A new Breed of Soldier

This is part of a set of miniatures from Puppets War, I believe.  They were quite different from what I have been working on lately!

I have been painting a lot of historical and fantasy figures, and going back to sci-fi was a bit of a refresher course :-)

That is not a bad thing to do once in a while... switch up genres and give yourself a fresh perspective on projects, and perhaps even get some new ideas in the process!

Ice Band Cometh

We continue with the "Army of many companies", a warband consisting of figures from Mantic, Reaper and Privateer Press.

Some are very old, and some are brand new.  Here are some of the old...

I have painted a few of these several times over the years!  The Ice Queen is a figure that I used to film the "Painting the Blues Away" color theory episode.

Here's some of the new, which I believe are from Mantic.

The head was replaced on the left figure by a Games Workshop head.

The new and the old side by side... Mantic and Reaper.

More of the warband, including a large critter from Mantic.

Creating a warband such as this out of many figures from different manufacturers can pose a real challenge, due to the wide variations in sculpting styles, etc.  Finding those 'commonalities' is even more difficult when the age of the sculpts varies so much!  These must span 15+ years.

It was less of a challenge for me, since I have been cranking out the "Army Painter" video series!  Each of those units requires a different approach, and along the way I have learned a LOT.  I try to find new approaches in each series that I do, and Series 7 is already in production!

These are usually 5 episodes long, and have roughly 11-12 hours of tutorials in them.  I show the entire unit from start to finish... from basing to final details.

That $15 pledge also provides access to all the other tutorials done that month, including the Dark Sword figures, basing episodes, and other general techniques.  It's all right here:  www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Tossing Rocks

I have been asked many times if I thought that the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures might work for other games, and I have showed people the alternate paint schemes and spear conversions as an example.

In this case, the requirement was creating some crew for 2 weapons (which I think came from one of the Zombicide games).  To create them, I cut away the shield and sword arms and replaced them with some of the Winter Soviet arms from Bolt Action.

The scale of the arms and hands matched up well, and having plain "sleeves" worked well with the color scheme and even the notion of being a weapon team.  You would not want chainmail sleeves getting caught up in the machinery!

The weapons can either be set up like this, without their bases... or

Placed on a custom base for game play if needed!  I made a base similar to this for the Night's watch Scorpion crew:  https://wappellious.blogspot.com/2018/11/steaks-for-dinner.html

Those bases did make a nice setting for the weapons.  I will be making some more tutorials on this type of base for the Patreon Page:  www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Here's one of the latest tutorials on basing Song of Ice and Fire armies:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INPfPLCTZcE

The Beast Inside

Yet another Army Painting tutorial series begins!  This time we have the Broolian Beastmen Close Combat Squad from Victoria Miniatures.  Here's a link to the first episode, where the "color test" figure is painted:  https://youtu.be/glLigbsoHRQ

The Color Test figure is always very important, because it is where you can figure out the color scheme of your army, and how long various effects might take on each one!  Keeping track of how long it takes you to paint a certain effect on the mini will let you know if you want to spend that much time executing that effect on every figure in the army, or just save it for special characters.  

This is something that I discuss over and over again in all my Army Painting series on the Patreon Page.  I call it the "Currency of Time", and it is in limited supply for all of us.  While there are nifty things that we would all like to do on our armies, sometimes choices have to be made.

Hopefully these tutorials help you on those decisions, but also give you a LOT of added tools and knowledge to make those less difficult.  After all, if the figures take less time to paint, you have more time for special effects... or even another army! ;-)

The rest of the multi part series will be available to the patrons of the Patreon Page.  Signing up for the $15 Army Paintinng pledge level will provide access to all the previous series (there are 7 already!) since those are designed to build on what has gone before.  That means you will have at least 13-20 hours of video tutorials each month, filled with all kinds of techniques and mediums!  Here's the link: www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Taking Flight

While I really love all the Creature Caster monsters, I had been looking forward to this one quite a bit.  The butterfly theme meant that I could do some nifty freehand on the wings and many other surfaces too!

It also turned into a real color theory exercise, as I constantly showed how to "carry" a specific color across the entire miniature.  That is, if you have orange in one area, you should have at least a suggestion of that on other locations around the figure.

The teal color also needed to be brought from the wings, down through the figure and even into the base, along with the tans and even those purple/magenta tones!

At a few points during the video, I turn off all the saturation, which leaves us with only the black and white value scale to show shape and dimension.  This is done to emphasize all the different forms of contrast that I mention so often during each of my tutorials.

The base was also a lot of fun, and I was able to go wild with all types of foliage and even water effects!  I filmed an entire 30 minute segment on adding flock, cut leaves and home made static grass tufts and flowers.  There were even some water effects added in at the very end.

There are other instances where I show you how to make those "course corrections" during the painting process, where you see that one area will have to be altered so that it can align with things that are painted on the surrounding surfaces.

I have the first episode of the series set to 'public' so that you can get an idea of how the process begins.  It is very brisk, to say the least!  I use the larger brushes and block in colors and shading right away, just as if I were working on one of my 2D art pieces.  Oh, there's also a 2D art video available to the patrons as well!

Here's a link to that first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gverWb5dj9k

Here is a link to the Patreon Page, where you can join in to see the complete series of this wonderful Creature Caster figure!  Keep in mind, I already have 2 more tutorials in the filming process already, so get in now and watch all those amazing demons come to life on screen!  www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Comfy Chair

We've heard of Fat Cats in politics before, but now the political track of Song of Ice and Fire has its very own.  Meet Caster, one of the new figures that is part of the Free Folk Starter box!

I had a lot of fun painting this piece, utilizing a number of subtle glazes to get pink and purple in shadow areas of greenish colors, and vice versa.  The idea is to keep what is a very sedentary figure looking more interesting than if it were all shaded in the same boring gradients of brown!

You can also see shades of blue incorporated in the upper parts of the figure, which help to provide even more contrast to the beet red parts of the face.  I tried to follow the concept art on the card as closely as possible.  You can see that at work in the Free Folk Savage Giant video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LvJv3dyjEw

I already have about 16 hours of painting videos strictly for Song of Ice and Fire available to the Patrons on the Patreon Page, and more are being added every week!  I have Night's watch under way right now for the Army Painter pledge level, with Spearwives about to begin.  You can check that out here:  www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

A Fungus Among Us: A future basing tutorial

I had a lot of fun creating bases for these little goblins from Aenor Miniatures.  So much fun, I thought I would film a quick how to video on that process!

As I mentioned, most of these are from Aenor Miniatures, and here's a link to the site:  https://www.aenorminiatures.com/en

The main parts of the bases were made using the tree bark and oxide paste process.  The mushrooms were made from green stuff, and painted with a combo of regular miniatures paint and the Moss & Lichen texture paint from Vallejo.

I had to match previous bases that you have already seen on the trolls, so the mushrooms had to be kept to the same scale and color.  This tutorial will be available on the Patreon Page for the folks who have signed up for the Basing or Army Painter pledge levels!  www.patreon.com/JamesWappel