ghouls, ghouls, ghouls...

finally got around to getting some paint on my ghouls...

annoyingly, what stalled me was what colours to paint them - I'm fine with uniforms and Timelords and what have you, but as soon as I need to decide on a colour, I really do ponder too much... in the end I just picked out the earthy tones from paints, and slapped it on... so it's kind of a slap dash job to an extent as I didn't want to be thinking about the colours too much... it kind of worked - a nice surprise was the WW2 German Uniform green... will use that more for this project I think...

these three are basic Mantic ghouls (although not sure what the camera was focusing on as the faces are a bit blurry)... some minor g/s on the back for the joins...

next were four Mantic ghouls that were heavily g/s'd for the 17th century vibe... quite chuffed with the frilly shirt on the red chap...

finally, a mix and match with Mantic bits added to Warlord plastic ECW figures... the female ghoul is converted from a Redoubt Enterprises ECW villager (with buckets on a yoke thing)...


went with a green grey for the basic skin colour, highlighted up with white and washed with mainly purple, but the odd splosh of green for a unhealthy shade... not a huge fan of lashings of blood and gore and I suspect others may have gone a bit paler, but I quite like the inhuman greyness... similarly I like the all white eyes, but may try some small pupils with a rotring pen or something... gums are also purple if you can manage to see them... I also added a fallen gravestone to one of the bases to go with the priest...

old timber frame cottage finished...

and it's done... as much as I can do with it really... not 100% happy with the thatch, had to avoid a too yellow/brown, so ended up using a Vallejo Green Grey and Green Ochre, I kind of like the finish, it has a dirty, old look, and as a first attempt at thatch, hey...


woodwork is GW Graveyard Earth (or whatever they call it now), drybrushed with varying bits of different greys and washed with Devlan Mud and variably drybrushed again... the render is GW Bleached Bone, drybrushed with Skull White and then the edges washed with Ogryn Flesh... the interior colours are the same... the windows are from the 4ground details set and are just the Foundry black triad...

the interior now has a Tudor settle (the correct name of which I found out googling images for Tudor benches), scratchbuilt from balsa... this is fixed, but the hollow nature of the bottom means it doesn't really impede any figure placement... a late thought was to take a mold of the settle with some Siligum so I can do some more for other buildings in resin... but I'll do another more fancy one for that I think... the door is balsa and card and g/s and is loosely hinged into the wall, so it can be open or closed or removed (pops out lovely)...

plenty of room still inside, have some barrels that may make an appearance in one corner, but don't want to clutter it too much... but don't want an empty box either...

the ladder was cut short to fit the wall, the other half is attached to the next floor and gives a nice continous run when the top floor is in place...

not much to say about the upstairs, did make a box bed, but it takes up alot of room, even if it is away from the window... may rethink that have maybe some bedding/matress straight on the floor, that way it has some detail and figures can still go where they will... I put in a couple of timbers along the wall with some balsa, just to hide the wall/roof join, I could have done more, but figured it would do...

old timber frame cottage part 3

interior is done... -ish... pondering some furniture, and need to do the ladder access to upstairs...

the fire was made from blue insulation foam, two pins, splintered matchsticks and superglue... the flaw there involved the hole from the pin leading to unprotected foam which promptly melted and collapsed when the superglue found it's way down there... g/s replaced that bit, sadly it looked better beforehand, but it will do...

old timber frame cottage part 2

ok... terrible pictures, but progress of sorts - I had been worried the render wasn't working, so gave it a spray undercoat to get a better feel for it... that worked ok, a few spots needed more definition, so I stippled some liquid g/s in spots... windows were added and the door and lintel... the windows and door lintel are from the detail kit, with a bit of texture added to the lintel again with liquid g/s... the door was made from 2mm balsa, with a latch made from g/s - it's loosely hinged, so can be open, closed or kicked in...

and then to the roof... tried thatch as I couldn't face cutting all those tiles... some nice tutorials can be found here for teddy fur and here for towelling... I went the towelling route, as they were dirt cheap in primark... not 100% about it yet, it looks ok, but I was a bit over enthusiastic with the brushing down and trimming, so patches needed replacing... this was especially true for the split where the roof seperates to give access to the first floor, a good hard line there helps a bit... the roof is taking an age... I think I've managed to replicate the weave ok in g/s, but won't know for certain til I can undercoat that... it may all get removed before long...

now, the sharp eyed will have noticed the absense of a chimney, Levied Troop over on Frothers pointed me towards a very useful little book... Discovering Timber Framed Buildings - it's dirt cheap (from £2 something used) and has some great illustrations... including the evolution of the chimney, so I went with a smoke hood rather than a chimney proper - that will stay regardless of what I do with roof...

