Posts Tagged ‘Bad Squiddo’

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From the painting desk #62 – Dastardly pirates

December 15, 2018

Plenty (for me) of painting done recently! I haven’t added all that many pirates to my pirate crew recently – that changes now. I realized I have a ton of wonderful pirate miniatures, and what do you know, they could be painted! With that intro, here we go:

Three 28mm pirate miniatures

Click for a larger version

On the left is a female pirate from Bad Squiddo that I bought on our visit to CRISIS in Antwerp in early November. While she’s pretty much on the borderline of almost being too fantasy, she’s just suitable enough. A lovely sculpt in general, her hair looks weirdly unfinished which gave me a bit of a headache. Are those ribbons? Dreadlocks? In the end I just painted everything as hair. That gripe aside, she looks very menacing and has a sweet Jack Sparrow/Black Sails Anne Bonny mash-up vibe. The axe is brutal, too. The miniature is also a great example of a non-sexualized female pirate miniature, we definitely need more of those.

Next up is a carpenter from Black Cat Bases. While he’s not explicitly pirate-y – he could well be used as a carpenter on a merchant ship – I added him to my pirate crew. A lovely, characterful sculpt that was fun and easy to paint. What more could you ask for?

My third pirate in this lot is one of my favourite pirate minis of all time, a knife thrower by Foundry. He’s one of the most characterful pirate minis in existence, and looks like a really rough customer. I used a darker skintone (as with the female pirate) for some variety, I think a pirate crew should be a motley one. There’s a narrative element as well, as in my imagination he’s not a European – I’m sort of thinking Queequeg in Moby Dick, so some South Pacific blood in him. Absolutely loved painting this one!

These three are a welcome addition to my crew. They bring my pirates up to a total of 18 or so – might be time for an end of the year group shot?

They also serve as a great reminder, that when basing and painting style are consistent, you can easily mix miniatures from different manufacturers despite the somewhat different sculpting styles.

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments »

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From the painting desk #61 – Terrors that flap in the night

November 18, 2018

It’s more than a couple of weeks since Halloween, so time to recap! As is tradition, I put on a horror themed miniature game for my friends, which in turn was a good incentive for me to get some vampires painted.

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These two ladies are part of Bad Squiddo’s My Last Sunrise line, and they’re lovely! I showcased the third one in a previous post. Long, flowing robes and clean sculpting (courtesy of Gus Kearns) made these really fun to paint. Again, I went with a very grey skintone – I had both corpses and statues in mind. I painted the robes in bright colours to counterbalance the grey skin. The painting isn’t as smooth as I’d like – it was a bit rushed so the blending is just not there especially on the blue dress. Other than that, they’re ok.

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Another miniature from said Kickstarter campaign, this one needs no introduction. He’s obviously the big D, Dr. Acula, Alucard, the mysterious owner of Carfax Abbey…so yeah Dracula. A quality sculpt by Gary Morley and a easy to paint mini, I’m quite happy. As with the notorious cloaker, I went with a very, very classic look with red cape linings and all. I went for a more human – if pale – skin than with the brides, to represent Dracula being a bit more sophisticated and trying to blend in with humans.

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This one is from Reaper, and documentation in this blog reveals that I bought the mini…nine years ago, back in 2009. Sheesh. Well, after nine years of waiting, she’s now finally painted! As you may have noticed, I love painting red, so I went with that here as well. It was a quick, rough-ish paintjob but I feel it does the trick. After all those years in the cupboard I’m just happy that the mini is finished. It’s still a pretty neat sculpt, so kudos to Derek Schubert!

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Vampires come in all flavours, and this one from Heresy is definitely one of the nastier-looking ones. Paul Muller has managed to sculpt one of the nicest vampires around, in my opinion. I gave the mini a really quick paintjob consisting mostly of drybrushing and washes, but I’m still immensely happy with the end result. It looks like a nasty beast, just like I wanted it to.

