Mess with the honk, you get the bonk

Goose Hydra

28mm scale

"I do not like the cobra chicken"

A friend had this fun, deranged model printed for me as a birthday gift.  It's from Yasashii Kyojin Studio on My Mini Factory.

Rhino Boys

Rhox Gangster

28mm scale

"Can I go in?"
"Are you on the list?"
"Not... technically."
"If you're not on the list, then you can't go in. Now, shove off!"

This rhino man puts his muscle to work as a gangsters' thug, guarding, fighting, or intimidating as the need arises...

Rhox lawyer

28mm scale

Single rhino lawyer
Filing an objection
Up at night and reading law
For his clients' protection

Single rhino lawyer
Working pro bono cases
Got some brand new evidence
So back to court he races!
(w. apologies to Futurama)

... While his law-abiding brother argues in court.  His clients may be guilty, innocent, or something in between, but either way he'll make sure they receive the toughest defense he can muster.

This pair of thick-headed fantasy figures are a set from Magic the Gathering.

Hakuna Matata!

Timon and Pumbaa

28mm scale

It means no worries
For the rest of your days
Yeah, sing it, kid!
It's our problem-free philosophy
Hakuna Matata!

 

 

 

Just a fun idea I've been wanting to put together for a while... Pumbaa is a Bears Head Miniature, Timon is from the North Star Africa line.

Cetacean cyborg

Jones
28mm scale

Jones heaved half his armored bulk over the edge of his tank, and I thought the metal would give way. Molly stabbed him overhand with the Syrette, driving the needle between two plates. Propellant hissed. Patterns of light exploded, swarming across the frame and then fading to black. We left him drifting, rolling languorously in the dark water. Maybe he was dreaming of his war
in the Pacific, of the cyber mines he'd swept, nosing gently into their circuitry with the SQUID he'd used to pick Ralfi's pathetic password from the chip buried in my head. - "Johnny Mnemonic"

Jones is a cybernetically enhanced dolphin, used by the navy to sweep and hack sea mines during the last war, and addicted to amphetamines to ensure his obedience.  He somehow left the service with his implants intact, but to feed his addiction he now lives in a tank at a grubby fun park, as a low-rent attraction for the children of Nighttown... "Talk to the War Whale!".  One day, razorgirl Molly Millions comes to him with a challenge: a data courier with an encrypted program in his head that only Jones' implanted superconducting quantum interference device can unlock...

 

He was more than a dolphin, but from another dolphin's point of view he might have seemed
like something less. I watched him swirling sluggishly in his galvanized tank. Water stopped
over the side, wetting my shoes. He was surplus from the last war. A cyborg.
He rose out of the water, showing us the crusted plates along his sides, a kind of visual pun,
his grace nearly lost under articulated armor, clumsy and prehistoric. Twin deformities on
either side of his skull had been engineered to house sensor units. Silver lesions gleamed on
exposed sections of his gray-white hide.

I first read "Johnny Mnemonic" in high school in the 80s and poor Jones stood out to me as one of the great characters in a story crammed with delicious cyberpunk detail.  I clearly wasn't the only one; Jones made a memorable appearance in the cheesy Keanu Reeves movie (loosely) based on the story.  I opted for a sleeker look here than in the film when I converted a WizKids dolphin.

"Why are we here?"  "Because Allison doesn't really have any
cyberpunk minis.  Also the dolphin was lonely."

Big Bird

Terror Bird
28mm scale

This large and muscular flightless bird could be a species of Gastornis/Diatryma (55 mya) or the more recent and savage Phorusrhacid Titanis (1.5 mya).  

I included this amazing Antediluvian Miniatures figure almost as an afterthought when I ordered Mary Anning.  They have some other really nice looking prehistoric creature figures referencing the history of paleontology itself.

The filming of "Lemurian Explorers", 1928: Burt Hardcastle couldn't help feeling that this was awfully realistic for a special effect...

Catsong

Indy, Ragdoll Bard
28 mm scale

Tomorrow will take us away
Far from home
No one will ever know our names
But the bards' songs will remain

A bard's coin and living rest on their reputation, and Indy's songs and sagas are certainly well-reknowned.  His passage through town always leaves behind happy, entertained folk purring a new song or two... and the occasional unexpected litter of kittens...

This Cats & Catacombs figure is actually the first bard I've ever painted.  As lovely as it is on its own, I felt like it deserved a well-done pastoral base, to suit a bard's itinerant, poetic nature.  I used bark for the rock, and these are my first sculpted mushrooms, which I think turned out okay.  The figure is posed pretty statically, but makes up for it with a poised, handsome character that suits a notoriously charismatic profession.

 

Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together,
With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather,
Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow,
Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow.

There has never been a time without unicorns

Unicorn
28 mm scale

A long time ago when the earth was green,
And there was more kinds of animals than you've ever seen,
They'd run around free while the earth was being born,
But the loveliest of them all was the Unicorn.

