Dragonbornses

I had a spate of Dragonborn characters rolled up for my D&D 5e campaign and as I had no miniatures to suit, I converted some.

The first was fairly straight forward conversion from a GW plastic lizardman. He's a Blue Dragonborn Ranger who chose to wear leather armour so I've painted him up with leather armour bits and added a bow, and a greenstuff bedroll and small sack on his hip using greenstuff putty. It wasn't until later that I wondered to myself, if Dragonborn were cold blooded, would they need to keep warm at night?

The other was a Green Dragonborn Warlock. I converted this from the mage knights figure below. I think it came up okay. I tried to paint the Juju stick in his left hand and the belt buckle with a dark ruby effect but it didn't really work. Oh well, I'll keep trying...

Dragonbornses

I had a spate of Dragonborn characters rolled up for my D&D 5e campaign and as I had no miniatures to suit, I converted some.

The first was fairly straight forward conversion from a GW plastic lizardman. He's a Blue Dragonborn Ranger who chose to wear leather armour so I've painted him up with leather armour bits and added a bow, and a greenstuff bedroll and small sack on his hip using greenstuff putty. It wasn't until later that I wondered to myself, if Dragonborn were cold blooded, would they need to keep warm at night?

The other was a Green Dragonborn Warlock. I converted this from the mage knights figure below. I think it came up okay. I tried to paint the Juju stick in his left hand and the belt buckle with a dark ruby effect but it didn't really work. Oh well, I'll keep trying...

Forgotten Heroes - Final

So its time I submit the finished product. I'm in two minds about photographing my miniatures. On the one hand I keep thinking that I need a proper light box thingy that people use to make their photographs look professional. On the other hand though, I have to remember that my paint jobs don't really warrant the expense. I've ended up using my smart phone and struggling with a couple of lamps, one of which causes the phone camera to strobe if not in the right place.

In any case here's the finished product.

Thanks again to Forgotten Heroes and particularly Roger Webb for inviting me to participate. I've certainly enjoyed the process and have tried to step up to the challenge. I'm pretty happy with him overall and I'm sure he'll find a place in any pulp games I play. 

BTW I did find some examples of gangsters with leg cuffs from the 1930s, but maybe not so pronounced as this guy :-)

Forgotten Heroes update

So Roger accepted my late entry to the forgotten heroes challenge so its full steam ahead for the final week. The other entrants seem to have picked up the pace and some have multiple entries.
I've finished the figure itself so it up to throwing some paint around. I've been doing some more browsing to check out the colour schemes and this is when I find that a figure does exist for Sandman in the heroclix range.

I' reckon though that my figure still meets the criteria as I am using a different model that I've based mine on and my inspiration is drawn from a different comic era.I was chatting with Craig and he tells me the figure I'm going for was from a 90s revival rather than the original 30s/40s version.

Definitely aiming for the black and tan version now. I've added a whiff of sleeping gas to his modifed weapon, some straps to his gasmask and cuffs to his trousers. I'm not sure about the cuffs though. I see them on some illustrations but not others - and I still haven't seen any cuffs on actual gangster photos on the very limited research I've done. I'll see how it looks with a bit of paint on...

Forgotten Heroes

There was talk of making some unique miniatures for super hero/villain types over at ForgottenHeroesSite and I had a mind to join in but as usual life's been getting in the way.

I was talking with my wife a week ago and she encouraged me to do something anyway and she suggested I do the Sandman. I immediately started thinking of Neil Gaiman's version, from the graphic novels I read many years ago, and started looking for existing miniatures. I couldn't find any in my collection that I could easily convert in a short time.

Then I remembered that Craig, a friend of mine from long ago, mentioned that Sandman was quite an old DC hero that went back to 1939. In fact it was he who let me read his Neil Gaiman graphic novels and showed me an old DC comic that featured the original character. I went looking for images and saw two main versions, a guy in a green suit and purple cloak and another in just a tan suit and overcoat, both also sporting a fedora, gasmask and special sleep gas emitting gun.

