Warming up the rockets

I ordered a few of these:

I'll be using a home-brew set of THW's Charioteer rules to race the new rockets. No shooting, no ramming; addition of aerobraking, planetary sling-shots, dodging asteroids; pure rocket racing. Should be fun.

Since these are a more retro design, I was thinking of doing them in black and white. Maybe. Though, I think I prefer color this time around.
By the way, these are available at Bombshell Miniatures.

Other news: No samurai yet. I think they got caught up in holiday mail and/or by U.S. Customs. Patience is the word.

The old wall

Yep, I went ahead and made a section of wall to go along with the corner. These are dangerously easy to make. The wall and the corner compliment each other nicely and will probably be used in conjunction (as in the photo) most of the time.

The wall is about 14 inches long and 4 inches wide at the base. I might need to get my butt moving and start selling some minis to make space for the Japanese.

Ancient Japanese castle ruins

This isn't the ruins of an entire castle, obviously, but it's a nice little corner. The corner can serve as either an objective, intervening terrain or simply a piece to make the table look nice. It was inspired by the ruined castle seen in "Ran."

My friends Jen and Bryon came over to paint and build some terrain with blue foam, and I built this little corner from the scraps (and based on a Proxie Models 120mm circle base.)

The foam was stacked and glued. I used a foam cutter to cut the angle into two sides, and to cut loose/jutting blocks on the reverse sides.

Then I used a pencil to engrave all the stone lines. I covered the whole thing in a layer of wood glue (white glue also works) to give it some strength, but the glue also ended up mostly filling in all the engraving work.

I gave it a generous coat of dark gray paint, followed by overbrushings of lighter grays. Next, since the engraved lines were still somewhat visible, I used a fine-line brush and black paint to pick out the rock lines. I used a light gray/white to highlight to top edges of most of the stones to further define them.

Finally, I added a floral stem scrap to be a small fall tree, and used static grass to finish. That's a 42mm samurai standing next to the finished product, though, the corner can be easily used for 28mm figures.

I still might go back later and add some grass tufts or extra rocks, but I do like the clean look, too. Space is still limited in my apartment, but I think I've settled on my 42mm Japanese as my all-time favorites, so a few extras now and then for them doesn't bother me. I may even add a section of ruined wall to go along with this corner.

Low Life: Cremefillian with dammit hammer

Here is my first painted Low Life miniature. This is a cremefillian with his flaming dammit hammer. The figure is made by Mutha Oith Creations, who also make the popular Low Life RPG for the Savage Worlds system.

I have a few more figures in this set to paint, and a lot more eventually coming, each figure more savagely unique than the last.

Still no new samurai yet; they probably got caught up in holiday mail. But the delay is giving me some time to think about conversion ideas.

Zombivor prototypes

Here are my first zombivors. It was a simple solution to merge my full-color survivors with my monochromatic zombies: Simply take out all the skin color.

I won't get to the rest of the zombivors anytime soon; I still have some samurai on the way, and I still need to get some figure cases to store all the zombie stuff. (I'm looking at the APC carriers at Portable Warfare.) One of these days, I'll actually get around to playing my copies of Zombicide (though, honestly, I also got a lot of this stuff to play All Things Zombie.)

I also finally -- FINALLY got my Low Life miniatures primed and ready to paint. Now, I just need to get back in the mood to paint those little weirdos.

Sepia tone: Basic recipe

I tried out some colors from my paint rack to test some sepia tone palettes. This is my first try and probably the one I'll stick with when I paint up some of my pulp stuff. Here are the color I used (Vallejo Model Colors):

Black
German Black Brown 150
Chocolate Brown 149
Flat Earth 143
Increasing amounts of White + Flat Earth for highlights

Man's best friend

I was cleaning off the table in preparation for the incoming samurai when I uncovered these puppies. They were easy to do. I just needed to get some reference material to work from.

My zombie dogs will get the same paint treatment as the other zombies. I haven't played with the dogs yet, but I hear they're scary. Still, I think I'll turn it up to 11, and paint a few with the toxic and berserker variations.

Zombicide painting is under way (and Santa!)

I'm not going to paint all the zombies in one go; that would get a little overwhelming, and might get in the way of other projects as my whims stray. But after finishing this group up, I think I have a good chance of finishing the rest.

This batch took a couple sittings (maybe 2 to 3 hours total) to paint up. I think I will paint the zombies in batches of 20-30. This will help keep the project manageable, yet moving along.

The keen eye might notice here that most of these figures are actually berserker sculpts. I want to a Walk of the Dead box, but the local store only had the berserker box.

Then I had my eureka moment, realizing I was going to paint over these anyway. So now my normal zombies have even more diverse poses. Also, I used a little green stuff to turn a fatty into Santa.

Other stuff: I have some more 42mm samurai on the way from Steve Barber. Brand new (multipart) sculpts. We'll get into those later.

Pulp Expedition in sepia

One of my fellow The Miniatures Pagers (Double W) is beginning to put together one of the first subjects that got me interested in doing pulp: The Central Asiatic Expeditions, a series of true adventures through warlord-era China into Mongolia to seek out dinosaur bones, led by Roy Chapman Andrews.

