Goblin update

things have been slow on this front. im trying to change how i paint, as im finding im getting bored painting the same stuff over and over. so im going to be mixing up all of my projects and giving smaller updates as i progress.
so whilst ive got my chaos troll in the works.
and an army of skaven
im still going to progress with goblins as and when i fancy a change from the above. this should in theory yield more posts on my otherwise post shy blog :)

anyways enough yapping.
heres another gobbo into the dungeon.

i wanted to focus on the shield for this dude. the whole blue & white halves colour being a common theme from my previous Heroquest Henchmen. so i wanted to apply the same theme to this shield. as if a henchman was slain in this same dungeon many moons ago. his shield was looted and botched back together and now this goblin carries it!. simple

and here he is with the other already completed goblins.

rowdy looking bunch! i think on the work table. ive got about another 10 of these guys waiting to be painted. so expect further updates as i manage to get each one completed :)

and happy belated easter!! :)

2 more goblins

whilst pursuing further with my goblin/gnobblar mashups. i have 2 more to show here.
i really like how these guys are turning out. i wanted a more gritty earthy look to them as opposed to the more bright fluorescent colour schemes you see normally.
after all these are for a dungeon where its dark and NASTY!

 get back or i'll break yer legs!

you may of noticed these pictures are a little better than my previous FOLDIO attempts.

as such, ive finally decided to pack the foldio away. as i can get better results with my old lamp and a sheet of A4 paper. (i'll do a write up on why soon)

but yup so far we've got 4 new goblins ready for the dungeon. with another 12 on the way.

i really want to get these guys finished as im chomping at the bit to start working on skaven.

recent ventures with AHQ have gotten me want to further skaven bestiary for that. and having a ruck load of island of blood skaven sitting around is making me itch like a rat with fleas!

till next time

my first try at sculpting a full miniature!

so i've kinda been training myself up of recent. little bits and bobs here and there. all the heroquest furniture, researching, watching and reading every tutorial i possibly could. because quite simply i want to learn to sculpt my own figures. for about a year now i have been trialling techniques and such. back and forth.
and in the last week i decided to finally bite the bullet and got for my first full sculpt.
now as i'm doing my best to create my own ultimate heroquest edition. it made sense i did the heroes too.

so please take a look at my first ever try. of course i'm happy with it or else i would'nt of posted it (but then i do like to post my failings too so other can learn like i have)

theres still a little tidying up to do. and the axe hand is only pinned and not fixed yet.

but ive tried lots of teqniques and i would say for my first 'animate' 'organic' whatever you want to call it miniature....im pretty chuffed! :)

of course its my take on the heroquest dwarf. and i cant wait to paint it! yay!

Heroquest Fireplace

So after my previous step by step, this has been sitting around for a few days mainly due to a certain city called Los Santos. Anyway I had a few spare hours and thought that I would finally get this finished up.

ill note this is the first time ive ever attempted freehand. what you think?

well its taken a few weeks to complete. but its done now. and i must say I'm very happy with how this one turned out. I'm not comfortable with freehand. but for my first attempt I don't think it turned out bad at all.
I had a lot of tasks to tackle to create this model that I had never attempted before. so for coming out the other side of those tasks with a model I'm happy with only adds even more so to how happy I am with this one.
only got 2 left to go now to complete the full set but i think the toughest is now completed.
hope you enjoy because I'm off to get in lost Los Santos....I may be gone a few weeks. :)

Treasure Chests

ok just a quick update on my heroquest furniture. ive created 4 new treasure chests. they arent masterpieces by any means. and i probably would of been better off just buying some new ones. but then that would be cheating wouldnt it? :)
i decided to make 4 completely different, but still ambiguous looking chests. I had toyed with the idea of decorating them with bits of gold and such around the bases, but in the end decided against it. the generic look is to hide the fact that all four contain deadly traps..had you fooled huh?

