Weekly Digest #2: Lipstick, powder and paint

Welcome to the second episode of

Weekly digest!

A biweekly summary of links guiding you to great tutorials, product reviews worth a look, breath takingly painted miniatures, interesting sculpts and awesome inspirational sources. 

If you've missed the first part of this sumamry you can find it here. 

This time I've collected more inspirational links then miniatures. So prepare for a lot of quiet interesting step-by-step articles, reviews and tutorials!

Inspirational

• Chris Clayton, the person behind Modelworks showed his way of creating a stunningly realistic painted face on a 1/6 scale bust. Although this news got already around I'll name it here as it is realy stunning and should be seen by many many people! Above you see a first shot of the finished bust by Mathieu Fontaine that I've found over at facebook.
• How to make spikes out of iron powder and superglue by Weisern
• Do you ever wanted to know how people create a realistic asphalt on their bases? Then you should take a look at this tutorial over at The Brush Brothers Blog
• Here's a late, but different review of the Games Day Germany written by one of the judges.
• And as we're into the games day here you have the first 2 articles about Roman's massive Diorama which got him the Slayersword. Part 1 and Part 2
• If you're still looking for a solution to transport your figurines I have 2 options for you (and a third one will follow soon on this blog!): Go the simple route and buy a completed box (a nice review of the box hobbyzone offers) or use parts of our favorite store IKEA. (a self made, low budget box)
• Some interesting thoughts and pictures about Reapers first Kickstarter: Reaper Bones
• Simon Miniatures is known for exquisite miniatures. Here's a review of his Sigfried.

Miniatures

• Maulg King of Jester's by McSciar
• Altdorf in drei Tagen by Schiraga
• Daemonette of Slaanesh by Miguel Matias
• Imperial Guard super heavy wrecker by JEJE25
• Target Identified by Solmar
• Draramis Healing Light by MayArt
• Viking by Feanor
• Eldar Harlequins by Hope River
• The Devil's Daughter by Carsten Schulte

Sculpts

• In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit...
• Discover Dominic Qwek's amazing sculpts

If you've found any article, miniature or inspirational pictures feel free to contact me so I can add it to the next weeks episode of weekly digest!
 

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Borrack The Bull General (Review)

The world has fallen into chaos. Jade Emperor, ruler of the three realms has gone missing. Soon after the demons escape from the Geo-core, they strike swiftly to the four kingdoms on Terra. Demons have slowly seized control over the world.

While the gods in heaven with their power fading alongside them, they couldn't offer any assist on Terra. Mortals cannot gain any foothold at their own realm with the demons invasion. Fate has chosen four pilgrims on a journey to retrieve the lost holy scripture, which may hold the key to bring salvation to all...

This is the first part of a still continuing wave of spoilers Marrow Production shared with us over at their Facebook page back in june. A wave reaching many places (about 1400 Likes so far) to spread the word for a new game called Journey: Wrath of Demons

Marrow Production is created by RAY.WONG and Hon Ho.

It's a fast-paced and exciting cooperative board game, with highly detailed miniatures which intrigue for one to four players. Currently in development... But as it can be seen at their page it's coming close to an end and we can finally back the upcoming kickstarter!

One of the Playtest-Shots from Marrow Productions shared over at facebook

Highly detailed miniatures in a board game? Yes, you've got it right. And that's where this post really starts!

As Marrow Productions reached 500 likes they gave away three miniatures to three lucky winners. They repeated this as they reached 1000 likes. And guess what? I'm one of the lucky 3!

Some days ago I received my prize. Borrack The Bull General! What a beast! This miniature is absolutely amazing. Something that just makes me wanna back the kickstarter more and more. Impatiently waiting for the start now...

 

As this is a board game that also offers highly detailed miniatures for painters I'll split all my opinions about the quality into "gaming wise" and "painting wise". There are clearly differences that should be named on different points. Lets start diving deeper now!

Gaming wise the casting quality is superb! There are only tiny mould lines which are nearly invisible. Every single detail sculpted there is crispy. A pure joy for gamers: Unpack, fell in love and start gaming. Regarding the quality of this resin cast from the opposite side, there's nothing more to add. As a painter you'll carefully remove the named mould lines, fill those supertiny gaps and yu're done with it.

