Razorbakz #4 - a shiny new chainsaw

So, the amazing Mr Inkpwn (I think) over at TalkFantasyFootball suggested that they start a monthly painting competition (similar to what some over discussion boards do). November's category was secret weapons, and I just happened to have a mini undercoated and ready to go on my painting desk...

Here he is, the star with the scars!

If you're interested in seeing any of the other entries, head over the TalkFantasyFootball and take a look (you will need to be a member of the site to access that link though... sorry, not my rules).

As usual, any comments and criticisms are welcomed.

White Scars Captain

This is a bit of a teaser for a fundraising lottery that I will be running in mid 2012. The raffle will be for a White Scars space marine force that includes some tactical marines, some assault marines, some bikes and a land speeder. In addition, it will be led by the miniature below.

I've pulled out a few stops on this one and am really happy with the results. The NMM is something I've been working on for a while, and the skin tones on the face are quite nuanced. Comments and criticism are, of course, welcome.

The CMON link, for those inclined to vote, is here.

Elven Referee

In between my other projects, I've been painting up this figure and setting her in a small and simple vignette. I think I got this figure at SSB last year. Generally I haven't been a fan of the Shadowforge figures (that this is), but I've been doing a commission evil elf team and, while I still think the proportions are a bit out (short legs for the torsos), the miniatures have very clean lines and interesting poses, as well as being well themed. This one was actually really nice to paint, and ended up being a bit of a study in some new flesh tones for me. I hope you like it:

Light Box Awesomeness

Hellooooo!

I feel like I've been neglecting the Studio (and the Hall for that matter) recently. Unfortunately, real life has been extremely busy... but you don't care about that. Fortunately, Southern Shrike Bowl 4 was held on the weekend and, amongst other shenanigans, tomfoolery and games of Blood Bowl, the organiser Adam brought along his light box.

I've wanted a light box for a while, but it's something I haven't yet sprung for. I'm not entirely convinced we were able to get the best shots possible, but I was able to take some pics of some miniatures that are slightly better than previous pics posted.

So, I thought I'd share and see what you thought...

Oh, and how did I fare at SSB you ask? Well, 8th overall in the gaming stakes (4-0-2 record for the weekend) with the Duskrunners, most touchdewns for and, yes, best painted team. There was some stiff opposition this year though, with a number of very well-painted teams showing up and making the affair a very colourful one.

But without further ado...

Some pics of the Duskrunners, starting with my new, sculpted and painted air elemental (counts as a wardancer) "Eurus the East Wind" who, incidentally, has to have come close to tournament MVP!

The earth elemental (counts as a treeman), "Cruac the River Bed":

The team:

And Jordell Freshbreeze:

The Drakwald Ravens are not my oldest Blood Bowl team, but they are the one that I have run with for the longest, through a stretch as the Marienburg Ravens, and back again. But the old miniatures are looking a bit shabby. This is the first "test" piece for the new incarnation of the team, which will be the next generation of players. This one is one of twin daughters to the old captain/blitzer Jock "the Hammer" Hammerstein: Jacqueline "JacHammer" Hammerstein (the other twin will be Samantha "Sledge" Hammerstein). I still have to add clumps of grass to the base and some more detail (a name and number) on the base itself).

And now a bunch of models you have seen before. Some of the Razorbakz:

The sculpted Ice Vixen:

And the diminutive flings of the White Acre Weed Pullers:

I hope you enjoy them. I'll also put up a pic of another project I've been working on recently... but that's another post.

EucBowl Monster Dice - good pics

So EucBowl has been run and won and I have it on good authority that the one and only GreedySmurf, part of the Zlurpcast team itself, took home the monster dice. Congrats to Greedy, and many thanks to all attendees who had such nice things to say about them. I'm just glad I was able to be a part of this event, even from such a distance.

Virral, the Commish, managed to get some excellent pics of the dice, so I thought I'd put together a bit of a collage and post it up. I really need to get myself a light box!

