Saturday, December 31, 2016

Hobby Goal 2017: Improving TMM

I've decided that in 2017 I will focus on pushing my True Metallics and making them look as good as possible. Its a rare case when I decide to paint something just to work on a skill, but, I decided to grab an old Reaper Miniatures dwarf and get some practice in.

Monday, December 26, 2016

2016 Year in Review!

The Brush Wizard's 2016 Year in Review!

2016 is coming to a close and it's time to take a look back at the projects and happenings of the year!

This year saw a lot less individual projects than 2015. Instead, 2016 was the year of the commission. It seemed like I had a lot of call for painting things for people and ended up doing 5 jobs for various friends. Of course, commission time equals less personal project time, but the reactions I get when I hand in a finished project makes it worth it.

Over the course of the year, I made some tweaks to the site, including tabbed navigation and splitting things up. I added in a gallery to make finding finished projects easier as well as tabs for reviews and tutorials.

Speaking of which, this year I put more focus into doing Tutorials and Reviews of things. They have proved to a great thing for the site too, most of the top viewed posts of this year have been either Tutorials or Reviews. By far the most read post was on the Citadel Gemstone paints, which has also overtaken the Bone tutorial from last year for most read post to date.

All in all, 2016 has been a solid year here at The Brush Wizard. Lets take a look at the happenings.

Super Secret Christmas Present 2016: The Princess Bride - Roberts vs. Montoya


Its time for another Super Secret Christmas Present! This time, it's for my sister and it is based on the Princess Bride. She is a huge fan of the book and movie and when I saw a set of custom made miniatures based on the character designs from the film, I knew I had to do something with them.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Tutorial: How to Paint Chibi Eyes Revisited

How to Paint Chibi Eyes - Revisited

"Why another chibi eyes tutorial?", you may be asking. Well, I've been painting up chibi figures since 2012, when I first got my hands on Super Dungeon Explore. But while my other techniques have changed, the eyes of all my SDE models have stayed the same. Four years is a long time to keep doing things the same exact way so it's time to change it up.

That said, I've changed up how I paint my eyes and I felt that maybe a more advanced version of the tutorial was in order. Don't worry, the original write up isn't going anywhere. Think of this as the next evolution and slightly more advanced version.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Tutorial: How to Paint Chipped Paint

How to Paint Chipped Paint

I am a fan of weathering, so much so that it's a pretty well known fact that  I tend to go crazy with it once I start adding in rust, dirt or scratches. There are a lot of things you can do with giving something a little wear and tear and it's all super fun.

This tutorial goes out to Twitter follower LizardinCrimson, who asked if I had a tutorial on how I do my chipped paint while I was working on the Iron Golem from Super Dungeon Explore. For this tutorial, I'll be going over how I did the scratched paint surfaces on that model, but not the beaten and scratched steel).

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Guess Who's Coming to Adepticon?

THIS GUY!

Come March 23rd I will be at Adepticon for the first time ever. Registration started on the 21st of this month and I have my sign ups all finished. This is exciting!

Friday, November 18, 2016

WIP: MOAR SDE Iron Golem

Are you guys getting tired of this fella? Cause I am, he's slowly draining my will to paint and I can only blame myself.

The silver has become a chore and while I think it looks awesome and I have been able to perfect it over the course of the miniature, there is just so much of it that it is getting tedious (and I have been known to do some pretty tedious things).

Luckily, I can finally say that his armor is finished and I can now move on to a different section, before I start on the sword and shield's silver.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Learn to Paint Minis at the Game Shop

A few weeks back I was asked by the guys at Dreams of Conquest, the game store I play board games at on the weekend, about possibly doing a painting event at the store. I said sure and they started making plans.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Unboxing: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past - The Works Edition

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.


Since I received my first set of toys for Christmas from my grandparents, all the way back in 1988. I've been hooked on those heroes in the half-shell. I still own all my original toys from those days, as well as all of the original movies and the entire 80s-90s animated series. I even have a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 that was reprinted for Free Comic Book Day and it's signed by Peter Laird.

