fimmdrui

Fimm McCool's

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Here’s the second of my ships for Bring Out Your Lead 2015.  She was the first ship I bought for this project after seeing
Harry’s nice Megabloks ships.  The detail on these toys is realy very good and
with an expert paintjob they’d come up really nicely.  Mine will not be an
expert job in part because I find at the moment I don’t have much patience and
would rather devote the times when I find the focus to painting miniatures
(and, of course, sculpting more Space Dorfs).  So the painting is rather rushed
and I might go back and work into it if I feel like it nearer the time.  I did
notice that fellow Oldhammerer Paul Ede has the same boat in his
hobby cupboard so it will be interesting to see his take on it.  Right, to the
step by step…. 

The concept for the ship was initially an Orc hulk, then it
was an Orc hulk under the captainship of my favourite old Ogre and towed by a Goblin
airship (stay tuned…) but now the back story is a pirate Orc crew that was ‘rescued’
from their shipwreck by a mysterious Ogre shaman.  Turns out he owed patronage
to Father Nurgle and the Orcs and their Goblin skivvies are now fated to sail
the seas forever in thrall to the plague ship THE NURGLITCH.  If they ever set
foot on land the rot would catch up with them and they would crumble to the
dust beneath their feet. 

The ship itself is a plastic Megabloks pirate ship so it has
bumps all over the deck.  First job, do away with the bumps!  Originally I
planned to grind them back and carve in extra detail with a dremel since the
sculpted planks are actually quite nice.  But that plan kind of disintegrated
and I opted for the quicker method of covering the studs with lolly sticks. 
They were snapped rather than cut to give an old, weathered look and I left the
studs on under them to make it look a bit gappy. 

Oh, before I did this I
chopped a chunk out of the middle of the ship since it was a bit long as it was
and I wanted it to have a stumpier, Orcy, hulky look.  That left some space in
the middle to be filled with splintered lolly sticks and I also built a
platform on one side so the crew could get down to a couple of dinghies.  In our
trial game one of my crew leapt spectacularly onto an island and splatted
himself across the beach so from now on dinghies are a good idea!  Except, I
know, fluff says they die if they touch land… there is another piece to this
jigsaw but that’s for another post! 

A note on Squigs.  One of the things to come out of our trial
game was the idea of having a Squig Minelayer and so I have moved the ribcagey
bits of the ship around to give myself a Squig Launsher on the bow.  The Squigs
are in a ready-made pit in the deck and are hoisted onto the ribcage stone
thrower with the hook on the jib arm.  Then they are flung across the waves.  If
they hit a ship or land they count just like a stone thrower and the
unfortunate Squig is splattered across whoever happens to be in the way.  If the
Squig lands in the water, however, it acts as a mine, chomping a big chunk out
of the hull of any ship that bumps into it.  For this purpose I made some
submerged Squig counters.  The Nurglitch is limited to 5 Squig mines, but it has
a little hatch in the stern for retrieving Squigs which scamper up a reinforced
corridor in the ship to be flung again from the bow. 

There is another hole in the stern of the boat which leads
to the aforementioned hatch.  The bone pile around this I like but the hole I’m
not so keen on so I dug around for something to fill it.  I settled on this guy. 
He’s an Arabyan relic, a monument to the plagues that destroyed the Arabyan
tribesmen who had enslaved the Ogre Shaman’s clan and forced them to labour at
building great cities and temples.  Through the plague they were liberated…
hence, or perhaps due to, the Shaman’s allegiance with Chaos.  I added the
boils, scarring and entrails to one side of the statue and perched the closest thing
to a Nurgling I have (an Oakbound Minis Bugle) on its shoulder. 

Bases!  I’d never painted miniatures on one base and then cut
their slotta tabs and pinned them on other, more scenic bases until I decided
to rebase my Fimir.  Pleased with the results I thought I’d try it intentionally
this time.  So here are the basic bases I’ll be going for, boarding to match the
ship deck.  I’ve used Rackham Confrontation bases because they have a slightly
steeper slope, slightly smaller top and are a bit higher.  All things I think
look nicer.  To make sure they match I painted the bases at the same time as the
ship, masking the black sides to keep them fresh, I find painting base sides
black never looks as nice as the original plastic. 

So the painting begins… now this doesn’t look much different
from the original I grant you!  I wanted to keep a pale, weather-beaten and
ghostly/unwell look.  I have, however, given it a base of dark brown, misted a
dark green, a pale green and an ochre over the top to give some mottling,
texture and variation to break up the surface. 

