Mice and Mystics: Maginos, Filch, Tilda and Lily

With the day off, I blitzed through the final figures for Mice and Mystics. I have the four final heroes - Maginos, Filch, Tilda and Lily - painted inked and sitting on the table waiting for the matte varnish to dry.

I didn't do anything special or different with these figures, so I'll just post the photos. Now, to refresh myself on the rules so I can play a game this week.

Filch

Lily

Maginos

Tilda

Mice and Mystics: Collin and Nez

Here are the first two heroes from Mice and Mystics, Collin (in cape) and Nez. Again, the fun factor was high while painting these. There were no difficult details to paint, and the sculptor kept all the elements well-defined and easy to pick out. Nez had some mould lines on his head that I forgot to deal with, but that doesn't bother me much, if at all; these are not contest minis, these are little place keepers for a board game.

Collin was pretty straight forward. Red cape, brown fur (with white underbelly), leather belting. After the cape was finished I washed it with some brown ink.

Originally, the shaft to Nez's hammer was bent, so I cut it out and replaced it with some brass rod. I was worried about converting a mini in a hard-to-find game, but it all worked out. (Being focused on the hammer work is probably why I missed the mould lines. Oh well- no biggie.)

One of the decisions I was thinking about was whether to paint the heroes based on the character cards from the game, or use my own schemes. I decided on the cards, and it's kind of nice, for once, leaving the color choice out of my hands; it's just one less thing to think about.

Mouse Goes to Work: A couple more pages

I added a couple more pages to "Mouse Goes to Work." I'm enjoying this little series if only because it's going nowhere. That, and it's fun to illustrate.

Now, I'm just wondering how pig got so fat eating those tiny, little donuts.

Work continues on the Mice and Mystics figures, by the way, though, progress has slowed this weekend while I spend time with friends (and do these random Mouse art pages.)

Another cute animal drawing

I actually started these before I bought Mice and Mystics, though it all still stems from this mysterious need to draw and paint little cute animals. I bought a new sketchbook since finishing the last a couple weeks ago, and this new one is made with watercolor paper. It's also much larger- 9x12 versus 5x8.

My original intent was to do full sketches on one page each, so that I wouldn't have to deal with the sketchbook's seam down the middle during scanning. But I'm still using the whole spread -- 18x12 inches worth of space -- and erasing the seam on Photoshop.

There's really no story with "Mouse." It's just going to be random incidents and large art put into the sketchbook on slow days. So far I only have the two pieces. Hopefully, there'll be more to follow.

All the minions for my Mice and Mystics game are painted. These were all fun and easy to paint.

I painted the rats in grays and browns to differentiate between regular rat warriors and elite rat warriors for the game. 

For the spider, I was originally intending to paint it in with bright orange or blue markings to give it an other-worldy feel, but I decided to stay with some natural browns and off-white to give it a more down-to-earth feel (to try to make the players just a touch more uneasy about having it on the board.)

Again- I'm having a blast painting these! I also heard through the grapevine (Internet) that Plaid Hat Games is working on "another set of minis" for the game. I'm not sure if this means they want to make these specific minis as a separate box, or if they'll be putting out some new minions (what they call the enemy figure is Mice and Mystic). Either way, if the game is too expensive for you, I recommend at least picking up some of the new minis to try; No assembly, fun sculpts and easy to paint.

Mice and Mystics: Creepy crawlies

Yep, I've been distracted by these wonderful Mice and Mystics figures. But I will get back to Dreadball; all I have left for DB for the time being is an orx team, the ref and a couple MVPs.

But I love these figures Plaid Hat Games has put into its Mice and Mystics board game. The plastic is a good blend of hard (to accept the primer easier) and soft (offering a bit of "give" for durability.) The sculpts also have well-defined and confident lines; these are pleasing to paint.

There are only 22 minis in the box (including the 8 roaches), and many people aren't pleased by the price tag ($75 retail), but it doesn't bother me too much. Honestly, if I had the choice between spending $75 on Mice and Mystics or $65 on any of the D&D Ravenloft, Ashardalon dungeon crawl games, which have twice as many figures, I'd choose Mice and Mystics. M&M is something I think I'll be purchasing all the expansions for. And, at least for me, getting a game that only has 22 figures makes it more likely that I'll get around to painting them (which I have, as you can see.)

