Instant Mold

A few weeks ago I ordered some "Instant Mold" from the Coolminiornot shop. This product is a clear waxy plastic, which melts to a soft consistency in hot water and can be used to make press molds of somewhat simple items.

There are a number of demo and review videos out there, so I didn't bother doing one. But I did a quick test that might be informative. Space Marine shoulder pads are a popular target for this, so I tried out a couple for my test run.



The pieces I'm duplicating: an old SM medic and a random Terminator arm.



The softened Instant Mold formed around the parts without any difficulty, and appeared to hold a very fine detail level.



The results. I'm pretty impressed! There's some loss of detail on sides of the Medic pad. There appeared to be some air bubbles in the Terminator seal, but it looks fine out of the mold. I imagine after a few more tries I'll get a more consistent result.

One thing: some forums I've seen have pointed out that polycaprolactone is available from various sources for cheaper than IM's price. That might be worth pursuing, but since this stuff is reusable, I'm not going to worry about it.

Bug Hunt

Alien Warriors
15mm

"Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?"
"All we know is that there's still no contact with the colony, and that a xenomorph may be involved."



OK, here's that "quick project" that took a month to finish: Khurasan's Space Demons, with an "abandoned colony" basing theme.

I resorted to *gasp* drybrushing these, and it really shows. But I'm not sure how else you could paint them in a reasonable amount of time, except maybe painting them light grey and dipping them with a pure black dip. The head carapaces were blended though, those would have looked terrible drybrushed.







"THEY cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"

Oops!

What? A month? I've been working on a "quick" 15mm project to post here, but somehow time has flown by.

In the meantime, this is all I've finished painting:



I promise I'll have something worth looking at soon. Really.

Adversaries through time and space

The Fifth Doctor
28 mm



All done! And I'm pretty happy with it. The Doctor's amazing trousers were a bit of a freehand challenge... and with freehand being my real weakness, those stripes did not come easy. I'm never sure how to approach shading with a painted-on pattern: in this case I shaded the tan base and then painted the detail: white & olive stripes, then red. The result is only okay IMO.

Also, I actually had to add detail to his feet 3/4 of the way through painting him, when I realized they looked more like blank, deformed dinner rolls than sneakers. It's like they were sculpted by Rob Liefield :(

As for the base... it's a cricket ball. Very fitting for the Fifth Doctor.

Sontaran Warrior
28 mm



As for the Sontaran, not the most exciting colours ever, that's for sure. I've tried to make up for it by making his ugly skin look really convincing, and putting some earth tones and grass on his base. Originally his base was going to be castle flagstones, referencing "The Time Warrior", but I decided that would be too similar to his grey uniform to look good.

Not quite cricket

The Doctor: some personality emerges... maybe a little too much personality. I'll have to dial back the shadows around his eyes just a little, lest he look like some kind of deranged drug addict:



And I started on a new adversary for him too:

Sontaran Warrior
25 mm



Sure, they look like potatoes with limbs, but the Doctor calls them the galaxy's greatest soldiers. This guy wasn't sculpted very faithfully, I had to reduce his number of fingers, and add the "probic vent" on his neck (which is only, you know, the #1 plot device associated with Sontarans):

Boom, right up the bung hole

The Fifth Doctor

The Fifth Doctor
25 mm





I'll admit I've never actually watched an episode of Doctor Who featuring Peter Davison as the Fifth doctor; my knowledge of the stories comes entirely from reading the Terrence Dicks novelizations as a child. (I think the last time I saw this actor he was elbow deep in a cow...). Still, I've been looking forward to painting my Doctors, including this one who wears celery.

A Harlequin/Black Tree miniature.

Cult of the Octopus God - finished!

The Cult of the Octopus God
15 mm




These turned out so well, I should have done three or four! Oh well, I can always do a couple more if I feel like it :) Keeping the same swampy theme of course, I decided their tentacled faces were not masks, so I kept the green skin/pinkish tentacles and black eyes from my previous Great Cthulhu. Just to tie everything together.

