Monday 27 January 2014

Malifaux: Nightmare Edition Teddy

I've been a bit lax with blog posts as I've been prepping for Vappafaux this weekend, but I have got my entry for this months Tyrants of Painting contest which is being run by the Malibros.  Basically it's a themed motivational challenge each month with this months theme being "Heavy Hitters".

I got my Nightmare Teddy in the Black Friday sale so I thought I'd build him and get him done for this contest as he not a hugely detailed model so I knew I could get him done quite quickly.


I pinned the head and arm (arm required some gap filling after I cocked up the pinning), but the claws were a right pain.  Every claw on his feet and left hand is a separate piece and so some judicious use of Zipkicker was required to get them in place.  After filling and priming he was ready for the base coat:


The panda theme I stole from Mike3838 like all my best ideas.  Base coat was a a light khaki for the white and dark blue for the black parts.  This is the stage that actually took longest in the end.

Next up the white got a wash of sepia ink, then brown ink in the darkest parts.  All the fur was then highlighted with lighter versions of the base coat.  I decided to hand paint the highlights rather than drybrushing (my usual go to method for painting fur) to give a better finish which I think it has.  Here's the finished entry:


The newspaper was fun to do.  I outlined the method for doing it in a previous blog post only this time I managed to find a customizable newspaper template online, in fact it was a PowerPoint slide that I just changed the text on:


Just adds a cool little detail to the model.

The #MFXTOP voting starts tomorrow (28th) so why not head over to twitter to vote and check out the entries on the Malibros blog.

Monday 6 January 2014

Terrain Kit Review: Walled Farm By Commission Figurines

As I've been doing for the past many months, I'm still building terrain for Vappafaux in February.  This week I've completed a walled farm from Commission Figurines which I purchased via the Kickstarter they did earlier this year.  I got the kit on KS for £25 but I'm not sure what the retail will be yet as it's a new product.

It's made from laser cut MDF and arrives looking like this:


There are no build instructions provided with the kit, however the leaflet points you to the website which shows you how to put the thing together.  Move of the pieces fit together pretty easily, though I usually found that filing them a little bit help them fit together more easily.  I glued mine together to make it a bit stronger though possibly you could away without doing that.  It probably took me an hour or so to build and it looks like this when done:


The medium building on the left is a house, the big building is a barn and the small one is a stable.  All three have removable roofs and the house and barn have a removable internal floor so it's on two levels.  The cart tracks lead out of the gate at the front but I knew they would get covered once I textured the base so it's not big deal if they don't.  There's a small gate on the back wall as well which has no detail on the internal side.  Overall it was easy though I would quite liked to have an option not to include the gates.  If you're handy with a jigsaw you could cut them out I suppose, I however am not.  The whole base measures 13" x 14" so it's a pretty substantial piece.

Next up, I added some texture to the base by gap filling round all the walls where they met the base so they looked more natural.  I then added a layer of sand to the base both inside and outside the walls and also inside the barn and stable.  The whole thing was then primed brown using car spray paint.

Painting wise I tried something a bit different.  I wanted an uneven tone which would be easy to achieve with an airbrush, however I don't own an airbrush so an alternative was needed.  What I finally used was a sponge to sponge paint all the walls.  I ended up doing several coats of khaki, pale grey, rotting flesh from GW to get the final look.  It's not quite the colour I had in mind but it's OK.  The exposed bricks and roof tiles were quickly painted with Vallejo Scrofulous Brown/Charred brown mixture.  I then added additional weathering to represent repair plaster work, water damage and dirty using weathering powder mixed with water.  I painted a bit on then dragged it downwards with my sponge so it looked like water damage.  I probably went a bit overboard on it to be honest but the effect looks OK in place.

The building interiors I left blank for now to save time.

Here's the final model with some minis on it:

 Main farm buildings

 Barn on the left, house on the right.

From the shadows...


Overall I enjoyed building and painting the kit.  It's available at 15mm and 20mm scale as well if those scales take your gaming fancy.

There's talk of Commission Figurines doing a Malifaux terrain kickstarter.  On the strength of this model I will definitely be backing that.  The scale is a shade small for Malifaux but it still works well as a terrain piece.