Topics

1

The Butcher's Cauldron / Paint Comp Entry: Vargh Gnobsplatter

« on: Sep 22, 2008, 11:57:32 AM »

Howdy Folks,

My model is not yet finished, but since Irongrib and Corai did not yet post their entries I decided to just opload my Wip ogre. Yesterday evening was a hell of an eve for me. I did the NMM gut plate, part of the ironfist, all the leather areas, His face, part of the pants and the stone.

I decided to go for 2 ogre bulls because painting competition keep the speed up in my painting (usually it takes a month before I finally finish a model).
I started out with the skin, tanned flash as basecoat. Did some shading with a mix of scorched brown and tanned flash. Then I worked up to a mix of elf flesh and scorched brown. And eventually did some highlights with pure elf flesh.
The pants is a combination of a mix of black and regal blue. With some ultramarines blue on the lighter area's.
For NMM I took a base of a grey foundation paint (can't recall the name) and mixed it with black for darker and white for lighter area's. The stones are a drybrush of Fenris Grey followed by a lighter drybrush of Fortress Grey.
Last but not least. The shoes where done with a basecoat of bestial brown, washed with diluted brown ink. And extreme highlighted with snakebite leather after.

I know it's not much, but I must say the pictures are outstanding! So I hope you guys can give me some real good feedback on this one, so I can make a little comeback in the second round.
(please don't comment that there are parts unfinished, hard feedback and critics is what I want).

note: the jpeg turned out more red then the original

2

The Butcher's Cauldron / Painting Competition - Best Progress (winner on last page)

« on: Sep 01, 2008, 11:58:19 AM »

Final results:

1st: BigD
2nd: Wildcard
3th: Corai
4th: Vargh Gnobsplatter

Thanks for voting!

I found it time for a new contest, but this time with a little twist.
If you wish to compete you can let me know in this topic, and I'll place you on the list.
You'll get 2 weeks to paint your first model, then there'll be a break of 1 week for the voting. Then you'll get another 2 weeks for the second round. The 2 weeks of painting will start at sunday the 7th, to make sure everybody had a chance to sign up before the painting time starts.
The 2 models which are going to be painted have to be related, i.e a leadbelcher and a bull. This to make it easier to compare the models. (if you paint a skeleton the first time, and a gnoblar the second we won't see which progress you made).
Using models you already painted is prohibited. The miniatures must be painted for this competition only, and may not be released or have been released earlier.
I hope the rules are clear enough, if not please state or ask.

Competitors:
Wildcard
Corai
IronGrib
BigD
Vargh Gnobsplatter

Rules The competition will exist out of two rounds. The score of both rounds is added together and gives the final score of this competition. round 1 This will be a normal painting competition, best painter wins the round. But our community has to give both positive as negative feedback on all the miniatures competing. round 2 For this round, the competitors take the feedback they've gotten and paint a next miniature. Keeping in mind what they did great, and what to improve. When the voting starts, one has to compare the first miniature with the second of each competitor and rate how much progress the competitor has made.

Reward
This trapper pet gnoblar

3

Off Topic / upcoming competitions

« on: Aug 29, 2008, 06:41:45 PM »

Hello there,

I've had a break on this forum for a while, but I remember a topic which had a list of all upcoming competitions. But I can't find this topic anywhere anymore, I even hunted a couple of keywords and went trough the returning list.

What happened to this topic, or did I just completely missed it?

4

The Butcher's Cauldron / an HE BSB is born.

« on: Jun 07, 2007, 09:16:26 PM »

I was tired of painting NMM and biggie models. So I took an unpainted unit of HE spearmen out of my carrying case (which I use more as a storage box).
Since it doesn't make sense to make units of 16 (4x4 (no rank bonus), or 5x3 and 1 extra). I had one spearmen left.
I also got in a bit of converting mood and swapped the front rank's spears with swords and lowered the spears of the second rank.

Now I'm converting the last spearman to my BSB.
I started out with chopping of the whole model of his base and break it down to pieces. The only thing you don't get double with HE are the torsos so I had to keep that part.
I took a good look at the white lion hero and tyrion to get some inspiration and decided to take the legs of an archer, with his leg coming out of the robe. I gave him like a mini skirt out of scale armor. The leg is going to be plate armor.
I also have a 5,5cm by 3cm banner ready for him.

I'll take pictures and posts of him tomorrow.
Anybody got some tips to make him really character like or BSB like ?

5

Halfling Cookbook / Tutorial: miniature casting

« on: May 29, 2007, 07:46:53 PM »

First of all I want to make clear that this is not my tutorial, neither are the pictures and models used, I just translated it to English for you to enjoy it.

For the tutorial is a miniature needed: Sculpted by the writer, a fat bald guy with an oversized sword, a bandaged leg and some battle damaged armor from different sets.


Next to that you need the following for making the clay mould (this will be a temporary base for the first half of the mal):
Clay (non self curing!)
Lego (to build a box)
Vaseline (to grease the lego-box)
Sculptingtool


Make a box out of the Lego which is big enough to fit the mini with at least one centimeter of spare room around each part of the mini:


Fill this box with some clay so you can put half of your mini in without reaching the bottom. After that put the mini in the clay, and push it till it is halfway in, Keep in mind to keep the cm of spare room around each part !
You can see that I've raised some parts of the clay, this is because some parts are higher then other parts, to nullify this height difference by raising some clay: see the neck and right arm.


Carefully close all edges and gaps around the model with the sculptingtool.


And add some tubes where the the metal has to flow trough later on (the orange clay parts).


Next to that, also make some holes and lumps in the clay, so the moulds will fit like puzzle pieces. This prevents the moulds from sliding.

De clay mould is now ready and we can proceed to the rubber mould.
For this you'll need:
RTV rubber
Catalyst
Release agent
clean brush
plastic one-use cup


Mixing of the rubber with the catalyst is a precision job, you need to add exactly 2,5% catalyst to the rubber.  I do this by measuring the weight of the rubber and add 2,5% of catalyst to it next, in this case it was almost 3,5 gram.


Mix it thoroughly! Before pouring, first grease the mould and lego box with releaseagent, this will prevent the rubber from sticking to the mini, clay and box. VERY IMPORTANT !
Before I pour everything in one time, I put some rubber on the model with a brush. On this way I prevent that bubbles get trapped between the model and rubber, this bubbles would be visible after the pouring, not very nice to see!



After 24 hours the rubber is cured and the lego box can be broken down carefully:


After that peel the clay of the rubber, while you make sure that the model stays IN the rubber mould:


While we leave the clay parts which have the purpose to make openings for casting in the rubber mould, we build the box from the other side. Before this I cleaned the mould; cutting away lost parts of rubber etc.

Then the whole pouring process can be repeated:
adding clay for an opening
mix the rubber
grease the mould, mini and box with release agent
put some rubber on the mini with the brush
pour the rubber in the box
leave it to dry for 24 hours


Et voila; cured!


Remove the box of lego:


Now carefully peel the two mould parts out of each other, without damaging the mould and mini. With the mini out of the moud, you can clearly see the prints:


To finish it cut out the pouring holes some more, clean the mould by removing rubber and clay left overs, next stop: Casting!

6

Off Topic / Programming

« on: May 26, 2007, 03:36:07 PM »

Hey,
I was just wondering if some of you ogres had programming skills.

I've been programming for about 5-7 years.
At the moment I'm working on make 3 of a game of mine. Making a chat server and client with python (and wicked python) now, it's rather hard but I've it up and running now. Next to do is adding a GUI so I can actually send my own text to the server instead of the pre-programmed text it sends to secure the connection.
It really takes a lot of time, which is a bad thing cause I've to finish my crusher for the painting competition

7

The Butcher's Cauldron / Autumn base.

« on: May 23, 2007, 11:02:54 PM »

I read an article on CMON about making cool autumn bases, altough it requires fall leaves. And those are pretty damn hard to get in spring
Now I'm not a hasty person, but waiting till autumn before I can finish my base is a bit to long.

So my question is, does anybody knows a good alternative? Or another cool way to make a forest looking base ?

8

Off Topic / Dutch forum is broken.

« on: May 20, 2007, 12:46:45 AM »

not really a big deal. But I was just looking trough my profile and noticed that I could switch the language to dutch. After doing that the text from the menu at the top was gone and the exclaimer was at the bottom of the site.
Just letting you know 

p.s. I posted it here cause I don't have the rights to post in the forums related to the website.

9

The Butcher's Cauldron / 'Mystical' paint job.

« on: May 13, 2007, 06:21:19 PM »

I bought 3 confrontation wolfes lately. And now I was thinking of how to paint them. With the hope to get some inspiration of their miniatures I came across this one:


It looks really really great, and I decided to paint my wolfes in this kind of style. But after watching some longer something bothered me. The paint job is really pretty but odd at the same time. It looks so very clean. I just can't describe what attracts me so much to this.
Anybody got a clue on how to get such a 'mystical' paint job done ?

10

The Butcher's Cauldron / High Elf freehand banner.

« on: May 12, 2007, 10:45:06 PM »

I took a look at my kingdom (read room) and saw my elves standing in the vitrine. Then my hawk eyes noticed that I didn't complete my last spearmen unit yet. Some didn't had shields and the banner didn't had a cool picture. So I took my brush and finished the banner.


