a quick gibbet

saw this on the Black Tree Design site when I was browsing and thought it would give a nice touch of dark, old English atmosphere... tried something new with the bushes, used the cleaning pads I had for the hedges for the body, painted brown and then added some leaf litter from Antenociti (usually used for ivy I think, bought it ages ago)... looks quite good and brambly...

pics don't really do it justice...

Witch Hunter

painted my converted Witch Hunter for my vaguely planned ECW Horror skirmish project... Witchfinder General meets Blood on Satans Claw meets Solomon Kane... details on the conversion are in the earlier post... quite happy with the blacks, tried for slightly different shades, boots have a hint of light brown from the black for a worn leather look, and the rest of the leatherwork is a very dark brown... I had planned black hair as well, but it needed a lighter colour to bring it all out a bit more... the angry shouty head has a nice crease in his brow, but now I look at it, it's all gone a bit Cromwell warty - which all things considered isn't a bad thing...

I didn't shade the white collar, just slapped on the brightest white I had just so it stood out more, the other bits of white have been shaded though...

the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project intermission

ok... so this stalled a wee bit... when I came to start undercoating, I completely fell out of love with the rock finish... it was all too rounded and worn, I wanted something a little more jagged - sheared rockfaces with tiny crevices and handholds... I came to realise I really wanted sharp edges and the whole thing stalled...

now I'd been giving it some thought lately, checking out various techniques online for wargaming and railroad set ups... bearing in mind I'll be building up on my existing structure, I needed a 'cladding' finish... bark bits are popular, but I couldn't see them working with what I had... recutting the foam wasn't winning me over... railroaders use the wet plaster in crinkled foil method (google is your friend), but would be too heavy and thick... however, I came up with a variation on that...

crinkled craft tissue paper... for the test piece I cut a thin strip, scrunched it up into a ball and then pulled it out into a strip again, without flattening it... slapped on some PVA and put on the strip, allowing the crinkles to stay and even creasing them some more... dry and a quick pj and I'm quite happy with that...

bearing in mind, there will also be the vertical definitions in the bluefoam that are absent here... should be good...

a Rescue to a Chase

more companions... Ian, Barbara and Vicki...

I'm slowly working through my companions... with exception of Dodo, because let's face it, what use was she? Susan should have been part of this group, but I had to cut her head off on account of it being a really, really, really ugly head... no paint job could have solved that one, so off it came and I'm halfway through replacing it...

and a shape of something to come...

watch this space, just don't hold your breath... it's going to take a while...

River WIP

well... almost done really...

As ever, looking for stuff that fits handily into A4 paper boxes (in this case a box for A4 label sheets), and as I've limited gaming space, confining myself to 3 or 4 foot square, a side/corner piece made more sense than having something run through the middle... I was quite impressed with Wirelizard's river banks over on LAF. Great idea... so I nicked it...

The three sections are a bugger to photo though, the above is the best I've managed (click pic for a bigger one)... I've added some marks on the photo to show where the joins are, but there are two peices the length of a sheet of A4 and a shorter peice... if necessary, the wooden dock/reinforced bank can be left out for a shorter section, if left in it should be enough room for my Dwarf longship if I ever get progressing with that, or any combo can be a handy entrance point for Sea Devils (again if I catch up with those)... the exposed bank is made from torn cork tile, nice and bitty and looks the job... the grass by the dock has some tracks in to show wear... I had gone with a patchier look all over, but when I did some test shots on my gaming tiles, just looked silly... by adding grass in those patches it has left faint thin patches of bare earth which looks more like the field/riverbank look I wanted so result...

The river itself could do with darkening... annoyingly, the reeds look the same colour as the grass, should have used the paler ones, so may give them a lick of paint to lightenen them up... and of course the water surface needs lots and lots of gloss to look watery... I did look at various ways of doing waves and so on for the surface, but as I want to add the longship at some point, it would be better just flat... also a removable/seperate jetty is on the cards...

I'll try and get some better photos at some point/when finished, but I wanted to get something up this month and move on to a long planned Who project...

Salute 2011

a good day, if long day, back at around 10.40 last night... three Frother's games and there seemed to be a lot of interest... the mansion in all it's glory, the first game was a bit slow, but the rules were trimmed back and the later games went better...

the mansion game together really well, especially considering how scattered around the UK the contributors are... of course, Akkie's Battlefield game was just one chaps efforts and was outstanding to look at...

the Tron game, oddly only got one pic of that, but it was genius in it's simplicity and won an award...

and Crooked Dice launched 7TV rather spectacularly... table looked great...

even down to the scale map of the table in the villains lair...

CD also had a Who game going...

other stuff included a nice looking VSF Aeronef game and a few ECW games (which considering my recent dabbling was nice to look at)...