Half A Million Views! Contest!!!!!

Holy Moly!

I looked at my view count today and realized I am likely to cross the half million mark in the next couple days!

This calls for a small Contest and Prizes!!!!!

So I'm going to make it simple.  Comment on this post on my blog (if you are reading this on facebook you will need to click the link to my actual blog). Please tell me one thing you would like to see (or see more of) in the next year on Lost In The Warp!

Thats it :)

Some time next week I will pick comments at random (probably using a number generator). I will then contact those people and send them a lovely little surprise from my shelves of mini stuff! I don't know how many prizes or what yet but I'm sure I can dig up some fun and random things :)

Thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to follow my little corner of the miniverse! Be good to each other!

The first picture I ever posted on this blog - not sure what I was thinking but it sure looks like fun!

New Year = New Start at LITW (Yup I am back!)

First off, Happy New Year!
Second - man am I looking forward to a new year, and leaving this one in the past.
Before I start rambling, posting pics of minis and slinging paint I want to shout out great thanks to all who will continue to read what I post on www.lostinthewarp.com. Thank you to the community of friends who make all this possible and worthwhile.

2015 was a rough year for me.  The first part was spent dealing with the loss of my Grandfather and figuring out how my family was going to look and relate in the wake of losing the man who was very much the lynch pin at the centre of us all. By Spring we discovered that my mother had brain cancer and by fall she too had passed. I am very much still reeling from this, but have looked to this hobby of ours, and my amazing community of family and friends, as a way of healing and trying to move forward.

BTW - Fuck You Cancer.

There were a few high points to this year - my kids are growing into super amazing people, Star Wars is a force to be reckoned with once more, I got to paint with Fernando Ruiz of Fer miniatures and learned the value of unicorn tears as a paint additive, GenCon was fun, my wife continues to support my love of little toys and painting, my hobby skills continue to grow, and a wonderful new figure painting event/competition (the Sword and Brush) launched in Toronto.

But it is the future I really want to look to now, and getting this blog back on track is an important step in that direction for me.


Here are a few of the things to expect in 2016 now that Lost In The Warp (LITW) is back up and running:

1. A full build log of my award winning Boromir Bust - my first bust and one of the last gifts I recieved from my Mom - I really wanted to do this piece up right and I really feel that I have. I am proud and it is one of my favourites to be sure. The first post in this series will go up in January.

2. For Christmas, my incredible wife and children bought me a model that I am super excited to work on.
It will me a mighty challenge even after the success I found in painting my first bust this year. It is the Bust of Mad Jack Churchill by RP Models. If you dont know the story of Mad Jack give him a quick google - he really was quite the character!
I will be sharing details about this kit and a detailed build log over this year.

3. Trolls!!!!!!!!! I want to push ahead with my trollblood army this year and do some real painting. I built LOTS of stuff for it over the last 16 months - well over 100 points built - but haven't painted much of anything.
It is really time that I finish up my Mega Mulg and Extreme Rok as well as the amazing bomber and bouncer conversions I have made!
This project will give me a chance to try out a few new techniques learned from Fernando Ruiz as well as incorporating some ideas from the folks at Painting Buddha (who I support through Patreon). Also I want to try out some new colour combinations with my new Scale 75 paints - I am really enjoying them so far and think that these are what I was waiting for as I was trying to figure out blue skin tones.
I also have this crazy masochistic desire to learn to paint complex plaid for another project (see #4) so i figure this will be a fine place to practice.

Pepa's work is SO beautiful!

4. Plaid Tartan. Good lord why am I doing this? I have the AMAZING Boudicca bust I won from Origen miniatures. The one pictured here is by Pepa and is one of my absolute favourite pieces. I want to paint mine a bit darker overall with my family tartan which is dramatically more complex than the beautiful one Pepa Saavedra has chosen.... I don't know how I am going to manage this so stay tuned as I fumble my way through!

5. A sculpt. A few years back I was more interested in sculpting than anything else hobby wise, now I feel i have let many of these skills lapse and I really want to get back into this really satisfying process of creation. I have chosen a subject, pushed myself into a fall due date (for a competition) and am excited to see where this adventure takes me!

