Pages

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Ooh! A painting competition!

The excellent blog Dropship Horizon is holding a 15mm sci-fi painting comp.  Their post itself is pretty clear, but in a nutshell:  three categories: squad, vehicle/mech, terrain piece.  Must be sci-fi.  You can enter one entry per category.  Lots of prizes.

The comp closes in a month so, if you're me and your stock of 15mm figures is sadly depleted, time is a bit tight.  But hopefully I can pull something together and even have the time to paint it nicely.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Ice, Ice, Baby

Ice Warriors
28 mm

You might have to be a real Doctor Who fan to appreciate these old enemies who made a reappearance this past year, in the Eleventh Doctor episode "Cold War".  As with the recent reappearance of the Zygons, I think they managed to update the concept while keeping the same goofy 60's-special-effects charm of the original design.

"That one!"  "Duh-okay boss!"
I really liked their appearance in the 1972 (Third Doctor) episode "The Curse of Peladon", where, while abrasive, they weren't the bad guys any more, and ultimately helped the Doctor discover the real villains and maintain peace.  These two figures depict the Ice Lord Izlyr and his bodyguard Ssorg from that episode.

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Ozymandias (15mm terrain)

Ancient Stone Head
15 mm scale

This was an idea I had a while ago for an interesting, cheap scenery piece.  I don't normally make, or have use for, scenery/terrain but this was too fun and easy to pass up as a holiday project.


Sacrificed: one "Clone Wars" Pez dispenser; surprisingly solid and tedious to saw through, I have to say.  You could probably use any action figure head or even a Barbie (if you didn't mind your relic looking like Barbie).


I glued the sliced head to a 2.5" diameter wooden craft circle with hot glue, and smeared some more glue around to make the ground uneven.  Then covered with a mix of sand and ballast and spray-primed.


Wow... at this point I was pretty pleased with the result but I felt it still kind of looked like a toy.  It needed a bit of scale.  So I painted on some lines to make it look like it was originally carved out of massive blocks.  And, of course a little bit of scraggly desert vegetation to add some colour.


So there you have it.  One mildly-interesting terrain piece, the mysterious ruins of a long-lost temple or monolith.  Could be better, but as a test run I can't complain.  Maybe someone else can improve on the concept with some more details, or better source material.

"Astounding!  I'll definitely get published in the Xenoarchaeology Bulletin for this!"