Micro Art Studios - Holo Bill Boards - Completed

Well I managed to find time to break out the airbrush yesterday and quickly hosed these down with a few different shades of light browns/whites and got the "Holo" bits stuck in.  I managed to grab a snap against a nice white wall to try and show off the "Holo" parts to best effect.

These went together exceptionally easy without any glue, all the parts fit nice and tight.  The "Holo" parts look even better in the flesh, though some bright spark should come up with a lighting kit for these as they would look spectacular lit up.  This is a definite must as scenery kit for anyone playing infinity and comes at a good price for what the kit contains.

Micro Art Studios - Holo Bill Boards

So this is the first of my Salute purchases to appear on here, I got these along with a whole lot of counters and templates from Micro Art Studios solely to use for playing Infinity.  The kits go together and smell delightfully of burnt wood. Im looking forward to getting these painting and the vividly printed inserts popped inside.

Scythes of the Emperor - Landspeeder Typhoons - Part Three

Well I finally finished one of these off barring the Insignia, hopefully it won't be long before I et it's friend taken care off but I get distracted easily.

Watchtower thingy - completed

Well I got this done before heading off to salute but only just got round to getting some photos of the finished product so here it is.  The most challenging bit was trying to get a good match for the old GW Terracotta that I wanted to use for the cap stones.

I also managed to get the glowing green swirls sorted out so if needed it could sub in for some homachine action with some kind of Cryx soul portal inside.

Salute 2012 - also my 100th post

So i figured for my 100th post (never thought I would make it this far) I would do something special.  Ever since I moved to the South of England I intended to go to Salute, yet never got round to it.  However as my 100th post loomed I got an unexpected saturday off and thought "lets get it on!"

I have to say this was an excellenty run event.  For starters a great venue combined with ease of transport and a super cheap ticket price with inclusive miniature already puts Gamesday in a bad light.

The variety of manufacturers and there how approachable and friendly are is where this event really shines.  They talk freely about where they came from and where they want the business to go in the future.  They happily speak about upcoming releases and eat up feedback of all kinds, GW could learn a lot from this approach.  With all this variety the day feels too short to take everything in and you are constantly on the go, not like at Gamesday where I often find myself bored and having covered everything by 2 o'clock.

Other refreshing things was just the variety of different things on display entered in the painting competition, after all it gets a bit boring after the 100th marine in Golden Demon.  Here are some examples of entries on the day.

A real highlight of the day was a chance to speak to the people from hawk wargames previewing there upcoming game dropzone commander.  This is a 10mm mass warfare system, they previewed four factions on the day all with exceptionally good studio paintjobs.  The miniatures and building kits are in a art deco style and the sculptors passion for this style certainly shines through in the miniatures.  Just from a painting basis this gam excites me and I look forward to seeing how it plays aswell.  Here are the photos I managed to plunder from there very well observed cabinets.

The detail on miniatures this scale is absolutely exquisite and the idea of doing a modular building system to go with these miniatures to complement the style is a definate winner. I also have to take my hat off to the studio painter, whoever they are showed these miniatures off in the best possible light.

On the whole it was a great day and despite spending far too much (my purchases will definately be appearing in future posts) I will 100% be back next year.

More Scenery - GW watchtower thingy

Some other bits of scenery i've been cracking on with.

This is fairly generic as far as GW scenery goes so will be able to hopefully use this for Homachine as well.  This means i'm probably going to be going glowey green for the well part to give it a Cryx to it.

Speaking of Distractions - Empire Griffon

I never could resist a distraction lol. Probably just going to bash this out and eBay it but its been ages since I manage to get a WFB big gribbly painted up.

Scythes of the Emperor - Landspeeder Typhoons - Part 2

As promised a little update for my scythes.  The yellow is done on both of these and i'm just getting started into getting the metal basecoats and first washes on at the moment.  Hopefully will crack on with these over the next couple of weeks.  Heres some photos anyway.

Also a sneak pek of the last few bits needed for this army.

Scenery again - OOP Fire Industries

Well time for a little update, I promise the next one will have more Scythes so don't worry.  I'm still churning through my scenery collection and this time it was the turn of some excellent ruins made by Fire Industries.  Fire Industries was to be what Forgeworld is to GW for Rackhams Confrontation range.  However due to Rackhams demise Fire Industries swiftly followed which is a great shame as I would love a few more of there pieces, still I shall continue scouring eBay.  Anyway its picture time:

Thats all for now and if all goes well i'll have some WIP photos of my Landspeeder Typhoons up tomorrow.

Fun with Science - Casting Crates

Well I survived the monkey fights in Kenya whilst out there for my brothers wedding and have returned!  unfortunately ever since, my misfiring brain has been getting me up at stupid o'clock.  Then inspiration struck! I had found some Hornby crates on sale in the local model shop/fancy dress bazaar and wanted more to use them for "generic crate" for scenery Infinity, Homachine, Malifaux, Fantasy etc.  I also had in my cupboard of many things the remains of a casting kit I had unsuccessfully experimented with in the past so I figured, why not! After all everyone enjoys a bit of solvent abuse in the morning.  So day one I made up the silicon mould.

All went well though I had to bulk out the silicon a bit with random tat I had due to not having quite enough to cover the crate, hence all the speckley bits.  Next up it was time to crack out the toxic chemicals :-)

After a few test pours into plastic cups to make sure I had the ratios right I took the plunge.

The results where surprisingly good so I endeavoured to cast as many as I had resin left.  This left me with a neat little pile of crates ready for priming and painting.

Having not totally cocked this up I think there will be more casting in the future and fully intend to experiment with different kinds of moulds and see what other things I can create as soon as I get some more Silicon and resin.  One thing I have learned is next time i'll be using a 1:1 ratio resin as there was a lot of time wasted with weighing and measuring.  So make sure you keep your eyes peeled for whatever early morning madness appears next.