Are you Board yet? Armies on parade display board stage one...

Since there is very little time left for the Armies on Parade qualifier, you can be sure to see more and more images here in the next 11 days! :-)

For those who did not see this graph layout of the army board:


My first task was to build the bottom level of the temple, to see if my calculations were correct.  I used a piece of masonite, and glued down a few layers of foam board.  I made the pillars out of used green stuff tubes, sculpey, and apoxy sculpt.  You can see that a few Stalkers are climbing on a few of the pillars.




You can see I have put down most of the miniatures that are meant to go in this lower level.  I discovered that I was going to have to leave behind the special movement trays I had created.



Here are some images of the statuary that will go on the upper "above ground" level.  I made one of these sphinxes, and then cast it.


My original plan for lighting the board proved to be impractical for a variety of reasons.  This turned out to be very fortuitous, as I much prefer my new plan, which uses "under cabinet" LED's that are battery powered, and very easy to get to!



This is by no means a final result... simply a test.  There is still going to be another big light on the back wall, which will be representing the Eye of the new God.



I will be using some fibre optics on the ceiling of the lower level, with each strand poking througha hole in the celiing representing a star in a night sky.  You can't see that right now, but I will be sure to take photos of that process!

Today I put a few layers of magnetic primer on my board, so that the miniatures could be carried into the convention hall on the board itself.  Please note... this is a tricky medium.  Very toxic with lots of vapors, and you have to mix it very well.  It does not melt foam, which is good!  It takes at least 3 layers for it to hold down a figure using refrigerator style magnets.

I did it outside to cut down on the vapors.  The directions say you can use any kind of paint on this, so we shall see tomorrow!





Here are a few fun pictures I snapped after I turned out the lights in the room! :-)

Brooding over one's Birthday? Then and now...

As a painter contemplates another birthday, he looks back once again at a "then and now" miniature, as I did with the Mean Jelly Bean.

This time it is a Grist from Dark Age Games (Brood faction).  It is not the exact same miniature, as this was sculpted to be an alternate pose, but you get the idea :-)





And now for the original one, painted at least 5-6 years earlier!

Meet the South Side Soul Stealers

This was a fun Necromantic team I painted for myself for a long caput Blood Bowl league.  I wish I had shots of the field, but I can't find any.  It was a foam field with textured squares that were painted just like the stone bases of the miniatures.  I think I played almost 20 regular season games with them.  I won a playoff game (or two?), and then lost in the championship.  This was back in the day when werewolves did not have regenerate, so both of mine died during the course of that game.











Some pictures of the whole team...

More Dreads...

Here is one more Angels Solarus Dreadnought!  It is more of the standard variety.







Here's a few group shots with all of the Dreadnoughts together, and the extra weapon arms!

I love it when a plan comes together... Armies on Parade Tomb Kings

So, when you are away from the studio for the whole day, but you need to make some kind of progress on an army display board for Armies on Parade, what do you do?

You break out the ole graph paper and start planning! :-)

Most of you have probably seen the original concept sketch of the army board (included in this post as well if you haven't!).  However, some changes had to be made so that it would fit in the display cases, and I needed to explain the story of the army in a more pictorial form.  My first idea was to tell the story through heiroglyphs that the viewers could read and translate using a guide.

However, that proved to be impractical, in that the glyphs would be too small for people to see from the estimated distance, not to mention that they would not have the time to do all that translation! 

Since I knew I wanted to have more of a 'backdrop' on the army board, via a wall/gate, I thought I could use that space like a giant billboard, showing images of the God and his reluctant ally, and how that uneasy alliance came to be.

The first drawing is more of a floor plan.  I needed to figure out just how much I could fit inside the temple, and if the movement trays would work in that confined space.  As it turns out, I will have to abandon my movement trays in order to get everything to fit in there.  You can see the measurements taken of the various units and their respective 'footprints'.  It was clear right away that I would need to break them up into smaller more flexible bits!

The board is 24 x 26, and you can see that one square on the plan is equal to 1 inch.  Man did space get used up fast!  I had to leave room enough for the lights as well.  I realize that is is a bit hard to translate all the information on the drawing, as it is mostly shorthand intended only for me.  I just thought it would be fun to see that now, since the board itself will be made next week.

I had to deal with 2 levels worth of construction and units, hence the dashes, filed in areas, and other scribbles!




This set of drawings was done to get a feel for how I wanted to do the actual graphics, and find very specific reference images to work from.  Most of these are for the exterior temple sections, but a few also cover the inner sanctum portion of the temple.  I think that the totality of all these images and glyphs should get the point of the story across quickly.  You can see that story in the previous threads about the army.  The overall design of the back wall/gate could change dramatically depending on what happens when I build it! :-)


I also had to come up with an Egyptian looking rendering of the Lord of Change Tzeentch god.  It proved to be far more difficult than I anticipated.  The pylon might also change in design as well.


Here is the original concept art for the board:

It's getting Dark out there... Dark Age Forsaken

Here's another batch that I painted for Dark Age.  These are a variety of Forsaken minis.  Some are St. Luke faction, some are St. Johns, etc.

Converted Saurus Hero

Sorry, no puns tonight folks!  Way too tired to even think straight.

Here is a fun saurus hero that was done as a Christmas present for a fellow lizardman player.  It was made from a basic plastic saurus, some green stuff and brown stuff, and a little plasticard.  If I can find the original artwork that inspired it, I will include it here.