Here's a new bird...

Well, not really a bird. :-)

While I was at Adepticon, I stopped by the CMON booth and picked up some of the Big Birds for the painting videos.  That's when I found out that one of the eagles has been discontinued.  This was the first Great Eagle that was produced.

So, the Osprey video will become the eagle video.  Many of you saw my Great eagle which I painted for my  LOTR Bilbo's Bash army.  That will be very nice.  As a substitute for the original eagle, I am doing my favorite of all, the Griffon.

I really like this guy!  Here are some images of the preparation.

First, the parts...

Using my usual glue / green stuff / glue technique, I put the body together

I used the same idea to glue the paws to the base.

I did a little green stuff work to clean up those joints.

Now for the wings.  Once again, glue /gs/ glue.  First wing in position.

The idea behind this technique is twofold.  First, it fills in some of the gaps that can happen in these kids of joints where pins are not always the best idea.  It also means that I don't have to sit there holding it in place as the glue sets!  You can see the bead of glue in this image, with the green stuff on the inner wing surface.

Wings attached, I did some more clean up work on the feather joint.

I needed a few 50mm square bases for these CMON birds, which meant I dug out some super thick plasticard which I got from Back 2 Base-ix.  I used the razor saw to slice through it...

And glued the base of the griffon to it once the burrs on the edges had been filed away.  I also used some Apoxy sculpt to increase the amount of base and be a little more decorative...

Another view of the extra material which I sculpted.  I added some fine and coarse gravel as well.

I had some of the brown craft paint mixed with black primer out on the palette, so I thought I would put a layer on the base when all the gravel and rocks dried.

I will do additional posts on the rider, and the painting of this beast!  Stay tuned!!!

Let's take it from the top...

Now for some top views to show the freehand a little better :-)

Just like the first Fiend, putting all these straight lines on such a curved surface was a challenge.  Somewhat easier the second time around, however.

If you wanted to see the bases, I suggest checking out the two posts that show how they were created.  Lots of images there! :-)

There could be some fun uses for the rest of the unused parts... especially all those giant metal tentacles!

The second Fiend...

Yes, another one of these big brutes.  I know they are very rough on Dark Eldar!

Here are some side views.  All the guns and heads were magnetized, just like the other one.

I used weathering powders on these two, just like I did with the Storm Eagles.  It's tricky, since it made it more difficult to keep from getting powders where I didn't want them to go!

I did learn to use the powders for something besides weathering.  I had purchased some colors that worked very well for shading and smoothing out the gold areas, which was neat!

I did a similar effect on a Hell Drake. which I will post here at a later date.  I have since used that technique on cloaks and other surfaces.

The life of a mini painter :-)

Minis everywhere!!!

For months now, I have been prepping minis for the painting videos.  These images represent a small poriton of what I have been working on!

I have already posted pictures of the big Ultraforge demons that were prepped before Adepticon.  While I was at Adepticon, I purchased some more of the big birds for those videos.  I am priming a few of those today.  One of the eagles has been discontinued, so I replaced it with the Griffon (I will do a post on that).

Some of the videos will have multiple minis in them, so I can show some of the techniques a little better.  There are a few topics (such blood, freehand, and so on, where the focus is not on painting the flesh, armor, etc.)  

I also wanted as many options open to me as possible, so there are two different minis for a few videos.  When I do the 'storyboard' figures, I can determine which is the best. :-)

I am still waiting on my box of Reaper Bones figures to arrive.  That has some fire elementals that I figured would be fun.  I purchased a few of the regular ones just in case the box is delayed for some reason.

You can see the crazy unicorns that I had to convert into regular horses.  It was made more difficult by virtue  of all the goat stuff they sculpted on the front legs and face.

You can also see the skeleton cavalry that I got for the bones video, ghosts for the glowing vids, the trolls for green flesh, and much more.

This image has one of the Syl-Iriah figures in the front of the scene.  Another one came in today, so I will be prepping that.

Once I had the bases made and all the extra gravel brushed away, they went into these boxes.

More minis!!

Here's some of the Urban Mammoth figures for a freehand video...

A big collection, but still only a part of the whole.  They are waiting for some primer.

I did an experiment with the craft paint I have been using on the big terrain pieces.  I am tired of using up lots of my good miniature paint on cork and rocks.  So, something new to test!  It really worked like a charm.  I mixed a tiny bit of black primer with it, along with a bit of dark purple.  The coverage was fantastic, and it got into all those crevices so easily.

Now to prime the minis.  I mixed white and black to get better holding power than the white offers.  Where  the grey is lighter, that's where I will be doing the lightest colors.  I may even go over it again with white in some cases.

Since these images were shot, two more big boxes of Raging Heroes minis have come in, with tons of amazing figures for the videos.  I have already been prepping those.

Look... it flies!!

What's that in the sky?  Is it a bird?  A plane?  No, it's a huge chunk of resin, riding on top of another chunk of resin. :-)

When I look at how the Razorwing relates in scale to the flying base and compare it to this monster, it is pretty crazy.  Even if it was not so heavy, the size difference is so obvious.

I had learned a lot on the previous Eagle about where to place the flying stand to balance this out.  It is pretty steady, actually.

I believe the base is made by Dragonforge Designs.  They make very high quality bases of many different designs, and for many game systems.

The neat thing about the flying base is that I could get some new angles for pictures.

I just feel very sorry for whoever has to deal with two of these in a game.  That power of the machine spirit is nasty with just one of these!

Some of those interesting views...

Now this is REALLY cool...

Lookie here.  I have many favorite Raging Heroes figures, but this one vaulted to the upper tier by virtue of the ease with which it can be assembled.  You wouldn't think so to look at it.  Even I was hesitant at first, thinking there would be all sorts of filing, shaving, pinning, and so on.  All of the usual things you would expect from a metal miniature of this complexity.

Not so!  The 4 wings fit so well into their slots, I could put all 4 in place with no pins.  Not even glue or blue tack!  Wow.  All of the various arm options also fit well.  I chose these so that they would have images of a different setup than their current glory shot.

She is called Syl-Iriah, and this is the 'heroic' scale.  It can fit on a 20mm square base, if needed.  I chose to put mine on one of my woodland theme bases.  You can get this one on CMON in the Groundwerks line.  It is also featured in one of the videos.

I am looking through lots of butterfly images.  My first thought is to do a Monarch butterfly color scheme.  We saw one a few days ago, and it got me thinking about it. :-)

This is the image which they use on their site.

I also have the epic sized version of this, and I want to something really special.  Stay tuned!!!!

Using the terrain pieces!

The principle behind terrain pieces is that they should be used early and often. :-)  Here are some images I shot of the terrain pieces (which you may recognize) being used at the Wandering Dragon for some Warmachine!

It was really neat to see all the terrain out on many different boards.  This is the Grand Championship board, which Kevin made a bunch of 3 x 3 boards which fill up the rest of the room.  Quite the beehive of activity!

There were games of Warmachine being played all evening long, which was very cool to see on this board.  I am pretty sure that it is where Rich and I will be returning to test out my new Arachnids of Evil list for Bilbo's Bash.  I remember all the 'training' games we played on this thing.  There are lots of battle reports on those in the LOTR section.

Well, I have to get back to priming now.  About 4 dozen minis... so here I go!