Something in the Dark

Tonight is the night to celebrate all shadowy things. Dark creatures will dance at the moonlight and only the bravest will join in the gory spectacle.
For the past weeks and only after midnight a monster was sculpted in the stickiest clay... Tonight I leave you a teaser for Something in the Dark.

Happy Halloween.

Sculpting a Rock Giant ( the concept)

I have been thinking about alternative creatures to add to my sculpting projects and after a bit of brainstorming I ended up going for a massive rock, stone and dirt Giant.

I find the miniature market does not have one that I would be willing to pay for so I got my pencils and paper out and sketched something that is more up to my street.

Sculpting rocks its kids play so this should be quite easy to sculpt too. Size wise I want the rock giant to be not as tall as regular Giant but considerably bulkier and with stumpy legs.

This is what I got so far.

Im not happy with the chains idea and will lose them, its just a bit ridiculous to expect that a Rock creature would be stopped by those puny metal chains. I already started sculpting this and its more patience work to fill that huge body mass with rocks than anything else... its entertaining though and drained 2 packs of putty already. Fun times.

ORC BULLY

In continuation to my Doomdiver convo I really needed a Orc Bully to keep those perky Night goblins in shape. Picked some cool bits from my bitzbox and sculpted just a few details here and there, nothing to ambitious just a quick & easy do build model.

It was fun to sculpt the Whip and will post a tutorial about it very soon. Until next time, happy modelling.

Alternative Arachnarok. HUGE SPIDER!

There's nothing like looking at the window and have a look at your friends to see if they are doing ok... No I'm not talking about the neighbors Im talking about my little garden friends.
This time of the year is when spiders get fat and big and Im lucky enough to have a colony of them outside near my garden.
Last year there was a big one on this same spot and looks like she left 5 or 6 spiderlings behing... this year I have watched them grow and hopefully next year the colony will grow even further. Lets hope they don't eat each other.

Here is one of the Spiderlings.

Thinking about spiders this weekend I remembered one of commissions for Otherworld miniatures, the biggest spider I ever sculpted. I mean I have them here so why not use it for Age of Sigmar as an Arachnarok?

As far as scale goes there are some differences against an Arachnarok. The legs are fatter but the abdomen is considerably smaller humm...

I think I will use this one with 4 little gobbos with spears on its back, which makes me 2 arachnarok strong for my AOS.

As for bits this kit comes with 8 legs 1 body and 2 small mouth pieces, all in pure metal so its very heavy... Heavy metal all the way!

If you interested you can find these spiders at Otherworld miniatures. 

To close this perfect weekend I managed to nail down a Huge sculpt concept for my Rock lobba and started sculpting it today... wasted already a full 113g pack of milliput Ouch!

The Tau Invasion

Great month for Tau fans with lots of new goodies! From huge kits loaded with options to wonderful terrain, there is something for everyone really. I have always been an enthusiast of the faction specially the Kroot since they do remind me of the Predator, like Nids do with Aliens. Not sure when Kroot will be updated but in the meanwhile Im having a great time with a small force of Tau.

I must say that I prefer infantry models rather than vehicles or big suits so I started just painting some colours into my man sized Tau, so far just reds. I want the colours to pop so its going to be nothing realistic or discreet, just plain in your face bubblegum red. Heres a wip.

Cheers

Squig Gobba into Doom Diver

I have finished another little convertion for my Age of Sigmar Goblin Force.
I have always found Goblin artillery models quite lacking and boring, as such I will build up alternative stand ins for what I find an essential part of any army.

I started up with the Doomdiver and was an easy project because I used a very original kit done by Forgeworld the Goblin Squig Gobba. Even if the model is just superb in every way I added some of my own things.

Bugobbos Doomdiver

On the big squig I changed the goblin on its back since it looked way to fragile for gaming and also replaced the spit parts with a Maggoth Lord bit, again for durability sake.

I sculpted some bits here and there but overall nothing too complex. Im happy how much more sturdy this model became now, unlike the original FW one that would snap at any sneeze.

The crew stayed as was except for the Goblin that was on gobba back, this one needed a special touch.

Quick and easy project and Im done with the "Doomdiver". I will struggle more with the rock lobba and spear chukka but I will cross that bridge in another day.

TUTORIAL ( How to make long tufts )

Long tufts can be challenging to do and time consuming if you need to do plenty of them. I have created a little assembly line for my tufts since I need lots of them for my upcoming terrain pieces. This process did speed up things and now I can do 100 or more a day, easy.

The main problem with long tufts is keeping them in place (standing up) while they dry... With a bit of paper you can do the following structure.

1 - Perforated paper with some folds so that the holes are away from the ground.

2 - Non adherent paper, this is where the glue goes

3 - Paper frame duck-taped to a movable surface since you want your little tuft factory mobile

I choose a big distance from the ground because I need big and medium tall tufts.

I created two assembly lines so that I can clear more units per day.

I use cheap PVA glue and some tall grass from any company really.

Lay down some glue blobs on the non adherent paper.

Grab the tall grass and make sure both extremities are secure. If you don't you will have loads of grass bits flying around everywhere.

Insert tuft trough the hole and let it stick to the glue beneath it.

Make sure you do different lengths and volumes so that you can have more options when flocking your terrain.

Once PVA is dried you lift the punched paper to reveal the results.

Thats it tuft done!

If some of them have to much glue on the base you make sure you cut off the extra.

Lots of different sizes and shapes.

I keep them in a bag and the leftovers I also keep them in a bag so I can use them later on as scatter flock.

You can do plenty of tufts very fast this way.

Age of SIgmar rebasing the black orcs

Hi all, I have been rebasing my armies to round bases so that they are ready for Age of Sigmar.
The task is not easy if you have lots of models but the end results are well worth it.
Rules wise we can use any base but the square bases look visually out of place in a skirmish game, also its quite obvious the new GW direction, its clearly round bases all the way.

This time its my unit of Black Orcs that got the new bases and I used the new 32mm since these models are very bulky. Previously I had one unit of 25 Black Orcs but Im going to split them in 3 smaller ones for AOS. So far I have 2x10 Orcs with full command and one smaller 5 Orc unit that I will expand with extra minis so its the 3rd unit of 10 strong Orcs.

With 3 units of Black Orcs I will only need a Giant and a Black Orc Big Boss so that the IRONJAWS BIG MOB is finished.

Some photos.

Unit1

Unit2

Incomplete unit3

I still need to find a way to differentiate these units on the battlefield because once they are all bundled together dishing some pain on the puny Sigmarites they will be hard to distinguish between themselves... Since the theme is Scorpions maybe they will be painted with some different details... like Black scorpion unit, red scorpion and white scorpions. I need to think about that once I crack some colours into these. For now these are based on the new wonderful 32mm's and they look a lot nicer.