A Bit of Converting for Mordheim

 It looks like we're going to be doing a short Mordheim campaign at the ol game club, and I would dearly like to play a Cult of Possessed warband. That means I need mutants, which I'm using as an excuse to get some models from the very bottom of the leadpile built and painted. I don't remember at this point where I got either of them. Their history is lost in the legends of ancient lead.

This one is a very lumpy sculpt that has always pleased me with its sheer vibiness. He got a scorpion tail mutation.

This next one is an actual, honest-to-god Mordheim mini, albeit technically intended for the Carnival of Chaos faction (lest you think I was about to correctly use an official mini for a games workshop game XD). But he was missing a hand, which I gather is pretty common for this mini. So he got a giant claw courtesy of the Shadowlord instead. I tried to go for a more mandibular look on the sculpt here.

It'll be thrilling to finally get some paint on these guys and put them on the table.

Project Spacefrog

I mark with this post the beginning of a long-term project that will hopefully culminate in my having a new, entirely scratch-built and home-cast Blood bowl team for Chaos Cup next year. This will be the first of many such posts documenting my progress toward that goal.

The hope here is that committing to this documentation process will force me to succeed.

The other hope is that posting this will distract from the fact that, yet again and despite much yammering and many promises that it would  not happen AGAIN this year, there is no post documenting my experience at the Chaos Cup this year.

It's not that I didn't bring my camera, because I did. And it's not that I forgot to take pictures (though I may well have given the oportunity). No, this time, the batteries that I swore were fully charged and ready to go, were in fact dead. And no one I could find had any spares.

So no post again this year, continuing my streak as best effing blogger ever. To make up for it? I'm sculpting some Slann. 

The armatures

More to come soon. In the meantime, +1 FAME to the first person to guess all the positions.

Sculpting a Token

Been pushing around some putty again lately, and sitting there as I do with a bunch of extra because I can't seem to judge how much I need, I decided that I wanted to make another attempt at sculpting some miscellaneous fantasy gaming tokens to maybe eventually cast (I've been ultimately disappointed with my previous attempts.

I started, of course, with a skull - in the eternal hope that the next playtest version of skulldred will come out and make all of my dreams come true - so that I could have something to use for dreadskulls.

...but I decided that that skull was too bare, and that it would be more interesting if I added a mass of twisty, soddy hair around it. Now I'm much more satisfied. Are you? Let me know below.

An Update on Scratch Building Trees: the Roots and the Rocks

Welcome to another chapter on what might fairly be called my obsession with scratch-built trees. Some of the most popular posts on this blog are the ones I did on building cheap, realistic trees.

I've updated my method since first writing those posts. For one thing, I noticed how good lichens look when used for foliage when I found Asslessman's Leadplague blog. For another, I started experimenting with Aves Apoxie Sculpt for making terrain. So what follows is a two part tutorial on those two changes in my process. First, we'll cover using the apoxie sculpt to make the root systems and other details on the base.

The tools: a size 0 color shaper, a homemade paperclip spatula, and a large, stiff-bristled brush. If you have none of these, a plain old pencil will do just fine.

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In my previous tutorial, I recommended using gardening twine and glue to make the roots - but that method doesn't give the kind of bulky, looming tree boles I decided I wanted. It's also very very sticky. So out came the Apoxie Sculpt and a few tools.

The nice thing about apoxie sculpt is that its water-soluble and works a lot like clay, so all you need to keep it from sticking to you is a little water. I keep some in a jar while I work. I just roughed-in and smoothed the putty with my dampened fingers  until I had the general shape of the root mass around the base of the tree. Having such big wads of root-mass has the added benefit of stabilizing the trunk. Apoxie sculpt cures hard, so the end result is quite sturdy.

Next I went in with my color shaper. I pressed in with the point to make the crotch of the root, and then dragged down to make the space between. I cleaned up the ends with the spatula tool. Finally, I used the stiff bristled brush in gentle strokes to make a barky texture. Again, if you're at budget on this project after buying the putty, then using a normal pencil will get you pretty much the same results.

I had some extra putty and some extra space on the CD, so I decided to add some rocks. This was as easy as smoothing the lumps of putty with my fingers and then texturizing with my highly specialized texturizing tool (a rock I found).

Finally (after the roots and rocks had cured), I added some mushrooms. I decided that I could go pretty crazy with these, as I imagine mushrooms are the only things that can really  thrive on the wyrdwold. I used green stuff because I had it and it's what I'm used to, but the Apoxie Sculpt will work for these too.

That's pretty much it for the roots. You can get as fancy or as simple as you want with them. Add mosses, ivies, skullz, the legs of rapidly-vanishing hobbitses, angry tree faces, whatever you'd like. You can see above I've added sand and some rocks, and I decided to leave some areas bare to become puddles later on.

Stay tuned next time for the painting and all the leafy bits. And let me know what you think below...if a keyboard is out of your budget, then a normal pencil will get you practically the same results, with the added benefit of personalizing your computer monitor.

The Stone All-Knowing

Oooh, yesss. Gaze upon it. Covet it. This is the stone ALL-KNOWING! This is one knowledgeable stone. 

Enjoy trivia? Like to gamble on sporting events? Try the Stone All-Knowing!

Just a quick post today, with an objective/magic item marker I made for fantasy skirmish games. Dead easy to make, the pedestal is just the cap from a bottle of dish soap (that little bit at the top there). The stone itself is a little ball of putty, and the flagstones are the extra putty I mixed when I badly misjudged the size of the stone. All of it slapped on a steel fender washer and called good.

Who needs to do dishes anyway?

If you've badly misjudged how many words will fit in your head, why not leave the extra ones in the comments box? Right down there.

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Treasure Tokens

Making steps on prepping these figs for their transformation into vibrant and twisted little homunculi, I decided to try a new method for fixing these guys to their washer bases (that is, a method other than superglue and faith). 

I figured, since I need to fill the holes in the washers with putty anyhow, why not use a little extra to allow me to make an imprint of the models feet on the base? That way, the superglue would have more surface area on which to adhere.

See that standard bearer? I'm really excited about that standard bearer.

It worked even better than that. When the putty cured, these guys were stuck. No superglue. No mess. (No fess?)

But it's hard to estimate precisely how much putty you will need to achieve an effective depth on the base. So of course, I wound up with some extra. And there I was, a little bead of putty and a whole world of possibilities.

And here's what came out:

Very simple, roughly sculpted tokens to represent hoards of treasure.

These are pretty simple to make. I just slapped a rough mound of putty on the washer, blocked out some bigger shapes for chests, sacks and whatnots, and then took out my super specialized tool pictured above to the right.

Yes, the ink reservoir in a standard ballpoint pen makes a pretty handy tool for making indentations. I used it to make impressions all over the putty to represent large, hard, oh-so-clutchable currency.

I went back in briefly with a detail tool afterward to clean up where some of the impressions overlapped, but I didn't stress to much. I'm content with a rough sculpt here, since all the coin is just going to be slathered in gold rub n' buff anyhow. I think it'll get the point across.

What's YOUR favorite trick with a pen? Encribe it in the soft epoxy comments field below. Quick! Before it cures!

Dwarves Don't Worship Beer

I get it. It's cute, they're funny little pseudo-vikings, waddling around being drunk and stubborn and murdering orcs. I get it.

I just happen to think it's kind of stupid.

I recently purchased the above Reaper Bones figure and in the package, as in the photo above, it was impossible to tell that emblazoned on his shield is a tiny little picture of a foaming beer stein.

Which is fine. This is extremely common across manufacturers, and would not have deterred me from buying the figure. But it did get me thinking. Why on earth (or one of its suitably elaborated, imaginary surrogates) would a dwarf decorate his shield with a mug of beer? Shields should be emblazoned with ferocious things, or heraldic things, or things that embody the spirit of the dwarf-at-war.

Which led me to conclude that the whole beer iconography with dwarves is just one of several conventions for (lazily) representing dwarf 'culture.' (Q: "What makes dwarves different, you know, as a race?" A: "They really, really like beer." Q: "But how do we clearly represent this rather obscure fact of their imaginary culture?" A: "I know! We'll put it on their shields!")

But that's another thing... really liking beer isn't a trait that sufficiently establishes a cultural identity. Particularly not when you are trying, as all fantasy settings these days seem inevitably to do, to make an imaginary race. Many cultures widely appreciate beer, but this does not define them. Culture is too abstract for that. So to say that an entire race can be defined by its love of beer is just silly.* 

It is NOT EVEN like saying all humans love drinking Soda, which definitely isn't true but might seem true to an outside observer, on a first glance, before they could get down to cases.

It IS like saying that all humans love drinking soda BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMANS. A-and that's where the whole idea starts to get really creepy. And so do all the others. Dwarves being slow, or stubborn, or bearing grudges...it all starts to sound uncomfortably like certain modes of racial stereotyping--which may be fine if you are trying to model that kind of thing in your game as an element of the story (this is big in RPG games, I'm told), but is less fine if you find that you are the one perpetrating stereotypes without thinking.

The kicker here is that dwarves are simply more compelling when they aren't conceived as a race anyway. Same with elves, and orcs, and whatever. Because what our monsters really represent (at least in my conception) is an utterly alien and incomprehensible force that nonetheless resides in the human psyche. Or rather, the very idea of monsters exists as an attempt to understand that force. The advantage to fantasy is that those monsters become literal in the game.

This makes sense to me. Because then the story of the game is not human vs. monster, or good vs. evil, but rather human vs. the most troubling aspects about himself. That story sounds more compelling.

So I sculpted right over that beer emblem. I decided that this guy has a magical shield which tells him secrets in blank pentameter. The sculpting was rough, but I wasn't in the mood for anything elaborate.

I also decided that there are no dwarves in the warbands I create, or on the Wyrdwold in general. Instead, there are Hunchymen.

Hunchymen was a term originally applied to those peasants who were forced to work in the drear and dangerous northern mining collonies of the Magnifex. The miners soon become stooped and mangled in the dwimmerdark--for they did not know what they were mining, and it was often deadly. When the peasants, after a few scant years of labor, could no longer work, they were forced out of the colonies to seek out vagrant and beggarly existences.

The term is now used by those in the grubby townships of the Wyrdwold to describe those who choose to dwell on the open land. These include, most commonly, veterans of the many wars of the Magnifex who, as meager compensation for their ruined lives, have been granted allotments of stony and twisted ground on which to stead; but also hermits and outcasts, roving banditry and peddlars, and less defineable, more troubling creatures which stir only at night. Hunchyman in this context is used to communicate that the individual is a stranger, is potentially dangerous, and is quite possibly mad.

Hunchyman is also used very loosely in the townships as a general derogatory term for the poor, the lowly, the dirty, or the openly lecherous. It's use in this context generally conotes that the hunchyperson is not wanted and not welcome.

To let me know what you think, go ahead and build yourself a shield and then paint upon it an emblem that you think best represents the gist of your thoughts. Or just put a comment in the comments box.

*Don't get me wrong, I love beer. But how do dwarves even grow grains up in the mountains? Environmentally, one would think that grapes would do better. It is at least conceivable that some dwarves prefer wine.

A Couple New Sculpts

Here are a pair of new sculpts I've been working on. These are the first scratch-built minis that I've tried since my Blood Bowl Troll: http://mdarrow.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-second-string-sculpts-finished-troll.html. I was excited to try something at normal scale for 28mm (which is funny, because these came out more like 32mm) and I wanted to try out mixing Aves Apoxie Sculpt and Green Stuff, which ended up working quite well. It's less sticky and it blends very well, unlike straight G.S. which always seems to leave a seam.

Above is the first mini and its concept sketch, The Electric Wizard Comes to the Wastes: Link, loosely based on the wonderful stoner-metal album Electric Wizard. You can tell that the work is still very much in progress, what with the lack of hands, but I'm very pleased with the face, as it is very first human face I've ever sculpted. I made it roughly following this tutorial: http://www.ebobminiatures.com/sculpting/faces.htm. This is a good, simple way to start studying the art of the visage.

