So much for self-imposed deadlines

I did not complete any of my March goals regarding minis and terrain.  I'm a terrible person.

One reason for that is realizing that I need an army if I'm going to compete in the ReaperCon Warlord tournament so I needed something besides my demo armies.  I do have 5 complete armies on the shelf.  None of them are painted, of course.

I know I have elves started but decided not to go with them.  I have my reasons.

Two friends are painting up some dwarf minis for me so I decided to field them with my army.  The decision went to dwarves.  I then used the online data card search to find my troop composition.

I blatantly imposed on a friend to review my list and make sure I hadn't done anything grossly stupid and he agreed it was a pretty solid list.  I'm actually 8 points over the limit but I can adjust spells and such to make it fit.

Then I had to bring out the models and see what I had.  Given the list I'm good on all but the 2 sergeants I picked.  I don't have those models.  Of course.  But the proxy rules are good and I can use some solo figures I'm not fielding to fill in for them.  I do have the real ones on my 'to acquire' list (or will when I get around to it) so I can put the solos back into play.  There's no reason why I have to play the same army all the time.  A good part of the fun is trying new things.

I'm also in the process of painting up the Razig monster.  He's got his base coat on him and I'm running into the same issue someone else so astutely noted.  How can you paint something as undead that looks dead when it's alive?  I'm trying to paint an undead crab.  Not quite the easiest thing I've ever done but I think I have the colors worked out so it should turn out decently enough.

Once I apply myself he should be completed in an evening.  There's a few fiddly bits but nothing that requires a lot of painstaking detail.  So I can work faster without having to go back and spend all the time I tried to save doing cleanup.  I already painted the inner details and assembled the shell so that's done.  Now it's just externals and then attaching him to the base.  That's going to be interesting since there's no good connection points.

I think I'm going to mark where his legs touch the base, carve out some holes, then use the 2 ton epoxy to put him in place.  That seems like the most effective way of keeping him attached.

Everyone's bases will be a mix of driftwood, sand and seaweed.  That's going to be fun.  Undead pirates, remember?

And I'm going to try to enlist help in getting the arena base coated.  I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to my painting but I don't think they can screw up a base coat too badly.  Hopefully.

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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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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.

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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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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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