Moodswings in the Darklands

Working with the Moodboard at the moment....Just picked some cool images that i liked. 'had this wicked idea, to tell the story of the Lemminkäinen with the moodboard.
-Mikko

The Future Unfolds...

Hello!

Now it's time to tell you about my thoughts, my future plans and projects.
But first, i got to tell you about the fact, that I'v been receiving lots of positive feedback lately, from many people that i highly respect and honour, people, Who's work had inspired me to start my own experiments in the first place.
That have gave me lots of extra energy to work my way forwards from project to project. So thank you all for your support!!!

I'v been reading a lot lately..and there's a reason for that. For a couple of months now, i have planning my next miniature project. I wanted to make something unique and something that had not been done before. I also wanted it to somehow express the way i see the world, as miniature artist. So i turned to our Finnish national epic The Kalevala

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kalevala

From that book, i found my character. I found The Tragic Hero Ahti Lemminkäinen.
Lemminkäinen was a wanton hero, that loved women and war! It is a long story to tell, but in one ocasion Lemminkäinen got killed By the Demons of Tuonela (realm of the dead) who hacked him into pieces and threw the pieces in to the River Of The Dead. In the end, Lemminkäinen's mother bringed him back by sewing the pieces together and by casting powerfull spells to awoke her son back to life.

So Lemminkäinen appeared to be a perfect choice for me!

The Actuall project is in very early stages now, but i have started it anyway.
This is what i got at the moment:

The Kalevala I have red the Kalevala in Finnish already, but i bought an English version because i have always wanted to read it in English too, so now i had my chance, plus it is easier fo my to write this blog when i can refer to the book.

Rauta Aika (The Age Of Iron)
It is a DVD version of an old Finnish TV production that visualizes The Story of The Kalevala


Here is a Stunning painting by Akseli Gallen Kallela

"The Painting is depicting a scene from Kalevala. The warrior Lemminkainen had been killed, his body hacked to pieces and thrown into the dark river that flows through the underworld, Tuonela. His mother, having collected the parts from the river and sewing them back together, looks up to see a single bee bringing back honey from the halls of the god Ukko, a wondrous ointment that would bring her son to life."

(Wikipedia)


This Painting really has the MOOD, that i want to bring into my version too.

My goal is to make MY own Version of the Hero, i will probably add some elements from the modern Fantasy into the mix. I am great fan of Michael Moorcook's Elric Saga and i think i want to include some of the Elric's looks into my Tragic Hero also

Here is Elric as painted by Frank Brunner:



I 'm sure that this thing will grow in to epic proportions and would not be just another miniature project but something i need to do, to understand my own motives as an miniature designer and artist.


So, for now on, i will be posting my thoughts and hopefully some skecthes too in the near future.

-Mikko

Yer Loot, or Yer Life?

Finally it's done! The Renegade "Captain Gaga" is now sculpted and ready for painting.

Sculpting her, was one hell of a emotional rollercoaster really! At first, i had major broblems, in getting the proportions right. I started sculpting the figure four times before getting it anywhere near the right direction. After that, there has been dozens of occasions, when i would have longed to just give up and throw the model outta' nearest window!!

Female figures are probably the hardest ones to get right and i took huge challence when i chose to do Captain Gaga. Eventually, i fought my way trough the hard times and got out as a winner =)

The model is not anywhere near perfect, nor it never tried to be such thing, but looking it now, i must say that i am satisfied with the outcome. I can honestly say, that this was my "babtism of fire" in figure sculpting.

I started with solid idea, i then sketched it properly down before i moved into actual Sculpting of the model. Then i tried to follow that plan and finished the model. When i now compare the original sketch and the newly finished product, i am pretty satisfied with the result.

Anyway, enough with bable, here comes the pictures!!!

Yarr!

Little birds just whispered to me that okkiW's Space Pirato Captain Gaga is ready, at least the sculpt is. I just saw couple of photos from her and I must say, it's just pure amazing! ... Eh, by the way, has anyone seen my jaw? It just fell off! Please let me know if you see it, cheers!

Something Delved From The Closet

I finally learned to operate some of my camera's more expert settings! I have always had some troubles handling the depth of view when shooting my projects, especially larger groups. It really pissed me off. Well, now this pesky little problem seems to be fixed, hooyah!

Now that those rear ranks won't blur away, I thought to take a shot from my another everlasting project, Chaos Warriors.