Like all things, we lost track of each other as I grew older and I never really paid attention to any of the new series or comics. But, when I heard there was a new board game coming to Kickstarter earlier this year, I had to jump on it. In the end, nostalgia won the day and I went in for The Works, which was everything in the campaign plus some extra goodies.

Throughout the campaign, the community surrounding it seemed to be extremely negative and angst ridden, which surprised me. Going into it I was a bit apprehensive, as the previous board game based on an IDW comic series, Ghostbusters, seemed to miss the mark (I was a backer for that campaign as well, until I decided to pull out). But, this game was being handled by IDW Games themselves rather than Crypozoic and the designer has some cred, so I remained hopeful.

Since the end of the campaign, the community that backed the project has seemed to get more and more negative. Of course, part of this is due to what seemed like poor communication on IDW's part, such as poor quality pictures of production sample models or sparse updates during production. But still, I remained hopeful. I figured, if the game is crap, at least I'll have a bunch of TMNT minis to paint up.

Well, after a long week of hitting F5 and refreshing my tracking number, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past - The Works Edition is finally here! Lets take a look at this massive box of lean green Foot kicking goodness!

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

WIP: SDE Iron Golem


Over the last month, I've been slowly working on the new Iron Golem mini-boss for Super Dungeon Explore. Part of the reason it's taken a while is because I haven't had a lot of chair time over the last month, the other part is that each section is kind of time consuming.

This guy is all silver metals too, and my metallics game has always been on the weak side, but not nearly as bad as my non-metallic metals. For this model I decided to push my limits and really focus on making the true metallic metal paints shine.

To do this, I pulled a few plays out of the non-metallic metals playbook and decided to just play around and see what happens. Namely, pushing contrast and forcing highlights, rather than letting the metallic paint do the highlighting work. Also, I knew that I wanted to keep as far away from drybrushing the metallic paint on to the surfaces. Not that there's anything wrong with drybrushed metallics, I just knew it wasn't the look I was going for on this model.

I've gotten a fair bit of work done on him, and he's turning out great!

Friday, October 28, 2016

Unboxing: Mechs vs Minions


Mechs vs Minions is a brand new board game by Riot Games, the creators of the massively popular League of Legends MOBA PC game. In this game players work together to complete various missions, while attempting to fend of waves of minions. I've never played League of Legends, but the concept of the game had me interested from the first day I heard about the game, and I knew I had to try and get my hands on it.

Its first wave of shipping, which was 15,000 units strong, sold out in less than a day. While its second shipping wave, which is scheduled to ship out in December, is still available for purchase on Riot's merch store as of this writing. 

After a stressful day of attempting to order it on launch day, while dealing with server issues caused by  thousands of other gamers attempting to do the same, as well as a week of anxious waiting. Mechs vs Minions has finally arrived at my door, in all its 15 lbs of glory. I now have pictures of everything taken and am here to do a full unboxing of the game.

Now, before we get started, Mechs vs Minions features a Legacy style system and new content is unlocked as you play. There are certain aspects of the game which are meant to be revealed as the game is played and remain secret until then. These range from new cards, scenarios and a boss mech that is sealed in his own box. By now, I'm sure those spoilers are all over the internet. But to keep the mystery alive for myself, at least a little, I haven't cracked open the dossiers or the boss mech's box. If you want to see that stuff, Watch it Played has done an excellent series of videos on the game and you can see it all on there.

With that out of the way, lets dig into this box!

Monday, October 17, 2016

Unboxing: Super Dungeon Explore: Super Ninja Ambush!

I've finally been able to get my hands on a copy of the new expansion for Super Dungeon Explore, the crossover set Super Ninja Ambush!

If you didn't already know, back during the Ninja All-Stars Kickstarter, Ninja Division added in some bonus cards that would allow players to add in Ninja All-Stars models into their Super Dungeon Explore games. The aptly named Ninja Pack was a simple pack of cards for use in Classic and Arcade Mode of Super Dungeon Explore and brought a new paired spawning point to the game.

