Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Ordering from the Menu...


So, the project entered a new chapter over the weekend, as Marty lent me a hand in a task that proved to be far more frustrating and difficult than I had expected.  

The task at hand was creating the menu screens, and getting the links to match up, etc.  You do this part after videos have been rendered.  There were a number of small things that kept conspiring to make things more annoying.  Of course, sometimes the only way to find out if it worked was to render it again or to burn another test DVD, etc.

There is a template now, and that certainly makes life easier moving forward!

Now I know how difficult it can be to find your exact 'anchor points' to indicate the chapters.  If I make some notations during the editing process, that will go a lot faster! :-)


By the way, this is a 60 TV screen!  Yes, indeed.  I had never seen something that giant in person before.


The jars of wash looked like 5 gallon buckets of paint!


Lots of text blocks interspersed throughout to make things easier to absorb.  As often as possible, I created additional text blocks with definitions of art terms as I mention them, colors, brushes, techniques, and so on.  This is partly for non-English speakers, who could then type that text into a translation matrix or something if they wanted to...


The supervisors were right there, making sure everything was up to snuff.


Green with envy


More fun with colors!!!  This time green.  The miniature was from Raging Heroes, a favorite of mine.


This was a rather complex figure, but it offered some unique ways to experiment with all sorts of greens.


The wings in particular provided me with a chance to show some high saturation colors, so that they could be played out next to much more grayed down greens...


This seemed to be the best way to show how 'warm' and 'cool' greens could be played off of each other.


Then it was time for some glazing!


Getting there!  The dreaded timer nearby...


And then side by side.


Once again, many thanks to the good folks at Raging Heroes for allowing me to use such wonderful figures!


I have an earlier post which shows the assembly of these figures.  I will be putting that link on the videos, so that people can use that as a guide.  They really go together quite well!


Another Raging Heroes figure is coming up soon, which was used for the Bloody Mess video.  Stay tuned!


Tuesday, August 13, 2013

New toys for Babo!!!! Kroak emerges...


Look what showed up the other day!  I know Babo sure was happy.

The special edition Lizard book was particularly neat!  Many thanks to Jon for the generous gifts of Lustria. :-)


Since I already have a Carnosaur painted, I will definitely be making the Troglodyte.  Gotta have more skinks on big monsters!  I can use the Rider for a new Revered Guardian or Scar Vet.  Also, the left over dino parts will help me sculpt another carnosaur that is more 'dragony' for a certain lore of Beasts...


Mage Priest Babo feels quite special!  A loyal servant of the Old Ones.


Smell that new book smell!!!!!!!!!!!!!


As I have mentioned a few times already, I want to do a whole Kroak theme for the new Lizard army.  We had the Temple of Blood... and now we shall have the Temple of Kroak!

This is something that I sculpted years ago.  I will be redoing this in my new method as part of an entire Temple City.  That will make for some very cool gaming board opportunities.


Here are some more views.  The entire structure was made out of sculpey last time.  The new on will be foam board, pink foam, and cardboard, etc.  It will also be much bigger!


I am looking forward to an entirely different theme.  The new enemy will switch from Demons of Chaos to the Tainted Pharaoh, and also a marauding army of Vampire Counts.  The VC are after the Death Mask... and the Tomb Kings have interest in the Temple itself.

Their 'god' wants them to secure the Temple at all costs.


This version of Kroak was also sculpted from scratch out of sculpey.  I will be doing a new version, like the one from the old 5th edition book.  Since he cannot be targeted, and also auto-passed LOS rolls, I can make him nice and tall to torment opponents who like to cower behind cannons!!!


I found several conversions that I made years ago, which will be turned into additional Temple Guard.  These guys (and possibly more) will help to build up the small Temple Guard unit that I have now for Mage Priest Babo.


The addition of these extra Guards will turn this unit...


Into this.  

Six wide is something I want to try, with all the Predatory Fighter and other potential boosts.  Since it is an unbreakable unit with Kroak, investing more points in this makes more sense.

If I can keep some of the natural boosts nearby, like the Trog and or Stegadon (plus a swarm or two), these guys might actually be a very nasty combat unit!  Depending on available points in the list, I might even go one more rank on the back. We shall see.


Another Chaotic day...


Here is a figure I did for Cool Mini or Not a while back.  This was a 72 MM scale Chaos Marauder champion.


The base was made with Apoxy sculpt and green stuff.  My goal here was to represent all four Chaos gods, by freehand, coloration, and little things sculpted on the base.


Obvisouly, this side has much of the freehand dedicated to Khorne, along with a demon face in the rocks themselves.


Another view of the Blood God's handiwork...


Here we have some Tzeentch.  Yay!  Even some tentacles to go with it. And some Slaneesh as well for good measure. ;-)


Towards the bridle, we have a bit of Nurgle.


So, four gods in one!


Monday, August 12, 2013

Shades of Grey


Yes, more color theories!  This time, it was gray... and all the possibilities therein.


As I mention over and over in the video, gray is more than just black mixed with white!


You can do just about as much with grey as you can with more traditional colors.


The color swatches illustrated how to lighten a black with a variety of lighter colors, but also how to get that darker color without using black at all.


The shaded basecoat stage nearly complete...


And out came the glazes!  This is a great way to tint your gray colors.


Now we have a pair of Archangels!


Many thanks to John and the folks at Urban Mammoth for letting me use these ladies for the videos!


More to come!


Fly away...


Thundering hooves


The cavalry unit continues to grow!


Adding a few more to the unit, with some more on the way...


The line is starting to look more impressive!


Watch out with those pointy things!


Charge!


More to come.