Holding the line around Wappelville

It's high time that Carl Fredrickson gets his own feature here on the blog!

The Hero of Wappelville is the most (well, the only) beloved Lawman in town.

Two babies have already been named Carl in his honor.

However, if they only knew what the Dark Council had in mind for him...

They are completely unaware of the impending storm that is coming...

The citizens of Wappelville will be very surprised to see Carl walking the streets of Wappelville once again, despite his apparent demise.

Stay tuned, as Carl helps to keep Wappelville safe from the clutches of the Evil Dr. Carpathian!!!

Have sword will travel

Here's another example of that new mix I ran across a little while ago.  That would be a mix of Reaper Mint Green and Brown liner.

In this case, much more of the Mint Green was used, which was then tinted by further glazes of blue and such.

She's also available here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hand-Painted-Reaper-Miniature-Female-Paladin-Knight-Fighter-RPG-Role-Playing-DnD-/321666504514?

Unexpected color mix experimentation

This very unassuming figure was the start of a new color mixture for me... in very unanticipated fashion!

I happened to run across a Reaper color that I brought back from Anne's Alchemy lab in the Reaper factory called Mint Green.

I was playing around with it on this figure, mixing it into a variety of other colors to see what would happen.  Most notably, I mixed it with Brown Liner and ended up with the colors of this horse!  Very neat!

Normally I mix a more subdued, warmer light green to create interesting gray colors, but the intensity of the Mint Green is quite interesting.  It's very nice when you mix it with brownish red, and that makes an interesting flesh tone.

Since then, I have used this color to make other grays on lots of additional figures.

This is not uncommon for me.  When you paint 70-140 a week, there are times when you just grab whatever color happens to be closer to you, or look for something  that is not the same old same old.

By closer, it could be just a matter of inches closer. :-)

Never be afraid to experiment!!!!!!!! 

Fire and Brimstone returns to Wappelville!

Courtesy of Burn in Designs, we have the First Redemptorist Church of Salvation, soon to become another focal point of conflict in Wappelville.

This very fine building is made by the very talented Lathan, who keeps coming up with one valuable structure after another.

Not only is this a nice visual piece, it is very workable for games as well.  Plenty of nooks and crannies to hide, with plenty of windows for shooting out!

It will also block line of sight nicely.

The interior, complete with a roof and rafters for hanging banners and other such things.

For those of you who saw the last fashion war between the Outlaws and Lawmen know that the Preacher, horrified at the ever increasing levels of violence in town, had taken his family away in search of a flock that was a bit more docile.

That is, until he became plagued by a vision which kept him awake most nights.

He was approached by a shadowy figure, whose skin seemed ashen grey... as if were found in a fire pit.  The preacher would swear to all the is Holy that the stranger's cloak seemed to be covered in a pattern which mimicked the heavens.

With eyes that gleamed with a reddish tint, he informed the Preacher that the Dead walked the streets of Wappelville, and that he must return to save his flock from such a hideous fate.

Convinced that the End of Days was at hand, the Preacher decided that he would come back once again to the town of Wappelville and fight this last apocalyptic battle.

The final struggle between good and evil would require allies, informed the stranger.  The Preacher was told to seek out the Lawmen, the only force capable to banishing these abominations to the fires of Hell.

The cloaked figure left him with a final vision... dozens of shambling figures, distorted, bloated and filthy, rising from the graves recently dug in the church cemetery. 

These recently departed were even more horrible on closer inspection, as the Preacher saw what he thought were metal gears and rods... animating the walking corpses like puppets.

The Preacher on that very spot vowed that he would stop this devastation, at the cost of his own life if need be... even his soul.

Release the Kraken!

All right, there is absolutely no doubt that this particular figure from Mierce Miniatures is one of the most unique (or unusual, bizarre, whatever you want to call it!) figures that has ever made onto the painting table.

It is HUGE!  It stands on one of those giant bases which you saw me making.  Those bases are the size of a DVD, by the way!

Once I found these images in a quick Google search, I knew that it's what I wanted to paint on him.

Just assembling this beast was wild.  The head is almost 9 inches across with the tentacles, and each of those was an individual piece.

The head had to be painted (along with the body) before I could ever hope to put that all together.

I definitely needed the water effects to fill in all the gaps, as they were in super confined spaces.  There's no way I could have gotten the sculpting tool in there, so that water effects technique was fantastic!

