Yay for the red team!

Well... one of the red teams at least.

C-Red Nation has to wait another game, but at least the Blackhawks are advancing!  The series could certainly gone the other way, but I am very glad to have the possibility of coming home from Reapercon to the final stages of that series.

It won't be too easy to keep tabs on it out in Texas, but I will do what I can!

In the meantime, the final Thallax before a set of Three Amigoes shots.

A touch of makeup on the dead...

As the final wall got it's demon wallpaper, it was time to think about the exterior walls.

I brought out a few weathering powders... some earth tones and a black.  Most of these were from Secret Weapon miniatures, which has a fantastic range to choose between.

Along the front entrance and the lower parts of the walls, I focused on a darker brown earth color, with a more sandy tone mixed in.

I "scumbled" those colors together right on the wall, mixing them together with the bristles of the filbert brush.

In this image, you can see that the roof was hit with a mixture of the black and reddish brown.

I continued that color mix in the form of streaks from the roof.

A new trick I discovered was to use a can of compressed air (normally for cleaning computers of dust) to sculpt the powders.  I found that I could move them around a bit, and remove excess where needed.

Wearing a mask of some kind when you do this would be a good idea.

Since the proprietor of this establishment is a very prominent politician, you see his portrait on the wall.  You will hear much more about him in future episodes, especially when my Union posse hits the field.

The posters on the outside walls definitely need their weathering effects.

I thought I would put a rug on the floor.  In the future, a casket set up and some flowers will go inside to complete the building's interior space.

A few exterior shots after posters and powders were applied.

I will do a set of completed images of this building that has some miniatures around it and inside!

So, there you have the Undertaker's building from Burn In Designs!!!

And that makes seven

Seven of ten Thralls.  Not long to go before some group shots!

As you can see, I have been incorporating lots of green with these guys, especially in the metals.

I mixed that in with the colors on the artificial leg, and on the helmet, etc.

It's getting spooky in Wappelville

So self respecting town can do without an Undertaker's establishment, especially one that experiences bloodbaths on such a routine basis!

So, the Burn In Designs version will fulfill that requirement nicely.

The building was painted before it got some special treatment...

I will be putting wallpaper on a few of my buildings, including this one.  To make sure that no light color exposed wood would show through possible gaps, I filled in the corners and edges with black.

I found some incredible papers and textures, including a very creepy wallpaper!  It looks like that 1880's style, but the design is actually made of demon faces!  Excellent!

I also created a sign with some layers of wood texture, and some faded letters.

Here's the printed version.

I was glad to see that I had measured the sign correctly!

Now to apply the wallpaper.  I used some glue sticks, starting with the easy wall.

The window walls would be more involved, but everything seemed to line up just right.

Once all the walls were complete, I broke out the weathering powders to finish things off.  Stay tuned for the next episode!!

"Tiny" red guys...

Another Thallax for you.

You could call them Mini Castellax, or Micro Thanatars :-)

It is truly unusual to see anything that's on a 40mm base not manage to stand knee high to a miniature that has a very similar shape!

A little help for the Nation.

I finally have me own version of the Flowing River Mercenary from Wild West Exodus.

Her glowing blue weapons are a true indicator that she will be teaming up with Geronio and friends of the Warrior Nation.

It seemed very appropriate from a story standpoint, and she also fits with the direction I wanted that posse to go.

So, the Nation continues to grow!!  Stay tuned for more. :-)

Just a week away!!

OK folks!  Preparations for Reapercon have been in full swing.

Shaded Basecoat, Glazing and basing are on the menu again.  This means getting lots of figures ready for painting!

I did learn something very important about BONES minis.  A hair dryer works perfectly for straightening out any warped or bent parts!  In fact, the heat from the gun seems to bend them into the exact shape you want... truly amazing.

I did have a container of very cold water on hand, so that I could dip the figure right away and seal that shape.  Amazingly enough, they stayed right where I left them.

I wanted to make some very quick aquatic style bases for the fishies.  I began with some cork.

Laying down some mica flakes, I tried to create and impression of seaweed or some other organic material.

The mica flakes were applied with a flat sculpting tool, almost like plaster on a wall.

I let this settle for a bit, and got ready for the next step!

Oxide paste would give me a bit of sandy texture, and fill in all of the big gaps that remained from the 'broccoli bases' of the fishmen.

I mixed a decent amount of elmer's glue into the oxide paste so that I could drop some fine ballast onto it, providing one more kind of texture.

This piece is being done as an example for the basing class... I exchanged bark for cork...

These are the usual types of ballast that I employ.  Heavy, medium and light.

For the Fire Giantess, I went with black lava.  I needed to create a cooled lava effect very quickly, and fill some very large gaps from the sliced broccoli bases.

Once again, I mixed in some elmer's glue to hold the ballast.  It will stick by itself, but adding the glue creates a very strong bond.

You can see how easily it builds up, and holds its shape.  This is important, as I am pulling up bits of the 'piles'  to make that puffy lava.

It did not take terribly long to get well over a dozen large minis completely based with a nice texture.

All set for priming!!!!