EDIT: another version of these, the "official" Khurasan paint jobs by Spacejacker. More colourful.

Swampy...

Battling the heat wave and painting are not 100% mutually exclusive.

I'm going to try and finish these guys this week, I like how the bases turned out... the rest, we shall see.


"American Idol"...

Domo Arigato

D-84
28 mm



Took me long enough... The quilted pattern of his clothes was so damn fussy to paint. I think the result looks decent enough.

I really, really need to paint more, and make better use of my time. I have the Octopus God cultists to work on too, and they haven't progressed much (I blame trying to paint the Italian seasoning).

Say it ain't so, kid!

Khurasan Miniatures has had to close shop temporarily while the owner deals with some kind of personal issue. As seen on other, more popular blogs, he has many fans who are slightly despondent about this - Khurasan is all about quality and service, and is easily one of the most creative ranges out there, in any scale! (see below...)

And of course there's the person behind the company name, who obviously is having something serious going on, usually these are not pleasant situations :(

I'll leave you with a reminder why I love this little outfit so much:



Who else makes figures of a monster from a notoriously bad 50' B-movie about an alien in a gorilla suit/diving helmet?

Noodly appendages

The Cult of the Octopus God
15 mm



A couple of Khurasan's Eldritch horror minis. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" refers to a swamp cult worshiping Cthulhu, so I'm giving these guys some bases featuring rotty tree roots and stagnant water:

"Ugly roots and malignant hanging nooses of Spanish moss beset them, and now and then a pile of dank stones or fragment of a rotting wall intensified by its hint of morbid habitation a depression which every malformed tree and every fungous islet combined to create."

Are their tentacled faces just crudely crafted masks... or hideous fleshy mutations resulting from some ghastly dark ritual?

And yes, I made them a Cthulhu idol to worship. Who's a cute little Elder God?



At 6mm high, not the smallest thing I've ever sculpted, but most of the others were just pouches.

Robot Detective

D-84
28 mm



Another one of my recent Doctor Who purchases... Not much to look at yet, admittedly.

The Robots of Death is a classic Doctor Who serial from the Tom Baker era. Aboard a giant mobile mining vehicle largely staffed by humanoid robots, the Doctor and Leela have to solve a mystery - who is murdering the crew one by one?

D-84 is an intelligent detective, disguised as a "Dumb" class labour robot, put on board to protect the crew from the murderer. Eventually he sacrifices himself to save the doctor and remaining crew members.

For the Motherland (finished!)

"железа ребенка" (Iron Baby)
15mm scale






Well this was a lot of fun to make. And I'm quite happy with the results: not goofy looking per se, but definitely a different visual style than my other Weird War 2 walkers. I think thinking up the back story beforehand helped visualize the final product, since of course every miniature should have a story, even a brief one.

So little

... both the figures, and the amount of painting I've been getting accomplished lately :P

Soviet flag bearer
15 mm



The first time I've done proper eyes with whites and pupils on a 15 mm figure :)

Soviet Assault Walker
15 mm scale



As you can see, I think I accomplished the "look" I was going for, a much brighter green (Ordic Olive mixed with Space Wolf Grey) than standard WW2 Allied olive drab. There apparently was no standard Soviet armour colour, since all factories used whatever was available.

Next I just have to base these guys and paint some markings on the mech. It's been a while since did any freehand...

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In other news, I just discovered Blogger has a static page function, so I can put up an About Me page and stuff like that. I'm always reluctant to put too much personal info on the web, but I'm not an "in the closet" mini painter, or anything :)

Why am I not painting?

I'm a busy man these days:







Freaking "real life". I'll try and post some proper content soon, I promise :P

(no that's not actually our sonogram, I don't have a digital copy of it)

For the Motherland!