6. Another bust..... yeah a third one. Why? Truth is this has little to do with it being "trendy" right now and more to do with the excitement of trying something different and extending my skills in new directions. This third one will have a VERY different palette and is something REALLY special.... it is currently one of a kind and unlikely something that anyone but me will end up with. I am hoping it will also cross over as a key competition level piece for me. I can say no more at this time except that it is INCREDIBLY cool and will likely make it to the blog in q2 and 3 of 2016....

7. A return to a very special project. I started a project called "With a little help from my friends" about 2 years ago - just before I moved and my life went sideways.  I have some commitments to fulfil in doing this and it is high time I made headway with this super cool opportunity - Models by several of my favourite modellers (who also happen to be friends) Shawn PPC Welte, Mike Butcher, Dragomir, Kirill Zhilkov, Brice Cocanour, Todd Swanson, and the incomparable Chris Borer(!!!!) among others!

8. DUST - now that the *ahem* dust has settled from the horrible way that Battlefront mishandled the kickstarter, DUST is poised to make huge leaps and bounds forward in the gaming community. The models are cool, the alternate WW2 setting is superb and the team behind this is fantastic. I have a crap ton of this stuff now and more on the way in a couple months now that the KS deal has been settled. I have even gone about commissioning some custom decals for my forces. :) What's more, my friend Mariano Pagotti has sculpted part of the cast of one of my favourite war movies - Kelly's Heroes - in 1/48 scale for this game! 2016 should be an amazing year for this game and I really look forward to making some models for it!

Well enough talking about what I intend to do - time to go make some of it happen! First to clean my work room, give the airbrush a sonic bath and prep some space for all these new projects ;)

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!

With a little help from... Kirill Zhilkov!

Back to the beasts! This weeks helping hand comes from the incomparable Kirill Zhilkov. We met through the Golden Demon Lounge organized by myself and a few others for Games Day events a couple of years ago. Kirill is a great guy, really awesome to talk to and has a great deal of insight into miniature painting and modelling. I think what I like best about him and his work is that I can see in him the same desire to grow and pursue this art form as I have. Equally willing to teach and to learn, Kirill approaches each project with a willingness to challenge himself and a fantastic eye for detail.

If you are unfamiliar with his competition work, try this link to check some of it out:

http://demonwinner.free.fr/peintre.php?id_peintre=1465

He also has a blog that is a little sparse and not often updated, but when it is he really shares some great stuff. It is worth subscribing to just for the notifications when he does add to it.

Here is the link for that: http://son-of-nostramo.blogspot.com

He was also a part of the 2012 Adepticon Charity Dreadfleet painting crew where he painted The Curse of Zandri. .... Man I wish I had won this raffle!!!!!!

I am thrilled that he was willing to contribute to this project and I am equally thrilled with the model that he has sent me. Here is what he wrote:

"There is really not much to say about this model. I was and still am very fascinated about beastmen and I still hope that one day I might be able to build an army… I always saw Nurgle, Khorne and Undivided beastmen but very few Slaaneshi ones. So I figure that this project will let me try some of my ideas for Slaanesh beastmen."

I Love just how slick this model is! Initially, this model seems pretty straightforward with its daemonette claw and stock stance. What is really great though is how incredibly smooth the sculpted musculature is. The placement, proportion and sculpting style make this claw looks like it was always meant to be there.

He has sculpted a perfect teeny tiny slaanesh symbol on the amulet hanging from the neck and additionally the belt features six studs around the edge of it - a fantastic subtle addition with six being the sacred number of Slaanesh.  The model here has been enhanced - not remade or reimagined - just perfected with a brilliant  upgrade of character.

This really reflects the advice many golden demon winners- and more importantly judges -  will tell you:

Make conversions look like they belong in the actual GW range - as if they were always meant to be a part of the model. Support the background and character of the piece you are presenting as clearly as you can in the details and modelling.

Keith Robertson seared this into my brain many years ago and I have heard judges tell that to more aspiring competitors than I can shake a golden drybrushed resin statue at ;P

I have decided that because this is a standard bearer AND because it is so different than the other models (which as he noted are mostly Nurgle, Khorne or Undivided looking) I am going to do something a little different with the basing and give it a different role in my army.  I have decided that I will mount it on a cavalry base and run him amongst my hounds unit(s). I have always found it kind of strange that the hounds run in organized yet uncontrolled packs amongst the battle lines, so it has always seemed to me that someone ought to be wrangling them, perhaps through more than simple verbal commands..... I like the way that using this character in this way thematically picks up on the idea of Slaaneshi speed and pheromone control.

