The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

Welcome to the Painting Challenge. Here you will find the fabulous, fevered work of miniature painters from around the world. While participants come from every ethnicity, gender, age and nationality, they have three things in common: they love miniatures, they enjoy a supportive community, and they want to set themselves against the Challenge. This site features the current year's event along with the archives of past Painting Challenges. Enjoy your visit and remember to come back soon.

Tuesday, 17 January 2023

From PeteF: Hearthguard Skeletons (60 points)

A while back I picked up a box of Wargames Atlantic skellies from my FLGS. I liked the look of the ancient Greek-ish undead and thought they might fit into a project someday. They are going to be a SAGA Age of Magic warband and these 8 skellies are the foot Hearthguard. This is my entry for the Swords and Sandals studio - strictly speaking there are no sandals here because they've rotted away.

It's a bare bones project, so for flare I unwisely decided to go to town on the shield designs. It turned out to be quite hard to get black to show up on weathered bronze.

I have a bone to pick with the designers of the fourth skellie on each sprue - although great for posability it can be a bit tricky to get all the bits lined up. Fotunately a big shield can hide a lot of pelvic misalignment.

The shield designs were inspired by various shield transfers I found online - I make no bones about copying from the best. I particularly liked the octopus.

The layers and highlighting don't really show up in this rear view - they're there. Honest! I worked my fingers to the bone on this small project. I highly recommend all flavours of SAGA to anyone who wants an excuse to paint a whole bunch of 50-ish figure armies. They keep churning out new "Ages" and with Age of Magic you have free rein.

Compared to many of my fellow challengers I feel bone idle with this relatively minor entry.

8 x 28mm foot and The Swords & Sandals studio for 60 points.

Squirrel +1 for a total of 2 Squirrels

Skullz + 8 for a total of 9 Skullz* [if helmeted skulls allowed]

For Tamsin: My route through the back lot

Those skeletons do look great, Pete! Very Harryhausen!

Just a note on your route map - you might want to download the updated version (with Westerns moved to the Blue zone, the Gift Shop and a couple of streets added). I'm guessing that you are intending to visit every studio - I hope you have a couple of female minis lined up for the limo rides to and from the Superheroes studio.

Tamsin