From ScottB - Ten 54mm Turks - Perry WWI (100 Points)

Having had my planned figure schedule for the Challenge somewhat interrupted, by a very worthwhile cause, I have soldiered on as best as I could, and managed to get these assembled and painted in 10 days... Which is about as quick as I can manage - I don't feel my bum, has had a spare moment off the painting chair! So now I can't feel my bum! ;-)

But its all for a great cause, so [Queue - Windsor Davies accent] "Chest out, stomach in, stand up straight!"

More information here if you have not come across this great undertaking already... Mustering the troops

They are specially commissioned, by Sir Peter Jackson, 54mm scale metal figures from the Perrys, with a proposed painting guide to follow by Aly Morrison. The instructions specifically stated to not paint the eyes, just to allow the shade wash to fill the eye socket...

Slightly different camera position altered the apparent lighting...

So I have followed the guide as best as I was able with a mix of GW, Foundry and Vallejo paints that I had on hand. I finally managed to source the elusive GW Ushabti bone today, in time to use it to dry brush the weathering on the boots...

We were also specifically told not to remove the mounting peg, and obviously not to individually base them as they are destined to be mounted on a huge 10m long diorama board, representing the battle of Chunuk Bair. The diorama board is to be made by the crew at Weta, and will be on display at the Wellington Museum until 2018.

Unfortunately I am unable to say this blog post is the debut of the figures as I submitted the picture to the Mustering the Troops blog manager; Roly Hermans, for approval, who immediately posted them to the main blog...

If that voids their scoring in the challenge then, so be it. I am happy to share the pictures and the details of this venture with you all, anyway...

Right, so while I wait arrival of the next dispatch of figures, I'll see if I can get back to some of my own figures that I had left half done...


From Curt:

Great Scott!! (Yeah, I know, I'm on a bit of a roll this week.)  These are fantastic figures and you've done a marvelous job on them (I'm especially impressed with the faces). It must be such a honour to have your work be part of a museum-quality exhibit such as this. With the diorama being created by the folks from Weta I think we can rest assured that the final product will be nothing less than amazing.  

So, Scott, give us some more details on the project. How many other painters are involved. Are all of you from New Zealand? How many models will be part of the display? I assume each is a unique sculpt? When do they plan to unveil the display? 

Again, great work Scott. I look forward to seeing more of these from you in the coming weeks/months.

From SanderS - Sci-Fi Anyone? (45 Points)

Dear Ladies and Gents,

A promise makes a debt as we say in the Netherlands. Some time ago I promised you all a few painted Tarks and well here they are. As I was doing some Sci-Fi stuff anyway I decided to paint up some more West End Games Star Wars miniatures as well and post them here together.

Here's a group shot of the lot of them.

Let's tackle the Star Wars mini's first. These figures are supposed to represent Han Solo shooting some-one, Lando in his Skiff-guard disguise and Leia dressed op as a bounty-hunter (with thermo detonator, mind you!) in order to rescue Han.

And yes, Han did shoot FIRST!

Next up are the Tarks, I can't remember what make they are but they're marvellous sculpts. The weapons are separate as are some of the arms. The bases are from the 36 Chambers again and really enhance the overall feel of Barsoom on the mini's I think.

Well I hope you like them as much as I do. Sadly the Tarks (and the OOP West End mini's for that matter) are rather expensive, so I haven't got any more of them. The Barsoom project still has about 8 base-coated humans waiting in the lists but I'll turn in some regiments for more points first. There are still loads of Star Wars mini's unpainted in my cupboard but they'll have to wait for a while yet.

Points wise this is a conundrum for me, yet again, the Star Wars mini's are 25mm (so let's say 28mm for the sake of argument)  and that would make 15 points, but the Tarks are much larger so let's leave it up to Lord C. to decide shall we?

Cheers Sander


From Curt:

Oooh, those classic Star Wars figures from West Wind are wonderful (and rare), but I have to say those Barsoom-esque miniatures take the cake for me. They're huge!  I really like the baroque bronze armour and weapons set against their green skin - very sharp. And the alien landscape basework sets it all off so nicely.  You've officially pushed me over the edge in wanting to get some of these (as credit card emerges from wallet...). Just so you know the excellent alien figures seen here are from Savage Barsoom while there are similar types available from Tin Man Miniatures as well. 

Points? I'm counting the 'Tarks' as 54mm so the total is 45. Well done Sander!

From SamuliS - Captured Universal Carrier (29 Points)

A slightly smaller entry this time with only one vehicle! Sticking with Germans, but this time in a slightly larger scale. What we've got here is a tiny Beutepanzer in the form of a captured Universal Carrier fitted with a Pak36. I got the kit as a christmas gift from Secret Santa run by Ian of the The Blog With No Name fame who is also taking part in the challenge.

I must admit at first I was a bit baffled as out of the packaging came a Universal Carrier box and I don't really have anything that could actually use it. But then opening the package up I noticed it contained a PaK36 and German crew along with some plasticard and building instructions for a Germanized version. Building this up was great fun and will certainly prove to be a striking vehicle for my 28mm Jerries. So if the mysterious benefactor is reading this thank you for a great and very thoughtful gift! This definitely wasn't thought up in a short last minute panic.

I had planned to do this already in early January to honour the gift, but unfortunately it took me a bit longer to finish than I though as I looked for readymade rivets to add to the gun shield. However none were to be found in a proper scale, so I had to do my own in the end.