It was a nice addition, and I love variety as much as the next gamer. But from a collector's stand point, I didn't like the idea of mixing components or breaking down part of the Ninja All-Stars rewards to use them exclusively for games of SDE. I also had a problem with the idea that a Super Dungeon Explore focused gamer, that is a completionist would need to buy an entire game that they may not be interested in just to finish off their collection. I also may have been vocal about it whenever Ninja Division posted polls asking about future crossovers.

Luckily all this was solved with the announcement of Super Ninja Ambush!

Not only does this box set give you everything you need to run two sets of paired spawning points worth of ninja models (the original Ninja Pack only included enough cards for a single paired spawning point), but you end up doing so fairly reasonably too, without the need to buy into Ninja All-Stars if you don't want to.

Also, it acts as a dual purpose release for Ninja All-Stars, in that it is an official release of the Earth and Wind shrine ninja. Before this release, the only way to get them was if you were a Kickstarter backer. Plus, a person could use these models for league play at their local shop, without having to buy into Ninja All-Stars fully.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Raphael 8404 Kolinsky Brushes

I've used a lot of different brushes over the 20 some years I've been painting these little metal and plastic soldiers. I started with that cheapo white handled brush that comes with Testors paint sets, moved up to value pack brushes and then to craft store art section brushes. But until earlier this year, I'd never bought a "high end" paint brush.

Well, after dealing with brush issues in the early part of this year and replacing them seemingly every month or so, I finally broke down and bought a set of Raphael 8404 Kolinsky brushes from Dick Blick's web store.

I've been using these brushes since mid-April, so I think now is as good a time as any to share my thoughts on them.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Finger Painters: Rafael Maladoni

My entry for September's Finger Painters Challenge is now finished. For this month, the theme was all about revisiting old projects that were left unfinished or old models in need of repainting.

For mine, I decided to repaint the Reaper Miniatures vampire, Rafael Maladoni.

I've had this guy for a very long time. In fact, if I remember correctly, I bought him along with a bunch of other Reaper Miniatures vampires in one big batch. Also, this was back in the days of mail order from their actual catalog book, Casketworks.

I believe this had to have been somewhere in the late 90s. Probably '97-'98, but maybe as early as '96. I can't remember. I do remember that I painted him after I discovered Games Workshop's Citadel paints. But that's not a very good gauge of when I bought the miniature itself, since I tend to stockpile models for a long time before they get touched.

Anyway, after a bath in some Simple Green it was time to bring him up to date. Unfortunately, I tossed him in the bath on a whim and didn't snap any before pictures of the original paint job.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Commission: Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor all Finished!

The commission of Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor is now all done! I really enjoyed painting these guys, partly because I am a huge D&D nerd and partly because Illithids are my favorite D&D monster race. I did have a few issues with them, mainly in the details of Halaster, but for the most part I liked working with them.

It's a pretty well known fact in my gaming group that I am not a fan of resin. But these models didn't have many issues with small parts that would easily break off or with bubbles in the casting. The issues I had with Halaster stemmed from his hair and beard. They seemed to have a lot of flashing in between the strands of hair and it was a pain to clean up.

These models were painted up for one of the owners of the game shop that my board gaming group meets up at on the weekends. He asked that I follow the official color schemes pretty closely, but that he wanted them to end up in my style of painting. He also didn't care if the beholder in the set was painted, since the person he is gifting these to didn't care for the beholder mini.

Anyway. Lets get to the pretty painted models!

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Shojo all Painted!

Ninja All-Stars Ronin Shojo is all finished! Finished being painted, anyway. She still needs her market stall, but I'm still looking for pieces parts for that. Til then, I pinned her back to her base and am calling her done - for now.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

New Commission: Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor


Another new commission! This time it's for the owner of the gaming shop I go to every weekend. For this one I am painting up Halaster Blackcloak and Sangalor from the Scoundrels of Skullport limited edition Dungeons and Dragons Collector's Series box set. The box also includes the beholder, Xanathar, but I'm not painting that one up.

The goal is to paint them up in the same color scheme as the models on the box, but in my style of painting. So far, I've gotten Halaster all  painted except for the base and Sangalor has his base coats down.

Let's take a look.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Cryx Deathripper Finished!

The Cryx Deathripper is now all finished, except for the basing which will be done when all the models are painted. He turned out really nice and evil looking too and everyone in my Warmahordes group really liked it.

