Cleaning House

A weekend or two ago I just could not sleep. This isn't that rare for me, but I had insomnia in a bad way. So I cleaned up my painting desk and work table. I took everything off, dusted it, cleaned individual items, and even used Pledge, haha.


I also 'cleaned house' so to speak with the inordinate amount of figs in my queue. Ugh, we all have this problem, and even though I have, literally, hudnreds of unpainted figs in boxes, are any of them really pressing? No, not not really. To that end I boxed up 75% of the clutter in my painting queue. It's boxed up now, and the neatness shows.


This hulking behemoth has got to be painted! Project Ragnarock was conceived as a mega-scale fig to use in games of SuperSystem. Somewhere along the lines I got the idea to magnetize his hands (so I could have a flying stand of one fist zooming around the battlefield) and he's been in limbo ever since. He'll become a member of the Super Soviets.


Of course we all collect odd bits and ends here and there to use in terrain projects and scratch builds. This is my burned-out automobile headlight collection. I plan on basing these on metal washers and painting them up as "flavor text" terrain pieces. Of course I'll mask off the bulb part, leaving it clear once finished. They should turn out all right.


Do I even need to recount the long and arduous journey my ten 40mm Chocktaw have endured? This is almost a running joke I'm sad to say. When you're not currently gaming in the genre, it's hard to get inspiration to finish projects in said genre. These guys have suffered long enough though, and their time is close at hand!

Crashed H.E.A.P.

The one that didn't make it...

The last of my H.E.A.P.'s are all finished up. Original this were going to be objective markers, but they're way too big, so they are now small terrain pieces, or "flavor text" as I like to call them. Obviously this is one pod that had a rough landing.






Collect all three!

I took notes when I painted the first one, which I recommend to anyone out there. Although about ten months have passed from painting one to another, thanks to my notes, I had the exact colors and steps written down, so they end up looking like they were painted during the same afternoon. This current one I imagine was once on fire, so it is a lot dirtier (sootier) than the first two, and obviously the cracked shell and skeletons are a new addition. I painted it up to look like it's been crashed for a while, but a plume of cotton smoke coming out of the breach in-game might give it a pretty nifty little smoke effect.

The Pumpkin Sitter

Werner Klocke's #02869 Elise, the Witch

Funny story, as you know my six year old has been painting for some time. Her last fig didn't turn out too bad, but it was a tad on the "scantily clad" side of the equation. She picked this Reaper fig off the racks at the LGS, and at the time, other than "being a witch with a pumpkin" I didn't look too much into it. I should've at the store..


Miniatures are cool, expecially the ones that are sculpted well. You don't notice many details until it's primed or you're into painting it, little surprises pop out and make the painting even better. Well, I didn't quite realize how "sexy" this fig was until I got her primed and ready for my daughter to paint. Then Chri3 from our group was looking at the fig and made a very obvious statement that escaped both Andy and myself...where's the pumpkin stem? Oh my. It was at this point that Elise here was taken out of my daughter's queue, ahem. She was already primered, and it was close to Halloween, so I shouldered the responsibility myself and painted her up. Not my best job ever, but Elise the Witch is complete.


My older brother-in-law has admitted to being quite the perve, so at this year's annual Halloween party I gave him Elise as a gift. Out of everyone, I felt he would appreciate her, ahem, assets, more than anyone else.


"Klockenbooty" indeed...

Rogue Trader Characters

Some the Void Dragon's Crew


Commander Kennoch

This is my Arch-Militant character, Kennoch. Raised on a Hive world, grown up in the gangs, and eventually left the world to escape persecution from a criminal organization, Kennoch ended up fighting the good fight. On a forgotten, backwater world, Kennoch rose to leadership of a human resistance fighting the accursed Eldar.


The figure itself is quite the rarity, and I've had it for a long time. Before Necromunda was called Necromunda, there was a gang warfare game by GW called Confrontation. This fig was "Leader 3" and they were put out in limited quantities for playtest purposes. I also have leaders #1 and #2, plus some of the original gangers. It's taken me somewhere in the order of eighteen years to get around to painting it, better late than never!


For a game like Rogue Trader, this fig is near perfect and exudes character and all the grittiness that is the 40kverse. I like him because he's awfully gregarious, and you can tel he's a grizzled veteran and can swing that power axe with ease. He still sports some gang signs (Necromunda Spiders anyone?) and has just tons of little details and extras, like the critter on his shoulder. I'm pretty surprised at the detail for a sculpt from 1990.


I was shooting for a mix of royal, flamboyant, and gaudy


Void Master

For my Arch Militant I had the fig picked out and the character rolled up, he is good to go. This fig was first painted up without anyone to call him 'home', but that got fixed during our second character creation session. Chrispy is going to use him as a Void Master character. He rolled up the rare 'best power armor' and took the light version, which is fitting for the figure. He's also noble born and the High Elf head helps accentuate that.


The Prince Adam lookalike is an older Warzone fig, an Redemption Assassin. I hacked off his head, not too skillfully, and swapped it for a WHFB plastic High Elf head. I also cut off the funky suppressor from the pistol. There were some real gems among the Warzone range, if you're looking for sci-fi figs, check out Prince August games.


Yes, I was thinking of General Kenobi from the Clone Wars when I painted him! I went with white, ceramite type armor and a fairly monochromatic palette for the clothing. I broke this up with the green in the pouches and straps (also used some green decals) and a non-metal metallic (NMM) pistol with a tiny red dot laser sight.



Since he's a crewman on board the Void Dragon, I used a couple of green Alpha Legion decals on his pauldrons, each one is a stylized dragon motif. I also used a green Athelorn Avengers Blood Bowl decal for the center of his chest armor.


I got on a roll and just started painting cool figs I thought would look good as crew members. I don't even know what class this guy could pass for, but I know he looks too cool to leave sitting unpainted in my bits box! I painted him up quickly, and looking at the photos, it kind of shows, I'll be going back and doing some touch-ups soon methinks.


I spent a lot of time differentiating from his dark skin tone and the leather satchels, bags, and pouches. The two were starting to look the same after a while. I also put more time than I should have into his all too-subtle camouflage pants.


Originally he was a Necromunda Cawdor (or is it kay-dor?) heavy stubber. I picked it up off of eBay last year when I was contemplating a Chaos Cultists army, when that idea was shelved, so was he. I'm glad I was able to find a use for him after all, what that use is right now, I don't know. Were it a Dark Heresy game, he'd be a lock for an ex-Guardsman, but I don't know for Rogue Trader, nonetheless, he was a lot of fun to paint up.


the end...

Tiny Totoro

After I was putting my the mini-diorama I made for my wife on Halloween in its little gift bag I got a pang of guilt I didn't have anything to give to my daughter, so at the last minute I whipped up this even smaller mini-diorama, this time a Totoro.


Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite filmmakers, and if you don't know his work, check him out, his films are simply great. The above character is from one of his named Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), and there's three such title creatures in the film; small, medium, and large. At a great toy store up in New York City, whose name escapes me, I found these little Totoro toys, I bought all they had. The above guy and light post came with a larger Cat-Bus figurine. I did not paint the figs (I considered it, but didn't have the time), but I did paint up and flock their base after super-gluing them onto it. Voilà!


A trio of Totoro types...