Iron Lady

Feminine Navigational Droid
28mm

Cabin's purged by satellites, now we're flying high
We've got a lady pilot, who's not afraid to die

This figure started life as a Space Bunny Arts sculpt.  It was a fun conversion, and an extensive one:

I liked the original, but after seeing "Solo: A Star Wars Story" its passing resemblance to Lando Calrissian's passionately droid-emancipating co-pilot L3-37 prodded me to do a conversion.  L3-37 was one of my favourite supporting characters in the movie, partly because "she" finally addressed (in spades) the awkward question of droid ownership in the SW universe, and partly because she was just well-written.

Man of the World

Corto Maltese
28 mm

I won this figure a few months ago from North Star figures in a (very unexpected) random draw at Lead Adventure forum.  This Mark Copplestone sculpt is an homage to the 1970s Italian comic book hero Corto Maltese, a sort of Han-Solo-like roving ship's captain and adventurer who meets exotic people, defends the underdog and generally champions liberty and fairness wherever he goes.  I'll confess I wasn't familiar with the books, but I should be; the art is stunning:

It Followed Me Home

New friend
15 mm

"Hey guys, this is Genet-Subspeaker Slaa, I think he's like, a kind of plant or something.  But he's cool... can he come in?"

Just a silly project I put together from some figures (girl: GZG; Slaa: Ion Age) I've been trying to decide what to do with.  Inspired by the possibility that First Contacts might not always be the exclusive domain of giant inscrutable spaceships showing up and asking to speak to the leader...

Sinister Synthetics

Android Hunter-Killer Team
15 mm

Ja tvoi sluga, ja tvoi rabotnik

Sigh. I remember the good old days, when a google search for "killer robots" led to popular movies, and not news articles...

These Khurasan figures are ostensibly "police bots", but I think adding skull masks gave them a really menacing military look.

Huey and Dewey

Horticultural droids
15 mm scale

Back to 15mm for a bit here, with a quick couple of GZG robots...

When you're a scientist on an ecological preserve ship in space who's mutinied against orders to destroy your cargo, murdered your crewmates, and set off for the rings of Saturn, sometimes it's handy to have a few mechanical sidekicks along to help with the gardening:

"Not wargaming"?  The battle against aphids NEVER ends!

 Obviously, these are not- versions of the funny little bots from "Silent Running" (1972):

Kind of hokey, kind of preachy, VERY 70's, but still surprisingly enjoyable...

Poe's Law

Edgar Allan Poe
28 mm

Out- out are the lights- out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

I learned a lot about Poe doing the (unnecessary) research for this figure.  I read stories like "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Telltale Heart" in school, and I'd certainly hope any North American with a TV is familiar with his Gothic poem "The Raven".  His financial struggles would be unsurprising to anyone familiar with the publishing industry.  But I did not know that he was in the army, or that his story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was the first modern detective story, or that when he was 27 he married his 14-year -old cousin...

As I posted earlier, this is another excellent figure from the Bears Head Miniatures Kickstarter.  It's obviously based on the well-known portraits from later in Poe's life, with impressive accuracy.  I doubt he regularly carried a skull and raven about town, but I think the figure really captures Poe's literary character very well.

"Howard, I know they said we could bring a pet, but I brought, well, a bird..."

Scribe of the Unspeakable

H.P. Lovecraft
28 mm

This Bears Head miniature was a real pleasure to paint!  Part literary caricature, part dramatic fictional character, it's an excellent sculpt, crisp and dynamic.  Waving his unholy idol and clutching his dog-eared copy of the Necronomicon, the author unleashes the creative process on an unsuspecting world...

I learned a few new things about Lovecraft in the painting process, like his hair colour, for which I had to consult professional Lovecraft impersonator Leeman Kessler, as no colour photographs of the author seem to exist.  I've always enjoyed Lovecraft's lurid works, and despite his substantial... personal shortcomings... and the fact that many of his creations have reached the status of self-parody in recent fandom, I truly think he was a man of remarkable imagination who contributed a lot to the fantasy, horror and SF genres.

Late night rites at the Miskatonic University library...

Masters of Horror

To my great excitement, these two figures just arrived from the Bears Head Miniatures Gallery Series Kickstarter.  There are a lot of nice offerings in this KS; I appreciated the variety and the impressive sculpting mojo.  But I managed to restrain myself and buy only two figures:

That's right! Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft, two of the most notable writers in the history of horror fiction, and so far the only authors in my collection.  At least until someone does a miniature of Margaret Atwood, that is.  I want to try and paint HPL (the "cultist" version, the "mythos investigator" was a surprise bonus!) as soon as I can, I have a fun idea for him. But I won't let Poe languish under the floorboards with my lead pile, either...