I went looking for a figure to match and found Mark Copplestone's Gangsters in a FLGS, in particular, Sam Spade. He's not quite what I'm after in that his overcoat is slightly different to those in the comics but I think he'll be good enough for me with a few changes.

I've started converting this miniature and I've changed the right arm to that of a Reaper bones cowboy figure that I've sacrificed for his revolver-wielding hand. I'm now throwing a bit of greenstuff around to blend in the arm, modify the weapon and add a gasmask to the face. I think I'll go for the tan-suited gent as I'm not so good at making cloaks yet ;-).

Now I just have to convince Roger to accept my late entry...

Fun with animals!

Here's a bunch of animals I painted up to be used as random encounters for roleplay games.

 Bears repeating... The figures are from the left airfix grizzly, GW, can't remember, airfix polar bear, Heroclix (D&D) and airfix grizzly again.

The Big Cats. Some appear bigger than others. The tiger on the far right appears to be the smallest. Maybe he's a normal sized critter while the rest are giant varieties? Four toys and the tiger is an airfix figure.

Lotsa doggies! and one ginger cat. Various brands. 20mm bases

Fluffy from Harry Potter. Well okay, Kerberos from Greek Mythology. A plastic toy I picked up somewhere and repainted. 40mm base

Pretty little ghouls

I've had a few older style GW ghouls for  many years but never enough for a complete unit. More recently I received some GW plastic ghouls, you know, the hunched over ones that look nothing like the old metal ones. It took me a while, but I worked out how to make the new plastic ones look more like the old ones with a bit of putty and glue.

I wanted them upright like the old style ones which caused a bit of a problem. The new plastic ones look more like beetles to me, all hunched over, so I straightened them up by adding some guts with greenstuff and shaping and refitting the arms into the sockets. The heads still sat too low on the necks so I cut away the neck bit and made new necks with putty. I had to do a fair bit of puttying to make them look reasonable as you can see above.

This is the back rank. I posed the arms so that they were mostly by their sides or flung back in ghoulish fasion to stay out of the way of the front rank. I cut a few of the extra bones off them that they wore a trophies peircing their skin as this nonsense did not appear on the older style ghouls. Even so there's alomst a whole skeleton on the back of one new ghoul figure which I couldn't really remove without compromising the figure.

This is the front rank with their arms reaching forward. I forgot how I got the purplish colour on the skin so I had to experiment with a very watered mix of red and dark blue to make a maroon colour. These guys gave me a bit of trouble as every time I went to carve a bit of putty off or clean a flash line, the body would come away from the putty belly or the legs would snap off the putty belly. I ended put waiting for the putty to dry, then pulling the legs away from the putty and gluing it with superglue, then waiting for that to dry, then pulling the body away from the putty and regluing that. I had to follow the same process for the arms and the head as they all had putty bits between them and the body.

This is a rank of the older figures . It seems I also put a little bit of brown wash into the eye sockets at the same time that I washed the bones, to give them that sunken look.

Here's all the figures together as a unit. I think I did fairly well to get them to blend together. The colour scheme  does most of the work I guess.

Last of all I have this little fella which has been knocking around my collection for many years. I suspect he might have come out of a collection of GW Talisman miniatures I bought once. He's a little different again so I've stuck him at the back :-)

Frost Giants

I saw Xintao's excellent update of some frost giants he painted using some Russian 54mm barbarian figures. They are very cheap so I thought I'd give it a go too and add them to a Kings of War army somehow ... or perhaps they can be used in a DnD scenario...

Have a look at [url]]http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=420257[/url] for more info.

When I got the figures from eBay I thought the axes were too short and the curved sword that one figure had was not to my liking. I changed the curved blade into a more typical Viking type saex by cutting it back and used green stuff to give that figure a scabbard across his front, as has been seen in Viking burials. I also cut the axe hafts and made longer hafts with wire and green stuff. I also used green stuff to add some more horsehair to their crests and some other touches.

