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.