Reaper Bones Minotaur

The baby slept enough this week to give me time to finish this guy.

Not an original look for this one, but I like it. It's my usual good-enough block-color approach, though I did try a little bit of wet-blending around the nose. I'm not sure it comes across, but it looks fine. I also tried free-handing some eyebrows, as he was looking a little too much like a friendly cartoon cow. Eyebrows make everything look meaner.

Here's the comparison shot with Sven. I swear, these large Bones minis seem like they're made to look down on 1/72 scale humans. The larger scale that Reaper uses for humans just isn't as dramatic with these large monsters.

Sven gets lost on the way to Crete and asks for directions.

Potpouri: Zombie Pirates, Uruk-hai, scale wonkery

Way too much to do this week to have free time for the hobby, but I thought I'd take what little time I have to share some interesting news and discussions related to 1/72 fantasy gaming.

1.) Plastic Soldier Review had a news item about new products from Mars miniatures that included a cryptic and snobbishly dismissive note that "one set is zombies." There was no other info, but I managed to track down this pic from a Russian minis forum.

If you didn't know, Mars made a previous Zombie pirates set, based on the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. 1/72 Multiverse reviewed the set, which featured fewer actual zombie pirates and more unlicensed characters from the movie than you might imagine. This set seems to correct the issue by featuring more undead swashbucklers and fewer extravagant cinematically-inspired sea-mutants than its predecessor. I also dig the evil mermaid figure. I'm looking forward to this one!

2. Also from the same Russian website, this teaser image from Alliance miniatures.

They seem to be fleshing out their not-LOTR line with not-Uruk-hai half-orcs. With bonus evil-white-wizard anarchist, it appears!

3.) Finally some interesting discussions at TMP. I recently started a thread about adapting 15-18mm minis to 1/72 scale. Fellow 1/72 fantasy enthusiast TwinMirror started a similar thread from the other direction, discussing "true 25mm" figures and their adaption to the preferred scale of this blog. Both should have a lot of useful info for the cheap fantasy miniaturist.

Lightbox upgrade

I've enjoyed the effect my cheap lightbox has had on my mini photography. The one thing I didn't like was the white backdrop. It seemed to either dampen the contrast in my photos or, if I adjusted the Brightness-Contrast levels in image editing, create a blasted, irradiated look. I had read in various places that the way to eliminate these effects is with a more neutral-colored backdrop, preferably with a bit of a pattern. I found a large sheet of artist's paper at Hobby Lobby the other day, so today I messed around with using it as a new background.

Here's the new setup. I just cut the paper to fit and taped it over the old white posterboard backdrop. Arguably this was a bit premature, but I was feeling confident. Note to self: Figure out a way to bolster the top dimensions of my lightbox. It's starting to look a little crushed.

I wanted to try some of the minis I recently took with the old lightbox setup. Here's Heinz and French, the condiment trolls, a few weeks ago.

And here they are now.

They no longer look like they are standing in a supernova. But the contrast is only a little better than before. Not the improvement I was hoping for, but wait: Notice the bleeding irradiated look on the right side. Maybe I need to adjust my lighting?

I tried again with some more brightly-colored lizardmen, just in case the problem was with the figures themselves.

Better, but still a little less contrast than I'd like. Lets move the right light and try again, this time with some goblins.

That's much better! Great contrast, and they're not overlit. I tried again just once more with the One Inch Guild. Here's how they looked a few weeks ago.

And here they are now.

I remember I had to oversaturate the first photo a bit just so it looked at all decent. I could have upped the saturation on the more recent shot as well, and it would have turned out a little better. Overall I like the second one more, though. They look more natural, and the eye is drawn to the figures, not the background.

I'm still learning a little bit about light placement and the like, but overall I think the new backdrop was a good investment.

Well, well, well!

Well, well, well, well, well. Well.

Well. This post is about wells, continuing my recent theme of 1/72 fantasy terrain and scenery. Wells are great for fantasy terrain. They exist pretty much anywhere there are people, they are usually centrally located, they are distinctive, and they're central to all kinds of myths and tales. All that, and they're pretty small, so they have a lot of character for such a little item.

Here's a well I just painted up.

It's a kit found in Italeri's 1/72 scale "Desert Tents" set. I like it, as it's pretty close to my classic impression of what a well should look like. It being a desert well, it has a skin instead of a bucket, and it doesn't have the protective gable covering you might find in more wooded areas. But it's round, loose stone, with wood supports and a rope. That largely says "well" to me.

The kit was pretty easy to put together. Everything fit together very nicely, even the rope and waterskin, which could have been obnoxiously fiddly. As you can see, the base was originally quite a bit bigger, more so than I thought it needed to be. With no undue effort I was able to cut it down to what was barely essential, then glue it to a 1.5" washer, as is my wont. I had to do another simple mod when I was scrubbing the kit before painting and snapped the waterskin off by accident. With my pin vise, pin, and glue, I was able to reattach it. Yes, the rope that hangs the skin from the crosspost is a smidgeon of metal pushpin, with a bit of woodglue dribbled on. It's certainly a more durable model this way, so I'm actually glad my accident occurred when it did.

Here are some other wells I have.

