Converting a plastic saurus into the Great and Mighty Chakax

On this fine morning after the Super Bowl, I thought I would begin the day posting some images of my custom made Chakax.

Since I was not very sure if this character would be a viable (or wise) points investment, I did not want to shell out a lots of $$$$ only to find ot that he was better in theory than in practice.  I also had a ton of extra plastic saurus which I was probably never going to use.

I figured I would have some fun and try to make myself a Chakax.  Here is a WIP image that shows all the plastic bits, as well as the green stuff and Brown stuff used to sculpt the headdress and weapon.  The white sections are baked sculpey.



And now for a finished image:





I tried this guy out in few games against 7th edition demons and also Karl Franz with that 100 point "I destroy your whole army without even rolling a dice weapon." 

It was very gratifying to see Chakax point to that particular item and say, " Hey, that's a pretty nice croquet mallet you got there, why don't you bring that over here so I can get a closer look at it... UUGH!!"  "Did that hurt?  It looked like it did.  You should have someone look at that."

Heavily converted Carnosaur (Adepticon Rogue Demon winner)

This was a very fun piece that I did a few years ago.  Someone donated a pair of old plastic dragon wings for the project, so I was off on my quest to make Loq-Qar the Terrible!

The wings were not very difficult to secure, but I did have to do a lot of sculpting around the joints to make it look cohesive and provide strength.  Liquid green stuff could have hastened the latter parts of  this process, however. 

Anyway, I was itching to do a reflected lava effect, so I went wild on this guy.  At that time I was creating a saurus "immune to psyche" spawn (the old book, obviously), and they were going to be the exact same color scheme as this.

Here are some pictures:









This shot gives the best view of the lighting...



The headdress took a lot more time to create than the wings.  I cut out some pieces of plasticard and added glyphs to it, as well as some saurus banner decorations.

The Challenge of painting Miniatures in Anime style

I recently painted these figures for Coolminiornot.com.  The line is called Soda Pop for those who are not familiar with it.  All of the miniatures are sculpted in Anime style, which presents several challenges for painting.

It is even more of a departure from the norm these days given all the hyper-weathering and muted colors which seem to be required on all minis.  As a result of this kind of sculpting, you have very large expanses of open areas which are painted in flat, smooth, bright colors.  The hair on the two large creatures is a good example.

I was instructed not to create any hair textures as I painted it, which is something I normally would have done.  All the colors had to be high chroma.  Now for the images:









While I was painting these, I was working on some Confrontation minis using the more current style of weathering and lower chroma palette.  That made my life much less fun! :-)

Images of a few Skink and Kroxigor units

Anyone who knows me or has seen / played against my Lizardman army is well aware of my love for the skinks, and the skink and Kroxigor (skrox) combined units in particular.

They are my favorite units in my army as they are so flexible.  You can make "small" units of them, with 16 skinks and two kroxigors.  If you give them full command, they are a little over 200 points, and you get some amazing abilities. It is fast, LD7, causes fear, has 3 ranks, poison shots, and even six ST 6 attacks! I field as many as five of them in some games. 

They also have a relatively small profile for that kind of punch, which means that template weapons don't have to scatter very much to miss them entirely.  And gee whiz, nobody uses artillery in 8th edition. ;-)  That small target aspect ratio is great, but the small footprint also gets you through the higher amounts of nasty terrain you see these days.

Here are just a few of my skrox units.  I chose to do each unit in a different color scheme to represent various work gangs.  Some are "Glyph Skinks", others are Engineers, Painters, etc.






In these images, you can see how the movement trays were created.  I used the same sculpey bits that were utilitzed on the miniature bases.  All of my moevement trays are leftover pieces of mattboard.  They are very smooth, and slide across the tables nicely.  After I witnessed multiple instances of units bouncing across sand and gravel tabletops suffering from the 'Electric Football' effect, I thought this was the best way to avoid that!



All of the minis were magnetized as well.  The ridge of sculpey around the edge of the tray helped to keep them in place as well.



I have pictures of some other units of this size....





And one more unit that is actually up on ebay right now:







This image has a close up of some converted plastic skinks of the old variety.  Most of the skinks in this unit are the original metal javelins.  Using the shields from the more recent plastic skink kits worked very well on these 'edge' skinks.



This link should take you to the auction.  There are a few more pictures there as well.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320842301304?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

The construction of the Great Temple of Blood

Since I have been posting so much about the Temple of Blood, I thought it would be fun to share some images taken during its construction.  I can't find my earliest photos of the very beginning stages, so I will update this if I can find them :-)

This is, in fact, the second Temple of Blood.  I made the first one many years ago, entirely out of sculpey!  It weighed a ton, of course, and that would not be practical for an army board/terrain piece at tournaments, etc.

As you can see, most of it was built out of foam core, which is strong and light.  It is also possible to 'weather' it almost as well as I could with sculpey.  While I was putting together the lower levels, I realized that I needed to widen the temple to accommodate movement trays.  Not just for display, but also for fighting!

On the ground level, I used baked sculpey that was carved to match all the bases and movement trays of my units.  The Blood Moat texture was built up with flex paste, and then painted with a blend of water effects and red gore.

These first images give you a pretty good idea of how it was built:






Those images show you the serpent columns, which were also made of sculpey.  The fun little altar is visible here.





Those images show the whole edifice completed, with ample amounts of sand and gravel scattered all over the kitchen.  It was like a day at the beach for several hours, minus the broken bottles.  Now on to the painting...







Once the vast majority of it was painted, it was time to put on the vegetation.  Wow, that was a huge mess!  I started by placing all the plastic aquarium plants, anchoring them with green stuff.  I grabbed several types of flock and static grass to do the majority of the temple, using a big tray to collect the avalanche of unglued debris which kept falling.  I was able to save that and use it on the Temple.





Since then I added a 6 inch by 2 foot section to the front of the board to make it more viable for Armies on Parade display.  I will post those images tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Brand New Dark Age Ice elementals... first images

In a brief departure from the Lizardmen, here are some miins which I just finished paintnig for Dark Age Games.  I believe this is a new release which is happeneing today, since I just sent them the photos!

Here are some images:

They were very fun to paint... I love doing ice effects.  The bases were made from baked sculpey that was carved and faceted.

Some close up images of units on the Temple of Blood

Here are a few close ups of units on the upper levels of the Temple.  I made sure that my skrox units and Bobo's gang of Temple Guard could fit in that top level.







This view shows some of the causeways over the Blood Moat being guarded by slamanders!





No Temple restoration army worth its salt would be without some Engines of the Gods!





I will be posting a thread on the Scratch built Engines of the Gods in the coming week.