Sunday, March 22, 2009

Some undead pirates to start your week

I don't have the harpooners or the crewmen lined yet so they're not quite finished.  And of course, I used natural light so the pictures aren't the best.

Here's the zombies, nicely lined.

Crewmen.  I did a green wash over the skeleton parts to give it more of an aged look and to make it stand out from my future Necropolis army.

And the harpooners.  These guys made me say a few bad words since I had to put an extra color into the mix for their shirts.
I think the glowing green eyes really give the right impression, don't you?

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Monday, March 9, 2009

OCD isn't always a bad thing

I'm sending some minis off for friends to paint.  It's a nice thing.  They're specially converted minis and I'm looking forward to seeing how they paint them.
There was just one problem.  I couldn't find the arms and shields that went with them.  I found the bodies with no problems.  I had two options - give up and try to get new ones or find those ones that came with the minis.
Guess which one I chose.
I knew I had them at last year's ReaperCon so that meant finding all the various containers with stuff from then.  I finally found a box in the corner that had all the things I wanted plus a whole lotta things I knew I had but didn't have handy.
So I carefully wrapped up each mini with it's associated bits and now have packages ready to go out tomorrow for the guys who are painting my minis.  They're not secret, just special.
The Reaper dwarven shield maidens are really cool, but they're missing something.  Specifically, they're missing beards.  Dwarves have beards.  So in exchange for some Hirst Arts casts the sculptor agreed to put beards on the lovely ladies.  I've had them in the painting queue for quite a while.  So when my buddies asked to paint some minis for me (long story) these are the ones that came to mind.
They're unique, they're fun, and they're mine.
So this evening was spent tweaking the website Mr. Rastl has been making and then trying to find these mini parts.  Now that it's done the rush is gone and I'm heading off to sleep.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

A very busy weekend, take 2.

Vox ate my post when I was trying to confirm that a picture was actually what I thought it was.  This displeases me.

So you get a summary instead of the longer ramble.  It might actually not have been that bad of a thing.

Mr. Rastl worked hard all weekend to get his club website changed over from the existing static pages to a Wordpress site.  We had tested it and got it functioning but once it was live there was lots of work to do to move the existing information over and structure it correctly.  To make it easier on both of us he worked on his computer in the dining room and I worked on making paper terrain at the other end of the table.  That way I was there if he had questions.

He was able to get the site up and working then found a theme he liked better and had me apply that for him.  A few tweaks later and he called it done.  Actually he said "I'm done" but it all works out the same.

I was able to start making some pieces from the World Works Games Gothic Realms set to use with my DungeonBash games.  The game provides tiles but these are just much cooler.  There's some inconsistencies between the tile sizes that came with the game and what comes with Gothic Realms but not enough to matter.  I have to do a couple of bashes to make it work better.  One of them I already did and that's the modification of the small corridor into a dead end.  Here's a couple of pics.

This is a long corridor, a corner and my dead end.  I didn't clip them together for this photo which is why there's some gaps.

Here's a bit of a closeup of the dead end that I made.  It's cooler in person and I hope to get much better pictures.
 

I also have another corner and a T intersection half completed.  Mostly completed.  Not assembled.

And after all this I was able to finish up painting the zombies.  They're not lined but they have all their paint on them.  Once more I'll say the lighting was less than optimal.


Click on any of the smaller pictures to bring up a larger image.  These are the ones where I painted all the leathers out of humanoid skin tones.  Ick.

Razig Zombies 04Razig Zombies 03Razig Zombies 01
So that's what I've accomplished.

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Thursday, March 5, 2009

I got my painting time back. And I used it!

We're getting back onto our typical schedule, which generally leaves me 2 hours in the evening to do hobby-related stuff.  And just so you don't think I neglect other chores around the house, I do those during my lunch break, after I get home, and on weekends.  Mostly.  A bit of that is prepping things so the robots can clean but I really do need to take a few hours this weekend and do some more cleaning.  Not a problem.

My undead army mooks I started last night are coming along nicely.  I'm kind of making up the color scheme as I go and even though I don't expect to add to this army I'm writing down the colors so I don't have issues later if I change my mind.  As I've been known to do.

The 'glowing green eyes' idea turned into putting a deep red-brown wash around the eyeballs (in the eye sockets), then painting the eyeballs with a dark green and then putting a dot of the obnoxiously bright green on top of that.  Works quite well, I think.  I really do like that obnoxious bright green set.  Too bad they discontinued it.  I understand because it's a rather limited use color but it's so useful at times.

I went with one of my preferred methods of painting the leather that works great but creeps me out.  On the bad guys I've started using the humanoid skin tones for the leathers.  As in, "Tanned Skin" as a leather color.  So these guys not only have that one but the "Humanoid Skin" as well.  The effect is great, the idea of doing it creeps me out.  Essentially I've clothed them in the skins of their enemies.  I know that's not much different from dragon skin armor but still ...

I've got the headwrap/hat thing and the sword to finish up.  I used the tanned skin on the hilt and I put the deep red-brown on the hilt basket but I think I'm going to paint over it with the same color as the headwrap/hat.  Otherwise I'm adding another color into the mix.  Yes, I did paint the insides of the mouths with the deep red-brown but that's just a single color.  The hilt basket is going to take shading and highlighting.  So it's going to match the other area that's getting the same treatment.

I'm tempted to try doing a touch of freehand on the hilt basket since it kind of cries out for it but I'm not that good and I wonder if they would waste the better weapons on the mooks.  Oh - I've also decided not to try making the weapons weathered and/or old.  They're going to be nice, servicable weapons.  You've gotta keep the undead busy when they're not in battle.  It's not like they hit the bars on shore leave.

Then I do the lining and call them painted.  Lining finishes a figure.  It consists of painting a darker line where two surfaces meet or where you want to emphasize a change, like between fingers.  Some people line the figure then paint, leaving a slight line between the colors.  I've always painted first and then added the lines.  I guess my method is more 'dangerous' since there's more of a chance of getting liner where you don't want it but it's the way I like to do it.  For these guys I'm doing a mix of brown and green liner.  Typically I would just use brown but there's a lot of green tones in there.  Technically I could toss red into the brown for contrast but I'm not trying to make the lines stand out.  I want them to blend in.

I won't base them until the whole army is done.  I have an idea using sand, driftwood and seaweed.  Very appropriate for undead pirates, I think.

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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Yay! I painted!

Well, at the weekly paint night I did a basic cloak paint job but since the lighting is less than optimal I'm going to have to do all the detail work here at home.  I'm going to try .. plaid.  Wish me luck.

And then after discussing the website changes that will be happening this weekend (far too much discussion for a paint night) I did get some other painting done.

I got the base coat on some of the Razig undead pirate army.  I wanted to start on something easy so I grabbed the 4 sword mooks.  Turns out they're zombies, not skellies.  The bone paints went back in the caddies, the undead flesh came out.  I got all the skin painted up, which is not bad at all.

I'm debating about how to paint the eyes on these guys.  During the brief pause in posting to take the dogs outside I got the idea of grey for that blank stare that zombies do so well.  That sounds like it might work.

On the housework front I did pretty well today.  The kitchen is back in order and I was able to get Scooba running during my lunch break.  So the living room floor is nice and clean.  I'm going to try to get the dining room done tomorrow.  I love coming home to a nice clean floor that I didn't have to scrub myself.  Robot servants!

I got another 3 Hirst Arts casts done today.  One before I left for work, one while I was waiting for lunch to cook, and one poured after paint night and staying in the molds overnight.  I switched out the Gothic Arena for the basic wall builder since I was running very low on basic building bricks.  I can still cast the two little pieces from the arena mold that I always seem to need off the same mix so I'm doing just fine.  If I can get 3 casts done per week night and maybe 5 per day over the weekend then I'll be in very good shape.  I'm going to let them air dry while I work on other projects since that only takes 2 days and I have lots of things I can be doing.  Like redesigning part of my challenge build that needs the bricks I'm casting right now.

I'm hoping to keep posting rather regularly this month.  In the past I've gone days between postings and since there's no limit on how many times you can post I'm going to take advantage of that.  I really don't like posting more than once per day so the end-of-the-day post kind of contains everything that's been in my noggin for the day.  Makes it more of a mash-up sometimes.

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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

I'm 'borrowing' an idea

WQRob did a posting in Twitter format and I'm going to see if my day seems more interesting by doing the same.

