Drow -- Old School style!

Just thought I'd show off a couple of my recent sculptures here -- I recently finished 2 Drow elves for Otherworld Miniatures. These are the first elves I've sculpted in about 10 years, the first since the final Dark Elves I made for Games Workshop. It took a while to get back in the groove, but after a while was pretty fun to return to my old pointy-eared pals!

These were both inspired by the artwork of Erol Otus, one of the pioneering artists of the Dungeons & Dragons game back in the early 1980s. For those who don't know who he is or are not familiar with early D&D, you can see a collection of some of his art here:

Erol Otus Shrine

Anyhow, check out the minis... they are now up for pre-order at Otherworld if you want to claim a set for yourself! It's great company, and the quality of their figures is top-notch!

Otherworld Miniatures

Click below to make 'em bigger:

Stone Giant Raiding Party!

As I got to the last few days of this year, I realized I had done almost no miniature painting for myself the last 12 months!  So I took the last few days off, and broke out the old paints & brushes!   The first result was the Cave Troll I posted a few days ago, and the latest ones are a trio of Stone Giants for Dungeons and Dragons!

I bought 2 of the Otherworld Miniatures Stone Giants a couple years ago at Salute.  I loved the model, it was sculpted by my pal Paul Muller (we used to share an office back when we worked at GW).  However, I wanted each one to look individual, so I converted one of them with a new face, turn of the head, and I sculpted 2 new arms on him carrying a club and barrel from my bits box.  I also gave him some bone armor (more bits from by bits box) and when I was done, he looked pretty different from the original model.  He looks a bit like he's returning from a raid on some town, with a big barrel of ale he's stolen from the inn!

In the picture below, the Stone Giant in the middle was a Citadel Miniatures C28 Giant, sculpted by Michael and Alan Perry way back in the 1980's.   One of the Giants in this series was clearly meant to be a D&D Stone Giant, and it matched up pretty nicely with the Otherworld Giant in scale.  The only problems were his head and feet -- the head looked too big and the feet were to small (in comparison with the Otherworld minis).  So I did a quicky sculpt of a new head that was a little smaller, and added some putty to bulk out the feet.  In the end, when based in the same manner, all 3 looked like they were made for the same range.

I painted them with a pallet of neutral tones, as I wanted them to have a cold, stony look.  I picture Stone Giants to be a bit like neolithic man, making weapons & gear from stone and hide.  The scenery in the photo is some of my neolithic stuff I made last year for WarGods of Hyperborea (the Wendigo), if you like it you can see more color photos of these in the Wendigo Warband Book, available from Crocodile Games. 

I hope Otherworld does a couple more poses for their Giants range -- I'd love to have a Stone Giant throwing a rock to go with these guys!

Now, the question is, can I get anything else painted before the year is over and I have to get back to work???

"They have a Cave Troll!"

It's been a long while since I've updated this blog -- thanks to stopping by to see what's new!

We were snowed in the day after Christmas, so I spent the afternoon brushing up on my painting!  Inspired by the recent Hobbit film, I decided to finish up an old project I started a long time ago -- a Cave Troll, from the Games Workshop 'Lord of the Rings' game.

This figure came in the Mines of Moria box set.  I liked the miniature, but I wanted it to have a face that was different from the Troll in the movie.  So I played around with the mini for a couple hours while at my sculpting table and came up with a new, slightly different head that looks fierce but suitably inbred.  I even had the green of the head molded in case I wanted to do a few more of him.  (I still have a couple extra heads, email me if anyone wants one for their Troll).

The figure then sat around on my shelf for many months, waiting to get painted.  A foot of snow outside was a sign that the time was right!

 

And some close-ups of his face... scary!

He's painted with a mixture of Vallejo and GW paints, with some of the GW washes and inks for weathering.  All in all, a fun miniature to work on, now I just need to paint up Tom, Bert, and William to keep him company!

And Another Two!

 
I took a break from my regular job at Croc Games today to slap some paint on 2 old landspeeder conversions that have been sitting around unfinished for a long time.  They are the Rodian Runabout and the customized Flash Speeder.

I've posted the Rodian Runabout before, detailing how it was built.  I wasn't happy with the paint job on it, it was too dull and really did not bring out the best of the actual conversion, but I had spent so long on the darned thing that I had to put it away for a while for the sake of my sanity!  Well, it's been many months, so I came to the model today with a fresh outlook, and gave it a fresh coat of paint.  I stuck with a simple color-scheme inspired a bit by Greedo's costume in Star Wars (this is supposed to be his landspeeder.)  I also used a couple decals from an old japanese robot model for the hood and sides of the speeder, and then weathered the whole thing with Doc O'briens 'Gritty Yellow' weathering powder.  The standing Greedo miniature is from WotC's Star Wars range, and the seated Greedo in the landspeeder was a simple conversion using the head of one of the cheap 'common' Rodian miniatures.  A little putty and paint, and done!

Here are some more pictures:

The custom Flash Speeder is a conversion on the Flash Speeder toy from the Galoob Star Wars "Action Fleet" Micromachine range.  It is basically the same thing as the WotC Flash Speeder, but it is a tiny bit larger and has much better detailing -- and, it is made of hard plastic, better for conversions.  I wanted the speeder to look faster and a little more aerodynamic, so I cut the big awkward square engines off the sides and replaced them with 2 round turbine-style engines I made from some parts from my bits box.  The original toy had a cannon mounted on the back, and I removed this and cut the top off of the 'roll bar', then extended each side up about 1/3 of an inch higher, to make it look a bit like the tail fins of a jet-fighter (specifically the awesome F-22 Raptor.)  I added a bit of rolled up fabric to represent the convertible top being down.  Last, it was mounted on a base taken from a WotC Flash Speeder.  Construction complete, it got a simple paint job and some further weathering to finish. 

