Monday 16 July 2012

I Put on my Airbrushing Robe and Wizard Hat

I have a number of things!

The first is bronchitis. Hence no good posts for a few days. This week breathing has been optional and consciousness variable. I've spent most of the week pulling sad faces while sat in various locations trying to move as little as possible.

The second is my first year uni results - I passed and am going on to my second year in the wonderful world of chemistry! Free IPA and distilled water here I come.

Thirdly, and most awesomely, I got an Iwata Compressor and Airbrush.

http://www.graphicair.co.uk/products/Iwata-Studio-Series-Smart-Jet-Pro-Compressor.html

http://www.graphicair.co.uk/products/Neo-for-Iwata-CN-gravity-feed-airbrush.html

This is what I got, and the store my parents got them from. They highly recommend the site. Apparently very good to deal with and really nice.

Obviously when I'm feeling better I'll do a run through of the equipment and talk about what it's like to use but for now I'm just going to say oooohhh my god I'm never doing anything with not an airbrush again. I don't care if it is a tank, a dreadnought, or making a curry I'm doing it with my airbrush.

I basecoated a tank in 15 minutes.

It is like magic.

Looks like I'm going to be ill for a few days more though. I have some ideas for a few posts that I can do while too ill to paint and photo properly. There should be something interesting going up during the week!

Monday 9 July 2012

Putties! Part One

My last post was written under the influence of glue. I don't sniff glue, or anything else, recreationally - rather I sniff it hazardously and accidentally. I don't know where the habit originated but these days I have to stick my nose in something the moment I open it and take a whiff. Building the truck had presented me with the opportunity to whip out the billion and one glues I own quite unnecessarily and set them out on my desk. I only used one but that wasn't the point. Being able to take my glues out of my nerdy chest of drawers meant I had been justified in buying them - I don't just leave them there doing nothing!

Later on I sat down to write that blog post, casually unscrewed my glues and found out what kindof scent they all had. I do it with shampoos, body sprays, spices and herbs. This time I did it with glues and I have no idea how I wrote that blog post. I spend many hours a week in a chemistry lab, by the way. Sniffed more than a few things in there I shouldn't have. Also set fire to lots of things I shouldn't have but that's for another blog post another day.

This weekend experiments with epoxy putties and the like have been concurring. Epoxy putties are a substance that comes in two parts. You mix them together in different ratios depending on what properties you want the final putty to have, and  can shape and sculpt them until they solidify. The putties don't react and harden until they've been mixed together, and don't require oven baking like clays do. Greenstuff is an epoxy putty - also known as kneadatite.

I really like making bits of scenery and bases so I have a number of different putties in my nerd-drawers. There are a range of different colour two part putties available that have different properties. I'm going to do a run through of the ones I've come across and then show a little experiment I did with a couple of molds and putties. I don’t do any proper sculpting yet though so I can’t really help in that area.

As a note, putty isn't a hard and fast term. It can refer to a number of things within miniatures alone, and not necessarily a two part thingy but its an easy umbrella term for me to use in this post.

First up is one that pretty much everyone doing wargaming has heard of - Greenstuff!

Greenstuff

Components


Yellow – Filler. The more yellow the better, finer detail the greenstuff will take and hold. Too much yellow compared to blue and it won’t cure properly. 

Blue – Hardener. The more of this the harder the final cured greenstuff will be, and the better it will hold sharp edges/corners. Too much blue to yellow and you will end up with a hard lump with not much detail. So pretty much everything I’ve ever sculpted. 

Work Time – About 90 minutes

 Full cure Time – About 24 Hours



Usage - Greenstuff doesn’t take to carving and sanding very well at any stage because it remains a degree of softness and elasticity. It can be tacky and chewing gum like, especially compared to other putties. It is what I normally see people using to fill gaps in models or conversion work. Very frequently used to create scrolls and cloaks and more organic type objects. 

Here’s some examples of models sculpted from greenstuff


 This is by Mr F from Coolminiornot. He painted it and then entered it into GDUK2007. 
Check out his gallery for the painted miniature - which is excellent - and some more painted and sculpted works.  