I'm also taking my first crack at weapon-making. (The wizard's sword, Slamdring the Foe-Slammer, and his Staff of Incandescence are mounted on wires out the sides of his cork.) That part's not going quite so well, but I'm learning a lot. It's a very fiddly business, and, as you can no doubt see by my attempt on the Evil Dead below, I have not quite figured out how to get an elegant result:

I tried to fashion this chopper out of plastic card, but that turned out to be even harder than using G.S. Furthermore, mounting it to the figure to achieve a strong bond proved to be impossible save by sculpting it into the hand itself, which came out looking...odd.

It was a good experiment, though, and I don't mind rough results on what will wind up being a rather mookish character. You have to start somewhere. I am, however, pretty pleased with the face on this one too, in spite of its being out of scale and anatomically out there. I'm discovering that I enjoy making my minis closer reflect my twisted visions than they do "reality."

What do you mean "reality?" This is fantasy, damn it.

That said, I will be trying to work on my sense of scale and the elegance of my putty work. Any and all comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

A Couple Burly Conversions

As promised, here are the other two converted dwarf warriors. Pretty much the same stuff as before, but this  time I was a little more adventurous.

I wanted a heavily armored dwarf, so I gave this guy some BURLY SHOULDER ARMOR. This armor is important if you spend a lot of time in fantasy battles because if you don't have it, your opponent can cut you. RIGHT IN THE SHOULDER. They are a little lumpy due to my lack of patience in trying to create a hard edge in Apoxie Sculpt/ Green Stuff.

I also wanted him to have a shield, but the ones supplied on the plastic dwarf sprue were definitely not burly enough. (If you couldn't tell already, "burliness" is a real theme in this post.) So I added a little extra around the edges...

...Plus some wood-grain for the back. Nothing fancy.

Now THIS guy took some work. Obviously, the two handed hammer needed something. What was it? Oh yeah. BURLINESS. I mixed up some Apoxie Sculpt and G.S., formed a rough cube, let it cure, and then ran it over fine-grit sand paper to get the sharpish edges.

Unfortunately, the arms provided on the sprue were not burly enough to accommodate a two handed pose with said hammer. (Weird that they would provide a piece that doesn't fit, but whatever...) I had to severely elongate the model's left arm to make this pose work. I lengthened the arm with a bit of paper clip, and then sculpted a simple vambrace over it. Never mind that it doesn't match! I didn't have much patience after all the chopping, as I also had to dislocate the shoulder because the arm was THAT short. This left a gaping hole where the arm socket was.

...which led me to the decision to burly up his cloak a little bit. I decided to do some matted fur so I could practice my texture sculpting. And there it is. I think I did a pretty good job of using the fur cloak to fill the gap in the shoulder, though there is an angle on one side where it looks a little weird. Oh well. I wanted idiosyncrasy.

Seriously, though, I really like it. And I'm excited to have a couple of heavy hitters for my little band of lost dwarves.

And here's dwarf number one again, after an unfortunate paint job and an even less fortunate strip job, in which the winged crests of his helm were lost forever (God! What a fiddly kit!). So I sculpted him up some nice, asymmetric horns. Perhaps not burly, but certainly unique.

Which brings me at last to this distinctly non-dwarven bit of putty magic. This is one of the used figures I picked up for Christmas. He was missing an arm, and I thought it would be no problem to sculpt him another (I was wrong, it was very difficult) but then the horns on the dwarf above gave me the idea for the weird, twisty claw thing. HETERODOXY! He will probably have the "Mutant" special rule from Song of Gold and Darkness. Unless you can provide a better idea, by using the fancy button below.

A Couple Stout Conversions

About a year ago, I bought a box of used plastic Citadel dwarf warriors from the discount shelf at the Dice Dojo ($17! Sweet!) At the time, I had just discovered Blood Bowl and was looking for cheap ways to make teams.

I separated out all of the pieces I would use for the team (I will have to convert/sculpt a pair of Troll Slayers, Runners, and, of course, the death roller. If you're patient, you might just see that project some day.) I found that I had enough left over to make a small party of dwarven adventurers.

