Trick or Treat

Well, the Iron Man costume I posted about previously turned out... okay.

My own costume, Furiosa from "Mad Max: Fury Road", was a fairly major crafting effort too:

We made a pretty sharp trick-or-treating crew, I think.  Alas my wife didn't have any costume ideas she wanted to go with, but I told her that next year if she thinks of something I'll do whatever it takes to help make it happen :)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

 Ion Age Spooks
15 mm

I don't often pull together seasonal pieces in time, but here are two kooky and spooky figures from The Ion Age. Both were monthly freebies, from 2013 (Skeleton) and 2014 (Witch).  I replaced the Skeleton's head with a slightly better 15 mm skull from Alternative Armies, and added a festive jack-o-lantern (not hard to sculpt, as it turns out!) and another skull to give the Witch's base some flair.

Happy Halloween!

The Great Khanate

Shia Khan commander and troopers
15 mm

What's the price of a mile?

Grinding through the churning mud and choking fumes of the future battlefield, the Shia Khan face their enemies with blistering firepower and relentless mechanized advance.  With the help of clever tactics and a willingness to sacrifice, their seemingly crude weapons and vehicles can hold their own against sleeker foes...

I originally intended to do an orange/black version of the studio paint job on these Shia Khan from The Ion Age.  But then I had a look at their little gas masks, and so now they're my grimdark "World War I in space" faction... with no apologies to the Death Korps of Krieg etc.

"I have a plan, sir."
"Really, Baldrick? A cunning and subtle one?"

Cardboard Man

Not a lot of painting lately... September is a busy month.  But I have been up to something this weekend.

Yep... one three-year-old sized Iron Man Halloween costume, coming up!  I'm a little wary of completing it too far ahead of time, lest he change his invariably fickle mind, but I'm banking on the finished product being so appealing that he won't :)

(Credit where credit's due, I adapted the helmet template found here to make the 3/4 head mask...)

Pistol Packing Smuggler

Sola Haru
28 mm

Here's my second Space Bunny Arts figure, a roguish smuggler who's not afraid to fly dangerous cargo or sling a blaster or two around (I wish I could say this paint job was inspired by Emily Ong's gender-bending Han Solo cosplay from about 5 years ago, but I didn't see that until I was mostly done).  I stayed pretty close to the iconic Star Wars outfit, but put the red "Corellian Bloodstripes" on the jacket sleeves where they'd be more visible.

And a group shot with my other SBA figure, Abi bin Qanubi (sold as "Jehn Kibo")

Wall-E World

Refuse Compactor Bot
15 mm

There must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.

I recently took a little break from our hectic summer schedule to paint up this cute little trash-picking automaton from Ground Zero Games. He's less grungy and battered than the guy in the film, but I like the sculpt and didn't want to obscure it behind a bunch of rust and weathering.  Or I'm lazy, pick one.

Master Blaster

I got a start on my second Space Bunny Arts figure today... the roguish "Sola Haru".  Another crisp, characterful sculpt from SBA, but initially I was puzzled by her fairly generic handguns.  Plain boxy bodies, round barrels; oddly not up to the standard of the rest of the sculpt...?

And then I realized... they're that way for a reason.  You're supposed to do things to them.  And so I chose the obvious route, making them look as much like a certain space smuggler's iconic pistol as possible.  Some fussy work, and bits from my trusty 1:700 Soviet navy spare parts sprue, and voila:

Obviously, you could easily go a different route.  Perhaps something more Western-inspired, or stubby and ugly-looking.  Sometimes with an off-the-shelf figure, "less is more"...

Warrior Hermit

Abi bin Qanubi
28 mm

So I finally got my first Space Bunny Arts figure painted!  I interpreted her as an older woman, who's spent years hiding in a remote desert from... something.  Possibly an evil galactic empire.  This is a lovely sculpt: well-posed, with cleanly rendered features and amazing fabric drapery.  A lot of fun to paint.

I feel like this paint job is similar to, and owes a lot to, Matt Sullivan's excellently-painted Imperial Assault figures... but it's hard to say how.  I have spent a lot of time admiring his work.  Anyway, I think this figure would fit in really well with that line.

"You're NOT the droid I'm looking for!"

Big Damn Heroes

Captain Tightpants

15 mm

"This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then... explode. "

A former rebel, a thief, a freelance trader and an all-round rogue with a heart of gold, the Captain inspires loyalty in his crew of misfits and outlaws.  His battle-worn brown coat reminds him that while he may once have been on the losing side, he's still not convinced it was the wrong one...


