Back to World of Twilight

I had quite a lot of World of Twilight minis in the painting queue, it was time to put my hands on them. I've started with the Dompaku:

Also known as giraffephant

The leg joints (the two left legs) were too evident, so I've sculpted some ropes and pendants. If you don't look too close you won't notice :)

I took a different path than the other one I painted. I made this one in light colours and no pattern on the back. The only touch of vibrant colours is the crest:

Then, the riders:

Huey, Dewey and Louie, WIP stage

The final result looks like this:

A real beauty, the Dompaku is one of the finest sculpts in all the Twilight ranges. At least is one of my favourites. I'll be painting the rest at a slow pace, as I'm currently embarked in a few projects (of which you will have notice quite soon); but for the moment this is it. Hmmm... Does it qualify for Dinovember? :D

Blog 5th anniversary!

Five years have gone by since I started this blog :O

Tempus fugit and that stuff, you know. In fact I wasn't even aware of the date until yesterday! A quick view to my stats (I hadn't looked at them since last year) shows that the blog is alive and healthy, with 494.408 views (13.235 of them in the last month). Wow.

But this is not about numbers. It's about the way we share this hobby, how I enjoy painting, converting or whatever and how your feedback encourages me to keep on. It's not about results, I'll never win a Golden Demon -not that I care about it. It's about the journey itself. Thank you all for being there, for your comments, for your visits, your ideas. Thanks for everything.

So Year Six starts now! In the short term (next month or so, until the end of Christmas) I have some plans in development, I really hope to bring them here soon (you know about the Arbites vs rioters scenario, but I have some other surprises on the works...). I also have long term plans, but you know how this works, new ideas keep on flowing, so I'll be doing them as they come.

Thanks for reading and for walking with me in this adventure. Allons-y!

I spy with my little cyber eye..

Yet another silly idea for my upcoming Arbites/rioters scenario. This was something that simply came up from nowhere; I fancied having a surveillance drone for the police force. I know, I know, in WH40K these things are covered by mere servoskulls. But hey, honestly, I didn't want that; a floating, grinning skull with tentacles was out of the table this time. I have used servoskulls before, but I really wanted a simple drone, something that looked technological.

The centerpiece for this project had been lying in my bitbox for years. Quite appropiate, as it was the plastic One Ring from the Fellowship of the Ring starter box (do you even remember what am I talking about? That box actually had a plastic ring, I'm not making it, promise!). With some more bits glued to it I got this:

This is essentially the thing

For the rotor I toyed with the idea of building it from scratch, but then I found that vent from the Overkill sprues (the one of the Genestealer Patriarch -whatever it is called these days. N.B.: This reminds me I have to paint a lot of Genestealers. But that's for another day). It was smaller than the Ring diameter, so I had to fill it with greenstuff.

The rest is just a matter of tiny stuff from here and there

The front camera is from a Predator tank, I believe. And this was pretty much all, no way I could make it simpler.

Smile to the camera

Painting the drone was of course quite easy too. Just paint it black! I added the yellow stripes that my other Arbites vehicles have and painted the Adeptus Arbites seal on the side.

Those blue spots were supposed to be LED lights. Impossible for me to achieve a proper OSL at that scale

I used a couple of Imperial Guard decals. Here you have your floating skull

I'm not really sure of what rules I will give the drone. My preliminary ideas are about some intel device; the Arbites player will not know for sure at first where are the mobs, nor their numbers or composition. The drone will give that knowledge to the law enforcers. Something like that, I still lhave to give it a thought.

Please, Fred, stop harassing me. We talked about this

I'm replacing you for a regular dog, Fred, I'm warning you

I want to add some more things to my Arbites force, but not many more. I should really get to think of the scenario rules...

Ballads of War 2x26-2x27

Here we start the home straight of what I have. Gasp!

These pages mark the starting point of a (micro) narrative arc in which we are coming back to Brent as the main leading character -and eventually to the critical point of what was going to be the big picture throughout the whole series. I'll talk about it all when the moment comes.