If there's any assembly necessary it will done within no time. The Bull General comes in 3 parts (mine was already glued). Here's a picture I've found at Marrow's Facebook page (thanks for lending me your pictures mates!):

The usage of resin ensures to cast all these tiny details like chains, scratches and other sculpted textures. Painting wise a welcomed material. Gaming wise it might be a bit too vulnerable (the hammer was broken when the miniature arrived even if it was packed safely and carefully - but who knows what happened during the trip of several thousand miles?). Please don't nail me on the wall if I'm wrong: I'm not sure about this as I don't have a lot of experience using resin miniatures for gaming purposes.

The following picture shows you a seize comparison.

From left to right: 28mm TrueScale // 28mm Hero Scale // Borrack The Bull General  54mm

On the left we have a beautiful noble lady by Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures, 30mm true scale it is. Right beside this beauty we can find my allmighty, one armed ork boy from GW. Also 28mm, but a lot more bulky then the beauty on the left. On the right we have Kaernus from Enigma, 54mm. And the Bull General still tops him! I told you: It's a beast :D


Conclusion:

If my best friend would ask me for advice wether to buy or not to buy this miniature I'd highly recommend him to buy this one. It will be worth every cent invested.

Big thanks again to Marrow for this great miniature and all those that we just have seen on pictures so far. Keep up the great work, feed us with small teasers every now and then and kick off your kickstarter when time has come. We're all waiting impatiently for this great game.

Cheers
Arne

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Exploring BeeSPutty - The Story goes on!

Hello there!

Just a quick post today.

Right now the sketch of my recently showen sculpt is hardening in the oven. I thought I might share some pictures of my current progress with you while I have to wait for this process...

I've used BeeSPutty here. A new sculpting putty which I really like. tbh I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to sculpt complex figures with different putties, but I'm really satisfied with the characteristics of this one. Something I'll definitely stick to! 

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Weekly Digest #1

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Welcome to my first episode of

Weekly digest!

A biweekly summary of links guiding you to great tutorials, product reviews worth a look, breath takingly painted miniatures, interesting sculpts and awesome inspirational sources.

To be honest, it's not an idea of mine but of Adam Stefańczyk. He has been collecting a lot of hot links for us on his polish blog. Sadly most of us are not able to read his content without using a translator like google. You can find his lastest collection right here. So I've decided to start something very similar to his weekly report and bring you a summary of what happened the past weeks on every 2nd Sunday.

Inspirational

 

• Den of Imagination promo video
  A nice insight into our hobby and the work of those crazy guys!

• The drowned ghost town
  Pictures of a drowned city with a post apocalyptic touch. Very inspirational!

• Warriors of all kinds - A Facebook Art-Page

Tutorials & Reviews

• Check out the Winter White Wash Camo tutorial over on the 5th dimension.
  If you ever wanted to know how to achieve these supercool white weathered vehicles you should check this tutorial. 
• Painting a dragon from start to finish by Studio Akaranseth
  What a bummer! A great step by step article about painting one of the dragons from Darksword Miniatures. 

• Skink priest step by step by Sproket
  Here's part 1 of David's upcoming articles how he's painting one if the currently most famous miniatures: The GW Skink Priest 

• Vehicle painting an Weathering Workshop with Farbfanatiker by (T)Raumschmiede
  Here you can find the impressions of a special workshop held by Farbfantiker. He taught his students to paint and weather a tank within a short time to obtain a geat result.

• Painters Unite!
  An interesting call to promote and sell your painted miniatures. I'd highly recommend to send an email to Martin if you want to push the highest bid up in the sky (better talking of a more realistic price worth your effort)

• Tutorial: Painting leather
  Another great tutorial, this time it's all about painting leather in a very realistic way.It's really worth a look!