To the right of the Italeri well are a Mines of Moria well from Games Workshop and a Bones "Chaos Well" from Reaper Miniatures. These larger scale bits actually compare favorably to the Italeri well in terms of scale. On the right is a sort of watering hole from Imex's "Southwestern Alamo Accessories" set, which has a great many interesting bits. This will be good for more hardscrabble or remote communities. Another in-scale well kit I'm aware of is made by Green Line. It's got the winch and gabled roof that are probably what most people expect from a well, but is fairly expensive for my taste.

I'm pleased with the little Italeri well. I'm sure I kind find a number of uses for it.

Sven gets more than he counted on when he seeks to quench his thirst

Zvezda tower

I've been thinking a lot about terrain and scenery. I'm of course impressed by the cool stuff people do with the likes of Hirst Arts or Dwarven Forge molds, but in addition to being fairly expensive, that sort of thing is too unwieldy and inflexible for what I want. I'm looking for terrain pieces that are either pretty small or useful in a lot of situations. That and cheap, of course!

So let's start our Cheap Fantasy Terrain with aplomb.

Sven vs. the evil red wizard.

This is a Zvezda 1/72 scale tower kit that I got pretty cheap from HobbyLinc. It's great for all sorts of classic fantasy scenarios: wizard's tower, damsel's prison, old ruins, frontier watchpost. I like the model a lot, though the kit is a little harder to assemble than need be. The round walls of the main part of the tower came on the sprue in quarter-sections, and it was tricky to glue these together. You can see that I couldn't quite get them to fit as nicely as one would like. Once assembled, though, it was a breeze to paint up, with nice stone detail that took drybrushing very well.

The kit came with a large conical roof that I didn't glue in place. For some extra detail, I took a trapdoor bit from Games Workshops' Mines of Moria set and added some additional stones made from Milliput. They could have turned out a little better, but overall I like the effect. You can perhaps also see that I based it on a 1.5" washer, which seems to fit perfectly.

The tower with the roof attached. The kit had impossibly tiny little plastic parts that were supposed to go in these small holes and join the roof halves together, which I simply couldn't manage. I wound up using a paperclip, gluing one end into a roof half, trimming it to size, and repeating for the other holes. I must have oversized one of these wire bits, because there was a gap at the tip of the roof which I had to crudely fill with Milliput. Plopping the roof on the model does give it a more refined look, and it's easily removable.

One curiosity, since this kit was intended to expand other Zvezda castle kits, is that there is no door at ground level. I may add one later, but I'm not sure it matters. Despite my grousing, putting together and painting this model didn't take much time at all. It's a solid, compact structure, and it should be useful for a lot of gaming situations.

Defeating the evil red wizard was the least of Sven's problems.

Hobgoblins at last!

It took me long enough! The hobgoblin horde that I first mentioned back in October is finally complete. Something about these large groups of monsters that I keep making causes me lately to drag my feet, plus we've been in high newborn mode during much of this time. The various smaller side projects I've been doing were a welcome distraction and good for feeling like I was accomplishing things, but it's good to get these done.

Hobgoblins have basically evolved in D&D as more organized orcs, so that's what I've used. These are Caesar orcs with various modifications. Really, there's no reason these couldn't be used as orcs as well. The goal was to make them a look a little better armed and outfitted than my orcs, though they wound up looking a bit ragtag, as though they thoughtfully scavenged their gear instead of systematically making their own. They wound up with a few basic looks.

The captain and his elites. The armored bodies are Caesar "15th century knights." The spiked shield on the left is also from the orcs, while the green shield on the right is borrowed from the Italeri Barbarians set that I find so useful.

Leather and fur armor. The three guys in the middle are the same pose, with various weapon swaps from other orc figures. Another Barbarian shield can be seen on the left figure.

The artillery. The archers are of course all the same; the set has only two archer poses, and the other is too primitive-looking for my hobgoblin concept. The sorcerer was a standard-bearer; I clipped the banner and replaced it with a skull from the Caesar Undead set.

Comparison with Sven.

By the way, note that nearly everyone is in green or brown, with a little gray. I like my armies to have a limited palette, both to make deciding on colors easier and so they look more like a unit. The exception is the captain, whose color scheme makes him stand out a bit from all the mooks.

I still have a few small projects to complete, but my painting table looks a lot more empty than it did a few weeks ago. I'll need to come up with some new distractions.

Lawful Evil, Chaotic Evil, what does it matter? Don't you see that deep down inside, you guys are all just Evil at heart?

CFM trolls for hits

Not the first troll pun on a mini/fantasy gaming blog, and probably not the last.

These are a couple of Reaper Bones trolls—I'm thinking of calling them Heinz and French. They were very quick to paint, as they are pretty much just troll skin with a loincloth and some other details. I've begun to use black spray primer instead of white, which is great for many reasons: the eyes and nostrils are untouched except for the primer and magic wash, for example, and I didn't have to tediously paint the bases. I also tried a simple repose on Heinz: the Bones plastic is soft and makes such mods very easy. Some woodglue and Milliput in the right places makes the change very hard to spot.

Comparison with Sven the 1/72 comparison viking. These aren't much bigger than the normal Reaper hero minis; they seem much more imposing and scary when confronting the smaller scale figure. I also like it when large figures appear to be looking down at punier antagonists.

Sven realizes that Trollheim was not just a colorful name on a map.

Coming soon: a heavily prolonged project is finally complete!