 Anyways, i just wanted them to be simple chests, nothing fancy, just simple chests

i kind of rushed these also, as like always. i got side tracked away from all the furniture onto something else...which i hope to be showing very soon. i wont say too much but..'he's' looking pretty cool and is something ive wanted to do for a long long time :)

as for furniture. what do i have left?

• fire place - in progress

• alchemists desk - got some bits and bobs done for it (i really want this to look cluttered and well used)

• altar - havent started this yet. i wanted to take a completely different approach maybe using some slate to create a more stone henge sort of looking altar. havent finalised yet what i want to do.

i believe then that will be all of them...so just another 20 years to complete the expansions too! hehe
anyways its late. and im fed up of firefox crashing on me. so thats the lot
G'night folks!

The Barbarian

Call him what you like. Say what you want about him, he was always my favourite bad ass! If there was ever a call for who was gonna play as who. I was always jumping to the front making my claim to be playing as the barbarian. He even got to be the feature point of the box art!!!

 so if anything became the face of Heroquest. he may not be skilled in the arts of magic or have a handy knack of spotting big spikes sticking out of the ground. but hes pretty mean with that broadsword. Now I'm not sure if he was everyone's favourite. but he still is mine. even playing fantasy video games, Skyrim or whatever. I still play as the brutish sword wielding oaf.

it seemed also when you took a look at him, that there were 'variations' of the figure.
in the box you got this red plastic dude with a slightly warped sword.
on the back of the quest book you had this awesome 'Mike Mcvey' painted version.
and also a metal variation was also floating around

 

I wanted that dude in the middle!! I've never even seen a picture of that same figure anywhere at all. the picture on the right claims to be the same. but we can see side by side. they aint the same!

i think that figure has popped up on Ebay for a substantially ridiculous amount over the years. and rightfully so if it really is that rare!

so who's fault is it?

 Get to the choppa!!!!!

Yes his fault. Conan the camel punching barbarian. I've never read any of Robert E Howard's tales, nor have i ever touched the comic book. but when i watched this film as a kid. i was just blown away. Arnie is Conan and not even Kal drogo can do anything about that!

So it comes as no surprise that anything called barbarian after this film, was pretty much a copy of, or so influenced by Conan that it may as well of been a copy.

Heroquest's barbarian also had to of been strongly influenced by his portrayal. and anything barbarian esq for the next few years also seemed to be that way. i collected so many of citadel's metal barbarians and still have many of them today.

sadly the whole 'barbarian' thing seems to of drained away. the nearest you see to a barbarian in games workshops catalogue of today are chaos marauders. but if you ask me they aren't even good models let alone barbarians.

Sadly many moons ago, because he got used so much every time Heroquest got played, (I'm sure I used to carry him around in my pocket for safe keeping too,, not safe enough though!) as he was the first and only casualty of a big heavy foot of doom. my foot to boot! (great pun!!)
but that wasn't so bad. i was pissed that id lost out on my favourite character, but i had loads of barbarians that could fill the void. OK none of them were a perfect match, but that didn't matter.

Over time i would change the figures I used as my barbarian.each time thinking I've moved onto something better. with the introduction of the internet I was starting to see I wasn't the only person doing this, be it a simple repaint or a complete proxy like i was doing.

was nice to see everyones own personal takes on the barbarian.

Some went for the straight up repaint

courtesy of Gunamar Ironwill

courtesy of goblin-king

We had He-Man barbarian!!

courtesy of painting agency

some gave him new weapons

 courtesy of Bruenor

Some took to having a female counterpart

courtesy of Sjeng

then some went with alternatives from other dungeon crawlers

coutesy of Tasao

So I scoured the web, every time I saw something that looked like that barbarian on the back of the quest book, I would nab it! for a few years i settled on the below figure from the Celtos range.

apart form the dodgy fringe line, i saw him as being the closest in pose and stature to that barbarian on the back of the quest book. and was very much my staple for a few years

throughout this time i was convinced i had the best fit barbarian for the job!

others cropped up on the net, but still i felt i had made the decision to rule them all. and I'd never need another replacement figure again......

