Luxumbra!

In case you hadnt seen yet :) my fellow CB judge Angel, of Studio Giraldez, has a kickstarter on the go that is looking amazing (<- click here to check it out!!!).

Fully funded in minutes and working towards many stretch goals. I have been waiting for some time to see this campaign come together and it looks impressive! I am not an Infinity player but these busts and figures are beautiful - I definitely want to paint one!

The sculpts are evocative and characterful. They appear to be exceptionally well sculpted and cast and represent a nice variety of subjects from the Infinity world. Even for those not associated with infinity the characters have great variety to appeal across genres and styles.

Whats more the model stands that have been unlocked are pretty darn cool! I hadn't seen this style of plinth before but I REALLY like the clean aesthetic of them They could be used as display stands or as holders while painting and are priced very well.

With more limited release models, special bases, painting guides, a WONDERFUL deal on a great H&S airbrush kit!!!!! this Campaign is going to be amazing. 30 days still to go means lots of room for surprises yet :)

Best of Luck to Angel and the crew at Luxumbra!

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.

Todd Swanson is SICK! (In a good way)

He may be quite healthy, but Todd's awesome award winning Nurgle models are the epitome of sickness decay and rot.

 I have made no secret that I admire the work of Multi Slayer Sword  winner Todd Swanson - looking back through my blog you may also have seen that he contributed something AMAZING to a special project of mine (check the "With a little help.... " label on the right) that got put on hold for a bit when I moved but which I am looking to return to in a big way this year!

Now Todd is looking to share a bit of his talent and give people some of the very things we have been so envious of all these years. Todd's First offering under the moniker Black Swan Miniatures is a ket to recreate the actual base from his Golden demon winning Mortio Grulgor Model from 2011 (seen here on the right ===> )
 
Yeah, For real.

This base is being sold through our equally amazing friend Chris Borer's FULL BORER Miniatures.

 He has really one upped himself though by offering it as a resin kit with two different base sections and a few extra parts so that you could very easily use it to base multiple hero models for you chaos or industrial style models with some real variety! 

This is intended as the first in a series of releases should it sell reasonably :) I for one SERIOUSLY hope it does because the possibilities offered by Todd's incredible skills and imagination are endless and awesome!

The pieces are super detailed and the casting is crisp with virtually no mold lines. Unbelievably good!

Look to the tiny key on the left hand base if you need any convincing as to how cleanly cast this is.

Awesome stuff - Do check it out, spread the signal far and wide and cheer Todd on! If you buy one of these and use it send me the pics and I will happily show it off here at LITW!

Until next time!

Props to the Awaken Realms Crew!

Excellent tutorials, great blog and an upcoming game that looks (at least from a modeling perspective) SUPER FRIKKIN COOL!

http://www.awakenrealms.com/tutorials/50-model-painting

And their Kickstarter has gone Live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/awakenrealms/the-edge-new-miniature-universe/

I think I may just need to get one of these....

Something Wicked this way comes......7 days and counting!

Hey folks! Something absolutely incredible is coming NOVEMBER 1st here on LITW!

 I have been hinting at this for a while and the plans have finally come to fruition in a way that will be bigger than I ever could have imagined.

So when you awake November 1st with a post Hallowe'en candy hangover, check out this site and see the first part of a whole lot of awesome!

Speaking of Awesome, (great segue!) I also just received a belated birthday gift from my buddy Erik and it was none other than GENERAL AWESOME..... er...Ossrum.....Whatever. This new Rhulic caster has found his way into my collection and I cannot wait to play him. His rules make for an extremely different play style than my other Rhulic commanders and as such I am extremely excited to try him out! I will have to get assembling both my Rockram Rockhammer (ooh a sledge cannon that can actually get into range!!!!) and my second group of Ogrun Assault Corps (probably a min highshields too). I will be sure to update my progress with building and painting those and will do a tutorial on trench segment building (as they are required in Ossrum's tier list) 

I have also ordered the Ashlynn resculpt. While I fully intend to keep playing the classic "pumpkinhead" Ashlynn that I got from my buddy David Pauwels, I think this new sculpt will be completed as an entry into the P3 Painting competition at Gencon in 2013! Details on that to come as well :)

On a final note - I have been eyeing up the extreme warpwolf model on PP's site - just because I really like the piece. Do any of my readers have experience with this model (any particular challenges assembling? Is it stable tabletop or does it always seem to want to fall over? etc.)

