DUNGEON DOORS ALL COMPLETED!!

yup! ive finally managed to finish another project. go me!

all 22 doors now finished and ready to be used in the dungeon
long slog here. most definately. but i hope it was a worthwhile venture all the same.

It doesnt really look like a great deal when i lay them all out like that. but this has been an ongoing project that ive been doing between other projects in a hope to prevent that monotonous feel when doing the same/similar things over and over, very much like unit painting.

now i could of just given these dip and been completed in a day. but i dont really do things in halves all that much. ok ive done some quick jobs on some of my projects. but generally its not a view point i favour. this is probably why i dont have many blogposts. but i think overall. this is a hobby. so we all need to enjoy it right? why should it feel like a chore. its a chance to be creative. and thats exactly what iver done here. so here they all are...

8 closed doors first up

you will notice i also experimented a little, wood is not something ive ever been comfortable painting. i guess its the organic look to it. but nonetheless i tried out a few different techniques with the wood. from simple washes to dry brushing as well as painting the wood grain individually.

 this is a new from the final batch. as you can see ive gone for a little bit of light sourcing from the torch. which i might add is something i dont have much experience with. but was really happy how this one turned out. i wanted to keep it subtle and i think i succeeded, however i think the light should of been shining a little further across the doors

 another new one here. simple insignia above the door and a rat running away with a turnip!

 another new one. simple skaven themed door here with a skaven skull i think and some warpstone

 ogre themed one here this time.

another new one. simple door with a few toadstool and a rather poisonous looking spider lurking above the door.

 sort of crypt/undead themed one here usong a shield from a skeleton warriors sprue. some random skulls, and finally i pressed a small mould from a skull to create the skull carvings on the wall and sculpted a little scarab.

 this was one from an earlier batch with sculpted ivy and spider

basic door as part of my early colour tests

12 Open Doors

ill hold my hands up in that i was starting to run low on ideas/ and bits through this project. so really started to scrape the barrel in trying to make them look unique.

 this was definately one of those barrel scrapers. but still its a skaven themed door so not all is bad.

 a chaos/beastman themed one here.

 standard open door from my earlier colour tests

 this one is probably my favourite out of all of them, in fact it was also the very first door i started working on. so i guess udeas were fresh at that point

 another simple one from my final batch.

 dwarf tomb. you may notice on a lot of these doors that they have dwarven runes. of which all of them were taken direct from the WFB dwarf army book.

 orcish doorway, this was my first real go at light sourcing. and whilst for the best part it doesnt look too bad. i do feel i went a little too yellow  around the flames.

 over grown doorway. i wanted to try and get something that looked really overgrown. sculpting some mushrooms and vines did a pretty decent job of that.

my second attempt at light sourcing. you will notice it is much more subtle that the orcish one above. experiment experiment! first was too yellow. and i feel this one was way too light on the glow from the flames. you will notice on the very first image for the closed doors where i finally managed to find that 'inbetween'

 chaos door thingy. ok lets just imagine youve got 22 door and you have some madcap idea to make them all unique and you have a nice sized box of bits...you throw everything you can at them right? thats simply the case here. its got a skull...because you have to have skulls. some weird star on a chain and a standard top from something. i can only assume is chaos?

 i kind of like this one purely for its subtlety. it has 4 features from the base doors. a hanging skull. dwarf rune, spider and some toadstools. but i think it really works nicely.

and the final open door. which was also from the last batch. was a simple 'glue this here' jobby using a dwarf standard top and a skull. simple and not too bad.

2 Portcullis'

i chose to do nothing with these as i didnt want them too removed from their function. for the best part a portcullis in a dungeon is more of a trap or onstacle than a door. so i painted these early on just to get them out of the way.

so there you have it. all 22 brand new double doors. fresh and converted from zealot miniatures.

i was really happy with these right from the get go. and needed very little attention to get them paint worthy. i had already planned before getting my hands on these that i would be converting them. so that is takes nothing from the base builds. these really are a great addition to any dungeon as they are. and hopefully with my own little addons they make for even better decor to the dungeon

next batch of dungeon doors

so whilst ive already shown my first testers and then a handful of doors. all of which i made the intention and commitment of making every single one unique......WHYYYYYYYYYYY?
lol honestly im fairly certain i am not the only one within this crazy little hobby world that simply just makes too much work for themselves.
i see the oldhammer sights floating around showing freshly painted 30 year old miniature. and im fairly certain its not the nostalgia, but moreso the fact that its been sitting in the painting queue that long. look at that minotaur lord i posted a few months back. thats been sitting waiting to be painted since about 1991 lol

so whilst ive progressed a little with my doors ive also hit a bit of a brick wall. because again whilst i made them all unique. it feels like im paiting units again. so the below  6 are the next off the the list. totting up 14 doors so far and needing to complete a further 8 and then im done.

 i made some simple press molds from those goblin spider bases GW kicked out. they make some nice little touches to all of the dungeon furniture ive done so far. if you ask me its the little details that make all the difference.

and ive tried to show that in all of the doors. another skaven themed door here making fairly good use of that cute little rat that sits ontop of the clanrats standard bearer.