The Halloween game itself was great fun as usual, with vampires successfully eating every single villager before sunrise. A random selection of photos shows you many of the usual suspects appearing in these Halloween games as well as some of the painted minis showcased above. You can click on any photo to open a bigger version in a new tab. Thanks to the players for the photos!

The hunters…

…and the hunted

Nosferatu stalks his prey

A hapless nightwatchman flees from approaching zombies

A damsel in distress

It’s a monster rampage!

Due to some really poor luck on the vampire’s part, these two basically spent such a long time together that they became a couple

 

Posted in 18th century, Game reports, Miniatures, Pirates, Vampires/Werewolves, Zombies | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments »

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From the painting desk #60 – All the single ladies

October 19, 2018

With my painting desk finally set up and Halloween approaching at full tilt, I’ve been painting a lot in the last couple of days. It’s time to showcase my first finished minis in god knows how long.

The first one is a pirate from Black Scorpion. I really love the posing of this mini, it makes for a nice change compared to typical fighting poses and gives the character a whimsical, flirty feel. I painted the legs as having pants on because I’m quite sure no one would choose to dress their female minis in a cropped top and a loincloth while the men are fully clothed, amirite Black Scorpion? For a bit of diversity and a painting challenge I went for non-caucasian skin which I think turned out nicely. The closed eyes are a nice touch and saved me the trouble of painting eyes!

Photo of pirate miniature blowing a kiss

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The second miniature is a vampire from Bad Squiddo’s My Last Sunrise Kickstarter. It’s a wonderful sculpt of one of Dracula’s brides. I love the combination of alluring and monstrous on the mini – the exposed leg and flowing dress create a wonderful contrast with the snarling, beast-like face and the hand that is almost a claw. And no, that’s not white in her hair! I haven’t yet given this mini a blast of matt spray so the old Citadel ink I used catches the light something awful.

Photo of female vampire miniature

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This was super fun to paint! A really crisp, clean sculpt and it was easy to make her look good. The drapery is great and the face is full of character. Of the three female vampires in the KS, this one looks least like a human, prompting me to paint her in a very gray, inhuman tone. For the base I went with my autumn mix as it fits the horror theme much better than my bright Caribbean basing.

It’s really good to be back in painting action. Hopefully plenty more blog posts on the horizon too!

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates, Vampires/Werewolves | Tagged , , | 11 Comments »

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Salute 2017 part 1

April 26, 2017

It’s that time of the year again! Salute 2017 is now behind me, and I’m sitting at an AirBnb in Dublin – the city I’ll be spending the next three months in. As I noticed I haven’t posted in a long while (and the blog is at its slowest in terms of views since January 2010), I figured it’s about time for a post-Salute post. This post will focus on what I bought, I’ll make another one with photos from the show itself. If you can’t wait for the show photos, I suggest you hop on over to this blog for example.

Salute was fun as usual! I spent time with old friends and made new ones. I was especially hanging around the Random Platypus games, which were great fun. If you’re not on the forum yet, you should be.

My Salute haul was quite reasonable, for a given value of reasonable.

Random Platypus dice

Cute Random Platypus dice that I bought to support the forum and because they’re cute random platypus dice.

Plastic Banner Saga miniatures

Plastic miniatures from the Banner Saga boardgame that I was kindly given by Ian of Fenris Games, who I talked into Banner Saga. They’re surprisingly nice miniatures, and should be a nice change from my usual 18th century fare, speaking of which…

© Blue Moon Manufacturing

© Blue Moon Manufacturing

The Duelists and the Duelists booster pack from Blue Moon Manufacturing. I’ve been eyeing these for ages so I grabbed them when I had the chance. Lovely assortment of 18th century civilians here, and really characterful sculpts.

© Wargames Foundry

Balthazar’s Marauders by Foundry was a purchase inspired by three things: my reading up on slavery, visiting the brilliant London, Sugar & Slavery exhibition at the London Docklands museum and my long-standing need to add maroons to my pirate project. Differing from the picture, the pack actually had eight individual miniatures instead of six. They are lovely, lovely sculpts and will give me a great chance to work on different skin tones.