Woke up on time.  Woke up the second time not so much on time.  Forgot meds but hadn't gotten in the car.  Took Hot Pockets to work for breakfast.

Picked up trouble ticket that came in late yesterday about notifications not being sent.  Part of a conversion project, settings had to be recreated by the users.

Picked up another trouble ticket that came in late yesterday about data not matching a report.  Couldn't find a problem, sent it back.

Finished work on an import package.  Sent out a confirmation request that they wanted the data appended every day since that import file had over 20k records.  Started on the next import package.

Surfed the web.

Went home.  Fed the zoo.  Cleaned the litterboxes.  Put my lunch in the microwave.  Wrote checks to pay some bills.  Ate lunch.  Put cleaning rags in the washer.

Went back to work.  Trouble ticket with nonmatching data came back.  Actually read the problem this time.  Researched.

User contacted me about notifications again.  Researched.  Found they had a trailing semi-colon in the list.  Had them remove, working now.  User error.

Found the problem with the nonmatching data.  Working on a way to purge that set of data so it can be recreated clean.

Talked to the team responsible for dealing with production matters, set up a plan of action on fixing the nonmatching data problem.

Surfed the web.

Came home.  Took the dogs out.  Chatted with Mr. Rastl.  Poured a set of HA molds.  Cleaned the kitchen.  Poured a second set of HA molds.  Put dinner in the microwave.  Put cleaning rags in the dryer.  Worked on a new Wordpress site.  Ate dinner.  Chatted with Mr. Rastl.  Poured an third and final set of HA molds.  Worked more on the new Wordpress site.

Wrote a blog post.  Went to bed.

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Monday, March 2, 2009

Lethargy. I have it.

I was going to LOLcat the subject but decided against it.  Mostly for my own dignity.

I'm trying to get back into the groove of building and painting.  I completely slacked for about a week now and getting back into the mindset isn't proving very easy.

Here's my current list of rationalizations.  Enjoy.

  • I don't want to dig out my mini paints just to have to pack them back up for Wednesday paint night.
  • I don't want to work on new arena pieces until I've finished the ones I've started.
  • I don't have enough bricks to keep building my own arena now.
  • I don't have time to do casting, even though I have the materials upstairs.
  • I keep getting started late, which limits how much I can reasonably accomplish,

I think that's a pretty darn good list of rationalizations, don't you?

Having said that I heaved a large sigh and did some actual work tonight with the time left to me.  I did get started late.  Then I just stared at the stuff on my paint table for a good 10 minutes.  But I did paint a few things.

The doors to the arena are painted.  I want to put some tougher paint-on acrylic varnish on those since they seem to take more of a beating.

I cleaned up the accent paint on three mostly painted pieces and started on the accent paint on one more.  I also put the base coat on some areas I missed on two other pieces.

So for those keeping track. that's 6 completed doors (sans varnish); 3 arena pieces waiting on gold paint; 2 arena pieces that need stonework drybrushing and all accent paint, and 1 arena piece with partial accent paint.

The rest of the arena is 99.9% built.  There's these little finials that go on a few of the pieces and I never seem to have enough of them.  So I need to dig through the casts from the two molds that have the piece and see if I have enough to finish this up.  If not I will be casting more.  And I always epoxy them on instead of regular glue because they take as much if not more abuse than the doors.  Actually they tend to get 'pinged' off unless they're firmly attached.  I can fix one of Mr. Rastl's decorative shower curtain hooks while I have epoxy mixed up as well.

My own arena is progressing slowly but steadily.  I've glued most of the floor sections that I have cast even though I'm torn on using raised plaster pieces or just patterned felt.  I can keep making the floors anyway.  I'm working more on the basic arena set rather than the decorative one since it's a lot easier and I had the pieces for that one sitting in the bin.  So now I've used up some of the specialized ones and need to cast more.  See rationalization above.

And this month I really want to get that Razig demo army painted up.  I put it off last month since I knew I wouldn't have time but I need to make progress or I'll never get to demo the game much less practice for the tournament at ReaperCon.

Finally, I won't be able to make the convention in Indy this month.  Without getting into uninteresting details Mr. Rastl is having a small surgical procedure and I rather need to be around.  Timing is everything.

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