Summer 2014 Updates

Here are some updates with regard to my gaming activities.

I have been able to make some small strides in supporting the Old School Renaissance by publishing some art in Basic Fantasy RPG's very own Adventure Anthology 1.  Chris Gonnerman, the author and all around BFRPG head guru and Game Master extraordinaire, selected a handful of pieces I created based on a general request in the BFRPG forums.  I'm pretty active there from time to time posting my drawings so folks can have fun with them.  I'm quite honored to put some work out there in book you can print on demand and get a decent copy.  In fact, here is my Amazon ordered copy:

 One of my pieces created in collaboration with Deviant Art stock photographer and model Dewfooter, was selected to sit right there on the first page.  As you can see, the black and white image came out crystal clear.  All text was readable and indistinguishable from older forms of printing!  Quite the improvement, and sadly better than DriveThruRPG printing at this time (a copy of Skyward Steel I purchased for my father didn't come out that cleanly).

Reading this wonderful supplement, I have many available places to put PC's into if I get around to GM'ing a BFRPG, Microlite D20, OSRIC, or Swords and Wizardry campaign.  Most are smaller locations that can be plugged into a larger campaign, or alternately get someone into a good one shot game.

Next up on my workbench, I'm working on some 1:12th scale figurines for practice.  You can see my wire and epoxy armatures on top of a unique sheet I created using some top notch sculpting reference drawings from Massive Voodoo (Male and Female drawing pages).  We shall see how long these take to turn into suitable miniatures.

YouTube is one of the best resources alongside blogs like Massive Voodoo and good books by Katherine Dewey.  I'm not going to get into the details for these miniatures unless I finish them.  Even then, if I do there are going to be a lot of links to follow.  Not a bad thing however.  I don't know how many tricks I've picked up just because I found some random artists blog that leads me through links to a video that is very helpful.

Finally, I'm working on a WH40K piece.  A Tyranid Hive Tyrant I picked up four or five years ago, back when they were part pewter and part polystyrene.  I like the effects I'm achieving with Liqitex acrylics.  I also like how I can purchase a tube of Liquitex for less than a single can of Citadel paint.  I use the Liquitex Basic series of colors, and thin it down with rubbing alcohol or ammonia based window cleaner spray.  Nothing but brush, and dry brushing here folks.  Just take some time to mix your color pallet! I have to say, my work is maturing very nicely ever since I learned how to manage those acrylics for painting in my 2D Design course!  Well worth knocking out that pesky humanities credit with an art course!

I can't promise too much more over the next few months.  Tomorrow begins another fun filled quarter at my local community college where I am pursuing an Associates Degree in Precision Machine CNC Tool and Die.  Good thing about that is knowing what I'm going to do when I graduate, and having an in demand job.

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.

11DEC13 Where is Sudsy?!

Well, I just wanted to let my followers know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth (yet, though I keep trying to convince my wife we need to take the kids and exit the earth gravity well and live on the Moon or Mars...).

Obviously, not much time for games and the like.  I took to continuing my education and am currently in the Winter Quarter of my first year in obtaining my Associates Degree in Applied Science.  I'm going into Precision Machine and am going nail down a job as a machinist.  Considering the way 3D printing is going...  That is going to be where I'm going to try to grow.  I already see 3D printing in the gaming world alongside sculpting and resin casting!

Speaking of sculpting, I've become addicted to Howard Tayler's Schlock Mercenary web comic.  Here is a fan sculpture and learning sculpture of a 28mm version of on of his characters, a Unioc named Lt. "Ebby".  If you read the strip, you'll know who...  If not, well I'm not telling you much beyond that to get you as hooked as myself!

 Nearly finished green

 Phase 2

Phase 1

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.

Winged Horror visualized for BFRPG Sword and Board!

Based on the ever valuable opinions of the BFRPG forums and my friendly neighborhood game guild Legion of Myth, as well as my dedicated followers on Deviant Art, the background won!  Here you go folks.  I do have a Creative Commons License on this image, so use as you wish, just credit where its due and let me know if you put in any books or supplements that are going to be published on the web or in print (shoot me a printed copy and I might have to send a drawing...  that and if you are going to print it let me know so I can send you the massive 300 dpi .tiff file instead of this lo res 96 dpi .png).

24OCT12 Winged Horror drawing for BFRPG....

Is the background alright?

Or do you think it goes better without a background?

So, again slipping into my fun and games with the OGL Old School Renaissance that has been going on, and only growing incredibly, since 2008 I figured I'd offer my services as an artist to the Basic Fantasy and Microlite D20 crowd.  In this instance, its the Winged Horror from page 49 of the BFRPG "Sword and Board" rules supplement (which itself is a beautiful work from the BFRPG community).  My question here is which is better?  A background or none?  Would an inked background take away from the horror of this creature or add to it?

I'll give it some time before I ink the background and refine the drawing!  Hopefully some folks out there on Deviant Art, or the forums for the various OSR project, and finally here on Blogger give me some input...

Stars Without Number!

I cannot speak highly enough about the FREE version of Sine Nomine Publishing "Stars Without Number" available on DriveThru RPG http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=86467&src=SNP_SWN_ImageLink&affiliate_id=323031%20

Why?  Well, you take the very best aspects of a gold classic like Marc Miller's Traveller, and then mix in some D20 3.5 OGL rules into it, finally add some VERY SOLID Game Master materials, you get a game capable of being an instant classic.  However, Kevin Crawford and company went FURTHER and made a FREE version to get you hooked and playing hip deep from the get go.  You potentially NEVER need a supplement with a creative GM.  That is a feature that attracted me to Mongoose Traveller until I was reading through the Starship creation section and found the tonnage rather limited... Not the case with SWN, no limits there.  Starships are still a bit more abstract than in Mongoose Traveller...  While the Starship Combat is indeed a bit more abstract, its much stronger than some brand name games set in highly copyrighted and heavily licensed science fiction franchises by the very company that created the OGL and is trying to get fans to forget it existed (WOTC D20 Star Wars if you didn't catch my meaning there).

That, and having just moved into a new neighborhood without any of my normal stuff at my fingertips, having a .pdf with a great game to build a little corner of some galaxy for players to explore is really nice.  I recommend this rule set to any gamer who has to travel somewhere light and only can carry a device to read and a set of dice.