Another Sunday and more Shieldwall

Having the washes and most of all of the shading done, I'm working on the shields today with the music of 43 cars at Daytona in the background. That is the last of the major paint items to be done.  Then I will go to touchups and eyeballs and base edges, besides the banners.

As you can see some of the shields are started, those are the ones with the Little Big Men transfers.  The rest will be my free right hand.

 Below is my favorite character of the group.

Some additional models.  The one with the raven in the background is one of my Berserkers.

And for Daytona lets hope the race does not have happen what happened yesterday with the debris going up in the stands at the end of the race.  Hope those fans that were injured recover.  Being involved in racing, I'm the one that is willingly taking the risk, the fans and spectators should not have to.  Accidents do happen, sometimes intentional, but we always hope that all of the stuff stays on the track.

In Progress on the Workbench: Light at the end of the Tunnel

Well I really did not get very much done over the week and this week will probably be pretty much the same as I be out of town for a few.  So today is the day to try make up for the lost time on the now 76 Vikings, I added a guy.  So below are pics of where we are at this morning.

Above and below are mostly of the multi-based Vikings.  They are pretty shiny right now.  I'm setting the goal pretty low today, I just want to get the washes all on to define things and maybe paint the bases edges.

If I have time I will paint some of the shields.  I wish I would have model some more with fur like the one in the middle above.  I'll be doing more stuff like that later as I have a ton of Vikings left in unassembled models.

The above Vikings are doing what they do, trying to steal my Mustang Hotwheels.  Typical.

Once I start doing the washes and shading, these will start really coming alive with character.  I did paint the backs of all of the shields already.  When you do these stands with multi-models, I usually on put the outside models on the base and paint them, and then have the middle models off of the base and paint them separately, then once you have that done, put them on the stand.

I had a few of the Gripping Beast metals and most of them in the mail are pretty good, so I added them in the mix for variety with the plastics, as you can see scale wise they work out fine, they stand a bit straighter up, but that is a good thing in my opinion.

And below is the last guy added, I had him primed, but had to do a bit of touch up on the modeling on him, so he is number 76.

Roman Casaulties

Squeezed in a couple of Romans that are bleeding out.  These are really rough casts for being relatively new.  The facial details are very rough and were difficult to make them look good.   So I did not spend much time on the faces, afterall if you polish a turd, it's still a turd.

The blood is a combination of Tamiya Smoke and Clear Red.

I have yet to determine what to do with shields of my latest batch of Romans.

I'm a Truckin'....51 Ford Progress

Been a while since I posted anything on my old truck.  Its a slow project, that will hopefully be completed road ready this spring or summer or fall.

This the last of the major bodywork to be done the new tailgate and the rear bumper.  The tailgate was the second try as the first did not turn out good enough.  The old rear bumper for this truck was flat ugly and besides I wanted to hide the tail lights a bit as most people hang a big ugly light off the sides of the box.  So with this we inset the tail lights in the bumper and I purposely shaped the bumper to mock the angles of the box.  Sort of has a Corvette look, which I have always liked.  My dad did all of the welding and paint work on both the tailgate and bumper.  I did a bunch of sanding on the bumper and that was about it. LED tail lights.

He mocked in an old license plate to see how everything fit up.

On the back we added a couple of neat touches.  Games Workshop is not the only one that likes to put skulls on everything so added some on the back.  That actually matches the theme, because my gear shifter knob is also a cool looking resin skull.  My dad came up with the dice idea, he had cut up and polished some aluminum cubes and I went work on them with the drill press counter sinking some pips.  The dice unscrew and allow the tailgate to swing down.  I still need to paint the pips, not sure what color to use.  Maybe red pips to match the tail lights.

Inside the box you can see the aluminum diamond plate bed and the fake tool box.  The fake tool box is actually concealing the 20+ gallon aluminum gas tank.  I had a local fabricator that works on race cars and street rods weld up all of the aluminum.

Its getting there......

In Progress on the Workbench: No Rest for the Wicked

Here is where they stood this morning.  Got a little distracted this morning reading a book on go karting chassis dynamics, so I forgot to post this.  Yea I know, you don't care about my crazy obsession with karting and going fast 1/2-inch off of the ground.  So we have Vikings, 75 of them on the workbench. YEP that's right 75 being assembly line painted, sometimes I don't know why I do such stupid things, but Adepticon is 10 weeks away and I still have a massive display board to do and I plan to add a few more miniatures.  This truly is a glimpse at impressive stupidty. 

 

In the above pic you can see two of my Warlord Games berserkers.  They look better than the old metal GB's.

