Muties! (Pt. 2)

The project goes on and on, and I think it's time to look what I have, as I think I reached the 50% milestone, at least on the converting side of the work.

You will see I attempted no visual coherence or a theme here. They are just wasteland mutants from here and there, all they have in common is that they are outcasts from a society that hates them as much as fear them. Some of them have pilgrim robes, some have industrial worker outfits, some only some raggedy clothes over them. Each one carries a story, but it doesn't matter out there. On the wastelands, you adapt yourself or die.

Let's go then:

 A family pic:

With this I have one of each type. Now I have another set of identical sprues (this isn't even close to an end!!) and of course the Goblin King. For the second round I'll try more complex conversions, so there won't be two identical minis. I may think of some special stuff for them. Dinosaur riders? Mad Max cars? Ahhh, decisions, decisions...

I see double

Back to regular activity again (as desperately slow as it may be), I thought I needed something quick and easy, to raise morale and keep on with my other more complex ongoing projects. So I chose a big, monochromatic element, the AT-ST from the Imperial Assault game:

Another wobblehead

 You can see I wasn't looking for any complication or cool effect, just having it tabletop ready. The production value here is that, thanks to a friend from a forum... I got a second one! Yay!

Don't know if you can use two of them in the game but... who cares! I have two! :D

Super easy work, all made in just one evening (well, bases took the whole night to dry, you know). So the kind of stuff to cheer me up and get back to greenstuffing muties and improving the railway infrastructure of my board ;) Besides, this helped to keep this whole Imperial Assault project alive!

More stuff coming soon :)

Punkapocalyptic new kickstarter incoming!

I'm currently in a summer hiatus, spending some days off with Mrs. Suber and the little Suberling, hence the lack of blog updating and general digital absence.

However, given that I'm not painting, at least I'd like to take the chance to let you know that Bad Roll Games are running a Kickstarter campaign to release a new band for their Punkapocalyptic game. The Black Blood Children will look like this:

I've tested the game (here you have the AAR) and I just love it. Spare a minute and have a look at the campaign, seriously. They've already unlocked a couple of stretch goals and they're on their road to make nice numbers. I also took part in their previous campaign, so I can recommend their work. All cast in metal, superb sculpting and cool concepts.

Not a pre-sale campaign, but a real kickstarter. Go have a look!

Back to regular business in a few days!

Slow Metro progress

A very quick update today. A couple of weeks ago I talked about the elevated monorail station. I've begun the train itself, but I'm afraid my progress is desperately slow (as I'm also greenstuffing wasteland mutants at the same time!). I can show you this WIP of the metro car:

Way too clean!!

I just sprayed it all over in dark grey and then made some of the bigger sections using a rather crude brush. Still a long way ahead, you can see. At first I was slightly disappointed of the car not having seats, but on a second thought, it's much better this way; otherwise it wouldn't be playable at all .

For the diver's cabin I'll be needing, well, a driver. Of course it's going to be a servitor, nothing else would fit into the ambientation better than a genetic bred anthropomorphic production, programmed for basic functions. I'm still working on the shape. It will be just a torso attached to a bar fixed to the floor. Most probably he won't also have arms, but mechadendrites, and I have narrowed it into two head options:

Wobblehead

Boring regular servitor head

The first head has the appealing of being totally over the top, if that can be considered any virtue. The assymetric lenses and stuff make the driver look kinda unsettling. The second head, apart from the obvious better sculpting, serves its purpose as well, but makes him look more 'generic servitor'. I'm still undecided. I like the second better, but in the end the guy's going to be just inside the cabin and will be scarcely seen, so the first head will do as well. Hmmm...

I've also painted (well, primed!) the elevated railway pillars, but I have no pics. I'll amend that (hopefully) soon...

Copyright ingfringement... Sort of

Well, not as problematic as the title suggests. If you have seen my latest scenery projects, like the lowlife residential building or the monorail station, you may have noticed I have been using different signs, ads and posters. They mostly come from a web I was so dumb to forget, so sorry for the uncredited work, whoever put all those posters together! The fact is that I was running out of them, so I was needing some more if I'm to follow up with this kind of stuff. Being unable to trace that web back again (besides, that would have only given me more of the same) I thought I could make some of my own.

Due to RealLifetm responsibilities, I am in no condition of designing brand new signs, I needed something quick. Soo... the easiest solution. I just googled 'sci-fi ads' and begun to copy-paste anything that caught my eye. No real criteria here, just colourful images that I thought may work. A friend provided me a few he apparently used for his Infinity games, so I just put them all together:

Weeeell, it's... eclectic, you may say. There are some real ads, some funny compositions and a few novels and stuff. It may provide enough resources for a while.

Anyway, I also thought I was in need of some more RT-specific imagery. As I had my 'Keep calm' posters, I simply added some shots from the RT book and other in the same line to what I had:

You can see I included some not 40K related pics. I just liked them. It's funny the stuff you find when looking for something totally different.

Here you have both of them, please be served if you find any of them interesting. If you print them in A4 size or so, they may work fine (but be sure of testing it before you print it at maximum resolution!).

I hope anyone find them useful; you'll see some of them in the (near?) future on some of my scenery...