Short Rounds

Dwarf Mercenary and Goblin Tank Ace
15mm scale

This couple of diminutive but tough guys have been on deck at my painting table for a while.  Fun quick paint jobs, and full of their own character; one a high-tech power-armoured warrior, the other a leather-helmeted trench fighter with a jaunty scarf.  The dwarf is a Khurasan figure, while the greenskin is from Ion Age's Malig range.

"Guys?  Guys?  I could really use air support right about now..."

I have a couple of really impressive 28mm figures coming soon from the Bear's Head Miniatures Kickstarter, they're done casting now so I'm hoping to see them show up within the month...

Outer Planets Operative

Asteroid Belt Spacer
28 mm

Oye!  Kewe kowlting ando go, welwala?  Wa koming gut da Belte!

My wife and I have been catching up on the amazing SyFy show "The Expanse" for a few months now.  Well-written, and its super-hard-SF style, solidly based on some pretty good novels, is something really refreshing among what tends to be fairly sloppy televised SF.

This nicely detailed and expressive figure is from Space Bunny Arts.  I added his "Belter fringe" hair, with colour inspired by my colleague @katafacepainting, and style loosely based on the show's Detective Joe Miller:

Beltalowda gonya leva xox!

Robot Jox

Orion and Urbanmech Battlemechs
6mm scale

Whoa oh oh oh camouflage
things are never quite the way they seem...

In the dark, grim, dark future of Mech warfare, it's hard to camouflage a fifty-foot behemoth under some green paint, nets, and branches.  Some mechwarriors opted instead for brazenness: presenting themselves in bold colours and menacing imagery to intimidate opponents.  But others opted for a different strategy: using countershading and the bizarre patterns and shapes of dazzle camouflage not to hide themselves, but to confuse enemies as to their size, mech type, armaments, and direction of movement.

My brother has bought a bunch of these Battletech-like models from some dicey site in Russia, and sent me a few to try my hand at painting them.  They're really nice quality, presumably mastered via 3-D printing, but since they're unlicensed knock-offs I'll refrain from promoting the manufacturer here.  Apparently he Paypals to some guy named "Yuri" :/

And so we're back... new year, new hobby goals and hopes, right?  May we all keep building, painting and learning, and of course, having fun doing it!  I'm hoping to show off some really fun stuff here in the next while, so stay posted :D

Devils Brigade

Space Devils
15 mm scale

I break bread with the late heads 
Pickin' their brains for angles on all the evils that the game'll do 
It gets dangerous, money and power is changin' us 
And now we're lethal, infected with D'evils

 

About a year ago I undertook this ambitious (for me) and enjoyable painting project for a particular miniature company.  I haven't heard a peep since about them being released or not, so I've decided to share them here.  I was really impressed by these horned aliens: both the sculpting quality and the variety of poses are excellent.  They look like they're coolly stalking across a battlefield, fearlessly picking off their outmatched opponents with high-tech hand weapons.

They're both menacing characters, and imposingly large in 15 mm scale:

Avenging Outlaw

Phoolan Devi, "Bandit Queen of Uttar Pradesh"
28 mm

I was intrigued that Bad Squiddo Games (aka Annie Norman), purveyor of "believable female miniatures", made not one, but three models of this controversial, but memorable figure from India's recent history.  Was she a hero avenging women and the mistreated lower castes?  Or simply a murdering brigand?  As usual, real people can't be pigeonholed, and her story holds a mirror to the desperation and unjust treatment women and lower-caste Indians faced during her lifetime, and continue to struggle against today.

Seema Biswas as Devi in her 1994 biopic;
obviously the model for this sculpt.

Dazzling Disco Mutant

Dazzler
15 mm

It wasn't much of a stretch to turn one of the female figures from Ion Age's "Entertainers" set into the iconic 1980's Marvel Comics singing mutant heroine.  The rollerskates and disco club base are my addition; if I was less lazy I suppose could have given her feathered hair too...

Dazzler's first appearance, in 1980.

Dazzler ended up becoming a pretty decent second-tier superhero in her own right, but her origins were squarely in the realm of cross-marketing:

Dazzler was originally a project commissioned by Casablanca Records in the mid-to-late 1970s to be a cross-promotion in the mold of KISS, who had two successful comic book tie-in super-specials by the end of 1977...

Romita, Jr. originally intended for the character to resemble model, actress, and singer Grace Jones, but representatives from Filmworks – wanting to promote model and actress Bo Derek – insisted on design changes to reflect Derek's features. - Wikipedia

"You should be dancing yeah, dancing yeah..."

Star Speeder

Scout Speeder
15 mm scale

When the People's Planetary Protectorate military procurement team requested a speeder design from a collective that made agricultural equipment, they really should have known what to expect: a speeder that looks like a tractor.  But, built around a compact power plant designed to drive 30-ton megaharvesters, the unattractive result was what the committee ultimately described as "extremely zippy".

Model is a Ground Zero Games "Eurasian Union Jet Bike".

Forest patrol in a remote area offers an opportunity to "punch it"