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.