Kentucky Derby... and PIE!

Time for some horse racin' today!  It was also time to prep more amazing Raging Heroes minis.  Here we have a bunch of Fantasy Blood Vestals.

This set just arrived Thursday.  Tree Warriors.  They will be perfect for the glazing videos.

Some shots of the preparation.  It is very straightforward, with the arms, torso, and head nicely sculpted and very solid.

They are incredibly easy to assemble.  You can also move the arms and other pieces a bit to make the poses a bit different.

Not long to get each one put together...

This picture shows a brief time lapse of one being assembled.

Ready for basing!!

OK, where's that guy with the chainsaw that thought he was so tough...

This is one of a few miniatures where the base will also be a big part of the demonstration.  I am sculpting some woodland bases for them right now!

As I sat down to prep these, I kept thinking about a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake which I had seen on facebook.  It was posted by a relative of Cathy's mom, who just happened to be in town!

I pointed to it, and said how tasty it looked, and that I wanted to make one.  Cathy's mom agreed, so we marched off to the store to get the ingredients.  About an hour later, we had it in the freezer!  Four hours after that, Cathy's dad and I cut out a few pieces to make sure that it did not taste horrible.

It almost took a diamond tipped saw to get through the crust (we used crushed chocolate Cheerios instead of rice crispy cereal), but it was a huge success!!!!

I am now calling our new invention Choc-crete.  Not only is it incredibly strong, it is delicious. :-)

The two 'sample' pieces...

And everyone joining in the next day.

Don't they make a nice couple?

And for the first time, both of the Fiends together!

Nasty buggers. :-)

Making the bases for these two was very fun.  I never had a chance to do grey marble like this.  I also came up with some new ways to do the casualties on the bases, etc.

Here's a new bird...

Well, not really a bird. :-)

While I was at Adepticon, I stopped by the CMON booth and picked up some of the Big Birds for the painting videos.  That's when I found out that one of the eagles has been discontinued.  This was the first Great Eagle that was produced.

So, the Osprey video will become the eagle video.  Many of you saw my Great eagle which I painted for my  LOTR Bilbo's Bash army.  That will be very nice.  As a substitute for the original eagle, I am doing my favorite of all, the Griffon.

I really like this guy!  Here are some images of the preparation.

First, the parts...

Using my usual glue / green stuff / glue technique, I put the body together

I used the same idea to glue the paws to the base.

I did a little green stuff work to clean up those joints.

Now for the wings.  Once again, glue /gs/ glue.  First wing in position.

The idea behind this technique is twofold.  First, it fills in some of the gaps that can happen in these kids of joints where pins are not always the best idea.  It also means that I don't have to sit there holding it in place as the glue sets!  You can see the bead of glue in this image, with the green stuff on the inner wing surface.

Wings attached, I did some more clean up work on the feather joint.

I needed a few 50mm square bases for these CMON birds, which meant I dug out some super thick plasticard which I got from Back 2 Base-ix.  I used the razor saw to slice through it...

And glued the base of the griffon to it once the burrs on the edges had been filed away.  I also used some Apoxy sculpt to increase the amount of base and be a little more decorative...

Another view of the extra material which I sculpted.  I added some fine and coarse gravel as well.

I had some of the brown craft paint mixed with black primer out on the palette, so I thought I would put a layer on the base when all the gravel and rocks dried.

I will do additional posts on the rider, and the painting of this beast!  Stay tuned!!!

Let's take it from the top...

Now for some top views to show the freehand a little better :-)

Just like the first Fiend, putting all these straight lines on such a curved surface was a challenge.  Somewhat easier the second time around, however.

If you wanted to see the bases, I suggest checking out the two posts that show how they were created.  Lots of images there! :-)

There could be some fun uses for the rest of the unused parts... especially all those giant metal tentacles!

The second Fiend...

Yes, another one of these big brutes.  I know they are very rough on Dark Eldar!

Here are some side views.  All the guns and heads were magnetized, just like the other one.

I used weathering powders on these two, just like I did with the Storm Eagles.  It's tricky, since it made it more difficult to keep from getting powders where I didn't want them to go!

I did learn to use the powders for something besides weathering.  I had purchased some colors that worked very well for shading and smoothing out the gold areas, which was neat!

I did a similar effect on a Hell Drake. which I will post here at a later date.  I have since used that technique on cloaks and other surfaces.

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...