EmperorNorton's Overabundance of Projects

[Solun Decius]

Damn! You're really churning out the minis here.
The Malifaux stuff is looking really good, well done!

[EmperorNorton]

That wizard is really good. The highlighting looks very natural.

Thanks. Yes, I think that turned out well.

That's the best paintjob I've ever seen on Nicodemus there (and I once painted him myself!). Your highlights are flawlessly smooth, and your choice of colors throughout the model is perfect. Fantastic work.

Thank you. It was a pleasure to paint, too. A very nice model, except for being abnormally large.

Liking the skin on the Malifaux girl a lot. Nicely done.

Thanks for noticing! Not to toot my own horn, but I think that's the best I've ever painted skin.

Damn! You're really churning out the minis here.
The Malifaux stuff is looking really good, well done!

Regrettably my churning has come to a halt. As I've said before, my painting space is in the attic. And currently it is impossible to stay there.
The whole year looked like autumn so far, but suddenly summer came along. Not a fan.

So all I've got is more pictures of Miss Demeanor:


Since she looks like a friend of mine I call her Carolin. Although the real Carolin is prettier, if less heavily armed.

[EmperorNorton]

Okay, new stuff.
I finally finished the last ten Spearmen:


Well, "finished" is not entirely true, there's some detail that I should go over. But I really don't want to.
The complete unit:


These models are a hobbyist's nightmare. They are a chore to paint, they are butt ugly, they are fragile (I had three or four spears snap while painting, which I've never had happen with any other mini. Transporting these will be nerve-wrecking.) and it's next to impossible to rank them up properly.
If I ever see one of these again it will be too soon.
The problem: I still have whole units of Halberdiers and Swordsmen. But they go back in their box to be forgotten for a couple of years at least.

I also painted this guy as a little extra:



Not a nice sculpt, to be honest. Maybe I'll pick up another Witch Hunter at some point (the GW one if the news about Finecast getting better turn out to be reliably true, or otherwise the one from Scibor).
On the back of his cape I tried some wet blending. Looks okay in the picture, not so much IRL.

Test piece for the SDE dragons:



The skin is finished, the claws and eyes still need some work. It takes quite a lot of layers to get this result and I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Finally, since August has been declared Goblin month (by me), I have prepared these:


I gave them a little more bounce.

[Lord Dan]

Great stuff! The cape on your pimp- er, Witch Hunter, looks awesome. You should dabble in some more wet blending in the future.

Love to see some squig hoppers that actually hop, so that was a clever addition. I'm somewhat confused, though, by the fact that there appears to be an outrageously old version of the model amongst the new ones?

[HereBeDragons]

Yay squig hoppers! They should be fun! And yay goblin month!

The painting is worth the effort on the SDE dragon. Looks fantastic! (And you don't want to have one baby dragon looking better than all the others do you? )

[Solun Decius]

Hmmm ... you seem to have gotten back to churning!
The skin on your SDE dragon looks very nice. It really is hard to get a good red skin color without many layers, so I'd say it's totally worth it.
I agree that the blue cape is really good.

[King Thor]

Awesome stuff, the speed at which you've painted your goblin's is astounding! Keep up the great work!

[EmperorNorton]

Great stuff! The cape on your pimp- er, Witch Hunter, looks awesome. You should dabble in some more wet blending in the future.

I think I shall, because this wasn't as horrible and messy as I had anticipated.
I'll have to dig out my wet palette, though. Which I don't really like to do, because I don't have running water in the attic and I am too lazy to go downstairs all the time.

Love to see some squig hoppers that actually hop, so that was a clever addition. I'm somewhat confused, though, by the fact that there appears to be an outrageously old version of the model amongst the new ones?

It's astounding that I have not seen this extremely simple modification on Squig Hoppers before.
Well spotted, there is an old model in there. Must have been part of some batch I bought on ebay. And these things have gotten too expensive to replace a model I already have just because it doesn't fit in 100%.

Yay squig hoppers! They should be fun! And yay goblin month!

The painting is worth the effort on the SDE dragon. Looks fantastic! (And you don't want to have one baby dragon looking better than all the others do you? )

Actually I added another layer to the other baby dragons, but I don't think one can really see the difference.

Hmmm ... you seem to have gotten back to churning!
The skin on your SDE dragon looks very nice. It really is hard to get a good red skin color without many layers, so I'd say it's totally worth it.

I think the only way to make these look really good is to use blending, but I'm not good enough for that. Layers don't really work all that well on something this smooth.

Awesome stuff, the speed at which you've painted your goblin's is astounding! Keep up the great work!

I will try.

So, as I am finished with the ToFP I took an army shot:


Well, part of an army shot, the rest is pictured on the first page of this log.

And to give myself more time to focus on goblins I finished the SDE dragons:





The original plan was to also finish the big one, but I just didn't have the patience today.
I see myself paint many, MANY more layers on this one:


What bugs me a little is that I failed to paint one more mini, so that the number of minis painted would be exactly double of the number of minis bought.
To be honest, though, the number of minis bought is deceiving, because it does not take into account the Kickstarters for Kings of War and Sedition Wars. Those will only be added once I actually have them in hand, although strictly speaking they are already bought.
Goblin month should help in making the number on the right go up before the number on the left explodes.
An additional goal now is to have the number of minis painted exceed 366 and I am fairly optimistic that I will reach it.

