Halloween?

It's that time of year where I feel like a prisoner in my own home...Halloween. A time where children are escorted (some of the time) by parents and encouraged to be greedy as they knock on the door, ask for sweets and if they don't get any...throw something at you.

I buy sweets every year just to fend off the hordes at the door.

I really don't enjoy Halloween.

I am really tired at the moment. I have had a TORRID week at work, have had to get up at stupid-o'clock in the morning to deliver and pick-up my son from school (he went to Spain for a football coaching trip for four days) and have had the sniffles...so I am a bit under the weather too...

I have a broken up night shift to do this coming week...with a night shift on Monday and Thursday and a day shift in between ( a bit of parade practice for the Remembrance Day parades)...sleep?...what sleep?

I know...moan, moan, moan...but I have not had the enthusiasm for anything as I am so bleeping shattered :(.

On the plus side, I sold £100-00 worth of miniatures so I have been able to buy a couple of miniatures cases to store yet more of my metal horde.

I have also ordered ten sets of claw arms to finish off my Tyranid Gargoyles that have sat on the side FOREVER!!! My wife will be glad to see them finished and packed away.

I have made a small order with Heresy so that I now have the remains of a complete set of trench-coat gang-members on the way (and some bases and Green Stuff).

A friend of mine from work brought in a rather interesting chunk of foam-board for me. It is all textured and lumpy and I thought it was very nice of him to do it...seeing as my hobby is viewed with ridicule where I work (I pitty them, I really do ;) )...it is now chopped into bits and is in the process of being covered in Polyfilla...one of the only things I have had the motor skills to actually do this week :(. Once it is all finished, it will make a nice background for my photographs.

I have found my E-bay Carnifex and have been bulking it out with some Green Stuff. I would try to do more than just bulk it out but I have no concentration span...so I won't because I'll ruin it.

There is an unofficial 'Diorama of Doom' competition over at the Forum of Doom that I have been roped in to running...take a look and give it a go:

DoD Competition

Finally, I would like to congratulate Andy Foster for finally finishing his masterpiece of a Dragon:

the Heresy Dragon

Well done Andy...it is absolutely STUNNING work.

Well...that's about it for today. I'm sorry I haven't got anything too interesting for you today but I haven't achieved anything worth showing off.

See you through the tear gas, rioters and angry commissariat.

I found something...

I wasn't going to post today...I was going to save it for the weekend but then I thought..."hang on...I have another follower!" So I couldn't really NOT post, could I?

Welcome to Spartan117! I hope you have fun on your travels through Inso's World...a world where you can never tell what will be around the next corner!

So...what was it that I found? Well, a couple of years ago, I went to Salute and bought a whole bunch of stuff. I have slowly been working my way through my stash and I recently came across this:

Click the Pic!

It is a Dvarg from Black Hat games. Now at first glance, he looks like a bit of an odd sculpt but he grows on you. He's a Space Dwarf and he is just one of a set of eight.

Now for the sad bit...

I bought a set of eight. They were all bagged up behind the counter and I put them in my convention carrier bag with the rest of my swag and took them home. I didn't think anything more about them until I unpacked them and found that three of the Dvarg I had bought were so poorly cast that I couldn't recover them. They suffered from a massive case of mould slip...and so they had to be retired to the bin :(.

I still have five of them...just enough for a small squad...so watch this space for a few more!

I quite like them but have had to work far too hard on them with regard to sorting them out ready for paint...but I guess they are worth the effort.

See you across the mist covered loch!

A time of reflection...

It is Sunday again. The nights are drawing in, the air is starting to acquire a chill feel and the impetus for life slows down as the Winter months loom ever nearer.

All around, the trees are starting to shed their leaves and the cobwebs become more visible as the branches are laid bare by the encroaching time of death and re-birth.

The Hedgehogs are all around us, in the quiet hours; rooting through the leaves and stocking up on tasty slugs so they have enough fat for the coming hibernation. The birds are filling their bellies with autumn berries and there is the beginning of the end for this season's growth...this season's life.

It is a time for reflection and a time for a bit of a sort out. The mind wanders to all those things that have been put off for too long...those little jobs that nag and bite at your conscience...the ones that you should have done a long time ago but got sidetracked and never got around to doing.