Speaking of water effects, the base has about a dozen layers of the water effects to have some moving water.  I will probably do one more layer with some water in it to create the foaming effect!

This view shows you some of the freehand effects to get that pattern.  I really enjoyed that one, so it will probably show up on a cloak or two :-)

The 'weapons' he is holding in his hands are massive as well.  I added extra corrosion with some Oxide Paste.

Carrying the color patterns through the tentacles and the rest of the body meant a lot of going back and forth with those colors.  Fortunately, that's something that the Shaded Basecoat technique is specifically designed for.

It allows me to add and subtract, shift and change color patterns to a large degree, since I am not committing fully to completing one tiny area.  This is important, as I started to lean more and more towards a blueish purple in the darker areas, as opposed to a reddish black.

That was to offer some contrast to the oranges, but also compliment the reds.  It would make those appear warmer as well, whereas the more brownish color made the red very dim and dull.

The whole body of this guy was pretty much an exercise in reds, and it made me think of the Raging Reds video that I did for the Pyramid series.

I also tried to use some greenish grey in the 'armor' and anchor to offer a little more contrast to those reds, but also mimic the stones on which he's standing.  This meant the colors would not be isolated to just the base.  I used them in the jawbone, and the ship prow as well.

I have many more images of this beast which I will be posting, including a set of size comparison images with other monsters from the Mierce range.

A Golden Opportunity

Or, that would simply be an opportunity to paint gold NMM.

Gold is particularly fun, since it has many of the same elements as sky-earth NMM, as it is incredibly 'shiny' and reflective.

It meant that I could play around with adding greens and purples into the mix to echo some of the environment surrounding the figure, such as the base.  I also like to include a few of the Vallejo fluorescent colors in my gold mixes, to heighten that intensity of color.

Playing around with the warmer vs cooler yellow shades is a great exploration into subtle color balances.  All of these principles went into the videos for Painting Gold NMM and the Yellow Alert color theory video.

She's also available here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hand-Painted-Reaper-Miniature-Female-Paladin-Knight-Fighter-RPG-Role-Playing-DnD-/321664484888?

Hmm... I think I need a bigger gun.

The great experiment continues with the Great Elk.  I was looking through some of the dried foliage that we had gotten many years ago, and noticed this.  I had been using some of it as long, dried grass... like sawgrass, but I noticed that it had the potential to also act as those viney tree roots.

It's not super easy to get these things pulled apart, as there is some breakage involved.  It has the texture of dehydrated lichen in some ways.

Like the other giant base that I created, I wanted to use some mica flakes as filler.  This can look like many different things, depending on how you apply it.

It can be fungus growths on trees, even a little bit like the shale rocks (aka bark).  Again, it all depends on what you are applying it with.  The sculpting tool in the foreground was used to apply larger amounts so that it wold be like rocks.

Large areas are now filled in.  If you have seen previous articles on the use of mica flakes, you know that I like to use them as dried foliage!

Oxide paste is applied on top of this, which adds a little different texture, and a whole lot of structural integrity! It dries like concrete, and that's what will be needed to support the weight of the Great Elk.

The mica flakes were used as mossy growth on the rocks.  I will be applying many layers of water effects on this, just like the giant octopus base.

Now it's that time again...gravel!  As usual, 3 different scales of heavy, medium and light.

After the elmer's glue is put in place, I start by positioning the larger rocks, followed by medium, and so on.

By working from heaviest gravel to lightest, you get a more realistic looking application.  If you did it the opposite way, you would have to continuously place more and more glue on top of your other rocks...

On giant bases like this, I can have entire skeletons as opposed to the random skull here and there!  And Secret Weapon has just the thing for that!  These are great, and I have used them many times. :-)

This many look like a mess right now, but all the elements I wanted are here... rocks, ruined vehicle, gun toting guy, trees, skeletons, and more!

A few images before I primed the base.  While I would have liked to have the elk about 3/4 of an inch further back... or even a little more, I have to keep in mind that it's for my games.  This means not having him overhand too much :-)

When it comes to height, that's not much of an issue, as there are not a whole lot of things he could hide behind!  He's already bigger than just about every building we have.

Stay tuned for the next few posts, which will show these massive bases going through the painting process!