That's it for now!  Enjoy the pics!

--Fitz

Clock Radio Building

Pretty much every miniature gamer I know has a few pieces of styrofoam packaging inserts stowed away in their closet, saving them for some future scenery project.  I don't know what it is about styrofoam packing inserts, but the make great buildings!  However, the problem with the white-styrofoam is that it is really fragile, and can't be painted or sealed with any kind of aerosol spray, so they always have a short life span.  Last year, I received a new clock radio for Christmas, and it came with a packing insert made out of a strange, brown, paper-mache material -- THIS kind of stuff.  The shape and texture of the insert looked interesting, like a very weathered sandstone or adobe.  What's more, it was fairly sturdy, so I decided I'd try an experiment and see how it worked as a building.  Unfortunately, I didn't  get any photos of the insert before I started the project, so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like beforehand -- I promise I'll take some in-progress photos next time!

Anyway, this building is supposed to be a power station, sort of like a gas station for Landspeeders. The insert had a lip around the bottom, which I trimmed off with a hobby knife.  There were also some holes and such, which I filled with putty.  Once I had the basic shape ready, I sprayed it all with a sand-texture spray (the stuff the use on outdoor furniture), but the results were underwhelming.  On top of the already-rough texture of the insert, you could hardly see the fine sand texture, so I need not have bothered.  After this dried, I added a bunch of mechanical components from my bits box.  This included parts from the "Platformer" power station and pumping station sets, plasticard, a door from a Galoob Action Fleet playset, and the tops of some toy missiles.  The roof of the building had a big hole, so I cut a big piece of plasticard and glued this in, to make a place for models to stand.  The junk pile around the back was, well, a bunch of junk.  I'm planning on putting a ladder on the back as well, once I find something suitable.  Then, the whole thing was glued down to a piece of 1/8 inch tempered hardboard for the base.  Then the whole thing was painted and the base was flocked in the usual manner.

Christmas is coming, and I'll on the lookout for some more interesting packing materials hiding in the boxes!

Two More Landspeeders!

OK, here's a couple more of the landspeeders that I've just finished off.

The White/Yellow landspeeder is the Sorosub V-35 'L-Kamino'.  It's based on the same toy as the "Lars Family Landspeeder" (posted earlier on the blog), but I've made a few modifications to give it a different feel.  Just like our cars come in different models (convertibles, hatchbacks, etc), I tried to make this a slightly different model of speeder, with a glamorous bubble canopy, larger side-mounted engines, and cargo room in the rear.  I removed the plastic canopy from the original model and filled in the gap on the top where the hinge was, and replaced the canopy with a clear-plastic bubble that I cut from a 'Woodland Scenics" Fir Tree 5-pack -- the packaging was a clear plastic clamshell and the top of each 'tree compartment' was the perfect size, once trimmed with some scissors.  The side engines are from the Micro-Machines Action Fleet "Gain Speeder", they were originally its guns that fired little toy rockets.  I think they look better as engine pods, with some little circular bits glued to the front and back.  The driver was s spare from one of the many WotC "Flash Speeders" that I dismantled to get their round bases, I cut off his head and replaced it with the head of a Wizkids 'Ghostfinder" miniature from their defunct Horrorclix game.  No model is safe in my collection!  It was then painted and dirtied up with weathering powders for that grungy "used universe" feel of Star Wars, particularly the vehicles you see on Tatooine.  I'm pleased with the way this one turned out, especially the wacky little 'El-Camino' style cargo area in the back!  (Thanks for the idea, Lyle!)

The Magenta landspeeder is based on a little keyring of "Anakin Skywalker's Airspeeder" from Attack of the Clones.  According to the Wookiepedia, it is a "Narglatch Airtech XJ-6 Airspeeder."  The keyring was part of the "Force Links" series of collectibles produced by Tiger Electronics around the time that the Clones movie came out, and I was able to pick up a couple very cheaply as they did not seem to be popular, probably due to their hideous yellow/orange/green color scheme!  Unfortunately, they were a little too small, probably 1/72 scale, so I needed to make the them look a little bigger to fit in with the rest.  Basically, I extended the rear engines with plasticard and putty by about 1/3 inch, added larger head-rests, and added some sort of frontal steering or propulsion fins alongside the engines.  These were inspired by the fins at the front of the Speeder Bikes, I figure that since landspeeders are using the same technology, they might have similar components.  These were just cut out of some simple plasticard shapes, and I added some thin plasticard rods to make them look like they are firmly attached.  With all these add-ons, the model finally looked the proper scale, albeit as a compact sports-car type vehicle.  The last bit was to give it a suitably racy paint job so that it will stand out from the crowd.  My wife really likes this one, and has claimed it as her speeder in the upcoming races!  (The other 'keyring speeder' is currently parked in the garage at Spaceport Speeders with a blown coolant regulator -- the repair parts are being shipped in from Mos Espa, but it's gonna be a while!)

Both of them were mounted on plastic bases torn off WotC "Flash Speeder" miniatures.

Looks like we have 10 completed speeders now, I need to do is get some suitably hazardous rocks and terrain built, and we'll be ready to race!