Nightstalkers: Sutter's Nightmare (King's of War)

I've been meaning to post this project for a while, as I painted this army up over the winter. It's tabletop quality, not like my usual Hordebloods level of detail, but it's completed and I'm happy with it!

One of the things I'd looked forward to with this army was creating scenic bases, rather than individual models. It's a new way to create your miniatures and allows you to combine terrain making with basing.

I took this idea a step further using inspiration from a scene on one of my favorite scary movies, In the Mouth of Madness. (Which also stars one of my favorite actors, Sam Neill and directed by the legendary John Carpenter.) In this scene, reality tears and Neill stares into the void. It's a simple concept but it added extra flavour to my bases.

This won't be a tutorial - that will come later. But I will discuss concepts and details.

OK, so - goals:

• I wanted the army to be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
• This meant tabletop quality.
• To paint them quick and still highlight detail, I tried out the new Games Workshop Contrast Paints.
• I wanted it to appear as if they'd come from the pages of an occult book.
• For these I printed pages from the Necronomicon onto light yellow paper and covered in paint to age them.
• Not just coming from the pages, but tearing through reality. Blurring the lines between what's real and fiction. Is the book merely a portal into our world? Or is the world a reality woven from the words in the book?
• To execute this, all the bases have some level of detail where reality is literally being "torn" open to reveal an inky black void on the other side of the pages of the book.
• The book is created by gluing down portions of the Necronomicon which are ripped outwards.
• Void
• The inky blackness is made from Heavy Sculpting Gel mixed with Black Gesso and covered in matte varnish. (Some of the void creatures are created the same way, either covering an existing form or with a wire skeleton.)
• For the colours, I'm working with a limited palette:
• Browns and yellows for the core of the creatures, with accents of red and white tipped weapons.
• Terrain is primarily rendered in the green spectrum, (Grass, leaves and stone.) with some brown dirt and paths, small red rose bushes and some yellow hay and flowers.
• Even the water is coloured green and to keep the limited palette I've used white sand / shells for all the shore and lake features.
• Sturdy Scenic Bases
• Each unit has a thin wooden base.
• Most units have 3D printed structures that I designed myself to build the form of the terrain they're built upon.
• Tokens needed to stand out from the rest of the army somehow so they don't blend in.
• I ended up going with blue, taking a line from the movie where the author makes everything change to blue, his favorite colour, to prove the control he has over the world.
• Tokens were also 3D printed.

Overall I feel I executed a nice army with a warm colour scheme on a cool backdrop with strong white accents.

Below, you can see the full army. Click through for more army photos and individual shots and descriptions.

Strange Magic - Part 2

When I last looked at creating some movie magic from Doctor Strange and applying it to miniatures, it was for the floating runes.

This week I'm going to look at the invisible swords that were created by the antagonists. Now, to be fair, I created the below sword well before Doctor Strange... but since I wrote up THAT tutorial, it made sense to align this tutorial with it.

Below is the effect we're going to learn to create today.

Strange Magic - Part 1

Have you seen Doctor Strange yet? There's some cool effects in there and if you're wondering how to recreate them on your miniatures, then you're in luck. Between today's tutorial on floating magic and a followup on transparent weapons, I'll show you how.

I'm also going to preface this with a note that after creating the effects I've got a few thoughts on how to pull it off a little cleaner - I'll share those at the end of the article.

You can also view a 360 view here:

Boba Fett on a Floating Skiff

Dug up an old model and decided to finally give it a layer of paint. It's from West End Games, released in 1988.

I wanted to do something a little different from my usual aggressive highlight and/or shadow contrasts, so I played more with layered light coats and blends.

I feel the miniature is complete and aesthetically my wife pointed out he's got a bit of the look of some of the old school artwork. It's not a look I'm going to keep up with further miniatures.. I'm still so attracted to the high contrast stuff I'm creating these days. I am glad I tried another style though.

Creating Vlagorescu's Black Water

When creating my black and white ghoul army display board, I wanted to have some water pools, but there was the question of "how?"

I decided to use some of my old techniques for water and try a few new things. I'm really happy with how the dark water turned out.

The following will detail just how I achieved this.

Janissa Tauren [Final WIP and Photos]

This is one I've been working on for a while and you've seen the progress if you've been following on Facebook.

The hair I'm particularly fond of, but a lot of things have brought the whole model together.

As I've said before, when I went into detail on how I painted her hair, she's come to be fondly referred to as "Maybelline". Some think her hair looks like a cloak, but I tell them "Maybe it's Maybelline." Love it.

Also, curious how I sculpted her? Take a look at the beginning process and how I bulked up some of my other Tauren minis. A process I think I've gotten better at as I built the heads and then the shoulders of my Warders.

Painting and Gelling Elemental Whelps

The Elemental King project involves covering him in a bunch of whelps. Some are perched on him, others are bursting forth from his body! Lets look at how I've painted them and added some extra flair too.

When working on this scale and around a larger project, sometimes it's easier to paint these smaller details separate. Pictured here, you can see that I've got this whelp glued to a toothpick. This lets me paint him away from the King while getting under and around into the hard to reach places and still hold him in place to see how it looks.

Because of the elemental theme, I'll be displaying how I've painted the Whelps in styles of Fire, Earth, Water and Wind as well as creating special effects to go along with these themes.

Advanced Fire Effects with Gels & Infernal Pyre Troll [part 3]

In the last post, I showed how I painted the lava effect on my Infernal Pyre Troll. Today I'll show how I create fire effects. This'll be green Fel Fire rather than a red/orange, but the theory is still applicable to your own work.

Sculpting Gel

Basic "gel" is available in normal, Heavy and Super Heavy. (I've used a few and prefer Liquitex.) It's basically a white substance that dries clear and the heavier it is, the more sculptable it is. Great for creating fire, water ripples, etc. I use it all the time, like on my Harlequin Wraithlord.

Translucent Paints

Liquid Fill (Martha Stewart brand) paint is a product I found while wandering a hobby store (Michaels) and it's designed to dry semi-clear. I'm going to write up a larger post on this stuff, because it's pretty cool. Otherwise, regular paints or washes will work as well.