It's not a game for everyone; it's an intro game for kids, but it's a nice relaxing diversion from the more in-depth games my friends like to play (and I can play it solo, moving cute little mice about, rolling some dice and watching some television.

Oh, I guess I should say something about painting these particular figures: The roaches were a simple drybrushing of a few browns, from tannish to reddish, then brown-inked. The centipede was a lot more detailed. Instead of drybrushing the segments, I went in and roughly painted each of the lines along the grain of the segments. I copied this scheme from someone else, though I went a bit more orangish with the legs.

I still have the rats to finish, a nice spider mini, and, of course, our heroes.

Snails. Why? Because snails.

I felt like throwing together my own little extras for my copy of Mice and Mystics. I'm not sure what I'm going to use the snails for, but they helped to scratch a bit of the sculpting itch, and they look just so ding-danged cute.

These were EASY to make. I sculpted a somewhat-snail shaped body out of Sculpey. The I rolled out a sausage of Sculpey that tapered to one end. I coiled the sausage up and that was the shell. Then I rolled out a few eye stalks with green stuff.

After everything was baked or cured, I drilled out some holes in the snail heads and glued in the eye stalks. A quick black prime and some random drybrushing (with a few added stripes on one snail) and the smails were done.

I mounted them on 30mm Proxie Model bases (since they were close in size to the large base size for the Mice and Mystics game.)

I had some Sculpey snails from a few years ago that I was going to use for a racing game (for which I never created rules nor found a published ruleset to strip down.) Since these were so easy, I may do three or four more and do racing snails anyway. If for anything, I could give these to little cousins and I'm sure they'll make up their own rules.

Dreadball: Lucky Joe joins the Rockets

Here's my Lucky Joe figure painted up to play for the Rockets. I painted him in my team's colors so that if I use him in league, he'd be in the right colors, and also so that I can use him (in one-off games) as a simple alternate pose for a jack or striker.

These figures are still a touch difficult for me to paint up due to their smaller size (true 25mm) and make look as good as my other stuff. But I'm getting used to it, and I still think these will look dandy when they actually make it onto the pitch.

Other minis news: I picked up a copy of Mice and Mystics today. I've wanted to paint some little mice for a while now; this'll be my first chance.

Iotacorp: A few more pics

I just wanted to throw up a few more pics to give a more complete view of my Dreadball team.
Also, here's my team's background copied over from the Mantic forums. Next up, I think I'll paint up my Lucky Joe figure using the Rockets' colors. Then maybe I'll start on the orcs.

The small company IotaCorp was named after the far-flung system on which it was founded, Iota Secunda. IotaCorp (secretly) specializes in designing and manufacturing weaponized nano-drones built using atomic-level sized parts, (unofficially) for use in assassination; It's rumored that IotaCorp's largest contract is with Corp Central (and possibly even the Council of Seven.) To deal with this rumor and preserve its true commercial purpose, IotaCorp (and its handlers) opted for the ploy of hiding in the open, so they founded a Dreadball team, the Rockets.

At all IotaCorp Rockets' games, fans are treated to ads lauding IotaCorp's " ... advances in surveillance, internal tech diagnostics and advanced subatomic medicine. Because when your life is on the line, the little things matter. IotaCorp: We deal in details."

The Rockets have yet to win a championship, or even to advance much in postseason league play. But they continue to play, disseminating the company's message while hiding its true machinations.

Iotacorp team

Here's my starting Iotacorp Rockets team. Still a couple figures to come next year (alternate poses as well as a keeper.)

It's been a while since I've done any kind of "army" painting, that is, painting any number of figures  with the same uniform scheme (even if there are a few variations here.)

Here's also a reverse view showing the yet-to-be-finished number plate (or i could just give them all happy faces.) You can also see the area of the torso I've painted as leather. I wanted a touch of old school with these futuristic players.

I'm going to move on to the orcs this weekend. As far as I know, the main pieces of armor will be rusted through and through. The plan is to then roughly paint a color scheme on top of the rust. This will match the tentative background for the team, who will be a bunch of scrap metal smugglers, who've had their armor fashioned using their favorite pieces of found metal which was then spraay- or brush-painted over by the orcs themselves. I think I'll call them Skrag's Scrappers.

