Thinking Outside the Box

The Purchase Well this week I took the plunge and ordered some stuff from Knight Models  for the Batman Miniatures Game . Let me say first off...OUCH. If you think the prices on the Knight Models store are high while you're browsing, wait until the shopping cart adds the taxes! Ordering enough stuff to get free shipping will cost you at least 150 Euros, but with the exchange rate and tax (21% VAT) the stuff I ordered cost me over $260 Canadian! That's a lot of money to spend on nine models and a book in my opinion (others of you out there might disagree). I could have ordered fewer items, but then I'd have been hit with shipping charges as well, so the net cost per item would have gone up. With all the cash I've spent on gaming figures in my lifetime, even I feel like it's a ridiculous amount of money for figures I have to build and paint. I'll definitely be looking for a cheaper source for Knight Models products closer to home if I order anything el...

After doing my Reaper Bones figure up as the Red Hulk, I decided to dig this one out for some custom paint work. The sculpt stuck in my head because it seemed to capture She Hulk's stature and strength, without sacrificing her femininity, or making her too 'cheesecake.' (Sorry the photos on this post are a little blurry.) The skin on the figure was a really dark green and I wanted something a little more vibrant. So I repainted it using GW Goblin Green with a GW Thraka Green wash over top. It gave a little more depth, but when I tried highlighting with goblin green again it looked crappy. I'm obviously better at sharper edges and armor than soft curves. In the end I put another coat of wash over top of the green. It's decent but I'm not entirely happy with result, as I was hoping for something more along the lines of the green hulk I already have. For her clothing I covered her shoes and the white areas of her suit with Secret Weapon Grey Wash to ad...

"The Terminator' and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" are some of my favourite movies of all time. I remember staying up late at a friend's house as a kid watching the original on BETA video, with the volume almost completely off, sitting a foot or two away from the small television screen. We weren't supposed to watch it, so we had to keep it really quiet so we wouldn't get in trouble. The eyeball extraction scene stuck in my mind for years, and still gives me chills every time I see it! Fast forward nearly three decades and there have been more movies, toys and even a new movie on the horizon. There will be a coinciding miniatures game for the new movie, with 28mm figures. Consider me excited for that. Long ago I painted some Copplestone Castings endoskeleton figures ( check those out here ) to use as some flesh-less terminator machines. Shortly thereafter I received my Reaper Bones box containing my Vampire pledge of stuff. Inside that box was a figu...

This figure has been rattling around in the big box of stuff in my Vampire Package that I got from the first Kickstarter campaign for Reaper Bones . I was given a version of this Bones model painted up in green and purple to represent the Hulk by Uncle Mike a while back, and decided I'd use mine to do a Red Hulk. While I don't know anything about Red Hulk or Red She-Hulk other than who their alter egos are, I think it's a cool look. I painted this figure in less than an hour, including drying time for the washes. Highlighting took another 10 to 15 minutes. Very simple paint recipe: - P3 Skorne Red for all the skin - P3 Greatcoat Grey for the shorts - P3 Menoth White Highlight for teeth and eyes - Black to simulate some hair - GW Fortress Gray for the nails Once the base colours were applied I did some rough dry brushing: P3 Midlund Flesh on the skin and some P3 Trollblood Highlight on the shorts. Following that I splashed on some GW Badab Black wash on t...

I have to start off by saying that this might be the nerdiest post I've written to date, and that's sayin' something! The amount of fun I've had working on these, and thinking about what kind of games or scenarios I could play with them has been pretty ridiculous. I'll admit that I fully intended to have these completed before end of the year...that obviously didn't happen. There are a few options out there for figures, but they are either the wrong scale, too damned expensive of just don't capture the feel I was looking for; and then I found this! The TMNT Foot Clan Street Fight  board game was on sale for $12. After I liberated the figures out of the copy I bought, I made some cardboard standees so that I could still play the game with my nephews. It was a big hit during our Christmas holiday too! Now about those figures...on the down side the plastic is pretty soft. The paint work is passable for a mass produced product, but (accurate to the cur...

For the new year I didn't want to post this as my first finished item. It just seemed...underwhelming. In truth this Lex figure had initially been painted for quite a while, but I was never quite happy with it. You wouldn't think painting a bald figure in an orange jumpsuit would be much of a challenge, but I ended up repainting it three times before it finally seemed to look done to me. The last repaint happened during my Christmas break, but I hadn't rebased him yet. While working on my TMNT figures I decided that he needed a base that suited his outfit. I liberated a custom base insert from my Carnevale collection that looked like it might fit a prison cell and put him on that to add some character. Painting the base took a few seconds and he was all finished! The figure itself is from the  Heroclix  Superman "Fast Forces" starter set. I've got plans for more superhero game stuff, other incarnations of Luthor, and more 'clix conversions and re...