For now, we're just going to post painting desk pictures.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Painting up Cryx: Deathripper Test Model

Shojo is done being painted, but her base isn't close to being finished (I'll have a post on that soon). But for now, I've begun painting up my Cryx army so I can field painted models for a change. I decided to start with a Deathripper and use it as a testing grounds for new techniques.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

WIP: More Work on the Market Stall, and Beginning Paint on Shojo

I didn't get a whole lot of seat time this week, but I did manage to do a few things on the Shojo project.

As of now, the market stall now has rope tying the wood planks together and I've begun work on painting Shojo herself.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

New Project! Shojo's Shop

New project time! Since I won the July Finger Painters challenge, I got to pick the next theme. I decided on an open, free-for-all theme, both to get more people to enter and because I couldn't think of one that I could use a current project for.

I decided to crack open my Ninja All-Stars box and paint up Shojo, who is one of my favorite sculpts from the set. But it's kind of snowballed into a diorama of Shojo sitting on her barrel in front of her market stall.

Monday, August 1, 2016

Kingdom Death: Distracted - Finished!

Kingdom Death: Distracted is now all finished!

I knew from the start that I wanted to build a rock base for her to sit on top of. With a lot of cork, a wooden disc and a dowel I was able to make a pretty epic base for it using my usual steps for making rocks. Its gotten a lot of compliments on Twitter and Instagram while I was in the process of building it too, but is always a good feeling.

Also, while I was building the base, I decided that I needed to cut away parts of the flooring base, to make it both easier on myself and to give the planks a bit more thickness. I was super nervous about that, but thanks to my fancy new Citadel cutters and some patience it wasn't a huge problem at all.

But now, I'll stop rambling. It's pretty pictures time!

Saturday, July 30, 2016

WIP - Kingdom Death: Distracted - Painting the Lady

It's been a pretty busy painting week. A few days ago, I started painting the female figure for the Distracted piece. It's been going really well too and I can honestly say that I am both stoked and amazing at how well I've done on the skin tone.

She is now all finished. I was planning on doing more WIP posts on her, but I really hit my stride and was too hooked on working on her. But that also means I get to do a showcase post and talk about the process as well, so this might be a longer post than usual.

By the way, this post features nudity and it's possibly NSFW. 

Monday, July 25, 2016

WIP - Kingdom Death: Distracted - Painting the Base

A few months ago, I bought my first Kingdom Death model, that wasn't part of the Kickstarter. It was a limited print run model named Distracted.

This Kingdom Death model is in 50mm scale, which is larger than most other miniatures I've ever painted. Kingdom Death models have a tendency to lean more towards the risque and Distracted is no different, but pushes the pin-up envelop a bit further. This model features a nude female sitting in a chair in her study, reading a book, it's fairly anatomically correct as well and not for young eyes at all.

So far, the chair is all assembled and the main base, chair and a stack of books are all painted.

Circle Oroboros Commission Complete!

The Circle Oroboros commission is now finished! All of the painting was done on Wednesday and I managed to finish up the basing just before I headed out to my Warmahordes group meet up. It was a fun project and it's always nice to see the owner's face when they finally get to see them in person.

I tried to follow the official artwork a bit closer than usual for these, though I don't use Priveteer Press' P3 paints. I also learned a new technique for doing the green on their armor as well, but the tutorial I was following seemed to only really work for larger surface areas and not the smaller armor of human size figures.

In the end, everything turned out well and the finished product was well recieved by their owner and the rest of the members of our group.

Lets get started by looking at the Warlocks in the set

Monday, July 11, 2016

Token Box Labels: Twilight Imperium

Tokens, tokens everywhere!

Twilight Imperium: Third Edition is a huge game and super token heavy. There's token sets for each race, each with their own control markers and command markers. There's Domain counters, Trade Goods counters, Fighter Supplement counters, Ground Force Supplement counters, Bonus tokens and the Speaker token. It all totals up to 448 cardboard chits, and that's not counting the plastic tokens that represent all the different ships, space stations and ground troops. It's a massive game, all packed into a 1' x 2' box.