What is relevant for the moment is that the group is getting together again... But wait! What's that!? There are a couple of things to talk about, specially in the second page. The veterans among you may recognise the use of weird grenades out from the Second Edition Wargear Manual. I really wanted so much to do that, to recreate this story under that prism. Strange and so specific grenades added lots of flavour to the game, not the generic 'yup, I'm assaulting so count my generic grenade modifier blah blah'.

About the Imperial Guard Stormtroopers... well, indulge me, this was made like ten years ago or so, when the ACU camo pattern was at its peak. I wanted the Stormtroopers to look in a modern-like, functional fashion, opposite to some other flamboyant uniforms in the Imperial Guard. Pixel patterns were on the rise and ACU was supposed to be adaptable to most scenarios, so it seemed a plausible option for these guys. I know, how things have changed in a decade. Funnily enough, if you go back to the first page, you may notice that the camo net covering the shuttle has quite a resemblance to the Multicam pattern now in use in quite a number of current actual Armed Forces. Ha! I predicted that! :D

I have very, very few pages left. I think I'll publish them all on the next installment with my comments of what was the story to be in my mind. It may take more than usual, but I'll try to have them soon...

Interlude: Yet another Secret Santa (out of time again!)

Just like it happened a year ago, I've taken part in a Secret Santa event with a group of friends. The only point in this is painting whatever you have in mind for the person you are assigned to, so no contest, no showoff, no pressure. In fact some of the people haven't painted a single mini since last year's event, making this one actually the very second mini ever painted by them! :)

Rules are easy. Take whatever you have at home (well, if you please buying new minis no one will complain, sure, but the idea is keeping it all simple), a 28mm scale infantry mini is a good reference rule, but proceed at will. Paint it and send it to your pal! It's fun, but we were totally out of time once again (predictable). Let me talk first of what I painted. We made a raffle and I got a guy who is starting his way into post-apoc stuff; so the choice was easy, I took a mini from the previous Punkapocalyptic KS:

They are currently running a new KS and this is the only mini I've painted of the previous campaign. Sigh

First thing is black priming and then the flesh. It's my usual M.O., having the skin defined helps me later on when it comes to decisions on colours.

Well, she looks scary now

I wanted her to have a distinctive look, and I remembered those tartan pattern trousers, they screamed punk vibe to me. Here's my recipe; it works for me, but doesn't mean it's the only way to do that.

Base colour, shades and lights. Vallejo Red is the base colour here

Vertical stripes. Mix of Red and dark brown, German Camo Something, Vallejo too

The same, but horizontal

I painted in a mix of black and dark brown the intersections. So you have those dark squares

Same process, vertical and horizontal, but now with  very thin lines, both sides of the larger stripes

Horizontal white lines in the wide open spaces

Finally, vertical lines in yellow

I can't state enough the importance of thinnin the paint during the whole process, seriously. If you don't, you take the risk of ruining it all. Don't be scared of not covering, the important thing here is keeping track of what are you really painting on each step so you don't get lost among all the stripes.

That was the tricky part. The rest of steps can be resumed. Just paint the rest of the mini!

Post-Apoc Punk

Yes, you also have to paint the back of the mini. Those are the rules

I went out of the confort zone with this one and I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. Now I'm only looking for places where I can paint tartan on my minis :D

But let's see what I got!

Oldschool Librarian. Much appreciated!

He totally fits in my RT Ultramarines Army, so I can't be happier! Airbrush technique remains witchcraft to me, it's amazing what you can achieve with one of those magic sticks :O

But this is not all, please check the rest of the goodies in the Secret Santa 2017. Trust me, all the participants have put a lot on each mini :)

This is it, quite a bunch of minis! Hope you enjoy the pics from all of the group. Now we should start preparing the next event if we really want it to be finished before the end of 2018...

After this interlude, my regular blog stuff will be restored soon. Maybe.