07FEB14 Miniature time!

I don't even want to look at my past posts to see how poorly I've updated this blog.  So, without further delay, here is what I've been up to lately:

28mm scale model of the Heuvelman IA25M used by Hammer's Slammers in David Drake's series, reference from Mongoose Traveller's Hammer's Slammers supplement.

The Miniature collection (with other odds and ends).  Large figures are 1/6th scale, small ones are 28mm or so from Rackham and Games Workshop.

My 1/12th scale reference drawings for a future sculpt of a Warhammer 40K (Games Workshop) Tau Fire Warrior

Some Reaper CAV Saber AFV's that I finished up and integrated into my slowly growing 6mm scale Dirtside 2 force.

Paints I used.  With enough Windex you'd be amazed at how nice you can get that Liquitex Basics to become very fluid.

A Unioc from Howard Tayler's masterpiece web comic "Schlock Mercenary"  My FIRST 28mm figure to reach COMPLETION.

Google's little animation of a series of photos I took of the Unioc during the painting process.

Unioc work in progress with inspirational and scale reference minis

Sideview of the Unioc in green.

How far I got the first day.  

So, while its been slow in anything but the computer gaming sector, I've been no complete slacker with my table top games.  I'm pretty proud of my first complete 28mm figure!  Even if its not human....  You'll notice, if you've followed me since 2007 when I first blogged, I only really finish alien figures.  Don't ask me why, but my aliens always seem to come out better.  I might also just be too critical of my human faces at this point.

21MAR13 And now for something a little different...

I am a sculptor. I know this shouldn't shock any of you as one of my very first blog posts years ago was about my first 1:6th scale figure... I've just started on another direction here recently, a massive drop in scale down to somewhere between 25mm to 32mm scale figures (as measured from toe to the top of the head, or toe to eyeball; depending on the sculptor and/or figure manufacturer). My photos are from making some dollies (what you call a very small scale figure armature) I made using a tutorial by Jason Miller on Matakishi's Tea House (http://www.matakishi.com/). I've been following Jason's sculpting work on Deviant Art for some time now taking mental notes and planning my start up. Obviously I had to have a stable place to set up and that wasn't happening for some time from 2011 onward as my family began our move from Alaska down to Nebraska starting in 2011... Yup, it took THAT long, almost three years to finally have real art space again (and even now its a bit, well, temporary as we are just renting a house...).

My workbench is a piece of 3/4” MDF board that measures about 3' by 5' across set up on some extra tall saw horses I made using brackets and 2x4's I cut myself, its a standing work bench, but when I sit in my pneumatic stool, it puts the surface at just below eye level allowing me to rest my elbows on it and work. Will this help? We shall see...

Everything I used today...

Dollies pre-solder.

How to avoid burns with the soldering iron...

About the right proportion, soldered...

A torso added with Green Stuff

The bench with the works in progress, and inspirational figures...

I pulled out about six corks I had in my sculpting tools along with some 24 ga. Copper wire and good ol' rosin core 60/40 electronic solder. I followed along with Miller's Lesson 1 and proceeded to build some dollies for figures pretty much following the designs he had to a letter with one exception. Instead of using a bit of green stuff to hold my twist together I soldered at that joint. Why? Well why waste green stuff on that? I'd rather solder it at this point, and in fact if it were a larger figure I'd use a cheaper epoxy for that part underneath anyway as Citadel green stuff is over $10 USD for .7oz/20g worth... Its running neck and neck with the street value of some illegal drugs being run by violent cartels (and with the way GW is with creatively interpreting IP and going ofter anyone who sells their product and posts pictures of it on their online store, or sells left over parts, or creates fan art one wonders if GW isn't their own cartel...).

Some notes on that epoxy price...  

Citadel Green Stuff in Omaha NE is about $10 USD for .7oz/20g

J-B Weld SteelStik in Omaha NE is about $9 USD for 2oz/57g (granted its not going to get the fine details, but I have used it for holding my armatures for larger figures in 1:6th and 1:12th scales...) with Locktite and other comparable brands being close in price for the same size.

A search on Amazon yielded some fruitful results for other model grade sculpting epoxy compounds:

Gale Force 9's version of Green Stuff is about $22 USD for 4.5oz/130g

Not too shabby GF9!  However, the winner overall for product quality and value has to be Magic Sculp with a close second being Apoxie Sculpt...  Both of which I have used extensively in the past before moving forced me to give away the remainder of these fine products.  