The Universal Carrier itself is pretty much straight out of the box with the driver and machine gunner figures being the normal British bodies that just had a head swap for conversion. I believe the PaK36 with it's crew come from an PaK36 Sdkfz251 kit. The gun was pretty much unchanged except for the fact that the gun shield was built up from plasticard with rivets added with Tamiya plastic filler. To make the carrier look more German I threw in some equipment I had left over from different Warlord plastic kits. There's some breadbags etc. hanging from the sides and Panzerfausts stored in the crew compartment as well as personal weapons.

My other German vehicles are all painted with a soft edged camouflage pattern so I decided to do the same with this one. I painted a three tone camouflage with my airbrush and then painted in the details wtih a brush. At this point I messed up the first time as I forgot to add decals before chipping and other weathering. I constantly had this feeling in the back of my head that something was missing, but couldn't really figure it out until the vehicle was going into a final matt varnish after everything was done. So I had to go back a few steps and add the decals. As these were added last they are a bit less weathered compared to everything else with no chipping and only some streaking done on them.

With the basic paintjob done I applied two different enamel washes on the carrier and let them dry before wiping most away leaving some streaking pattern down the sides. With that done I then added some rust and oil coloured streaks on the sides. The second error (or the first that I noticed) came in at this stage with Vallejo base coat paint starting to peel of at some edges when wiping away washes. At this point it was going to be hard to fix, but luckily it was mainly just on the lower part so I could cover it up with mud. The keen eyed can probably spot the areas from the photos though.

To finish the model up I applied a generous amount of mud in two different tones on the tracks and the lower part of the chassis. I prefer my vehicles muddy so there are quite large chunks in various different places. I also used mud to cover up the areas where paint had started to peel off a bit due to the basecoat sticking to the surface badly.

All in all a very enjoyable little project. As I've come to wargaming through scale models I really enjoy the building aspect of the hobby a lot and am really fond of plastic kits. A little conversion work is also fun and this did provide a lot of enjoyment. Yet again if my mysterious benefactor is reading this, a big THANK YOU to you!


From Curt:

Wow! That is a spectacular little model Samuli - well done! The three-tone camo came off brilliantly and I would not have been able to spot the supposed 'gaffs' if you had not pointed them out. The fabricated gun-shield turned out amazingly well (the rivets really do add to the overall impression). What a wonderful gift and reciprocated by an excellent build by you.

Well done!

From SeanS - 40mm Zombies!? (56 Points)

I finished these yesterday but didn't have time to draft the post what with Field Day at school, Chinese New Year and an evening of San Soo. Happy year of the Ram/ Sheep/ Goat (depending on your bias) to every one. 恭喜发财.

Anyway, here are eight Zombies from that EMCE Zombies vs. Zombie Hunters set.

I decided not to go with the sloppy drybrush technique and went with more of a shade, mid, highlight approach. I screwed it up and some areas and partially saved it with a combination of grunge and straight black washes.

This group looks a little more pristine than the ones I did for Zombtober. I added the Tamiya Clear Red gore after the Vallejo Matt varnish and the ink I added did not dirty the blood up enough. The only other addition was those GW tufts to my regular flock and static grass on the base. I tired a few different sizes. Some glued down better than others.

Just a group shot of those done to date. Eight Zombies for today's entry, the four survivors for the last one, and the seven done during Zombtober.

We'll see if I can pull the Comedic round out of my butt.


From Curt:

That last sentence had me do the one-eyed cringe. Let's pray for you that it's a small theme round... :)

This is a lovely(?) group of huge(!) zombies Sean!. It's nice to see undead painted in defined layers as opposed to the now-common quickshade method. Also, I really like the blueish grey fleshtone you've created for them - what's your recipe for that? It looks marvelously hideous.

Great work!

From PaulS - Gladiators! Ready!... (21 Points)

Ok, so not quite those gladiators. No Wolf present here. Those are in the other post... *badum.. tish*

I'll get my coat.

With Salute coming up in a few months, I thought it was probably time that I started tackling the preview Jugula models that I bought two years ago! I did originally intended to get these painted up well before they were originally released, but that never happened. These are 40mm multi-part metal models from Gripping Beast. I bought a couple of the Familia boxes, each one giving you 4 gladiator bodies and a large selection of heads and weapons to create a range of different gladiatorial types. I've decided that, for now, both Familia will have the same 4 gladiators. The models are quite nice and I enjoyed the few games I've had so far, but I think if I were to start Jugula again I would go for 28mm models instead as these feel like scaled up models rather than something specifically made for 40mm

 

The shields are done using the slightly odd sticky waterslide transfers. It's an odd way to deal with these things and not being able to reposition the transfer on the model is going to take some getting used to, but the plastic covering does make it easier and safer to cut the holes out for the shields. The main problem area was getting it onto the domed shield as it really didn't want to stick at the edges. I fully expect to find this one flaking off sometime soon. Really nice detail on these though, so I may have to pick up some for my vikings with flat shields.

From Curt:

Ah, I was wondering when we'd see someone do up as set of these larger-scaled gladiators. I remember visiting the excellent 'Atlantica' hobby shop in Madrid last year and seeing these up close. Though they looked very good (and I love the idea of each being a small kit) I shied away as I didn't want to get in to a scale that wouldn't mix with any other range. Nonetheless you've done a cracking job on these Paul.  I really like the defined musculature and nuanced armour, especially on the central spear-armed figure. Wonderful.

As soon as you started to describe the shield transfers for these my eyes started to roll in my head. I think at this scale I would try freehand before risking a rage-induced aneurysm trying to fiddle with 'waterslide' transfers that don't slide (sounds like something invented by the Marquis de Sade).

Again, great work Paul.