New art and forthcoming posts

It's nearly the end of October and the second gaming highlight of the year (for me anyway) is nearly upon us... the annual GROG Halloween game, Night of the Living Lead. Every year the tiny Bretonnian hamlet of Shitz Creek is beset by necromancers searching for the powerful pumpkins which will allow them to raise the ever-growing numbers of undead from the multitude of graveyards which surround the unfortunate village. This year I believe a coven of witches has entered the hunt for the renowned squashes...

 

Not only is it the end of October, but nearly the end of ORCtober too. I have not been idle but have been (appropriately) back to work finishing the shields for my Goblinoids project. They'll be done by the end of the month so stand by for mass photo dump!

 

Preparations are in progress for the launch of the Factious Waste Live Campaign, War 1984, which can be found here. All-comers welcome. The pdf rulebook should be available in just over a week's time and new artwork, funky scenery and gorgeous miniatures have been procured to adorn the pages of the physical book which is pencilled in for production in February. I've dug out some of my steampunk costumes for some digital pieces to grace the pages with. Credit to me ol' mate Sultan at Sulty's Photography for a good number of the original shots here!

 

Last, but by no means least, I have some very cool sculpting commissions on the go right now. The See Thirty Amazons are back on track after a long hiatus, a couple of political characters from the past year are getting miniature representation and I finally get to tackle some Realm Of Chaos stuff! It's going to be a fun few months!

New art and forthcoming posts

A New Year's retrospective-futurespective for Oakbound Studio

It's nearly the end of the year, as I'm sure you've noticed, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to have a look at what happened at Oakbound in 2015 and ask some important questions about what I want to happen next year. For the latter part I'd like to ask your help, but more about that later down the page.

The beginning part of 2015 saw a couple of important events, one for Oakbound and the other for me. First we shipped (after a lot of unavoidable hassle which I hope not to experience again!) The Woods Kickstarter miniatures. Yes, it really did take five months to mould, cast and ship and since that period involved my having to make hasty arrangements to get bits resculpted and cast by three different companies in order to not keep backers waiting any longer than necessary the final sending of those boxes was a great relief. If you've noticed that there are still only a tiny fraction of the figures we produced on the webstore that's because of the rate at which my painting was able to go before getting caught in the next thing...

I got married! Not of enormous significance to Oakbound maybe (although my wife Solly has generously donated space in her studio and a substantial amount of her excellent artwork to the company) but certainly a momentous occasion for myself and one that kept me away from big developments with Oakbound for a few months.

The Summer and Autumn were more productive on the Oakbound front with the Legends of British Steampunk Kickstarter gearing up and a couple of trade shows where we sold the last copies of our first Tripods! board game print run and a significant number of The Woods miniatures. Completing the Legends Kickstarter at 500% was a very positive way to end the year and I'm now leaving the casting in the capable hands of Kieven at Lancer Miniatures whilst I go off on Honeymoon.

So, LOOKING AHEAD TO 2016 then...

There have been two very key developments from the previous year. The first is that Tripods! is currently earmarked for an international release and a significant amount of work has been undertaken to make the system more strategic for the adult board game market. The developments need some serious playtesting in the spring but we're hopeful it will be ready for print in the next 6 months.

The second development is with a game system called 'Factious Waste' which a number of followers of this blog and the Oldhammer Forum have been testing during 2015. Talking to visitors at the trade shows one thing that is apparent is that selling miniatures without a game system supporting them can be confusing for some people. A slight frustration of 2015 has been having a huge amount of background for The Woods produced for a couple of aborted attempts to work with people producing roleplay systems and which has yet to see publication. That, and wanting to release Factious Waste but knowing that the miniature and background development is a good year or so away from being ready, has prompted me to make a significant step which I believe is going to make some future developments much easier. I have stripped the rules-set (all 4 pages of it!) from Factious Waste and left it as a background-free system I'm calling Systemmech. Legends Kickstarter backers have had a chance to download and try out Systemmech with a Legends plug-in which gives a good idea of where I'm going with this.

So, my hope for the next year is to finish testing and release Systemmech, a cards-free, dice-free tabletop roleplay system consisting of a short, free, downloadable rulebook. THEN to release a series of printed supplements with equipment lists, skills trees, scenario ideas, narratives, character classes and, most importantly, a ton of background for each of the miniatures ranges to allow their use not only with Systemmech but also with any wargame or roleplay system players wish to plug the setting into.

All going well with the casting process, the success of the Legends Kickstarter  puts Oakbound at a position where I hoped we'd be this time last year, with a comparatively small but usable pot of money to invest in developing a setting.