not even this wonderfully painted original could sway me

 courtesy of Massive Voodoo

then i spotted this little figure from Hasslefree miniatures

wolf

Great pose! even has a identical sword to that of the Celtos barbarian i have been using for the last few years. But I'm still not sold?? out of the 3 heads available, I would have to sculpt some hair. I have got no problem with that! but still.... I'm not sold on it and not sure why! I then happened to stumble on a magnificent blog by damien thevenin, who's complete reworking of Heroquest is nothing short of amazing!! He too had used Hasslefree's wolf mini to make his barbarian!

this is fantastic right? it truly is, and still i'm not sold.  for me this version almost hits the mark but has a bit of an Arabic vibe about him. not sure why. but this confirmed why id chosen against using this previously. all the above..great versions of. But for my picky self i still thought there was something better out there. in truth i was totally wrong. id scoured the web into every dank dark corner possible. Google searched so much i was ending up in all sort of weird places.
Truth was my answer lay right under my nose all the time!

i had stumbled upon a fantastic thread on Warseer that was a worklog for someone creating warhammer quest characters and the likes, he hit upon something i had been trying to do for a while. and that was creating character! any model can be painted up in a various sort of way. of customised a little just to add a little bit more. even with the original Heroquest barbarian he had managed to give this a new lease of life

Courtesy of eastern empire

so i go back to the drawing board on this. a bit of rope, a vial, generally just a few things that make someone look like they are kitted out for some adventure time!

so i start looking at the wolf miniature from Hasslefree once more...what if i add a few things to his belt? and a new head? of course a head that fits what i want much better.

then completely out of the blue i find this gem of a blog and they have some wonderful projects on there. including a Warhammer quest log. of which they have used a wolf mini as the barbarian also.

and et voila. the perfect head too!!!!!!!!

so of course at this point I know I'm close to getting that barbarian i want...

now just gotta find that head right? some of you may recognize it already. so i scoured everything i could think of. every GW sprue that i could possibly think of. until i finally broke. and just asked the creator (of which you can see my pleading on his blog)

and it turns out it belongs to a space wolves sprue!!! space wolves????? i never thought once to look at 40k stuff at all!

so there we go. that was my journey to creating my (for now) perfect barbarian.

I've got the mini.

I've got the head.

I've got more bits than i can comprehend.

so let get cracking.

bish bash bosh,,paint paint paint

I did initially just want a smooth sword, but I couldn't quite fill in the etchings on the sword to be as smooth as i wanted. plus i has all my bits ready and just wanted to get him done. maybe a little bit of a rush job...but i was excited to get him completed! I carved the diamond shape on his brow to be more triangular and gave him a nice 80's rock band hair style!

also sculpted some fur around those boots

attached a bit i had found in my bits box. this seems like something a barbarian might be carrying around. a pouch for his gold. a vial of some concocted potion. a big ass dagger! and some looted gems!

oh and gave him some stubble too :)

 

so there we have it. a little bit of my journey in creating and very little on the actual creating of! It took a long time, but thankfully the gift of the internet and the many many wonderful ideas people have, helped me get to where i wanted with my favourite Heroquest character. all the great ideas I've seen everywhere helped guide and influence. and hope for many years the community continues to thrive with such magnificently creative souls!

hope you enjoyed

till next time! :)

Back to the Furniture store

ok got a few more. ill keep it brief and just throw the pictures in here.

Cupboard

I was happy with my first attempt at sculpting a candle! :)

Tomb

 

Bookshelf

four silhouettes stepped from the shadows.

well. actually only one for now.