Ship and crew

Well, that makes the entire crew... definitely a couple of nice sets (1, 2) from Ground Zero Games.  I picked up the perfect ship for them too, the "Glow-worm class freighter", in roughly the same scale as the last one I painted.

 

You can't take the sky from me...

Let's be Bad Guys

Warrior Woman and Hired Gun
15 mm

"Are those grenades?"
"Cap'n doesn't want them." 
"We're robbing the place, we're not occupying it." 

Here's my second-last post of GZG's spaceship crew figures: the muscle.  Here we have the Captain's loyal war buddy turned First Mate, and a distinctly more mercenary fighter from the crew.  Both very deadly in a fight.  I'll admit to sculpting on the mercenary's hat after painting was well underway... not the first time I've done that.  Sometimes you just start to see that a figure needs something extra.

Stag Party

Peryton
28 mm

Here's another model that's a bit different from my usual fare.  It's not often that I have a chance to tout fantastic(al) Latin-American author Jorge Luis Borges on this blog, but here's my chance.  The griffon-like Peryton is his creation, from his 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings.  If you read one Latin-American author ever... maybe it should be Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but Borges seems a lot more fun ;)

The figure is Reaper Bones Peryton (A Julie Guthrie sculpt!); it was a Christmas gift from my daughter :)

As usual, I'm seeing a lot of things I should improve or fix now that I've taken photos, but that will have to wait for another time...

Crate Draggin'

Container Transport
Scale unknown

I don't normally paint spaceship minis, but Ground Zero Games has a pretty nice selection of civilian ship models, so on a whim I picked up a few in my latest order.   I'm not sure what scale this model is supposed to be: if the containers are standard modern sea-container size it could be around 1:700, but that would make the ship pretty small.  I would assume at least 2-3x that.

I decided this cargo hauler looked like a suitable ride for a couple of scruffy-looking characters I'd already painted, with a bit of influence from the amazing 1996 film "Space Truckers" thrown in for good measure.  Maybe one of those containers has square pigs in it!

One of the better effects in the movie, which TBH isn't saying much.

Space Bunny arrivals!

I just got a pretty exciting package in the mail... two crisp resin figures from Space Bunny Arts: 

I'd been following the slow birth of this new studio for a while and really wanted to support Peter's venture, not to mention get my hands on a couple of his sci-fi figures, suitable for use in whatever space conflict game one might be into :)  These two, "Sola Haru" and "Jehn Kibo" should paint up nicely as "Rule 63" versions of a couple of favourite characters I have painted before.  He's got a few other sculpts as well, they all look great and honestly, only budgetary constraints prevented me from buying the whole set...

Protoplasmic Terror

Shoggoth
no scale

Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes - viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells - rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile - slaves of suggestion, builders of cities - more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative! Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and carve such things? - "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft

This Reaper Bones miniature is a weird and convoluted sculpt that captures the amorphous spirit of the powerful bioengineered creatures that Lovecraft wisely described in vague terms.  I've seen various interpretations, but this one definitely fits the bill.  It is small for 28 mm but perhaps it's an immature specimen, and consequently the Bones figure is "priced to sell", as they say.  A quick, fun paint job!

"Don't worry Leela, they're quite harmless if you know how to talk to
them... Would you like a jelly baby, teke-li-li?"

Flashing Storm of Blades

Xin Combat Acolytes
15 mm

Whirling dust in morning air,
Two warriors in the ring.
With the strength of two great bears,
They make their weapons sing.

Sparks fly high when steel meets steel,
And no one can believe
That these two men are best friends
Not enemies...

Combat Acolytes specialize in close-quarters fighting using edged and striking weapons, seemingly an anachronism in an era of energy blasters and autonomous battle drones.  But in shipboard and fortress assaults they show their value, storming through airlocks and corridors using aggressive movement as a weapon of its own.  Of course, it helps that they wear tough Kuijia III armour suits and are usually backed up by standard troopers with ranged weapons.  Nevertheless they train constantly, honing their abilities to the utmost balance of force and fluidity to ensure they always strike first.  Acolytes seeking a higher calling sometimes leave the service to follow the independent path of the Wu Xia.

Another day of meditation, Tai Chi and sparring...

Figures are Xin Trade Fleet Assault from The Ion Age.