It will also allow me to add another colour to the army palette which is pretty exciting! I can picture a purple tone that still has a reasonable connection to the mahogany/hull red type tones that I have used pretty extensively. If I really like the new colourway I may also include it in one (or both?) of my Centigor units or perhaps even with my Minotaurs (which I will be revisiting soon as well)

If I am truly going to paint this model up to my army standard, a friend pointed out that the banner demands some creative freehand. I have started brainstorming some designs and will post them here soon for critique and so that you readers can help me choose a design. I will then post a step by step of how I actually execute the banner on the model.

So with one last great thanks to Kirill, I am going to get down to some painting and see what I can actually get done in the next bit :)


Cya soon!

With a little help from... Todd Swanson!

Part 3 of "With a little help from my friends".

So I have started the painting process on the first of the beasts sent to me by friends (PPC and Mike Butcher) and will post write ups on how that goes very soon. In the meantime I have the honor of unveiling what has quickly become one of my favorite Beastmen - the model built for me by the incomparable Todd Swanson.

Todd first came to my attention when he painted his first (OF FIVE!!!) Slayer sword winning entries for Baltimore in 2006. This was a Beastmen unit that was lavished in cool details (shown above). Here is a LINK to the galleries at crookedeye.net  a site he shares with the super nice and immensely talented Zach Lanier. There are great images of the individual Beastmen from the unit there along with commentaries on each. The site also features several tutorials and explanations that are worth their weight in Gold!

Todd has continued to push himself and I have had the pleasure of watching his style and techniques develop by leaps and bounds over the years. His attention to detail is incredible and his sense of composition and posing is fantastic. His figures tell more of their a story in their gesture and posing than many complete dioramas I have seen.

This past summer Todd won the North American Slayer sword with a wood elf that started out as a dark eldar model of Lelith Hesperax he largely re sculpted himself. It is a beautiful piece full of tension, power and expression (not to mention truly minute detail!).

When I received his beastman contribution to this project I was astounded by how fast he had finished and how wonderfully classic the whole piece was. A traditional scene of a beastman standing on an incredibly detailed resin forest base (that Todd had clearly cast himself) holding the severed head of one of its most noteworthy enemies - a wood elf...... And then it hit me. It was THAT base and yes, it was the head of THAT wood elf!

Todd had made casts of his finished sculpted parts! I was holding a model that itself was holding the head of the 2012 North American Slayer winner! He said of the model: I only spent about 2-3 hours on the mini but you get the benefit of my casting as that base probably took me 60+hours to sculpt.

This was an incredibly cool move on Todd's part - poking a little inside fun at himself and really sharing something incredibly special with me in the process. The little twist has raised this model to be one of my favorites in my whole collection. The whole clever idea just entertains me to no end.
The concept sold me completely, and the challenge of painting it to look even vaguely like his masterpiece ought to be nightmarishly fun!

The gang thus far :)

See you soon with some more fun!

With a little help from my friends part 2

Beastmen, Movember and Kickstarters Oh my!

First of all I would like to thank all of you who have received the group project so well! Shawn "PPC" Welte, Mike Butcher and myself have all received great kudos and lots of interest from the community - looks like we are definitely on to something here :)

I would like to point you once again to Shawn "PPC" Welte and Mike Butcher's sites as they have each posted some pretty great info about their thought and design process in the Beastman figures they made for me. Following along the same lines below I will post a couple of pics of the model that I made for Shawn and a little info on what it is all about.

Before I get to that, however, I would like to plug my Movember campaign page.  Movember is a month long fundraiser where guys shave their faces and then proceed to grow moustaches across November. This is done in hopes of attracting fundraising pledges and to create a visible public spectacle drawing attention to men's cancers and mental health issues.  If you would like to pledge me even just a little(every $ counts!) please click and add to the cause.

