Blog 6th Anniversary

Another year has indeed gone by for this blog! Right, it's been six years since I started this adventure. Wow.

This is a huge milestone for me, even if it doesn't look like one. I never had any serious expectations about blogging, it was just a way of showing my humble stuff and having it organised somewhere; but I never had plans or schedules. Well, if you look back to 2012 or 2013, you will see that many things have changed. I was usually able to update the blog twice a week, while now I hardly can make a post every week or two. Well, you know, life tends to do that and I have no regrets. With little Suberling Prime over the place (oh, and some news: Suberling Secundus incoming next year!), work, family, studies et al., hobby time has somehow decreased.

However, though slower, I'd like to think that I now paint slightly better and that some evolution can be noticed through the years. I also embark myself on silly stupid bolder projects, so I'm overall happy with the pace of the blog.

I hadn't seen the blog stats for a whole year, I'm just looking up for them right now, as I don't really make a big deal of that kind of numbers. Anyway, 566.369 hits looks satisfying to me (Come on, not all of them can be bots, can they? If you are a bot please do not respond), with USA, UK and Spain remaining the top three visitors once again.

What can I say, ladies and gentlemen (and bots. This blog tries to be totally discrimination-free). A huge thank you. Thank you for being there, just lurking if it's the case, hopefully smiling at my silly ideas here. Enormous thanks to all of you who regularly leave some comments. Seriously, pals, you make this much, much easier. Your constant support, encouragement, criticism and ideas are essential. YOU make this blog work.

Once I said that... yes, I know all the above is fine, blah, blah. But you people come over here to see some painted stuff!

My latest World of Twilight minis (commission again), just finished them right before starting to write the post. As usual, I love them, I truly do.

I'm running out of ideas for new patterns!

But I still can make them work

Musician lizards. Beat that

They could be on a Bennetton commercial

Finally, some flora. Man, even that is refreshing

This is it for today! But more stuff coming soon.

So well, Year Six is behind, Year Seven lies ahead. Let's go for it. Let's discover together what the brushes have for us!

Sharkplain

I bet you forgot I was doing those realscale Space Sharks by now! Well, I can't blame you (sigh), but I can bring you more stuff!

When I saw the mini of the Sarge I knew I had to do something special. It certainly deserved it:

What do you mean 'over the top'?

It was a candidate for the Veteran Squad Sergeant, of course, but I thought it could serve as a Chaplain as well. Hmmm, but it would need some conversion work...

We can arrange something

The head and top Crozius Arcanum are from my old 2nd Ed. Chaplain. The rest of the Crozius is a Grey Knights staff. The greenstuff work was kind of tricky, as turning all those strips into some full cloak was not as easy as expected. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the paintjob could solve the most obvious failures.

So more Maori inspired designs were required

This is the final result:

'Brother! You call that a haka? Outrageous!'

Combining Maori and Warhammer iconography is a fun thing to do. Jade toki, facial tatoo on the skull helmet... You can integrate that kind of elements into the Space Marine concept, and they work surprisingly well.

I should have painted something more on the back cloak

Here you can see the Chaplain alongside the other characters:

What a happy fellowship

As I see the pics I think I could add something on the backpack. Not sure if a banner (I haven't done that with the Captain and could also do that) or some other element, just like the Librarian.

Hmmm... still some decisions to make...

Gladiators of Khorne

Inspiration not always comes at once. Sometimes you fiddle with some strange ideas that never come to fruition and the result you try to achieve remains on the edge of your own perception, hidden and unreachable. As all of you know, Muses can be elusive. That happened to me this time with the Khorne band for Shadespire. I wasn't able to find that touch I was looking for, just to make the band look different. Fortunately a friend pointed out the right choice and then it all was 'oh, why didn't I think of that!'

Gladiator heads by MaxMini

They suited the theme perfectly and fitted the minis, so very little conversions would be needed this time.

Minimum mandatory conversion

I took out most of the spikes. I mean, Chaos doesn't have to mean spikes everywhere. It can, and it's cool, yeah, whatever. But please, allow me the option of not having Chaos hedgehogs.