Needless to say, I had to come up with a better storage solution.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Warmachine: Starting a Cryx Army


Whelp, I've been tempted by another war game and this it's Warmachine from Privateer Press. Now you might be saying "But Scott, weren't you also gung ho about 40k Skitarii and Bolt Action Americans? What happened there? What makes this I'm starting a new army post different"? Well, unlike 40k and Bolt Action, I actually have a group to play Warmachine with and that is the key ingredient of wargaming right there.

WIP: Krueger and Warpwolf Stalker Finished!


 Another quick update on the Hordes commission. Krueger and the Warpwolf Stalker are both finished now and that brings the finished model count up to 4 out of 6.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

WIP: Kromac Finished, Kreuger Started!

Time for a quickie little update on the Circle Oroboros commission, before I go off for Independence Day weekend fun.

As of right now, Kromac is all finished! It took longer than I had expected, but it's all set and time to move on to the next one.

SDE - Stilt Town Zombies Warband



When the Forgotten King Kickstarter was running, Soda Pop changed up how they are doing expansion packs. Instead of level boxes, like Caverns of Roxor or Von Drakk Manor, they are doing something different. These warbands include a paired spawning point, a mini-boss and a hero, instead of a the level box's spawning point, paired spawning point, mini-boss, boss and three heroes.

Warbands serve two purposes. The first is to give SDE players new options for their games. The second is to give folks who want to play SDE: Arena a jumping point, without needing to buy the entire game. Personally, I've never played the Arena game, but I get the reasoning. From the perspective of a Dark Consul player, it's always nice to have more mini-boss and spawning point options.

This set includes more minis to run alongside the Von Drakk Manor expansion pack and as the name suggests, it's all about zombies!

Lets take a look at them.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Tutorial: How to Paint Gems with Gemstone Paints



How to Paint Gemstones with Gemstone Paints

Citadel's new Gemstone paints seem to be the hotness lately. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the new Citadel Gemstone technical paints, they are a new line of translucent glossy paints. The purpose of them is to give you good looking gems without a bunch of hassle doing them the "old fashioned way". A lot of folks have really liked the gradient undercoat for the gems I did testing on. So I thought a quick tutorial is in order.

This tutorial will follow the gradient technique that I used in my testing for the Gemstone paints review.

Friday, June 24, 2016

New Commission: Hordes Circle Oroboros

 
Another commission has hit the table, which you may have already known if you follow me on Twitter. This time, it's a collection of minis from the Hordes faction, Circle Oroboros. The goal of for these is to get them table ready, as some were previously painted or other were just primed.

This set of models includes the Warcasters, Kreuger, Kromac and mounted Morvahna, and the warbeasts Ghertorix and a Warpwolf Stalker.

So far, I've started with Kromac.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Review: Citadel Gemstone Paints


Games Workshop just released a new type of paint for their Technical line of paints, called Gemstone. If you're not familiar with Games Workshop's technical paints, usually each serves a different purpose from corrosion to cracked earth and even blood effects. Usually in the interest of making things easier or faster to paint.

Well, I recently picked up the full set of these paints and began doing testing. Let's see how they work and if they're worth it, shall we?

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Mansions of Madness Complete!

The Mansions of Madness commission is now finished and ready to be handed off to its owner!

It seemed to take a lot longer than expected for this project, but luckily the set is for a buddy of mine and he is patient. Though as I got further in and more stuff painted, I could tell that his hype level was reaching critical mass.

Like all projects, some of the models were more fun to work on than others. For this one, I had the most fun working on the large and medium monsters as well as a few of the investigators. I especially enjoyed working on Joe Diamond, which was painted to resemble Dick Tracy.

So now, lets enter the mansion and take a look at the whole set now that's its finished!

Thursday, June 2, 2016

WIP - More Mansions of Madness

After being sick most of last week, I am finally back to painting the Mansions of Madness commission. Since the last post, I've now finished all the monsters and one of the heroes, with a 2nd hero in progress. I had a good time painting up the last two large monsters, the winged demon was rough though as he didn't want to stay seated on the bottle cap.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

WIP - Mansions of Madness Commission

Hobby slacking doesn't happen around here lately. I'm currently working on another commission. This one is for the board game Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight Games for my friend Chad. He's given me free reign over everything, but has asked that I use a pink/purple similar to that which is featured on the box as an accent color. As such, this pink and purple is being used throughout the set.