Hot miniatures

• Cpt. Gruumshak by Thomas Wasch

• Chaos Dwarf Unit by Sergey Gybin

• Allariel the Everqueen by Lan Studio

• Toms tree house by HonourGuard

• Swordmasters of Hoeth by Volomir

• You shall not pass! By HonourGuard

• Ogre #3 by Karol Rudyk

• The Knightmare by Thomas David

• Meadow of Doom by fantasygames.com.pl

• The Barbarian Dude by Divaz

• Brom (Hard Bark) by Honour Guard

• Vezdekhod 47 by Darkmessia

• Beastmen Unit by Trovarion

• Kroot Collector by Trovarion

• Morglum Necksnapper by dahu

• Larry Elmore’s Dragon by Mathieu Fontaine

• Necron Army by duskfrost
  
  

Sculpts 

• Gandalf 30mm - Knight Models

• Demon Tzzzn (LeBen Studio Miniatures)

• Fight or Flight (Full Scratchbuild by Chris Clayton)

• Raf Grassetti's digital sculpture 

If you've found any article, miniature or inspirational pictures feel free to contact me so I can add it to the next weeks episode of weekly digest!
 

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Pimp my DETOLF: Dust-Proofed!

As many of us I do own a "DETOLF" display cabinet by IKEA to show off and store my painted miniatures and those, which took a break due to other projects I prefer to finish first. It's one of the cheaper but still good looking ways to present our miniatures. 

A while ago Raffa from Massive Voodoo shared his way of adding a proper lighting and a nice but cheap background. I followed his advice and bought a pair of additional lights. What a boost! Im able to see more then just painted miniatures. They started to show me their details in all their greatness :) I've pimped my display cabinet and am very proud of this little change. 

But there's one point... I don't like about this cabinet. It's collecting dust. Pretty fast and a lot of that!

To be honest, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to clean my display regular. It's more like: "Wtf! Why's there so much dust all over again?!". What's following then is an extensive, time consuming process to get rid of the dust from the display boards as of the miniatures. It's also some kind of risky as I have to move every single project out of the cabinet. 

As one of my brushbrothers asked me how he can get his new cabinet dust proofed i started to search for an answer. I never really thought about how to achieve this. But there's a simple solution that guarantees a 99.9% dust proofed cabinet! And best of all: It just costs me around 10€ including pp!

So, what's this cheap solution I am talking about? 

It's a brush seal with adhesive backing (measuring 4.8mm base x 4mm high) attached all around the single door that prevents dust from getting inside of the display cabinet.

Dust-Proofing your display cabinet

Materials needed:

- paper tissue / Kleenex 

- glass cleaner / windex

- about 6m brush seal with self adhesive backing (4.8x4mm) ((I've got mine here))

- a duster 

- a pair of gloves

- a screwdriver 

- a scissor

Step 1 - Empty it

...but be careful! Handle your miniatures with care and try to avoid to drop them on the floor or to bump them on the side panels! Store them safe while you're going on with the next steps. 

Here's how it looks 2 weeks after I carefully cleaned it:

You can easily see where I've placed my miniatures. Very annoying. Damn this dust!

No accidents happened? Great, lets carry on then. If not... Well, it seems not to be your best day. Keep your head up, you're probably not the only one. It might have been even more worse!

Step 2 - The Cleansing

After you've removed every single miniature and stored it safely you can start removing dust and any fingerprints. Make it shiny again! This is where the gloves come in. Wear them to avoid adding new fingerprints while cleaning everything. 

Don't forget to clean the edges (very important!) and outer glasses too.

Step 3 - Sealing-Preparation

As its easier to work with a lot of space it's necessary to remove the door from the display cabinet. 

There are just 4 screws we have to loosen. Be careful and fixate the door while doing that with the other hand. It might fall off immediately.

Step 4 - The Sealing

Now it's time to add the brush seal all around the door. It's quiet easy as it comes with a self adhesive backing. Just work precise here as any misplaced part will be visible later. 

The gaps between the door and the side panels are everything else then even. So it might be necessary to attach the brush seal on the door AND on the side panels to prevent dust from getting in there. 

I guess you can see where's the gap after adding the brush seal. That's the upper part.

And here's the lower part. Later we will adjust the door.

If you've attached the brush seal all around its time to bring back the door into its place. Adjust it by moving it some millimeters if necessary. 

At this time your DETOLF should look like this:

Step 5 - Re-Organisation

Now it's time to get all your beloved projects back in place.

Again: Be careful to not bump your miniatures on any furnitures. 

This is how my display cabinet is looking after this complete roll up:

The black clothing on top was used to get better photos for you. I'll definitely add something like this permanently. I'm also considering of replacing the back with a mirror. But I'm not sure about that right now. 