After drybrushing up to neat white around the edges (looks
especially nice around the bases, contrasting with the black border) and
yellowing the bones with some washes (very dilute flesh wash and khaki) I
painted in the sculpted ropes and ironwork in black and did the sea in the same
way as the Ironclad (except the wave tops, haven’t got there yet).  The metal
will get a good rusting.  The ghostly sections on the side I washed and then
drybrushed in a Nurgly purple, blending the wash into the surrounding wood to
give a bruised look.  Then I dribbled weedy green down the sides of the ship. 
The sides will get some crackly rust weathering as well. 

Lastly I mixed up some standard polyester layup resin and dribbled
it in pools and on some of the bases.  This dries nicely translucent and glossy
giving a slimy effect, although it hasn’t photographed very well.  I’ll do some
more down the steps in a while as I think they would benefit from being a bit
sludgier! 

And there she is so far.  Still more to do, but at least the
crew for this one is nearly painted!  Just over two months to go…

Saturday, 23 May 2015

It didn’t take long after Bring Out Your Lead 2014 for ideas
to form for next year… in fact about ten minutes in the car on the way home saw
plans begin to develop!  The most ambitious of these is a large naval battle we’re
calling OLDHAMMER AHOY!  The game will use the rules for ships in the General’s
Compedium, altered a bit for speed and Oldhammerishness.  Initially my plan was
to bring one ship, something I’d been working on for a little while anyhow.  Then
I was going to have one ship pulling another large hulk.  Then, as these things
do, it got a bit out of hand and I will now be bringing five ships if all goes
well!  The plan is to have a number of ‘stock’ ships and crews available for
anyone to grab one and jump in.  Over the next few blog posts I’ll walk through
a few of the ships in progress. 

The first of these is the CUTTING SNARK, a Chaos Dwarf submersible
ironclad.  A bit of an odd one as Oldhammer Ahoy goes in that it won’t have a
crew per se and will have to be severely handicapped since it might be quite
hard to destroy and carries some serious firepower… rules yet to be decided. 

This ship started life from a discarded vacuum form.  As some
people know I started a new job as a modelmaking technician at a university in
October and one of the student projects is a vacuum formed iron to learn
product design prototype modelling skills.  Inevitably some of these forms don’t
go so well and it seemed a shame to waste them so I got to wondering what I
could turn one into.  Since I’d also been doing some revision work on Tripods! 
the board game Ironclads were very much in my mind and the shape just cried out
to me as a perfect basis.  The week was quite quiet so I started trimming
sections of plastic rod and gluing rivets…

The first step was to mark where the plates of the Ironclad
would go.  I wanted an industrial, Victorian look for the ship so went for big
plates and rivets.  I used a marker to rough out the plates, then cut oodles and
oodles of tiny lengths of plastic rod and used a pin and small pools of
superglue to stick these ‘rivets’ in place.  Then I cut mm wide strips of
masking tape and stuck them along my pen lines to mark the joins between
plates.  The chimneys were sections of plastic pipe cut to length and blended
into the side of the ship with milliput.  The turret and paddlewheel at the rear
I made from lolly sticks cut to length and joined with superglue and
reinforcing strips of paper. 

To make the plates stand out I sprayed about 8 thin coats of
primer over the form...

...let it set and carefully peeled off the masking tape,
leaving recesses between the ‘plates’. 

Then I added a hull-mounted cannon and a
turret-mounted mortar made from various bits from my junk drawer and some green
stuff to make suitably oriental gargoyle heads to adorn the muzzles.  I also
green stuffed the tops of the funnels with some roughly-shaped bearded heads
and skulls and added some nasty-looking 40K meat hooks.  The water was created
by dabbing poly filler onto the base with a stirrer, making sure that the water
was most ‘agitated’ around the bow to give the impression of movement. 
Polyfiller was also applied to the lower blades of the paddlewheel to simulate
their churning through the ocean. 

Then everything got a light coat of matt black...

...followed by a light overspray of beige (with the can held at quite a
distance). 

Next the drybrushing began.  First three fine coats of grey
followed by an even lighter layer of white brushed downwards and focusing on
the ‘corners’ of the hull shape.  Then each of the rivets was outlined with an
oil-effect wash, dragging some of the wash downwards to look like drips.  This
is also good for hiding the bits of over-enthusiastic dry brushing!  The gaps
between the plates had cd-marker pen lines to reinforce the outlines. 

