Wappelville Lives Again!!

Something that was a huge and pleasant surprise this year at Adepticon was the discovery that Wild West Exodus remains alive, and is being rejuvenated!

For the first time in over a year, the town of Wappelville, and all the painted Wild West Exodus miniatures were out and on display!

Even with a few of the bigger beasties left behind, you can see quite the horde of figures creating chaos in the streets!

The buildings are all provided by Burn in Designs.  I have several blog posts showing how I painted those:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-pink-flamingo-is-open-for-business.html

There's also the bank, bar and church:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2015/02/fire-and-brimstone-returns-to.html

Here's an article on painting the Jail:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2014/10/spending-time-in-big-house.html

I've done a number of Battle Reports, and more adventures will be on the way!

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/03/new-enemies-old-heroes.html

Powered by the deadly RJ-1027 energy, Lawmen and Outlaws duke it out at high speeds over the Badlands:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2015/07/charge-me-up.html

There's no shortage of fantastic minis!!

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-nation-of-warriors.html

Division abounds in the West, as even the Free Nations struggle in deadly conflicts!

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-nations-go-to-war.html

Side by Side Demos!

There were too many fun things at Adepticon to count, but one that was entirely unique beyond any experience for me was doing a side by side painting demo with Paul in the Trenchworx booth!

They had all their resin beasts of doom on the table, along with a few that some guy had spilled paint all over!  Some of you will remember those as test subjects for a variety of Facebook Live broadcasts.

Late Friday night, a plan was hatched where we would each paint one of Victoria's new Matilda tanks.  Trenchworx did the sculpting and printing and casting, so the action would take place there.

Victoria nervously awaits whatever mischief  that might be about to take place!

Our supplies were limited, because there was no power to tap into.  So, we would have to go "Old School" on these, using brush on primer for the bare resin and metal.

It didn't take long to discover that the cold temps in the room, along with all the bodies, would make it difficult for the primer to dry.  I am very used to that, since I have painted entire vehicles and miniatures using just the Badger Stynlrez primer!

We had roughly two hours to go from bare resin to finished, so the challenge was certainly high.  We each picked a classic desert camo scheme, with mine on the right hand side of each image.  My camera died early on in the painting, so I don't have any of those pictures for you.

Also, that wiped out my reference source, so I had to lay out the pattern right off the bat when I saw there was only 10% power remaining!

I loved doing that camo scheme, so I will definitely have to try that on a "conventional" Matilda.

I did a number of "spot demos" as the painting moved along, using Mig Ammo products to get the specialized effects.  I was even able to use the heavy mud to smush tufts of static grass into the mud guards in the side assembly!

I could not resist freehanding a few ID numbers on the vehicle, of course!

This was a very fun experience, and it is something that I hope we could do again!!  One never knows...

A Fortress Shall Rise

This post begins a series on what went on during this year's Adepticon.

On Wednesday morning, we headed out to the convention with a vehicle filled with all manner of paints, brushes, minis, lights... even a presentation camera!  

That afternoon, the great staff of Adepticon appeared, and in no time at all, Fort Wappel was created out of nothing.

I tried to create my own setup to maximize the potential for "spot demos", where someone (or a few someones) could watch what I was doing.  This would be the case several times.

Primarily, I figured that I would be demonstrating how to use oils, such as the Mig AMMO paints and the Wilder oils.  I had prepped some Counterblast figures from Patrick Keith to show how you can get dramatic color combinations very easily with the slow drying oils.

These were also done as a bit of a step by step preview that I was going to do for Lyn Stahl, but they were helpful in other demos as well!

After a few minutes of discussion about the use of the oils, in terms of what acrylic techniques would have to be left behind, etc., and a few minutes of painting myself, Lyn put some colors on the palette and went to town!

Right off the bat, she liked how she could blend right there on the miniature, with no worries of something drying, or water marks.  She began taking advantage of all that oil paints can offer...

And POW!  In a mere 25 minutes, she proudly displayed her new superpower!

Here's a few quick images of her Libby by Hasslefree Miniatures.  Congratulations to Lyn for doing some amazing things in no time flat.

It's not easy to take on a brand new medium, especially one that is essentially the opposite of acrylics.  I have the advantage of years of 2D oil painting, but she did not, many kudos!!!

An Old Classic

We are back from Adepticon, and the long process of unpacking rebuilding the various work areas begins!  Many new projects await, and I can also get back into all the one which are well under way!

A lot of exciting things happened while we were there, including some fun spontaneous demos, talking about the oil paints, and even a side by side painting demonstration in the Trenchworx booth.

I have several new materials to try out, such as the new oil paint "sticks" from Mig AMMO, new Wild West Exodus figures, Eden miniatures and Historical figures from Footslogger.

Finally, with the help of generous friends from both north and south, the Facebook live broadcasts should look very different in the near future!  I think it will make them easier to see, and give me a host of new options to present the material (such as toggling back and forth between what I a painting and a blog post as reference).

I want those to be as informative as possible, so that people can get the most out of them!!

Stay tuned, and thanks to everyone who hung out with me, or tracked me down on my many forays around the convention.  That means a lot!

I'm in charge here!

At long last, time to show the finished winter American force from Bolt Action and Warlord Games!  These were painted primarily with oil paints.

I had never had a chance to paint winter theme armies for myself, so these are a real treat!  I love all the earth tones in the greatcoats and balancing that with the snow.

This video was an introduction to the oil paints:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10209553700813482/?type=2&theater

This Facebook live video gives you a view at how some of the weathering powders and dried punched leaves were done:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10209478379330492/?type=2&theater

Foreign Legion

From Gorgon Studio we have a machine gun team for the French Foreign Legion!

There's an extensive range to choose from, with command figures, riflemen in sheepskin and anorac, etc.  And that it just one faction.  There are early war German, British and Norwegian forces as well.

You have seen some of those Norwegian figures here already, but more are on the way.  Since these will all be part of various Norway campaigns, the early war British and German armies will be shown here as well.

Here's a link to the page!  Be sure to check out the Anicents as well :-)

http://www.gorgon-studios.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=18_23

Join The Herd

It just gets more Beastly with this batch from Mierce Miniatures!

As I have mentioned before, Mierce not only has an extensive range of creatures, within each range is an interesting variety of sizes.  You have infantry size such as these, but there are also units of large to very large 'infantry' as well.

I suppose this reminds me of my Lizardman army, which had small infantry, heavy and very heavy infantry.  Mierce takes that principle even further with some truly colossal sized infantry!

The regular infantry and even the monstrous infantry tend to be sold in groups of five, with champions, banners and so on.

These are all part of that same winter theme commission, so the basing and color schemes remain the same.

It can definitely be a challenge to blend this many different manufacturer's figures into one single army!

While the basing is probably the easiest thing to keep consistent throughout,  different companies have widely different ways of approaching how they scuplt certain common elements!  Certainly a challenge, especially when there's more than 5 different companies involved.