Saturday, March 30, 2013

To the Health of the Goblin Master!

Painted: A few orcs o' the Old Skull Tribe

I'd like to post these two with a shout out to Kev Adams with wishes for a speedy recovery after his being assaulted a short while ago, and another to Goblin Aid, a charity set up to help out. Donations of goblin sculpts and the traditional sort are being solicited, and from what I understand there soon will be charity figures available for purchase, both the donated goblins and some great orcs Kev did for Renegade but were never produced.

Here's my take on some Adams greenskins:

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Kev's figures were some of the first to capture my imagination many years ago, and today I've got more of Kev's greenskins than any type of figure from anyone. And if that doesn't tell you something of the esteem I hold this guy in, it also happens my nom de plume/callsign was also taken, way back then, from a figure in Kev's own greenskin army shown in the Warhammer Armies hardback.

This is also the first time I've posted figures here from my fantasy Citadel, or Oldhammer collection, which I believe remains by biggest collection of figures despite how many figures I've picked up for D&D in the past few years. And within the Oldhammer collection, the Orcs & Goblins here are themselves the most numerous faction. So far I've painted a Mordheim-sized gang out of what I hope will one day be a vast green horde. I call them the Old Skull Tribe.

I'm showing just three of these today as I was testing out a new background and didn't want to shoot too many, decide I didn't care for it, and have to reshoot. Actually, I was going to show just the two Adams figures but I had already taken pics of the following Perry figure too and hopefully no one would mind if I put him in, too.

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At any rate, this is a middle-gray background somewhere between the white I tried last post and the dark one I've been using up until then. This has been an ongoing dilemma—here's some previous thoughts—but the ballads, I believe, are now in, and the verdict, the middle gray background wins by a landslide. Not to say that you can't get good results against dark or against white, just that it's a lot riskier, in my experience. This gray background, by the way, is a sheet of Recollections brand 80 lb "smooth cardstock" paper I got from Michaels. The color name is not on the sticker.

Basing

The gang I'll be showing for awhile here were painted back in 2009-2010. I'm not sure when I'll be getting back to the project to do more. Part of the reason is a dilemma with regard to basing. You'll see I use thin, flat bases and my aim with the terrain on them was to represent generic ground that would look equally good in outdoor and underground games. This is a bit of a tall order, but I like the result of many of the figures in the gang. One of these too, the one with the green face on the shield, you'll have to excuse though, as originally I had a different terrain represented and then just covered it over with Sculptamold. His is a bit crap next to the others, and I've tried to distract your eye with a colorful bit of fungus. Generally these bases are Sculptamold with a little glue and a few bits of Woodland Scenics talus and course ballast.

I'm at a cross-roads regarding the basing. Part of me is being drawn back to using slottas and having the terrain be in the more traditional outdoor variety. Given how many figures are in the collection, the consequences of the decision are far-reaching, and that's one reason the D&D project (free of any concern for slottas) gets all the attention I have to devote to painting, these days. I might say more about this later.

Painting

Call me a traditionalist, but Citadel orcs aren't right unless they are John-Blanche-yellow-green. Browns, greys and olive hues are best saved for other figure lines and I have never been taken with the minty and shamrock greens currently en vogue. My recipe is to start over a black primer layer with a dark green. I put the dark green on my wet pallet and then build up through a brilliant middle green, through almost pure orange-yellow, and then put some few whitish yellow-tan highlights as needed. I experimented with glazes on a few figures but these and most you'll see coming up just use the straight build-from-black-to-light method. In recent times I sometimes do underpainting, and I plan to expand my use of this as I now have a quiet compressor for my airbrush, but as I said these orcs were painted years ago. The specific colors I used, from dark to light, were:

  • GW Orkhide Shade
  • P3 Necrotite green (this is the key for the intense color)
  • GW Snakebite leather and/or Bestial Brown
  • GW Tausept Ochre (careful with this one as the pigment is so strong)
  • GW Golden Yellow
  • For the gums, mix in a little GW Dwarf Flesh
  • Add a tiny bit of Vallejo Pale Sand if needed for final highlights

Shields

The shield designs are from old Warhammer publications. These are both from a color spread in the Warhammer Armies hardback.