On an unrelated note, David Pauwels is one of my close friends (and one of the future contributors to my "friends" beastman project!!!!! You heard it here first!) and is the writer of one of the COOLEST web comics you could ever ask for - FREE MARS. David has started a kickstarter campaign to publish graphic novel style hard copies of the first two story arcs of the acclaimed series. I SERIOUSLY suggest you check it out! (Oh and another friend you may have heard of - 5 time slayer sword winner Chris Borer - is sculpting miniatures of the main characters as one of the package/stretch goals. So even if you aren't into comics but just want some exclusive cool minis CHECK IT OUT!)

So with all that in the public eye, here are some pics of the mutant marauder that I built for Shawn in exchange for the beastmen he made me:

Shawn's army is comprised mostly of mutant freaks with a very marauder/barbarian kind of feel. He has not limited himself to GW models or parts so I didn't feel in any way constrained to that either. I chose an OOP Rackham figure Gwahyr the Merciless as the basis. This is one of my favorite miniatures - the sculpting is incredible, the pose is really different and the minute and strange details on it remind me of the kind of thing I would expect in a John Blanche illustration.

<---Here is a pic of a painted Gwahyr. (not my work) I just grabbed this pic from the net so that you can better see some of the cool details.  It should enlarge if you click it.

I immediately ditched the head and the shield arm and then pinned a new weapon hand together using great weapon bits from the GW Grave Guard kit - I love these blades - they have a very different and exotic but definitely brutal feel to them. Turning this from a two handed weapon to a single handed sword helps give a bit of bulk to this thin figure and ties it nicely back to the GW range.

  Likewise the Grave Guard helmet received a little editing. I felt that this undead head was proportionately a good fit with the body and again hinted at a bit of an exotic look, very much in contrast to the typical Empire or Brettonian styles (the whole design made me think a little of the Persians in the movie 300). I simply trimmed off the bat wings and smoothed in the side plates with some Green stuff. I also filled the hollow undead eyes with GS making proper paintable eyes.

I ground some of the filigree off of the chest plate and replaced it with a brass piece of a chaos star from a Forgeworld Brass etch set. I then set about replacing the left arm. I positioned the shoulder and the arm to give him a bit of a lurching pose that was maybe a little zombie-esque (and fit also with the slightly turned in directions of his feet). I felt this would correspond to the very Nurglish way I was going to treat this arm and would maintain the forward motion of this model (though less explosively so than the original base figure). I used a hook for the hand (remembering that this was supposed to be some kind of mutant or blessed of the chaos gods) and made it look as though it had been jammed and partially sewn into the stump of the arm.
I added some textures to the arm that look a little like the dogs breakfast in these pictures, but which I think should paint up nicely as necrotised/infected tissues with a careful glazes or tonal blends. I then capped the shoulder with a little piece of armour - again from the Grave Guard kits. The model already had ample skulls hanging from the belts etc so I decided that to really put it over the top I would make use of the straps sculpted all across the back to add a shoulder mounted chaos icon. This would give meaning to the hunched posture of the figure and ensure that this slightly more petite sculpt would still fit in well with any models displaying the traditional bulk of GW chaos pieces.

All in all it was a pretty simple conversion - took me two or three casual evenings interspersed with a couple other pieces and produced something that I think is super cool and that I would definitely field for myself. I can not wait to see how he will look once Shawn gets to painting him. Check his blog The Madhouse Workshop for updates on his progress!

 Until Next week!

With a little help from my friends... PART 1

This is the beginning of something EXTREMELY awesome! :) so hang on this is going to be a much longer than my usual posts but will pay off in the end.....

WIP of one of my first Gors from back in the day...

Anyone who knows my work or has read this blog knows that I have a Beastmen army that I have been working on for years. It is a labour of love that has earned me nearly half of my Golden Demon wins and, even though I don't actually play warhammer much anymore, I am still working on the army.

As an artist, I do not work in a "bubble". I owe A LOT to the inspiration, technical advice and critical eye of some of my friends in this hobby. The community of painters that began to grow in the late 1990's and early 2000's  has taken on a whole new life across the Internet, but sometimes the bonds of respect and friendship that form transcend the faceless web and, in lucky cases, become rooted in real meetings and opportunities to share at events like GenCon and Games Day. I know look forward to seeing my friends and meeting new ones annually at such events.

Two of these friends are the main topic of today's post, though more are yet to follow......