This lovely unicorn was one of the offerings in Bears Head miniatures' last kickstarter, and I knew I had to have one.  I love its real feeling of bulk and power; it's not a gracile, vulnerable
"The Last Unicorn" style creature but a lot more like a war horse.

To me the unicorn represents hope...  I didn't know how thematic that'd be when I ordered it late last year... sure do now.

I recently picked up a bottle of metallic medium and lightly applied that to the unicorn's back, mane and tail to give it a bit of enchanted sparkle.  It didn't really work that well for photos, but in person it definitely adds something extra :)  I'm also pretty happy with this nature base.  It had some growing pains as I had to scrape off a really bad static grass attempt, but the second try with a mixture of flock, foam foliage, and Italian seasoning along with some Gamers Grass clumps worked a lot better.

(Idyllic setting courtesy of the Oxfam Canada calendar)

The magic of nature

Forest witch and her familiars

28 mm

Colors swirl in spiral skies
The trees stare back with willful eyes
The night doesn't frighten me
Cast a stone cast an eye
Water mirrors never lie
The earth is firm beneath your feet

This Bears Head figure took a while to grow on me once I had it in hand - I liked it, but didn't know exactly what to do with it. Luckily, I'd also bought an assortment of Philip Hynes' amazing animal figures, including this adorable little rabbit and squirrel!

 

I won't lie, I was watching a lot of "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" while painting this, but its vision of witches who by and large behave like Christians and just add "Satanic" in front of everything ("Satanic blessing", "dark baptism"... "evil church camp?") obviously didn't move me so much. So here she is, a crone in touch with nature and the living things of the deep woods. She may have her own morality, but I don't think she's hosting any Dark Baptisms or roasting any babies...

"You're outnumbered, witch!"
"You think death has any power here?  In my world, surrounded by life?

Happy little trees
28 mm scale

I also made my first trees! I used the basic method from this video (including homemade clump foliage), but there are lots of other good foliage and tree tutorials out there.  They're a bit sparse, but I think I achieved a somewhat natural look.

Definitely little.  Perhaps happy.

"I hope that's not releasing some kind of fumes" - my wife

Green Heeler

Cattle Dog Ranger
28 mm scale

The last Dungeons and Doggies figure you'll see here, for now anyway.  They're fun, but I do want to get back to the many fun 15mm figures I have.  Plus I have a lot of Bears Head miniatures sitting unpainted... including Narthoks the sci fi Beholder!

"Stand down, marauder!" "Woof!"

Sorcerer Supreme

Dogtor Strange
28mm scale

"Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all."
"Which is?"
"It's not about you."

Once an ordinary Dachshund, Earth's Sorcerer Supreme now protects humanity from mystical threats and supernatural villains of all kinds.  His Doghouse Sanctorum in Greenwich Village is a place of great power and mysterious artifacts, from which he ventures forth to fight evil on both the material and astral planes...

Dogtor Strange is a Dungeons and Doggies figure: "Morgaine the Dachshund Sorceror".

"By Dormammu's beard, I know I left my kong here somewhere!"

Thick-skinned undead

Zombie Rhinoceros
28mm scale

Animal zombies... a philosophical mystery.  We know human zombies as mindless, bloodthirsty savages, reduced to a single drive: kill the living.  But when other animals are infected, do they become the same species of generically aggressive, flesh-rending creature?  Or is some vestige of their original nature preserved?

This is another Bears Head Miniature, received as a miscast freebie in my last order.

Since somebody asked, the basing is Milliput textured with an Instant Mold stamp of the bumpy privacy glass from our bathroom door :D

The last sight of many an African zombie-hunter...

Canine Conjurer

Cornelius, Golden Retriever Wizard
28mm scale

Misty morning, clouds in the sky
Without warning, the wizard walks by
Casting his shadow, weaving his spell
Funny clothes, tinkling bell

A coworker recently showed me something pretty cool: she had backed the "Animal Adventures: Tales of Dungeons and Doggies" Kickstarter!  She recently received 13 lovely fantasy adventurer dog figures in the classic character classes: wizard, monk, fighter, bard, paladin, druid and so on.  Naturally, I offered to paint one for her: this classic magic user complete with battered Gandalf-style hat and spell books.  It's a really lovely set, especially considering they're plastic figures.

"All right, calm down there Shardik.  How about a nice Cure Light Wounds spell?"

Ursus arctos horribilis

Grizzly Bear
28mm scale

The bare necessities
That's why a bear can rest at ease
With just the bare necessities of life

Philip Hynes' animal sculpts are really incredible; more wildlife art than gaming figures, really.  I got this lovely figure as a miscast in my Bears' Head Miniatures order.  I just had to fill some large bubbles on its stomach and do some dental work.  North American brown bears come in a variety of coat colours, so I had a fair bit of leeway in that regard; this reddish hue was a purely esthetic choice.

The base is an ambitious improvement on my old "Italian seasoning forest base" method... I added some fallen North American tree species and woodland flowers to liven it up a bit.  This was a really enjoyable project; expressive, beautiful, and quite a change from my usual subject matter.

Living her be(a)st life...