Death Liche painted!

OK!  Death Liche is ready to go!





Now that this guy is done, I suppose I will have to give him another try and see if I can pull that combo off! :-)





I had a blast putting the glyphs on the skull, and all the other freehand as well,  This was  a very fun piece!

Now to the Titan!

Tipping the scales... sculpting nearly finished

The last big thing to do on the Titan is the scales.  I have gone through a few designs, depending on what materials I had to work with, and how strong I thought it would be.  It also had to fit a certain dimension, allowing room for all the nearby miniatures on the board, plus it had to be a workable game piece.  I had to make sure that standard figures would be able to get into base contact.

This reduced the size of the scales from the original intent.





There is still a bit of work to be done on the weapon handle, and ther odds and ends here and there.



The colors on this piece when it is painted will likely be very similar to the Ushabti.

Clash of the Titans: Scratch sculpting a Hierotitan

Now that the sculpting process of the Hierotitan is nearly complete, I thought I would do a small set of WIP images before it gets all covered in paint!

Here is the concept sketch of the Titan, done for the art contest at Games Day last year:

That won the Best in Show for the art contest, which was very cool!  It was a nice way to pass the time while all my miniatures were in various contests.

The original armature was made with tin foil, which was then wrapped in Apoxy sculpt for the first few layers.  You can also see the plasticard/polystyrene tubing that I used to create the great weapon...




More recently, I added several more layers of green stuff.  The variations in the green that you see are very specific, in that the more yellow the mixture, the softer the material was, making it easier to sculpt.  By putting more blue into the mix, you are making it hold a better edge.







I also used liquid green stuff to do rapid feathering of rounded surfaces.  It is really handy for such things!







I am working in the scales, which will have to be attached after everything gets painted!

A very brief break from Tomb Kings...

For those of who who are not as interested in the long run Tomb Kings postings, I do apologize.  I will try to pop in a few non TK things here and there for you!  However, it has been very fun for me (and very helpful as well) to have this day by day accounting of what has been done.  When I looked at a post from the 19th of June during that "Long Night" of the qualifier, I saw just how much I had accomplished in only 10 days.

That gave me a boost to keep upright for the rest of that day.

Here's a few Ilyad ladies:

Rolling On! Chariots work in progress

This post will give you a fairly good idea of how I am going about making those chariots!  Settra was a bit of a sneak peek into this process :-)

I began by adding to the horses themselves.  There was some artwork in the army book that made me want to put these "blankets" on the horses.  I created the blanket using green stuff and pieces of plasticard on a flat surface, so that I could make a one piece mould.  Once the mould was made, all I had to do was press in some green stuff and 'poof', armored blankets.  Tin foil was used on the back side of them to keep the green stuff from sagging.







Once all the blankets were done, it was time to start painting them!  Here are the initial layers of paint, what I called my "primer painting", since I was mixing paint in with the primer.  That really cuts down on the time spent priming!







This next stage saw the development of some of the colors on the horses and the crews.  I was trying to make sure to shift the colors from one chariot to the next.




Here is a shot of the bases, showing the big design that besically established the theme of the army!


Now for the most recent image.  The front row of chariots had the horses and crew worked up some more, and some more work on the bases.  Stay tuned for more!

A few more tidbits for the army...

Here's a couple of command figures for the Tomb Kings.  Each of these guys will go with a batch of skeleton archers inside the Tomb.

Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Of course he's pale!  He is a skeleton after all.

I guess I have not even come close to catching up on sleep. :-)  Anyway, I discovered this guy a few weeks ago when I was looking for something else.  I almost squished him.

Nearly 14 months ago, in the earliest days of my excitement over Tomb Kings, I had started converting/sculpting this miniature.  I never had a death mage before, and I thought that lore might have some synergy with the Tomb King lore.  However, Death magic has that notoriously short range.  Since I wanted to have a 'fast' army of horsemen and chariots, I thought I could put a lower level liche priest on a horse and stick him in a unit of skeleton horses.

The plan was to ride up to a unit, mess with their leadership (Doom & Darkness), and then whack them with a big chariot unit with a character that had the Golden Death Mask.  It never really panned out that way.

I also thought it looked neat!

When the early tests of the army went horrifically bad, I kinda forgot all about him.

Since I was painting all these other horses (for chariots, horse archers, etc.), I began to want to see this mage be completed.  He will go in the front row with the Horse arechers on the board.

Here are some pictures:




Since I first started working on this figure, I have become much more familiar with the green stuff work needed to make these conversions have that Tomb Kings look.  I added a few extra tidbits today as I was green stuffing a whole new batch of Forgeworld commission pieces.

More images: