There Goes My Last "Good" Excuse!

Anyone who has visited here knows that for the past year(ish), I have been yammering on about how I didn't have the drive to paint due to Rad Tech school, and the fun of clinicals. Well, I've since graduated, got certified, am legal to practice in the state of Texas, and after one very happy phone call yesterday, I now have a job at the hospital that I really wanted to work at (pending their sift through my "sordid" past :D ). Can I feel settled enough now?

More interesting, I'm starting my shift Fri, Sat, Sun - 10am - 10pm, so four days to get paint in! No excuses except for my laziness, which is the strongest hurdle of all. I think I'll finish off those Grenadier skeletaurs that are sitting on my desk now!

I mean, after a nap, of course.... ;)

Everything Old Is New Again

Recently, Reaper Miniatures announced that they were sort of reviving the old Dungeon Dwellers line that they took over from Heritage. This has piqued my interest, as, when I was a tiny troll, my collection was primarily made up of Heritage and pre-slotta Citadel miniatures. Their first offering to the line is a new skelly sculpt named "Rictus the Undying" which does rather recall those old Heritage sculpts. In a wave of nostalgia, I managed to remember that I still had these old fellows:

Yes, five "Denizens of the Dungeon" plastic skellies from Heritage, in full '80s paint job glory. Sadly, (sort of sadly, anyways - these minis were pretty awful, but cheap) I only have these guys left, where once I had all four sets that were made. I especially miss the ogre that came in one of the boxes.

This nostalgia got me to digging around in the oldest of miniature vaults, in search of all the metal Heritage minis that I still have. Surprisingly enough, there are still quite a few lurking around so readers might be subjected to old "Eh" sculpts with my current painting skills in the coming months. Not these skeletons though - they get to stay this way forever.

But that's not the only reason I'm posting tonight...

While digging in the Deep Vaults, I came across an old conversion that I did in the late '80s or early '90s that I had somehow forgotten about. I remember that Warhammer 3rd Edition was fading out, but still the current ruleset. I believe that I was putting together a Khorne army from Slaves to Darkness, and wanted a unit or two of chaos dwarves. As I couldn't source any of the excellent metal ones that were out at the time, I decided to convert my own from the dwarves in the plastic Warhammer Regiments set (yes, the shockingly white plastic ones). Well, me being an ADD doofus, I only managed to convert about six or so (mostly head swaps, although I do recall giving one a skaven head and tail), and of that, only painted one.

But what a one he is.

May I present the standard bearer of "Da Bugeyez" - the best conversion of the lot:

Quite a sight, isn't he? Let's see - Warhammer Regiments dwarf with RTB01 space marine combat attachments in place of horns (why not), the ends of the cross piece of an early space marine back banner pole for eyestalks, and the lance of an early Roughrider for the banner pole (I think these pulled double duty for High Elf knight lances, as well).

God, I still love this little freak.

What the rest of the unit sees. Yes, that IS his picture on the back - he's a bit full of himself.

I don't think I ever got too far with the army overall - 40K kind of overshadowed Fantasy pretty quickly with the local gaming group. This guy still had work though - I had need of cultists, and at least one friend fielded Chaos Squats. 

Ah nostalgia! I think I'll put him in the display box for a while to scare the cats.

"Watchoo lookin' at?"

Marauder Miniatures Lich

What makes a lich(e), a lich(e)? For those of us who grew up with the first edition Monster Manual, we would say it's a nice crown, perched up on his bony noggin. I mean, look at this guy:

What do you notice? The glowing eyes? The spooky skull? The impending threat of being tickled? No! It's that stylish crown.

Which brings us to THIS guy:

What are we looking at, here? All the hallmarks of lichitude are there, but what's the deal with the hat? Is he, in fact, an undead London Metropolitan police officer? Where's the sweet, sweet crown?

All kidding aside, I am one of those weirdos who like most of the miniatures that Trish and Aly Morrison and Colin Dixon made for Marauder Miniatures. This lich is probably my favorite of the lot. Kind of different from what one would usually expect from the typical undead sorcerer, with a slightly goofy aura about him to offset the menace. I swear this miniature was the inspiration for the infamous Nagash miniature.

My plan here was to challenge myself with a palette that I don't usually use. Evil undead wizards usually dress in ominous reds and blacks, but why not one in yellow? (I've been using yellow for my BB Skaven, but not as much on one miniature as with this guy.) For the second color I added purple, which is a color that I hardly ever touch - I painted his collar and stole(?) with Reaper's Faded and Bruise purples. I'm not super happy with how it turned out, but I'll put that down to inexperience with the color.

Like most Marauder Minis, this guy is pretty big:

Granted, he's standing next to an old, old Fantasy Tribes lich (note the crown!), but the MM lich still holds his own with most of today's minis.

Gee, I wonder where the FT lich got his pose from?

"Tickle, tickle, tickle!" "...No."

The next time I paint up a lich (and I will, because they're one of my favorite monsters) and it doesn't have a crown - WELL - I'll give that lich a crown...

...Liches LOVE crowns.

Chugging Along - BB Skaven

Not feeling too wordy tonight - here's the four Bloodbowl Skaven players that I started a while back:

I like how they turned out, even though my eyesight is having trouble with the freehand numbers. Time for some reading glasses, I think!

Mandatory team shot:

Of all the ratman sculpts that I've seen, Jes Goodwin's are still my favorite.

Oh Em Gee, I Painted A Thing!

A crappy thing, but painted nonetheless.

Number One Son and I spent a few hours at ReaperCon in Texas today. Might as well, we only live about 10 miles away from it, and we both needed brain breaks from school. He's getting more interested in painting and gaming, so I'm using him as a lifeline to keep my interest going too.

As always, Reaper has one or two "Paint and Take" tables set up, which is always a favorite of NOS. As he worked his way through a Bones sea hag of some sort, I picked up a vicious rat man, made of the same stuff. I didn't really have a plan for him, I just noodled around him with the paints and brushes that were available. This is the horrible result:

Truly dreadful, even for me. I'm not a fan of painting away from my comfortable work area, and certainly not a fan of limited paints, well-used brushes, horrible lighting and crowds all around as I work. I'm by no means an award-winner, but I've done better.

In all honesty, I was going to just abandon the beastie then and there at the convention hall, but when my son looked at it, he said, "That's good Dad! Take him home with you."

Well then - there's no way I'm going to leave it behind when one of the most important people in my life honestly says that they like it. Remember how I said I'm using him as a lifeline to stay interested? Well, that was a pretty fekkin' obvious one right there.

So here is my latest entry to my painting history - terrible to me, but not to a 14 year old whose opinion is worth the world to me. I'll seal the mini in dullcoat, and add him to my "dungeon crawl games" collection of monsters and  bad guys.

Sappy post aside, it's always good to finish painting something - even a smaller Reaper Bones miniature, which I'm not a fan of. They're getting better in the detail department, but when they have mold lines - ugh. Near impossible to remove. I prefer to have large monsters, dragons, giants, etc. in Bones though; it's where the material shines through.

Will painting happen again, soon? Who knows? I have a month and a half before I graduate from Radiology school, so my free time - as usual - is wonky, and I tend to spend it doing stupid things like computer games and crap. Time for an intervention, I think ;)

For Posterity

I decided to take a couple pics of Trooper Bush for posterity, so I can compare the old paint job with the new (whenever I get around to repainting her). Fortunately, she was only in SG for 10 minutes at that point, so no damage to the paint just yet.

Actually using my photo setup makes a difference, it seems. Still using the cell phone, though.

Not too sure what I'll do about her gun, though. Bunging a plastic lasgun barrel to the miscast part didn't really work out last time. Might just give her some sort of sawed-off gun next.

'Ee's a biggun, isn't 'ee?

Where Trooper Bush discovers that Space Marines have finally grown into the size that the fluff describes them:

Upon making this discovery, the good trooper suffered from a bout of self-awareness about her 20+ year old rushed paint job and hopped into a vat of fresh Simple Green. I've never been happy with her paint job - much less by the fact that the miniature was a miscast and I did a hack job of repairing her las gun. Originally, she was meant to be a Chaos cultist, but now I'll just repaint her to match my old blue-and-black Planetary Defence Force.

While it's not a great paint job, the gloss coat and my cell phone really conspire to make it worse. Might be time to steal my wife's nice camera.

BB Skaven are still in the queue (yeah, yeah...), but I'm just assembling the new WH40k 1,000,000th Edition (I've lost count at this point) miniatures because I like how big the marines are now. Plus, it gets my hands steady again so I can do the real work of painting.