Rob tries to figure something

[ShaunW]

Looking good, Rob and I agree he now looks more concerned than angry - goes to show with figures it's the way they are painted that gives them their character as much as the sculpting.

[rob_van_riel]

goes to show with figures it's the way they are painted that gives them their character as much as the sculpting.

Now, if only I could do that sort of thing on purpose For now, I'm stuck with hoping for 'happy accidents'..

[rob_van_riel]

The Grumpy Dude is finished. The rather primitive hair style (is it even deserves the word 'style') made me think he looked ealy mediaeval, and the chap who donated the head to my spares pile immediately volunteered he looked like some Roman emperor, so I'm guessing he would have been stylish between one and two thousand years back. Good enough



Six days into the year, and I've already finished a model. This is ridiculous

[rob_van_riel]

I feel a severe case of figure building and painting coming on, so I guess it is time to rivive this thread as well

As mentioned here, aside from a largish dragon that got it's own thread before I remembered this one, the first figure I started to mess with was a Draconian from the Dragonlance setting.

It has had such a long and hard life so far that I'd almost feel sorry for it, but then I remember just how "pleasant" a bunch Draconians really are and think the better of it. Still, the story so far:

Something between 25 and 30 years ago, I was running a D&D campaign, and I decided I could do with a small army of 'bad guys' to help in visualising tactical situations. I didn't want to spend a small fortune on miniatures, so I engaged in a spot of small scale IP piracy and borrowed the original figure from a friend and made a mould of one of the figures from this set. The box art is a direct copy of the painting “What do you mean we’re lost?” by Keith Parkinson.
Several casts were made from the mould, but the bad guy army never came into existence, and the casts languished for years.
Fast forward a decade or so, and I decided to finally do something with at least one of them, and I got to work painting. This too stalled, in no small part because the wings just looked silly.
Another break of several years, and I got fed up with this bit of bench clutter and tossed him out. That is, I dumped him next to the smelter to be recycled into something a little more useful next time I decided to cast something in metal. Waste not, want not and all that.
There wasn't any metal production for a few years after that, and it sat there on death row throwing baleful glares at me.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I started work on a proper dragon, and decided I might as well give him another shot as well. This time round, I modified the cloak to be able to leave off the wings, and actually got him painted up completely, and I was quite pleased with the result. That's when I varnished the figure, and in under five minutes it transformed into an irrecoverable frosted mess. Much very, very foul language was uttered, and the Draconian was dumped in cellulose thinners to rot the paint off.

So back to square one with this critter. It hadn't looked quite so bright and shiny in decades, and after a blast of white primer, work on it has started yet again. Here's where it stands now:



You may recognise him as the centre figure in the painting
I will not be entirely faithfull to Mr Parkinsons painting, this is my Draconian, and some details will change.

[Impisi]

WOW, that is quite a collection there on page 3

[rob_van_riel]

WOW, that is quite a collection there on page 3

Thanks.
I was cranking out figures at near blitzbau speed in those days. That was fine with the cheap Airfix figures, but when Historex entered the picture (at roughly five times the cost per figure), it got entirely too expensive, and it made me move the quality-quantity slider as far to the quality side as I could manage. Best decision I was ever pressured to make; I'm having more fun now while burning less money per hour and less shelfspace for the results.

Now, if I could only get a tighter grip on the stash, things would be great

[rob_van_riel]

The Draconian has gained some colour, and some company in the form of a Gnome Turtle tank. I know, it's daft, don't care



The tank is another straggler, half painted and then abandoned after the experimental paint job became a disaster. Like the Draconian, it is a home made clone cast in metal, and it too was dunked in thinner, brushed clean, and reprimed. Assuming the Draconain doesn't need yet another pass, this one will be next in line...for more experiments..

[Impisi]

you really do have some strange thingies under your bed ...

[rob_van_riel]

you really do have some strange thingies under your bed ...

I've never had to worry about monsters under the bed; I know they're there, and I'm on a first name basis with them

For what it's worth, there's also a queue of 'real' subjects waiting for attention, but I had to start somewhere, and since that dragon needed testing in preparation for a more involved project for the first week of next year, weird critters is where I started.

[rob_van_riel]

A little more colour on the Draconian, although most of it doesn't really show in the picture.

I've drilled out the barrel of the tank, and fixed/cleaned up some casting problems. I'll be trying a tank's worth of pre-shading on the shell next.

[rob_van_riel]

The Draconian finally managed to get through the painting process without incident.



Still looks like a nasty, cranky git, but this one at least has an excuse for it

The wash as pre-shading on the tank failed completely. I'll have to come up with something else.

[jssel]

Pretty cool.

[rob_van_riel]

Some activity again at last..

I hand painted the lines on the Turtle Tank with Raw Umber, and then hit the tank with Tamiya transparent green, followed by a lighter coat of transparent blue. The result isn't quite what I was aiming for, but I sort of like it, and equally importantly, I'm done stripping paint off this thing



To stop this thread from getting completely swamped in weird fantasy stuff, next in line is a 54mm French surveyor, courtesy of the German company Hecker-Goros. I'd never heard of them, but I needed some filler to pad out an order from Berliner Zinnfiguren, and this one got caught.



There's just a handfull of parts in the bag, but a figure like this doesn't need a huge parts count, and the quality of the parts is excellent.



The base was not included, that was picked up ages ago in a clearance sale somewhere.

There is nothing to help the builder align the legs and deck of the tripod with the measurement tool, so I've been improvising a bit. So far, strips of thin polystyrene have been glued to the large disc, with a space between the strips and the center axle. There are also holes drilled into the base. Hopefully that will give me enough grip to align the bits.

[Bissyboat]

Nice figures and a very fierce looking dragon.

[rob_van_riel]

I've run into a slight glitch with the surveyor. The tripod thing is as tall as he is, which makes looking throught the instrument on top rather challenging. I suppose this is due to the fact that the tripod legs end in spikes, that are supposed to be pushed into the ground. This won't work on the cobblestone base I had planned, so I'm currently constructing a grass covered alternative out of some scrap wood and leftover 'grass'.

Meanwhile, some unexpected guests showed up, courtesy of my new 3D printing toy..



The pile of luggage with a person attached was designed at 35mm scale, but since all my other figures are either 28mm or 54mm, I scaled him both ways. This one really needs to be attached to a base, since keeling over backwards is guaranteed with that load. The big guy will inherit the cobblestones from the surveyor, while the little guy will have to make do with some random bit of plastic.

The cat was just too funny to resist

There's also a young lady with bow and arrows, but she's entirely too topless to avoid permanently scarring fragile minds, and as such probably not allowed here. She's providing quite the learning experience in dealing with 3D prints, in particular, dealing with the mess left behind by a small forest of supports. You can't get away with anything while dealing with bare skin. The little pinpricks left behind by some supports are a real pain to fix, especially since she too is only 54mm.