Octopus Overlords

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2017 7:09 pm Ah ok. I wasn't sure if it was a 40K thing.

It's Warhammer Fantasy, I believe. Same god, different millennium.

As a casual, it's hard to tell for me sometimes because even 40,000 years into the future, they're still fighting with swords and axes.

A very impressive Great Unclean One. I wish I had someone to player Warhammer with. =(

I feel like such a slouch posting my minis here but here is what I got done since my last post.

Not happy with this one. Was trying my hand at highlighting and glazing. I think I need to wait until I am better.

Great job so far! I love your color choices. Good contrast like that brings in visual drama, which makes the piece look interesting.

miltonite wrote: ↑Sat Dec 30, 2017 3:19 am
Not happy with this one. Was trying my hand at highlighting and glazing. I think I need to wait until I am better.

Nah, you have it backwards. You get better by trying your hand! You have the right idea already. A couple of suggestions:

~Highlighting with metallics on non-metallics or vice-versa is tough to begin with (it looks like you were highlighting purple with metallic gold.) It is really hard to get them to blend and look natural. Making non-metallics look metallic is possible with a couple of different techniques (including NMM, paint additives, and special coats), but those are really advanced techniques.
~Your base tone is color A. Figure out what color you need your highlight to be (often it is a lighter color of the base tone, or the base tone plus white or yellow.) That's color B. Highlight with A + B mixed, then highlight with B. Make the second highlight a little smaller. Get that basic skill down, then work from there. FWIW, on some of my more detailed pieces, the highlight is more like AAAA+B, then AAA+B, then AA+B, then A+B, then B, then B+white, but that takes a long time and a lot of patience.

That kobold is actually those colors because he is working under a brass dragon and his scales are turning brass around the edges. I would usually not use a metallic on top of "skin".
I will however keep those highlighting tips in mind though, Thanks.

Finished another Kobold. This will be my character for our next pathfinder campaign.

Got 5 or 6 of my Sword & Sorcery minis finished. I'l try to put some pics up tonight.

Here we go. The warrior and the ranger I'm not quite finished with. I still need to blend the highlights on their capes a bit and seal them/gloss the base. These are all going to be played with so I didn't go too crazy time-wise - just used a quick prime/base/wash/highlight. Pretty happy with them though; they look great on the table.

The green base for the goblin is in reference to the game, which utilizes Green, Blue, and Red monsters to reference difficulty. My plan is to utilize those colors heavily in their respective color schemes, as well as make the base the appropriate color.

And yes, I'm aware that my warrior has a bad case of bendy sword. Nothing a little heat won't fix.

I actually haven't painted much of anything since this summer. I got seriously burned out by painting for D&D game when I really wasn't in the mood to paint.

I also fell out of habit, and hope to get back into painting by summer. I might even set up a new painting space.

I like the yellow knight best because it's just enough to make him interesting without overdoing it.

The blue dwarf reminds me of Warcraft. The gauntlets and warhammer are nicely detailed

Been busy on a lot of projects, still content to be a "lazy amateur". I do the base coat, clean up the details and then wash. I'm happy with the results for the time spent. Latest obsession has been Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire. I've never owned a GW product before but I saw this in play and decided it might be a good fit at home. We love it and I was very anxious to get it painted. Click to embiggen!

First up from the Core set is Steelheart's Champions:



Also from the Core set, Garrek's Reavers:



Once they were released, I had to get the first two expansions, Ironskull's Boyz:



and the Sepulchral Guard:



The game is played on two double-sided boards. Two of the four sides are plain/empty boards while the other two have a few "blocked" hexes. Made up some custom bits of terrain for them to liven up the board. The game also has 5 objective markers that get spread out. Instead of the tiles I got crafty and made up my own. I don't have a picture for comparison but I tried to recreate the artifacts shown on the originals:



Yes, I did get a little fancy there and actually dry brushed the terrain. I do like the effect a lot but I've tried the same on miniatures and never quite get it right... trying to casually brush tiny areas.

Here's a typical game setup:

Hot damn.

No pics yet but I'm continuing work on the Sword & Sorcery figures.

Got tired of the slow progress, so to kick start things I bought some spray primer, primed everything in one fell swoop, then painted all the bases.