Do you own a DETOLF too and pimped it in any way? Tell us in the comments. I'd like to gather as much ideas as possible to sum up in another article so everyone can get the most out of his display cabinet. Who knows, some day IKEA might change their DETOLF to our likes...

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The Barbarian Dude Collection

Aloha!

It's been a while since I've posted a finished showcase project. But now I'm able to proudly present you my interpretation of the infamous Barbarian Dude. 

Due to it's refreshing and for me very interesting sculpt he was sold out pretty damn fast. So I wasn't able to grab one in time. Maybe I was considering way too much if its worth my money or not. Lucky me that my best friend gave me one to my birthday! :) and what else should I've done then immediately start thinking about what to do with him. 

There are plenty of gorgeous versions of this miniature, like the ones from P1per:

...or Weisern, who've used a nice contrast on his scene:

Some people added a slain beast / giant as a trophy to her base. Something that came to my mind too when I was thinking about a scenery:

Antonioooh:

And Raffa:

There's even a very simplistic version, painted by Camelson. I think his version was the first painted Dude I've seen on the www:

I knew that I am not a bad painter. But I'm also far away from being one of the top painters right now. 

So my thoughts were stumbling over themselves, searching for an idea to make something different out of my Dude. One of the 350. 

While I was thinking about that I was reading a great fantasy novel, written by David Gemmell. The main character in that story was a a big Dude (Druss) which probably could become my version. Inspired by this I started to think about it. In these books Druss started his journey aged 17, a simple wood worker with raw power in his arms, often describe as a bear due to his appearance. 

Later he became a famous warrior searching for his robbed wife. His journey lasts several years before he was able to find her. Many stories were told about him until that moment, and even more would follow. 

He became an old, wise warrior who never lost his strength. 

So, here's my version of the Barbarian Dude:

Druss The Legend

(also known as Deathwalker)

"Druss is the grandson of Bardan the Slayer, a psychotic madman driven insane by the demon residing within his cursed axe, Snaga the Sender. Druss is described as a physically imposing man, immensely strong but also possessing great speed and dexterity"

I'd be happy to receive some feedback on this on especially on what I could have done better. I'm sure that I won't do any further brushstroke on this project, but it's always a good way to search for improvement for upcoming projects. 

If you want to vote, you can do that right here:

CMON

Putty&Paint

Painting ALEPH the different way

Hey there!

Me and a friend of mine decided to start playing Infinity recently. My decision for the faction was ALEPH. There weren't any game wise thoughts included when deciding what to play, it's just because I like the models of this faction the most.

As I'm not a friend of copying the given color scheme (mostly white, black & pinkish) there's a different scheme on my miniatures with a very limited color palette. I actually used just 2 colors excluding black and white.

This miniature was supposed to be painted in a classic TT-quality. But as I had so much fun painting this little fellow I decided early to aim for a higher quality.

You might notice that he's based on an acrylic disc. Both, me and my friend, are using these to maximise the impression of "non-based" miniatures. And it works. During our first game the full advantage of those bases came through. 

You can find more views over at Putty&Paint as on CMON.

I'd be happy for any comment, critique and vote.

There are some more miniatures of this one on my painting desk. I'm planning to write up a step by step for you. So keep watching ;)

Cheers
Arne

Exploring BeeSputty!

Good morning guys 'n gals!

It's a beautiful morning over here and I'm already relaxing in the garden. Yep, just before the breakfast. 

Me and my family are on vacation for some days. As my painting equipment wasn't able to find a space to come with me I decided to take some sculpting tools with me and tested the new BeeSputty. 

Here's my result so far, just added basic volumes so far:

As I'm not an experienced sculpteur (this is my 2nd attempt) I'd be happy to receive some feedback from you. 

Soon more pictures for you!

Have a nice weekend. 

Yours Sleipnir

A trale of though

Good morning!

I just found an interesting post in a rather small forum that is worth to be shared I think. 

The Author is talking about different aspects of painting miniatures. Some of those might be worth to always keep in mind for you. So why not taking a peek at it?

He also explain his thoughts by using some pictures to give his words more expression. Though...we all know that a picture tells more then words can do ;)

Here's just a small sneak peek for you, a comparison of the most famous painter in our world:

You don't know who has painted these? Just read the following article behind the link and find out, what binds these together. 

[Url=http://www.dragonpainting.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4097]Clickediclick![/url]