Deadcember: Scibor Necromancer

 Scibor miniatures produce some lovely sculpts (perhaps not everyone’s tastes) but still wonderful character and detail, in my opinion. This is the first one I have bought from them; having been disappointed to find the original sculpt of this being only available in 54mm size. I loved the sculpt as soon as I saw it with the Necromancer actively raising his undead minions and the lovely triangular composition in particular being pretty inspiring. So I was made up when I heard that this sculpt was also available in 28mm scale too and immediately purchased it from their website. It was, I’m sure you can imagine, a pleasure to paint after I had decided to base the Necromancer on the Emperor Palpatine due to their very similar appearance. I knew I wanted him to made up of blues and blacks and have slightly warmer, contrasting flesh tones for the summoned zombies. The model will fit in well with my Mantic zombies and therefore they have a new leader to direct them around the dungeon.

Frostgrave Bestiary Challenge: Boar and Snow Leopard

The Snow Leopard, incongruous away from the melted snow, approaches the static and serene boar

Circling around the boar, the snow leopard ruminates whether it can take the bristly beast down. 

It decides to approach from the rear, avoiding those pointy tusks, but realises quickly that it's rear end is worse.

The snow leopard gets too close and as swift as you like, the boar turns, grunts and chases the snow leopard away. Perhaps an easier meal awaits back in the Frozen City

The Spotted Dog Tavern Interior

I put together a photoshoot combining some of my recently painted ncp characters and some of my older scenery and floor tiles. It felt a bit like playing with a dolls house (with two daughters, this is from experience) due to the arranging and re-arranging of the composition. I deliberately tried not to create a narrative diorama, but the positioning of a certain figure in relation to the scenery or another figure always means something, but I will let your imaginations project onto the scene portrayed here.

Star Wars: Mos Eisley Scratchbuilt Scenery

Having painted up Greedo in his traditional colours, I quickly set off to pursue my favoured aspect of the hobby; scratch-built scenery.

I didn't need to do much image research to find inspiration on the Internet as the films settings are ingrained in my memory, but a bit of a refresher of re-watching the movies over the wet weekend with my kids didn't hurt. Re-visiting A New Hope set my mind on recreating some buildings from Mos Eisley on Tattoine as I particularly like the desert setting, the combination of rectangular and spherical shaped buildings and of course it being a "wretched hive of scum and villainy". And where Greedo hangs out.

I used a combination of foamcard, polystyrene balls, yoghurt pots and some resin doors and accessories that I picked up years ago:

Here you can see me experimenting with some self-cracking paint to create a weathered look on this door.

The second one, of course, was more successful!

Here he is to show the scale

And a few WIP shots to show you the build. I haven't got around to painting up the tall generator yet.

A small tip for maintaining a rectangular shape whilst the gluing of the 4 walls dry:

And using my trusty circular cutter for those awkward archways:

Next up, some generators made up pretty much entirely of recycled materials...

Star Wars: Greedo

I realised that one of the reasons I never really got into 40K was not because I had a preference for fantasy but because the sci-fi vision served up by GW in the 80's just wasn't Star Wars (although I realise there are references to it). For me Star Wars is the Ultimate Science Fiction Universe and Space Marines and the other various 40k factions, quite simply, weren't. 

Living a slightly blinkered life these days, I didn't even know that there was a Star Wars game and models and that these models were fucking cool and totally represented my love of the original films. So lets start another new project; Star Wars Legions. Well I happened to be passing my (not so) local games store and inside found a Greedo model which looked just the ticket (turns out I've actually picked up one from Star Wars Imperial Assault game, which is a board game rather than the tabletop game and that these are also, annoyingly, a different scale). However the scale of these matches some of my other, very limited, selection of 40k based models (for example; here, here, here and here)

So I just had to paint him up in his traditional colours and base him the same way as my others, which just happens to be a sandy equivalent to Mos Eisley.

I will attempt to put together a squad of Bounty Hunters from the films and then locate them all in my own scum-ridden corner of Mos Eisely (cue for some scratch-building of scenery...)