Final challenge entries

With the Painting Challenge over it's high time I get to posting my final entries! Points wise my challenge wasn't much of a success with only 506 points gathered out of my original goal of 1000. Personal worst of the 5 editions I've taken part in, but still I'm pretty happy with the result. When setting up my target I didn't know I'd be buying an apartment just a few weeks later and spending much of the beginning of the year redoing it before moving in. Even after that I've honestly felt quite exhausted constantly and rather spent my time watching various TV shows and spent my hobby time mostly gaming instead of painting.

Enough rambling and onto the things that I actually managed to paint up!

First up the cast of Danger 5 and their arch nemesis Hitler with some of his cronies. I'd planned submitting them for the final bonus round as they were perfect for the theme, but seriously underestimated how long it would take to paint them up and missed the deadline. Still when I accepted the inevitable it did allow me to paint up the accompanying human and lizard soldiers for Hitler that would otherwise have been left for another entry. Great sculpts from an even better TV show. Now I just have to figure out how to actually use them in some game :)

For my final entry it was time for my entry fee. The wednesday crew had decided to paint up some Spanish Civil War minis for Curt's collection and I decided to join them. SCW has always interested me, but never enough to get me started on collecting any forces. So this was the perfect opportunity to get some painted without having to commit to a project. Luckily my fellow Finn Teemu (Vain Vader) was organizing the group entry and had ordered plenty of extras so I was able to source a mini from him. I went with a Miliciana as what sane man could resist a fiery southern woman! Like all Empress offerings the pose and general sculpt was great, but the face was bit of a let down. All the minis I've painted from them have had fairly smooth faces with little detail, perhaps more realistic in the scale, but it just doesn't look as good as a some exaggerated details.

With the challenge ending I was left with a few projects on the table in varying states of readiness. Different fantasy miniatures had paint thrown onto them as well as two battalions of Napoleonic Saxons that got about all the base colours done and were only missing a final highlight and a wash. I just couldn't get myself to finish them as doing large groups of nearly identical minis just started to feel too much like work and I had to force myself to pick up the brushes. So I felt better leave them on the desk and continue when I start to feel like painting again.

Finally part of the reason why I've been fairly quiet on the blogging and painting front aside from the renovations. A product development project on which I've been working on as one of the lead designers for the last couple of years has more or less reached it's conclusion with the first production runs and project delivery to our customer. As we are using a subcontractor outside of Finland there's been quite a bit of travel to inspect and approve work. Still quite nice to see things in real life after looking at them on the computer screen for such a long time! Hard to realize the scale of things as well considering that the smallest sizes weigh about 17tons and take roughly 100 cubic meters of space. As you can see I'm also pretty adept at playing the part of the inept office worker. No helmet and taking a selfie while hanging at 4 meter height with no proper walkways is something that is exactly what they tell you not to do at the occupational safety courses that I've gone through :) I probably should write a hazard report due to that...

Painting Challenge entry 18: Mop-up

Time for my last entry for the challenge. This was more of a mop-up of the last minis on the painting desk. The challenge desperado and dino were in a half finished state for over half the challenge and I only got them done last weekend.

First up is the entry fee. It's a Foundry Lawman that I got off a clubmate. Turned out quite nicely in the end and I think the blue pants really give some nice contrast without being too far away from the earthy colors on the rest of his clothing.

 The next fella is a Gripping Beast Bard for Saga. Not sure if he's going to get any use in games as his rules can make your Warlord a brutal killing machine or a total time bomb waiting to ruin your game. Still it's a cool mini and adds some nice narrative into the games.

Finally Danny the Dino! 2 euros from some local store. I filled his huge mould lines and mismatches with greenstuff and repainted with my airbrush. He was sort of a therapy project that I did on and off when I was bored with everything else and had the airbrush out. Everything except for the eyes, teeth  and nails are done with an airbrush. Turned out rather nicely even if I say so myself. Good practice for some Warhammer Chimeras that I have lined up. Now I just need to figure out some scenario for In Her Majestys Name that I can use him in :)

And for those of you who don't read the amazing Analogue Hobbies blog here is the artist and video behind Danny's name. Watch at your own risk as it's just horribly bad.

Painting Challenge entry 4: Pulp Character

My entry for the Villain category for the Painting Challenge was one of the Lead Adventure minis Pulp Investigators. Kind of a impulse buy as I just ordered him at the same time with their VSF Ottomans. There is just no way you can resist the call of Cthulhu. Originally he wasn't even supposed to end up as my villain, but I had totally forgotten the fortnight challenge and would not have had enough time to finish converting and painting my Nurgle Demon Prince.

Anyhow here is Mr. Edwards with his pet Bolivian flying toad. Not everyone has been convinced by his claims that it is truly a normal species found in Bolivia, but with the emergence of new species found by the brave explorers of the Empire you can never be too sure. However incidents with various cultists and "magicians" have seemed to be on the rise ever since Mr. Edwards came back from his latest research trip.

ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

This was actually quite a quick paintjob as I only had an hour or two to finish this off in time for the end of the round. I decided to go with a completely black suit in part to practice painting black and also because it was faster than starting to to pinstripes etc. :) The suit is actually black only in the greases with everything painted in various shades of grey. I tried keeping the contrast between the shades and highlights as that seems to work best for blacks and whites. Taking a picture of it seemed nigh impossible though so the colour seems quite monotone at least on my screen.