Shawn "PPC" Welte is no stranger to the North American Tournament scene.  He is a great modeller with a vivid and imaginative perspective on creating miniatures. He has won NUMEROUS modelling awards and several of his armies have been featured in White Dwarf magazine as well as GW events coverage and other forums of note.  

Our other friend, Mike Butcher, is an accomplished designer and sculptor (large steel real world sculptures - not just minis) and is well known in the hobby for his Nurgle pieces (though historicals seem to be his favorite topic these days) that have long given me inspiration in my own modelling.  He was one of my first inspirations in converting my own models (my personal trinity of unbridled creativity and pure inspiration when I first started converting minis - John Blanche, Mike Butcher & Joe Orteza). When I saw Mike's Nurgle themed pieces in the pages of White Dwarf, specifically a Nurgle Dreadnought, I was blown away. I knew I had to start cutting up my chaos marines - I had to try. I am still in awe of his style, creativity and vision of all things Nurgle. I don't think that I could ever thank Mike Butcher enough for his inspiration.

Somewhere along the way, I crossed paths with both of these guys (turns out they are really close friends with each other as well!). Now I consider them friends, and together we came up with a great idea.

Shawn and Mike and I all have hobby blogs and are always on the lookout for ways to connect with our readers and to share our love of this hobby.

Shawn's Blog is PPC's  The Madhouse Workshop

Mike Butcher's is The Butcher's Bill

Shawn Welte and I decided that as a fun way to cross promote our blogs and spark our creativity, we would each make a model for the other (he is building Chaos Marauders). Mike upon hearing about this up and volunteered to build a piece for me as well which was an amazingly cool thing to do! We each took just a little time with a bit of plastic and putty and just built something fun. It was pretty energizing and certainly different. These were meant to be enjoyable projects not laborious ones. It has really been very reinvigorating for my hobby life to make a "one off" super fun model for Shawn. The whole collaboration has been a great experience that will be shown on all 3 of our blogs. IN FACT - If you want to see the extremely cool Mutant Chaos Marauder that I made for Shawn, you will have to head on over to his page - see above!  ;)

So - what did they make for me? Well.... In my army I have one Khornate themed unit of beasts and one Nurgle themed unit (rules - or lack thereof - be damned), and here I have one friend famed for his Nurgle work and another for his Khornate - a match made in heaven  ;)

Once upon a time, Shawn made an AMAZINGLY COOL  Khorne beastman army that I was very envious of (at the time I was slogging through painting tiny units for golden demons while he was creating an entire army of awesomeness in a fraction of the time).  So when I approached Shawn, I asked him to build me a beastman in the style of his classic blood lovin beasts. Not content to sit on past laurels Shawn actually created TWO models - one in the the style requested and an additional "mini-gor" based on some of his more recent (and lighthearted) conversions for his chaos army. Below are some pictures:

Not to be outdone, Mike happened to have a Minotaur that he had started to convert some time ago but never found the inspiration or impetus to finish (we all have projects like this don't we!). In this case the slightest nudge was all that was needed and "The Butcher" broke out his putty and plasticard! He sent me this incredible piece of Nurgly goodness:

 It connects stylistically so clearly to his own amazing Nurgle WFB army pieces:

I am so incredibly PROUD to have these in my collection! It is amazing to have the opportunity to paint models custom made especially for me by two artists who I respect so much. Dang that is just cool to say!

I will be posting  updates of the progress in painting them over the next weeks and months (I am ridiculously slow at painting - but VERY motivated by the very nature of these pieces). At the time of writing this they are in primer and base coats have begun :)

I will now leave you an an extremely additional cool note. Shawn and Mike and I may have been the start of this, but in sharing and explaining the idea with more of my friends - many of them agreed that this build would be a really fun and creatively stimulating project for them as well! So, as suggested above, this really is only the beginning. Over the next year, Lost In The Warp will be featuring new beastman models built by my friends - who happen to be some of the most well known and respected miniaturists in the world. This group includes no less than 3 (YES THREE!!!!) Slayer sword winners (one of which - Created by 5 TIME Slayer sword winner Todd Swanson - is already in my grubby little hands and is now one of the absolute favorite miniatures that I own!!!! to be revealed soon....). I will also be bringing you some more detailed profiles of the artists involved, more of my usual Warmachine stuff, Terrain, Competition builds, Historical models etc. etc.

The next 12 months are looking good for LITW!