So far I've knocked out all of the human baddies and one of the beasts and have been making decent progress with it. The way the bases are made for this game, the miniatures plug into them with a little round tab, and it's proved to be a bit of a challenge. I ended up drilling a bunch of my bottle caps and even then they don't really like staying on them.

Here's what's done so far.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Chibi Swap! Nyan-Nyan and Tabbybrook Mage


A few months back, my friend Chris asked about doing a painting swap of Super Dungeon Explore miniatures. We each picked a single release figure from Super Dungeon and would paint it for the other person, then mail it off. The chosen miniatures ended up being Nyan-Nyan and Tabbybrook Mage.

For today's post, we're doing something special. Chris has agreed to write up a bit of stuff on Nyan-Nyan and how he went about painting her. So that means, there's a guest writer on the blog for the first time ever!

Now let's get to it, shall we? Starting with Chris and his Nyan-Nyan.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Ninja All-Stars: Son Goku Display Piece


I've finally painted a Ninja All-Stars miniature, but it's not one of mine from the Kickstarter rewards. This is actually a commission for a friend of mine, Vid Markes.

Monday, April 25, 2016

Tutorial: How to Paint Rocks


How to Paint Rocks

Welcome to part two of the rock tutorial. In the first tutorial we built the rock from scratch and now it's time to paint it! That's what this part is all about. In this tutorial we will be coloring the rock with a mix of paint and washes to give the surface color a bit more depth, rather than only using grey.

Citadel Battle Box

 
For years I've had a hard time transporting gaming miniatures and in recent times, Super Dungeon Explore. I've used ring cases, index card holders, cross-stitch floss boxes and small parts organizers, none were really optimal though.

Last year, Games Workshop announced and released a new set of carrying cases. The Skirmish, Battle and Crusade Cases. After looking them over, I knew they were the answer to my Super Dungeon Explore hauling nightmare and have spent a while debating on getting one. But I wasn't sure which of the two smaller cases were my answer.

Well, I am now an owner of the Battle Case, which is the medium size box. It is small enough to be convenient, while large enough to handle anything I'd ever need to carry. Here's my thoughts on it after using it for a game day and hauling SDE to the game store.

Monday, April 18, 2016

Tutorial: How to Make Rock Formations

How to Make Rock Formations

I've tried a lot of different ways to make rocks over the years. From using actual rocks, tree bark, pink foam, cork and others. But now a days I do something completely different than those early techniques, and I feel safe in saying that the way I do rocks is a technique I developed myself.


This way of making rocks gives you a lot more creative control over their shape, size and even better, they are easy to drill and mount miniatures on to.It's messy, involved and not quick. But the results can be really nice. If you've been following any of my diorama projects, such as Trex, Araloth or the Colossal Skeleton Battle, you've no doubt seen these steps taking shape. But now I'm going to actually explain them.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Blood Rage Commission Finished!

Those who have been following me on Twitter, Instagram or on here know that all my painting time has been taken up recently with a commission for the new Blood Rage board game. It wasn't a full game job, and only the clan leaders and monsters were given to me to paint. But, now they are done and it's time to show of pretty pictures of each of them!

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

WIP - Blood Rage: Snake and Raven Clan Leaders Finished!

Two of the 5 Clan Leaders are now finished!

I'm pretty pleased with both of them so far, though the sculpts are kind of two dimensional. There are still a lot of details, but since they are one piece models, it's hard to get them to be dynamic.

Monday, April 4, 2016

WIP - Blood Rage: All Monsters are Finished!


Really quick update today.

All of the Blood Rage Monsters are now finished! Well, except for their bases anyway. Some of them were more fun to paint than others. But I definitely enjoyed painting the larger monsters the most, especially the Sea Serpent.

