'The Hobbit' Miniatures - New Pics

Here we are, some pictures from White Dwarf showing the miniatures from the new Hobbit box, one presumes. Some nice looking minis, especially the mutant goblin types and the fat troll king guy. The warg riders are pretty cool too. Would I buy it though? Probably not. Enjoy!

Fimir - Half Dead & Fimir Character

I've been having a lot of fun with files, saws, clippers and greenstuff of late. I love assembling and converting models, I must say. Here above from right to left we have another half-dead, the half-dead unit champion, Sreng, and Avagdu, a deformed shearl who carries a possessed wyrdstone on his back containing the soul of a former meargh. He'll be a low level wizard in the game. I've been wanting to put him together for a while now. He's a mad model, I'm looking forward to painting him up.

I used the solder pen again on the half-dead to add lesions and melt out his abdomen. Works great. He'll be test model number two, so he should be done sometime next week.

Fimir - Half Dead Update 4, Glowing Eyes

I've been considering putting a glowing effect into the eyes of the half dead. I had a go at it last night, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I'm still unsure which way to go, however. I do like the way it adds a new focal point to the miniature, and I think I managed to avoid washing out the face putting a pale glow into a light face. There's still a decent amount of contrast, which I don't think would have been the case had I used yellow or red.

So, now I would love some feedback on what ye think. Glow, or no glow?

Fimir - Half Dead Update 3, Test Model Complete

The test model for the half-dead is done. He painted up pretty quickly once I'd gotten the skin the way I wanted it, which did take some experimentation. I wanted him to have that mahogany looking skin that most bog mummies have, quite dark, which meant highlighting had to be subtle but still effective. The bone I painted as normal, even though it would also be quite dark in reality, but this would have been pretty boring on a model. I then used a matt varnish over gloss, which tends to give a satiny look to the skin. I use this on the fimm warriors too to give their skin a little lift.

I used some Macharius Solar  Orange from the now defunct Games Workshop foundation range to add rust to the iron. I added a little flow improver to this to dilute it to a milky consistency. I created patches of orange on the sword which created a very pleasing random corrosion effect. It's a little hard to see on the picture, unfortunately.

The rotted kilt is a 50/50 mix of Mechrite Red and the skin colour. I wanted to mute down any clothing as it would have been stained by the peat as well, but not so much that it was indistinguishable from the skin. I'm thinking of using this mix for hair, as all bog mummies appear to be redheads, which I imagine is the bog's doing over time.

More leathery bog undead soon!

A little update - thinking about the glowing eyes thing. There are so few members of the unit with eyes, I'd kinda have to attempt the glowing eye sockets if I want glowing eyes in the unit to work. I'm aiming for something like what you see below. Whatcha think?

H&A Castle - Update 3

The castle is now finished, thank the powers. It was quite a haul, but looking at it now, there will be many years of entertainment had fighting over this place. A very nice kit, with plenty of detail. The drawbridge has some chain and pins that come with it, presumably to attach it, but I'll leave that to the fellow I painted it for, as I can't fathom how they are put together. I suspect that one or more of the pins are missing. A small quibble though, as with frequent use it will be far more convenient to be able to easily lift the drawbridge when needed. Here are some more pictures of the finished model.

Fimir - Half Dead Update 2

So! The monumental castle is done (pics later on) and with barely a moment to switch paint for modelling tools I barrelled right into the half-dead unit I've been eyeing forlornly for the last few weeks. Folks may recall this guy as the first half-dead model I mocked up some time ago. Here he is, once again, though now assembled and with a re-built shoulder and other small green stuff clean-ups. He's going to be the test model, so I'll be painting him up as soon as the green stuff cures.

The biggest problem with him was removing the integral base that Mantic models come with. I had a notion to try a soldering iron to melt it off. Boy, did that work well. A couple of seconds and the base was evaporated by the solder iron leaving only his feet. Now, there's a couple of things with this. The iron is super hot and produces fumes from the melting plastic, and if you touch it, the burn is super nasty. I also used it to add more holes to his flesh, for which it works perfectly. I can see this being used to zombify models by melting flesh, hollowing out eyes and adding ragged holes and stringy flesh. The iron is now firmly in my hobby tool set.

