Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Old Year/New Year

2014
I'll keep this short 'n sweet.

The Good: In April, I began painting with a regularity I didn't have previously. My skills improved and I began to take chances with new things. This confidence in what I was doing got through a mental block or five and I was painting miniatures I would never have, could never have, painted previously.

Personal standouts:

Imperial Dwarf.
Empire Flagellant. 

I received the first Dragon Bait indigogo campaign and fell in love with Kevin Adams' characterful sculpting.

Purveyor of luggage and scorn.

The Bad: I bought two warmahordes starter boxes and discovered the horror of piecing together plastic beasts and warlocks.

They look okay here, but don't breathe they may fall off their legs.


The Ugly: A change in job and medication caused the horror loss of focus that spun me through a cycle of shortlived interests/obsessions: Crowleyean Magick, Magic the Gathering, American Sign Language, sculpting, puppetry. 4 months without painting a miniature. Gah.

The Very Ugly: Wanting to buy Kevin Adams orcs and Discovering that the current Orcs sold by Games Workshop aren't capable of shutting their mouths (oh, and they're not sculpted by Adams). It's like staring into a Rob Liefield splash page: nothing but grimace.

Anywho. For the new year I have some goals. In no kind of order.

1 Finish my Dark Elf army
2. Paint more dungeon adventurers.
3. Start my eclectic chaos army.
4. Start painting the 40k Harlequins.
5. Get the orcs I have accumulated constructed and based ready to paint.
6. Press mold shields for the dark elves

7. Start painting with more care. It's going to make for crisper paint jobs. Which leads to:
8. Being more judicious with the army painter washes. This got me over a big hurdle in completion of miniatures, and I could get by on scruffy for a long time. Now is the time to step up the blending
9. Start some conversions/sculpting using  green stuff.
10. Make some terrain: medusa cave, ruined gate, hills etc.
11. Do more freehanding
12. construct dungeon tiles out of fimo.

13. Play warhammer against an honest to Nurgle live opponent.
14. Fingers very crossed to be able attend the next US Oldhammer meet.
15. Try out Lion Rampant, Sword of Blades and Heroes and other rule sets.

Pie in the Sky 16.  hope to get some of my stuff from NZ. Eldar and Skaven are a calling...

All of the above is subject to change, correspondence may be entered into, no guarantees etc etc, so on and so forth...

Happy New Year!

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Dragon Bait Indiegogo Gnome Chevalier

Back in May I supported an Indiegogo campaign for a range of dungeon adventurers bv Dragon Bait Miniatures. The miniatures are sculpted by Kevin Adams and are fantastic, awesome, beautiful and other superlatives that you can all read in posts on this blog.

Anyway: Dragon Bait have their second campaign up and running right this second with 16 miniatures in the offing by Tim Prow and David Soderquist. Kevin Adams sculpted a couple of miniatures before he was given a staff job at Foundry.

And this is one of them:

The Gnome Chevalier.

Joe Corsaro, the gracious gent in charge of Dragon Bait, sent me the Gnome Chevalier a couple of months back after he'd seen my earlier posts. A very generous out of the blue thing indeed and one that I am thankful for.

The mini is 3-parts: rider, dog and shield and they fit together very well. The details are crisp: the dog is magnificent in it's stature and anatomy and the rider has a very haughty cast to his features. There was no flash and the mold lines did not cause me any trouble. They are usually something that I miss and then find after I've painted everything but these were either easily removed or simply not there on this mini.

Todger!
Ahem, well. 

The Chevalier will be made available as a $10 add-on to a pledge when the funding reaches $3000. With just over 15 days to go, the funding is just over half way there.

I'll be backing for the full collection and have no doubt that I will be well pleased with the miniatures. Joe Corsaro created a great first campaign that was fulfilled quickly and totally top-notch, and I'm 100% sure that the second will be the same.