As mentioned before, I'm trying to keep the blue/red/green scheme for the monsters not only in the base, but incorporated throughout their figure. So I now have red-skinned gremlins and blue-skinned gremlins in addition to the green.

I also had the idea that maybe these creatures are assigned a social caste according to their skin color, and that caste takes on the symbol of a certain element. So the Green tribe uses Earth symbolism, Blue uses Water, Red uses Fire. So for the red orc chieftain I incorporated some yellows and oranges into his loincloth to represent flames. The red orc shaman will have a cloak which looks like flame, etc.

I REALLY want to start the campaign but I can't bring myself to do so until the minis are painted.

I bought a "mega" set of 50 Army Painter colors after finding a good deal and cashing in some gift cards. I've never used Army Painter paints, but the reviews are generally positive from a "bang for the buck" standpoint. Biggest negatives I've read are the need to mix thoroughly by shaking (folks have had good results just adding agitator balls), and that some shades can be a little thin and require multiple coats (not a dealbreaker for me - I'd actually prefer too thin than too thick).

Primarily I just wanted a wider color palette. I own around 20 paints right now, but that really only boils down to a couple of shades of each primary base color. And I hate mixing my own colors. This may even inspire me to go back to some of my older painted minis and touch them up.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2018 10:56 am I bought a "mega" set of 50 Army Painter colors after finding a good deal and cashing in some gift cards. I've never used Army Painter paints, but the reviews are generally positive from a "bang for the buck" standpoint. Biggest negatives I've read are the need to mix thoroughly by shaking (folks have had good results just adding agitator balls), and that some shades can be a little thin and require multiple coats (not a dealbreaker for me - I'd actually prefer too thin than too thick).

Primarily I just wanted a wider color palette. I own around 20 paints right now, but that really only boils down to a couple of shades of each primary base color. And I hate mixing my own colors. This may even inspire me to go back to some of my older painted minis and touch them up.

I switched to Army Painter when I started my cowboy painting and haven't looked back. A very happy customer.

Good to hear hentzau. I've seen some phenomenal figures on YouTube and various sites from Army Painter users, so I know in the right hands they can produce some great results.

I also went back to being a "dropper" vs "dipper" guy. While I had a brief fling with paint pots, I've fallen back in love with the dropper bottles again.

I'm a huge fan of the Army Painter kits and fully endorse them. I do think I'm going to invest in the agitator stainless BBs mainly because they seem to separate (as pointed out) in my cool basement. I also have really embraced the use of the wet palette as it allows me to take my time painting and not waste paint or be worried that anything I create custom is going to be impossible to re-create.

I ended up picking the Army Painter complete set last year:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2 ... UTF8&psc=1

I also picked this up recently to help with the shaking issue since I currently have some wrist injuries..

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006 ... UTF8&psc=1

A side benefit to that is that my wife also has some wrist injuries (unrelated) and I pitched it as something that could shake her nail polish..

I have only tested it once so far by looking for the most separated bottle of paint and it worked like a charm..

I finished a few more.




I saw there were a few mistakes on this one the day after that I did a quick fix on. (bow and face) I just didn't have time to take more pictures.

I'm trying to work out a way to take short videos of miniatures and post them as gifs, but so far the results are poor at best. One online converter can't handle my video size. Another slows the result down to a crawl and crushed the image quality. Still, it's a work in progress.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sat Apr 14, 2018 7:40 pm I'm trying to work out a way to take short videos of miniatures and post them as gifs, but so far the results are poor at best. One online converter can't handle my video size. Another slows the result down to a crawl and crushed the image quality. Still, it's a work in progress.

Why not just upload to youtube or something?

I would love to see some help tutorials from you, BH. I am starting to get my Malifaux itch again and have picked up some new figs. I just need to get motivated to paint again.

I posted a whole set at the beginning of this thread, but Photobucket is holding all of the images for ransom. I need to go back and figure out what all the images are supposed to be, then re-host all of them. I've been meaning to do that for some time, but it's going to be an annoying project.

Lately I've been working on painting board game stuff. Mice & Mystics and Fallout are currently underway. What I really need to learn is speed painting. I've got tons of board games with so-so miniatures that need painted, but my normal painting style is way, way too time consuming for hordes of board game miniatures. I've actually considered trying out Quickshade for my Zombicide Season 3 stuff. Hand blending, washing, and highlighting all of them would take me months, probably years if you count the inevitable burnout that would occur.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 1:59 pm I posted a whole set at the beginning of this thread, but Photobucket is holding all of the images for ransom. I need to go back and figure out what all the images are supposed to be, then re-host all of them. I've been meaning to do that for some time, but it's going to be an annoying project.