I thought the picture was a bit blurry, after playing around with Gimp a bit I found a way to sharpen the picture. Don't know which looks better tough, that's why I post them both. Here is the sharpened one:


oh and yes, that is a dark elf head pierced on his spear 

11

Off Topic / Confrontation anyone ?

« on: May 10, 2007, 04:44:12 PM »

I noticed that some of you have Rackham minis and I also saw the term Confrontation falling in some threats.
So I started wondering, how many of you are playing confrontation next to your ogres ?

I got myself the initiation set today, and I'm really happy with the models. The biggie book with rules scare me a bit, but I read the small booklet while I was glue'ing my wolves and the rules don't seem to be that hard. I really like the part that you can get different kind of wounds. And 180 degrees sight, which makes much more sense then 90.

For those who don't know what confrontation is, click here to go to the official website. It's a bit like warhammer, but more skirmish like. And instead of having an army book you got individual cards for every 1 to 3 models. Can't tell much more since I just got the game. But I was sold by the damned pretty miniatures

12

Halfling Cookbook / Tutorial: Forests (and a bit of basing)

« on: Apr 28, 2007, 11:53:09 PM »

Hey there,
I had some trees lying around which needed to get a base, after doing some it started to bore me. So to entertain myself and hopefully teach you, I started to make a tutorial on how I make my little forests. I've to apologize for the bad pictures. Thought they were good (judging on the little camera screen) but on the computer they're not that good
I got my trees for cheap at a hobby store (thing it's called a hobby store. You know, a store where they sell miniature trains and stuff) like 15 trees for 5 euro.

Requirements:
-Sand
-Flock
-Snakebite Leather
-Bleached Bone
-Brown Ink
-60mm round base
-PVA glue
-Super Glue
-Some trees

The making of:
Take a base and decide how much trees you want to have on it (in the example I have chosen for tree). Then glue them on except for one. Glue the last one on with just a little bit of glue (you need to able to get it off again later on). It might be useful to mark the lose glued one with something like tape or something. I chose the smallest tree.


Wait till the glue is dried and the trees are steady on the base. Now fill the whole base and the undersides of the trees with thinned PVA glue. Now dip it into the sand, (or place it on a sheet of paper and throw sand over it). Tip of the excess sand.


Ok, here comes a bit of a tricky part. Let the PVA glue dry a bit, but not to much. If you don't wait long enough the glue with the sand will flow into the place where the tree has to stand. If you wait to long you've to break the PVA glue which can break the whole sanding on your model. So after that waiting break the weakly glued tree off the base. This is done because we want to paint to sand in the middle of the trees without painting the trees and having to do strange movements with our brushes. (while working on the tutorial I waited just a bit to long)


Let the PVA dry further till it is completely hard. Dip a big brush totally in the ink and place it at one edge of the base. Enjoy the magic of ink. It will flow trough almost a quarter of the base (in my case, if you've a really big brush you might be able to do the whole base at once) add more ink till all the sand on the base is dark brown. Also apply some ink to the sand which is left on the tree you broke of the base.


Let the ink dry. Then take a drybrush and snakebite leather. Drybrush the base with loads of snakebite, we will do another drybrush of bleached bone after this, so you want much snakebite on the base. Else you'll end up with a base looking just drybrushed with bleached bone.


Now drybrush the base with bleached bone. Try to drybrush some more at the edges then in the middle to create the effect that the trees block the sunlight.


Finish off with glue-ing the tree back on his place (it should fit perfectly) this time use the normal amount of glue. With some flock cover the rough edges between tree and base, also just past it here and there for some nice forest effect. I like the green edge for a final touch.



And there you've a circle forest with a diameter of 60mm. It works like a charm in battles and easy to transport.
The steps of inking and drybrushing are exactly the same as I use on bases. Tough there I finish off with static grass and snow. Easy and effective terrain

Hope you enjoyed it.

13

Gnoblogs / The Unknown Tracking Tribe

« on: Apr 17, 2007, 07:11:44 PM »

Hey there,
just got myself the batallion box, the army book and a hunter. After some reading in the book and looking at pictures I tought of a tribe which is tracking itself. I've some cool Ideas for a story and ready for converting some models. Altough I'm not really sure how to convert them yet, I am sure that I want to make them unique.

Instead of making the 24 gnoblars which would come with the box according to the back I just cutted out all of them and made like 40.

With this new army I want to learn 3 new things. 2 of them come together and are blending and NMM. The 3th thing is converting with greenstuff.

I already painted my first bull but I'm not really happy with it. My techniques need some more work, but most of all I don't like it because it is to plain/normal.




The pictures are a bit dark, this is because of an anti-lighting thing, which prevents that my pictures from becoming to light 

I'll be working on my story, I hope you got some inspiration or tips for me for what I can do with this unknown tracking.