I am trying to finish up every figure I start. Even if they are not turning out well. I'll at least learn some thing from each one of them.

Here is John Willowby. John signed on in the King's service in 1642 and has performed admirably. Equally adept at pike or matchlocke, John can been seen filling in as needed, all for King and regiment.




Pierre Malady has been in the service of Loathar for a number of years. He stands beside Heinrick DuBair in formation. He and Heinrick share everything, at least Pierre thought so, he remains unaware that Heinrick is planning a move to Bearstein.



I still need some silicone to make any real progress on making armies. Till then, I'm just working mostly on one off figures for practice. I have chosen a manufacturer and supplier of Silicone but havn't the money at the moment to sink into it. The palace coffers are a bit low right now. At 145 bucks a gallon, it aint' exactly spare change, no real rush though.

I have been considering painting up some troops I have that I am not likely to use and selling them on ebay or something. That would help jump start my efforts.

Good Gaming!

The hobby today is being driven by eye candy. By hobby, I mean the miniatures gaming hobby as it applies to table top wargaming though you could probably include the roll playing game community (RPG) as well. We are in the midst of the the information age, perhaps only at the very beginning stages of it, 100 years from now information processing will make our present methods more akin to the ribbon manual typewriter.

All across the Internet you can find a plethora of information concerning the hobby. There are many sites that deal with all aspects of the hobby from sculpting, painting, terrain making, rules, to battles and campaigns. We as a community like to communicate across the net, it gives us a strength beyond our actual numbers.

I have noticed, and I bet you have to, that no matter how well written the text on a website is, if it doesn't have pictures it doesn't get hits. How any self respecting hobby dealer can take the trouble to set up an online store and not include pictures of their products, painted and unpainted, is simply beyond me. They are failing to take advantage of the primary means gamers use to evaluate what they will buy and what they'll pay for it.

We love pictures. The visual appeal is one of the driving factors for participating in miniatures gaming. I readily admit there are others, but who does not like to see a well laid out battle, nicely painted figures, or well crafted terrain?

The full color glossy is here to stay and its driving our industry. Do you think the drive to 25/28mm, to 30mm, to 40mm figures is happening by accident? Take a look at the increasing number of 40mm figures available today. What is the attraction?

The obvious negative side of 40mm is more metal equates to more cost to the buyer. Another is table space, with 40mm figures you are limited in engagement size. I don't think people have suddenly decided that skirmish gaming is the best form of gaming though one might argue this is a biproduct of RPG success.

First there was scale creep, 25mm became 28/30mm. Then there was the pork factor, figures started getting fat to accommodate detail and ease of sculpting. Sculptors could produce figures quicker if they didn't have to be anatomically correct, they could put more painting detail into them if they bulked them out and stretched the definition of 25mm.

I am not insinuating that there is an international brain trust plotting a scale creep to 40mm behind our backs. We collectively contribute to it by what we are naturally attracted to. We either want to see more figures in the picture, creating an upwelling of interest in 10mm and 6mm, or we want to see super detailed and beautifully painted figures in the picture.

Personally, I'm to old to paint 10mm figures and I'm not a good enough painter to justify buying 40mm figures. I like 25/30 mm and that's where I intend to stay. On top of that, I absolutely refuse to be taken in by 'hard plastic' figures, I like the weighty feel of metal. I have some LOTR figures around here, plastic they are, hard they ain't, broken is what they are. Plastic? I'd play soft plastic over hard plastic, but I can't do that for one simple reason, I could never adjust to all the ridiculous poses that come in a box.

I've been in the hobby long enough now to see rule systems, figure lines, and manufacturers come and go. There is always a new thing being pushed, full of glossy pictures of course. New army codex, FOTM ancients rules, 54mm figures, D&D 4.0 anyone? No thanks. I am just one man out to make my game my own again. I'm taking it back for myself and refuse to have my game dictated to me by glossy pictures or the FOTM, though I may stop to admire a lovely display.

It has thus far been far more interesting to think about my game, to create it, than it ever was to buy it. It isn't the industry innovation that bothers me, it's the price tag. This is after all, only a hobby for me.

I plan on keeping track of these links and adding to them as I find sites of interest. If you know of any I'm missing, please let me know about it!

Sculpting tutorials and information

Lyon Studios - links, how to's, and tips
From the Knife's Edge - Blog with some examples and tips
Dan Perez Studio - Articles on sculpting and molding
Musketeer Miniatures - Great article on sculpting a pirate, good photos
Sculpting Miniatures - Some good tips
Prophet Miniatures - Good face tutorial
Things to Make and Do - Sculpting a 54mm polo player
Studio Worx - Youtube videos, sculpting in real time
The Puttydrome - Sculpting Blog
Soapy's Workshop - Sculpting Blog
Storm the Castle - drawing the human form, fantasy flavor
An hour of wolves and shattered shields - good armature article

Some suppliers - included if they offer tools, putty, and lessons

Jeff Valent Studios
Ebob Miniatures
Prophet Miniatures

Mail Lists

Yahoo 1listSculpting - Must join up to view messages

Master Craftsman - Miniature art really

The World according to Tom

Amateur Sculptors - like me, just knocking up some figures for personal use, I'd really like to add to this section.

Making Miniatures - Good work using Ebob doll as a base
Soweiter League - Fitz does some highlanders and sweet highland cattle
Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog - Tim's productivity is motivating

I'm still practicing. In this case on an ECW pikeman.