I recommend the book "Dragon Hunter" for anyone interested in checking out the story. Not the most accurate or complete account, it is nonetheless still an enjoyable read.

Anyway, After I had completed my black and white gangsters back in the day, I decided to try out some sepia tone. I wasn't completely happy with them at the time, but looking back, I kinda like'em now. And I have a bunch of unfinished/primed figures in that collection waiting for some sepia paint. Now if I could only remember the paint recipe!

As you can see by looking at the Crossley trucks, the collection actually started out in full color. This was one of my original paint-stripping jobs (and I think the first time I discovered Simple Green as a good paint stripper.) The collection is almost all Copplestone (of course!) with one or two Foundry and Artizan Designs figures. A couple favorites of mine are the rocketmen with scratch-built rocket packs (made from plasticard, roman shields and a chainsaw engine with the blade cut away.

This isn't my entire sepia expedition- I have a few soldiers, more Crossleys (by Models of Yesteryear,) a couple tents and lots of baggage (as all expeditions should have.) If I get them painted all up, I'll post them, of course.

Zombicide zombie painting

So here are my first prototypes of the three zombie classes in the Zombicide game. I finally settled on a green palette for my toxic zombies; I got rid of the neon green look because it just wouldn't match up well with the other zombies.

Under each photo below is the palette I used for each zombie type. The colors come from a combination of Foundry, Vallejo Model Color and Reaper HD. I still might change up the toxic zombies just a touch; I think I'll use a slightly darker base coat, thought these still work for me.

Normal Zombies

- Start with a base coat of black.
- Do an all-around overbrushing of the figure with German Grey (167). Black and darker clothes can stop at this point.
- To a top-to-down drybrushing of Grey Green (165). This serves as sort of a basic light source highlight.
- Start highlighting the skin with Neutral Grey (160). This can also serve as a final highlight for medium to light clothes.
- A highlight of Sky Grey (154) on skin, and on the lightest colored clothes.
- A few conservative highlights of white on the skin.

Note: Skin tones (caucasians and even the Irish) are actually darker than white (unlike what I've done in the above palette). But since these are pale zombies, I've made the skin the lightest tone in the palette. The same goes with the toxic and berserker zombies.

I've eliminated the "such and such color also used to highlight clothes/skin" note in the following palette lists. At this point, I figure you can decide how dark or light you want to make your own zombies' clothes or skin.

Berserker Zombies

-Base coat of Foundry Red Oxide 102B (or C for a little bit more contrast.)
- All-around overbrushing of Foundry Spearshaft 13A
- Top-to-down drybrushing of Reaper HD Burning Orange
- Begin highlighting (especially skin) with Foundry Orange 3A
- More highlighting with a mix of Foundry Orange 3A + Foundry Ochre 4A
- A final skin highlight of Foundry Ochre 4A

Toxic Zombies

- Base coat of Reaper HD Field Grey
- All-around overbrushing of Storm Green 27B
- Top-to-down of Foundry Forest Green 26C
- Highlights begin with a mix of Foundry Forest Green + Yellow 2C
- Lighter highlights of the same Forest Green/Yellow mix, but lightened using Raw Linen 30C*
- A final highlight of Raw Linen 30C

* (Too much yellow starts to add a neon quality to the palette, which is great if you want radiated zombies, but doesn't match the muted look of the other zombie types.)

The old days: Man O'War (SOLD)

I finally got my copy of Man O'War back home. It had been in storage at my parent's house, but they're moving soon, so I had to evacuate a few things.

I'm only showing this because I plan on selling it all. A friend of mine (who just opened his new shop a couple weeks ago) consigns stuff and only takes a moderate cut, so I'll be selling all of my Man O'War stuff through him.

Update: One lucky person took the long trip to pick these up (Thanks, bud!)
Thank you to everyone for looking!

Just another look at some samurai

The Ronin, left, decide the Sword School has overstepped its bounds.

Steve Barber has some new samurai about to go into production, so I thought I'd parade out most of my collection again. Most of these have some conversion work; all of them at least have new weapons I've pounded out on the anvil (my usual M.O.)

I look forward to the new (unarmored) samurai; I commissioned Steve to do a multipart samurai which will take different heads or arms. (I also commissioned a couple famous faces to go with the new samurai.) Now that the body is paid for and sculpted, I can commission smaller things such as new arms, heads and weapons for the new torso (I even have an idea or two for civilians using this torso.) I can also do the reverse and commission a new torso to fit the new arms and heads. Lots of choices, lots of ideas, but I better save up some money first.

Missing in the following series of photos are my Red and Kaage factions. I packed those up for now to get them out of the way, so that I can maybe get in an unarmored skirmish or two with the Sword School and the ronin. A happy side note: My Reds and Kaages each easily fit into a Chessex case. I like figures that have easy-to-find protected space in case I need to move or pack things. The Reds and Kaages are also still for sale ($400 for all of them- close to 30x 42mm figures.)

Zombies: I haven't quit. I ran out of primer, so I can't try out a couple ideas yet. I'm also still weighing storage options before I launch into full-scale painting. Honestly, I think the new samurai will come first.

(But I'm still taking feedback and questions on black and white painting. The zombies are not abandoned.)

The sword school (plus one)

The peasants

The ronin

The ninja

The monks