The wooden areas had a coat of Vallejo Dark Flesh, then
Filthy Brown and finally a light brush of Khaki, working from the middle out to
leave dark areas toward the banding.  These need further detailing with a finer
brush (tomorrow’s job possibly) to do the grain, gaps between planks etc.  The
metal areas got a coat of Vallejo Bronze and were washed with old school
Citadel Expert Rust Red Ink.  They still need proper highlights and shading. 

The water was painted with a dark blue poster paint, then
had an emerald and grass green readymix paint dabbed into it whilst wet to
provide variation in colour suggesting depth.  Although I think we’ll be gaming
in blue seas at BOYL 2015, the water on my own terrain boards is green so I’ve
tried to go for a blend of the two, perhaps leaning more towards the green.  The
very tips of the roughest waves were given a gentle white drybrush, but because
I did this whilst the green was still wet the result is a nice blend from the
foamy white tips into a lighter green wave.  Finally a layer of black ink was painted
along the line where the waves meet the hull to provide definition and clean up
any ‘sea’ which had got onto the hull. 

And there she is, the Cutting Snark.  Still lots of detailing
to do, so there’ll be another post with her finished and her background and
rules detailed.  But for now I hear another ship calling for me to finish planking
its deck…. 

Thursday, 21 May 2015

There's a new Facebook group on the scene, well there are several actually, they seem to be multiplying at a rapid pace!  But the one I'm talking about is the Oldhammer Sculpting Group where established sculptors and newcomers alike can share tips, ideas and examples of their work as they create new pieces of art that fit the 'Oldhammer' vibe. 

Curtis of Ramshackle Games has been leading a team of intrepid sculptors in a quest to put together a Chaos warband which is being called the "Circle of Chaos".  You can find more on the Facebook page, but here's my (still WIP) submission to the project with some background story.  Qikdeath Gallbroiler started as a Realm of Chaos champion of Nurgle generation- Skaven, Limb Loss (both arms), Chaos Weapon, Head of a Beast of Nurgle. 

Qikdeath Gallbroiler raised its snout from the carcass of
the white deer and held its nostrils to the wind.  Though it was no longer Skaven
the ratbeast’s nostrils were still keen and there was something in the winds
today that would have quickened its heart were it still beating.  The scent was
not flowing in the natural wind, this was coming over the fens to the west and
carried with it the usual pungent odour of marsh gas and decay.  Such scents
brought pleasure to Nurgle’s creations, but it was not this that excited
Qikdeath.  No, the scent which had stirred him from his feasting was borne on
the subtler winds of Chaos, flowing down from the North, and that way he turned
his muzzle. 

The Gallbroiler had found the white deer here a few hours
ago.  The animal had been dead several days and its remaining flesh was putrid and
green, satisfyingly pulpy to the spawn’s tastes.  It had not failed to notice
the remains of the crudely drawn circle of summoning, the chalky marks on the
obsidian-black standing stones or the disturbed earth which told of a rite
disturbed and a skirmish lost.  Qikdeath had been tracking a motley band of
travellers over the last month after they had passed by his hole.  Normally it
left well-equipped warrior-types alone, but in this instance there was
something drawing it out of its lair and after the strange party.  Something in
the winds of Chaos.  Something it smelt again now.  The green-clad travellers
with the white arrow mark on their shields and cloaks had continued southwards
into the marshes at great speed and Qikdeath had lost sight of them as it
struggled to keep up.  At least one of the travellers was riding a horse, one
other was mounted on a giant dog, another on a bear and another was a centaur. 
Together with a forbiddingly large giant they were covering open ground swiftly
and the spawn was loathe to follow too closely for fear of being seen so it
kept to the scrubby woodland, forcing it to detour and struggle to keep up.  It
had been a week since the Gallbroiler’s four eyes had caught a glimpse of the
warband but the remnants of the site at which he was now gorging on deerflesh
told him he was still on the right track. 

Scanning the winds of Chaos for some sign, some message, the
spawn suddenly found a firm conviction growing in the remnants of its simple
mind.  There was no need to follow the band further, not yet.  The ritual had not
been completely in vain.  The cultists’ work was not entirely unfinished.  Qikdeath
would wait here.  Others were coming, others drawn by the same wind, others with
greater patronage and understanding.  Once more the Gallbroiler would not be
alone, it would fight once more for the infernal powers.  Maybe in time it would
be raised to higher things.  The ratbeast turned its eyestalks to the broken and
scuffed summoning circle on the ground.  When the others came the markings would
be restored, the Circle of Chaos would be completed.