I also have another human team. I have no idea what scheme to give them yet.

Started Dreadball

I got my shipment of Dread Ball stuff. Everything is cleaned and assembled (took a couple hours for the 40 or so figures I have.)

I drybrushed the whole figure with silver (that was easy and fun,) then I painted in the contrasting yellow along with the accents, followed with some inking to pull some details back out.

This is my first try at my IotaCorp Rockets uniform scheme. It came out a touch rough, but I think I can improve. It was difficult to get a straight line from the apex of the yellow "triangle" down to at least the knees. 

Part of the difficulty is that these are small figures (probably true 25mm if you don't include the base.) Coming down from 54mm isn't too bad of a transition, but I can still "feel" it. Oh well, this was the first; there are plenty more to go. The orcs will be easy enough- I plan on giving them all a healthy dose of rust.

Piglet's Rocket

Here's some more Winnie-the-Pooh fan art. It was a long day at work (newsroom) with the school shooting on the television the whole time.

I needed to do something light-hearted and a bit more whimsical than usual to lighten the load on the soul.

There's no profanity here; your young ones can read this very short episode along with you.

Click here to read on!

Pooh Bear

I was starting to get a little worried that I've only painted (finished) one mini in the past month, but then I looked and realized I had a similar painting slowdown around this time last year.

No worries, the Dreadball is on its way- there'll be plenty to paint then! And thanks for coming back to check my blog to see if there's anything new. I especially appreciate the patience of those who are not fans of profanity-laced children's illustrations.

In the mean time, here's another of my little illustrations. This one is of a bear more famous than my own Bear Brown. I love the style of artist E.H. Shepard (I'd call it a relaxed, whimsical doodling style,) and I wanted to do something at least inspired if not very similar to it. So I sketched this up quick. It still bears a bit of my humor ... oh, a pun, dammit.

A Bear Brown Christmas

I know, I know, it's been a while since I've painted any minis. I think it's because I'm waiting eagerly for my Dread Ball stuff to arrive, and I'm reluctant to start anything new.

Anyway, in the spirit of the holiday season, here is an inspirational tale about how Bear Brown learns the true meaning of Christmas:

Bear Brown goes to the Corner Shop finished

I've finished "Bear Brown Goes to the Corner Shop."
You can read it here.

I'm thinking of new ideas for the next Bear Brown story. Maybe Bear Brown goes Bowling, or Bear Brown learns the true meaning of Christmas.

A couple pages added to Bear Brown

For those who liked the Bear Brown story, I've added a couple pages.
The whole story can be read here.

Random dinosaurs

The creative block was strong today, so I painted up a random pair of parasaurolophuses.

(And in case you're wandering what that dark line down the center is; that's the center of the page spread in my sketchbook. I like to draw and paint across both pages.)

Varp Krigarr

Oy, it's been a while since I finished something. Today's something is a Varp Krigarr figure from Red Box Games. I kept the painting on this one simple; I just applied my 5-layer flesh recipe, rusted up his sword, vegetated the base and called it done. He's so naked, he's not even wearing tattoos.

Though the painting was simple, I spent a little time slightly reposing this figure. Originally, he was walking on level ground, dragging whatever huge weapon you chose to arm him with. My intent was to give him an axe, but to do so, I needed to raise the figure's front a bit to allow space between the ground and the axe blade. After I bent his forward leg a bit (in the wrong direction), I noticed he looked like he was taking a step up, so I went with it, placing the rock under this leading leg. It was a last-minute decision to give him a sword instead of an axe (sword being my preferred D&D weapon.)

And a last minor note: This is my first figure based on one of Proxie Models' bases. It works great. Even though the lip was slight, there was still enough to fill with green stuff, allowing for flagstones to be carved out. The lower base also feels MUCH more stable, especially with this slightly larger, top-heavy figure.

Some more art (but less humorous)

I just returned from vacation, so I've been away from the minis table. There have also been a lot of warmer-than-usual days that I wanted to take advantage of. But Dread Ball is being shipped this week, so I have some incentive to make room on my painting table.

In the mean time, here's some more random art I did from around town the past few weeks. What the hell -- I'll add a pinata full of scorpions at the end.