© Wargames Foundry

Three miniatures from this Gun crew by Foundry, that were given to me in the Random Platypus pre-Salute meet-up, as well as a bag of cannon!

© Hasslefree Miniatures

This Random Platypus from Hasslefree Miniatures, that I received as a gift. He’s brilliant, isn’t he?

Sailor and two native miniatures

Three unknown miniatures given to me by Phil of Slug Industries. They’ll find service in my pirate project obviously. Does anyone know where they’re from?

© David Wood

A full Political Parody Party from Dave of Dear Tony Blair. Love these foul little creatures!

North Star pirates

I had lost hope in finding these North Star pirates, but was given them as a gift by Andy from Ainsty Castings. I was super, super happy to have my hands on these.

I got the latest two Hounds of the Dagsterville from Jon who was working the Ainsty stand. They’ll be running around the streets of Port George soonish.

28mm bunny miniatures

And last but not least, these adorable Bunnies from Bad Squiddo Games. I bought them as a gift, purely on their cuteness factor.

Looking back at that list, I was given a lot of miniatures. Either everyone sees me as being really poor, or I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends in this hobby. I’d like to think the latter is the case.

 

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

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Shabby chic

February 22, 2016

Another finished Warbases building, one of their range of modular, simple pieces. Now, when I say simple, I really do mean simple. The basic modular building is a featureless box with a slanted roof. Of course, this makes it perfect to modify, which is why I bought quite a few. I originally intended to make a Spanish Caribbean style town which is why I bought the original few. My vision changed, but I still wanted to use the buildings of course.

After the stable, I wanted to build something a bit more fancy, yet in the same run-down style. That’s where the in-game story for the building started. I’ve found that much the same as with miniatures, providing a mental backstory to a building helps me make it more interesting and detailed. As the whole idea of my town is that it’s a British trading outpost that has slowly slid under pirate control, I figured that there would be some fancier buildings for the officials and other upper crust types. This building was maybe once owned by the local magistrate or a rich trader. After being taken over, it has slipped into decay a bit, but is still impressive.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

I wanted the building to look both shabby and impressive at the same time, so while I made it plastered (to set it apart from most of the other buildings that will have wooden exteriors) I made sure to make the plaster cracked and the nice blue paint faded and dirty. I added a balcony from Warbases and put in some extra decoration using coffee stirrers, and made supporting and decorative columns from barbecue skewers. The balcony and the window frames and shutters were all painted white, but heavily weathered in keeping with the run-down look. I also added a small patio from squares of card, but made sure that stones were missing and some misaligned. The roofing was done using the laser-cut sheets available from Warbases.

While I wanted the building to look worn, it needed to show that whoever was inhabiting the place still appreciated it. The next few steps also came from necessity.

First up were the windows. While I’ve now bought windows with smaller panes, the original ones were great, big, abyssal black holes in the walls and didn’t look right. I solved this by painting in some curtains. It makes the house look more lived-in, plus provided an extra touch of colour.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Next were the balcony detailings. I had done the coffee stirrer bits quite quickly, resulting in pretty rough gaps at the balcony corners. This was easily remedied by putting in some nice flowers flowing down over the gaps. They also made the balcony look much more lavish. In order not to make it look too fine, I used small plastic barrels by Renedra (procured through Bad Squiddo Games) as flower pots.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

As a final touch I added some details around the place. The bales of cotton and other goods (by Ainsty and Renedra) in front of the building are intended to be a non-subtle show of wealth, while various patches of grass and the vines creeping up the wall just add a bit of colour.

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

Click for a larger version

I’ve already got a suitable tenant for the building, a female pirate by Reaper Miniatures that I also picked up from Bad Squiddo. I’ve already dubbed her “pirate queen” in my head, so this should be a nice, shabby palace for her!

Photo © Reaper Miniatures

Photo © Reaper Miniatures

This piece took plenty of work, so I’m happy to say I’m satisfied with the result. Comments welcome as always!

Posted in 18th century, Miniatures, Pirates, Scenics | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments »

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