Air Elemental - sculpting reprised

With the EucBowl commission finished, even though there are a few other things on the boil, I have enough breathing space to look back at my sculpting. After taking the Duskrunners to the AusBowl State Championship in March I realised I wasn't happy with the wardancers. The centaur thing just wasn't doing it for me. I started sculpting an air elemental to go with the team some time ago. I had planned for it to be a star player, but now the plan is to make two as replacements for the current wardancers.

So I have now finished the sculpt. I still need to do a little bit of sanding to smooth out some areas, but it is pretty much finished other than that. As I will be taking this team to Southern Shrike Bowl in September, I need to have her done by then. "But won't you need another wardancer?" I hear you ask. Well, no. I have something special up my sleeve for the other one...

But in the meantime, I hope you like the sculpt...

EucBowl Monster Dice #5

So, with EucBowl happening as we speak, these five dice have winged their way to Burwood to be placed on the prize table... or have been sequestered for Virral's private collection!  :)

Either way, they are finished. The final element to add to them is number five: "Fatality".

EucBowl Monster Dice #4

Well, I woke up to myself with a start the other day when I realised that Eucalyptus Bowl was two weekends earlier than I had thought! Not to worry though, I have been getting close to finishing these guys and the fourth Monster Dice has been completed.

This one is named "Tentacles", obviously as an homage to the skill of the same name. It has a little bit of a different palette to the others, I was aiming for a more pustulent and slimey feel.

Anyway, I hope you like it and, like always, please come along to EucBowl (6-7 August at Burwood RSL in Burwood, NSW) to check out the action.

AusBowl Legacy Team Snow Troll (Yhetee)

Each year the AusBowl community gets together and creates a "legacy team", with painted miniatures donated by individual coaches from around Australia and raffled off at the CanCon "Nationals".

This year Qman actually donated a mini to me to paint - the Yhetee. This is actually the best Yhetee/Snow Troll miniature I've ever seen and it was actually really nice to paint. I've gone to town as much as I can on the skin colours, using a mauve colour that is a blend between Crimson Gore and Ice Blue to add a rosy shadow. I also worked hard to produce a chipped feel to the armour plates, which is not an effect I've had much experience doing.

My favourite bit is the "orcidas" band though.  :)

EucBowl Monster Dice #3

OK, so my brushes have been running a little bit hotter than usual. Being sick and off work means there is little time (or inclination) for much else!

Number three of the EucBowl Monster Dice I have dubbed "Always Hungry", for reasons that should be obvious. With this one I tried to get as smooth a blend as I could from the white of the dice itself to the fierce red of the monster.

Just the one pic of this one (and it is my "promotional" pic too), but I hope you like how these are progressing...

EucBowl Monster Dice #2

It seems like forever since I updated this plog. You know the story, real life gets in the way. But I recently finished the big BB project I've been working on (BL!TZ magazine issue 1) and am in-between pracs for my study, so I finally managed to get some desk time with my paints.

Of course, first on my list of stuff to get done is the EucBowl monster dice commission, so here I bring you number two: "Red Card".

This one is little bit subtle in the shades around the face, with a much more human skintone than the previous one. Obviously the stripes are supposed to represent a Blood Bowl referee.

EucBowl Monster Dice

OK, so in the wake of AusBowl I was approached by Virral, the Commissioner of this year's Eucalyptus Bowl (EucBowl) to paint an extra special set of prizes he had organised: the CMON Monster Dice!

I had seen these dice before, and the amazing painting jobs that the pros at CMON had done on them. Suffice to say, it was an honour to have been asked in the first place, and I was just itching to get my hands on them.

They arrived a few days ago and I eagerly opened them up and had a good look. They are resin pieces. I've had a little bit of experience with resin, but nowhere near as much as with plastic or metal. I don't know if it's my small sample size, but I find the casting of resin can be a little variable. In this case the casting was a little bit strange in some places and, even after trying to sand it down to smooth, once I undercoated I still found some small imperfections.