Apoxie Sculpt can be found in 1 lbs and 4 lbs weights for $12 and $33 USD respectively (sorry no metric conversions here on these, its late!)

Magic Sculp can be found in 1 lbs and 5 lbs(!!!!!) for $16.50 (okay, Apoxie wins in the 1 lbs weight class) and $33.50 USD (here we have the 5 lbs class title at only about $2 more for a whole pound extra).

Difference between green stuff and the Apoxie/Magic stuff is going to be the manner in which you work.  Green stuff is going to give you a more immediate satisfaction for working time, and therefore its pretty nice in that regard as its hard and sculpt ready moment you mix it.  My experience with Apoxie taught me the value of patience, I couldn't sculpt with it for almost an hour as it needed that time to set up a bit.  This is a severe disadvantage in my current stay-at-home dad mode with kids teaching me that Chaos is the natural state of the universe...  Magic Sculp was workable in about 10 to 15 after mixing if I recall, and I greatly appreciated that its labeled as 'resin' and 'hardener' instead of just 'A' and 'B'.  Both are superior products, equal to green stuff/Kneadatite in their own way, and value wise blowing green stuff out of the water completely.

17DEC09 Games Workshop Killing Fanboys off?! From SA to ST!

A shameless plug for my weekly webcomic... A fairly rare twice a week post this week, containing gaming commentary as opposed to political commentary!




Figured I'd do an editorial about entertainment this time for a Thursday Special! Luckily I don't watch TV so I'll rarely mention TV programing (unless its old and I watch it on DVD without commercials...). One of my favorite hobbies is wargaming, and in this case its table top wargaming in the Science Fiction genre with Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. Sadly, the Games Workshop has sent out their legal department on a Witch Hunt (pun intended for WH fans...) on a grand scale! Nobody really expected that the Inquisition would come down this hard on the fanboys! Understandably, there is some violation of copyrights that do indeed need to be addressed by the Cease and Desist letters. However, they've gone overly obnoxious in enough cases to leave anyone making 'fan art' nervous. Where will Games Workshop draw the line between protecting IP legitimately (by ensure the rules and supplement information critical to the game and their bottom line are protected) and going overboard by shutting down fan created content (possibly someones eBay/online auction store as they liquidate their miniatures, or online galleries containing fan generated artwork)? Recently one of the biggest sites dedicated to good ol' fashioned board and table top games was hit by the GW Legal Inquisition's latest C&D letters, Boardgame Geek. Obviously many fans reacted rather rashly prior to the full scope of the letter being published. Luckily Seth Owen at the blog Pawnderings is a good logical gamer who chronicled these events the last few months (hence all the links to his blog posts...) and came out with the best Lessons Learned statement about the event addressing both sides of the issue.

I'm a fan of Games Workshop. From my perspective here in Fairbanks Alaska where you only see Warhammer 40,000 or War Machine games in any quantity, I feel they've done a lot to keep the table top miniature game world afloat. Too many companies are going to cheap vinyl pre-painted miniatures with little regard for scale while GW has diversified from mostly pewter to loads of injection molded figures with better sculpting and detail. However, they come at great cost (to my modest budget!), and now they act in a rather rash manner themselves protecting their IP?! I enjoy the simplicity of the rules and the system, and am absolutely impressed with their Lord of the Rings line of product (George Lucas, you'd better pay attention...), but with this aggressive legal action against the fans, the very foundation of games, in this economy?! I suspect its only a matter of time before they end up going the way of TSR which used similar tactics during the infancy of the Internet... Where is TSR? Wizards of the Coast did a great deed and put Dungeons and Dragons back on top, and not just by re-vamping it with the D20 system, but by having an Open Gaming License that allowed other publishers and fans to produce material. Hmm... Sounds solid. Fan support has also kept many abandoned games alive, some may even see revival in a better economy, check out Dwarfstar Games and Warp War. While not terribly impressive at first, its amazing what a little fan loyalty will do for some games... At least keep them alive. If a company treats the fans right, their product could live on forever on the Internet... But thats too high minded of an ideal sometimes... Even if it means losing even more money while trying to recover 'lost profits' for a miniature game by hammering down on images on the Internet!