The guy with the horn below is working alright, I like the looks of the pose and its coming along.

Now I don't mind painting some of the Warlord Games barbarians for berserkers, but most of the poses are way over the top in dynamics.  I really don't know what Warlord is thinking half the time.  There is no happy midway point with their miniatures, they are boringly static in poses like with their Romans or way over the top dynamically posed like these below.  AND they are really a pain in the ass to paint, thankfully I don't have many of these to do and I'm probably be spending way too much time for low point value skirmishers which is what I'm going to be using these miniatures for.

So.....on today's agenda, I need to paint all of the hair, half dozen models have fur, paint the bronze and gold, paint the silver arm bands, all of the washes and shading, then hopefully by the end of the day dry brush the bases.

A New Berserker

 Well the last model from the first rank and file Viking unit that I have done.   This is an old Gripping Beast metal casting, and the casting is showing its age, its very rough and thick in the wrong places.  I did replace the weapon and gave him a plastic axe, did a bunch of shaving, carving, filing.  The face of the model is pretty cool. 

I thought I could save this model and the other berserker with my paint work, but unfortunately these GB metal berserkers are just too rough in my opinion.  I'm working on building some replacement berserkers.

A Viking with a Cape....Superviking

Well maybe not Superviking, but it is a Viking with a cape.  Slow day only one to show.  The cape is actually  from the FireForge mounted knights.

Old Stuff Wednesday...February: The Gnoblar Objective

 I don't remember what year I did this piece, probably around 2005.  It was something that we had to do for the Fantasy Team Tournament at Adepticon, one of the few years that I did not team with Mike Butcher.  For this tournament I was teamed with Ryan Golke, otherwise known as Bear, and his Khorne based Ogres that were teamed up with my Khorne based beastmen.  Ryan is also the founder of Waaghpaca and also sometimes posts on The Magnificant Bastards' Blog and is one of those not-so-Handsome Point Boys.

This is one of those pieces that asks why....and I have no answer for.  The gold in the chest is actually round shaped glue glitter.

Actually the first and only time I have ever done lava bases....kind of surprising with all of the Khorne stuff that I have done over the years.

Vikings...More Multi-based

Some more of the multi-model based pieces.  One of the reasons I do this is that you can make the poses a bit more dynamic than say with just individual 20 mm bases.

I think I'm getting the hang of the shields.  The basing maybe needs a bit more static grass, but I'm sure I'll figure that out after basing the next 100 minis.

Good angle showing the backs of the minis.

Some more of the First Unit of Vikings

Not a big fan of Gripping Beast's older metal models.  The castings and sculpts are a bit clunky and rough.  This and the next two models are both of their metals.

 I do however like the face on this model.  I also decided to give him a plastic axe.

The metal model below is better than the two above.  It is a pretty cool looking pose with the horn.

The model below is a plastic model.  I hand painted the design on the shield.  Its a bit more elaborate in design than some of my others.  Need to do more of that.

History: The Vikings are coming

I normally cringe when I see the History Channel enter scripted television, but I have been seeing the advertisements for this throughout the day while watching some things on The Military Channel while doing some paint work on my Vikings.

I'm kind of intrigued, but then again, this is from the same people that give us the glorious TV Series of Swamp People and Pawn Stars and American Pickers and oh yes how could I forget that great piece of scripted crap called Axe Men and its twin frozen feces Ice Road Truckers.  Yea, that's why I have my doubts about the channel that says history is made everyday. 

Lets hope its better than that other crap and what is on Starz.

More Vikings multi-based

As I was building this big rank units I had decided to use a number of multi-models on a base, as it allowed me to move the figs around and get the most out of the poses, than with simply a single model on a 20mm base.

This is another of the second rank bases.  I like the guy that is attempting to stab with the pointy end.  He has one of my better painted shields.

I'm gradually getting them done.

WIP On the Desk: Viking Mayhem

The mayhem continues, after taking a short break messing around with the go-karting video, its back to the other hobby and the Vikings.

 Back to the 75 Vikings sitting on my desk.  We'll see if I can put a dent in the Skjalborg.

Hello...We have not seen this guy in awhile

 This was my test piece for the army.  Mainly what I was testing was the armor, as the colors were going to vary anyways.  I really like how this model turned out.  The casting around the face is a little rough, but I believe I was able to rescue it with the paint.

I really like how my shading and highlighting turned out on this model.  Most of the color was painted using a wet pallette.  Something I rarely do when painting armies.  Its just not very quick for me.

This shield was one that I really think turned out awesome.  I managed to achieve what I was looking for.  Black and white can always be tricky to paint.