012

Monday 2 January 2012

Big Un - II

Oh no, what have I done?

This stage always makes me nervous because it feels like everything is getting worse, rather than progressing!

All of the resin textured stucco has been applied, two coats of black spray undercoat applied and two coats of the stucco base, and the slate grey roof. The orange might seem extreme, but it gives a great base to the following two stipple-coats that will be applied next. For paint on this model I'm using Dulux emulsion paints which I had mixed to as close as the Foundry Triad colours I normally paint with and used on the original Pryn-Gul tower models.

Next step is to finish the stucco with two stipple coats of lighter shades, then to repaint in the black undercoat of the beam work, then base coat and the laborious job of painting in the wood gain detail... Long way to go yet!