Soviet assault walker
15mm scale



The war walkers produced by Allies and Axis alike captured the interest of Comrade Stalin, and he ordered production of a "robot" to support mass infantry charges. The Christie walking suspension was overly costly for Soviet production, so a simpler non-transforming leg mechanism was devised, and the walkers transported over distance by trucks. Armament varied; this one carries a 20 mm ShVAK autocannon and a rocket launcher adapted from a captured German Nebelwerfer.

Due to the walkers' awkward toddling gait they gained the nickname "железа ребенка" (Iron Baby) among Soviet soldiers. Operation required considerable skill, and drivers enjoyed being considerably less expendable than their comrades on foot.

This was a fun conversion from a Khurasan Miniatures sci-fi walker. I just generally down-tech'ed it, giving it a more gas-powered look and fixing some bad design (pointless asymmetry - why?) and building the Nebelwerfer out of sprue.

Earth Invaders

"Doctor Who" Dalek and Cyberman
28 mm



I'll be the first to admit these are basically tabletop-level paint jobs, but I wanted to have some fun and finish these quickly. We've been watching so much Doctor Who lately that I'm kind of... obsessed :) Anyway I like these two as a pair; they have different body shapes and metallic hues, but the same objective: conquer and destroy! The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend...

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Side note: I found a couple of other decent blogs with some pretty pictures of Doctor Who minis:

Miros' Games - UNIT, Cyberman and Sontaran forces.

An Evil Giraffe - Some nice recent-series figures.

captain apathy's secret lab - inclues some Vogans, Movellans and Zygons, which I'm not familiar with.

ArtWho9 Figure Painting - a lot of the old Citadel (!) DW range, including Sea Devils and Martians.

Hack and Slash

Cyberpunk Elf Street Warrior
25 mm



Nothing says "dark future of the 80's" like ripped jean shorts, a mohawk and a katana ;) I received this figure for Mini Exchange #25; I think it's a "Shadowrun" mini by Grenadier but I'm not certain, since Stuff of Legends' SR gallery is very incomplete.

Javi informs me "This mini is from mark copplestone's future warriors and it was labeled as future warriors killer bimbo's, all 5 minis under the same reference 7901 (page 100)." Thanks!

Pretty cool anyway, in a retro way. Edit #2: I'm not sure where I got "elf" from, since she doesn't have pointy ears. Perhaps from her slight physique.

The base is a resin industrial-type thingy I received a few exchanges ago. So this is a two-fer, if you will.

Grr Argh!

HeroQuest Zombie
25 mm



Well he's done, nothing special but I'm reasonably happy with how he turned out. Once again, GW Snakebite Leather looks rich and wonderful when it's basecoated and washed with a dark brown, but looks dull and lame once you start highlighting... Clearly a colour meant for "dippers" :)

Review: Black Tree Design Doctor Who figures

L->R: Fourth Doctor, Robot of Death, Fifth Doctor, Cyberman, Dalek.

So I just received these fantastic minis from Black Tree Design. I was kind of amazed that a fairly minor company would have such a prominent license, and in fact surprised that these were even still being made. But "Doctor Who" is the longest-running sci-fi franchise in TV history, beloved by many.

First of all, I was expecting these to be OLD sculpts, from the 80's or so. Fairly small, a bit odd-looking. But they're definitely not. At 30mm, these should mesh nicely with most modern ranges (see below). Really nice detail and proportions, not to mention pretty decent likenesses of Doctors #4 & 5.



The other thing is... the line is HUGE. The first EIGHT Doctors and all their major foes and Companions, all in miniature form. Wow.

The downside is... you have to be patient. It took a few weeks just for my order to ship, and a few more for it to get here. Kind of anomalous these days, but I'm guessing Black Tree is really just a few people. Still, it could be a frustrating if you need gaming miniatures in a hurry.

EDIT: A search of The Miniatures Page forums will reveal a number of threads of this nature, which is very unfortunate. I might order from them again simply because DOCTOR WHO, but I'd email ahead to confirm they have the stock in hand before making any payment (with credit card not Paypal).