Monday, March 28, 2016

WIP - Blood Rage: All Large Monsters and the Witch are Finished


The troll is now finished, which gives me complete paint jobs for all of the large monsters and it is time to knock out the smaller minis.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Bolt Action: Joining the War Effort

I've always been interested in World War II. I particularly enjoy video games set in that time period, such as Medal of Honor: Frontline. I also like to read about US operations during D-Day and the lead up to the end of the war in Europe. My interest in WWII usually only stays within the Western European Theater, honestly.

I'm surprised that I've never been really interested in World War II wargaming before, though. Probably because I'm not interested in fielding massive amounts of 15mm troops or even huge regiments of units in 25mm. As such, Flames of War never interested me at all, much like Warhammer Fantasy Battles never interested me either.

I've found over recent years that I am more of a skirmish gamer. I like systems with few troops. Such as, Frostgrave, Blood Bowl, 40k Kill Team, Hordes and even Ninja All-Stars.

That makes Bolt Action a pretty much perfect fit for me.

Friday, March 25, 2016

WIP - Blood Rage: Fire Giant and Sea Serpent Finished, Troll in Progress

It's  been a little bit since my last WIP post for the Blood Rage commission, but it hasn't all be slacking and playing games...

Ok, it was some slacking and playing games, as I spent all of last weekend in Chicago (more on that later).

But I have some solid progress to report, the Fire Giant is finished, along with the Sea Serpent. Both turned out really awesome and the client is really happy with them too. I am now deep into progress on the Troll, which just needs a bit more work and he'll be finished too.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

WIP - Blood Rage Commission: Frost Giant Finished, Fire Giant in Progress.

The commission for Blood Rage continues! The Frost Giant is now finished and I've begun on the Fire Giant.

So far the paint jobs have gotten a lot of compliments, and I've shown the progress to their owner and he's digging it. So I have no worries about them not being well received.

Monday, March 14, 2016

New Project: Blood Rage Commission

Whelp. The river and fountain project is now on hold, as over the weekend I ended up with a commission to paint up some of the minis from the new Cool Mini or Not board game, Blood Rage.


It's not the full set, just the monsters and clan leaders. That's fine though, it's still something like 14 miniatures and should be a blast to paint. They are some beautiful sculpts!

Thursday, March 10, 2016

WIP: Modular River - More Fountain Work

Work on the Frostheart Phoenix fountain continues.

I needed to take some time to plan out my steps a bit, because I've never made anything this large before and it the first time I've ever attempted building something that the minis will be able to climb on. I am in learn as we go mode and so far it seems to be working well.

Monday, March 7, 2016

WIP: Frostgrave Terrain - Modular River

 Time for a new long term project!

I recently joined a new Facebook group called the International Brotherhood of Hobbyists. In my first month I ended up winning their friendly painting competition with my Stilt Town Zombies and got to choose the theme for March!

I decided to put them on their toes and called for Terrain. But it also gave me some trouble too, as I was then hit with crafters block and unable to think of anything.

So I decided to take it easy and do an urban river for Frostgrave.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

SDE - Beatrix the Witch Queen and Ghost Creeps


The first Super Dungeon Explore Boss of the new year is finished and Beatrix is now ready to deal with those pesky Heroes herself!

This set came out back in October of 2015 and if you've been following me since then, you know I painted up her Ghosts for U-Con. It includes Beatrix and 6 new Ghost Creeps to add to your creep collection. She also has her own Explore cards, treasure and boss cards.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Super Dungeon Explore: Relic Knights Crossover - Completed!

This weekend I finished up One Shot, the final mini in the Super Dungeon Explore: Relic Knights crossover set that came out during the Relic Knights Kickstarter. Of course, I had to get them. It's actually because of the Relic Knights KS that I discovered Super Dungeon Explore. My wallet has hated me ever since.

The Relic Knights SDE mini set was originally meant to be a "Kickstarter Exclusive", because that's how Cool Mini or Not rolls. But after Soda Pop split from them, their exclusivity was revoked and they are now openly available, because that's how Soda Pop rolls.

