Sigh .. Undead pirates

Well, after all that the undead pirates are going to be taking a bit of a vacation.  I did find out after I had them painted that they weren't going to be in the first release of Warlord changes and so I need to set them aside and work on factions that are so I can demo the game properly.

I found this out trying to balance my demo armies using the new datacards.  There are no official datacards for this faction so I'm just going to set them aside and wait until they come back.  And of course this is one of the only demo armies I have painted.

I think I'll replace them with Nefsokar (Egyptian) after I get the Reptus (leezards, in honor of the classic Taco Bell ad) painted up.

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Argh! Undead pirates!

This is just a quick post because I think I finally figured out how to make the seaweed for their bases.  Once that's in place I'll have to take all new pictures.

Scuttlebones 02

You can see the others in the collection below and once they're really complete I do a full post on them.

Demo - Razig

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Painting sooner than I expected

I wasn't expecting to get back to painting in the very near future.  That's why I felt safe in using the area on, around and by the paint table as temporary storage.

But things changed and now I guess I'm running a demo of the game of Warlord on Friday.  And one of my demo armies doesn't have painted bases.

Yes.  I can use them without painted bases.  But they're just not as cool!

So I dug out the paint table and drenched the bases in the shadow color.  Once that dries it will be a quick matter to drybrush up the rest of the colors.  I do want to put seaweed on them (undead pirates, etc.) but that's not 100% necessary and I'd rather get them painted and sealed for play.

I'm also playing with the idea of adding a highlight to the base edges in the army color.  Nothing too fancy, just another way to easily identify the pieces on the table.  Of course one of my far more detailed painter friends took that to mean that I was going to gem the bases.

For those not in the know, to 'gem' something is to paint in the manner of a gemstone.  Reflecting light and all that.

I wasn't planning on going that far for demo army bases but I will try one with the highlight edges and see what that looks like.

Base coat is on and drying.  I touched up the spot on the crab where primer got on the underside of the claw.  So they're set for the evening.

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I promise, pictures this weekend

The undead pirates all have the sand on their bases.  That still means primer, paint and vegetation but it's better than nothing.  I know the last post had 'everyone except the monster' but now it's just everyone.  Yay everyone!

The bear riders have the bears finished and varnished and the riders are primed.  So I can work on painting the riders without as much worry about scraping/wearing the paint off the bears.  When I get them done the entire figure will get a coat of varnish so the bears get a double helping.

This weekend was supposed to be very, very busy but now it's just very busy.  It looks like the only time I'll have for hobbies is Sunday night.  And I'll try to be good and finish up the base coat on the arena pieces then so that project is ready for finishing.

I will try to get pictures this weekend so you can see how things look.  I've been talking about them a lot but it's really cool to actually see them.

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Yeah, yeah

A quick update on various and sundry things.

The hankie/lace issue hasn't been resolved.  I need some time on the couch without too many distractions and that hasn't happened in the last few days.  It's on the list.

The undead pirates are painted, varnished, and have the sand on the bases.  The monster is one step behind because he needed to be attached using epoxy and I was waiting for another project to get to the epoxy state as well.  That has been achieved.

I'm also painting one of my personal armies to bring to ReaperCon so I've been working on those as well.  5 dwarf bear riders are well underway.  The bears are painted except for a couple of touchups where they were lying down and are currently letting their epoxy set as well.  See above for 'another project'.  This was it.

The bear riders need to be painted yet but now that I will be able to handle the model without fear of damaging the paint it will go much easier.

I also have 3 mancatcher models (nasty models with reach) that I started at paint night so those are the next ones up to be done.  I'd say they're close to 1/4 done already.  I'm such an optimist.

Terrain-wise I did get the final arena-in-trade pieces base coated but they need the touchups.  I'm hoping to get those done over the weekend even though it's a busy one.  That's looking for the holes and seams where the paint didn't get so it's kind of a finishing thing.  The drybrushing goes really quickly and his decorative painting is easy.

Also regarding terrain I'm stealing a really good idea from a friend and making mold masters for village houses.  The masters are completed walls with knuckle joints so I can pour an entire house in just a few pieces and assemble them quickly.  It's an easy way to build a village.  I'm currently making pieces in 4, 5 and 6 inch wall lengths so I can make some real variety.  I'm out of the 30 degree blocks that are great for the roof angles so I'll need to cast some of those to make the roof sections.  Gee, me having to cast more blocks to complete a project.  Who would have thought it?

Maybe pictures this weekend, maybe not.

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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.

Zombies 01

Zombies 02

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.

Crewmen 01

Crewmen 02

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.

Harpooners 01

Harpooners 02

I think the glowing green eyes really give the right impression, don't you?

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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.

DungeonBash 02

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.

DungeonBash 01

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.

Razig Zombies 02

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.

So that's what I've accomplished.

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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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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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Demo army progress but no pictures

I'm coming to the end of my Crusaders demo army.  Two archers, the troop sergeant and the monster.  The monster needed some assembly and that required green stuff (epoxy putty; Procreate in this case which is actually grey and not green when mixed) to fill the joins.  So that's a multi-step process.

Then I had to think about the next demo army to paint.  I'm a bit tired of doing full armor so that means Overlords are out.  I also have a personal Overlord army and no defined color scheme so that one was certainly out.  I decided on Razig, the undead pirate faction.

I know, undead pirates.  But they're completely different from the armored dudes, they're a different alignment which helps for demos ("You wanna play the good guys or the bad guys?") and I have no plans to make an army of them for myself.

Their monster required assembly too, and much more of it than the Crusader monster.  Since I was going to have to use all the tools anyway I pulled him out and started assembly.  This was a tedious one since there were 10 pieces that had to be glued, pinned, smoothed, then puttied.  They're all on the underside where technically no one will see them but I feel it's better to be thorough up front than to regret it later.

I found that superglue still doesn't like me very much.  I have to add water to get it to bond and even then it can take a couple of tries.  Might be time to look at the whole house humidifier setting but I also have this problem in summer when humidity can run over 90%.  The only time this is really a problem is when I'm working with water effects and the glue needs to be clear.  Using water to set it turns it white.

Now then, I have all of my remaining Crusaders assembled and waiting on primer.  I also have all the Razig figures assembled and waiting on primer.  I did have to pin a couple of the one-piece figures since I didn't trust that their arms would stay on.  Skeletons tend to be fragile at the joints.  I'm a bit concerned that the axe shafts aren't going to stand up to demo army wear but at this time I'm not going to replace them with brass rod.  If I have to later, I will.

Crusaders get black spray primer, Razig get white.  So tomorrow I turn on the heat in the garage and get to priming.  I like spray primer better than the brush on stuff and it's much easier to have the figures primed and ready for when I feel like painting.

Even after finishing the paint jobs on the Crusaders I'll have to base them, which means putting scenic elements on the bases (if you're not familiar with the lingo).  I'm thinking of going more with a winter theme - some snow on the rocks and the winter static and field grasses.  I think those will contrast nicely with the bright color scheme.

Why no pictures?  They're just pewter figures right now.  Nothing at all exciting.  I'll take pictures of the Crusaders as they're finished and then the Razig army progress.  I don't see another step-by-step on these since they're really not that intricate to do.  Maybe one of the other ones, but not this army.

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