Amazing miniatures from Raging Heroes!!

Some incredible things arrived in the mail today.  A box of fantastic miniatures from Raging Heroes!!!

I have been drooling over these for weeks, but I had never seen them myself.  From what I had seen on their website, it looked like these minis had some unique traits.  The fine details, such as the faces, hands, weapons and even the hair, appeared to be remarkably clean and consistent from one figure to the next.

This got me very excited, as I have been noticing some decline in detail and consistency with newer figures.  It's not a huge issue, but one would hope that with all the technology available now, the arrow would only be pointing up.

Also, lots of companies have been going to resin, for a variety of reasons.  However, the quality of the casting has been, shall we say underwhelming.  Very underwhelming.

My spidey sense got to tingling whet I saw the Raging Heroes images.  I just got the sense that things might be different.  Once I had them in my hands, I would finally know for sure...

And I was right!  Actually, I was way more than right.  Not only were the castings of a good consistent quality, they had a few other amazing surprises.  I already knew that many options came with each figure, similar to what you see with Avatars of War figures.  I also knew that there were nice, dynamic poses and faces that you could paint with extra details.

Mind you, all of the things you see here are right out of the box, with the exception of the one Hero on the left...all I did was take them out of the packaging.

What was a big surprise was that all of this awsomeness was achieved in single piece castings!  Check out these Vestals, which come in a variety of sets (this one is a wonderful set of five).  The figure on the left is just 2 pieces, and that is because the left arm has 3 options!  Unreal!

I held my breath as I opened up the resin sci-fi Vestals, which I will be using for my Adepticon Dark Eldar army.  Hands down, the best resin casting I have ever worked with.  Ilyad miniatures used to do very nice resin casting, but these pieces are a step above that.  Certainly leaps and bounds ahead of what I have been dealing with the last few years.  No air bubbles, not to soft or not too brittle, and barely any mould lines.  There are no "hollow" pieces, which I hate so much.  Even the tiniest of pieces came out very well.

I salute the talents of the casters.  No end to the Kudos!  Here are some close ups to try and give you an idea of how nice the resin is, and how "paintable" the faces will be.  Also, the hair is exactly as I had hoped. Even very long strands that flow across the bodies, etc., are clean, unbroken lines that will not have me pulling my own hair out as I try to paint them :-)

This really is the tip of the ice berg.  I have lots more to review.  They also have a nice variety of critters and monsters that will make a great addition to many armies, both sci-fi and fantasy.  I apologize if I am gushing way too much, but seeing things done so well makes me happy.  It has been a particularly frustrating couple of months dealing with resins, metals, and even plastics.

This is a breath of welcome fresh air.  I have not really done these justice with these images, but I will try to bet nicer views for you going forward.

More to come!!!!

Shiny things: An early experiment with reflections

These are some Grey Knights I did back in the days when I first started playing my Demonhunters army.  I wanted to have a shiny, reflective armor look.  I had been doing the Sky-earth NMM for a few years, and I thought this could be an interesting test to do something besides "earth" for the ground half.

Since the entire army was based on the marble and tiles, it seemed only natural to reflect those onto the armor!

I did my best to reflect them where I could.  Obviously, I had to simplify things a bit due to the 1 inch tall figures!

Whne I did rreflect the tiles, I made sure to grey down the colors and make them a bit darker than the actual tiles, which is how you would paint those in 2 dimensions.  I had to do more in some areas than I might have done in "reality", but I also wanted people to see this stuff, so sometimes you have to boost things a bit to make them visible.

As it was, it still took viewers a while to notice the reflections.

Speaking of shiny things, Jeero got some new shiny things to put in his bank!  He was very happy, and Trunko was curious, as always.

Classic Lizardman Salamanders

Here we have some very "old timey" GW Lizardman minis.  These salamanders and handlers, for the most part, go way back.  There are a few more recent skinks thrown in to get some variety.  I don't remember when GW had the baby dragons as part of an official list, but they are certainly fun!

The movement tray was made from pieces of baked sculpey placed on matboard.  The salamanders and skinks are magnetized, and are placed in a loose formation as dictated by the 8th edition skirmish rules.

I added a few aquarium plants to get a nice jungle look.

I had a lot of fun using this combination of colors.  Purples are always interesting, since there are lots of neat color shifts you can do by changing the temperature and saturation of the hues.  Blueish highlights on a deep purple next to a more magenta tone is fantastic.

These top views give you a better look at the unit as a whole and how they look on the tray.  There are some previous posts in my lizardman army that discuss how these movement trays were created.