Having said that, these were fairly minor (only to be brought up by a pedant like myself).

I thought long and hard about how I was going to present these though. My brief was fairly simple: each one mounted on a seperate base to be used, potentially, as re-roll counters. Beyond that the creative process was open.

So, obviously my first thought, and probably a novel one for these particular minis, was a Blood Bowl theme. So the first set was assembled with this in mind. You will find out exactly what this means as I post some pics, but for the moment, my working titles for the first set are:
"Not the Skull"
"Tentacles"
"Dead"
"Red Card"
"Always Hungry"

The second set are still forming in my head, but will be less BB themed. In fact, they will probably be based around five elements (air, water, earth, fire and life). But these are still in process.

So I guess you want to see some pics though, right?

Well, the first one from the list is finished, so without further ado I present "Not the Skull":

I'm really happy with how this turned out. I have yet to varnish the piece, and looking at it now I'd like to put a white line on the base (a sideline) to give it a bit more. The pics don't show it up as well as I would like, but there is a decent amount of subtle shading on the white areas. You also can't see in this pic the yellow POW symbol on the outside face of the block die, or the POW-Dodge (orange) or POW-block (red and yellow) on the inside and bottom respectively.

Remember above how I noted there were some small imperfections in the casting? Well, this actually gave me an idea. I needed something to provide a little bit of extra interest on the vast white areas, and I also needed to incorporate some of these small imperfections into the final piece. The solution - the greenish-grey 'cracks'. I really like how these have turned out and, while I didn't want to over-do them, I feel I have struck the right balance between not enough and too many.

Anyway, I hope you like them and, having shown them to Virral, I was very glad he liked it too. More to come as I do them... next up, Red Card!



Oh, and get along to EucBowl if you can. My budget is not up to it unfortunately, but it is one of the biggest and best Blood Bowl tournaments in Australia. And if you go you just might win one of these sets of monster dice!

Interlude

Hi all

Just a quick message to explain the long gap between posts. It has been an incredibly busy month, with lots happening on different fronts. The AusBowl tournament turned out to be a huge success and I am one of a few guys who will make up the organising committee for the next one in 2013. So I have been trying to organise a small committee for this. I have also been putting together a survey of the Blood Bowl community in Australia to assist with long-term planning by TOs and others and get a bit of an idea of what our community looks like. I'm also helping to do some design work for the Southern Sgrike Bowl later in the year, as well as liaising with another group of people about expanding the Southern Strike idea into a national magazine! As if that wasn't enough, I have a couple of small commissions to paint, my RL study has started again in earnest and my work has gone bananas (we had a technical integration of two organisations that didn't go as smoothly as was hoped).

So I am working on some things, particularly a commission for some of the CMON monster dice, a treeman for my 'flings, more Ice Vixens, my air spirit for the Duskrunners and a few other miscellaneous things.

Stay tuned, more soon...

Seamus "Hellspawn" O'Reilly - commission #2, SA State Team fundraiser

Another commission piece that I am doing pro bono (and hey, let's face it, at my prices that's what you're likely to see), Seamus is the limited edition miniature from Southern Shrike Bowl 2010. This is my take on the figure and it is currently on auction via eBay: LINK

Ice Vixens #2 - finished sculpt

Well, the sculpt is finished and, while it's not quite professional quality in its execution, I learned a great deal and the painted result will fit in quite well with the team I am working on.

So here she is, the first blitzer of the Ice Vixens norse team:

Sculpt 1 finished!

She is done! I finally finished my first sculpt. Now I didn't do all of it, the basic armature is a Reaper heroic armature and it is also a Reaper head, but basically all the rest is procreate sculpting. I'm not going to waste too many words here because I explained the rationale and so on in my previous posts, but here she is...

My other scuplting job is also coming along, here's where I'm at with the air spirit...