Tinywars.com

Looks like I get a preview of what our party may be facing. I helped the DM paint these critters up. Reaper miniatures Kobolds! Pretty much a quick tabletop job of the critters, with a little bit of OSL (Object Source Lighting) effect on the shaman’s gloves. OSL tip/Cardinal rule: It is best attempted on a dark surface. The gloves were painted black to setup a good contrast to the color of the flames. If the gloves were a light tan or brown color, the general value of the blue-greens would be lost vs. the similar value of the tan or brown. Same would apply to other light colors.

We are starting our first D&D 4.0 campaign and that means a new character (or two) and new figures to represent them!

The first character that I am working on is a Dragonborn Warlord. My DM has been joking about the Reptus figure I’ve used for a few weeks, saying things like You still haven’t removed the tail? Taking the hint, I went through the Reaper catalog to look for a Reptus figure that it would be fairly easy to remove the tail from.

I took a 14222: Audt, snipped his tail off, strategically filed the rough edges down, added a sword (from 03316: Kar’Drakir, Reptus Dragonman Warrior) and will be smoothing the joins out sometime soon. I still haven’t decided on the color scheme, but I’ve got a little bit of time.

Something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but didn’t want to drop serious cash on, was under-shelf lighting. It just seemed excessive to spend $50.00 to $100.00 per 12″ to 18″ of space. Add to that my preference for the ability to adjust the direction of the lighting and it didn’t seem like I’d be able to achieve the desired results with an economic solution. All of that changed when I found the pictured lamp for $5.00 at home depot.

At first I had hoped to figure out a way to move the clamp along the underside of the shelf that’s over the workbench. After some trial and error, I decided that the clamp was too weak and it would end up degrading the overall appearance of the workbench. Appearance… workbench? Yes. The workbench has to perform double duty and it needs to be configured so that it’s easy to maintain AND can be cleaned up to a clean professional workspace. My solution was to remove the clamp and original plug. Drill holes in the shelfs valance/over-hang and mount the gooseneck directly from the shelf. The result is that I’ve cleared space on the desk AND have adjustable lighting available for the workspace. The total cost was about $27.12 for a very well lit 24″ area. If I don’t need as much light I can get the cost down to about half that.

Below is a picture of one of the two that I’ve got mounted already. Once all of the current ones I’ve purchase are mounted, I will install wire channels to conceal the lamp cords.

Reaper was gracious enough to fly Jeremie Bonamant Teboul into town this weekend; The powers that be brought many of the local Reaper freelance painter’s in for the visit. It was really neat getting a chance to talk to him about the hobby and get a glimpse at his approach. He’s quite modest, so I’m going to avoid too much rabid fan-boy talk in this post.

I wanted to share my “sketchpad” miniature for the time he was here. The figure is Rhymaiss from the Kraken Artefactory range. Jeremie co-owns Kraken with two other folks.

The point of the exercises that we went through were to get practical experience with what Jeremie was sharing. Odds are that I will not finish this figure as I want to preserve it for future reference. If you have not ever done this, I highly recommend it. Keeping physical reminders of past successes and failures is very effective memory tip/tool.

What I think I learned about how he is currently doing things:
His approach to color, to light placement, to composition (neat ideas about the harmony between a base and figure), re-learned the wet palette, to brush-strokes plus paint consistency and finally a bit about his approach to photography. His photography is very harmonized with his painting style.

Below is the picture of how far I got with several hours of painting on Rhymaiss. The final note is that I tried to use the photography technique that he described as well… When I write up my photography tips, I’ll be sure to include this approach since it is very complimentary to the painting techniques he taught.

During my routine hunt for site referrers I found something else. Another miniature fan that had chosen the name “tinywars” for his gaming wiki. While we aren’t affiliated, it’s always nice to give folks props for their great work. He’s got some nice 10/12mm WWII stuff on his page(s). check it out: tinywars at pbwiki.com

I’ve had alot of issues getting back to the workbench and one of them was my ability to stay seated for a reasonable amount of time. I figured out that my painting time had decreased due to my chairs and workbench heights not quite being aligned. I also find that no matter what the chair, if I sit too long it messes with my leg circulation. I did a little research and decided I’d try a kneeling chair. The one I ordered arrived in the mail today & I’m giving it a whirl. So far, it seems to encourage better posture and the height adjustment is helpful. The instructions could have done with a few more words (there weren’t any), but it wasn’t that hard to put together.

I purchased this figure with a few others of his ilk in a Pinnacle Entertainment miniature pack: DL-1504 Walkin’ Dead. I think it was somewhere in the 90’s. Reaper Miniature’s RotD (Reich of the Dead) development AND the Halloween season has got me thinking about all things creepy crawly and gruesome… so the timing is perfect. He took a few hours, divided up into lots of tiny bits…

I’ve taken the plunge and changed the site’s interface. I’ve also removed the “beta” forum. The goal is to spend less time fiddling with the site-mechanics and more posting new content. wish me luck!

While not a showcase paint job, it’s good enough for RPG’ing… now, the story of how this one came about:

Somewhere in the early 90’s I ran a 3rd edition AD&D game with a great group of people that I had met during college. One of the folks (Mike) ran a character named Brelvin. I didn’t need much of an excuse to paint figures up & Mike picked a figure out of my vast collection (30 or 40 figures) of Ral-Partha, Grenadier, and Citadel figures. At that time, the paint job was the best I had ever done. To make a long story short, the pack came with two figures: A Male Halfling Fighter/Thief and a Female Halfling Fighter/Thief. I lost the male, but not the female & searched high & low for a used pack, or loose mini.

I finally found the male figure, but minus a few parts. A fellow painter who shall remain nameless negotiated the purchase from a friend of hers (Thank you A!!!). Oddly enough, I also received an original unopened blister of the figures for my ‘07 birthday! As a result, instead of converting the figure back to it’s original design, I used it to practice a few things.

First, I created a scale sword out of wire to confirm that I could have a scale sized weapon that was not weaker than a pewter/lead sword. The hilt and pommel were sculpted with greenstuff. Second I used a buckler from a Foundry miniatures Gladiator “Horde” pack. Once attached to the figure I used greenstuff to sculpt a strap for it. Finally, it’s a standard cork & texture topping on a 20mm x 20mm base.