Reaper Gremlins II

I found the time to finish up the remaining two Gremlins, from Reaper's four pack.  And here they are:

I sculpted a mohawk out of green stuff for the one on the right and painted some little yellow spots on his ears to make him reminiscent of Spike from the movie Gremlins, just for fun. 

Here's a shot of all four together:

Up next an animal familiar and a classic monster from Grenadier.  Stay Tuned.

Reaper Gremlins

I painted two of Reaper's Gremlins (Dark Heaven Legends 03621) and thought I would share them even though they are from a pack of four.  I realized I hadn't shared any painted minis here for almost two months.  So I am still working on the other two but here is the first pair.

These are fun little miniatures that look similar to Pathfinder goblins.  They are quite small: less than 15mm high from their feet to the top of their head or hat.  Can't wait to finish the remaining two and I've got lots of vintage lead to paint up and share too.  Stay tuned.

Fall and Minis

This is the time of year when, besides getting a Halloween costume together and watching horror movies, I realize I need to base up and prime a bunch of miniatures before it gets too cold.  I always use spray primer and I apply it out in my backyard so I don't have to worry about overspray.  This is something you can't do when it's below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  So that's what I've been working on and I don't have any newly painted minis to share...yet, anyway.  I do have some in progress that I hope to be posting soon! 

Since I'm a visual-kind-of-guy and it's Halloween, I will leave you with this sweet Lovecraft inspired illustration by Rowena Morrill.(Which I found on one of my favorite blogs: Monster Brains.)

Ral Partha Aerial Servant aka Ghost Butler

I painted Ral Partha's Aerial Servant with Pizza, from their Weird Fantasy line, to represent the ghost of a butler that the PCs in my current D&D game are going to be facing.  Definitely a silly miniature but here he is.  Hopefully the players will underestimate him, evil laugh, evil laugh...

Grenadier Shambling Mound

Here is the Grenadier Shambling Mound from the same "Denizens of the Swamp" set that I posted the basilisk from earlier.

I feel like the photo I took makes my brushstrokes look huge and a bit sloppy but overall I'm satisfied with this mini.  I've always loved plant-based monsters for some reason and I tried to paint him with the cover illustration of the box set in mind.

I tried to use a similar (but slightly duller) coloring under the eyes like you can see in the detail of the painting below.  I'm not sure if that's supposed to be source lighting from glowing eyes or just a coloration in the facial area of this beast, but I went with it.

 More monsters on the way...

The Five Doctors

Here is a group shot of all 5 of the FASA Doctor Who minis which if you've been following along, I just finished.  Thanks for looking! (Click to enlarge)

I've got several things on my painting table right now so I'm not sure what's next...

Doctor Who - Peter Davison

Just finished the last of the five Doctor Who miniatures made by FASA: the fifth doctor, Peter Davison.  As I mentioned previously, he's one of my favorite actors to have played the doctor. He's also the only one I have met in real life.  I had the privilege of meeting him as a kid at a Doctor Who convention in Cleveland, Ohio.  I want to say it was 1986.  So without further ado, here he is...

The striped pants were the biggest challenge with this miniature.  I also think the nose it a bit too large to get a good likeness of Davison.  C'est la vie.
 I'm happy to have all five done after keeping them sitting in a box for so many years.  I will post a group shot in the next day or two!

p.s. If anyone is interested I just redid my non-miniature related art website: www.crazymattreed.com which shows some of my fine art and illustration work.  If you are so inclined, check it out!

Grenadier Basilisk

I recently picked up a complete Grenadier "Denizens of the Swamp" set of miniatures on eBay.  I wanted to paint the basilisk first because the players in a game I'm running were going to encounter one.  Unfortunately I didn't finish it in time and had to use something else but I can still share it with you, the fine readers of my blog.

The basilisk in this set has two of his eight feet propped up on a rock, so I decided to put him on top of a rocky base insert.

After sticking him down, I realized that his feet didn't match up with the base all that well and left a gap.  You can see this gap in the picture on the left.

So I used some green stuff to sculpt some
little rocks underneath him to make it a better fit.










I picked my colors based on his Monster Manual description, which indicates that he should be brown with glowing green eyes.  And here he is....

 

Doctor Who - Tom Baker

I finished painting the fourth doctor as portrayed by Tom Baker.  The fourth and fifth doctors are my favorites so a lot of love went into this mini.  The Ark in Space is the first Doctor Who episode I ever saw and I fell in love immediately. 

 

I was going for the Season 12 costume but I was looking at my Underground Toys action figure for the scarf pattern and realized later that it may have been based on the Season 15 scarf.  Oh well, it's not all that different and it gets the point across.  I also left the pattern off of his vest but that was more of conscious choice.  The way the eyes are sculpted also gave me a bit of difficulty but in the end I'm pretty happy with him.  He's been waiting for me to paint him for over 20 years, so I'm glad I did it.  Just Peter Davison left now.  Expect to see him as well as some fantasy monsters soon.

Asgard Wight FM51

Here is Asgard Miniatures FM51 Wight.

He is an oddly posed miniature with his right arm sticking out.  Is he throwing a punch?  I thought about trying to make him carry a lantern, but as scholars of the Monster Manual can tell you, wights shun bright light.  The face had kind of an odd line going through it (not sure if that's how it was sculpted or if it was an oddity of the casting) and one side seemed to have an eye and the other more of an empty socket.  Because of this I decided to paint the right side like a piece of normal flesh hanging on a green skull-like face.

I've got lots more minis primed, based, and staring at me on my painting table including Tom Baker and Peter Davison Doctor Who minis.  Something about painting that long striped scarf gives me pause but I plan to tackle it soon...

Doctor Who and an Ewok ?

I'm continuing to work on the FASA Doctor Who minis and I have completed the third doctor, Jon Pertwee.

The sculpt doesn't have a bow tie but it does have a cape, and based on that I felt like the Season Eight/Terror of the Autons costume would be most appropriate to base the colors on for this mini.

                                                       

This picture shows that costume and while the sculpt doesn't match it perfectly it seemed like the closest fit.  I have to admit I'm not as happy with this one as the last two.  Something about the face that I just couldn't get quite right.

I also painted one of the Fuzzies from Archive's Star Rovers Line.  It's interesting because if you know anything about these minis, you'll know that many of them are rip-offs of Star Wars characters.  For example, "Hans Self" instead of Han Solo etc etc.  I always assumed that this one was supposed to be an Ewok, but if I'm not mistaken this figure actually dates to around 1977 and as far as I know Ewok's did not appear until Return of the Jedi in 1983. So I guess not.

  I painted this guy up pretty quickly but I think he turned out okay.  He is very small.  I've painted 15mm miniatures bigger than he is.  You can get some idea of how small he is in this picture with the good doctor:

Should be lots more miniature goodness coming up this summer.  I've got an Asgard figure in progress, the remaining two FASA Doctor Who figures and I just picked up a bunch of Grenadier minis as well.  Stay Tuned.

5th Edition D&D aka D&D Next

I got to playtest 5E or D&D Next, or whatever they are calling it, today and it was pretty fun.  It felt more like older versions of D&D with some of the good ideas of recent editions included.  I don't have a handle on the entirety of the rules (as they are right now), but overall I'm cautiously optimistic.  I played the wizard and he felt pretty bad-ass, especially for first level but he was still very squishy and needed to stay out of harm's way most of the time.  I'm interested to play it more and see how it develops before I form a more final opinion.

What does this have to do with miniatures or old-school miniatures?  Well, not much really but the group I played with did not use miniatures at all and I missed them.  They were perfectly happy to play without them and it worked well. On the other hand, as a lover of miniatures and a hater of arguments about who is where in relation to a monster I missed them. I think it would be even better with them, at least during some combat situations.  Regardless of my opinion, it seems they are planning to make the rules work with or without miniatures or a grid.

Doctor Who and the Long Wait

Sorry for the long wait between posts (more than a month), but I've been super busy.  My goal is to post once per calendar month at a minimum.  Anyway, I managed to find a few hours to paint another one of the FASA Doctor Who miniatures that are on my painting table.  This time it's the second doctor, Patrick Troughton.

I've got to say I'm pretty happy with this mini.  It was my first attempt at any kind of plaid.  I tend to avoid doing any freehand on miniatures so I was worried, but I think I'm ok with how it turned out.  I even added some low contrast stripes to his handkerchief, that are a little hard to see in the picture, but that I think look pretty decent.  His hands look a lot more boney than I might want but overall, I like this little guy.