 

 another delve into the bits box and i was able to do a sort of chaos themed door. not sure where the main skull comes from as i couldnt find it on any chaos standard bearer by GW. but nonetheless it helps as a centre piece to a pretty cool looking door i think.

 another skaven one here. either i was running out of bits or i was running out of ideas on this one. not even the sculpted little smudge of a rat makes this one stand out much. but its unique. and that was the quest.

 the plan here was for some other sort of chaos based door. nice and simple. and i even tried out a new paint i had bought for the blood..but then sealed the model with some spray and lost the wet blood shine of it lol. didnt turn out too bad though.

another simple door. making use of my press moulds some skull thing from my bits box and some mushrooms i had made. again. another different looking one. so alls good.
you may notice a lot of these doors have dwarven runes on them. like everything i make. i like to add character and details that might go unnoticed. im sure im not the only one that makes up an origin to a character when painting them up. so i like to do the same whenever i create custom stuff. back stories help with ideas for those subtle little details. and the whole point of the dwarven runes are quite simple. the dungeons were once dwarven strongholds, mines or whatever. and have since been overrun by the beasties of the old world. each of the runes are correct from the dwarf WFB book and all have a meaning. so i guess its a nice little touch to add.

so ive got 8 more to do. but think im going to sit on those for a while and work on some other stuff until i can find the inspiration to dive back in and finish these doors off.
ive been working on quite a few other things recently and hope to have plenty more to show soon enough.

enjoy!

First Few Custom Doors

So as you may of seen in my last few posts, I've shifted attention towards getting my zealot double doors painted up. and to make it a little more interesting for myself and the overall dungeony feel I decided i was going to customize them ALL!

Be it very minor customisations to slightly more flamboyant themed doors. so with the help of a little greenstuff and a route through my bits box ive finally managed to get them all customised and have now finished my first 4.

DWARF TOMB

The idea here was that with a very little bit of change i could make something somewhat slightly resemble a dwarven doorway. adding some hammers to the base of the arch and a dwarven rune (master rune of kingship) would be a nice little touch too. as you see a simple change. but still something different. 

ORC THEME

The idea behind this one was to have something resemble that of some orcish lair or throne room to a warlord. again pretty simple to achieve. as you will see with this one. i attempted some light sourcing. as a few of these doors have torches on to light the way. this being the first attempt..a little bit of a fail as i dont feel i got it quite right, but brush down and better the next one with light sourcing and all will be good .

 VINES

Got to have something overgrown right?

making all of these i tried something new ive not done before, the mushrooms on the base was my attempt to show the dark dampness of the dungeon. im quite happy how they turned out. the vines...well they add more, but not brilliant. again I added a dwarf rune as the idea in my head is that most dungeons were once dwarven  strongholds or at least dwarven built. even sewers of the old world were built by dwarves.

 WARPSTONE

Another very simple one where i attempted a little less subtle light glow.

another dwarven rune and a few chunks of warpstone set this one off quite nicely

So thats my first 4 if you exclude my 4 earlier testers. another 14 to go and ill be all finished.
im just in the painting process with the remaining ones now so hope to have more to show soon.
so until then!! :)

Doors colour test

now ive got a ruck load of doors to start making my dungeon look the part.
however i have 2 dilemmas on this front.

now anyone that paints have certain things they paint that they know they are good at. and to follow that up. there are certain things that some are not so comfortable with. and for me...doors have 2 things ive never been very confident in painting. and this might sound stupid but ive never really been able to paint wood or rock to a standard i like.
ive never been able to lock down a solid colour formula that when i sit back and look at i am happy with. so it made perfect sense that i attempted some colour tests before really laying into the doorways.

so here we have them

 first up the portcullis' (portculli? portcullises?) i dunno.
anyways as i only had 2 of these i just painted both of them in these scheme. for me the real tests were to attack the rock work and wood. this is no wood on this so i simply went for a brown dark rusted type of old metal.

 the rock work...ive gotta say im about 75% happy with my attempts and will carry forwards the method i used on these for all of the other doors. was rather simple really.
-Mid tone grey basecoat(in this case i used some cheap acrylic i picked up from a hobby store)
- Thin washes with 4 colours to break up the solid grey colour and hopefully gain some sort of realistic weathered look the 4 colours being. Agrax Earthshade, Athonian Camoshade, Seraphim Sepia and Reikland Fleshshade
-Dry brush with base colour.
- Light dry brush to pick out edges using Screaming skull

so with the rockwork nailed down it was the wood to concentrate on.
here....i wasnt to happy so will be trying a new formula on the wood as i want to get a much older dark and dampened look for the wood. but all in all it was a worth while attempt.
im happy with the rock. now i just need to go scouting around for the wood colour i would prefer to have and take it from there :)

so yup the dungeon is slowly getting there. a quick little mock up is showing how things are starting to look pretty nifty indeed.

i have much more plans for these doors as well. trying to add some character to them rather than them just being standard.
maybe some themed ones for the open doors(skaven themed - undead themed and so on)
and some ivy or cobwebs and such for the closed ones. skulls (gotta have skulls) rats, cobwebs and that sort of thing.
i just want them to end up looking great and not so standard.
i know most dont care about these little details. but we would all chose to have them if they were easy to have right?

anyways until next time :)

Doors galore

so things for my dungeon are starting to close in. having recently completed my new 30mm AHQ board sections (will post about these soon i promise)
1 thing that was severely lacking and also a reason i wasnt posting anything on my new dungeon tiles was the fact i had no doors to throw down and show everything in its full glory.

well thanks to Zealot miniatures, i do now!!

totally at 8 closed, 12 open and 2 portcullis' hopefuly now ill have enough to run a full dungeon

i have some great ideas for these. doors dont have to be just doors. these great sculpts will lend themselves perfectly to the ideas i have. so hopefully in the upcoming weeks i can start to show some of the completed ones.

i cant wait to get started on these. so just thought i'd put a few pics up of the before pics. that will hopefully compliment the after shows that will follow :)