Thing a Week 32

My first stab at the unambiguously post-apocalyptic for the AHPC, with this guy.

He's a scavenger, he has a rusty pipe, an a la mode scavenged wardrobe and he is ugly as shit.

I painted him with colours that just happened to be on my palette while painting other items. Other than the neon orange, a recent acquisition from Model Box. I decided to give him a modern climbers rope and somehow it managed to throw the entire scheme off. Not that that's a huge problem, he's a post-apocalyptic scavenger, not a hipster.

So my mother says I'm hard to buy presents for. It shouldn't be that difficult, I give her access to my amazon wish list, and a request not to buy novelty key-chains or tat.

Come play with us human...

With that in mind, here's a tatty, novelty key-chain that she got me for Christmas. I decided to re-purpose it as a miniature, perhaps an animatronic mascot at a long abandoned theme park, or even just a piece of art.

It lights up it's eyes and makes a tinny meowing noise when you press the button on it's head. Just what you want going off in your pocket all the time. This is where our planets precious finite resources are going people...

Come play with us... forever...

Thing a Week 31

Anyway, here's a giant scorpion.

Give him a hug!

Despite it being a fairly rushed job, I'm actually pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially with the way the Vallejo quote unquote matt varnish glossed it up a treat.

I basically had no idea what I was doing when I started out, but a few washes in and he started to look quite gribbly.

I based the paint job on a yellow-tailed scorpion; the UKs only resident scorpion, that, thanks to global warming, has been thriving! You're welcome fellow Brits!
 

With an unlucky scavenger, for scale

I drilled the claws, but not the legs; I suspect that I may live to regret this decision.

Thing a Week 30

For your delectation, a small child with a crowbar.

As painting continued, I realised he looked a little bit like Donald Trump... I decided this wasn't entirely inappropriate.

For scale, here are two repainted dogs. I really wasn't happy with two I did previously.

Turns out one of them was supposed to be a German shepherd...

Gaming Roundup

From the recent City Of Games festival in Bristol

Vikings the Megagame - beware summoned serpents and portals to wizard realms

Watch trees grow!

Play as a cave!

8 Minute Empire, now in 80 minute form!

Monopoly - Highland Clearances Edition

Best game!

Collect albatrosses and make your enemies flee

Thing a Week 29

This guy is good for viewing over at the All That Remains blog!

Thing a Week 28

The French EW forces continue to take shape, here's my artillery group. All photos, no waiting.

Thing a Week 27

Turns out I'm better at identifying dog breeds than I thought.
This, I believe is an Irish Wolfhound.

It might be worth noting that some of these were sold to me as 30mm. I thought there wouldn't be much of difference but I was wrong. I had to clip bases back to the minimum to get these to fit on 25mm bases. Even so this one seemed rather oversized and *one google search later* bloody hell those things are big!

I'm well aware of the internet's penchant of paring particularly large animals with particularly small women, but even by those standards these dogs are massive. 

Speaking of massive dogs, the next breed is a Baskerville hound. That's a real thing right?

It was giant and ornery so it looked like it deserved to be a giant black predator hunting fictional detectives across the moors of Victorian England.

It's original colour scheme was so black that none of the highlighting showed up on the photo... or at distance for that matter... so I added some less subtle highlighting to compensate. I'm not entirely sure it's an improvement. Have I mentioned that I hate painting animals? Actually, any large smooth surface, flesh in particular.

I am, however, happy with the outcome on this wee guy.

I'm note sure what breed it is (but I'm sure you can enlighten me ad nauseum in the comments). It looks like some cross between a chihuahua and a miniature German Shepherd.

I've never tried blending, and I'm not sure if that's what I've done here, but I think I got the colours to blend really well.

Here's group shot of them all

Thing a Week 26

Hello everybody! With the holiday period now a sweet memory I have finally got round to some more painting: some rats!

These little fellas are going to be providing XP to level one adventurers in both post apocalyptic wastelands and tavern cellars. I've never really seen what threat rats pose to a humans* (other than via the medium of disease obvs) in fact, I think they're rather cute, but I get that they're a staple, and these guys can double up as dire rats or those brain rats from Planescape: Torment that gain access to more powerful spells the more of them there are.

Look at his widdle paws!

The figures aren't great, they have a prominent mold line bisecting some of them that gives some of them a weird "sideways Trump hair flick"** if viewed from one side.

He just wants to hug... your face off!

*But of course D&D is a system where - rules as written - the average housecat will, on average, win a fight with the average peasant...

**Insert your own political joke here

Thing a Week 25

Happy New Year all,

Here's my first paintjob for the year and first submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge ever: Ben Affleck in a Batman costume. I'm not even joking, the packaging repeatedly stated that this figure was Batman (Ben Affleck)