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Mr+F?browseid=2128606


These models are the work of Scibor. I love the warbear. I really want to get one but they are super expensive and I can't paint nearly well enough to justify it. You can check out more of Scibor's sculptures and painting here
http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Scibor?browseid=2128763

Pricing and availability – Greenstuff is easy to get ahold of. Pretty much any art/modelling shop you go into will have it. 

Games Workshop sell 20g packets of greenstuff for £6.15. It  comes as a ribbon. £0.31/g.
In America is it 20g for $10. $0.50/g. 

Gale Force Nine sells 100g total of greenstuff for £9, with the yellow and blue components store in separate resealable tubes. £0.09/g. It can also be bought under the name Kneadatite, in a tube, at roughly the same price per gram. 

Army Painted sell a ribbon 20cm for about £4. I can’t find a weight for their standard packs which is helpful! 

All greenstuff tends to be the same stuff just repacked and priced up depending on how fancy the name attached to it is, with Games Workshop being the most expensive. Remember if you buy a ribbon you can’t use the section in the middle where the two colours meet because they will already have reacted so you will lose a small but annoying portion of your product.  I picked up a clear box with nothing on it but the word greenstuff and a price tag - 18 inches for 5 pounds - and what I got has acted exactly like GW’s stuff for a fraction of the price.


Milliput

Milliput comes in five different grades with slightly different properties and prices. 
Colour – Black/Terracota/Standard

Components – Various. It doesn’t matter that much what these do. 

Work Time – About 90 minutes

Full cure Time – About 4 Hours

Usage – The non ‘fine’ grade milliputs are good for bulking out armatures and making bits of scenery. They have a bigger grain than silver/white milliput and so do not make for good detail work. Also their colours tends to come off on your hands when working them. For the purposes of miniature modelling the colour is just there so they can be used to repair pottery, radiators etc without needing to be painted. In reality they are slightly different but unless you are going to be firing your finely sculpted rock into the sun to see which melts first it doesn’t matter. 

Milliput claims to be able to fix everything. Maybe one week when I’m struggling for update topics I’ll go round breaking things in my house and see how true the claims on the box are.
Not tacky or sticky to the touch. I recently smoothed out a roll of it yesterday and immeadiately tried to stick it to my face as a moustache but it kept falling off. Not springy either. Easy to control when pushing and pulling. 

Very easy to sand, file and cut once set. Water soluble before it sets which can be useful when smoothing it into something. 

I don’t have any examples of anyone using it for interesting modelling work.

Pricing and Availability – Everywhere. Modelling shops, Car shops, DIY stores. The first three grades run about £4 for 117g of total product. £0.03/g. 

Always comes as two separately wrapped tubes so you don’t need to throw any away. Cheapness and the fact it’s everywhere means it’s worth trying out at some point as the underlay on a sculpture or something. I like making my molded rocks with it and broken walls. Being able to sand and cut it after its set makes it much better for ruins and scenery than the springy greenstuff would ever be.

I lied - I found something amazing sculpted by someone amazing using standard milliput.



Allan Carrasco is an excellent painter and sculptor. Check out his website here.

http://www.allancarrasco.net/

And his CMON here, including the painted version of this sculpture

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/allan+c?browseid=2129286


Milliput

Milliput comes in five different grades with slightly different properties and prices. 

Colour – Silver Grey Fine / White Superfine

Components – Various. It doesn’t matter that much what these do. All I’ll say is both the components are white and working out when they whole thing is blended properly is a pain in the butt. 

Work Time – About 90 minutes

Full cure Time – About 4 Hours

Usage – Very fine grain and good at taking basic edges, and organic details. Sand, files and cuts very finely after curing so complicated edge details can be formed too. Quite often used to make weapons with sharp edges such as swords and halberds. 

Pricing and Availability – Everywhere. Modelling shops, Car shops, DIY stores. These two grades used to be more expensive but you can find them around the same price as the above now. 
Always comes as two separately wrapped tubes so you don’t need to throw any away. Go for super fine white if you are doing character type sculpting. Also water soluble. 

One of the better uses of milliput is mixing it up with enough water that it becomes fluid. You can then brush it over small cracks as a very smooth filler. Create a mix with even more water and you can use it to brush over irregular surfaces to create a super smooth base for priming.  


This is the Elf Warrior sculpted by Freeman, taken from CMON. It is a combination of milliput and apoxie sculpt. This guy has done a lot of pieces I've seen before painted by others - you probably have too. Check out his gallery at CMON to see the original sculptures and some of his paint jobs on his own work.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Freeman?browseid=2133366



Z Putty Patrollers

Components – Clay. Evil.

Work Time – About 10 Seconds

Full Cure Time – If not killed in one hit they will roll around on the floor for a bit then get up again

Usage – Rough creations only good for delaying the Power Rangers while a bigger monster is prepared, or distracting them while Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd get up to mischief elsewhere. The inclusion of a giant Z weakspot on their chests allows them to be dealt with in one accurate blow. In conjunction with their very low intelligence this means they are only useful in large numbers. There are a few variations on the basic putty patroller but all are useless and die quickly. When it comes to modelling the best idea is to give them a hard strike to the chest and use the clay they explode into for making the bulk shape of scenery eg; hills, cliffs.

Pricing and Availability – A dime a dozen. They seem cheap at first but you need so many for them to be of any use that it can add up to a significant price. As for availability if you want to use them for modelling you need to be prepared to run around performing some basic hand to hand combat and then kick them in the chest. If you aren’t very flexible or fit this can be an issue. They are also good at doing somersaults so if you have any low hanging lights storage can pose a problem.

 

Brownstuff 

Components – Brown and Aluminium

Work Time – About an hour

Full Cure Time – 4 to 5 Hours

Usage – A very hard curing, stiff putty. Good for sharp edges and points. Takes sanding, filing and cutting well after fully hardened. One of the harder putties. Not as good at fine details as superfine, for example, but sets harder and sharper. 

Price and Availability – Actually a bit of a pain to get ahold of. About £7-8 for 4 inches online. Can’t find a weight for this one yet. It is more expensive than most other putties though but mostly gets used as an additive in other putties so a little can last a long time. 

This one doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as commonly used as any of the others. I don’t know if this is because of limited applications, or price, or the fact it isn’t easy to get ahold of. 

Here’s some examples of components of sculpts made with brown stuff


 This is another one by Freeman on CMON. 56mm sculpt, like the one above. You can see the brownstuff work on the shin guards. 


This piece has a lot more brownstuff on it - all of the hard plates in the armour.

It is by Adso2 on CMON. He has a few more figures up in his gallery, and apparently started up Enigma miniatures himself. 



Those are the main two part epoxie putties that I’ve come across. There are lots of alternatives used for sculpting and miniature prep/repairs but I will go into those in another update. I’ve been playing with milliput and greenstuff etc at the moment. I will be playing with my clays and bake able sculpting materials soon. 

Next update will be up in a day or so showing what I've actually done with my materials and how I found using them. I'll be comparing the detail they've taken in a mold and the different ways I tried to apply them. Then I will be priming and comparing how they have taken their paint and so on. 

I hope this was useful to someone! 

Friday 6 July 2012

Bits Bits and Bobs

Alot of how much we are willing to pay for something comes down to how much of it we get. There's also the detail, accuracy and quality of sculpting, etc. But most things in miniature modelling on are a similar level these days and fall into similar price brackets. If you are a student scumming off my parents like I am, or have screaming kids, or are just plain old fiscally aware (Scroogey) then we really want to save money while still enjoying ourselves in our hobby.

I thought about it long and hard. Then I decided I would sit down and compare some similar kits from different companies and see what kindof quality and volume you got from them.

Then I thought this was boring and thought I would make use of my intense gymnastic and martials arts training as a young, orphaned child and instead dressed up as a catwoman/ninja and broke into a Modelzone warehouse to steal tanks and glue. Previously I had only used my skills for breaking into fine art institutions containing legendary works of art or the guarded houses of old horrible ladies owning piles of jewels. Silently and invisible skulking around buildings, ducking out of sight of wandering flashlights and the gazes of portly underpaid security guards. Applying amazing strength and finesse to bound over complicated sensors and detection systems.Sneaking up on highly trained guard dogs to give them paralyzing belly rubs before they could scent me and become aggressive.

The warehouse was different. It wasn't easy like stealing a Faberge Egg. I couldn't put swanky music and a suit on and just whisk it out from under someones nose in an overly complicated but dull series of stupid coincidences and waste of acting talent. This would take planning, practice, and skill.

I planned a route through the building. I could get in through a small window on the top level of storage, but I would not be able to leave through it again with a full bag on my back. Thinking back I could have pushed the bag through first and then followed myself, but it's too late now. Maybe next time I crave hundreds of tiny contacta glues I'll try it.

Entry should have been simple. I just had to climb up the side of the building using the guttering and then swing myself through the unlocked window. I should have been wearing my giant whiskers; my ass got stuck and I made a loud ooph noise as my momentum was stolen. Approaching footsteps told me that the men working the night shift were not accustomed to their boxes making oomph noises and had come over the see if there was anything happening. I saw his belly round the corner first and began a desperate wiggle to escape.

You may think you have wiggled desperately, but until you are stuck halfway through a window with your arse in the rain and a fat man waddling towards you with a flash light you haven't wiggled at all. It chaffed slightly.

I can suck my stomach in. I haven't worked out how to suck my ass in so decided to abandon the window idea and finally pulled myself out. My swearing and clanging on the metal of the walls had made quite a racket and attracted the attention of the men doing inventory overnight. They had all come to my position, and as I clung to the guttering outside I could here someone getting the lift over to check the window.

A graveyard shift - not many of them in the building. I slide down the soaked pipe with much swearing and I think I ripped my trousers too. I legged it as fast as I could to the side door, propped open so the blokes could stick their head out for a cigarette every so often. Luckily the downpour was heavy, as I ran like a cat being soaked in the rain - yowling and hissing everytime my foot hit a puddle and arching my back and baring my teeth when water sloughed off the side of the building down my back. I poked my head in and grabbed the first small box off a shelf that I could see. Then I popped back out and splashed home in the rain, elated with my success.

Sitting at home I decided although I had the option of employing years worth of intense training and skill, I should use it for good - like Batman. That was why I had chosen to emulate catwoman after all. And ninjas. There were ninjas in the first Batman film. So here's a comparison of what you can get in different boxes, and what kindof price you can get them at.

My father and I sat down together to build a Revell Truck thing from the 1950's or sometime around then. I'd picked up the thingy and a Sherman tank by Revell for about £8 each at Modelzone on sale. They are 1:35 scale; a tiny bit bigger than 40K scale.


This was the beastie we were putting together. I didn't think it would be too big a deal - then I pulled out the sprues and saw the hundreds of tiny its. Father and I decided to go crazy and follow the instructions. It started us off building the engine; we were building from the inside out.

Yes I understand this
 Here's the sprues



These are the canvas sheets that cover the form of the track, and some external accessories like the jerry cans. 


Here's a mix of things including shocks, window wipers and strange magical components that make vehicles go broom broom.




Some more external components like the wheel covers. 


The set even comes with tiny window wipers and mirors.

It took damn well ages to get anything put together. Here's what we managed to get assembled.













We realized as we tried to go further from here that we were putting together very fiddly things that we kept crushing with our stupid impracticed hands like the clutch pedal. Instead we decidedto start building things from the outside in, and see what bits were left over.

Essentially the truck is a cube and therefore only requires six pieces to complete, give or take a few. There's so much on the sprue that is aimed at people wanting historical accuracy but in reality there's not much needed for the model to work structurally. Most of it can be used as mechanical bits in bases or in conversions.