What you may not know about this particular plastic set, and what I found out shortly after sitting down to assemble it, is that it is total crap. It seems like none of the pieces fit together as intended. The bodies come in two pieces, front and back-- or more accurately, beard and legs-- and I had to spend at least 15 minutes shaving and filing each piece in order to get them to fit together. And even then there were gaps. Big ones. Between the hair and the helmet, the beard and the body, the arms and the sockets... a total mess.

                                     

Fortunately, I dislike having figures that too closely resemble one another. So it became an opportunity to practice my putty work. To fill the cracks between the helmet and the top of the warrior's back, I sculpted longer, knottier hair. To cover the gaps in the shoulders, I sculpted armor (or more hair.) To cover the seams running down the sides, I sculpted extra folds in the cloaks (or even more hair.)

These are just the first two. There are two more to come, so keep an eye out. And let me know what you think!

Synntowne Abbey Mangles: Blitzer Conversions

Having (quite a while ago) completed my plastic Orc Bloodbowl team from the Bloodbowl box, I have since let my human team sit gathering dust. Well it's time to change that.

However, the models provided in the box make for a silly line-up. To get a working team, I need to make some changes. The first (and maybe only--I haven't really decided) step is to turn a couple of the many linemen into a more useful position--blitzers.

This kind of project can be tricky, but when I thoroughly mutilated and reconstructed a couple of Orc linemen, they actually became my favorite models on the team. So I had every confidence I could do the same for these measly humans. What I had in mind was to re-position both the legs and the right arm of a lineman to achieve a running pose similar, though not exactly alike, to the standard blitzer models. Here's some of the preliminary surgery:

I went on to cut the leg on the left into three pieces at the knee and ankle. After a bunch of pinning and careful, strenuous drilling, I was ready to roll!

...Until the newly glued foot fell off and skittered into oblivion. Then I was ready to cry.

So, after much tossing aside of possessions in the ensuing search, I carefully set the first model aside and decided on a more conservative conversion for the second blitzer. A simple arm re-positioning and a sculpted knuckle duster.

Fortunately for me, by the time I got to the sculpting stage on the second model, the missing foot dropped back from oblivion into plain sight where it patiently awaited me. NOW I was ready to roll.

The Finished Blitzers

There was, of course, much gap filling, but the really important putty work needed to sell these guys as blitzers. I needed more than just the pose. Looking at the original models, I noticed the distinctive leg padding. So I slapped some on. An easy step. I also gave them some plumes by sticking a tiny length of paper clip into the tops of their helmets to use as support for the sculpting. Finally, I slapped on some fun, ridiculous, custom visors. My favorite.

The finished blitzer's arses.

And that's that. Ready for basing, priming, and paint. I still need to decide whether I want to try and convert some of the team into more catchers, since the box only comes with two. However, the box also comes with two throwers, which I think might be one too many. Now what would be really cool is if I could figure out a way to convert the extra thrower convincingly into a catcher... we'll see. Oh, and I have to decide if I want to sculpt an ogre.

I also need to come up with some fluff for this team, for as we know, teams with a story always play better. So far I'm thinking they might be the sporting initiates of some violence-loving brotherhood of monks. We'll see what I can come up with.

On another note, I've begun stripping my second-hand citadels from my last post, as well as some plastic dwarf warriors which I really messed up on my first try. I'm trying a solution of dish soap and water to see how well it works. Stay tuned to see the results.

Oh, and if you have anything to say, too bad. It's not like you can comment or anything.

A Moveable Beast: My Portable Sculpting Studio

Hi there everyone. This is just a quick post I put together in response to a few questions no one asked, regarding my sculpting tools and set-up. So I thought I'd give a quick overview.

Washers at about 10 cents each. Dental tools at around $5. Blistex for 99 cents. Paper clips for the same. Junky pens-- priceless.

The tools: 

1) (top left) A cork to use as a handle for the mini. I've glued washers to both the bottom and the side of this cork so that it can be used for either small or large figures.

