Immortal Brush Entry 1: DONE!

Part 1 of my 3 part plan to enter Strategies Games & Hobbies Immortal Brush Tournament has gone according to plan (which is great because part 2 fell apart.. literally, more on that later).  I did some touch-ups and changed the colour of the body armour on 5 of my space fascists and I'm quite satisfied.

I added highlights to the eye-lenses on the gas masks, cleaned up the bases a bit and repainted the body armour a MUCH lighter shade of gray (Dawnstone vs Skavenblight Dinge).  The overall effect is quite striking but unfortunately doesn't photograph particularly well (still being multiple shades of gray).  This will now be my new paint scheme for my space fascists and when time presents itself I will be going back and bringing my other finished figs from this collection up to date with these colour changes.

I'm glad part 1 went well because as I mentioned part 2 fell apart, those Celt figures actually fell apart while they were sitting untouched on my painting table.  I had assembled 3 units last week (5 Celts, 5 Sanguinary Guard and 6 new Greatcoat troopers) and when I came home from work that night I found them standing stock still with various arms, weapons and upper torsos just lying next to them.  The culprit appears to be my plastic cement because all the damaged figures had globs of the stuff crusted on the busted joints but none of it appears to have actually melted and fused the plastic.

I'm undecided at this point if I'm going to build another 5 Celts using a different glue, or if I might just pick a different unit altogether.

Stay tuned and find out!

-Jay

Hobby Grab Bag - Painting Contest & Another Blood Angel!

Hi all,

I've been a bit scatter shot hobby-wise again but I'm doing 2 (maybe 3) projects with a hard deadline of October 1st.

I've decided to participate in the Immortal Brush Competition at Strategies Games & Hobbies in Vancouver BC.  I'll be entering 2 categories for sure (5 man squad sci-fi/modern and 5 man squad fantasy/historical) and hopefully a 3rd (one of the large model categories time permitting).

For my sci-fi/modern entry I've decided to go a slightly different route than usual.  I'm going to take some figs that I speed painted awhile back and fix them up to a higher standard of painting.  I'll be starting with 5 of my space fascists from Wargames Factory's Greatcoat Troopers box.  I've been planning on these multi-use figures standing in for Bauhaus in Warzone and Viridians in VOID/Urban War, they could also work as Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40,000.
The picture below is how they looked when I pulled them out of my figure case this morning...not bad but definitely not paint contest worthy.  They'll probably get finished first because they represent the least amount of work.

Next up are 5 Celt Warriors from Warlord Games Celts box.  I've wanted to do historical gaming of this era forever but the amount of stuff I would have to paint has always seemed quite daunting.  Lately a few of my friends have discovered some skirmish level games that might work so and old idea has become new again!  These will get done second because I do want to get them finished and I think my best shot in a paint competition will always be "unit" categories because that doesn't seem to be where the elite painters enter.

And last up I am 90% done my next Blood Angel, the Librarian from Space Hulk.  This is just a continuation of my ongoing effort to get an actual Blood Angels army done in 2013.  I might actually also use the large model category in the painting competition to get a larger Blood Angels model done (like a dreadnought) but if that's the case I'll definitely have to run out and buy one this week.

There you have it, bit of a mess but I'm enjoying it!

-Jay

Final appearance of the Zombie Vixens....for now....

I have finished my first sprue of Zombie Vixens (except the crawlers, more on this later) and I'm very happy with the variety of figures I ended up with.

I'll be re-visiting the crawlers later after I've finished all my Studio Miniatures zombies.  I'm still trying to decide how I want to base my crawlers which I why I skipped them on my first Studio Miniatures box as well.

So for now zombies will move to the back burner as I have impending Pathfinder and LOTR games to get figures ready for.

-Jay

Last 2 Zombie Vixens

 

This is what you can make with one-third of a box.

 

 

Return of the Zombie Vixens

Got 2 more zombie vixens done tonight.  That leaves me with 2 more regular zombies and 2 crawlers and my first sprue will be done!  I think after that I'll take a break from these and do another box of Studio Miniatures zombies.

-Jay

Doing some shopping ladies?

 

Space Facists!

Watching Iron Sky tonight was a great reminder that every gamer, whether they play miniature games or RPGs needs a selection of pseudo-Nazis in their miniature collection.

A while back I started on a painting project comprised of a mix of Wargames Factory Greatcoat Troopers, Warzone Bauhaus figures and Urban Mammoth Viridians to make up a generic space facist army for whatever I needed them for.  I finished 18 of the Greatcoats several months back and dug out another 18 to finish up over the last few days.

The paint scheme is very basic and I probably spent as much time on the basesas I did on the figures themselves but overall I'm still very satisfied with them and my first 18 troopers have already appeared in 3 separate and entirely unrelated games.

Also....you should all watch Iron Sky

-Jay

Hello boys, you look friendly.

 

Oh...so, not so friendly then?

 

 

More Zombie Vixens!

I managed to finish 3 more of my Zombie Vixens from Wargames Factory today.  I am definitely still really pleased with these models.  Today I built a life-guard, a waitress and a nurse and they look like they should blend in fairly well with my existing zombie miniatures.

For tonight I'm deciding between a couple more zombies or taking a serious run at painting my 4 Ratchets for Dark Age.

-Jay

I'm not sure if the term "life"guard still applies here...

 

Always happy to be of service!

 

 

The first of my 3 Zombie Vixens are done!

After a week of getting distracted and going off on all-kinds of crazy tangents I finally got around to painting my first 3 zombie vixens from Wargames Factory.  I have to say these models were an extremely pleasant surprise, I had purchased the previous plastic zombies from Wargames Factory and was really disappointed in them.  These however are really super-cool models!  There are 10 distinct torso and leg sets as well as 2 crawlers on each sprue so if like alot of variety this set has it, there is also alot of character to these figures with most of them having a distinct enough look to come across like themed metal models rather than a plastic box set.

It took me forever to get started but my next 3 are already half done now that my enthusiasm has been fired up!

Cheers

-Jay

Guess the one that looks like a jogger didn't run fast enough