Tutorial - Speedpainting Trollblood models

So Ive had some requests for a quick and easy way to paint good looking troll skin. Sure Why not?
Grab your airbrush and lets begin!

Start out with a black primer followed by a coat of a light coloured primer like white - or as I have used here Grey by Ammo of Mig Jimenez (I love this stuff!). Tamiya grey would also work really nicely I am sure though it may be a little slick for the tints..... Anyhoo, spray the lighter colour from above to help create some shadows with nil effort.

Remember you can click on the pics if you want to see any of them larger...

Next I grabbed my badger Freak Flex tints - these are translucent colours often called "candies".
Miniature artists like Schnauzerface and my incredibly friend Mathieu Fontaine have done a lot to draw attention to the Badger "Ghost Tints" line of paints, which are essentially the same thing - just a few different colours in the range.

So I started with the purple and sprayed it into a few of my deepest recesses (basically anywhere I still saw the black undercoat). I followed this up with the blue as my dominant colour and more or less worked up in stripes from the creases and used the blue to help surround and define each shape leaving some of the light primer on top of each form as highlight. Because it is so translucent it really lets your pre-shadowing (the black and violet) and highlighting show.

I then used the turquoise to spray a  really thin and light coat over almost the whole thing which helped to unify the overall colour.

Anywhere that I felt I had lost too much light I just went back and misted in a tiny bit of white and then a small amount of turquoise to re-blend one more time.  I also re lit the mouth and sprayed it with the red and purple tints to create the gums and whatnot and finally grabbed my actual paintbrush to base coat & paint teeth, nails etc.



I don't know why it looks squished on the blog but just click it and it will straighten out so that you can properly see it!  :P

Total time to paint this mauler - less than 1 hour. Totally effective tabletop quality paintjob! Tempting just to paint my trolls all this way... but p3 is calling my name so Id best get back to the slow methodical method im trying ;)

LMK if you try this. ASK if you have any questions. SEND pics of trying this out and Ill happily post them here for people to see!

Until next time

Trollbloods know how to Rok...TO THE EXTREME!

Might as well start with an EXTREME pic! And yes, I do need to yell when I refer to how EXTREME this model is...

So yeah.. EXTREME Rok. Since I already bought the extreme mauler just to get the base for my MEGA Mulg, I found myself with this great big lump of metal left behind. I didn't really need another mauler, so Rok it was !

Ok so yeah I planned it all along.

Rok is such a super cool part of the Trollblood mythos and such a powerful impressive CHARACTER beast, that he clearly deserved a characterful model - that was more than just a plastic mauler with a new face. I did some looking around and found a few REALLY cool beer drinking raging and genuinely impressive Rok models, but I kept coming back to the big bad extreme version.

I had one recurring problem with the extreme Rok conversion's that I was able to find and that was around the axe hand. Some people clipped the axe and put it in the wrong hand, which was a strange idea that I still don't really understand given the nature of the game rules. Other builders cut and pinned the axe to the correct hand - which I understand is probably the easiest answer, but given the tightly clenched fist doesn't make it look like he is properly holding it . Or the most sensible but still difficult way was to cut off the extreme hand, attach the Rok hand and try to smooth the zone to match it up..... which basically leaves him with one less detailed and smaller hand.

To me, the solution seemed straightforward - none of these would suffice. Instead I started by sawing and clipping away all of Rok's hand and carving the remaining metal so that it was shaped in a way similar to the rest of the axe handle. Yeah...umm that was .... not....fun. On any level. But it sure as hell looked cool when it was finished and on the table.

Next I took Instant Mold from CMON and took an impression of the fingers and knuckles of the extreme mauler hand. This stuff is really great and I am finding all kinds of uses for it in my conversion work.  I could have simply resculpted the fingers and matched them up, but this cut a ton of time and made sure the fingers matched up perfectly to the original sculpt!






Once I was sure that my press mold was good and the resulting fingers were dry I set about cutting the original fingers from the extreme fist. I was careful to cut on angles and work slowly so that I could maintain the integrity of the thumb. this made gluing the axe into place much more easy. once that was secure I trimmed, bent (GS is flexible!) and fit the greenstuff fingers into place.

Now I had an extreme Rok who was properly holding his axe!

Next was a bit of simple gap filling around the back and arm joints and then to make him a bit more EXTREME I gave him more hair and a MORE EXTREME BEARD!

This was now a Rok with a beard so fine that even Kris Aubin would be proud to sport it!

Now I truly had an EXTREME Rok to be proud of. Time finish Mega Mulg and Frank&Stein so I can get them all into paint at the same time - so that my colour matches will line up across the batch :)

Then again..... Perhaps one more model first.

A Warcaster.

That way I could end up with a heck of a battle group for P3.

But who would hang out with both Rok and Mulg? hmmm........

Introducing Frank & Stein - my Dire Troll Bomber Team!

This started out as 40% inspiration and 60% joke but in my mind has ended up 100% awesome!!!!! (ok 96% awesome and 4% still a joke - makes me smile like crazy!)

hehehe the hands are SO MUCH BIGGER than this... but dang this looks cool!

