Law of the Jungle

The Algoryn invade a jungle world in this latest episode of Gates of Antares.  I had to come up with as many different themes and color schemes as possible for this faction, which is always the most interesting phase of creating any army!

Thus far, I have done the Ice World, the Spartan theme, and a few others.  I wanted to have some of these interacting with their environment as much as possible!

The leaves are a special paper kit, which also comes with very fine wire to support them.  They can be bent and shaped, and painting them doesn't warp the leaves, which is quite amazing!

I will have this guy, as well as all the other color test figures at Adepticon in just a few short days!  I will be in the Hobby Lounge, which we have named Fort Wappel.  Come and see me there, since I will be doing lots of impromptu demos!!

That Man is a Beast!

Back to Mierce Miniatures, and a return to the beastman line.  There are a number of interesting factions that cover just about any kind of creature you can imagine.  Birds, Bears, Octopus, Rats, Dragons, Demons and sooo many beasties.

These beastmen are from the "human" sized set, which is the first of several sizes.  Usually you will find this size, and ogre size, followed by a monstrous infantry and even a colossal beast.

Units of the human sized always have command figures, with banners, extra weapons, and so on,

There are also a number of mounted units as well, but the monstrous mounts are among my favorites!

Clowning Around

Here's another Reaper BONES figure for you, with a very different color theme than the previous version!

Cathy had suggested a clownfish motif after we looked at some of the unpainted Reapercon examples that were sitting around.  They had been used as subject matter for the class on Clear Reaper paints.

In fact, I will be doing a set of that class at Nova Open this year, showing how the clear paints can be thinned down to great effect for glazing!

In this example, I worked in the Clear Red, Clear Yellow (both very intense and highly pigmented colors), with mixtures of the Green, Purple and Blue for the darks.  You can even use the liner paints as I did to enhance those dark colors even more.

Da Druben!

Over there, lads!  Here's another addition to the winter German force from Bolt Action.

The snow technique was done with the Secret Weapon Miniatures crushed glass method, as you have seen in similar blog posts and facebook live videos.

I have a number of winter projects in the works, including the winter Soviets, winter American and winter Hungarian armies.  Stay tuned for all of these forces, both on the blog and on live videos!

Out for a Stroll

These four Zombie Vikings (or zombie Saxons) must have been pieces from a board game, because the plastic had that kind of consistency.

A series of earth tones kept the overall colors scheme muted, and a few rust/corrosion effects were put in for good measure.

There wasn't anything super fancy about these figures, but these compressed palette exercises are always useful!

The plastic was slightly bendy, but not enough to make painting things such as the swords too difficult.

Scaley Steed

We head to the way back machine to check out another old unit from days gone by.  This Cold One and Saurus rider were part of the first Golden Demon winning unit that I ever did in 2007.

Lizardmen were my first Warhammer army, and this was the most challenging of the early units.  I heavily converted some Saurus Warriors to make the Temple Guard, along with the Terradons and Engines of the Gods.

The unit itself never saw much action, since it was too slow to keep up with other fast units, and not fast enough to outflank most infantry blocks.

I believe I have mentioned the vast amount of failed Stupidity rolls with these poor guys.  After failing that 4 turns in a row, I gave up on the unit for good.  The opponent didn't even bother to shoot at or charge them, since they had wandered aimlessly into a forest, not scoring a single point.

Some you you will also recognize that these are the older version on the cold ones from 2002-3.  While the more recent plastic versions have more dynamism than these... there is sentimental value in the original unit!

A Brand New Medium!

This will be an unusual blog post today, in the form of a link.

I have been experimenting with facebook live broadcasts the last few weeks, to see how those work, and many of the technical aspects involved.

With each session, I learn a bit more, and there is new equipment that I am trying to secure for future improvements.  The best thing about them is that there is no limit to the number of people who can watch and participate as it's happening.

This makes them very interactive, yet there are no interruptions in the lesson... the questions only add to it!  That's great!

For the moment. I am using an ancient phone for these broadcasts.  I am hoping to get updated equipment which should make a huge difference right away.

In the meantime, I will focus more on large scale figures and vehicles, since it seems that the current device works more readily with them.

My ultimate goal is to be able to do sessions like these almost every day, if not a few shorter sessions each day.  Basically, I want to just "turn the camera on" and let people see whatever it is that I am working on at the moment.

Here's a link to the most recent session, where I continue to work on the Trenchworx vehicles, testing out a brand new paint!

This is from Wilder, and these thinner, fast drying oils are fantastic!  They are so much like the regular miniature paints we all use, but with all the benefits of oil paints... take a look:

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