Tuesday...Hammer Time.

I thought that I would avoid the diorama today so I continued to paint my Forgefathers. I have nearly finished them but I don't have any pics... but along the same lines, this turned up:

Click the Pic!

As you can see, I have received my Dread-ball order and have decided to arm them with hammers. The one at the bottom of the above pic is next to a standard trooper to give an idea of scale. After a bit of clean up and a small amount of conversion, I ended up with these:

Click the Pic!

They are almost finished but I have just found out that a mystery component on the Forgefather sprue is a power cable for the hammers so I may end up adding some of those before I paint these. 

I think that the new miniatures will be Chemically Enhanced Assault Troops (CE-ATs); that will explain the smaller heads and beefier arms/legs. They are berserks that just charge forward and hit things... pretty simple.

See you from the spray booth!

Seeing as I am on Holiday...

...I have plenty of time to do all sorts of stuff so as well as going Christmas shopping and a few other things today, I also got a small amount of work done on my Unofficial Diorama of Doom. Here is where it is at the moment:

Click the Pix!

It is still very WIP but it is getting there.

More tomorrow.

See you from the cupola!

A busy Sunday.

It has been a busy day today. I was awake long before the alarm and went for a Mc Donalds breakfast on the way to get a news paper. The news paper was needed as an indicator of when I started my Unofficial Diorama of Doom entry.

The diorama in question has been my job for the day but I have also been painting Mantic Forgefathers while I was waiting... but I don't have any pix to show off yet... so I'll crack on with the diorama.

First thing this morning, this was the starting pic:

Click the pic!

All of the miniatures in the starting pic were brand new and hadn't seen a file or clippers and the CD was one from an old box of data-discs. Once I had taken the starting pic, I got to work with some plasticard, first covering the entire CD and then adding two layers of thicker plasticard to give the appearance of channels. A small stepping stone was made from a 20mm plastic base capped of with a disc of plasticard and a table was built from yet more of the stuff. The column was made from four plastic bases, the barrel of a pen, some plastic tubes and a disc of plasticard:

Click the Pic!

I left the column off the base for now and glued the table down. I decided that I needed to trial fit the miniatures on the base so I assembled them and put them on the base. It quickly became apparent that there wasn't enough room for all of the Hellmites so I left two off:

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Once I was happy with all of the positioning, I began the green-stuff process. I filled the gaps in the column and contoured some of the surfaces before adding detail to the edges of the raised 'platform' areas of the base and the stepping stone:

Click the Pic!

Next it was time to fill in the gaps on the miniatures and add the little details (like the spilled guts of the Hellmite and the one with quarrels sticking out of it). The column was correctly positioned and glued into place before a grapple and rope was fashioned from brass wire. Finally, skeletons for the food were stuck to the table so that when it came to sculpting the items, I had something to push against:

Click the Pic!

Finally, everything was finished. The food was sculpted and the Hellmites had their pins glued in place. All of the miniatures were attached to a priming stand and all of the position pins on the base were fitted (not all pictured - they are just bits of brass wire that fill the holes the miniatures will be attached to so that they don't get clogged with paint):

Click the Pic!

I started the day with the hope that I would have everything ready for painting on Monday... and I succeeded so I am happy. Tomorrow I will prime everything and decide on colours. I think you will agree that today has been most productive.

See you from the hobby table!

A Friday post

I know it is unusual for me to post on a Friday but I thought I'd change the pace and share a few things tonight so I am sitting with a glass of port in hand typing this little post.

First of all, I'd like to welcome a new follower... I think it is adamcore but I am not sure so I hope that whoever the new follower is accepts my fond welcome. Please enjoy your stay and feel free to share ideas and thoughts through the comments box.

So today has been a day of mixed emotions.

First of all, a friend at work is leaving and I saw the last of him today... which made me sad. He is going to work somewhere else and I may get to see him in the future but it won't be like sharing banter in the office... that is service life for you.

Next I watched the final fly past of the Puma HC Mk1 helicopter today. It was a broken formation of four aircraft that overflew the airfield, landed and shut-down in unison; thus ending 41 years of illustrious service. It was a sad occasion but there is light at the end of the tunnel because the Puma HC Mk2 is now in the process of being brought into service. Hopefully it will see the successes that it's brother did.

After that, I left work to start my three week Christmas holiday. Thanks to the government for giving me an extra five days for free but I am still on call so I haven't fully escaped.

Finally, I have decided to build a diorama in seven days for the Unofficial Diorama of Doom 2012. See here for the LINK. My aim was to motivate a fellow FoDer but it seems to have fallen flat... so I'm doing it just for the hell of it now. I plan to start on Sunday morning from scratch so it could be an interesting week.

In other news, I have had my pre-Christmas tidy up... and my wife hasn't noticed. On the plus side, I now know where everything is but I would have liked her to notice... oh well.