Once upon a time I was digging through the forums at privateer press and cam across a model that I thought was pretty darn cool - turned out it was actually just a digital mock up that forum member Maximum had made when people were trying to figure out how big Dozer and Smig's hands were when the initial pics of them had been leaked and what the model could look like... He pasted them on to an image of a dire troll and then used bouncer shields as shoulder pads to camouflage the arm joins etc.

Having just cut apart Dozer for my Mega Mulg project I had a set of the hands just kind of kicking around and thought - what the heck lets give it a try. First thing I discovered was that Maximum's estimate of the size of D&S hands was under - by a lot. Those frikking hands are HUGE. But I had little to lose and thought that the bouncer shields might really offset some of the size disparity so I pushed on. Using my leftover Extreme Mauler head really helped as it was much bigger than the standard plastic head and brought more overall proportional balance to this (still mostly ridiculous) model. That was actually a tough choice because I did so like the look of Maximum's inspiration piece with the blitzer head, but I figure Ill be building at least one blitzer still so Ill get to use that head yet....and this really did add a lot to balancing the sections of the figure.

As with Mulg I wanted to make sure that it stayed close to the definitions of legal for Tournament play - and looked to the defining features of the actual bomber model for inspiration. I used the correct back piece for the bomber kit and carefully cut one of the bomber "bombs" from the hand so that I could it it in the D&S hand. A little Green stuff later and the hand close around the refinished bomb nicely!

I used a couple of extra mule barrel/kegs and some smaller ones from various Trollblood models (I bits ordered a bunch directly from PP a while ago) to fill out the area along the belt line and around the back. Really easy and really worked out!

I also noticed the helmet head on the bomber and felt that this was one of the things that was specific to differentiating this model from the other trolls in the kit so I cut the helmet away and mounted it atop the extreme head and then added some straps from brass etch (1/35 german tie down straps).
It actually made the extreme head a little more normal looking but what I really like it the way the brass straps look like he has just burst them in the moment and really give some life to the overall model!

I also removed all the gear that was strapped to the gloves - the missiles/shells, an axe, bedroll, pouches, straps etc (hey there was a lot of room to fill on those!) and went about refilling the resulting holes with greenstuff and apoxie sculpt (apoxie sculpt is way easier to smoothly blend in for surfaces like this btw...) I decided to leave them less than 100% level - giving them a slightly dented appearance instead. A light sanding to finish and they looked great!

I then added the shoulder pad which was a Bouncer shield press molded using Instant Mold from Cool Mini or Not and Apoxie sculpt.  Once it was hardened and attached I added a brass strap across the body. I looked at whether to add the second bouncer pad like Maximum's original artwork had featured But I really liked the asymmetry of just one and felt that it gave me more range of pose for the bomb holding arm not to have the second pad.

It was at this point that I realized there was still something missing and that a whelp was really needed to finish the composition and raise the eye level above the huge lateral axis created by the huge hands. I briefly thought about using the stock bomber whelp and was explaining to a friend about how I had "frankensteined" this whole thing together from leftover parts when I was hit square in the face with inspiration.  Like Dozer and Smig - I could really characterize this duo as Frank and Stein!  With all personal the character focused attitude featured in the current Riven Bonds league play I knew I was really on the right path!

I made a press mold of Smig's arm and grabbed a metal whelp with the bottle.  a few snips + a bit of wire later and I had modified the bottle into a bomb, taken off the other arm and married the cast of smigs fist to the body. I took some greenstuff and gave him a frankenstein-esque tall forehead and hairdo and then added some grandt line bolts to the whelps neck! I then took some screws/bolts from the Cephalyx monstrosity sprues and added them to the neck of the dire troll to give a bit of thematic continuity. It looks pretty cool!

Cant wait for my Bases from CMON/MAS to finally come in as I will be able to stand him up properly and start laying in some paint!

Play it Painted 1: Cygnar in a week

So as many of my readers know, I supervise a games club for local kids with board games (like Zombies Keep Out!), card games (like BANG! - ONE OF THE BEST GAMES I HAVE EVER PLAYED!) and miniature based games (like Super Dungeon Explore and DUST:Tactics)  and regular leagues for my favorite miniature game(s) Warmachine/Hordes aka "WARMAHORDES!"

Speed painted Menoth

I find that it is the miniatures games that bring in the most kids and the most attention. Seeing cool tables full of beautiful scenery and cool armies really appeals. I collect starter forces wherever I can get a good deal and have used my promotional support from Privateer Press' Press Ganger program to ensure that all kids interested can get a start in this game/community regardless of financial standing or ability to collect their own forces. That being said, many of the students have indeed, purchased their own models to supplement the ones that I have so that they can tool up the club forces and/or build their own preferred forces over time! It has been pretty awesome to see the growth and interest in this hobby through the eyes of these kids.  One now has a Cephalyx army in progress, another Cryx, 2 student owned khador forces, 1 menoth, 1 legion and one circle are all now in the works!
As they paint up their models I will be featuring many of them here on the site for all to see.

