Duel #2 - Roguetrader theme

Another duel between me and Meninobesta. Theme was Roguetrader-like single miniature, front and back shots.

Meninobesta came in with a 1990 Eldar Swooping Hawk, in a nice subdued color scheme:

And I went for the classical "beaky" marine in White Scars garb:

As in the previous one, loser after poll closes gets to set the conditions for the next one.

Another 2011 batch re-photgraphed

Some random miniatures from several 2011 (some older) projects.

 General Georges Mouton, Count of Lobau (from Perry):

A couple of Perry japanese (this are the greatest sculpts I ever painted):

French Napoleonic command stand to use in a MaW adaptation to 28mm, again from Perry - a mix of plastics and metals:

Conan, for CROM (highly recommended simple skirmish ruleset). A em4 miniature, originally from Grenadier (I think...)

 

A Kushite companion for Conan, also bought at em4:

Today I finished the Rogue Trader Duel mini, but will only post it after the voting is ongoing (that will be Monday).

Reiksguard for retro-fantasy Painting duel

All my photography woes cured by a 6500K daylight bulb :)

And here is the result: a Reiksguard painted for the 1st Setti.tv Forum miniature duel (the theme of which was "Retro Fantasy Duel"):

Marauder Reiksguard

Tomorrow I'll take a photo of the other half of the duel - an early 90s Marauder Lich.

The 2nd duel is already under way, themed "retro-40K AKA Roguetrader" (a single miniature this time around). I lost the first challenge to Meninobesta's excellent Otherworld Pig faced Orc, let's see If I can claw one victory back and claim a draw :)

Photo setup tests and some more past miniatures.

I tried some of the advice I got regarding lighting but, more importantly, I got my old Fuji S304 SLR fixed.

This post will start pretty boring as I post the exact same 3 miniatures from the last one, to document the possible improvement. I´ll try to avoid being totally tedious by showing some other 2011 completed work.

The same 3 miniatures, different camera and some fancy baking-paper-covering-desklamps work.

A bit better when I compare them with the real thing in terms of color accuracy, but still some detail is lost (washed out) and the pictures are not crisp. More on that latter.

So while I was at it, I snapped some photos of some other minis from 2011 projects:

Another retro Necromancer, from Marauder (base still plain MDF):

Conan for CROM skirmish games, from a barbarian sold by em4 (originally from the Grenadier range of barbarians, as far as I can remember):

 A FoW Gebirgsjager Objective marker:

Perry Miniatures General Lobau, for a Men at War 28mm adaptation (also, for Songs of Drums and Shakos skirmish)

 A battalion command base done with a mix of plastic and metal Perries, also for MaW;

 A couple of battalion bases (6 make up a battalion), again, for MaW. These particular ones are Voltigueurs. Again, Perry plastics:

 A WIP test figure (a Battlefront T28) for 3-tone camo I´m working on for a project I really have to get into, a Finnish Midwar Tank Company for an upcoming Portuguese big tournament (the GTS). From what I´ve researched, I´m pretty happy with the camo tones and now I must tackle the rest of the tanks.

I spent all evening fidgeting with various photo settings.

Conclusion - to improve anything of significant, I´ll have to either get a better camera or a lightbox. I´ll go for the cheaper of the two and try and get myslef a lightbox as soon as I can.

And that will be it - I won´t bother anyone anymore with test posts of the same old miniatures again and again as I try and perfect the photo setup, as this is far from interesting to anyone but me (and only slightly at that). I´ll just keep using the best possible setup at my disposal and "get on with IT!" - IT being that this is a miniature hobby blog, not a slight-baby-steps-towards-being-able-to-take-a-decent-photo-of-a-miniature-blog.

First and foremost on the workbench are the Finns I mentioned above and a 2nd Miniature Duel, with a theme to be decided (already have, really) by me, so expect that to feature throughout the next posts.

Cheers,
Torradas

Some 2011 miniatures - part 1

I'll be filling some backlog of miniatures onto the blog as time permits, also as a way of testing some different photo setups, until I'm comfortable with the way they turn out.

For the photos in this post I tested using a blue gradient background, and my cheap Fuji compact set with macro on a tripod and with flash forced off.

First up, a Battlefront 15mm German half-track:

Now, a GW old-style skeleton horseman (for a CROM Fantasy Warband):

And a Tentacle Faced Wizard from Reaper:

Didn't turn out too bad, still not quite happy with focus and lighting.

EDIT: Just got a hot tip from Meninobesta and the next setup will feature a diffused lighting focus through the use of some baking paper.  

Some retro mini links

Related to the previous post here are some sites worth cheking for retro-miniature collecting:

Stuff of Legends - The definite bible for old minis - with pics of painted examples and original catalog scans where available.

Archive section of DnD Lead - extensive guide with some excellent quirky minis (check out Minifigs 1976 Conan the Duck to see what I mean)

FU:UKs Citadel Archive thread - almost exclusively Citadel miniatures, with some wonderful modern paintjobs on some very characterful miniatures. At some 500+ pages at the time of this post - worth checking, if only for a couple of minutes each day.

Painting Duel #0

The 1st Painting Duel, Me vs. Meninobesta.

This year me and my mate Meninobesta will try to get a painting duel thing going in the local (Portugal) hobby forum.

The rules are simple - You challenge a fellow hobbyist to a duel and name the end-date for the challenge. The opponent names the "weapons" (theme, scale, number of miniatures) and the duel is up!

For this inaugural challenge we had about 4 days, with New Years Eve thrown in the middle of the period (for me this translated into a couple of painting sessions, with maybe some 2h for each). The theme was retro-fantasy duel with 2 miniatures, 28mm, with scenery. 1 photo only.

The voting is now up till the end of the week, winner gets bragging rights and can put a little notch on his paintbrush ;)

My entry was a couple of old Marauder miniatures. A MM65/1 - Reiksguard Knight 4 and a Liche from the MM51 Undead Character pack, both from about 1992/1993.

Meninobesta´s was an Otherworld Pig-faced Orc fresh from the Christmas lead loot and a good old Heroquest plastic Dwarf.

And now for the pics, that are a blatant illustration of another thing that needs improving this year - my photo skills, or lighting setup, or camera (or indeed all of these...):

Enough text - my entry:

And Meninobesta´s entry:

A New year, a new blog

This blog was started as a place to show my efforts on the painting workbench & (occasionally) gaming table or other hobby-related subjects.

This year I´m planning on investing my time mainly in Napoleonics (15s & 28s) with Perries, Impetvs (WOTR, Normans & Romans), Fantasy skirmish (retro Grenadier, Citadel, Marauder with the occasional Reaper thrown in), 15 & 28mm WW2 (Battlefront, Artizan, Warlord´s BAM range, etc.).

This is mainly figures I already own and are resting in my lead pile. More painting & gaming, less buying is a must for this year. I´ll buy the least I possibly can, but I´m a sucker for some miniature "bling" so the odd "Perry Ox Cart" or "Otherworld Undead" will find a way to cheat me out of some euros...

Hopefully this blog will also generate some pressure for me to produce (in a good way) because during work peaks (IRL) I tend to get into boggy painting slumps that take me forever to drag out of.

So here it is, the basic statement of intentions of the blog.

The project wish list will probably take several twists and turns throughout 2012, but that is to be expected.

Cheers & Happy New Year,

Torradas