Tuesday, July 31, 2012

R0B0-Boy

I found this magnificent piece of "artwork" from the bottom of a drawer at my work, at the other day.
It is a mess, randomly generated by oil, coffee, and various tools that had been lying there.

It is a nasty reminder that no matter how hard we try,  series of random accidents can still out-do our best attempts ;)

I call it R0B0-Boy -

What do you see?

Friday, July 20, 2012

"Blacktail" Skaven Commando From The 88th Reconnaissance Battalion







Edit -

The idea for this kitbash/conversion came from the fact that Im thinking of using GW plastics to create my Inquisitor Pherion for our Punk Moth project.

I am also working on a major commission project at the moment that has something to do with Skaven, so I have plenty of Plastic Skaven lying on my desk. One day I just remembered the story about how GW first tried to fit Skaven in to the wh 40k universe without success. (The story and the original sketches can be found in Jes Goodwin's book The Gothic And The Eldricht)

I wanted to give that idea a try, a good warm up project for the inquisitor I thought.
In the 80's GW tried to get the WW1 look for their Space Skavens. I decided to go for the modern look - U.S. & British troops fighting in Afganistan.
Being a huge fan of military gear (I work in a military surplus store) I felt that I had good understanding about how that gear works, so that came very naturally for me.

The process itself was very simple - Skaven body with armor plates, Guardman weapon, Spiky Rat magic tricks, Space Marine helmet targeters & pouches, little bit modeling putty and Voila'!


I would love to do a small squad of these commandos with dedicated APC-transport someday.......someday;)

Friday, July 13, 2012

Take Two

Our first go with the terrain landed flat. The base - 3 mm foam PVC sheet, covered with 25 mm polystyrene strips - was way too elastic and bent after the glue had dried. So it was time to go back to the drawing board and rethink the process.

Learning from this mishap, we decided to use plain 50 mm polystyrene plates for the base.

Crushed ground and bombed foundation (with mock-up building).

I have to admit, I thought that the process of building terrain versus painting miniatures wouldn't be that different, after all, the scale is same and you need to be good craftsman in both cases. Well, so far I've prooved myself wrong. While the scale is same, the wast amount of space and possibilities of my 50 x 50 cm board has made a tremendous obstacle for me to cross over. Not that I don't like the challenge, but I've very limited time in my hands when it comes to doing hobbystuff (don't we all?) and the size of ONE board really hit me. Choosing the facing of the cathedral's corner alone was very hard decision for me to make, not to mention how tall the building was going to be. Well, the inner perfectionist in me will cry for the compromises I'll have to make.

Even though there's been couple of setbacks, it has also been refreshingly new and fascinating trip so far. Trying all the new tricks and techniques while building the terrain has been really fun - you know, smashing the foam with fist-sized stone and poke the surface with crafting knife like a mad man... Something totally different to kit-bashing and micro-accurate greenstuffin' I've used to do. It's both liberating and lustily airy.