Terrorgheist base finished.

I have been putting together a base for a Terrorgheist I have converted. I have played with the base Terrorgheist model to put his wings out sideways. This means he heavily overhangs both sides of the base. If he is going to be usable on a tabletop then I will need to raise the model above the tops of other models. This needs me to lift him high up. To achieve this I have added some walls to sit him on top of. The arrangement was put together with just the body part of the beast asseembled to ensure that he would sit right.

 

 

I have now added a little paint to the base. I have tried to keep the base colours fairly restricted so that the base will not distract too much from the beast. Having said all that I had a bit of fun shading each of the blocks in the wall to try and make it quite natural looking.

I have tried to keep the metal work as painted black with areas of rust coming through.

Now all I need to do is add a little colour to the terrorgheist!

Hope you enjoy.

Man with a bear and a hurdy gurdy

What more could anyone ask than a musician figure with a bear as a pet and playing his own little hurdy gurdy?

This model first came out two years ago and I loved it so much I had to buy it then. Unfortunetly I got distracted and failed to paint him for some time. Now he has a little paint on him I have fell in love all over again...

 ...and what is not to love? The bear is very cute and paints up very nice.

The only real problem areas were on the guy. The cheeks were too raised for my painting style and I found the bandaged hand was a little clumisly modeled. When I looked on line all the hurdy gurdys I could find had a nice black and white checkered edge so I added one to this model.

I quite like the basket on the chaps back, but the spare drumstick looked a little too much like a loaf of bread.

Spread your wings and fly little Terrorgheist!

Did you know that even with his wings held fairly tight to his body, as above, the Terrorgheist has a wingspan of 14 1/2 inches (almost 37cm). I know this because I have been playing with a Terrorgheist conversion to show off his lovely wings. I believe that with the wings stretched out they could reach a whopping 26 inches (66cm), but even I am not daft enough to try that conversion - just yet!.

I first played with flying beast conversions with an Imperial dragon for Karl Franz. I have recent looked again at this model (following a chat on the excellent Warhammer forum) and felt inspired to have a play with the biggest Vampire counts beast.

The majority of the animal is built as normal, but the wing to shoulder joint had to be repositioned. I put a solid pin in there and set about hiding the joint by building up layers of muscle around the gap.

 I did this in a number of stages for two main reasons.

First I wanted to make sure the muscle  looked OK. With my limited sculpting ability I wanted to pace myself so I didn't get too frustrated with my lack of ability and I wanted to review each step.

Secondly, this starts off as a big model,when you have made it so wide it becomes very awkward to handle. I need the figure to be robust to play with, so I need to make sure I don't snap it in half in one go, so I fixed each wing individually and then let them set before having a go at the second one.

Pictured below is the finished model ready for its undercoat and resting on its back. It was a difficult birth and I guess it needed its rest. I certainly did!

Ogre Firebelly

I have a longstanding arrangement with my friends in the local gaming community. This is that I will agree to paint any figure that they want me to paint, for free, in whatever style they ask for. This arrangement does have a number of constraints of course. The constraints are;

• You only get one figure per lifetime (if you can work out how to get two lifetimes, you get two figures)
• I can take as long as I like to paint the figure
• I can photograph the figure and add it to this blog
•  If they ever want to sell the figure, I get first option and at the current cost that you can buy the unpainted figure for.

A good friend of mine in Exeter is building an Ogre army and has taken advantage of this offer to ask me to paint his Ogre firebelly; and here are the results, I hope he will be pleased.

I have deliberately painted him with quite dark skin. this was in an attempt to make the bright parts of the flame look brighter still.

I have added a bit of reflected light onto the skin, but have tried to keep this quite subtle. Hope it shows up OK on these photos.

The weapon is a little bent. I did straighten it out a bit, but it is obvious from this photo that I should try again. The base matches his army bases and includes some cork bits which are painted to appear like rock.

 Hope you enjoy.

Building a base for a Terrorgheist

A Terrorgheist scream is a truly awesome thing and having been on the receiving end of it with my Empire army was all the encouragement I needed to add one to my Vampire Counts army.

