Monday, June 30, 2014

There will be new dragons...


I believe these images are from the first time I painted the Ultraforge Dragon.  I really loved this one, since it was not only a spectacular sculpt, it was engineered quite well.

The wings were magnetized, and could be removed.  Once removed, this piece took up very little room in a case!  The pose was also very workable in a game of D & D or WFB, since the head and tail will both stay out of the way for figures making base to base contact.


As you can see, it is at once very delicate, but also solid.  It was not hard to prep and assemble at all.


The incredibly talented artist who sculpted this has since started his own company, and launched a very successful kickstarter.  Why not?  He is amazing!


The new sculpts are even more wondrous than this... so I look forward to painting those!


The personality is still there, but the concepts and the sculpting are even more advanced... if that's possible!


The armor on this was a dream to paint.  Lots of fine detail, and the shapes were very easy to render in the NMM technique.  That's amazing, given the complexity of the pose and the angles needed for coverage.


I believe this is still available from Ultraforge, and for a very reasonable price.


No need for the blues when you have sprues!


While not everyone who will read this will have the Happy Seppuku moulds that I used on the sculpey, you all have sprues!

Yes, they are everywhere... in boxes, in piles, on the floor...

The new generation of sprues (in this case by Wild West Exodus) struck me as being ideal for making pipes and conduits.


I cut up a few of them to see how they might work out.  There are a few limitations, as you don't want them to get in the way of the miniatures.  It is also somewhat difficult, to "anchor" the ends of these sprue pieces.


Here we have one more of the sci-fi patterns from Happy Seppuku moulds.  As before, I pressed a sheet of sculpey with the mould to get the texture, and baked it afterwards.


I used some cork to serve as a platform for the sculpey pieces and sprues.


I had a few chunks of the plasticard deck plating, so I put that as an accent on a few of the larger bases.


All the pieces combined.  The sprue is anchored at one end with a 'brick' of sculpey.


The next base.  This time I will use the flat end of the sprue to glue to the metal plates.


Still, it is anchored at one end.


On this base, I put in a few of my trusty small scale conduits.


On a smaller base, I used one of the sprue chunks to create a vignette, with two un-anchored points.


I followed that up with a few more bases using the sprues... I like the curved pieces, since it means I can easily keep it out of the way of the miniature's footprint.


This one had a very low to the ground sprue, so a figure could easily step over it.


An all sculpey base for the last one in the set.


The set as a whole.  Lots of fun!  I will show you some WIP images of the painting process, just like the first set.