Fimir - New Heads

I just got an image back of my fimir heads cast in resin. Lovely crisp detailed resin, mmmmm... I'm so damn happy about this I could spit, for both the fact they look great and that the originals weren't lost in the post! That would have been a little not cool. Here they are anyway, for your delectation. No more greenstuff heads for me! Now I can concentrate on adding detail to the heads such as hoods, jewellery, scars and so on to individual models.

I also need to add that these are for my personal use, and will not be for sale.

Still Alive! - Two Years of Mumbling

Today marks the 2nd birthday of the mumblings. Yes, it's been two years I've been disgorging my internal hobby monologue onto this here blog, and there's plenty of mildy bewildered obsessive rambling left in there, let me tell you. My, how the time flies.

My thanks to all those who deemed it not only prudent, but a vital part of their hobby universe to follow the mumblings. I trust you have enjoyed the self-indulgent tirade thus far, for I certainly have. To that end, I shall continue to bang on about whatever I deem of interest at the time. Right now, it's getting that faaaaakkkkinnnggg castle done (only the drawbridge left now, so close...) and getting back to my beloved Cyclopean bog-dwellers. I got big plans for the next few units, yessir, big plans. Getting the half-dead off the skids and onto the paint table, a horde of human tribesmen complete with mythical Celtic monsters, warp-spasming fianna fimm, the rather intimidating daemonmaniac, the list, she goes on. I'll let my good pal and occasional drinking buddy Pinhead say it best.

Kickstarter - Gribbly Alien Goodness from Troll Forged

This morning on Wargame News and Terrain I came across another of those irresistible kickstarters. Troll Forged Games have put up the Assimilation alien host, containing a plethora of frankly wonderful gribblies. Here's the pitch:

The main factor driving this project is my lack of time for sculpting due to the success of Trollcast. While the new process is fantastic I have found most of my time is now used on production for other companies. My passion has always been sculpting and this Kickstarter is designed to allow me the time set aside for my own sculpting and create for the first time a full core force for Troll Forged Miniatures.

To get started I broke this force into several main creatures and have several more in the works. Being the owner and the production operator is going to allow me to bring you some fantastic value as well as product for your support.  The other large advantage here is that these would be the first product designed specifically for my new Trollcast system. This means superior product for the value, lets look at a few items. I also decided first 200 backers will have the choice of 5 trollcast bases free or 1 Grub worm of their choice. Grub worm will have 3 head styles with 3 body styles so 9 total worm to choose from. The free backer can only be taken one time and I have this in my backer list.

You can look at the kickstarter here. Some of the work in progress minis are just pure want, such as the kickstarter only host, which you can see below.

Quite the looker, ain't he?

There's another 13 days to go on this at the time of writing, with some pretty cool stretch goals still to attain, such as the awesome queen. The value for money in this kickstarter is pretty incredible too, so after a good ten minutes of resistance I hit the backer button.  I can't think of too many game systems where these juicy monsters won't fit in somewhere.

There are also some human alien hunter troops in the works too, which from the concept work look pretty sweet. There's a good deal going on these lads too, with a unit of Alien Hunters at $29 for 15 or $40 for 30 troopers. That's a pretty decent deal in my book.

For myself, having already bought some of the Troll Forged giant worms for my fimir, I can see a lot of these monsters fitting into my wyrm/grub/wriggly beastie heavy fimir army perfectly. Grub swarms lashed into battle by fimir handlers, more mounts for my marlwyrm riders, and as one of the fimir deities is essentially a giant worm, his daemons possessing a human would most likely look an awful lot like our wriggly friend above. I look forward to incorporating these miniatures into the army with great anticipation.

The second part of the kickstarter is Troll Forged games new base series, cast in 'trollcast' which looks to be a rather decent casting material developed by Troll Forged. These look grand so far, and hopefully Troll Forged will increase the range of base types they produce as I'm a real sucker for resin bases. These are proving popular, but for me the real stars of the show right now are the monsters.