If anyone knows much about this model do please email me or drop it in the comment section below :)

That is it for now - Keep an Eye to the Countdown - a SPECTACULAR new project to drop here NOVEMBER 1st!!!! BE THERE :)

Weathering, Rusting Paints and a personal connection.....

So, if you have been following my posts over the last year, you will see that rusting and weathering have become two of my favorite things to paint and that I have been experimenting and having a lot of fun. On my recent Warmahordes mercenary outpost terrain pieces I used the AK interactive red primer paint set with a little additional vallejo transparent orange to genuinely great effect. I enjoyed the whole process so much that it got me thinking about the forward thinking and innovative approach that AK takes to new products and next thing I know I am chatting online with Mig Jimenez suggesting a new set of paints for his company.


Turns out he was already thinking along the same lines and a couple of months later this shows up in a package on my doorstep:

 

THANK YOU to AK Interactive for sending me this cool product and thankyou to Mig for genuinely listening to a customer/modeller half a world away! So Cool.

Also in the package was the first issue of WEATHERING magazine. This is a new publication that I may be preparing some future contributions to (sweet opportunity!) which is going to be published 4 times a year. It is all about weathering models and each issue deals with a single subject. The first issue is Rust. It approaches rusting from several directions, displays a variety of products (AK interactive is certainly a pressence in their mag but they are really openly showing and promoting other companies products as well!), and really details a great variety of styles. It includes Historical/AFV, SciFi (the Maschinen krieger piece in here is AWESOME), aircraft and auto models.  The magazine full of beautiful photos and is printed on extremely high grade paper and should hold up to the use it is likely to receive on your workbench!  

One example of what you can find in here is a great side by side comparison of several rust paints/products from a variety of companies (including the kind of paint that you add a mild acid to to create actual rust on surfaces) which gives some well informed descriptions of the finishes and their potential uses. 

 Great stuff for the beginner through to the master painter - WELL worth the price (and likely a subscription for me!)

Apparently it is cold enough to require a jacket but not cold enough to require pants...

My only critique of The Weathering Magazine is that it also contains a couple photos of a sexy girl (barely) in an AK interactive shirt. While quite pleasant in one sense, it really seems gratuitous and unneccessary.  In many ways it seems hardly worth mentioning, doubly so in the era of models like this one from Relic Knights, or several of the mature themed Kingdom Death or even DUST miniatures... but I can still here my wife making jokes about it in the background from when I opened the magazine to write this post.

(PS THIS ANIME BASED GAME GAME BY SODA POP MINIATURES IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN A KICKSTARTER AND ACTUALLY LOOKS PRETTY COOL OVERALL)

COMING UP - Post #200 complete with a CONTEST! A little help and Fun with my friends, Tournament coverage, Terrain work, more product reviews,  Beastmen, Warmachine, painting!

Red Menace - DUST Ruskies - Part 1

The announcement I have been waiting for !!!!! The first Russian releases for DUST Tactics/Warfare have been announced!

Now on first blush I am not so sure about the design of the copter - it looks too bulbous/too much like a toy for my tastes. That being said I am sure there will be lots of ways to edit it to make it look cooler and what is most important about its inclusion in this picture is that it means AIRCRAFT are finally going to be a part of the game!  Also one of the figures is clearly the character Koshka (one of the main protagonists of the comic and the girl seen in most of the web art, cover of the box for the boardgame etc.) which is pretty neat! Also pictured is a medic (more rules) and what appears to be a model holding a Molotow "cocktail". A little stereotypical but neat nonetheless. 

It is worth noting that in the world of DUST, the Sino-Soviet Union is very much the key protagonist group in the battle against the Axis. The Allies are barely clinging to Britain and are mile behind everyone else in their mobilization for war. The SSU on the other hand has held in the face of Axis offence and has done a much better job of field stripping and capturing Axis tech for reuse and reverse engineering. Their 'bots seem to trend towards small quickly built battlesuits like the KV 47 or extra big behemoths like "Big Joseph" (man I hope they make that in 1:48 - I still want to build a 1:35 one pretty bad! Google Jose Brito's one if you want to see an amazing piece of modelling!).

I am SUPER excited about the KV47 light walker suits pictured. I love the design of these and they were a

Chicago Games Day 2011 Previews - Warhammer Forge Vermin Lord! HPA! Taurus! More to come....

Just for those who have been searching to see a little something cool from Games Day, here
is a Pic of the new Warhammer Forge/Forgeworld resin Vermin Lord! This is super cool and is reportedly still a WIP (more details yet to be added) This thing is AWESOME.

Here is a shot of the Hell Pit Abomination