Basing your Wereshewolves

Recently Raging Heroes added some wonderful new figures, the Wereshewolves!  I will be doing a number of posts on them soon, but I thought I might dovetail this post onto the recent basing of the Flames of War French artillery.  

That was 15mm scale, so now it is time for the 'normal' 28mm variety.  I wanted to illustrate how the same materials can look radically different depending on the scale of the figure.

This Wereshewolf is standing on a 60mm base.  I need to create a rock face that is on an angle, so that I can make it appear if she is climbing to the edge of a precipice.  

I gathered together some tree bark, and began to "shimmy" the leading arm upward, making sure to leave space for the back feet.

It's OK to use multiple pieces of bark to get what you need in terms of shape.  This is also why I never throw any of my pieces away!

The magical Oxide Paste from Vallejo will be used as "mortar" between the layers, as usual for my "Bark and Branch" technique.

I really like this very cheap, very think super glue for this purpose.  It adds some extra holding power, dries faster than the oxide paste, and can be used for other interesting tasks on the base as well.  Did I mention that the ten tubes were 99 cents?

The initial layers of bark are in place, so I can now build on from this point.

A spare piece of bark with a wonderful texture is going to fill in this somewhat boring area.  You can see the super glue here as well.

To match the texture of the rock under the hand, I used some pieces of my bulletin board cork, which can be broken up easily into all kinds of fantastic shapes.  This is the same cork that I used for the Artillery basing... and it certainly looks different next to a 28mm monster!

The oxide paste and glue will hold the pieces in place...

You can even brush the oxide paste over all the surfaces to make the textures match a little more closely.  In this case, I will be using some more gravel to fill in the gaps.

This is what I am doing on this side.  Biggest rocks first, and then working all the way down to fine sand, just as I did on the Artillery.

I had a few extra pieces of branch which I had broken off another piece being used for a different base.  It seemed to be just right!

You can see the smaller rocks and finer gravel used to fill the gaps between the large stones.  More to come on the Basing Your Wereshewolves, so stay tuned!

A few of my closest friends

Time for another collection series!  Here we see Inquisitor Reva Garanov and his faithful Retinue.

I had a lot of fun making the conversions!  This was way back in 4th Edition 40k, so such things were in their infancy.  I hadn't really done anything like that previously.

The plasma servitor earned his back banner and Slaneesh marine helmet trophy by blasting a unit of Noise Marines with one well placed (sage guided) shot.

The guns of both servitors were sculpted from scratch in sculpey clay, using the edge holding firm grey variety.

That stuff really holds an edge, and it is very strong!

Cheers to the great Inquisitor!

You missed a spot

I think this guy was one of my favorite bloody snow figures from the Red Box Games archer set that I painted a while back.  I did four WIP articles on this group, and the final episode covered the blood/poison effects, as well as how I tried to make it appear as if the blood was sinking into the snow.

That was the most fun part of the painting process, figuring out how to do that on a completely solid surface.  Normally, I would have used more of a flock material which would have absorbed the paint naturally.  This was a real challenge, but unavoidable since I had to continue with the same style of basing as the rest of the army.

Here's a link to that part of the step by step:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/01/blood-and-poison.html

I also created a video for blood spatter and other effects, called (not surprisingly) Bloody Mess!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAu51YMREA

This and much of the rest of the Painting Pyramid series is available from me on USB drives, and also here:

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/James-Wappel-s-The-Painting-Pyramid-s/130.htm

Keen Eyes, Great Bows

It seems that I forgot to show you the finished Enslaved Guardian Archer unit with its new tray and unit filler.

It was all very simple, but it definitely gave it all a nicer look!

In fact, this "stepped" look makes it seem even more like a temple than one entirely flat surface.

It was very nice to have these open spaces to show the demon marble effect.  I can recall how disappointed I was after I put the big chariot unit's figures on their bases.  The large, complicated figures covered up well over 60% of the excruciatingly elaborate freehand work I had done on all six massive bases!

This unit proved itself to be quite valuable in tonight's game.  I may just have to do a second unit!

As with nearly everything else in the Mantic Empire of Dust army, things that had little value in another system are at least playable, if not seriously deadly.  That has proven itself in each of the three games, as I try to experiment with various units, and combinations thereof.

