Anvils Hammer sculpts, builds and paints his own miniatures!

[Anvils Hammer]

Hello all!!

Its been a very long time since I created a project log to showcase my work and get feedback, and this thread is extra special to me.

In this thread I will be documenting the creation and painting of all my own miniatures. For information on release dates, sales, pricing etc etc, please see the Official Anvil Industry Thread

This thread is about the miniatures themselves, I will be posting photos and information about the master models as I sculpt/model them, and WIP photos of paint jobs etc.

I will try to make this thread as useful as possible to the community - offering guides and insights on the techniques I use to sculpt/model, the materials I use, and (as I hopefully improve) guides to how to paint miniatures.

I hope that my fellow Warseer’s will offer me encouragement, advice, suggestions and feedback on my work, so that I can continue to improve my skills.

Enough rambling, on to the good stuff.

Today I assembled my "hot out the molds" Steam Lord Praetorian Kit.





Two complete Praetorian models.





Partially assembled, as they will be painted like this, note the Machine pistols built into the hilt of the sword!


These miniatures are for a post-apocalyptic wargame universe I'm going to elaborate on in future, but for now, a Steam Lord is a human soldier who has been spirit bonded to the soul of a long dead warrior from humanities past.

The energy of the spirit warrior flows through the mortal man, giving him vastly enhanced speed, strength and endurance.

In order for the Warrior to survive the traumatic bonding ritual, he is augmented with metallic bone grafts and electro/chemical power enhancers, and encased in an armoured exo-skeleton, normally based on the wargear and equipment originally used by the warrior spirit,

Hence, my Steam Lord Praetorians are humans who have been bonded with the warrior spirits of Roman Legionnaires.

So there are the miniatures, no one has ever painted this kit before.. I get to be the first, which is simultaneously exciting and rather dauting!

Luckily Ive got a shiny new airbrush to make the process easier!

Thanks for reading this far, expect update pictures soon!

Anvils Hammer

[Anvils Hammer]

My air brushing station.



Im still getting the hang of it and wont have mastered the thing for months, but I already think its amazing, the level of control I have with building up precise layers of colour is simply astonishing.

The models are basecoated using vallejo Model Air Mahogany. Im now going to give them a wash of black to get into the deeper recesses. Time to break out the regular brushes!

Anvils Hammer

[nedius]

Really looking forward to seeing these painted!

[GomezAddams]

I'm genuinely intrigued, but I think a lot depends on price and quality - if there cheaper then a space marine I'll probably nab a few

[Anvils Hammer]

I'm genuinely intrigued, but I think a lot depends on price and quality - if there cheaper then a space marine I'll probably nab a few

Quality I can personally garantee as top notch, each part is pressure cast and then indivdually inspected for defects/bubbles as they come out the molds.

Pricing will be updated in my Store thread. I cant compete with mass produced plastic miniatures on price, but I intend to keep the price as low as is possible for a hand cast resin product with a dozen separate components!!

Today's update-




The heads, swords and shields are finnished and ready for assembly, the legs and bodies have base coats/washes mostly done. Im not looking forward to layering up the armour from bleached bone to white!

I learned a valueable lesson- its easy to overcomplicate an undercoat. I wish Id just sprayed these guys black and started from there!

I will know better when I paint my Spartans! (the next project)

Anvils Hammer

[Anvils Hammer]

Evening Warseer,

I plan on making a small display board to photograph these guys on for promotional photos, and intended to wait untill those photos were ready before posting any, but it turns out I cant possibly wait that long with these guys sitting on my desk!

The complete five man squad of Praetorian Steam Lords!!



Not the best photo in the world, apologies, I will post better ones later in the week,

I put a lot of effort into painting these models and I hope it shows, I intend to put maximum effort into the paint job of every new unit I make, so hopefully my painting skills should increase a lot over the coming months.

This is the first infantry unit Ive painted in about 2 years!

cheers guys,

Anvils Hammer

[bluewolf74727]

nice looking model i may have to get some of them

[Darkover]

They look really nice! Great work and the quality looks indeed promising!

Could you provide us with a size-comparison picture? Maybe one of your Praetorians next to a Space Marine and an Imperial Guardsman?

Keep up the great work!

[Anvils Hammer]

Thanks for the feedback guys,

I will post a scale comparison shot soon.

For now here is the reason I had this thread moved to "Random"-

some scenery. Ive really missed hacking up foam board!



This is the start of my display base for photographing miniatures on, probably the first of several different display bases!

The board is approximatly 50cmx30cm, Ive started the project by building up layers of foam to make the basic shape of the landscape. After taking this photo I glued everything down with vast ammounts of PVA glue.

Anvils Hammer

[juicytomatoes]

Thanks for the tutorial on the board. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[Little Joe]

Nice miniatures and a great tutorial on the board, I will be following this.

[bluewolf74727]

thanks for shareing the techniques it is always nice of people that do this kind of thing

[Easy E]

Those Steam Lords look nice.

I really need to get better at sculpting and learn to cast.

[Anvils Hammer]

[bluewolf74727]

really nice now all we need is a pic with mini's on it

[Jormi_Boced]

Yeah, very cool display board. Can't wait to see it with the minis.

[Anvils Hammer]

Thanks guys,

This is what all this work was for- The cinematic product image for my upcoming website-



Thanks to my friends awesome camera and skill with photoshop, 5 Steam Lords become 18!!

Im really busy for the next week casting up stock of all sorts and launching the website, but I hope to start work on some new products, with update photos, in a week or so.

Cheers,

Anvils Hammer

[Jormi_Boced]

That looks really cool all put together!

[Anvils Hammer]

hey,

Here is a sneak preview of some upcoming new parts.



A new "barbarian" cloak set- five completely new sculpts, not just fur added to the old cloaks!

Also a Spartan Hoplite weapons set- Shield, battle glaive and Glaive Gun. The gun is a separate peice which can be added as shown on top of the glaive, on top of another weapon, or mounted on a models wrist. The glaive is 40mm long.

The next project is a whole load of new scenic bases which Ive been developing for a while!

Cheers,

Anvils Hammer

[Anvils Hammer]

the new miniatures are "blu tac" assembled.

Spartan Steam Lords with the new releases- Barbarian Cloak, Pelt, War Glaive, Rifle Attachment and Spartan Shield.







Hope you like it, Im really pleased with how they turned out.

Next Project- Scenic bases, which will hopefully be a much quicker job!

Cheers,

Anvils Hammer.