Muninn's May Mini Madness

[Brother Muninn]

This month I intend to complete a mini a day.

I, like every other miniature enthusiast I've ever met, have boxes full of half built, half painted, half loved minis. Projects that started strong but petered out, leaving behind a road of sad metal men created by the best of artistic intentions.

I've gathered together 31 of my models that I'd always meant to paint/finish, and devised an excuse to complete them all. These minis have been collected over the course of 15 years of painting and are just the tip of the iceberg. Most are Reaper & GW, some are limited editions, others are plastic troops, but all are wholly deserving of a little TLC. Here's the Calendar.


I hope to update this plog once a day for the entire month. As minis are completed I'll post them here and update the Calendar so you can see them all together in one place. I'm not totally sure I can do it without cutting a few corners with my painting (I might even have to drybrush), and I'm not sure my wife/friends/cats will appreciate the time I'll be putting into the project either, but there it is.

I hope you enjoy,

~Muninn

[EmperorNorton]

Interesting approach.
I am curious to see what awaits us here.

[Yorrik]

Get to work, you lazy hump!

[biginbelgium]

yep the clock is ticking

[Brother Muninn]

Thanks for the support... I guess?

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and here he is.


This is a mini that I'd originally bought for my Dark Sun game a year ago. I'm not sure what exactly I would have used him more, but he was clearly made to be part of a feral dessert world where no one has access to metal.

I also took a shot of him before I'd actually started painting for the day so you could see just how much progress had been made.


At this point all that had been done was a basecoat of Dark Flesh on the skin, so everything else was from scratch.

I did cut some corners. I usually have a 3-4 stage bone workup, but I mostly glossed over the details on the bone and relied on Sepia ink to fill in where I'd skipped over. Otherwise, I'm quite happy with how he turned out given the speed at which he was done.

One down, 30 to go.

~Muninn

[HereBeDragons]

what an awesome idea for a plog. I love the calender thing. I hope the entire calender just counts as one image so you can get all 31 minis up there without breaking limits. Good luck I hope you succeed!

[Yorrik]

I remember that game! We discovered that Psions are bad!

The dwarf looks good. I like the limited palette, it makes the mini bold and coherent. My only gripe is that the boots are very close in color to the sand.

Great work, keep it up!

[mrtn]

Nice idea, and good luck!
Over here it's already the 3rd, so I'm looking forward to the mini for the 2nd...

[Tzarinchilla]

Nice job there. I love the Dark Sun world and he fits in brilliantly. Looking forward to seeing you achieve your goal.

[sigur]

What a fun miniature. Nice job indeed.

[basher]

i'm going to sub to this and see how you get on

[Brother Muninn]

what an awesome idea for a plog. I love the calender thing. I hope the entire calender just counts as one image so you can get all 31 minis up there without breaking limits. Good luck I hope you succeed!

It's a single photo, I just clone a new picture into the calendar and re-upload it.

I remember that game! We discovered that Psions are bad!

The dwarf looks good. I like the limited palette, it makes the mini bold and coherent. My only gripe is that the boots are very close in color to the sand.

Great work, keep it up!

Yeah, I realized that as I was working on the base, but I just decided to go with it. Just something to be mindful of in the future I guess.

Nice idea, and good luck!
Over here it's already the 3rd, so I'm looking forward to the mini for the 2nd...

I remember time changes like that. I'm going off of American Pacific time, so it's around 10 hours behind some of the European countries. Hop I don't keep you waiting too long.

Nice job there. I love the Dark Sun world and he fits in brilliantly. Looking forward to seeing you achieve your goal.

Thanks, there will even be a handful more models from the now-defunct Dark Sun game, so I hope you keep checking in.

What a fun miniature. Nice job indeed.

I was thrilled when I saw the bald, beardless savage dwarf on Reaper's website, I'm glad you like him too.

i'm going to sub to this and see how you get on

I hope to get on well, and so far so good.

Day two complete. Last night the wife & I hosted friends for a dinner/movie night, so I didn't have as much time to paint as before. Just meant that i wasn't able to put on quite as much detail as I'd have liked.