In an army where many things were my favorite, these guys are very sentimental.  It was in painting these that I got the inspiration to sculpt my own massive beasts for the army, and go with this sort of iridescent blue color for the skin.

Another view from above to show you the floor pattern and the hieroglyphs.

Another battle report is coming soon, and these boys will certainly be featured!!  Stay tuned...

A new Twist on Miniatures!

Since we first saw the Twisted Game universe a few years ago at Adepticon, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of these amazing miniatures!  That time has come to pass.

Wonderful figures such as this Nightingale will inspire a lot of painters to do great things.

Some of these creations have arrived at our door for some painting, and you will see those take shape over the next month.  My first thought is to stay as faithful to the concept art as possible.

One reason I like to do this is to have side by side by side images, where you journey from the initial concept to a painted figure.

There is a lot of character and style that goes into each figure, as this Feygin shows.

Every time I look at these, I notice new details... and then more!

This charming set has just about everything you could wish for in a figure.

Here is an amazing piece of terrain which is also part of the campaign.  It's going to be so much fun to paint!

These scenes give you a sense of what it all looks like in living color.  It's quite impressive!

Capturing the whimsical style of the figures in terrain form is a far more difficult task than one might imagine.  That is, if you want it to still be interesting and practical from a game play standpoint.

I have these figures all prepped and ready to go!  A blog post it coming to show what they look like assembled, so stay tuned!

Firing Positions!

This is another case of you learn something new every day.  Or at least I try to do that :-)

I have a large number of artillery pieces to base for my French Flames of War army, and today was that day!  I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I really didn't know if any of the ideas would be practical, given the more unusual circumstances of scale (1/100), and the crews.

I thought I would start with the "easier" pieces, which were the 75mm mobile anti aircraft guns.

In addition to a few types of cork, I had several grades of gravel on hand.  Again, I had some thoughts on what would and wouldn't work... but you don't really find out until you try.

I used the bulletin board cork to establish a platform for the vehicle.  Anti Aircraft guns don't do much good if they are tucked inside a trench or stuck in a forest, so I felt that being on a mound or small hill would make sense.

Also, I would be very bored basing and painting all of these things directly to the plain base stand.  One must be entertained!

This is the first of four styles of basing that I experimented with.

The critical element in this attempt would be the red oxide paste from Vallejo.  I use this all the time, and I'm sure you have seen it used in nearly all of my basing posts lately.  I like to mix in some regular white glue with it so that my rocks adhere even better.

You can see that I added a small chunk of cork as a large boulder, and then placed a few heavier bits of gravel.  I had to keep in mind that what is a somewhat large rock at 28mm scale is a massive boulder at this scale!  So, I used this grade of gravel sparingly.

Where I would normally use a medium gravel, I went towards a finer grade for my "middle" level rocks.

Fine sand was used to complete the process.  This gave slightly more texture than the oxide paste, but would not be too crazy in scale next to the tiny 15mm figures.

I placed the vehicle on the stand in order to pile up some dirt around the bracing sponsons.  I thought this might make it look like it had been firing, and was driving itself into the mud/dirt.

This is my favorite part.  I like to use this mossy material on my "bark and branch" bases to serve as dried saplings or something similar.  Here, however, I was hoping to use them as tree roots sticking out from the side of the mound.

That might convey the idea that this crest was at least partially man made, and that hastily dug positions might find these exposed roots protruding in such a manner.  The other hope was to lend a sense of scale, and make something so tiny seem bigger by adding more details.

When these strands are painted, they will sag down into the mud.  To make sure they were secure, some inexpensive, very thin super glue was dropped over the top, and covered in a bit of fine sand.

Here's what we have thus far.  The vehicle will be removed and painted, while the base is painted and flocked.

There are more experiments to come with this base, as I want to test a few different types of foliage.  I'm hoping that some of the Hangar 18 tiny leaf foliage will give me another 'scale boost'.

I also have some Woodland Scenics foliage clumps that I have been hanging onto for years.  Something tells me that this scale might be just perfect to haul it out again!  We shall find out soon!