Fusion Taxi Services

Gillette's packaging for it's Fusion razor blades is completely over the top. Each razor blade given it's own little plastic compartment trying to tell the consumer that THIS IS A LUXURY ITEM. Well, Gillette, I've trash-bashed your packaging into something a damn site better than for what you intended, a Rogue Trader hover taxi!

This was inspired by the current competition on The Emporium of Rogue Dreams: Old School Gaming Facebook page, where a skiff-bash challenge is underway. I had the competition in mind as I was about to throw away the aforementioned packaging and it struck me just how interesting the shapes actually were; the curved front, the hollowed out areas with slanting backs... what else could come into my mind except a hover car with lots of seats. And what vehicle needs lots of seats? Well a automated taxi service of course!

So from here I scrounged together a few other pieces, the family craft cardboard is a place I rarely venture in (it's a mess of felt, string, glitter glue and felt tips) but I vaguely recalled the interesting shapes of felt tip pen lids in that they may correspond to a kind of propeller shape. In the big box of shit that holds felt tip pens (many dried up without their lids), I scrambled to the bottom of the box to find those missing lids. I found a perfect one (with a kind of interior compartment shape that looked sexy and propeller like) but of course not a second one. So I just pilfered one from a perfectly healthy felt tip pen which is now dried up and useless. I should have used this as an opportunity to clear out the box, but did not want to disrupt my creative energy and stall my momentum. One of the kids can do it and anyway the referee in our house, doesn't know. The felt tip lids were filed flat on one side (deliberately roughly) and then superglued to the side rear of the hover craft.

I then dug out a few miscast sci-fi bits I was gifted at an event, dual exhausts, double lights and single lights and glued these in the appropriate places (after a bit of playing with their positions) on to the front and rear and was then ready to go and paint. Well not quite, to capture the hover aspect of the vehicle I built a hidden stand out of the end of a pen, inserted a rare earth magnet into the top of it and then drilled a corresponding hole to the underside of the hovercraft to accommodate the other magnet. The craft could now be removed from it's base (which helped for painting and can be removed and replaced by another vehicle if I ever get around to making another). Oh and it makes it look like it hovers too.

The painting stage was relatively straightforward. Black primer for the inside, masked this off and white primer on the outside. I added a few blended, vertical dark grey stripes to the seats to give them a textured fabric feel and then dabbed on a variety of rust colours onto the outside. Around these I added a range of silvers to show scratch marks and the revealed metal of the vehicle where the yellow paint and rust had de-laminated. The yellow layers were then blended in, black taxi details applied and finally I went back to the rust areas and textured them with some weathering pigments and then weathered the entire vehicle with some thinned washes.

Continuing the baggage train...

I'm usually pretty good at remembering from which company I bought my miniatures from (I try and buy from a wide range of producers), but on this occasion I cannot remember, so please remind me if you can.

I remember buying this for my baggage train idea; I like the downtrodden, abjectivity of the peasant and the ox and then decided to load up his cart with some bits which I didn't need but which could be handy for a mercenary baggage train. Quivers of arrows, some shields and a cask of ale in this case. I find these type of miniatures with lots of wood and cloth and little dynamism quite difficult to paint, so I'm pleased to get through it.

Like my previous post, I've half and half based it to fit both of my mini worlds.

The start of a baggage train

3rd Edition Warhammer Armies introduced me to the idea of a baggage train to accompany an army; the riff-raff hanging around for personal gain, the wounded and useless, the non-fighting (and from a gaming perspective - non-playing) characters could add so much flavour and character to an army and spawn a load of ideas about different scenarios. A defensive skirmish to protect the supply line. An ambush of an unsuspecting baggage train, the dawning realisation that a victorious army on the battlefield has been ultimately defeated because it no longer has it's baggage train... and so on.

So a few years ago I got hold of some ex-Citadel, now Foundry mules and quickly painted them up over the weekend.

To allow these models to be used in both city and battlefield environments (and to fit in with the two types of basing I have going on) I decided to go half and half. They can only walk to the right in a Mordheim/Frostgrave/Dungeon setting (cobblestones) and can only walk left on the battlefield.

Or perhaps they are saving wear and tear on their horseshoes by walking on the grass verge next to the road:

It always helps my motivation when painting to think of the miniatures backstory and how they fit into my plans. I currently only have a growing Nurgle army (and I want to do a Carnival/Calvalcade for their baggage - but that's for another day) so I tied these to my Mercenary contingent "The Blotted" and decided to do a little photoshoot where they are being escorted by the mercenary band. Perhaps these mules are carrying the loot and money earnt from another (successful?) venture and the vagabonds are protecting their haul.

Oh and here they are joined by an Otherworld Miniatures mule, in a slightly desolate town (more buildings needed...). The beginnings of a baggage train...?

To do in 2019 (aka preparing myself to fail)

It's highly unlikely that I will paint any of these before a new idea/model/miniature jumps to the forefront, but just in case I do, here's what I plan to paint during the coming year.

I hope that priming them makes them a step closer to being painted (and also moves them from the "to assemble drawer" to the "to paint drawer").

Whadya see?