2) (middle) Sculpting tools. You can see at the bottom a pair of cheap store-bought dental tools, which aren't very good for anything but rough work. The three tools above them are the gold. They are scratch-built tools, filed down from paperclips, polished with super-fine sandpaper, and mounted in disused ball-point pens using putty. If you want to put together a set of these, check out this tutorial. King uses drilled out pieces of color-coded dowel, which is way classier, but I didn't have any of that on hand, so crappy old pens it was.

3) Blistex. This is about the most portable form of petroleum based wax lubricant that you can find. And it smells nice, too (better than green stuff anyway.) Just make sure to use it sparingly or else rinse the model with soap between layers of GS, since it can really prevent new layers from sticking.

Food-container: free with some food. Sandwich baggie: free with a sandwich. Box: free with a $1000 gizmo.

The Set-up:

Here's where it all gets clever. I happened to have an Ipad box laying around (HAHAHAHAHAHA, yeah right. I snagged an extra from work) which was a great size for fitting in a book-bag, since its roughly text-book sized and shaped. It was also nice and sturdy and therefore unlikely to be crushed. 

I took a small food container (I think this one once held parmesan cheese) and glued it right into the box with a small lake of superglue. Once that cured, I put in my super-glue, my blistex, and all of my small- and jumbo-sized paperclips. 

I found a handy velcro strap for wrapping my tools and my six inch pocket ruler in. Rubberbands work too.

I found a small sandwich baggie. I placed my green stuff into the sandwich baggie.

I then cut a small square of cardboard, and laminated it with clear adhesive sheets. I can smear a little blistex on here to have a portable, flat, non-stick surface. However, I am beginning to have problems with air-bubbles under the laminate, and so will probably simply replace this with an old CD.

Finally, I laid all of this out in the box to see where I could put my figure so it wouldn't be disturbed during transportation. There was the perfect cavity on the bottom right. Once I had the spot, I pierced the side of the box with a paperclip which I then glued in place. This formed a short spike on the inside of the box onto which I could put the cork. The spike goes through the center of the washer and into the cork, preventing it from bouncing around. This way I can take my studio somewhere, sculpt for a while, and place the uncured model in the box without fear of my work being ruined. If you want, you can also glue magnets into the box to stick to the washer and make it even more secure.

There is also enough room to fit a pair of pliers and a pair of clippers for making armatures. And the box lid makes a passable portable photo back-drop.

As always, remember to post a comment if you have any questions or feedback. It would make my year.

First Sculpt Ever!

So I've finally taken the plunge and started sculpting my own Troll for use in Bloodbowl. I have to say, its rather exhilarating, and not quite as difficult as I imagined. Granted, I have spent a lot of time swearing under my breath while trying to manipulate the knead-a-tite, but once you get the hang of it, it really isn't so bad. Granted the quality is no where near a professional standard, but for my purposes, I think it'll do nicely. And it'll cost much less money than the $30+ Trolls that you can find elsewhere.

As I've said, I have very little money-- but tons of time.

Pictured above is the first step of layering putty onto a paperclip armature into the rough form of the body. I decided to leave the arms off for now, as I think it will make sculpting some of the torso detail a little easier.

Since this Troll is a Bloodbowler, I decided he should have some shin pads. Don't know why, but the idea of a Troll in shin pads makes me smile.

To make them, I simply took a couple of small cones of putty and squished them flat with my ruler. Make sure to keep both of the surfaces lubricated so the putty won't stick. I then got a roughly uniform shape with my sculpting tools (right now i'm using bargain dental tools, but I'm going to try making my own soon) and then presses the lines in to represent padding.

Then I just transferred them to the figure. I made some straps and a belt in much the same way, using a roll instead of a cone.

 For the shorts, I just flattened out some putty 'discs' as thin as I could and slapped them on. I didn't worry too much about tears and holes, since I figured a troll probably wouldn't bother with a sewing kit for his uniform. The best part was that the putty wrinkled itself in much the same way that real cloth would, and so required very little shaping.

 All in all, I'm having a lot of fun with this project so far. There is some serious zen to sculpting, perhaps even more so than with painting. And it really doesn't take too long to get some good results. I only really work for around 45 minutes at each stage. Beyond that and the putty will start to harden and become difficult to work.