Comission: Demon Orince Broly

 Greetings, Archivists!

This shall be a "shorty".

A good while ago, I have been comissioned with something really strange...
A Dragon Ball Z character... as a Demon Prince.

I honestly have not much love left for Dragon Ball Z (the original Dragon BAll Comics where... entertaining, but after a while it turned into a quite boring neverending battle thingy...)

Nontheless, here are my effords to turn the folling picture into a live model.

 WIP:

The hair is a royal pain in the @§$, but the mixture of Greenstuff and Apoxy sculpt and some curing time before the sculpting gives everything the needed stability to be sculpted in "mid air".

Here is the finished guy:

The Cabinet of Doom WIP

Greetings!

I promised you fresh stuff from my on going sedition wars quest.

Instead I bring you something else.

You might remember, that I have moved this summer (announcment: Soon I will do a little article about mancaves). With this I have risen to a new dimension of selfawareness.
I found the Home-Improver in me, the Tim Taylor of Tool Time...

I feel like Tim, look probably more like Alan

All this was fueld, when I found a second-hand furniture store close by.
Long story short, being short on money, wanting a show-cabinet for my minitures and being inspired by the "Shabby-Chique"-Stuff my Nornqueen likes somuch I bought the following for an apple and an egg.

To give the cabinet a new paintjob, I removed the glass with my newly found skills...

I gave everything a coat of white laquer...

After that I used green acrylic paint. It was quite hard to get the paint covering up the laquer, but since I wanted to remove that paint layer, it wasn't to bad. I used a sponge and not a brush, avoiding the brush-strokes.

I mixed some brown pgments into the acryl paint to tone down the quite bright green.

After everything had dried, I took a variety of sanding papers to get the "used" look.

Since I have some nice metallic barock-application and the whole thing wasn't "Dark future" enough, I decided that I should hone my skills in barock design.
So I searched for some Input...

and started sculpting

As soon as I have painted the barock application, I will glue it onto the door and provide you with some more shots.

What do you think about customising furniture?

Archive Golden Demon Up Date 3 Lictor time

Greetings Archivists!

I finally find some time to continiue my retrospectation of my former projects.

Today I want to show you my Lictor Bust and the little story that is behind it.
In 2009 Mr.Moloch (as in Hive Fleet Moloch) and I decided to give our beloved Mr.Pink a visit. The reason were manyfold. That year, the Warpshadow Members organised a unique table setting, I had the funds and the time for such a travel and the stars alined in the right order.

But there is no visting our canadian friedn without crashing the Golden Demon. So, I sat down for, if I recall correctly, two or three weeks and let my sculpting tools and putty glow. All in all I managed to get three entries done and the Lictor was one of them.

In the end I didn't get everything done before the flight, which left me painting my stuff until the last minute before the flight ( I actually almost missed my flight because of that). Moloch was a bit annoyed when I instantly fell asleep on the plane, even before lift off (which is my favourite part of flying).

I shall tell you more of that amazing trip the next time.

The Lictorbust is one of the few very good documented projects I did for a demon. Probably, because I checked it almost everyday with the community on warpshadow, who where a great help. Especially since this was going to be my first complete scratch sculpt ever.

So, here are a few impressions of the different stages.

as obvious as it may seem, I started with the head, which gave me the rough idea of how big everything would become. I chose to stick the tentacles pretty close to the eyes, because I wanted their structre to be the texture for the next layer.

The connection of the tentacles to the rest of the head really gave me headaches. I tried for hours to figure out how to aply the structures that were shown in the sketches (back then provided by GW) to the model.
In the end it was my former nornqueen who simply said: Stop using your head... just sculpt :D

Next up the carapace. I wanted the carapace not to be the smooth surface you find on your avaerage tyranid, but to make "sense". The head carapace should be some bony structure, that gives some protection. From falling rocks... or maybe when it rains...

I started the torso with a rough build in Apoxy Sculpt, which was sanded into shape with a dremel.

As mentioned before the carapace should make sense in a way. Since my nids have stripes in green, I asked myself which biological process would result in stripes. I thought of shells and how they grow their carapace in layers. I imagined, that the lower layers where still freshly green and the older they get and the further up they grown, the darker they turn.
As I said, I wanted to sculpt this, not to simply paint it on.
I chose Magic Sculpt for that, since you can work really fine lines into the putty.

When the torso was done, I sculpted the neck, without glueing the head into place. That allowed me to remove the head for a seperate painting. The only problem was, that there was just one narrow angle that allowed the head to be removed...

The next step was to finish the "pillar". I wanted to add some structure, so that this area wouldn't be plain and flat. The aim was to create some organic texture, that wouldn't be mistaken as a extension of the torso.
ecause I didn't have any silicone clayshapers back then, I used the ends of some brushes in various shapes and sizes. The big differnce, in retrospect, is the way you can work into the putty. Apoxy culpt has the advantage over greenstuff in the ability to be compressed to some degree. That works especially well, when you have a "hard" tool.

After some paintslapping, here is the painted result.

Welll, that for now.

Next time, I will have some fresh stuff from the 2nd Wave of Sedition Wars...