Most non-GW type sets come with these. Revell, Dragon, some Tamiya sets. Even if you don't want the model itself, or the set isn't the right scale these are really good to pick up when you see them on sale and use for parts. The actual outside of this truck for example would be really good half buried in a diorama.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Awesome Terrain and Scenery Inc

The last couple of hours have been spent trawling round for some good terrain and scenery, as promised. Firstly I'm going to show you guys some pieces that have been hand made by individuals - not necessarily professionals making to sell.

My eye was immediately caught by this piece, by 'Theomar Pius'. I found it on CMON.


A scratch built temple of time from Zelda! I have a soft spot for Zelda. Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time were not only fantastic games but the first I owned and played. It's less of a soft spot and more of a weak spot really. I own every version of OOT you can get including the 3DS game - which I play on my limited edition Zelda 3DS. 

That aside, this piece is still great on its own terms. It would be a fantastic centrepiece to a gaming table. Or any table. Every table! The painting in Theomar Prius' gallery isn't mind blowing but he does his models justice. If they were released as kits I'd be overjoyed and wearing a suit made of Temples of Time. 

Below are a couple more pieces from their gallery. 



Theomar Pius - http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/member.php?26657-Theomar%20Pius


 Next up I found the 'Manorhouse Workshop' who specialise in resin kits of everything from houses to eqyptian temples. It's not the biggest spread but they do some neat things.


This is a custom made model of Helm's Deep, with GW miniatures on it. It's not one of their standard kits but I thought it was quite cool. 



One of the house units on the table is about 40 euro, so still a bit steeply priced for what you get. They are more varied and interesting than a number of equivalents and can be used by people who don't get spontaneous skull-boners.

Actually looking at some of their other stuff I did think these guys were still expensive when I initially came across them, but it's an alternative anyway if you have money coming out your butt. 

Manorhouse Workshop - http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/ManorhouseWorkshop?browseid=2085656

The next two pieces are by Monolith Icon, and are still very expensive but I think they warrant most of their price tag. 



They do a number of different pieces but these two were most visually interesting to me at the moment. They are about 300 euro it which is painful, but I haven't seen anything like them really. I'd love to paint one someday. My main problem with every model like this though is that the scale always seems to be off to me. All towers/castles/walls and whatnot look stumpy and small. Like this is the Baby Chaos Tower and Sauron is chilling in the Daddy Chaos Tower.

Monolith Icon - http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/micon?browseid=2085672

Next up appears to be a gaming board for a specialist game about being pirates and scallywags on boats. It's both gorgeous and a nice change from castles ruins and crumbly churches. 


Sooo pretty.

Team Toulouse - http://www.ttcreation.com/

The following is a piece by CMON user 'Showtime40k'. There's only a few entries by him but they are all worth taking a look. The thing that intrigued me in particular is that they are all made using parts by a company called Armorcast.


I've looked at Armorcast stuff before on their terrible 90's website. I never felt compelled to buy any or seek out any pieces made using their output - the pieces always looked a bit rough and rubbish. Seeing this work has made me think that may have just been because my eyes were being assaulted by serif fonts and ultramarine blue backgrounds while I tried to look at them. The site is hideous and I've decided after doing this the pictures they have on it don't do their pieces justice. 

This ruins set is $57. It's a fair size and fairly unique. You can buy small portions for $10, like dilapidated walls and corners from Armorcast too. 

Looking through their stock actually I judged them too harshly before. Some of it is horribly sculpted tat, but it's cheap if it is. Most of it is pretty cool and not excessively expensive. The ruins above are one of the more expensive things and I think they are very visually interesting. More natural than the GW equivalents. 

 Showtime40k - http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/showtime40k?browseid=2085717

Armorcast - http://www.armorcast.com/

Now for my favourite pieces I found! These are all by Tabletop World. There are more cool building on their site and I fully approve of the pricing for what you get. It's probably the best out of what I have found. They have both unpainted and painted pictures available so I have posted them in pairs.



 


 This one is a collection of their pieces put together as a setting.