For me, the last few weeks have been torturous to say the least. I have had no enthusiasm for the hobby but have managed to keep ticking along with all those mundane little jobs that I have put off for so long. I have been so tired that I have been unable to achieve ANYTHING with my sculpting tools...apart from filling gaps in a plastic base or two...which has been very frustrating as the jobs on that front are mounting up. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel and, as my previous posts this week have shown, I have been catching up on basing and varnishing and painting the odd thing that didn't need too much detailing. My Tyranids are now finished and awaiting varnish but there was one member of the group that had been missing from their numbers...until now. This is the Carnifex. Before anyone says 'he is detailed and needed a steady hand' I would like to say that the smallest brush I used on this one was a size-1...in fact...it was the only brush I used:

Click the Pic!

He is painted the same as the rest and will be acting as the boss until the queen turns up...but that will be in the future when I can start sculpting again.

I am not looking forward to varnishing all of the Tyranids but until I do, I have no space in my cupboard for anything else...so I guess, the sooner I do it, the better.

As a result of varnishing my Urban Grymn and getting a new case from Kaiser Rushforth, I have re-packed my Temperate camouflaged Grymn into a shiny new case and have left room in the old one for the Tyranids...once I have varnished them. Also, the new case is so perfect that I will be getting a few more to cater for my various armies...then I can get rid of the GW cases that I own and that have been 'chopped' a bit...everything will be tidy :).

With a view to having a bit more cash for cases, I have been selling a few bits from the cupboards...all unpainted stuff that I collected and never got around to assembling. That means I'll have more money for cases and more space in the cupboards for storing the stuff I want.

...Yes...Autumn is a time for reflection, change and the passing of an era...but from all change comes new ideas, new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. In order to build the latest temple/building/bridge, the old one has to be destroyed or flattened...to build upon an old structure means that the new one will only be as strong as the weakest part...and that is likely to be the old, crumbling, out-moded components that should have been washed away.

So...

The Carnifex is no longer on the table :).

See you through the falling leaves.

...What?

I went out last night...had a complete blast...and one too many glasses of port...GREAT!!!

...so I am a bit shabby today and don't have the will power to do anything other than sit, chill and rehydrate.

Here is my Space Dog with a finished base and a coat of varnish:

Click the Pic!

...and here he is with the rest of the crew:

Click the Pic!

I just thought I'd share :).

...and another thing...the Carnifex is on the table...

See you when I wake up...

A Wednesday Welcome!

I have just noticed that my follower count has reached 80...so I'd just like to say Bienvenue to Haakon.

Welcome aboard! I hope you enjoy your stay here and garner a small amount of inspiration for any hobby related endeavours you may encounter.

A small distraction...

I received this in the post yesterday...I couldn't resist painting it (but haven't finished the base):

Click the Pic!

Blimey...the paint on the base is still wet!

It is soon to be released by Hasslefree Miniatures.

See you through the shrapnel cloud!

Consolidation...

Another week has flown by and it is time for a Sunday update again. I would love to say that I have started another project or sculpted something new...but this week has been a bit of a consolidation week. For starters, I have been systematically varnishing this lot and they are now varnished, ready to go into storage:

Click the Pic!

They are my Urban Grymn...a platoon of jump-pack assault troops. Once I had varnished them, I moved onto the next little job that has been sat in my cupboard for ages...my desert Tyranids. These needed basing and that is what I did:

Click the Pic!

The Warriors (big ones) and Gaunts (medium sized ones) just needed the bases painting but the Rippers (smallest ones) needed to have their bases made from scratch.

Click the Pic!

As you can see in the pic above, each of the Ripper bases has three Rippers on it. If you look at the pic on the far right above, you will see a Ripper lying on it's side; showing off the little magnet that holds it onto it's base. Each of the bases have magnets in them and each ripper has one on it's bottom; that means that they are removable so that each time the base receives a wound, one can be removed to represent it...it also means that I can make another batch of single bases if I need to change them onto individual bases for some reason.

Next up is a selection of Gaunts. These are Termagants with Genestealer claws:

Click the Pic!

The next two pics show the Hormagaunts:

Click the Pic!

Click the Pic!

Once these are varnished, the only troops on my painting shelf will be my Tunnel Fighters.

