Crooked Claw Goblins WIP

It's been awhile so to tide you over until a proper post here are some Oldhammer goblins I'm painting at the moment. Kev Adams sculpts available from Crooked Claw. Picked up the whole range to date awhile back and am really glad I did—huge variety, beautiful sculpts and beautiful castings!

Edit: Oh, and I was reminded in the comments I wanted to say about the painting: I often I paint straight dark to light over black primer but here I brush painted a white undercoat over the skin first and did the classic goblin green, ink wash and then my normal highlight procedure. I made up a custom batch of very yellow-green highlight for the purpose as it's a color not like any of seen in a range. Sounds fiddly but I wanted to see if I could get extra pop, and it's actually less work overall than what I was doing... going through many intermediate shades. Also less work than "zenithal" airbrush, which less chance of overs-praying the chainmail. Simple, old school stuff I guess.

Speaking of which, I can clearly remember in an old Citadel painting guide the black prime then white over the flesh being demonstrated on a Marauder dwarf iron breaker. And now some of you are recalling it too I bet. ;)

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

Kublacon 2014

Last minute, but by any chance are you gonna be at Kublacon this year? Let's meet and say hey. Drop me a line, my handle at Yahoo. While not smart phone equipped, should have a few opportunities to check mail. See also: http://oppositionforce.blogspot.com/2014/05/kublacon-2014-op-for-velvet-rope-game.html

Grenadier AD&D "Solid Gold" Line Box Art and Insert Scans Part II

New scans by m4jumbo

In Part I I put out a call for anyone with other Grenadier box sets they'd be willing to scan, and m4jumbo of LAF and elsewhere stepped up and contributed the following, and was kind enough to let me add them to the archive I started on Flickr. I'm pretty excited to show these and very grateful.

Here also is the AD&D Action Art Painting Guide that went with the 8001 set above in a few flavors of PDF for you to choose from. The clean print and reader copies have the contrasts boosted and the color removed, and the only difference between the two is that in the reader copy a sideways-oriented chart has been rotated so you can read it on your screen. The archive copy has the scan contrast and colors preserved. All copies have OCR.

• Clean reader copy
• Clean print copy
• Archive copy

Per usual you can also see these on flickr

And anyone got any of the others? We're doing pretty well here and it would be great to edge toward a full set!

Grenadier AD&D "Solid Gold" Line Box Art and Insert Scans

For posterity and the good of the community I scanned my Grenadier AD&D box sets and inserts. Art by Ray Rubin and figures by Andrew Chernak.

I also made some cropped shots of a view of these sans lettering in case they prove useful.

These are on flickr where you can download high res copies (trickier now since the latest flickr facelift but still possible, don't give up!).

If you have other sets, would you consider scanning them at 300dpi or above as well and would you let me know if you do? I don't need a full collection of figures but I'd love to have a full collection of decent pics. And if you don't want to go to the trouble to host them I'd love to put them on Flickr and credit you in whatever way you want.

I also contributed these where appropriate to the Lost Minis Wiki, which has mostly fairly poor copies of the box art so far:

• The large sets
• The small sets

Finally, I'd love to hear what you think of these! For me they rank high among the reasons I started an American style 25mm fantasy collection in the first place and my sense of nostalgia viewing these is pure and strong. I love the graphic design, the painting technique and the degree of unintentional camp. The magic user explorer is a classic, the demon's fur pants are out of control, the female thief third from right is expressing what is hands down the height of fashion in my campaign world, and seeing the renditions of the lizardman and shambling mound make me wish Rubin had had the chance to put his hand to every monster in the books.

Painted: Otherworld Hill Giant

Here's a figure that I just finished recently, and was languishing WIP for a number of months.

Right out of the Monster Manual, eh wot?

Manufacturer: Otherworld
Line: Giants
Figure: Hill Giant
Base markings: none
Release date: 2007?
Sculptor: Paul Muller
Date painted: 2013

Painting

This one was done using the zenithal under-painting technique, primed dark gray and then white from the top. The skin was done much the same as I did for the verbeeg shared earlier. I starting with a number of coats of a light flesh tone (GW Elf Flesh) and then washes of progressively darker shades (a mix of GW and P3 flesh tones like Bronzed Flesh, Khardic Flesh, Idrian Flesh) and then many glaze layers of mixed brown (Snakebite Leather, Bestial Brown, etc), red and yellow inks. The knees, knuckles, lips, etc were glazed with red paint. Then highlights, rinse and repeat.