Most of the things keeping me busy are probably not of interest to the readers of this blog, but one thing I spent a few hours doing was the painting of an orc shaman seen below, that I sent in as part of WOTC's D&D Art Test.  I didn't labor over making something that I thought was what they were looking for, as much as I just had fun making a sort of spot illustration/character study.  I thought I would share it here, just for the heck of it.

Unfortunately I'm still pretty busy with more serious art projects, and other less exciting things, but hopefully I'll get back to the pile of lead and post more here soon!

Gamma World Eating My Time

It's been almost a month since I've posted anything here and it's mainly because I'm running a Gamma World campaign right now and preparing material and miniatures for that has taken up most of my
gaming/miniature-related time.  I just finished rebasing and slightly touching up or throwing a wash on a bunch of pre-painted heroclix and horrorclix miniatures for that game which you can see below.  Now that I'm done with that task, I should be getting back to the vintage lead which is meant to be the focus here.  Stay tuned.

Doctor Who and the Planet of Giant Ticks

So I just finished painting two miniatures: Doctor Who (the first doctor as portrayed by William Hartnell) and Asgard's Giant Tick (FM62).

This Doctor Who miniature was made by FASA in the 80's to go along with their Doctor Who RPG.  The minis were licensed to RAFM in the U.S. and Citadel in the U.K.  They made miniatures of the first five doctors, and they are all primed and ready to go on my desk, so expect to see the rest of them in the near future.  I got these as a kid and was always afraid to paint them, for fear of not doing them justice.

I'm not sure why they gave him so many rings.  I only remember him wearing the blue one.  Unfortunately in this picture the two on his left hand kind of look like warts or something. They look better in real life but maybe I should use an actual metallic paint on them.  I used grey mainly because I didn't want them to stand out too much.

The Asgard Giant Tick has some great texture on it but it really is kind of a lump of lead.  Like a deer tick, it has no eyes.  That being said, I think a giant tick would be one of the scariest monsters to run into, what with it's hideous appearance and blood-sucking abilities.  As far as I know the only other Giant Ticks available are the ones from Otherworld which do look pretty great.
 

 

 In other related news, I got a copy of the Journal of the OSFMapa that I mentioned in my last post.  It was a really fun read and I learned some things about old school miniatures that I was previously unaware of.  Again I encourage you to join us so you can get a copy of the next issue!  Email Scott at oldschoolfantasy (at) gmail (dot) com for more info.  

Update: OSFMapa now has a blog and a website where you can learn more about it.

General Update

So January was a busy month for me and I don't have any newly painted minis to show yet, but I will soon!

One of the things I did this past month was contribute to a new amateur press journal: The Old School Fantasy Miniatures APA or OSFMapa.  I wasn't really familiar with the APA concept before I saw this post on Mike's Blog: Swords and Dorkery, but essentially it's a printed zine that one needs to contribute to in order to get a copy to read.  Only a few extras are printed.  I'm not sure yet what I think of that format because it has such a limited readership, but I'm really excited to see what the other members have contributed when the first printing comes out sometime this month.  The reason I am bringing this to your attention, dear reader, is to encourage you to join the group as well.  If you are interested in vintage miniatures consider joining the group and contributing an article to the next issue.   We could use a few more miniatures junkies like you.

Archive Wink Dog

So here is Archive's "Wink Dog" painted in some slightly wacky colors.

For reasons I can't explain, the first time I saw this mini I wanted to paint it purple and pink.  There's a lovable goofiness about this piece that just made me want to go with that color scheme.  

I painted it with these colors despite the fact that I'm assuming this was supposed to represent a Blink Dog from Dungeons and Dragons.  In fact, I didn't realize it at first but the pose is very similar to Tom Wham's illustration of the Blink Dog from the first edition Monster Manual.

I love that they added a horn and a row of spines on his back, turning this into another creature entirely.  I'm  more likely to use this in a game of Gamma World than D&D.  Even if I had gone for a naturalistic color scheme I probably would have shot for something reptilian rather than anything like a dog.  

Thanks for visiting.