NOW, this is where I need your help.
With the two Kickstarters we've run so far we've got a small but strong core of supporters. Kickstarter is something of an odd beast, I'm very keen on it but I know some people, especially with established businesses, aren't since it has taken a lot of trade away from the small companies who aren't using the platform. Meanwhile, companies like Mantic, with a customer base and reputation large enough not to need Kickstarter any more, are still using the platform for the coverage it provides for them. My own take on Kickstarter is that it is a wonderful opportunity for someone like myself with ideas I'd like to make flesh but no supply of capital to enable that to happen without the support of other people who think those ideas are worth pursuing. BUT, at the point at which the company has enough capital to go it without crowd-funding platforms I think it SHOULD, to allow others to benefit from Kickstarter without being overshadowed by established giants, and to grow the business practice of the individuals running company.

For this reason I would like Oakbound to not have to resort to Kickstarter in 2016 (or afterwards) As I say, we have a small but usable pot of money to invest in the development of our settings and systems now and I believe we should use it for that rather than banking it and then asking backers for more money through crowd funding. That doesn't mean necessarily we won't need to do pre-orders, but it represents a move away from the startup stage and I'm very excited about it.

HOWEVER....

From this point it would be very easy to crash back to the point of not having any funds rather than building on the funds we have available to invest in the necessary and hefty expenses such as getting artwork commissioned, printing books, paying painters and sculptors to work on the miniatures I find myself not having time to work on and so forth. WHATEVER WE DO WITH THE FUNDS WE HAVE NOW HAS TO REALLY COUNT! So I'd like to ask a few questions of this blog's readers if I may. It won't take long, but it really is important to me as the future of Oakbound Studio could really hang on this one decision.

The decision is... which setting do we go for as a starter? You can find a description of the settings and a few related questions
courtesy of Survey Monkey (here). You don't need to sign up or provide personal details or anything. I'd be very interested to see what you think, grateful for your participation and would love further feedback and ideas. Please do feel free to post on the Facebook Page.

Thank you again, and Happy Christmas!

A New Year's retrospective-futurespective for Oakbound Studio

Legends of British Steampunk-final week

Second big event of the season, Dragonmeet last Saturday, was as much fun as we thought it would be. Loads of really nice people, smooth running and very friendly. I got a load of sculpting done, and the final wave of the Legends of British Steampunk are now (almost!) finished:

As with all the miniatures in the range they are all based on real people from the Steampunk scene, and such joyous characters that they were immense fun to sculpt.

 

The Kickstarter is in its last week now and 400% funded. We've just added a 'Legendary Pledge' option to get all 30 figures for just £3 each, so if Steam and Dieselpunk/Victorian characters are your kind of thing go have a look before Sunday. :)

 

www.kickstarter.com/projects/951486445/legends-of-british-steampunk-roleplay-and-wargames

Legends of British Steampunk-final week

Legends of British Steampunk! Somewhere I haven't posted!

I have been mostly absent from the worlds of blogging and Oldhammer since, I am told, my latest project is "not really Oldhammer". Fair enough.

The miniatures are 35mm, not 28mm so don't fit with RT or 80s/90s WHFB minis.

The miniatures take neither of the above setting as their influence.

Never mind, I'm doing them because I want to (and that to me is very Oldhammer) so here they are, the Legends of British Steampunk:

The idea is to produce miniatures suitable for some of the current skirmish-sized systems such as Malifaux, Infamy, Wild West Exodus, Dystopian Legions and Wolsung which use 32-35mm miniatures and have Steampunky themes. The thing about Steampunk games designed by people who like the aesthetic but haven't been immersed in the Steampunk scene is that they can be quite generic and lacking in character or creativity, two things central to the subculture. To challenge this and as a way of showing recognition to some individuals who have shaped the way the Steampunk scene in the UK has developed over the last ten years I am sculpting miniature versions of 'actual' personas for use on the tabletop.

There are another two sets currently being sculpted, the fabulous Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing and a selection of celebrated personages from across the UK.

The range is on Kickstarter at the moment. Don't pay any attention to the 'unlocks at £450' shown above, we were funded in 5 hours and all stretch goals were met in under a day. We're now working towards three new stretch goals, the first of which was unlocked on Monday, releasing the Steam Mascots to the world.

The masters from Wave 1 were painted by the excellent Sigur from Battle Brush Studios. In under a week would you believe?!

So if the neo-Victorian vibe is your thing, or you know people who play any of the games above, please do share the project and pay a visit to The KICKSTARTER page. And if you do have any concerns about scale and whether these guys will fit in with your collections, here's a photo that may answer those questions:

Legends of British Steampunk! Somewhere I haven't posted!

