Rail Golem and Archie

I was asked earlier this year to do a sculpt of Archie. a wave 4 Malifaux model for a friend, and as he had generously given me a lot of Dropzone stuff before this it seemed a fair swap, I sculpted him with a mix of milliput and plasticine for the core, with green stuff  and milliput mixed for the details. I found this worked a lot better at holding its shape than many techniques I've used, it would have certainly saved me a lot of time with my Ogre army!, here's a few shots of the finished piece-

I'm pretty happy with him, I even sculpted a hand (the big one, the little ones are from my bits box because I hate hands) he is huge, and way out of scale as I messed up on the picture- I scaled him based on the guys in front, but forgot they were kneeling.. You can see him in the back right...

I've also been asked for a few close ups of Babe Ruth, my Rail Golem- so here are a few from my phone- not the greatest as my poor photography skills are once again coming to the fore. I also noticed a chip on his finger after the photo which needs picking up. It's odd that Babe was one of my earliest Malifaux models, and the first scratch build I'd done for a long time, and Archie is my latest and another scratch build, though using totally different techniques, yet I am pretty proud of both of them:) - 

 

playing with filters

another gap after a post, getting bad at those, will have to keep an eye out! I haven't managed a tremendous amount of painting recently due to health crud, however I did focus on one project enough to get it near finished- My malifaux Mr Cooper's Carnival crew.

The idea here is to only take models that fit the theme, and if I need something that doesn't fit, i have to convert it. I'm taking it to a couple of tourneys this year (which is probably a bad thing as I have so far scored 7 points total in 5 games played with them) and this should give me such a limited pool of miniatures that I'll be a lot faster getting a crew on the table each game, it also means I can go to town on the painting as there's less to paint compared to the rest of my Arcanists

two models have jumped ship and ran away to join the circus- Johanna and my Gunsmith were colourful enough to fit the theme (and I wanted a relic hammer for the test your strength machine) so they've been rebased, everything else is purchased just for this crew. (or blagged from a good friend in the case of the firestarter)

I've not taken the best photos yet, BUT as I'm building a fate deck to match the crew, I've taken some quick phone photos and ran them through filters at Pixlr o-matic-

https://pixlr.com/o-matic/

to get them looking monochromatic, old and battered, and as this doesn't give too much away about the finished article, I thought I'd share:)

Steam Raptor (raptor body with bits box bits and etch-master wings)

Angry Monkeys

Mannequins

Effigy (memory man)

Harlequin Ice dancer (proxy made from december acolyte with TTB arms and head))

Gunsmith (famous sharpshooter Dirty Rosewood)

Big Jake (from Wild West Exodus range)

2 shots of Acolytes (Acrobats) not sure which I like best

Mercury, strongest man in the world!

Thin Lizzy- The Bearded Lady

Arielle- Mermaid of Malifaux (there's a howard langston (which it represents) a brass arachnid, a mannequin and a performer in there somewhere) 

The Killephant (killjoy with green stuff)

Luther, the Pascha hare

Johanna and the relic hammer game.

The Wolf Girl (proxy for myranda, TTB body legs and head, Hamelin's spunkcloud provided the arms and the face is green stuff) 

Mr Cooper, Carnival Master

Baritone Lola, sweetest thing in the carnival

The Funstarter, the party doesn't start till he does!

stay tuned for colour photographs when I get the time, lighting and equipment to do it properly!

Mysterious Emissary

despite not having Neverborn, I decided I liked the Mysterious emissary art enough to have a crack at making one, i'm very happy with the result, I don't fully sculpt a model very often (I'm pants at faces and hands) so this is a proud achievement for me, even made a few of the terrain markers it generates to go with it:) I've since found it a good home with a neverborn player who appreciates the emissaries on-table abilities.

entirely green stuff and grey stuff, the only element on the model I didn't sculpt is the tree and crow on the base, they're from Avatar Zoraida who is currently swimming around as my Ice dancer.  

The pistachio shells on the bases are pretty obvious, but the larger creatures are a bit more unusual= they're press moulded from an antique spoon my wife has hanging in the kitchen;)

 you'll also notice the photo quality is somewhat better (i.e. marvellous instead of utter tosh) that's down to Jonah taking the photo's for me, he's got the knack that boy:)

Come with me, And you'll be, in a world of pure imagination....

Well, I finished my first Ten Thunders Crew during the break, and I chose Lynch and his box set. Now I actually really dislike the fluff for the ten thunders, they come across as vicious bullies pretending to help the people, which for some reason annoys me more than say, absolute evil gits like Dreamer or the Guild in General. So I decided to convert all of them into not the TT. most of them will be Mongol themed, but Lynch, well I already knew ho he would be handing out brilliance. Meet Sweet William, the finest confectioner in Malifaux..  

I tried to get Sweet William as close to Gene Wilder's look as possible, I added a TTB head and cane hand, and green stuffed a floppy bow tie. As I was researching his look I noticed he has a pattern of small purple and white flowers over his waistcoat: 

I was painstakingly attempting to reproduce them when my wife walked past and pointed out that they looked like sweet williams, a type of dianthus flower:-

Which means William Wonka, maker of many Sweets, was wearing a waistcoat covered in sweet william. Mind Blown. Costumer, whoever you are, I salute you. 

Then Huggy had his turn. Hungering Darkness- he needed to be a bit scarier than the weird worm I had. so some more green stuff and two old epic tentacles and:-

Now that is much better, glowing with the brilliance he just consumed from his latest victim, I took his eyes and added limbs, spikes and plates to make him look like a true monster.

and the Depleted he just had for lunch. The illuminated I was working on are now based to fit the crew, and I can call my TomB complete. only several months late....

Eventual illumination

finished my illuminated almost, these stumped me for a long time while my hands had a shaky month but I got them done:)

will add some more images of them based later, as I've got really behind with this Blog!!