The hairs were drawn individually, and turned out a lot better than the graphite technique I tried on the minotaur. I also stuck to much more vibrant flesh tones with the Hill Giant, focusing on depth and punch. This feel-as-you-go method is typical of me. It took some effort here, and there were a number of points where I put the figure down thinking it was glowing to satisfaction and came back later thinking it was not yellow or red enough, not rich enough, not bright enough, and I'd go back in. I wanted it to look very ruddy, per the sense I get reading the Monster Manual description.

A couple more notes. The eyes are red-rimmed per the Monster Manual description, and you might spot a bit of shine as I haven't varnished it yet. Having some warm weather already here so may do a round of priming and varnishing soon.

In the end I'm pretty satisfied with this one. The flesh is done to competition standard, but like my Warpwolf I don't think of it as a real competition or coolminiornot contender because of lack of bells and whistles, lack of opportunities for technical wizardry beyond the depth and realism of the flesh, no foot on rock, etc. With miniatures painting especially, though, some of us are bound to come to a point where we have to decide whether to try to please others or ourselves.

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

Painted: Grenadier Djinni

Here's one I painted quickly the end of last year, another oldie-but-goldie from the "Solid Gold" line.

Manufacturer: Grenadier
Line: AD&D "Solid Gold" line
Set: 5004 Tomb Of Spells
Figure: Djinn
Base markings: none
Release date: 1980
Sculptor: Andrew Chernak
Date painted: 2013

Prep and painting

The first thing I noticed about this figure is of all the integral-base figures I've got this was the very first that absolutely positively could not stand on it's own. Two, even if it could be made to precariously stand on it's own it would be leaning severely to one side. So when I glued it to the base I shimmed one side with bits of plasticard and then filled in the gaps with concrete patch.

That done, while I understood there was a lot of smoke from the lamp curling around, for some reason I thought some of the littler bits of smoke around the base were supposed to be stones, and I continued the stone motif with Das airbake clay all over the base. It was more work than I like to spend on a base but I think it looks pretty good, a bit of variety from the normal bases I do while keeping some continuity with the colors. I've done a few Grenadier dragons this way which I have yet to paint. This one also has concrete patch "grout" which I shaded with a wash.

As usual I made a reference folder of Djinni, but I had already made up my mind ahead of time on a pure ultramarine blueof a Djinni in an illustration by Kay Nielsen from one of my favorite books of all, The Unknown Paintings of Kay Nielsen, which collects previously unpublished Arabian Nights pictures.

Most blue miniature paints, and I have quite a few, are nothing like ultramarine. Most are quite warm. I have a Vallejo Model Color ultramarine, but honestly, when held side by side with a tube of standard variety acrylic paint the Vallejo is fairly dull, and not as deep or as dark as I would like. For that reason I did an all-over basecoat of the Vallejo color, but then did a number of washes made with the tube acrylic. Also, as I think I've mentioned before, a strong focus of mine these days is achieving deep, rich tones through the use of glazes. To this end Winsor and Newton inks have been helpful, with the caveats that the bottles are pretty but don't work very well, and the lack of dropper means it's very easy to accidentally contaminate the ink, and also you can't seem to buy them separately, which means, of course, unless you use every ink in the set at the very same rate you are screwed when one of them becomes empty. Really Winsor & Newton, huge fail that last one. Huge. As in I'm obviously not going to buy a $25 set for one or two inks, and obviously that means I'm going to your competitor at that point. That's obvious to you, right?

Anyway, rant aside, the reason I went with W&N in the first place is that in addition to being transparent and otherwise glaze-worthy, having a nice lacquering effect as a bonus, the real glory of these is for many (all?) colors there is at least both a warm and cool version. To whit, glazing your ultramarine djinni with a warm blue, however rich and dark it might be, will completely spoil things. So in summary the Vallejo + tube paint + W&N ink combo was a real win for a very tricky color I was insisting on getting just right.

The smoke has some Privateer Press pale bluish-whites and the Vallejo Ultramarine mixed in. I am also really pleased with the brass effect, which is a base of Cryx Gold (dark yellow-gold metallic) with quite a few layers of P3 Brass Balls. I am counting on the smoothness and luster of the paint itself to create the spot highlight on the bulb of the lamp, rather than forced highlights (going up to silver or what have you), though there may be a few touches of sliver on the edges.