As always, the collection can be viewed in its entirety at flickr.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Painted: Zombies

Zombies
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Manufacturer: Hobby Products
Imprint: Metal Magic
Line: Fantasy
Set: C1026 Zombies
Base Markings: ?
Release date: 1990?
Sculptor: ?
Date painted: 2010
Notes: The original figures have hollow eye sockets, and I added eyes made from green stuff. Mega Miniatures owns the rights to and produces the Metal Magic ranges as of 2013.

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Manufacturer: Grenadier
Line: Monster Manuscripts
Set: 1512 Monster Manuscript Vol.XII
Figure: MM106 Zombie
Base Markings: GRENADIER, 1987?; MM106
Release date: 1990?
Sculptor: Andrew Chernak
Date painted: 2010

Zombies and Zombie Miniatures

Zombies are a perennial mainstay of geek culture and in 2013 it seems like market saturation is at an all time high. Not surprisingly, however, when it came time to do up some zombie miniatures for D&D I traveled back to a groovier, trashier age for inspiration, the age of pulp horror comics from publishers like EC and Eerie. Probably not coincidentally, this was the age during which D&D appeared.

While the style was easily decided, finding zombie miniatures in 25mm scale and appropriately-dressed for the fantasy milieu wasn't as easy, at least not at first. There is one in the Grenadier AD&D range, one (shown above) in the Monster Manuscript range and at least one in their Cthulhu range. Here and there companies like Prince August, Broadsword and Ral Partha did some in the past, but they are fairly difficult to find. Iron Wind has some Ral Partha ones available but they are post-golden-age and not really to my taste. At first I dismissed the Metal Magic ones Mega Miniatures currently offers, but then I had the idea that what I didn't like about them was the empty eye sockets and that I could easily add my own eyes. Having them in hand I knew I made the right choice as they were perfectly-scaled with my other D&D figures, dressed appropriately and had lots of great distinguishing zombie features like open wounds, missing bits of scalp, shredded clothing, etc. Perhaps best of all there are no less than eight completely unique sculpts and are a great value at a bulk price for all eight. In fact, I'm overdue for getting another set. With head and weapon swaps another eight unique zombies would be fairly easy.

Painting

In my usual style I started by collecting reference pictures, which consisted of vintage pulp covers, Halloween masks and a few more-recent illustrations. With an aim for the pulp feel I made the main base color dull periwinkle (Vallejo Game Color Sombre Grey) and modulated this with casts of purple and blue-green coming from particular directions. One obstacle to going whole hog for a 4-color approach is that in comics you show the same characters many times throughout the comic and color each panel based on it's particular intrinsic needs. The zombie might be purple in one panel and orange in another but it never occurs to the reader that the zombie is orange or purple. But you only get to paint each miniature once and that's how it looks in every panel, so to speak. There's no getting around it.

I also wasn't afraid to choose bold colors for the clothing and the shield as later I came back and muddied things up to give them the feel of layers of grime. In addition to splotchy glazes, if you want an aged, weathered appearance to a color add gray to it for your highlight rather than white. In fact, it's not a bad idea to do this even when you're after a fairly intense color. Having your highlights as saturated as your middle tones is only appropriate for representing a select few surface materials.

As I mentioned, the figures come stock with empty eye sockets and I added the eyes to these with green stuff. I also did a few tricks and had one eyeball hanging out and bloody and to another I added tiny white maggots in the eye socket and elsewhere on the figure. I actually don't mind if a few zombies are missing their eyes but I figured as long as I was troubling myself to it I may as well do all of them. Even as I was doing these I was planning to pick up another batch and I can leave some of those hollow if I want to.

One tip for painting your undead eyeballs, do add a dot to represent the iris and pupil but make it a really faint dot only slightly darker than the white of the eye. I'm really please with the "dead stare" effect that results.

The open wounds were painted with a wine color (P3 Sanguine Base), brushed over with GW Red Gore and then after the figures were dullcoated I went back with Tamiya Red Clear, which is highly glossy. I'm not alone when I say it's great for gory effects.

As always, the collection can be viewed in its entirety at flickr.