Not at all an Old Hammer... Legends of British Steampunk coming up from Oakbound

This is not an old hammer. Not oldhammer in the slightest.

BUT on the grounds that it is something I'm up to right now, something I think is fun, is gaming-based and might possibly be of interest to some allow me to present what Oakbound will be doing in a month's time:

 

 

Brass Goggles is the leading Steampunk forum in the UK, possibly the world, and as a young propmaker just turned professional it was a wonderful place to get all kinds of tips and share techniques and ideas with others. It seems incredible, but 10 years have passed since the launch of that great institution, during which time the UK Steampunk scene has gone from strength to strength. To commemorate the anniversary I'm sculpting some of the people who've been really pivotal in the way the scene has developed. A few have already been done:



 

 

 

 

Now unless you're a part of the scene (and maybe even then!) you won't necessarily recognise them, but hopefully they'll make nice roleplay miniatures in any case. They're 35mm scale to fit in with systems like Malifaux, Freebooter's Fate, Infamy, Marvel's miniatures games and even the most recent scale-creeped GW as well as being great character figures for RPGs like Cogs, Cakes and Swordsticks. Because they're effectively miniature portraits I decided not to try and go true 28mm scale as I wanted to get loads of details on them and character on the faces particularly.

The British Steampunk community are at present voting for the characters they'd like to see added to the next wave of miniatures by going here: Legends of Steampunk Survey. It'd be great to have some input from gamers as well, so if you've got a spare moment (it doesn't take long) I'd be very grateful if you could have a look and vote for the characters (there are photos for you to see what kind of ministure they'd end up looking like) you'd want to see miniaturised.

Oh, and if you're interested in picking some up our current launch date for the Kickstarter is the 21st November. More details to come.

 

Not at all an Old Hammer... Legends of British Steampunk coming up from Oakbound

A bit of early promotion... Legends of British Steampunk coming next month:

A bit of early promotion... Legends of British Steampunk coming next month:

Chico's Evil Space Dorfs run amok!

You may be aware of a certain Mr Chico who haunts the dark places of the community's minds, daring to go places that others fear to tread... usually with goats. Well, a while ago now he commissioned Oakbound to sculpt some miniatures for him. We gladly complied and I'm pleased to announce that Judge Chico's Evil Space Dorfs are now on sale in the Oakbound shop.

Please give generously, all donations will go towards expanding the range. Ideas (featuring tentacles and powered armour designs) are already being thrown around, and knowing Chico you know there's weirdness coming!

 

While I'm on the subject of additions to the shop, The Woods kickstarter minis are now all shipped to the backers so we have some spares to put in the shop, they'll be there soon, along with a limited number of Airship Goblinks. If you're going to BOYL 2015 you'll have a chance to try out the airship Klinderboorg and its crazy crew in the Oldhammer Ahoy game.

 

 

 

Chico's Evil Space Dorfs run amok!

Steampunks in Spaaaaace!

We had a jolly splendid time this weekend at the spiffing Steampunks in Space event at the National Space Centre. Having missed seeing our friend Thaddeus Tinker, Lady Elsie, Jack Union and the fabulous chaps and chapesses from Modiphius at the Asylum this year it was great to have a chance to catch up.

We were there with Tripods! which you might remember is out War of the Worlds themed board game. Tripey had a full makeover for the event, which was just as well, for we were confronted by the terrible sight of a full sized Tripod looming from the shadows!

We'll be at Dragonmeet this weekend with Tripods! and hopefully the first batch of castings from The Woods Kickstarter so if you're London way it'd be great to see you. And if not, you can still order Tripods! by following the links at The oakbound website. Perfect Christmas present for the discerning Steampunk, Board Gamer or Sci Fi fan. Ooooolaaaaaa!

Steampunks in Spaaaaace!

Tripods attack Leicester!

It's all been a bit quiet on the Martian front lately...

No, not the Android's Dungeon game, the Oakbound Games board game Tripods! We took the game to the UK Games Expo back in April where it was very positively received despite being pipped to 'New Game of the Year' by Asmodee's "Splendour". That hasn't deterred us, since Asmodee themselves are now reviewing Tripods! with the possibility of becoming involved at some point in the future.

Well there are a few copies left from our original print run, and your last chance to pick one up may be coming up in the next few weeks. First up there's

STEAMPUNKS IN SPACE!
Leicester, National Space Centre
29-30th November

and then

DRAGONMEET
London, Earl's Court
6th December


If you can't make it to either but would like to know some more about this War of the Worlds boardgame you can find us on Facebook and at the Oakbound website.