The house shown first is their 'Merchant's House' and costs 60 euros, so about £45 at the moment. I would give my left arm to have their pieces, even at that price. They are a good deal bigger than the GW equivalents - their fantasy houses and watchtower. It looks so unique and characterful I think if I found one I'd wee myself with delight. If that's a thing you can do in a delightful way, anyway. Ok - if I weed myself I would still be delighted, how's that sound instead?

Still not great, I agree. They are resin and the site is well worth a look round for some amazing designs. I'm jealous of anyone who get's any of these!

The Guard Tower in the background is 113 euros, so about £75. It's half a metre tall! The insides are fully designed at well - not just external eye candy!

Tabletop World - http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Tabletop+World?browseid=2085704

I originally set out to find some hand made pieces on CMON and similar sites but found as I looked most of the great pieces were done by companies. So if you're looking around and you see some unique, or unrecognized models, read further on the page and you might come across something commercially available and cool!

The following is for people who want atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing terrain but maybe don't have the time, inclination, skill or money to learn to make it themselves.

Terraclips. These were originally designed with Malifaux in mind but have since expanded to cover nore types of scenery. They are basically heavy plastic/card stock buildings and areas with specially designed clips so that they can be assembled in a modular way. There's no painting and minimal assembly. I saw some at a stall once and when the person running it wasn't looking tried to break a house. I couldn't in the ten seconds I had without being noticed, so I can vouch to some level of hardiness to them.




These are the pictures from the Worldworksgames site but they do look totally boss in real life. The only reason I'm not desperate to have them is that I mucho prefer making things myself.  The worldworksgames site is well worth checking out - they have their precursors to the terraclips for very low prices and they are equally as cool. 

Worldworks Games - http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/

Finally I've just found something called Antenocitis Workshop, which is a site dealing in all sorts of different terrain including their own original pieces and all of it is beautiful and really well priced. I can feel my wallet drooling.

Antenocitis Workshop - http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/

It's too late for me to post anymore; I've been writing this for ages.

I've only just scratched the surface but you can already see that there are amazing sources of scenery and terrain out there extending past the skull buffet hint eua d'skull and skull trim. There's both cheaper and more expensive option but pretty much all of it is more interesting and well designed than the pants you can get in a GW store. 





Tuesday 3 July 2012

Pretty Cloaks and Bitching About Skulls

It is summer again and I have 3 months of no uni ahead of me. All of my painting stuff is set up and I've got the itch to meticulously paint expensive tiny things. I had exams for the past month or so and my hobbies ground to a halt. I'm looking forward to getting back into painting and entering into the SA Oath thread each month!

I had to stop halfway through painting something before; the captainy model from the Assault on Black Reach boxset.


I think it's the best painting I've done so far even though I am not very far along.  I had problems with the folds of this banner, as you can see there is no real blend. I am going to try and fix them with glazes later on. I painted the skull really badly the first time and had to rebase it.


I haven't done much with his snazzy body pose yet. The cloak on the back is partially done, but still looks very rough. 


Quite proud of how the cloak is coming alone. I need to add some glazes to extend the shadows so there isn't such a sharp change. I also want to put some cold highlights on the uppermost parts and some warm shadows in. Probably in blue and red respectively. 

The sword is boring and I really cant think of anything to do with it. I hate the tiny ugly skulls everywhere. It's not skull motifs in and of themselves I find offensive, its the way gamesworksho uses them. They are so lazy. Every space gets a skull shoved in. They aren't sculpted well at all. All the scenery has horrible deformed lazy skulls on instead of any thought going into it.

Games Workshop is pretty much the face of wargaming. It has the only physical presence in the country, really. The stuff it is currently putting out though is alarmingly bad and really infuriates me - because not only is the standard dubious, in both make quality and in design, but it has become ridiculously exensive. They have just inflated various prices to 'keep up with inflation' or whatever gubbins the store manager told me when I last went in.

 This is just lazy. There is one in pretty much every GW shop on the board and the model is hideous. There's mold lines running all through details - and not small ones either I've noticed these types of models just have massive lines and badly fitting parts in. The design is terrible. They decide instead of putting thought and care into it that throwing giant badly sculpted skulls is an adequate replacement. Put six on one piece of scenery and that'll make it grimdark enough. The pillars and stonework isn't to scale with models either. Lazy lazy lazy money grabbing. £20 for this 'temple'.