Waiting for the train

I'm still greenstuffing muties. Desperately long and slow process. In the meanwhile, when the greenstuff is curing, I can take some other projects back. One of them is a big box full of MDF kits I got ages ago. MadMechaGuy makes some really sexy scenery (15 and 28 mm) and quite reasonably priced too. I got a number of kits and I hadn't even begun with any of them.

I decided to start with a different, iconic piece. The elevated monorail station. I fell in love with it when I first saw the piece. I thought it would fit in my urban setting.

Ehhm. You may need better pics

Unfortunately I didn't take any WIP pics. That is because of a reason. The kit is sweet, but I'm afraid the assembly process is not the most intuitive one (I'm being polite). The fact is that you don't get any instructions and your only reference are a couple of partial pics on his web. I mean, I'm no new to the MDF kits world, and I've spent some time assembling some pieces of scenery from a number of manufacturers. But man, it took me some time to make this work. So sorry, I didn't take pics as I was just trying to guess what was where.

The painting was ultra easy. Green spray all over, and grey for the floor. That's it. For the weathering I recurred to my old trick. Lacking an airbrush, I used primer spray of different colours. That made it look dirty, as you can see above!

Then it was time to customise it a bit. The kit is a great main body (despite the assembly problems) but it needed my personal touch to make it fit in my ambientation.

 

Station props made of card

I added some rust effects and additional weathering and it begun to look like this:

The station is really big!

The access ramp is too steep, I'm afraid

I added a sign at the entrance with the name of the station, using MDF spare parts.

The ticket validator is an old stormbolter magazine from the Leman Russ kit

The final touch was adding some signs and posters, from the collection I have already used (still uncredited, if you happen to know the source, I'll be glad to edit the post):

Why are we waiting for the train? We don't even have a railway!

There is some space for ads I could use here...

The main kit is complete with these two shelters. The first one is for the ticket vending machines:

One works, the second one has an error blue screen, the third is out of order. Usual stuff

More signs on the rear part

The other one is just a bus stop/plain shelter/whatever. I simply glued some signs front and back. Here you have both of them:



The moment I'm taking the pic I'm realizing...

...I glued all the signs upside down on one of the shelters. F$#@&

So this is the main part of the train project. I still have to put stuff together for the railway and the train itself. You know, I'll be jumping from this to any other of my open projects randomly. I hope it doesn't take too long!

Muties! (Pt. 1)

If you were expecting me to be bringing closure upon any project today... Well, you haven't been reading this blog long enough :D

Instead of that, I'm embarking in a new adventure! Oh, come on, by now you know me, I'm that predictable...

Some intro on this stuff. First of all, I have to say that I have maximum respect for all those concept artists, design developers and all that people who make movies, games, etc. possible. I know it's a hard job and, for each design they get approved, tons of hours of work are simply flushed away forever. Once I've said that, there I go: On The Hobbit movie trilogy, who on earth took the decisions about creatures, costumes, props and all that? Seriously, you can say what you want but, this is not a goblin:

Not a goblin, for Tolkien's sake

I don't know the insights during the pre-production stage or whatever, but the creatures under the Misty Mountains as shown in the film make me difficult to recognise them as goblins. You can call that a prejudice if you like, but those deformed, warty, harelipped, bulbous beings certainly divert from my concept of goblins. If that makes me a grumpy grognard, let it be.

A thousand times better goblins. Don't fit in the PJ aesthetics, but still better goblins

OK. So I have stated that these are too much over the top even for Peter Jackson's standards. I made my point. Enough rants for a day. Why all this intro? You may remember my Hobbit project. I got the Escape from Goblin Town starter box, so I have lots of ugly deformed creatures that won't be goblins on any of my boards. What can I do? Of course, I'm an optimist by nature, so I always try to take advantage of tactical setbacks like this. They may be awful goblins... but they for sure make magnificent post-apoc mutants!!

That's it. If I added some firearms, they could become nice nuclear wasteland dwellers. I immediately went for my GW Skitarii box...

Hmm. I can work with that...

A friend suggested I could make a Hrud warband for WH40K. How cool would that be? I could adhere to the old concept latest seen in the pages of the WH40K3 Rulebook...

Those were the days when Hrud were conceived more like Space Skavens. But after the release of the Xenology book that changed. A lot.

So I had second thoughts on that. Besides, quite recently, the most awesome Asslessman from Leadplague has achieved this absolute marvel: Space Skavens, taking the old Jes Goodwin sketches as reference. Seriously, pay him a visit, the blog that never disappoints.
Then I turned back to the original concept. Mutants! Mutants with guns are as important as underrepresented in WH40K. If I got some ugly people with guns they could serve as wasteland nomadic traders or whatever, not only in 40K settings, but any post-apoc or different ambientations. My first approach looked like this:

Still in early stages, of course, this is just a cut/paste of bits, but I have the first handful at least oriented:

I've begun to greenstuff a few of them. Long robes and stuff. I need to add some shoes or something; if not, they'd just look like ugly men in their bath robes.

 Of course there's a loong way ahead. Goggles, breathers, wires, tech stuff... I don't want to abuse of skulls, but maybe they're in order here. I don't pretend to uniform them; some will have robes, some will wear nothing but their ragged clothes. I'll also use some Dark Vengeance cultists heads as well as Skitarii robed heads. Let's see where this goes.Wish me luck, this is gonna take some time!!