2018 in review

My least productive year of blogging; after a decent start it all tailed off and I moved away from this hobby and focused on other spare time activities over the spring and summer; namely cycling and reading. I think taking on the challenge of painting an entire unit in one go, completely put me off this hobby and is a lesson learnt; small and varied tasks are the way forward. However the year finished with a flourish as I re-found my love of the hobby and worked through quite a few models and projects and enjoyed working on them too. Find that motivation in whatever form it takes!

It was the completion of my 3rd Edition Chaos Allied Contingent that had finished me off halfway through the year, so to start off with, here is a few shots of them; The Chaos Dwarf Renegades:

 The Chaos Ogre to accompany them

 The entire Chaos Dwarf unit

 And the entire contingent with commander, minotaurs, centaurs and other chaos dwarves:

My rehabilitation back into the hobby began where it had all started anyway - 3rd Edition Orcs, namely the commander and bodyguard that were painted up for my Greenskin Combat Card Collection. Painting two miniatures in a go is obviously my limit and it was nice to go back to the familiar green/brown skin tones that I know so well.

With these done, I decided to delve into my unpainted scenery collection, so I could be a bit more creative in putting things together, rather than just painting. So I re-discovered my Renedra gravestones and added some undead

But I did not want to lose my mojo too quickly again (after the depressing, but relatively fast painting of so much weathered stone) so rapidly returned to another greenskin for Orctober. This one involved a conversion so I could remember the joy that that brings me within the hobby. A bit of greenstuffing and problem solving later, a goblin was ready to paint which could be painted in a short period of time.

I had the bug again and now entered quite a frenetic period of production, the GW Garden of Morr set was next on my list to accompany the gravestones. I went for speed on this set:

I was also motivated in getting this scenery added to my growing collection and display, as seen here:

A diversion attacked me from my "drawer of unpainted miniatures"; some npcs from Otherworld:

Followed swiftly by a couple of unreleased Citadel Wizards that I picked up from BOYL many years ago, to act as other npcs. 

And then I realised to my horror, that I had another BOYL miniature sitting in that same drawer, unpainted:

Having painted these npcs, it gave me a chance to break out the old scratchbuilt, modular dungeon scenery and set up a tavern interior scene. These photoshoots, I have remembered, are a very motivating factor in the never-ending quest to "get stuff done"

And then a chance visit to a gaming store introduced me to the Star Wars miniatures. Greedo was bought and painted in the same day. That is a rarity! 

But of course such is the mind of a hobbyist, that he needed a context and some Mos Eisley buildings were scratchbuilt from junk and painted

Phew! A glance at my blog reminded me that I have some (read many) unfinished projects on the go, one of which is a determination to collect and paint all of the Frostgrave Bestiary. A Reaper Bones snow leopard and a Citadel boar were then finished.

And then finally, in December, for DeadCember, I completed a Scibor Necromancer that had been sitting around in the "models to be assembled" drawer. 

There is a satisfaction in starting to empty out both the "models to be assembled" and the "to be painted" drawers. But ironically (having finished with a Necromancer) new minions seem to have appeared with a combination of different complexions from matt resin, dull and shiny lead and some grey plastic in both drawers, replenishing them with "new tasks" for me to take on, control and bring to life in 2019

The Enduring Legacy of the Realms of Chaos

Remember those amazing illustrations from the original Realms of Chaos books, by artists such as Adrian Smith, Paul Campbell etal, the ones that provoked so many ideas and fleshed out some of the possibilities and potential within 3rd Edition Realms of Chaos? I still love looking at them today and often feel inspired to try and convert my own miniatures based on the characters depicted within them. But I don't have to so much anymore because the Games Workshop of today (which has more recently seemed like quite a different beast as to what I grew up with) has released some models that are so obviously steeped in and inspired by some of those very illustrations I alluded to earlier.

I rarely venture onto the GW website, so I am somewhat behind the times, but I saw someone else had painted this model (Sloppity Bilepiper) and assumed it was a conversion, but no, this is a bonefide GW release that is clearly based upon some illustrations from GW of the 80's, specifically the Realms of Chaos. I just had to buy it (and make a bit of an adjustment to make it fit a bit better with those illustrations and lose the, quite frankly, ridiculous staff);

The musical element, the dynamic, dancing poses (especially the Nurgling) are just so evocative of those early illustrations, especially the Dance of Death. The older Nurgling I added to Sloppity's hand is a reference to that era.

I had forgotten about my scenic photography backdrop, so I dusted it off (I actually had to and was surprised by the versatility of static grass) and used it again here:

 Before converting and painting this modern model, I just had to reach for my Lost and Damned book and look for the specific illustrations that I saw the link to in these sculpts. The two images were by Adrian Smith and Paul Campbell from the Nurgle pages in the Lost and Damned Realm of Chaos Tome, specifically the Dance of Death and Nurgle Calvalcade pages. Have a look:

So, as I was researching some of this post, I discovered that GW is releasing a game called the Realm of Chaos. It's not aimed for me, but it is nicely reassuring that my favourite era and output of model miniatures is seeing something of a revival for a new generation of gamers/painters. I'm looking forward to some new plastic models to paint and then sit alongside my original lead ones and hope they all are happy lined up alongside each other.