Someone is going to point out to me that it's called the temple of skulls and thus should have skulls on it. If it was called the temple of shit and had a big badly sculpted mold-lined dog turd in the middle I would still think it was rubbish. Just because it does what it says on the tin doesn't excuse it from being awful. Also good to know that temple = three fat stumpy pillars with half hearted spikes on.



I actually really like this, and want to own one. However I would not let it near any other GW model ever especially on a proper board because I would be too frightened the skull concentration would go over a set limit and  some kindof of half-arsed design singularity would occur and I'd be left as some kindof massive boobed droppy face dark elf witch wearing chain mail pants. With a skull on.

Still, even as I like themodel it's still lazily done. Oh we have to make it dark and sinister. Well shove a massive amount of skulled on it. Have a small amount of massive skulls on it too - mix things up. This looks to me like the result of what happens if someone new to drawing tries to sit and draw from memory. You may be able to think of what it looks like, but what you end up drawing (unless you are some kindof savant) doesn't turn out so accurately. This looks like someone thought 'Creepy dangerous tower' and then tried to work out how their brain thought it would look rather than using any references and getting something that hits the mark.

MORE FUCKING SKULLS AND A RANDOM BROKEN MARBLE BIT GO GO GO.

Covering something in skulls really limits some of the painting options as well. You could sculpt demonic faces and symbols on something and give the modeller complete control over the paint scheme and theme. I've got a lovely bunch of skull-nuts and there they are stuck on the side of my tower.

It could be taken as a warning decoration - this is what we do to cold callers, but there is nothing actually threatening or creepy about the design. Put sharp dangerous looking bits on it! Some damage so it looks like it's been beseiged rather than buying skulls on sale in Ikea.

£50 for Tower O'Skulls


This one annoys me in articular out of all the scenery because there are two boxes with two pieces in each, and I really like one piece out of both of them. In this case it's the vortex. It could be better - the faces should be swirling abominations screaming through the fire rather than skeleton heads very surprised to be caught up in a whirlwind but it's an improvement all the same.

The thing on the left.... Eh. Where do they get the references for their skulls from? It appears to be some kindof long toothed chipmonk human hybrid. The stuff on top is better but still not well sculpted. It's all very chunky and out of scale. Also a skull with wings. How original. And practical!

I'm too distracted by the faces going WHEEEE to rant about this one.



I really like the idea but again the flat faced skulls of an extinct giant chipmanmonk race pastered on the side of the tower and very lazy rock. With a ranom sneaky skeleton with a hammer. No one will notice me as part of this wall!

If I ever saw this on sale I'd grab it and hack it apart. The left side is ok and has a quirky tilt to it with minimal skull storage. The right I'd pull off the skulls and resculpt the walls. I'pull the rock out too and replace it with rickety wooden beams holding it to the main tower. I'd leave cheeky skeelton there though because he looks so damn smug to have stolen that bird's wing. 



I'd like a mini version of the tower above with super lazy rocks. It does have WHOO skeleton though rocking out on top being fucking massive though so that wins it brownie points. Also the skulls in the pool looking like they are in the middle of a harmony in a disney song.

This illustrates what I was saying about skulls everywhere limited the pallete. The white bone with the pale rock makes it look unfinished to me, and the grey rocks look ugly. This is partly to do with the laziness involved in painting the rock at the bottom the same colour as used stairs but mostly due to not complimenting the softer colours on the main tower.

Whoo skeleton is all like 'Dudes come swim in the wine pool I'm so totally wasted I've got candles on my head Yeah!'

Tomorrow I will find some good scenery and compare design and most importantly, prices.

As I said in one of my last updates - even though it was a while ago - I do like the new plastic stuff they are putting out. But the increase in prices and the more expensive pieces like these being so poor in quality is frustrating, especially after the change in the paint line being so rubbish.