"Let me present Zanrath, High Mage of Sarako. An ancient bearded man wearing a pointed hat and carrying a staff topped with a crescent moon."

so for me. this guy is a bad guy. but looks more like a stereotypical hero wizard, Gandalf's little brother!, generic empire grand mage. whatever, he doesn't fit the mold for me personally
I was fairly happy with this paint job until I took pictures of it. my dreaded poor photography skills blighting me once again! the colours aren't quite showing as they do to the human eye.
I've chosen for the none generic figures that I wouldn't go with the dip method in order to help them stand out. weather or not that is a stand out in a bad way or not ill leave for when im finished hehe.

also I cant paint metallic to save my life. I want to try my hand and NMM. but fear itll end up looking even worse. maybe I should just concentrate on finding a better technique for taking pictures and then maybe I might just be half the way there.
again any help on the picture front would be most appreciated.

here come the green skins!

so I've finally managed to of succeeded in a quest that's took since the release of Heroquest.
and that's painting all of the monsters (still need to paint the heroes and wizards of morcar and also will be posting up the other bad guys over the next week or so)
but my approach was simple...since seeing army painters dip methods I knew this was the only thing that would honestly gee me up enough to get off my lazy ass and finally finish them. so all of the monsters and henchmen I've posted up so far have predominantly been given a dipping. and that suite follows here with all of the greenskins (ok fimir don't count, but still they are green so who cares right?)

anyways again the paint jobs aren't anything special. they were given their base coats and simply just dipped with army painter. I then rusted up some of the weapons later on. but really it was that simple.
results wise. they aren't going to be even getting a 5 on CMON. but what they do do is look tidy enough to be sitting prettily on the game board during any session. no longer will I have the solid coloured plastics sitting on my board. I now have these babies!!

 Goblins

 again im not really happy with my pictures...way too much glare. and I hate it when a picture shows up all the sloppiness (yes I admit my guilt,,, it happens...get over it :))

but again heroquest goblins are a bench mark. classic models, classic look, awful paint jobs hehe.

but like I say..finally painted! so the quality level doesn't matter.

 

Orcs

same method here applied. as you can see. this army painter stuff works. it gives an adequate level of quality with minimal time spent. I do have a little problem with the anti shine spray that army painter provide. I'm now on my second can of this stuff. and my second can I am getting results i'm not very happy with. all of these models were given a second coat of watered down matt acrylic varnish.. why you say? after spray these over they are coated with a fine white dust that you cant see with the human eye...... that is until you throw a digital camera in front of them. you may see some left over of this on the bases of the orcs. but at the end of the day ive had to spend a lot more time fixing these up due to this fine dust than I would of hoped for. because my first can I never had this problem at all.

I may be doing something wrong, giving too many coats. im just not sure. I spray them in layers until no shine is left on the models. so I don't know. if anyone has any info on this id be happy to know any ones else's results as ill be doing an article soon with a step by step of using army painters products that I use.

 

Fimir

I've never known what to think of these, they are kind of extinct I believe in games workshops line these days. they are a little comical. but the one thing you know when your playing heroquest is you don't want one of these creeping up as a wandering monster whilst searching that dark corridor.

they deal damage! but look odd in a way I cant describe.

it wasn't until I took this picture that I realised id completely missed the ankle bands on their left legs...oh well. im sure they will survive . Bad me again!

 



men at arms

not the greatest models around. but who can ever knock the clip on weapons of these little guys?
sent into rooms before the heroes as complete cannon fodder! haha
anyways the colour scheme for these I decided to base on my favourite football team (which will remain anonymous out of embarrassing performances of late)
again nothing too special. army painter strong tone dipped then I just touched up the eyes afterwards.
simple methods for simple figures, im resigning any real time and effort for the character models. so all of the monsters and fodder like these guys get the strong tone treatment.
Heck ive had this game over 20 years and only now decided to paint them up. a half decent lick of paint is better than none!

 

 

also id like to add. and it must be pretty evident even after only a few posts. I am awful at taking pictures. I do my best to get a good focused shot. but colours getting brighter and basically mushing out of colour from the original is a big problem. and glare is also another massive problem. no matter what I try on my budget setup I just cant seem to get pictures that im happy with. so if anyone has any tips that would be greatly appreciated. as id love to be able to post pictures that look exactly how I see them to my own naked eye. and don't feel once ive been able to do that.

its pretty frustrating. im no expert on taking snaps and don't claim to be. but surely there has to be a few bullet points I can follow to get better pictures.

please HELP!