One other note on the subject of specular highlights, it's not easy highlighting a broad, bald head like this figure has. I like the result, but it took a lot of careful layers to get it to gradually build up the layers just right. Had the same issue with a Gold Line magic-user I might not have gotten around to sharing yet.

Parting comments

An OCD note about Djinn: from the text of the 1e AD&D Monster Manual one gathers that Djinn is the plural, and Djinni is the singular. Which is counter-intuitive to us because in latin -i indicates the plural, e.g. cactus/cacti. And another oddity is that in the Monster Manual II we're told that collectively, elemental humanoids including djinni, jannee, marids, and dao are known as "genie." So here "ie" is plural, just as "ee" for Jannee indicates plural. Meanwhile, the Grenadier catalog calls the figure a Djinn, singular.

So this led me to Wikipedia, which confirms Gygax was correct to call the collective number Djinn, and there's further support for Genie being plural, because we're told it's not a variant spelling of Djinni I had thought, but the plural of Genius. Still not sure about Jann/Jannee, why MMII uses Jann as the singular and Jannee as the plural. Maybe that one is a goof?

And lastly, for those not familiar with you old school D&D, while as a player it can't hurt to get on the good side of these powerful chaotic good creatures of the aerial plane, or else, better yet, master them (and the suggestion is you can succeed here in being a "good master," with the how left to the "referee"), as they can grant various boons, only a "noble djinni (1%)" can bestow that most valuable in-game commodity of all, the wish.

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

Painted: Hobgoblins

Painted: Hobgoblins

A new encounter group for you that has long been in the works, and a new presentation style. I like to think I have great success showing off the miniatures isolated against a backdrop as I've been doing, but over the past year or so I've been drawn to the idea of setting up posed diorama shots.

Here's a major source of my inspiration, John Morey . Note that for the most part he's using prepainted figures, which we know have average tabletop quality paintjobs in the best of times, but the artistry of the photography morphs them into something much more, and a few pics in we're immersed in the illusory diorama landscapes. Can't recommend this guy's work enough, and have gone as far as to create a gallery in flickr of some of my favorites. Along the same lines, though a little farther out from our fantasy miniatures niche, is the work of guys like Matt K.

Hobgoblins block the party's advance in the lost caverns of Brule

My own effort here is pretty basic as far as the composition goes, and I did have to resort to a tiny bit of Photoshop, though only a very small amount all considering. The only bits that are shopped are I extended the left and right cavern elements in front of the background, from their actual height of about 3 inches to the top of the picture. In lightroom I added vignetting. Really, that's it. It may be awhile before I get to it but I want to eventually try incorporating split height, greater scene depth, source lighting and others of the more sophisticated techniques used in those pics I pointed you at.

Manufacturer: Minifigs
Line: Dungeons & Dragons
Set: Hobgoblins
Base markings: Marked on top of base HB01-HB14
Release date: 1977
Sculptor:?
Date painted: 2012-2014
Notes: Many of these needed significant restoration. The eye sockets were drilled and eyes and angry brows were added. Some crescent moon emblems were replaced, most weapons were replaced, and most shields were press-molded from molds made from original shields. Weapons are largely a combination of Thunderbolt Mountain and Wargames Factory castings.

Making of

Figures by Minifigs, circa 1977. This first batch of 10 completed 2013. I have many more WIP and waiting in the wings.

These were a significant restoration project, and wound up re-sculpting all of the eyes and brows and replacing most of the weapons, in addition to casting the shields from a press-mold from several variant original castings and re-sculpting some other details here and there. They were also a major chore to rebase, and here they are mounted on 14 x 19mm ellipse bases so that they can fight 3 abreast in a 10' (2") corridor, and magnitized so they can be stored upright as the weapons (a variety of Thunderbolt Mountain and Wargames Factory) are a bit delicate. In retrospect the bases were such a pain though I almost wish I hadn't bothered.

I picked up a four or five of these around 2007 in a large box of old lead, and these (along with an Archive owlbear and a Grenadier elf and wizard) are really what set me adrift on the old lead odyssey that has me now far out in distant waters.

These are also among a select few miniatures I own that are older than I am.

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