Mutie Kul

Mi bolt slug becriepeth yer brainpanne mid ease. Drie groet met yer deth bodde en blionesse, yer brainne painteh waelles greie ond roed.  Hi' is yer blod one shalt feede mi hyngru hund - what a graedig basterd it es.

Unwisdom er ablendath ond made thee a weak huntung.

+ Mutie Kul +

Mutie Kul it be, first member to be finished in my Inquisitor's retinue. I used lots of inks and washes this time, utilizing dirty painting technique (introduced to us by Steve Buddle in his blog Spyglass Asylum) and that sort of styles to haste the painting session. Loved the freedome of the new methods, really made me feel more, well - I quote Migsula and J.B. here - more elemental!

I still wanted to add some sharp detaild to his equipment with more traditional freehanding, just to bind him more with his portrated version. Colour palette was much more restricted than it usually is in my case, leaning more to different wash shades and inks.

More to follow...

What about Bile?

It's been very busy in the rat nest lately and not because we've been knee deep in our projects. Hobbytime's been very limited by the many factors thrown at us. This has been in the air I believve...

okkiW got married last weekend (congrats yet again mate, beautiful wedding you had!) in Kemi's Snow Castle. Weekend before that we had a blast getting drunk and shooting arrows at okkiW's stag party in Helsinki - first shooting arrows with the bows and THEN getting wasted, in the name of safety of course...

+++

But now it's time to return in our normal lives with our normal challenges. If you're not totally ignorant, blind and follow our blog at least every now and then, you might have noticed our latest posts regarding some hints from the rat pack's next joint project, Fabius Bile, captain of the Emperor's Children, infamous consummator.

Our plan is to raise our blog on a new level with this project, sharing ALL of our planning, sketching, jargon and ideas with you, in real time, using only blog posting and commenting as our tabula and tool. Your comments, discussions and ideas are more than welcome, we actualy demand them! We want to leech inspiration from your visions and create this project with our trademark quality and passion, along with our great community and its splendid spirit.

Lets begin our glorious journey...

Deeper Into Perfect Madness

Brothers, we are not perfect - yet.

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo down through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy."

- Captain Bile

Mutie - Some Progress With The Feet

I followed my instincts and decided to rip Mutie from his base and put high heels on him. Here's couple of WIP-shots...

Left foot is almost ready, heel is still waiting for the maker. Not sure if I'll be doing identical right foot or go with the twist and do odd one instead...

Captain's Close-Ups

As promised, I took couple of close-up photos from Space Pirato Captain Gaga, Spiky Rat Pack's joint-project...

You can clearly see some of the brush strokes and blending colour borders in these shots, but that's part of the fun! I've learned a lot about painting by staring other people's close-up photos of their minis, by studying their brushwork and the way they've achieved certain colour vibrance etc.

The huge gap between my two painting sessions with this model is somehow visible in here. If you look closely, you can see how smoothly blended red stockings and sharp freehands have evolved into dirty (ref. Steve Buddle's Spyglass Asylum blogpost from last year) and strong style used eg. in base and feather. This latter style will most likely be used in my future projects more often, in some transformed form, as it feels both effective and aesthetically satisfying technique. That small perfectionist in me is still rebelling against the idea, but I bet it'll get used to it...

Hunted Is The Hunter

Some progress with Mutie Kul mini...

And then some thoughts... Relation between Kul and his skullhopper is quite simple; hopper tracks and hunts enemies, draws their gunfire at it and then Kul pops the hostile heads into gibs with his bolt pistol. This way the one that hunts the hopper will be hunted by the mutie.

Hopper will have a small flag on its shoulders - with a target sign on it - just so that it'd be more desirable and obvious target for the opposing force. This is Kul's sixth hopper... Mutie Kul himself is carrying bolt pistol, some ammunition, frag grenades and a small family coat-of-arms.

I'm quite pleased to the outcome so far, especially in my greenstuffin' "skills" (it has been some time from my last 'putting, you know). Even though I've discarded some of the details seen in the drawing, there is still relative strong bond between the miniature version and the drawn one. Not sure if I'm gonna do those feminine boots for him, after all, they're my favourite part...