Ditto for Khador - Impressive big Jacks but I think we can do even better...

The trick/problem on my end is that in gathering up enough starter armies for everyone to play it becomes extremely difficult to ensure that everyone has some nicely painted stuff to feel proud to play and to develop a connection to in those first days of trying things out. I have the Khador and Menoth starter box models all painted up (Pictures/articles about doing them HERE, HERE, and HERE ) but now I am looking to find ways to get plently of my other faction forces together and looking good to fuel young imaginations. So I have decided to start "speed painting" a variety of forces that I have - using all the coolest tricks and shortcuts that I have learned over a lifetime of figure painting. The goal is to crate models that, while they wont win me any awards, will look as good or better than the majority of armies seen on gaming tables (remember we are looking to inspire!) and can be done FAST!

My weapons of choice for this project....

Up first are the boys (and girls) in Blue - Cygnar, bastions of humanity, technology, tolerance and civilization in the Iron Kingdoms. While this may be overstating it a little, Cygnar are generally cast in the hero/good guy role - as such I will be painting them in a clean and bright manner with minimal battle damage and a strong colour palette. Inspired by painters like Schnauzerface, I will be tackling these guys mostly with my airbrush followed by a few keen shortcuts to a good looking finish.

From a friend I got a good deal on a trade for some Cygnar, specifically a Morrowan force based around Constance Blaize and precursor knights:
Blaize
1 Full Precursor unit, with UA
Charger light warjack
Lancer light warjack
Captain Jonas Murdoch (character UA)

Murdoch is the real star of this list as he allows Merc units to become full on Cygnar units.  This way, despite the narrow focus of the rest of the army, my students could try out a variety of different unit/playstyles in conjunction with this. They have almost exclusively decided that Ogrun Assault Corps is the unit of choice - giving necessary fire support while also being beefy enough to take a beating. That Murdoch gives them the assault special rule just makes them a beautiful place to park some list points and terrify opponents..... I hope to add an additional caster and unit (long rifles or stormblades perhaps) to this sometime during the coming year and I already have a firefly and hopefully a couple heavy jacks coming from a friend in the near future. I also have some Gun Mages in my merc. collection that help round out the options for the kids.


After cleaning the models up, I hit them with a chaos black primer from below followed by light Grey Primer from AMMO of Mig Jimenez  (This stuff goes on thin and beautiful) and finally a spray of VMC Foundation white across all upper surfaces to create basic highlights and shadows on the models.

After this I cracked open my Badger Freak Flex Tints (basically the same thing as the Ghost Tints that Schnauzerface and Mathieu Fontaine have been singing the praises of for some time now but in an older packaging line)  I used teal and blue to blend in some simple layers of a transparent colour over top of the preshaded primer coats.


The result is a great series of colour transitions that are rich enough to pop and which blend into my desired apex white colours in various areas. Look at these (admittedly crappy) phone pics to see what results are possible with this method and try to tell me that it isn't pretty darn cool.



First colour passes - still a few more layers to go.



Here you can really see it starting to come together on the Charger

Weapons and skin were base coated with a brush, white was tidied up and a bright lime green colour was gently airbrushes on gems/arc nodes/glowy areas etc. for a little pop of colour



 Here is one with the shield attatched, skin tone was given a wash, weapon and armour each with one dry brush and washed with the same AMMO of Mig tracks wash that I washed the skin with.

Here is a small selection of the final washed and highlighted  pieces - completed over my lunch hour in less than 2 weeks (16 figures in about 7 lunches/probably 5 hours total including basing):

A great little force for the students to throw down with! I have also ordered the trencher master gunner solo to use with season two of the Riven Bonds campaign and I hope to expand it soon with another caster and a unit (preferably a shooting one - probably long gunners and/or black 13th for character!) If anyone out there has good suggestions please let me know :)

Wishing you an EGG-ceptional Easter! NINJA style!

May your treats arrive stealthily and leave you in good health and spirits!

On a vaguely related note - 15 days left in the Soda Pop Miniatures Ninja All Stars Kickstarter!

Deke, Kris, Ross and the crew were super nice to me at Gen Con last year so I figure the least I could do to say thanks is to throw their amazing looking new game a shout out. Thanks Soda Pop & Ninja Division! I would really like my readers to know that I think Soda Pop/Ninja division are  a great group of true hobbyists who love what they do - and it is clear in their work. I also think that, following what I saw in the adepticon coverage - and the inclusion of a specific category in the Crystal Brush - that Chibi miniatures are really becoming a significant aspect of the hobby landscape, and that it is clear that these are the people who are leading the way!

ALSO:

SUPER DUNGEON EXPLORE has shipped!
I cant wait to get mine in the mail and to get painting some of these models. Check out this one by fellow Canuck Alex Nemes of Minx Studio.

Check out the way he has shadowed this model - it really is a clever piece and beautifully handled. I told Alex I wished it were mine lol.

Great work! .... Not enough?
Ok one more pic from Alex  - one of upcoming the Ninja All Star models!

That is just cool.
Ok back to hunting eggs.
Have a great one folks! New post Wednesday.