A new look for some old halftracks

I recently dumped my FoW halftracks in some soap and water and cleaned them up ready to paint them up as a whole collection. They were sorely mismatched, having been acquired over the past decade or so.

I wanted them to be flexible in their gaming use, good for any front or passenger, so I kept them in a no frills dunkgelb base.

Yesterday I finished one up and kept the recipe for all the others. Still not 100% happy with it - I hate that mossy green camo net and will have to to something about it.

Here he is - the first of about 16 to do:

Henschel 129 B3

Finished last night, some air support for my Panzergrenadiers. A Hs129B3 with the massive 75mm canon. A truly unique (meaning weird) flying machine. Figure is 1:144 by Battlefront.

Hs129B3

On the table now

Finished a couple of comission works and have some in the queue, but I took a brief interval to paint up some stuff for me. No more text, all pics from here down:

BEF Tanks - Comission was the markings - white/red/white and freehand yellow markings

Me262 Sturmvogel, still lacking varnish (waiting for a sunny day)

Flammhetzer (some detailing left to do)

Hs129B3 WIP

Humber Scout cars (Comission work)

I also finished some Khurasan Tibetans but have no photos of that. Will wait for the customer to take some proper photos so I can have a memento :)

Upcoming post will mainly focus on 15mm Panzergrenadiers (Lehr) done for me and 20mm SCW/10mm ACW/15mm Romans on comission.

Cheers,

Pedro

A quick review of the last month

Mainly focused on commission work for the last month and here is a quick review.

Numidian 15mm Elephants

Iberian 15mm command

Gaul 15mm command

Gaul 15mm Cavalry base

Gaul 15mm Cavalry base

15mm legion

WIP 15mm Tibetan Cataphracts

And that about sums it up. Next month will still feature commission work heavily, mainly the finished 15mm Tibetans from Khurasan and a new project - 20mm SCW :)

Cheers,
Pedro

Hurricane IId for FoW

Latest commission work on the queue done - a Hurricane IId in tropical camo scheme, 15mm scale by Battlefront. Never had done a plane at this scale before, but I´m pretty happy with how it turned out.

On the commission queue lots of different things: from Tibetan 15mm Cataphracts to markings on Churchills. Will have plenty to keep me busy and variety enough to avoid boredom :)

Cheers,
Pedro

Current status of Late Republican Roman 15mm

Three additional elements finished and delivered on this comission.

One unit of Legionnaires (only two to go)

The Light Horse element of the army - Numidians

And a Gaul command (either auxiliary or to be used in different armies)

Not much left to go on this job. Everything should be done in 2 to 3 weeks.

Cheers,
Pedro

Viriathus & Stalins

Been busy on the workbench lately. Last work finished couldn´t be further apart in chronologically:

15mm IS2 tanks (Battlefront) done on comission:

Command IS2, with some stolen oil painting of a Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies splayed on the turret

One of the other tanks - the IS2 is a beast!

This one shows off nicely the pigment work I tried. Worked nicely, will use again

All 5 of the IS2 bumper to bumper

And a Lusitanian command stand with Crusader Miniatures:

Commander is Viriathus - his shield design is supposed to be Endovelicus, an Iron Age pre-Roman Lusitanian God

Next few days I´ll be finishing some Numidian Light Horse and a  Late Republican Roman Legion, both part of a FoG army comission.

Oh - I also managed to find time and dab some additional paint on my Seljuk Emir (right down the middle of the timeline between the previous 2 figures). Still some way to go, but he currently looks like this:

The Seljuk Emir, now with 100% more carpet

Cheers,
Pedro

On the workbench - commission work

A pause from Seljuks and Crusades to do some Commission Work. I just started doing this type of work, having never previously sold a single painted miniature, and it´s going rather well. In fact - I have a massive pipeline of work already on order, so over the next month or so the comission work I´m doing will feature heavily here.

Last night I finished (all except basing) 6x Numidian Archers in 15mm (Corvus Belli is the manufacturer) for an ongoing Late Republican Roman FoG commission.

Numidian Archers 

Excellent miniatures and a pretty straight forward colour scheme, as the Numidians used plain unadorned and un-dyed  tunics.  Bases will now get a dark brown wash and then a khaki drybrush to make the miniatures "pop" and I´ll add some tufts to give it some contrast.

All my projected commission work are in this 15mm ancients area. Next up will be a unit which will be much (MUCH) more colourfull - Gaul Cavalry (as Cavalry auxiliaries for the same Late Republican Roman army).

Already done are a couple of units of legionnaires, Cretan archer support, a command base with a mounted praetor and a Fortified camp - all of which went without any photos, unfortunately.

Currently the commission queue is filled for 2012 :)

FoW German Scouts

It has been a while since the last update, mainly because I've been playing more than painting.

With the release of Battlefront's V3 Ruleset for Flames of War, I have been playing the game a lot. I'm having lots of fun with the new version - probably the most I've had with the game since V1 :)

Well, that inspired me to do some hours on ww2 15mm, a nice change from the 28mm historics I've dedicated myself to in the last couple of months.

Always a challenge "scaling down" from 28mm to 15mm where painting is concerned - I always find myself spending way too much time on details no one will see on the gaming table on the first projects until I get to the 15mm "mindset" - hold the miniature at arms length, if it's ok, moe on to the next one.

That said, I got all my WW2 15mm out of the display cabinets to be checked for battle damage or a spot of repaint and organised some miniatures from the lead pile into platoons for painting.

As a curiosity - this is what 120+ AFVs and soft skins look like on my gaming table, ready for inspection:

The unit currently in progress is a German Motorised Scout platoon. It is composed of a command element and 3x squads. They can ride either motorcycles with sidecar or kubelwagens (both count as Jeeps in the rules, so it's really up to players taste). in my case the command will ride a kubelwagen (with lots of stowage and a always handy panzerfaust) and all the squads will be motorcycles with sidecars.

Finished up the command kubelwagen today:

Will post up the motorcycles as I finish them (currently assembled, based & primed).

Cheers,
Pedro

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.