Who Dares WIP

some g/s'ing has been afoot while waiting for Tudor cottage things to set/dry...

finally found some 80's SAS I can live with:

TAG Modern SWAT with gasmask heads from Eureka and some g/s - I did buy some of the Urban Beat SAS from North Star, but they are so skinny they looked silly next to normal 28mm figs... these will be doing duty as special forces back up obviously...

Lewis Collins in waiting:

a Rogue miniatures not-DieHard terrorist with new feet, soon to get some new hands and when I get my head order a new head... undecided which one, may be the Man from 2000...

and my super spy:


another Rogue Miniatures figure, this time a not Steve McQueen - I'm torn when it comes to Rogue minis, they have some nice ideas, but some odd sculpts... off came the small head and the small hand with a vague blobby revolver, some g's to give him some bigger feet (why the Rogue minis all have such small extremities I have no idea, they just look weird) and his remaining hand was bulked out... the shoulder holster was sculpted very oddly at the rear, I get that they were aiming for tight and elasticated, but the thing was sculpted so deep into his back it looked like something from a Saw movie, so g/s over that and a new rear holster made... the head is from the Man from 2000 from Crooked Dice, as is the gun (made less sci-fi and more silencer) - this head is quite close to the original in style, just bigger and better... sadly the Hasslefree heads are a little too large for the slighter Rogue Mini's, but the Crooked Dice heads work just fine... I almost went with the beardy Tweedy for this chap, but the MF2000 seemed more in keeping...

old timber frame cottage part 1

progress on the lasercut cottage kit... it hasn't actually taken me 10 days to get to this stage, I'm just a very occassional worker at the moment...

balsa wood has been added to follow the frames cut into the mdf... I still need to do the curved braces and the undereave timbers, but the majority is done and I wanted to get an update sorted out... annoyingly I bought a shedload of 2mm balsa a while ago and so went with that for the timber, but it was too thick so when it was on, the whole face was sanded back to a rough and varied 1mm... the slight differences add to the feel I think, although some horrendous over pressure (mainly on the gables) meant g/s had to rebuild the timber in a few spots - I have to say Silent Invader's work over on LAF and his own blog are very handy references for this kind of work... also I'm becoming a huge fan of GW Liquid Greenstuff, when dry it's hard, but is just soft enough to allow a wire brush to add some woodgrain...

I gave the whole balsa frame a good going over with the wirebrush to get some more grain into the sanded flat surface, varying direction with the length of the timber... windowsills were added with matchsticks, cut into the existing balsa frames, but standing proud of the frame itself..

the basic kit didn't come with the floorboards cut in as I said before and this is something of a blessing as the mdf surface is too smooth to get a wood effect with and when 'roughed' up just gets down to the fibrous mess inside which is no better... I bought the thinnest balsa I could find and glued that to the interior floors and scored in the floorboards - each is 5mm wide which may seem wide in the grand scheme of things, but gives me 17 boards across, when the lasercut version has 16 across... I also cut the hatch over to one corner (from the look of the instruction diagram, on the bought kit that is in the middle of the floor), it's 2cm square, wide enough for the ladder and a 28mm body, leaving the majority of the floor clear - what I loved about this kit is the access to the inside and I want to make the most of it... I added a frame around the hatch into the balsa, with a little help from more liquid g/s...

same with the downstairs floor really, although no hatch... the ladder will be attached to the downstairs wall once it's prepped and I have a rather nice fireplace made up - it just didn't photograph well... I need to do the matching breast upstairs, but it will be on a small footprint so I don't lose any floor... the one difference with this floor was that I needed the balsa to be flush with the bottom of the doorframe, so the walls are all raised slightly by the same thickness of balsa, this is hidden by the framing timbers though, but just thought I mention it if anyone is following in these footsteps...

and a shot for scale... poor photos I know, but they do the job... I need to add the curved timbers on the frame, the chimney breast on the first floor and decide what to do about the roof before adding the chimney stack itself... that will probably be made from blue insulation foam rather than using the mdf one in the kit... similarly to the floorboard problem, the door from the accessories kit is going to be too smooth, so I need to think on that... I still think that kit is a good deal, the windows alone make it, and the lovely little tudor door frame detail as well... I'll keep you posted on that...