I think this guy is a grenadier mini. He's a lead mini I picked up from a discount shelf at my local game store. When I first bought him I figured he was some heroic priest character but the more I looked at him the more I liked the idea that he's the leader of a cult devoted to a red dragon. The helmet particularly sold me on the idea.

If I'd had more time I'd have embellished some details onto this clothing. As it is now the red is pretty much one note, & the red dragon on his helmet blends in with the rest of him. Once this is all over I'll probably just add a light band of color around his sleeves/trim to make him pop a bit more.

~Muninn

[Brother Muninn]

Today's offering is one from an old D&D game of mine, a water Genasi treasure hunter named Zarina Ambrose (Reaper's Kyla, Bounty Hunter mini).

She was an alright character, but she suffered a bit from my not knowing the mechanics of her class (I was trying out the D&D 4th edition Artificer class for the first time. It's not very well supported, & kinda tough to make work well)

Admittedly there wasn't much left to do on the mini. Her skin & most of her clothing was done & all that was really left to finish were the details like the belts, buckles, hair, bags, & weapons. It's got a lot of detail though, so even those added up to a few hours of work. Here's how she looked when I started last night.


One thing of note with this project is that I already have the minis selected and assigned to their dates.

I've tried to place them based upon how much time I expect to be able to dedicate to mini painting on a given day. So since Thursday I was working and participating in a game night I assigned a mini that wouldn't take as much time to finish. During my work week I have easy/partially completed minis, whereas on my weekend I have detailed, or completely unfinished minis.

I also have the weeks divided by the types of miniature:
Weeks 1 & 2 are Roleplaying minis,
Week 3 is 40k Xenos,
Week 4 is 40k Imperium,
Week 5 is Fantasy

This could change a bit based on unforeseen circumstances, but for now that's my plan.

~Muninn

[Brother Muninn]

Similar to the savage dwarf this mini was also intended to take part in my Dark Sun game. The campaign setting created an interesting painting challenge for me since there was practically no metal in the world, therefore I couldn't really use metallic paints. I had to paint what would normally be silver or gold as other materials like leather, bone, and wood. Plus it needed to have a desert theme.

Since there were very few minis that were actually made for the Dark Sun setting I had to find minis that could fit in with a palette swap. This guy was one of them.


More tomorrow,

~Muninn

[HereBeDragons]

Really great painting so far!

[Caiphas Cain]

I really like that dragon cultist. I think a little gold trim on the bottom of his robes and sleeves would look good. I think you need some matt varnish though.

[mdiscala]

Cool idea. Why don't you paint that earth elemental I gave you, since you've got so many minis getting painted right now. It shouldn't take too long for you to knock him out.

[Brother Muninn]

Really great painting so far!

Thank you much. I'm hoping I can keep it up, but I'm worried by the end I might drag a bit.

I really like that dragon cultist. I think a little gold trim on the bottom of his robes and sleeves would look good. I think you need some matt varnish though.

Agreed on both parts. I didn't have enough time to paint the trim, and I don't have any varnish. I've been working with washes, so that tends to make things a lot shinier than they normally should be, so a bit of matte would be a good thing.

Cool idea. Why don't you paint that earth elemental I gave you, since you've got so many minis getting painted right now. It shouldn't take too long for you to knock him out.

He's on the list actually. Although since the Dark Sun fell through I've been contemplating a different use for him. I hope you like the direction I take it.


To wrap up this week, this is a mini from a fantasy horror D&D game I played over six years ago, GMed by Yorrik (the guy with the Red Skull avatar above). This represented our Cleric who used a short spear, & followed an all-in-one deity whose symbol was a wheel with seven spokes. Figuring out how to space the seven spokes was probably one of the more trying things about this mini too.

~Muninn

[Daniel36]

Well, you're churning out quality stuff at such an insane rate, I can't help but feel inspired.
Keep up! I like the fact that they are for RPGs mostly. I am getting a slight bit tired of having to paint stuff for an army instead of painting cool models for RPGs.

[basher]

well i've got to admit i am impressed with your work rate mate