This project has been long under work, maybe lost forever, who knows... I was collecting this army just before Games Workshop decided to split Mortals and Immortals (daemons). Maybe that's one of the reasons this project, Father Nurgle's Ruddy Idolators, is now chilled and just lurking in the closet, waiting for my retirement days...

That group of eight Chaos Warriors in rotting red armors won The Best Group title in RopeCon 2010's Miniature Painting Competition.

Work Bench Update 2.0!

Hell'o!

Here's some "teaser footage" for my Captain Gaga project!
The sculpt is about 80% ready at the moment.

Utter Nonsense And Emperor's Children

I must admit, I'm a bit of a nostalgia junkie. I have four Commodore 64's with couple of floppy drives and a punch of TAC-2's. Me and couple of my good friends enjoy playing retro games in our every-now-and-then arranged Retro Evenings, which also include some beer to go with the old classics, of course. I happen to like, surprisingly, 80's and early 90's heavy metal. Those old thrash bands really had that something. Too bad I was just a kid when that kind of music was "the pop".

I'm also a huge fan of 80's Games Workshop stuff, especially the classic Citadel miniatures range (just visit The Stuff of the Legends and you'll know what I'm talking about) and the (real) Old World, the one that is introduced properly in the 1st edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and, in generally, in the 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Those two first Realm of Chaos books, Slaves to Darkness and The Lost And The Damned, are just something you simply need to read to fully understand what's the real potential of the Warhammer universe. Even the smell of those old tomes gives me damn good vibes to start painting.

Speaking of the grim and unforgiving world of Warhammer, place where death visits often and widely. I happened to stumble in the Internet and found out that the upcoming The Witcher 2 is going to have very interesting feature - Insane difficulty. In Insane mode you're not able to load your saved games after you die. Now that, if something, is like straight from the good old WFRP, where only couple of critical hits could sever your limbs off and end your adventure in that bloody spot. Yeah, sounds like a harsh way to play the game but the enjoyment of surviving the events is plenty in my opinion.

--

Back to business... Usually my projects are heavily inspired by the 80's and early 90's 'Eavy Metal team's outputs. I wade the old White Dwarfs, which are perfect source of inspiration for my kind of projects.

Collecting and painting an entire playable forces has always fascinated me. Seeing fully painted armies in show case standard is something outrageously beautiful, something to envy. I have many old school armies under work, dwarfs, orcs, chaos warriors and wood elves. Well, my current ambitious project, a small warband of Emperor's Children, is a bit of a side quest...

Once again I was dragged by the irresistible need to collect an army. I was planning to start playing Warhammer 40.000 and I was thinking of which army I'd like to play. Space Marines have always fascinated me, but I wanted to play the evil side. Therefor I chose the Chaos Space Marines.

Then it was a time to choose which God of Chaos would it be. I know that you can take worshipers of different Gods and mix them to suit your playing style, but I wanted to make just one chapter warband. I've read about Emperor's Children and their background really inspired me, so I decided to choose them. I dug some resent White Dwarfs and ended up browsing the one that included the new Chaos Space Marines plastics and their new Codex. The same WD had also an article about the new Apocalypse and some pictures of the studio armies. Christian Byrne's huge Chaos Space Marines army caught my eye, especially his Slaanesh posse. I decided to emulate his colour scheme for my army as it looked so bad ass.

Here's the first three of the Children that I've managed to mod and paint in past six (seven or eight?) months...

I still have two of these on the painting stage and punch of more in bits. I'm planning to have one squad of 5-10 Children armed with bolters, plasma pistol (Champion, in the middle) and one with the bigger plasma gun. Second squad of 5 Children is going to consist of bolt pistols and close combat weapons (chainsaw swords and power swords). These two squads will have nicely freehanded Rhinos as their personal transport, just to give them enough rapid deployment if needed.

Of course Slaanesh warband is nothing without couple of Noise Marines. I think I'm going to have 5 of those gigsters. Daemon Prince is a must too, so I thought to have the Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, Azazel, to be leading my band of brothers. Azazel's pose, feather wings and daemonic claw make him just perfect for my plans.

I'm not sure how much that all is in gaming points, enough to start playing maybe? So that's it for now. Maybe I'll finish my next couple of Children within 3-4 months ;) In any case, have a merry Christmas and mind blowing New Year!