Review Sedition Wars Wave 2 and a "Welcome home"

Grettings, everybody!
 
As I mentioned the Project "Beloved Castle shit Dragon" reached a state, where my craftsmanship is not needed all the time. So, I can check that of my to do list. That doesn't mean, the house is done. Those of you, living in a house, probably know, that a house is never finished...

The other thing is, that since last Thrusday, I am a fully build and suited teacher. I passed all the exams the crazy german education-system could throw at you. Now I am just hoping to find a job :D
This exam had engulfed everything for the last couple of months. In the end even my sleepingphases. But as Mr.Pink would quote myself: "Sleep is inefficent! Sleep is for the weak!"

But now, I have my "free" time and my sleep back, i can turn back tto the things I love to do.

And the first thing I did was building my Man Cave.
Here some insights:

From left to right:

Table for my gaming table and terrain, Workingspace for painting and sculpting, my "black library" and a small show case.

Centerpiece of my attention: My Masters of the Universe colletion. Sitting at my computer and needing some time out, while preparing and learning for my exam, I roamed the interwebs on search for a lucky shot on ebay. My parents forbid me Masters of the Univers Figures and rumour has it, that this trauma lasts on.
Funnily, when ever the circumstances force me to be uber-"Grown up", I turn to the earlies childhood memory I can recall and that is Skeletor an his friends. Before my last exam, I had 3 Figures.... you can see, I was forced to be "Grown up" quite often lately.



BUT NOW; THE REVIEW:

Well, this is probably, why you are reading this.
In the last phase of my exam, my Sedition Wars Wave 2 Parcel arrived. And not to spoil the fun, I just pulled out the cards, marveling at the stats and miniatures.

Now I have come around unpacking them.
And I started with the miniature, that got me hooked up with this game:

I just had to have one of my favourite charcters from one of my favourite movies in her iconic pose. That sold me on Sedition Wars. Well, I got way more, but I was really looking out for this model.

So, natrualy, she was the first, I unbox...

A quick mock up, revealed that the restic used for the casting didn't do the model justice...

But the real "Douh!"-Moment was when I placed her next to the others...

I know, my photoskills are not the best (as is my camera), but you can already see the size difference. It looks like as if she was washed to hot and shrunk. I know that the restic melts details like noses and so on, but whole miniatures?

I have the feeling, that I know where the problem is, I am having and that is no with the McVeys, partly with the restic and mostly with the sculptor of the extra models. When you compare the others like the firefl... ehm calamity crew you see them having the same size issues.

I totaly understand that the McVeys where overwhelmed by the success the Kickstarter was and that they had to out-source sculptings.
And I don't want to criticise the skills or the talent the sculptor has.
IMHO he did just one mistake and missed the scale, which resulted in unclean casts, close to breaking-thin legs and washed away details.

If they would re-do them, I would buy them immediatly.

So, what do we do now?

We could start screaming and crying like a small child, waving angry fists at people who are not really guilty or at the universe...
 But that would help noone.

I tell you, what I will do: I will make other companies rich. There are quite a lot count as models out there, that can replace the shrunk ones.
Hasslefree has quite a lot to offer. I have found replacemnets for Hexen, River, Battledamage Asoka and others. Heresy Miniatures has a quite nice looking Riddic, Bombshell has a almost match for Jade and so on.

The great thing is, Wave 2 provided ALL the cards! Yes, even for the characters you didn't order.
In my book that makes up for a lot. Thisway I can play with all of them and they are not "lost" to me.

I hope this was some light at the end of the tunnel for you...
If you find more good "count as" please let me know.

Until then.

Games Day Afterthought and the Look ahead

Picture Taken from Massive Voodoo                                               oh, look, it is me :D

One of the main aspects on Games Days, if you ask me, is meeting friends.
And to remember that, pictures are taken.

Harald from Warpshadow and my other forums has kindly shared his pictures of us meeting the night before the Event.

It is always a blast with this guy!

The obligatoric greeting that goes out to all Warpshadow Members

Just in case: The fingers are ment to be Lictor tentacles!

Funny to see the other perspective...

Glen (the guy on the left) was "new" this year.
The White Dwarf Team realised what a great opportunity the Games Day is to make pictures of the most fantastic models ever seen. So he jumped all over the place klicking away like a maniac with his camera.
It got a little confusing from time to time, we managed to get everyone happy.








Today, something really cool happened.

A WAVE hit.

The Second Wae of Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster hit my postbox.
Expect a detailed review on the new stuff soon!

P.S.: If you haven't seen or read it yet, Jarhead has posted is thoughts on his Slayer Sword winning entrie!
Fast , hurry over to MAssive Voodoo! ---------------------------------------------------------------->

"Bring your Man-E-Faces to work day" - The day after...

It was great fun, thought I would have loved to have a shot of Man-E tutoring my students in the Art of Acting.

'Bring Your Man-E-Faces to Work' Day

It is almost upon us!

Since I never had a Man-E-Faces as a child and since I have grown up, I bought one on ebay and will celebrate the Man-E-Faces Day with my co-workers. Since they are all teachers, it is going to be a fun day.

Where will you be on Man-e-Faces day?

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