It's a great thing too. I can't tell you how many games I've not picked up because I found out that this or that was an exclusive thing for Kickstarter Backers or Con Goers. Con exclusives especially piss me off. I'm sorry, but if you're going to release part of your game and only allow a select few people fortunate enough to buy it at your convention booth before you run out, I'm out.

Anyway, mini rant over. Lets get to the chibi!

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Finger Painters: Mecha, Robots and Cyborgs - Kastelan Robot

The first Finger Painters competition for 2016 is done and the theme was Mecha, Robots and Cyborgs. Originally I had hoped to do the Onager Dunecrawler for my entry, since there was some confusion as to what constituted "mecha". But once vehicles were officially nixed from eligibility, I decided on one of the Kastelan Robots instead.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Tutorial: How to Make Token Box Labels


How to Make Token Box Labels

As you've no doubt seen, I like sorting my tokens and other game pieces into boxes (see here). While I never finished my degree, I am also a bit of a graphical designer. As such, I like to do projects in Photoshop and Illustrator from time to time to scratch my graphics itch.

Over the years, I've made all sorts of digital art. MAME arcade cabinets overlays, custom covers for video games, a few labels for glasses, and a bunch more.

Then it came time to store the X-Wing Miniatures Game, which had easily over grown it's original box. Since then, I've redone those original covers, and a few other boxes with custom labels. I think it's safe to say that I've perfected my technique for making them.

Now, is as good a time as any to share what I've learned with everyone else.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Ninja All-Stars Arrives!


According to last week's update on Kickstarter, Ninja All-Stars was all set to ship out by last Friday. I have been waiting anxiously this entire week, hoping it would arrive before this weekend. Now I can finally say, Soda Pop Miniature's Ninja All-Stars has landed at my doorstep! The box was fairly heavy as well, clocking in over 11 pounds!

Monday, January 25, 2016

Tutorial: How to Paint Weathered Brass


How to Paint Weathered Brass

Unless bare metal is fresh off the line and in a controlled environment, there is a very good chance that there is some corrosion present on it. So it only makes sense that our metals aren't pristine and clean. Especially when it comes to statues.

For this tutorial, we will be looking at how to paint weathered/ corroded brass. This will also work well for copper and bronze. But for steel and iron, you'll need rust instead, which is a completely different process. I may get to doing that one eventually.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

WIP - AdMech - Rusting the Robot

Progress continues!

Over the course of the week, I've been slowly working my way through corroding the Kastelan Robot. It's an involved series of steps and sometimes I may get out of hand with it. But it's fun and gives the mini a lot of character.


Monday, January 18, 2016

Custom Space Hulk Token Box


Another token box! Man I love these damn things... I may have a problem.

Friday, January 15, 2016

AdMech - Kastelan Robots Progress


Progress on the power fist Kastelan Robot is well underway, and if you've been following on Twitter, you know that he's been getting a lot of attention lately. As of right now, his main armor plating, silver mechanical bits and a bit of detailing are all finished.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Custom Forbidden Stars Token Box


Forbidden Stars has a bunch of tokens, each for a different faction.  I have a thing for keeping my game components organized, and I'm not a big fan of having 5 million plastic bags. The box is big enough that there is room inside for a token box, so I decided to make another custom box like my SDE one.

More AdMech Progress!


Slow bit of progress on the AdMech so far, this week (I found myself gravitating toward Super Dungeon Explore painting instead). Batch painting isn't really my thing, so I tend to get tired of it quickly. But I do have a little bit of progress to report.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

AdMech Skitarii - Finally Starting on the Army.

In 2015, Games Workshop released a brand new army for Warhammer 40,000 and I fell in love with it. The new Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarii army features a bunch of retro-futuristic / steampunk vibes and really clicked with me. I ended up buying multiple kits, the Codex and Datacards and more kits and then the Adeptus Mechanicus: Cult Mechanicus Codex and Datacards... and more kits.

They all sat in the box for weeks, until I finally bit the bullet and assembled them in a marathon of sprue cutting not seen in my house before. But then, they sat again, while I worked on other projects and debated on a color scheme.

But now, the time has come for the Skitarii to finally be given the attention it deserves. Time to work out one of many new year resolutions. We're painting my first ever 40k army, y'all.