I kept the bow as I don't mind the idea of depicting a giant with a long range weapon, although I do like Xin's spear modification. Maybe I should have bought two boxes?

The figures were not so easy to modify as the plastic is fairly soft and similar to what airfix soldiers are made from.

Here is a 'before painting' shot.

And here is a 'during painting' shot.

I'll finish them off some time but I have more KoW zombies to paint first.

HotT Victorian Sci Fi - Germans

Time for a sad story. Many years ago I made up a HotT Victorian Sci Fi army from mostly old plastic miniatures - Esci and  Airfix mainly. I finished them and played a few games before HotT went out of favour at my local group. I shelved them in a shed out the back and years later came back to find that we'd had rats in who had pretty much destroyed them all. Despite this, I did learn a few things while making them so I thought I'd show them off anyway.

I based them, not on the standard 60mm wide bases but on 80mm wide bases. We played the game by doubling the distances given for the 40mm base width game. There were a couple of problems with this but it mostly worked :-)

 Shooters - Bavarian Infantry - I think these are from the Esci Prussian and Austrian Infantry box.

 Riders - Deaths Head Hussars - figures are Esci Lord Cardigan's 11th Hussars

Flyers - Two flyer units based on WWI Germans using mechanical wings. See my first post on how these were made.

Hero - German Command Unit - Bavarian Officer from the esci Prussian and Austrian Infantry box, Prussian Officer from the Airfix WWI Germans, two Flag bearers from the airfix prussian box and a matchbox (or corgi or hotwheels) antique car.

Hordes - Martian Marines - figs are airfix Prussian Infantry 1815

Blades - Prussian Flame Throwers - Airfix WWI german Inf.

Knights - Prussian Heavy Cavalry - These were Esci Scots greys with the head cut off and airfix WWI infantry heads stuck on. I just painted the cuirass on and ignored the figure details.

Shooters - Prussian Infantry - figs are airfix WWI german infantry

One of my Underwater Cavalry It was an esci plastic Polish Lancer Figure with green stuff diving helmet and air barrel strapped to his back and a piece of wire bent into shape as the breathing tube.

Underwater cavalryman from the back.

Water Lurkers - My undersea cavalry. The mounts were shark figures from http://www.megaminis.com/ but I think the moulds have since been sold on.

Artillery - Two airfix WWI German machine gunners plus an Airfix Prussian and Airfix British WWI cannon (don't tell anyone).

Behemoth - German WWI A7v tank - paper miniature with a couple of modifications, some brass rod for the exhaust and front gun with a bit of green stuff around the gun mount all painted brass to give it that steampunk feel :-)

Some zombies for my Kings of War army

These are some zombies that have been lying around for quite a while. I've been playing Kings of War lately and really enjoying the Undead army. I like the way they keep coming back at ya... unless they get hit really hard all at once, that is...

Debbie made these herself many years ago and I finally got around to throwing some paint on them.

They are made up of plastic bits from at least two different sources, GW zombie box, very old GW skeletons box and possibly the odd bit from the GW militia box. 

I need about 60 of them to field a Legion in 'Kings of War'.

Example Hobbit from wargames factory miniature

This is just a quick note to show that you can make hobbits from old Wargames Factory Saxon, Viking and Norman miniatures.

Front

 Back

I took a sheet of saxon bits. I took the leg bit and cut out the legs between the tunic and the shoes. I then glued the shoes directly onto the base of the tunic and assembled the rest of the figure as normal.I added a bow and quiver to his back and then I used a bit of green stuff to add a bedroll and strap, a small paunch on his belly, some hair on his shoes to make bare feet and a leg of cured ham on his belt. I also cut down his sword to look more appropriate for a hobbit.

I reckon it will paint up okay and cheaper than a purpose bought miniature :-)