From SteveM: The Squirrel Hunt (75 Points)

 

Thinking of what  "squirrels" I could do for this years challenge and figured why not start the hunt off with a squirrel battalion for Hedgerows and Heroes; only these 15 squirrels might fight back as they look like they are out hunting.

 These are based for the game by Splintered Light Miniatures. This is my first time painting some anthropomorphic animals for gaming. They were quite fun to paint. They are so cute.

 

 

 

 

 

As my first post, this is the first batch for the squirrel side-duel.

Squirrel Point Tally: 1

1. 28mm Squirrel Battalion

Challenge Points:

28mm foot figure @ 5 points * 15 figures = 75 points

I suspect young Oscar might have an unexpected surprise if he comes across this bunch on his time-travels! What a great idea to start off your squirrel hunt with a bunch of hunting squirrels!

Tamsin

From ChrisF - Chamber of Challenge Shrine 15mm (28pts)

 A serpent priest has managed to waylay some lovelies from the nearby village.

Hopefully, they can break free from his magical sermon before becoming part of his permanent "congregation"!

The snake is from Son of Snakes (Splintered Light minis), and the ladies are Egyptian villagers from Blue Moon.

Minor chores this weekend, so should be able to get some more minis done quickly. 

On to the next room in the Challenge.

From SeanS - 4 Ogres and a Rat (21points)

Hi All,

Not as productive as I need to be to get on track, but here is a small selection of figures I finished while watching the Cardinals get shellacked by the Panthers on Sunday.

These characterful little sculpts come from Splintered Light in their 20mm fantasy range here.

I decided to go with the Reaper golden skin triad, but used only the shadow and mid and then wased with the shadow again. I think some areas could have used a dark lining where the golden shadow hits a darker color, but only realized that in hindsight.

I thought I'd show  closeup of these faces as i liked them a lot. Perhaps I should have used a tripod, the picture isn't as clear as I'd like.

Here we have the Giant Rat from Reaper. I got him with the Basic Learn to Paint kit : Fur and Armor. The Drybrush highlight of the fur didn't really come across. In general I've taken to picking out fur with a small brush instead of drybrushing. Funny as that used to be my go to technique.

The flesh was just good ole Reaper tanned skin and the boils were Rosy skin, a wash of red and then a drybrush of rosy skin again. He is 28 mm scale on a 25 x 50mm base.

Here's a shot of the group so you can make a relative size comparison. The Ogres are pretty large, but I've only scored them at 4 points each as many of my 20mm offerings have been fairly small goblins and such. The rat I scored at 5 because he is essentially a riderless mount. So 21 for the lot.

Just wanted to show this weeks change in photo set up. Normally I use static lights, a tripod and a laptop to remotely control taking photos. This time I used some remote flashes. This set up evolved as I was messing around, it's not quite right. All of these photos were still under exposed, so I tweaked the levels in GIMP. But I did manually adjust the shutter and aperture and hand hold the camera for these. Thanks for looking.

Fine painting Sean, the facial detail is excellent and as you say they are very characterful, and rat is particularly nasty looking. Adjusting things in GIMP... hmm wont go there.. Nice work.

From SeanS - Rum, Bugbears and the Brush (8 points)

Well the seal has been broken by me, finally.

For your pleasure I submit two Splintered Light Miniatures Bugbears from their 20mm Fantasy range.

I really struggled with waffling on how I wanted to do these guys. I feel like I need to explore better ways to do fur, as they're okay, but just not really grabbing me. I felt really good about my work on building up the flesh using brown, orange and yellow. I did until I tried some Reaper Oiled Leather that looked almost exactly like my painstakingly mixed and layered flesh straight out of the pot. Sigh!

All paints used were craft acrylics except for GW Bolt Gun Metal for the iron bits and the aforementioned Oiled Leather and Ruddy Leather, by Reaper, for the leather belts and pouches.

These little guys have a lot of character which was enhanced by dropping the guy on the right several times, bending his left ear.

I hope I can maintain this blistering pace of two figures every five days.

It's going to be a looong Winter.

From Curt: Sean, welcome aboard - these guys are excellent! They remind me of the old school D&D miniatures that Ral Partha and Citadel produced during the mid 80s (and  right there I've just hopelessly dated myself). I particularly like how you did the hide shield of the fellow with the sexy topknot (and frankly the guy with the bent ear is rather fetching as well).  I'll have to score some of that Reaper Oiled Leather and give it a shot - thanks for the tip.