You may ask why I have been plodding along with this stuff. Well, I have had a torrid time with sleep and after I attempted to do a spot of sculpting, I not only dropped the mini a dozen times but also managed to stick the sculpting tool into my finger...so I thought I needed to work on something simple. That has led to me sorting out my cupboard and finishing off all of my basing/varnishing. I have also packed away my Temperate Grymn army into my new miniatures case from Kaiser Rushforth...which leaves space in it's previous case for the Nids to go into :).

It is all terribly logical when you look at it.

...so...Drop-ship...Lion Marines...Tunnel Fighters...varnishing...

...Mmmmmm...Drop-ship...

See you over the pulpit!

Sunday...oh dear...

I guess it's Sunday already. I have had a very busy week of 12hour -long, night-shifts as guard commander and it has really taken it's toll on me. My sleep patterns are shot and as a result I have not picked up a brush or sculpting tool for over a week now. All I have managed to do is unpack ten Copplestone Castings, Future Wars troopers and put them on my table. I also decided to unpack an old army and take a few pix...when you see the quality of the pix you will quickly realise why I haven't done any hobby stuff lately:

Catachan Jungle Fighters (Click the link to see the album).

The army (above) is an all metal Catachan army that I painted a while ago. All gloss varnished and based using Milliput!

So...fliers.

What sorts are there when you think about troop transport and support? I have been thinking and I have come up with three that appeal to me:

1) Dropship - A craft that is able to breach the atmosphere, go into space and ferry troops from ship to planet surface and back again.

2) Surface troop transporter/equipment lifter - A futuristic version of a helicopter that is big enough to carry a squad of troops and maybe under-sling loads...or even fold all the troop seats up to carry cargo inside.

3) Surface gunship - I think a futuristic Apache helicopter would be where I'm heading with this idea.

Obviously, there are other fliers that could be thought about...fast interceptors, dog-fighters, bombers, heavy lift fliers (think Antonov) and jet-bikes...but I am a helicopter man and I am thinking that is the route I would like to take.

So...a dropship. Flying controls would have to be able to function in a vacuum and in an atmosphere so it would need to be a mix of thrusters and standard ailerons/flaps/rudders. The propulsion system would need to be able to fire in a vacuum...so no air intakes...maybe solid rockets or propulsion fields? The shape must be such that it looks like it could take on re-entry easily...maybe with the help of some protective fields? How large should it be...squad sized or platoon sized? Should it be armed and if so would it have guns or just protective missiles/flares/rockets?

All just thoughts and whimsy at the moment...but the idea is there...

Well...that's it for today. Sorry I haven't got any pictures to show off but I hope to be back on form soon :) .

See you through an optimistic sense of purpose.

It's a Friday update for a change...

Another day and another update. Before I start with the post, I'd like to welcome the latest follower to Inso's World; bigmanfran...so in the usual fashion...WELCOME! I hope you enjoy your journey here.

Whilst on the subject of new additions, I have added a blog to my list of visited sites...'Hivestone Incursion'. It is the blog of Bagpuss and is filled with some great miniatures and painting...I heartily recommend that you all visit it.

So...why the Friday update? Well, I am about to start a seven day stretch of 12 hour night shifts and I really don't think that a Sunday update would be on the cards this week...but rather than not bother, I thought I'd bring it forward a couple of days.

On to the rest of the stuff and this week I have been really put through the mangle with a serious lack of sleep and a whole bunch of other stuff...so I haven't been very busy on the hobby front. I have not picked up any sculpting tools for fear of injury and I have just kept to basic painting...as a result, I have only managed to finish off the latest Tunnel Fighter squad:

Click the Pic!

It is the fourth basic squad and is designated pink-squad. I have another squad of these that has yet to even be unpacked...but that is due to life being a bit heavy lately :(. I have just ordered a new batch of Pig Iron heads to go with this un-started squad and when they arrive, I should have enough heads to finish the army with...unless of course, this is one of my armies that never sees the end...

Seeing as I sorted out my Pay-pal faf, I have ordered a miniature storage case from Kaiser Rushforth and that means that I can start all of my varnishing afresh...when I have the time and enthusiasm...

That, as they say, is the end of the show (for today) so I'll bid thee farewell.

See you through the downpour!