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"

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!"