Time to let Ol' Painless out of the bag

 Once I've finished the monstrous Gargant, I'm clearly in the mood for much smaller stuff. I can't face another large project right now, so I believe I can take the opportunity to paint single minis or any other kind of standalone project.

My palette cleanser today will be this "Ace" by Hasslefree Miniatures, a mini that have been waiting for some time to be painted:

No, not Blain. Ace, I said

 

I've heard that Hasslefree has been experiencing some delivery issues for some time now, but to be honest, it's been quite a long time since I last placed them an order (you know, my mountain of shame doesn't allow it) and I always got the best of them.

Whatever the case, the sculpt is simply magnificent, as usual. It of course resembles Blain from the Predator movie, though it's not an exact replica of the character.

I tried to get it as close as I could, so it meant those 80's Woodland fatigues:

It took me like two or three tries to get a green I was comfortable with

 

Painting camo is always tricky. If you do it right, it will work and you will see a blurry object with no definite shapes (as that's what camo is supposed to do!). But you can't forget that you are painting a mini and that it should look good and distinctive on a board!

I most likely won't achive neither of both goals

 

I used a soft green on all the other gear. It makes some shapes recognizable, I hope, but the camouflage itself is still there.

A mess of greens and stuff

 

I finally made the kneepads, boots and weapon with different shades of black:

The Ol' Painless

Little else! Here you have the final result:

 

I have to say I was much happier before I saw the pics full screen, it makes all the mistakes awfully apparent :D

Anyway, quick'n'dirty job, so I'm happy with what I got. Let's get a comparison shot

Wait, are these two even the same scale?

I'm quite satisfied with having painted anything in kind of a week's time. It feels strangely good! I guess I'll paint a few more standalone minis before I come back to full units or whatever. Who knows!

Beauty and the Beast

You may remember the Elda Space Elf from a few weeks ago. I said I wasn't quite happy with the colours and that I may have to repaint the mini. Well, I finally did so. I opted for the Biel Tan scheme, so green instead of red...

...and all the spirit stones painted

Still suspiciously Christmas-like, yet an improvement, I think

Right after finishing this mini (again) I found this other one wandering through the lead mountain.

You didn't see this coming, uh?

The Fomorian Bounty Hunter by Knightmare Miniatures is something I purchased as part of the Space Raiders kickstarter some time ago. About time to spill some paint on this beauty (What? You were assuming the Beauty was the other one?)

A Space Fimir. Deal with it

Barsoom? No, never heard of that place

It's quite a straightforward paintjob, as I think the mini was asking for this kind of palette. Didn't want to overdo it or oversaturate colours, so everything here is a conscious decision (well, apart from quality, you know).

The sculpt itself is a work over the original fantasy Fomorian by Diego Serrate too (which I recall getting on another kickstarter, but now I'm unable to locate it on Knightmare's web)

Maybe not that much, but I'd like to think there's an evolution as a painter here

So having painted these two on a row, I suddenly begun to see a connection. Two rogue space adventurers, outcast warriors taken apart from their respective worlds and now wandering together through the galaxy on a quest that will take them through endless adventures. An odd couple shoulder to shoulder in an unexpected alliance against evil, wherever they find it.

Beauty and the Beast (I insist, the Beauty is the Fimir)

Will they earn forgiveness? Will they return as heroes to their homes? Or will they keep on travelling through the edge of the Galaxy beyond the limits of known space?

Don't miss next week's episode!

I'm happy with the result, and how such different minis can team up this way. I honestly have no idea of what will I paint next, but I'll tell you as soon as I discover it myself! :D

Christmas (Space) Elf

First of all, belated merry Xmas! These days are totally crazy and the painting queue doesn't go down at all!

But as the last post of the year I wanted to paint something, a mini at least. I chose this one, an Elf I got from Hasslefree long time ago:

Plus a couple of bits to Eldarize the mini

I love the pose. As soon as I saw the mini I knew I needed it. Funny thing, I have never had an Eldar force before, and I really don't plan on starting one by now. It was a standalone project, just because. The armour looked Eldar-ish enough and I had little or no conversion work to do, as you can see.

Unsure of what Craftworld to choose, I started painting the armour cold white. I knew I wanted bright colours, nothing dark at all. Maybe that was my mistake, as I ended up painting a really bright red tabard. Sorry, didn't take WIP pics. The thing is that I suddenly couldn't see but Christmas colours on the mini. It reminded me my Christmas Elven Warband for Frostgrave so much that  I simply couldn't unsee it anymore.

'Ahhh... I guess I'll have to repaint that tabard... But... That can wait. Isn't it Christmas anyway?'

So I finished the job and got this:

She just needs a touch of green

Pinting snowflakes would have been too much, even for me

I may repaint the tabard differently. I may not. We'll see next year. For the moment I have this sweet Elda warrior ready to defend Craftworld Rovaniemi :D

Scale comparison shot next to classic Ragnar

And next to a realscale Space Marine

Note the different base, I think she scales up nicely

To be honest, I ordered another Elf alongside this mini; from the Red Box ranges. It also was love at first sight. Unfortunately they didn't match as expected. It's not that the mini is shorter than the warrior, they are really a different scale.

Beautiful, nevertheless

The thing is that a friend was so gentle to give me away this other guy, which I think looks too large, but may work alongside her.

Not that I'm starting an Eldar army

Whatever I may do with these, that will be a matter for 2020 :D

Happy new year to all!! See you soon again!

Separated at birth

A second tough, badass warrior woman in a row!