[Solun Decius]

Dragons look nice man, and the big one is off to an exellent start!
The Sedition Wars pack plus all the Kickstarter pledge promotional minis is like, what, a hundred miniatures? That'll put your bought/painted ratio a bit off

[EmperorNorton]

The Sedition Wars pack plus all the Kickstarter pledge promotional minis is like, what, a hundred miniatures? That'll put your bought/painted ratio a bit off

Yeah, I'm expecting 104 minis from that.
The Kings of War Kickstarter is even worse, I'm expecting about 200 minis from that one.

It's...problematic.

[Lord Dan]

An additional goal now is to have the number of minis painted exceed 366 and I am fairly optimistic that I will reach it.

Any particular reason for that intriguingly-specific number?

Love that big dragon. He has far better detail than I would have expected from a SDE mini, and your paintjob certainly elaborates on that fact.

[Jericho]

Any particular reason for that intriguingly-specific number?

Love that big dragon. He has far better detail than I would have expected from a SDE mini, and your paintjob certainly elaborates on that fact.

2012 is a leap year. 366 days

[HereBeDragons]

2012 is a leap year. 366 days

Good spot! I was wondering that myself. Shame about all the extra minis you'd been doing such a great job on the mini balance, I thought you were going to make a great inroad into your backlog. Well you still have, its just the fresh purchase pile will have expanded even faster lol

[EmperorNorton]

Love that big dragon. He has far better detail than I would have expected from a SDE mini, and your paintjob certainly elaborates on that fact.

It is surprisingly detailed and a fairly nice mini once you have wrestled it down and assembled it.

2012 is a leap year. 366 days

One virtual cookie for you, sir!

Good spot! I was wondering that myself. Shame about all the extra minis you'd been doing such a great job on the mini balance, I thought you were going to make a great inroad into your backlog. Well you still have, its just the fresh purchase pile will have expanded even faster lol

The Mantic stuff won't arrive before next year, so I still have a chance.
And this has actually helped me cut down on additional purchases. I only bought seven minis this month. That's still seven more than I had aimed for and I feel guilty about each and every one of them, but still seven is not that many.
Maybe next month I'll manage to not buy anything new. Although I have my eyes on the indiegogo projects from Studio Miniatures and 1650.

[Gargobot]

Finally we're past the undead half-naked ladies, they really disgusted me. (Not your painting which was good - I assume, but I really can't stand to look at those minis.)
Anyway, yay Empire! Double yay finished Empire! Triple yay Empire Witchhunter!
And if those SDE dragons are any indication August is gonna be squighoppalicious (that's a real word, look it up )!

[EmperorNorton]

I am surprised you are thusly affected by a few ladies who go bump in the night.

Anyway, I got a new toy.
I was looking at the indiegogo campaign for 1650 and I started wondering about some of the buildings you can see in some of the pictures.
After a little digging I found out that they were made by Escenorama, a small company from Spain. After looking at their website I decided that I had to have their Guard Tower, which looked to be an absolute steal at a mere 20€. After signing up to their site I found the catch: Shipping would be 25€, which of course is absurd for an item that costs less itself. Luckily I found a Spanish online store that sold the kit and only wanted 14€ for shipping, which I was willing to pay. So here it is after a bath and a good scrubbing:



And a comparison shot to something in a similar price bracket:


Regrettably the casting quality is fairly bad, even shocking in some places:



It will take hours to get this into a condition I find acceptable.
If I could get this at a local store for 20€ I'd be happy with it. Considering the additional shipping cost and lengthy waiting time I cannot recommend buying this, although I am sure it will be nice enough once it is all done.

And another comparison Lord Dan was asking for:

[Lord Dan]

Wow, the kings of war rulebook looks great! I didn't realize that the book is so big. Thanks for the comparison shot.

[EmperorNorton]

I think it is a good deal at $35.
It's 144 pages (opposed to 96 pages for the VC Army Book), but it looks only slightly bigger. I guess the paper is thinner.
So far I've only read the fluff part, which is the first twenty pages. Standard fare, not particularly inspiring as far as I'm concerned.
There are a lof of battle shots, which is nice. I was especially delighted to see that they included photos of minis from other manufacturers. There is one picture of some Fireforge Games knights charging into what I believe to be Gripping Beast vikings that I am rather fond of.
The illustrations on the other hand I find lacking, because most look like early drafts that have not been finished. It doesn't help that they are usually black and white, which makes the book full colour in the same way the Orks & Goblins Army Book was - not really.

[Caiphas Cain]

Did you get that from the kickstarter, EmperorNorton? And if so, where's the metal vampiress?

[shelfunit.]

The SDE dragons look good EN. I was sooooo tempted to buy SDE when it was on 50% off the other week at the warstore... still, glad to see your KoW rules (and any plastic armies) from the KickStarter has arrived - still waitingfor mine, not too bothered though as I have a tonne (no far off reality) ofstuff still to paint...