Tripods attack Leicester!

Tripods! The British await the invasion....

As news reaches me here that the boards, cards, boxes, dice and other its and pieces are currently winging their way across the Atlantic the industrious Brits have also been busy.


Those following on our facebook page will know we've just wrapped up a competition to design some Victorian meeples for the game. The competition has now closed, the winners have been chosen and the prototype meeples have been produced so without further ado allow me to unveil.....



The NEW LONDON POPULACE as it awaits invaders from elsewhere:

 

 

Now to officially coin the term "Meepods"! :D

Tripods! The British await the invasion....

From the timeless worlds of space... The martians have landed!

This time it's not about those pesky Techpriests, for something else lurks on that dark, forbidding planet!

-----------------TRIPODS!--------------------

I've mentioned to some people how I've been making a War of the Worlds based board game called TRIPODS! which is currently in playtest stages (If anybody happens to be of the steampunk persuasion and attending the famed UK convivial 'Weekend at the Asylum' in Lincoln you may have the chance to play (and even take home if you're VERY lucky!) one of the first prototypes. I finished the Tripod model this morning and it has been posing for shots which will be turned into artwork for the game. The pen and ink sketches for the board and cards have been completed but my other half is going to produce oil paintings for the characters and Tripod art over the next few months, based on photos now taken.

  

Here's a brighter shot for an all-round view. I wanted the Tripod to look like it had a kind of musculature, the book mentions that Martian technology seems to have evolved without the wheel and it seems the best way of avoiding any kind of rotary motion in creating a machine is to use a kind of  advanced 'smart' technology, using memory materials to create sinews and tentacular devices. The 'hood' of the martian machine is based loosely on a cobra and intended to give an impression of the shape of the creature within, with a few of the pilot's creepy tentacles protruding from gaps in the scales. It's hard to see from this angle, but the top of the Tripod has a hatch where the martian enters, the ridged panels down the 'spine' of the machine extending to form a ramp for entry. The arrays around the front of the hood are mirrors and lenses for increasing visibility, an extension of the periscopic device used to survey and aim the heat ray from the cylinder pit. The heat ray itself is the small brass 'funnel' wielded by one of the machine's tentacles. There is a similar box from which the black smoke issues. It looks fairly harmless until....

Kazzzzzzaaaaappppppp!

I'll post some more pics of the game art as it progresses.

From the timeless worlds of space... The martians have landed!

The Martians are coming!!!!!!!!!

No, it's not the little green men, it's a gaggle of red-robed technomagi come bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and pain for the heretic! These three likely lads are the first creations from my first batch of castings of my general-robed-figure sculpts. A few teething problems to iron out to make sure the next lot are bubble-free and they'll be good to go for anyone who wants a bog-standard cowl-bedecked 28mm figure to turn into a cultist, sorceror, monk, cleric, techpriest, dark angels veteran etc etc etc. The heads are adapted from castings of sculpts I made for my Servitor Interiti maniple, which I will also be doing a run of as cultist, arcoflagellant, Mechanicus, haemonculus etc heads. In the meantime I have dressed these up for my Mechanicus army, three technomagi from the Haerimperator Opifex, guardians of the Incarnus Titan Legion.

   

 And for those who were disappointed not to see gribbly alien monsters under this post, here are the machine adepts fighting a deadly Xenos heresy!

This is a latex casting from the Gigeresque-Tyranid-Hierophant-type sculpt I've done for a mate's birthday (trying to convince him to get that Apocalypse force together!). I'll put up some pictures once he's painted it... which may be some time!

Out Damned Blob! Out I say....

The Martians are coming!!!!!!!!!

At the end of a busy month....

Well I've been absent for a month, plenty of wintery painting time has happened and the Mechanicus are well advanced. They've even fought their first battle (drew). Here are some shots of the painted army as it stands, apologies for the lousy picture quality. There's loads more in the pipeline and better pics will be posted soon on the Cult Mehcanicus page (here). Enjoy!

The core of the force, made up mainly from Warzone mutant chronicles figures

Seven Skitarii Hyspasist maniples (infantry squads), each with a Tessararius (sergeant)

Two Praetorian (veteran) squads with plasma weapons and the command maniple (company command squad), bodyguards and advisors

Four Sagittarii maniples (heavy weapon squads) and all but two of the platoon command maniple members (platoon command squads) with much plasma to boot!

Up next I need to work on the Vexillarius, Tanks, Rough Rider and Ogryn equivalents and servitor squads, hopefully that'll break up the uniformity of the army a bit and give it a stronger, twisted mechanicus feel.

At the end of a busy month....