You may remember the female Barbarian I painted for my HeroQuest (or you may not, hence this link). The thing is that I loved the pose of the mini so much that I got two copies, with a specific idea in mind: I was doing an adventurer for RT settings.

I didn't have a clear idea of what was I specifically aiming for, so I let it flow and begun to add stuff from the bits box. This is the result:

-Hey sis. -Hey sis

Let's have some close-ups. As you can see the general attitude remains (well, that was what called my eye in the first place).

Nothing screams 40K as a ridiculosly bulky bionic eye

Main change was cutting the shield away. I sculpted a crude wristband and added an autogun (from a Necromunda weapons sprue?).

Shoulder pads with skulls is also a hint that this is 40K

I also replaced the axe with a combat knife, which looked much more in place:

Oh, and a greenstuff wire thing. That eye really needs power supply

Finally a Death Korps of Krieg backpack and this is pretty much it, we have a low-tech barbarian ready to live some adventures in the grimdark millenium blah blah

Smart casual dress code

The face sculpt looked good enough to me to try dark skin. I mean, it didn't tell me that clearly 'caucasian'. Lips and nose weren't ultra thin, half of the face was covered by the bionic eye and I think the experiment worked good enough. I also read the clothes differently from the original, and used the full longcoat idea, which also works fine. You may see some attempt of embroidery pattern so it didn't look too flat. Red and yellow were almost default colours to roguetraderise the mini, but now I miss some checkers :P

It's a very simple conversion, not much greenstuff was used on her, it's been more a matter of kitbashing. Thing is I'm using quite a bit of greenstuff these days as I'm working an a wider project (unrelated to this lady). I hope I'll be able to show something next week.

See you then!

SheroQuest

For quite some time I've been toying with the idea of adding some more diversity to my games, and specifically to HeroQuest. Well, the thing is, one day, wandering through the Hasslefree web (any sentence starting like that is doomed to end with an empty wallet) I just saw a few minis... and I immedately knew I had a project. It was love at first sight. I was to make female characters so you could choose whatever you wanted. This is what I mean:

The Barbarian

 

 I know it's supposed to depict that girl from the Vikings TV show, but I don't follow the series, so I know nothing of that character. I just saw the mini and loved it. I didn't want a Red Sonja nor a chainmail bikini, this was exactly what I was looking for. In fact I got two minis! The other one will be converted to become a Rogue Trader adventurer, but that will come in time...
Let's go on:

The Dwarf

 

 This one took me some more time to choose, but in the end I think she's up to the duty! Probably the helmet is something I would have liked to convert, but she works good enough as it is, so I finally left her just like that.

The Elf

 

The pose. Oh, it's all about the pose. I love it. A real pleasure to paint. And that goes too for the final one:

The Wizard

 

I thought of doing some more embroidery on the dress, but I think it works fine as it is. Where the Elf's cloak is a travel garment and I painted it like that, here I tried to show a more 'urban' look, something she would wear for her daily palace intrigues and stuff.

Well, not much else to add, I think you get what I was aiming for here. Just a final picture with her counterparts:

The same but not the same

I hope I have more chances of geting Mrs. Suber into gaming with these! :D
No, seriously, the minis were too good, I needed them. But now I'm tempted of doing things like this with basically each game I own. Oh, now I'm doomed...

Interlude: Sculpting Mikos

Quick update while working on the mutants. Some time ago my pal Keyan Sark asked me to sculpt a Miko (a Shinto shrine maiden) for different settings.

I found this beauty by Hasslefree, which could make a nice start:

Hoping it wouldn't prove that difficult, Keyan asked me if I could make it double, so he could have two converted minis, one for self and the other one to give away. Challenges. I like challenges.

And so I accepted. I'm easy, you know

First thing was fitting the hakama (the trouser/skirt) and the upper garment, to make them look right.

Volumes and stuff

Though they look like Arabian belly dancers in this pic

Getting the hakama right needed more than one attempt. More than two. More than a hundred, I don't know. I got stuck in the folds, but it finally worked. So then I had to sculpt more hair and the tiny bag (which I was told to put by the side of the mini).

Something in this fashion

The rear part of the hakama was also solved!

And a tiny Eldar-ish rune carved on the bag, as per request

So this was my part of the deal. Keyan's outstanding skills made her look like this:

Much better now

So you better check his blog! You'll find more (and better) pics there :)

Back to regular programming soon :D

Shiny Lord of Chaos

Some more stuff for my HeroQuest project. Two on a row, wow! Among the Hasslefree ranges I found a wonderful Chaos Lord. As my previous original HQ Chaos Warriors were painted in black, I thought it could be a nice chance to make something different and pour some colour on. I d't take too much risk anyway, I went for classic red.

Man, I feel like torn into pieces

 So this was like he was supposed to look:

Does this colour make me look angry?

But I must confess something. I didn't feel comfortable with it. Not at all. This is one of those things that I see other people master but I can't make it work. Honestly, I've seen other people's Chaos Warriors in every colour imaginable and I drool all over. But I made this one and felt totally clumsy. Ouch.

So I came up with an alternate solution. What if I tried brass?

Then this happened

Trying to play with camera's colour balance

Now I feel chrome and shiny

Ahh, it's so hard looking good for battle...

The brass look works better for me. The pics look too gritty and dirty, but in hand transitions look smoother. Don't know, maybe I have the image of Mordred fom the Excalibur movie way too attached in my mind, but I kinda prefer this metal approach rather than the coloured stuff. Ahhhh, when my Pantheon of Chaos KS minis arrive I guess I'll have another chance to see what I dare to do...