I've had to cut his head off twice - just not happy with the way they are turning out. I've read several tutorials on how to go about sculpting the head, but it is still very difficult to get to turn out right.

I'm about ready to chop his hands off and give'em another go as well.

I'm thinking a couple of tools will help a lot. Something smooth, with a larger flatter and angled surface to use in pushing and pulling putty. Something sharp, a scalpel preferably.

I've seen 10 or 20 tool sets of tools, I just don't think I need all that. Maybe a few at most.

I'll be out for a long weekend so probably won't get around to finishing this guy till next week.




Good gaming!

I need a few buildings suitable for my Dark Age ideas so I took some stuff I had around the house and put together a suitable building. I used the below materials and some strips cut from an old bath towel. Of course, you'll need paint, but I imagine we all have that laying around already.



Basic structure with roof.




Attaching a few pieces of cut balsa for effect and to cover up those little notches. I also attach the strips of bath towel from bottom to top, leaving a slightly broader piece to cover the top of the roof on both sides.



Take a suitable brown paint, I watered mine down a little for ease of handling, and covered the blue towel roof and boards on the side. Wipe excess paint from the boards to give a stain look.



Here I've highlighted the roof with some lighter brown.



Covered the wall with glue, added a balsa door with frame, and some railroad texture to the walls. Any texture will be fine, Spackle, sawdust, or fine sand.



A little more paint to suit yourself and we have a complete building. Suitable for a Dark Age house or even out buildings through WWII. Cost: 10 cents worth of balsa? and some time.



Good Gaming!

I had to do some research on how to make a human. There are a lot of things out there on drawing humans which is not much different when your talking about how big a human is. The information over at Storming the Castle was useful.

The average human male is 7.5 heads tall. A head is measured from the bottom of the chin to the crown. So, the average man is 7.5 heads tall from his heels to his crown. A woman is about 6 to 6.5 heads tall. You can measure them both neatly here.

As an experiment I went over and measured the Minden figures, 7.5 heads from what I can tell online. Nice figures too, they look proportional, or composed of the correct number of head lengths.

If you go shorter than 7 heads you start to get dwarf proportions. If you go more than say 8 heads, you get alien looking.

Eight heads is supposed to give a graceful, agile, heroic type figure. Perfect for my troops. I measured the RSM figures, best I could tell online, they appear to be 8 heads tall.

I was tempted, when I first made this sausage man, to go with 40mm as my scale. That gives a head length of 5mm at eight heads tall, which would be very convenient.

I have other considerations though, like who would my armies fight? There are some locals around and their troops might get intimidated if I marched 40mm giants onto the table. I'll stick with a more normal 30mm figure which gives me a 3.75mm head length.

The Ebob puppet is almost 30mm to the crown. This will work well if I decide to use the Ebob horses or the Ebob puppet. Otherwise I'll have to make armatures, dollies, then cast up some dollies for repeat use. Over at An Hour of Wolves and Shattered Shields there is a nice armature article that I reccomend. Plus, he has the coolest blog name ever, which I believe is an LoTR quote.

I tried my hand at a horse. I was pretty happy with the turn out and would have no problem using this guy for a regiment or two. He has some proportion problems and smoothing problems but all in all, he'd make a fine wargame horse.



Here he is standing next to an Ebob puppet and a ruler. A normal horse would be slightly taller than the shoulders of a normal man. He is a bit shorter, guess he's a light cavalry horse.







Here is an excellent article on how to make a mold for complex shapes, like a horse.

Till next time,
Cheers!

Here are four things I've made so far in the order I made them.

1. Alister Greely: Is wanted in the Duchy of Loathar for espionage.





2. Rabble Rouser: Spends all his time roaming the Duchy of Loather fomenting discontent among the peasants. He has wild notions that the workers should rule. As a sculpture, this guy is a total disaster. He was fine up until the overcoat, I tried to do too much at once and ended up ruining him, he got all saggy. After that I just through a head and some hands on him to finish him up.
Made from green stuff.




3. Private Ducket: Ran away from the farm for adventure. A summers worth of campaigning in the July heat has left his sense of adventure a bit wilted. Made from green stuff, upper body is all Milliput. Total disaster. Once again, tried to do too much at one time, Milliput is very soft and prone to damage until it sets.





4. Heinrick DuBair: Heinrick is a professional soldier. He has spent time in many armed forces in western Germany. At this moment he is enrolled in the Pont-a-Mousson regiment of Loathar, however, he has already begun to pack supplies for a journey to Bearstein. Word has reached him that the conditions in IR Grolsch are superb and the beer rations cannot be beat. This guy was much better than my previous efforts, still, needs a lot of work. He was done with Procreate.



From my initial attempts this is what I've learned.

1. I need better tools, a sharpened brass rod and exacto knife just isn't enough.

2. I need to work in smaller batches on a given figure. I think the way to deal with this is to line up at least 5 figures and work on each in turn, then back around again till they are all done. This will provide some setting time while allowing me to continue working.

3. I probably need half the putty I pinch off for a given job. It goes much farther than you think and, its much easier to add more, much more difficult to get rid of what has been put on.

4. I really need some silicone to make molds. I am not going to sculpt certain items every time I do a figure, like weapons and heads.

5. Extremities are very difficult, head, hands and feet. I can remove most of this as a problem by sculpting one head, then casting it to use over again on different poses.

In my next post I'll talk about scale, proportion, and armatures.