Lately I've been working on painting board game stuff. Mice & Mystics and Fallout are currently underway. What I really need to learn is speed painting. I've got tons of board games with so-so miniatures that need painted, but my normal painting style is way, way too time consuming for hordes of board game miniatures. I've actually considered trying out Quickshade for my Zombicide Season 3 stuff. Hand blending, washing, and highlighting all of them would take me months, probably years if you count the inevitable burnout that would occur.

Pick a random zombie, prime, base coat, use quickshade. See if you like the results.. You can always add blood effects as well afterwards.
The seem to come out decently with this..

Got a couple more done.
Samuari for our vey own Arcanis


Android Brawler


Undead Dwarf. I think this is my best mini yet.

I was assembling some Romans for Gangs of Rome last night. Knocked over a full bottle of Instaset on my table. Man, that was a mess.

Currently debating on whether or not to paint my Godfather: Corleone's Empire figures. They're super detailed (albeit tiny), so I'm sure they'd look fantastic. On the other hand, there's a LOT of them and my painting backlog is already insane. Plus they have the pre-colored bases that I hate to mess with so I'd either have to brush prime them or figure out some way of masking the bases off. Ugh.

Let's talk paint storage. I need something to store my paints in and be able to put them away when I'm not using them. I'm an Army Painter kind of guy, so it's the eyedropper bottles I need to store. I picked up one of these this weekend: Broken Token Paint Rack but found out that I'm short by about a dozen bottles, and I don't have any room to grow.

So I started looking around at some other storage solutions and saw that, unlike the BT organizer, all of the other ones have you store the bottles droppers up vs droppers down. I like the dropper down method, seems like it would have a better chance of getting the pigment mixed rather than sitting on the bottom of the bottle. Anyone have a storage rack they like using?

hentzau wrote: ↑Mon May 07, 2018 12:11 pmAnyone have a storage rack they like using?

I've been using this for a few years now to keep my Army Painter bottles organized. I'm a fan.

I've never tried nozzle down, but my own wishlist includes a couple of possibilities that my research has turned up:

Vallejo modular stands have a good reputation, but they're not very space efficient, and space is a premium for me.

The majority of painters I've seen discussing this just raid the beauty counter.

I've also seen some really nice sets made from foamcore.

A buddy just mentioned that if I have a spare drawer in my card catalog, I could just put all of my paints in there. I may investigate this tonight. Might be I got me a paint rack for no reason.

Where they will just fall over when you open and close it.

One thing I do with mine is to paint the conical portion of the cap. It lets me find colors at a glance, and is the best representation of what the color actually looks like when dried. It would probably also work on the bottoms of the bottles.

Isgrimnur wrote:Where they will just fall over when you open and close it.

Yeah, I would need to make a rack to go in the bottom of it. Or, a piece of foam with holes cut to hold the bottles.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon May 07, 2018 12:16 pm

hentzau wrote: ↑Mon May 07, 2018 12:11 pmAnyone have a storage rack they like using?

I've been using this for a few years now to keep my Army Painter bottles organized. I'm a fan.

I have the entire Army Painter set and this is exactly what I use to store my paints!

You can always use a paint rack for in process work.

I ordered specialty plastic racks from http://www.back2base-ix.com which took forever to ship but are nicely modular. Droppers lay on their side, and the racks connect by magnets.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon May 07, 2018 12:39 pm I've never tried nozzle down, but my own wishlist includes a couple of possibilities that my research has turned up:

Vallejo modular stands have a good reputation, but they're not very space efficient, and space is a premium for me.

The majority of painters I've seen discussing this just raid the beauty counter.

I've also seen some really nice sets made from foamcore.

Be careful with some of the nail polish racks. I tried a couple and the Army Painter bottles would fit.

Painted up my Daimyo and monsters from Rising Sun. Didn't spend quite as much time on these as some of my older minis but I am still pretty happy with how they turned out.

All of the Daimyos from the base game and expansions.


All the monsters from the base game.


This guy is my favorite.