A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Board Games - Scythe is a new board game that features steampunk robots and cool characters with animal companions. It's set in the 1920's in an alternate reality just after World War I. One of my regular board game clients just dropped these off to me to have painted. Her primary request was to make the robots look beat up and mostly metal with chipping paint and grime.
Read MoreBoard Games - Sometimes you get the coolest effects without planning on it. My latest batch of board game bits comes from the Greed expansion for The Others: Seven Sins. For those of you unfamiliar with the game it pits Hellboy-esque agents of FAITH against the otherworldly threat of The Others. It's a bit Cthulu-esque mixed in with the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. The core box gets you two of the major sins with their minions and the other five sins are available individually.
Read MoreBoard Games - Egypt has always been a place that interests me. The mysteries of the pyramids, Indiana Jones and The Mummy have always held my attention. When a client brought me Kemet to paint I was a excited to paint some Egyptian monsters, Of course the boatload of tiny plastic people would be its own challenge.
Read MoreBoard Games - I'm a bit bummed I haven't had a chance to put The Others: Seven Sins on the table. The game look great and from what I've heard it plays well too. I've already painted a Sons of Ragnorak hero set for one of my board game clients. This time around she gave me the core heroes and the large sin monster: Pride.
Read MoreBoard Games - The new King Arthur movie comes out soon and to get in the mood I recommend Shadows Over Camelot. Hidden traitor games are tons of fun to play with friends and this is one of the better ones.
Read MoreBoard Games - Cute little animals seem to be all the rage right now. I can't say that I mind it's pretty fun to paint the miniatures in this line. They're well sculpted and have cool little details like sea shell armor and sand dollar shields.
Read MoreBoard Games - The sheer number of board games on the market with good quality miniatures is pretty amazing. I don't have anywhere near enough time to play all of them so when a client brings me something I haven't seen before I get pretty excited. Theminis from Fortune and Glory remind me of Indiana Jones a bit. With mobsters, cultists and Nazis it seems the heroes will have their hands full.
These are painted to my basic tabletop standard. After blocking in the base colors and applying a wash I went in and applied highlights and details on each piece. Once you get paint on them they don't look like blobs of colored plastic and feel closer to a standard tabletop miniatures game.
If you pick this game up I suggest painting or having the pieces painted to bring the experience to life.
Board Games - With King Arthur coming out I think this game might get a second look for people looking to do a theme night before going out to see Charlie Hunnam trade in his hog for a horse and suit of chainmail. ThisDays of Wonder title is one of the traitor mechanic games that seemed to be all the rage a few years ago.
This set of models is from the Merlin's company expansion that introduces Merlin as a character and gives Sir Bedivere his own figure with special coat of arms.
Board Games - Mansions of Madness looks like a pretty amazing game, that is if the game is anywhere near the same level of quality as the miniatures. I'm going to have to check this on out if I can ever get to a board game night and demo the game. I've heard there may be some type of deck builder that feels similar to the board game but I haven't done my research to confirm. (currently my game nights don't have room for another game of this type, however after painting these up I might need to see if I can squeeze it in.)
These are painted to a tabletop level. Some basic shading, highlighting and variety of colors across the full range. I kept the bases black as my understanding is the game carries across several different types of terrain and as such it makes more sense for a simple black base to frame the models.
Board Games – Fantasy Flight certainly knows how to fill a box with cool little extras that add a ton to a game. Case in point Mansions of Madness could function just fine with paper cut outs, or wooden meeples but going the extra mile and doing 3D sculpts of every monster and character really takes it to the next level.
My regular board game client recently dropped of the core game and what looks to be all the expansions. There's something like 75 pieces to this batch that need to painted to a tabletop quality.
With a big batch of models like this I start by separating them into models that will share similar colors. For example Cthulu and most of the deep ones are green, the cultists are red etc. This lets me assembly line the base coats and shading quickly so I can get to the detail stage which takes a little while with board game minis as they don't have the level of detail that pops out after a wash that traditional tabletop models do. Which means I need to work a little harder to bring out what's there.
Board Games – I wrapped up the ships for the Firefly board game. I'm pretty happy with how the coloring turned out the band on the base as well as the engine glow makes it easy to tell them apart with a simple paint job.
Read MoreBoard Games – I wrapped up the complete set of models for A Touch of Evil. These were fun to paint. The bendy board game plastic reacts a little different than what I'm used to but over all I think this batch of models turned out nice.
Read MoreBoardgames – It's always a bit odd for me when I get a painting job and I know very little about the game system the models are used for. Lately that's been happening quite a bit with board game miniatures. My primary focus has always been on table wargames so many of the cool board games fall off my radar.
Read MoreBoardgames – Yes indeed Browncoats, the Firefly board game is now on my painting table. I've never had the pleasure of playing the game but I was a big fan of the show and movie, so I'm really happy to be painting up these ships.
Read MoreMice and Mystics – I have to be totally honest I know little to nothing about mice and mystics. When I started painting these I assumed they were for a Mouseguard RPG.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – The second half of the Space Hulk commission I've been working on has wrapped up. These are really basic Blood Angels. The whole job is a simple 3-Color job with a wash. Since they are just board game pieces my client didn't want anything fancy. I have more photos of these in the 40K Gallery.
Read MoreSpace Hulk – Genestealer Cults are back and I for one am excited. One of my regular clients recently dropped off a set of Space Hulk miniatures from the most recent version of the game to have me paint up to a basic standard. I never managed to pick up a copy of the game for myself, partially because a friend owns it and partially because I have a full bug hunt corridor set that I can play Zone Mortalis 40K on to get that type of feel. Or so I thought ...
Read MoreThe Others: Seven Sins – I recently received a big box of stuff for the C'MON kickstarter The Others: Seven Sins. (yeah the name is a bit long... I'm just going to call it The Others). As wil most C'MON kickstarters it was late about five months or so, nothing compared to the several year delay of Kingdom Death or Relic Knight but still a sizable delay. I'm not sure how their estimator still has a job with that kind of track record, but honestly this wasn't something I was super eager to get, the amount of stuff you got for $100 was pretty sick and even if the game turned out terrible they'd be fun to paint.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 – One of my regular clients sent over the Deathwatch marines from the Overkill board game to have painted to match his Inquisitor/Grey Knight/Assassin force. I don't know how effective they are on the battlefield but the models look amazing. They are however one pose models, which is the thing I dislike about other companies plastic models. The poses are dynamic and look cool, however the end result is you have the exact same models as everyone else that chooses to play it. The thing that always set GW above the rest was the possibility and customizability of their models and kits. I have bins of space marine parts and can spend days building random dudes that just look cool. With the new direction that is significantly harder to do. Hopefully the multi part kits with more possibility stay part of the range in the future.
Read MoreNinja All Stars – I've been sitting on my Ninja All-Stars box for quite some time waiting for a chance to play the game. I was a little leary because of the negative reviews I read on a few sites so it kept getting pushed to the maybe later pile.
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