I thought that I would start with the base. Now I have two significant problems with the GW base build;

1. It is just too barren. The base is very large and the small amount of jagged rocks not only look a little lost, but don't look gothic enough for my visual image of a VC setting. After all where are the skulls? I thought the GW approach was at least 20 skulls per square inch of base!
2. For reasons that will become apparent when I go on to assemble the Terrorgheist, I need more height!

This is the base that evolved, and I will talk through how this came about.... 

The base itself was a bit of a disappointment. It was warped at the corner. I tried setting it again by placing in alternating boiling then cold water, but that did not work. In the end I just learnt to accept it and hope that the weight of the scenery on it would hold it down (it has not).

 

I then assembled the trunk of the Terrorgheist. I knew I wanted him to stand on the garden of Morr wall, but needed to learn how high the support for the other leg needed to be. So I made a little mock up. I tried different sized pieces of plastic until I got the assembly to look about right. Thank you blue-tac.

The gravestones were put together using scenery pieces from a company called Renedra. They fit great and were very easy to place. I selected one just the right height to support the beasts left leg. The only slight problem with these is that they have quite a few crosses and Christian iconography, which just does not fit into the warhammer world. Never mind, I was able to find sufficient to suit my needs.

I made a path out of flagstones from a spare GW movement tray kit. I did this mainly because I wanted to use a gate, so needed a reason to have a gate. I had to remove then rotate the gate so that the skulls etc were facing forward on the model.

I then added to old spare tree trunk bases from microart studio to break up the space at the front of the base. Next comes the beast itself!

A little more fantasy scenery

If your club is anything like mine,then it will have an insatiable appetite for scenery. We recently provided the tables and scenery for a tournament at Legionary 2012, and were able to field 12 fantasy and 5 40k tables with no problem what-so ever; however when I ask what the club members want to spend the club monies on, the answer is always more scenery please.

In a vain attempt to sate this desire, I have plonked together two more fantasy pieces. A magic circle and an arcane ruins. The scenery is all GW and comes from their Arcane ruins set.  

The scenery needed a little help from my greenstuff to help hide some of the joins. I also made a simple hexagon for the centre of the magic circle by scribing into a piece of plastic card. I think every magic circle needs a focal point, don't you?

I painted in a fairly standard grey build up, with a few washes for effect. All in all a nice simple and quick construction.

Back soon,have fun!

Avatars of War: Dwarf Army Campaign

I have long been a fan of the Dwarf Beserker figures released by Avatars of war, but have held back from buying these because Avatars of War Dwarf range was quite limited.

It looks as if that is all about to change. Avatars of war have set themselves up on the Indiegogo site which is a kickstarter type site. The idea is that you commit to buying some of the new figures from them and if they get enough money committed then they can afford to produce the figures. If they don't hit the target then you don't get charged. Their target is $20,000.

I have signed up for 100 dwarf figures and I am hopeful that they hit the target so I can lay my hands on some dwarfy goodness!

Lore of Life wizard

Way back at the dawn of time; OK the mid nineties, when Games workshop still experimented with alternative game systems. GW had a go at a game called Warhammer quest. This was a box set with a whole load of miniatures and a set of cardboard tiles to represent a dungeon floor plan. As was their practise at the time, they followed this up with a good selection of add on sets.

 The legacy of this is that there are a few very nice plastic figures out there available for use in GWs current game selection. I have managed to collect a selection of the plastic wizards. Now whilst some are quite badly damaged (I think one has been chewed by a dog!), they are some gems in amongst them. This druid is one such model, and best of all I got him unpainted and un-primed.

I have painted him up as a life wizard, because lets face facts, that is exactly what he is. I have kept the paint scheme as simple as possible to retain the simplicity of the figure.

I am very very happy with how he has come out, I hope you are too.

Nordland Empire swordsmen

Every Empire army needs its fair quota of swordsmen, and mine is no exception. In my last post I carried out a small conversion on some 6th edition spearmen to make them swordsmen. I have rummaged through my unpainted pile and have grabbed some more figures and painted what I can.

Please forgive the standard of the photos today,I have been playing with the settings and have got myself a little lost!

In the picture above you have two spearmen conversions and a crusty old figure from the 1988 catalogue.

Here we have more of the same, together with a modern chap (second from left). I use the same shields to tie them all together into a united force.

Hope you enjoy. Now I am off to set how I set white balance on my camera. Wish me luck!