The life of a mini painter :-)

Minis everywhere!!!

For months now, I have been prepping minis for the painting videos.  These images represent a small poriton of what I have been working on!

I have already posted pictures of the big Ultraforge demons that were prepped before Adepticon.  While I was at Adepticon, I purchased some more of the big birds for those videos.  I am priming a few of those today.  One of the eagles has been discontinued, so I replaced it with the Griffon (I will do a post on that).

Some of the videos will have multiple minis in them, so I can show some of the techniques a little better.  There are a few topics (such blood, freehand, and so on, where the focus is not on painting the flesh, armor, etc.)  

I also wanted as many options open to me as possible, so there are two different minis for a few videos.  When I do the 'storyboard' figures, I can determine which is the best. :-)

I am still waiting on my box of Reaper Bones figures to arrive.  That has some fire elementals that I figured would be fun.  I purchased a few of the regular ones just in case the box is delayed for some reason.

You can see the crazy unicorns that I had to convert into regular horses.  It was made more difficult by virtue  of all the goat stuff they sculpted on the front legs and face.

You can also see the skeleton cavalry that I got for the bones video, ghosts for the glowing vids, the trolls for green flesh, and much more.

This image has one of the Syl-Iriah figures in the front of the scene.  Another one came in today, so I will be prepping that.

Once I had the bases made and all the extra gravel brushed away, they went into these boxes.

More minis!!

Here's some of the Urban Mammoth figures for a freehand video...

A big collection, but still only a part of the whole.  They are waiting for some primer.

I did an experiment with the craft paint I have been using on the big terrain pieces.  I am tired of using up lots of my good miniature paint on cork and rocks.  So, something new to test!  It really worked like a charm.  I mixed a tiny bit of black primer with it, along with a bit of dark purple.  The coverage was fantastic, and it got into all those crevices so easily.

Now to prime the minis.  I mixed white and black to get better holding power than the white offers.  Where  the grey is lighter, that's where I will be doing the lightest colors.  I may even go over it again with white in some cases.

Since these images were shot, two more big boxes of Raging Heroes minis have come in, with tons of amazing figures for the videos.  I have already been prepping those.

Look... it flies!!

What's that in the sky?  Is it a bird?  A plane?  No, it's a huge chunk of resin, riding on top of another chunk of resin. :-)

When I look at how the Razorwing relates in scale to the flying base and compare it to this monster, it is pretty crazy.  Even if it was not so heavy, the size difference is so obvious.

I had learned a lot on the previous Eagle about where to place the flying stand to balance this out.  It is pretty steady, actually.

I believe the base is made by Dragonforge Designs.  They make very high quality bases of many different designs, and for many game systems.

The neat thing about the flying base is that I could get some new angles for pictures.

I just feel very sorry for whoever has to deal with two of these in a game.  That power of the machine spirit is nasty with just one of these!

Some of those interesting views...

Now this is REALLY cool...

Lookie here.  I have many favorite Raging Heroes figures, but this one vaulted to the upper tier by virtue of the ease with which it can be assembled.  You wouldn't think so to look at it.  Even I was hesitant at first, thinking there would be all sorts of filing, shaving, pinning, and so on.  All of the usual things you would expect from a metal miniature of this complexity.

Not so!  The 4 wings fit so well into their slots, I could put all 4 in place with no pins.  Not even glue or blue tack!  Wow.  All of the various arm options also fit well.  I chose these so that they would have images of a different setup than their current glory shot.

She is called Syl-Iriah, and this is the 'heroic' scale.  It can fit on a 20mm square base, if needed.  I chose to put mine on one of my woodland theme bases.  You can get this one on CMON in the Groundwerks line.  It is also featured in one of the videos.

I am looking through lots of butterfly images.  My first thought is to do a Monarch butterfly color scheme.  We saw one a few days ago, and it got me thinking about it. :-)

This is the image which they use on their site.

I also have the epic sized version of this, and I want to something really special.  Stay tuned!!!!

Using the terrain pieces!

The principle behind terrain pieces is that they should be used early and often. :-)  Here are some images I shot of the terrain pieces (which you may recognize) being used at the Wandering Dragon for some Warmachine!

It was really neat to see all the terrain out on many different boards.  This is the Grand Championship board, which Kevin made a bunch of 3 x 3 boards which fill up the rest of the room.  Quite the beehive of activity!

There were games of Warmachine being played all evening long, which was very cool to see on this board.  I am pretty sure that it is where Rich and I will be returning to test out my new Arachnids of Evil list for Bilbo's Bash.  I remember all the 'training' games we played on this thing.  There are lots of battle reports on those in the LOTR section.

Well, I have to get back to priming now.  About 4 dozen minis... so here I go!

Something from Raging Heroes

Here is a pretty fascinating figure form Raging Heroes.  This is called Kahn-Urkan, and it is the "Heroic" scale.  The base on which he's standing is 50mm.

So, he's got some very hefty wings!

As with all Raging Heroes figures, he comes with many options.  There is another head, another shoulder armor set, and 4 different weapons!  Not only does this give you some great choices to make it exactly what you would like, you end up with lots of fantastic conversion bits.

I know I will be using one of the extra blades for my Dark Eldar!

What has amazed me about some of these winged figures from Raging Heroes is how well they fit.  It's unreal.  The next miniature I will be featuring had 4 wings that fit so snugly that I had all 4 of them attached with no glue or pins!

That speaks to the quality of the casting.  As usual, not lots of nasty flash.

I am using this snow base so that I can make him into a frost demon.  Should be fun!!!!

These guys are beasts!

At first, I didn't think these guys were too nasty in a game.  I was wrong.

With 4 hull points, walker traits (and armor to go with that) and high strength attacks, these suckers are brutal.

I think they are also demons, so they get those saves, and a chance to repair themselves.  As if they needed it!

Just one of these inflicted some major damage to the Dark Eldar in that practice tournament game that we did a while back.

This was the set of options that was used, not the plasma version.  I am sure that one is also very nasty.

This guy was done in an Iron Warriors type of scheme.  It was also the vehicle where I discovered the new use for the Vallejo transparent red.

Some of you may recall the blog post that describes the way I magnetized the weapons and the heads.

There are also some blog posts that show how the base was made .  If you have not seen those, be sure to check them out!!!

Ground level

One more post on the Storm Eagle!  This time from ground level.

The eagle head freehand is definitely my favorite of all the Imperial Fist iconography that I developed for this army project.

The lighter color of the Imperial Fists definitely facilitated the weathering very well.  It has been very cool to work out all sorts of techniques for the weathering!

I love what the streaks and stains do to the logos and icons.  For lack of a better term, it makes them look less 'painted on'...

I did a little change to the fortress icon as well for this vehicle.  That is a terrain piece that I will be making.

It will be a four sided piece, with a modular wall and modular towers for each corner.  Of course, there will be the central tower as well. :-)  Bastion, anyone?

These next few views show the additional nose mounted weapons...

And the missile launcher...

I have some posts coming up that will feature a few amazing miniatures from Raging Heroes, along with some photos of dozens of figures that I have been prepping for the painting videos.  Even more are on their way right now!