The Mantic Forgefathers have grabbed me. That means that I have gone to the lengths of ordering a few bits and bobs; namely:

• THESE for converting
• THESE for more troops with a few extra options to help with conversions
• THIS for some heavy support
• THESE for some close combat action

I already have some of THESE and also THESE for converting so I have quite a selection of Forgefathers to command... obviously, I now need to get them all converted and painted but that shouldn't be too hard, should it?

As well as all the Mantic stuff going on, I have kept my Clanker unit on the table for the conversion and assembly process that was always going to be my Christmas project. I also have my two remaining superheroes to paint and a Thor to sculpt... plus the Diorama of Doom entry. 

That's plenty to keep me busy!

Please join me on Sunday as I post up some images of the start and progression of the diorama. I will need all of the help I can get.

See you from the tip of the iceberg!

Sweep and clean...

This week has been one of tidying up loose ends at home and at work. There has been a lot of shifting, moving and binning things and it seemed to extend to my home and the need to put Christmas decorations up.

I have been tidying up my hobby areas and still have a lot to go but things are slowly improving... but you don't want to hear about housework so I will start the post proper with a welcome. Welcome to Schrumpfkopf, the latest follower at Inso's World. Please feel free to share thoughts and ideas and I hope you enjoy your stay.

Well, first up is another superhero. This one is called Stockade and he has joined Beamer and Matterhorn:

Click the Pic!

Next is the tale of an early wake up call. Saturday, I awoke suddenly with the thought of the size discrepancy of Mantic's Forgefather miniatures. The plastics are bigger than the resin miniatures so I decided to just use the plastic ones which meant I could now paint some. I wanted to make them baddies so I kept their kit dark and their faces bleached. This is the first five:

Click the Pics!

I have just realised that the beards need a slight addition but I am happy with the way they turned out. I hope you do as well.

In other news, my Hellbrute still hasn't turned up but I am hopefull it will arrive this week. 

I have been asked to sculpt a Thor miniature. It will be a likeness of the Thor from the latest Avengers movie so it will be the newest super-version. It looks like a Loki will be following soon after too... but at the moment, there is no wire on the corks.

One week to go before I start my infeasibly long Christmas holiday. I will need to keep busy so it is likely that the hobby progress should i,prove dramatically.

Here's hoping.

See you from the bus queue!

Some news.

Well the time has come for me to share the secret that I have been barely keeping... the Space Cowboy sculpt.

A while ago I was asked to sculpt a character from a computer game and was given a few pix to copy so I set to work and took far too long to finish the job. Well I did manage to finish the sculpt and here it is in all of its glory:

Click the Pic!

He is about 3 inches tall (from the floor to the tip of the fuse) and is Green stuff over a wire frame. The only addition was a pin for the gun 'barrel' and a plastic base. He is based on Sheriff Lonestar from Awesomenauts. For more information, have a look at these two links: 

LINK, LINK

The sculpt was designed to be a gift for the buyer's friend who is one of the creators of the game and he wanted to paint it up before he sent it on. I think he did a pretty good job, don't you?:

Click the Pix!

That is just about it for now. 

See you from the middle of the queue!

It's all starting to get crazy!

It is getting to that time of year where I can't go shopping for fear of going postal on all the people who insist on walking at you because they have their Christmas blinkers on. That means that I have to occupy my time in other ways so this weekend has been one of painting and cleaning up stuff.

First on the agenda were my Visitors and I managed to finish off the Mekon's unit:

Click the Pic!

Once they were finished, I started cleaning up the next vehicle for my Tunnel Fighter army; the ambulance but didn't get very far so I decided to look for something else to do and didn't have to look far because these were on my painting table... so I painted them:

Click the Pic!

Not the best pictures... but these are the first two of the five Crossover Miniatures I got as part of a Kickstarter I joined. I am not sure... but there may be more to follow.

In other news... Henry the kitten decided to go walkabouts this week and gave us all a case of nerves... but he came back and it was only when I looked him straight in the eye, I realised where the problem was:

Click the Pic!

Can you see the problem? No? You mean you haven't noticed? Yes... he is a Hitler cat! Oh the shame! 

Last week, as you know, I dyed my daughter's hair. Well it didn't go down too well at school so this week, she looks like this:

Click the Pic!

Some teachers should lighten up a bit... but I guess there are standards and there are no other people at the school who dye their hair (he said sarcastically). 

Well... what is next? I guess this:

Click the Pic!

It is single shot and Henry loves chasing the darts. It also makes a handy distraction for him when he is doing things he shouldn't be... as long as I don't shoot at him of course! Even if I did, it is perfectly harmless so the odd one doesn't upset him.

Christmas is coming. Only a few weeks left. I have an extra long holiday this year so I should have plenty of time to get all of my chores done and crack on with a few projects. I plan on getting my travelling done before the event so that I can have time to chill out and get rid of all the tiredness that has built up over the last few months.

I guess that is about it for today. What will be next, who knows? 

See you from the top of the Blackpool Tower!