I didn't want to replace the weapons, as tempting as the idea was. Given that the game relies on individual characters, I wanted the minis to remain recognizable at first sight when consulting the cards and stuff. So no weapon swapping nor new poses.

Not all the ideas were good (remember what I told about the Muses?). I tried to make different helmets, so the five minis weren't mere clones, but it proved tricky.

Didn't find the way to make it work properly

So I finally took the easy way :P

I tried it again with the boss:

Once again, the open helmet didn't work

But remember, I do not fail, I just find different ways that won't work. If the quote is really from Edison, then a light bulb went on over my head. I remembered I had this:

From The Hobbit box

Would this work...?

Well, it works for me

The next one was hard. Not only I hollowed the helmet, but had to take the crest out:

Also sculpted the skull jaw so it was a closed helmet

On the other side, the last one was pretty easy.

No, not Chtulhu, those are chains. Chainmail, you know

Well, so now I had the five minis, time to spill some paint on them.

On their way

The pic doesn't show (you know my awesome photo skills, ahem...), but all of them have different skin tones. I also made some work on the bases. The original ones show a cracked desert, but I put some Das and used the rolling pin I used for the boards, so now the bases are consistent with that.

Let's see the final work:

Blood for the Blood God!

Just an example on the board:

Background still pending

I hope I can show pics of these and the undead sigmarites on a couple of boards... on a game! Hopefully anytime soon... (That means months, ahem, but whatever...)

Octobretonnia

I've gone rogue. While everyone is doing Orctober, Zomtober or Dreadtober, I've set sail for my own sea of madness and I've declared... Octobretonnia.

Ehm. Well, yes. I needed an excuse!

Long, long time ago, I sold my WHFB armies, but I kept a few Bretonnian Knights, just out of nostalgia. For years they were simply gathering dust on a shelf, until I was brave enough to repaint them. I will save you the sheer horror of their original paintjob. A younger me, you know.

Anyway. New life for these blokes then! You will see, all of them are mere 5th Ed plastic Knights of the Realm, but for the leader, a Knight of the Grail. I wanted them to look really gaudy and flamboyant. Kind of the craziest armorial you can find. However, you can say I started in quite a restricted way...

Classical and easy

Don't worry. It got more complicated soon.

Yet still manageable

As usual, you cannot see the highlights. I promise, there are highlights (sigh)

But, of course, it eventually got out of control...

I blame Google. I would have never imagined such a design

Good thing about painting fantasy is that you don't have to pay attention to actual heraldry rules. You can use whatever colours you fancy and any design that comes to mind.

I mean this about colour

At some point this became a 3D mandala. The craziest, weirdiest mandala ever.

I think I might be developing a true OCD

Pics are awful, I promise you should be able to see much more depth.

I really mean it, this pic brings shame to me and my family

Some designs are more inspired than others. I'm happy with some of them but horrified at a few others.

Particularly this one. I may repaint him again

As I was working with an autoimposed schedule, I haven't been able to give the unit a banner.

I will have to solve that

Anyway, I managed to finish these just on the edge of midnight, so I declare this mission successful :P

This one was particularly dreadful

The Knight of the Grail. Most likely my favourite Bretonnian mini ever

So here we have this particular round table:

No epileptic was damaged during the production of this unit

I still have to make a proper banner, to improve the bases and likely to repaint the yellow/green one. But I think I passed the test/challenge. Wow, man, what a month!!

BONUS:

I was committed to make a true Octobretonnia. This is a commission for a friend, just a conversion work; the paintjob will be his. He asked me if I could 40K-ize the Bretonnian Reliquary so he could use it in a Necromunda setting (within a Cawdor band, I presume).

I started with this

And went crazy wiring it all

Remember, there is no such thing as 'too much' in Warhammer

Specially in 40K

I'm looking forward to seeing what my pal does with this now!

So, as of today Octobretonnia has ended, back to regular stuff!