Legal Issues

Something a bit different this time, I finally got myself around to painting some Malifaux.  I bought the Lucius box about 7 months ago, but so many other projects, plus DIY, plus work had meant that I'd not even got round to examining the miniatures!

First up is the lawyer:

To be honest, of all the crew, he is the least interesting model, but his simplicity meant that it was easy to test the paint scheme I wanted to use.

I wanted a deep red for the trousers, so Scorched Brown for the base coat, washed with Devlan Mud, then highlighted with Blood Red and then Red Gore.  The boots were based in Vallejo German Grey, highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey and then washed with Badab Black.

I wanted the coats to be different from the standard grey-black, and I make no apologies for using Charadon Granite - I haven't checked yet, but I really hope they've got an equivalent in GW's new paint line, as I don't have a huge amount of it left...

The coat was washed with Badab Black, and highlighted up through Charadon Granite and Dheneb Stone.  The liner of the coat was a mix of Khemri Brown and Charadon Granite, washed with Devlan Mud and then highlighted with Khemri Brown and then a little Dheneb Stone mixed in.  The gold trim to the coat is P3 Blighted Gold, shaded with Devlan Mud and then highlighted with the Gold and some Mithril Silver.

I wanted the hair to stand out a bit as the rest of the model is quite dark - so a base of Snakebite Leather was shaded with Gryphonne Sepia, and then highlighted with Snakebite Leather and Bleached Bone (I'm going to miss those two paint names when they go).  The shirt was Dheneb Stone shaded with Gryphonne Sepia and highlighted with Dheneb Stone and Skull White.

The skin was my normal method at the moment - Tallarn Flesh, shaded with Ogryn Flesh (which gives a nicer colour than Gryphonne Sepia) and highlighted with Tallarn Flesh and P3 Ryn Flesh.  The teeth were then shaded with Devlan Mud and picked out with white.  The face mask was based in Astronomican Grey and highlighted with white.

The base is another from The Dark Templar, which I can't recommend highly enough (no, I'm not on commission, just a big fan!).  On the metal parts, a base coat of Tin Bitz and some spots of diluted Bestial Brown was washed with Devlan Mud, then lightly dry-brushed with Boltgun Metal and Chainmail.  The stone was a lot of grey washed with Devlan Mud and dry-brushed again.

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Other News!

Andy Hoare has released the next preview version of his skirmish rules "Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies" (Download here), now with points costs! and he's hoping for people to play-test.  I'm starting on my second warband, the Shadow Company mercenaries (the third warband is in the pipeline too), so may get around to putting up a battle report in the coming weeks.

Smerc the thief is almost done, but "The Great Shazam the Sorceror" will be on hold as only evil warbands get sorcerers (I probably should have checked that).  It might be time to look through my collection of old miniatures again...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

TARDIS needed…

Anyone know of a good way to get more time in the day?  Or make weekends longer?  It’s late on Sunday and I have no idea where the weekend has gone or how I’m going to get everything done next week – at work and at home!

I actually managed to get some painting done this week though.  A friend I’ve worked with for over 10 years has moved on to pastures new - he’s gone to University to pursue the career he was meant to have, the lucky swine.  He’s a massive Doctor Who fan, so my contribution to his leaving present was this little beauty from Ainsty Castings:

He was over the moon with it (thankfully!) and it got quite a few admiring glances from other people (one person asked if I did commissions!).  The wife has also demanded one – I’m not sure how I feel about batch painting TARDIS’s…

Painting “Police Box” four times was torture.

Work on “The New Lair” continues – the fireplace is still a gaping hole, but I’ve got a base-coat on 3/4 of the walls now, and probably 3/4 of the woodwork is primed.  I’m doing things in stages as I have to shift some furniture around, all good fun!  But at least I’m doing something constructive, and with the Polycell basecoat on the walls (and a lot of woodwork now white), I’m getting more of a feel of how the room is going to look.

I don’t usually get excited about DIY, so this is about as close as I’m going to get.  To be honest I’m more than a little impatient and wish it was all done already…

Bikou hasn’t progressed at all, and I was right in worrying about the pin being long enough (it wasn’t) so deeper holes have been drilled.  Lord only knows when I’m going to get some paint on her.

This post has been brought to you by the wonders of Microsoft Live Writer – I think I prefer it to Google’s in browser offering and a couple of other clients I’ve tried.  I haven’t clicked “Publish” yet though, so we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway onwards and upwards (and probably sideways and backwards at times)!

Bikou, a base, and bugger all else...

Due to work pressures (24 hours overtime this weekend - rather unhealthy Andy at the moment), not much has been done since the last post, lair or painting wise.  In the new lair I'm currently trying to clear up the mess from the work done recently (how much dust?!), lots of sanding, and repairing plaster.  The actual plastering of the fireplace I'm building myself up to - everyone keeps giving me funny looks when I talk about doing it myself...

Painting/modelling wise, I've got Bikou glued to a base (seriously, this is about as much as I've got done in 2 weeks):

One of the really great things about the Bushido miniatures is the quality of the casting (I mentioned this in the Ancible article) - very little in the way of flash or mold lines (certainly no hedgehogification), and the limited amount there is there is easily removed with a file and/or knife. 

The base is from Dark Templar's Malcontent bamboo range - very appropriate for the Samurai/Ninja theme, and really looks the part.  Aside from using a "base topper" from GW's 40K basing kit (used on Pedro Kantor), this is the first time I've used a proper resin base - tonight I was outside with a camping light, wearing a face mask, busy sanding away - if anyone looked into our back garden they must have wondered what the hell was going on.  The base has sanded up well, the casting is detailed and crisp and there are no bubbles/flaws that I could see.  Having a small amount of the bamboo decking next to a large amount of dirt means the tree trunk doesn't look too out of place/weird.

Worryingly, I may not have used a long enough pin into the base, so I may have to change that - we'll see how well the glue holds first.  I'll also need to glue a little basing material where the trunk meets the base, just so there's no gap, and so the dead(?) tree looks like it's coming out of the ground.  I'm tempted to use some of my new "autumnal grass with fallen leaves" basing material, or maybe get some of the grass with blossom, for a "cherry blossom" effect.

Picard was not impressed with Andy's attempt at basing...

GCT studios have got a painting competition closing at the end of the month - can I get Bikou done in time?

Probably not...

I've been playing around with the blog itself.  You'll notice I've got a new little widget for the Ancible articles, but I'm also wondering about a whole new template, as this one's a bit busy - any opinions? 

I'm not a big fan of writing my blog posts in the current blogger web interface, it feels a bit clunky, and I don't feel like I've got a lot of control (I work in IT so I like to fiddle with this stuff).  I've tried using ScribeFire, in both Firefox and Chrome, but I can't upload images in Firefox (where the interface is nicer), and in Chrome there appears to be no preview functionality, so this may be a no-go. Does anyone use Windows Live Writer?  I've noticed this has a Picasa plug-in which may be useful, although this is sat on "determining disk space requirements" now I'm trying to install it - marvellous.

I wouldn't mind so much, but I have to deal with enough rubbish software at work, I could do with something that works properly at home.

Anyway, I'll hopefully have something decent to show for my efforts at the end of the week.  If I don't have anything, feel free to complain to the management... ;-)