Cats & cats & cats

Still plugging away on the Catthulhu Kickstarter minis. I think I will forgo tiny animal minis for a while after this project. I'm about 2/3 done, so I figure 3-4 more sessions should do it. They don't take long to paint individually, but the strain on my eyes limits brush time for such small figures.

Looking ahead, I want to get back to the LOTR stuff. I figure I need to focus on the terrain a bit, as most of the minis I need are really done. There are plenty of odds & ends to fill in (Rohirrim, Smaug, Gondorians, etc.), but the Moria section is pretty well stocked with goblins and so forth.

I made a recent purchase that I am excited to try out. A bunch of my paints are getting dried out, so rather than making a careful inventory of what is good and what is gunk, I bought the Army Painter Mega Set. It's a good deal for all you get. I've not tried their Warpaints before, but they get good reviews. I'll post my impressions after I have a chance to use some of them.

Cats and more

I had a week off from work and did a lot of painting. I've finished about a half dozen kitties for the Catthulhu thing. I'm not posting pics as they should be for the donors first.

I also painted up one of the barrow wights and Treebeard, which was fun. I will post pics of them soon.

I also played a simple SBH skirmish with my oldest daughter using some fan-made LOTR stats from the Yahoo group.  She ran Gandalf the Grey, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas while I ran some gobbos and a cave troll.

The fight was over pretty quick as Legolas skewered the goblin captain forcing a morale test that catastrophic for the forces of evil. Only one warrior and one archer remained to fight, and they were no match for Aragorn & Co. It was fun to dust of the SBH rules and roll some activation dice, though!

I've been killing orcs for over sixty years, and I'm GOOD AT IT!

Update Madness

I managed to prime the minis yesterday (Yay Me!).

Bilbo and Gollum (on 1/2" bases)

The Average Wight (war) Band

Ent-y!

The wights got stuck onto 1" squares for uniformity, but I think the basing will need to be prettied up a little. 

Treebeard (on his included 2" metal square) got spray-primed with a green undercoat. I was going to use black, because I wanted to make sure the leafy recesses were –ahaha– shaded. But I was out of black, so I used the green instead. Why not?

Next up: 

THE WATCHER IN THE WATER!

Yes, the pool is done. Granted, I still need to do something about the Doors of Durin, etc. But check it out (I put the bead there as a "Transfix/Entangle" marker):

Bad day for Gandalf!

The water is coated with gloss Modge Podge for sheen. I tried to make the color sort of murky. I also painted the tentacle bases with the same shades. The process was basically the same as the river pieces.

Another finished (but not varnished piece is Balin's Tomb from the GW set. 

Also, I did a color test for the Minas Tirith soldiers. It's a very quick & dirty job, but I basically went with the movie look of black and silver.

Racing the sun

Tomorrow (Saturday) is supposed to be sunny and in the mid 50s. Tonight, Gollum and the Reaper minis I'd ordered get filed and assembled for priming! If there's time, I may prime Bilbo too.

Winter Woes

It was sunny and 73ºF here on Saturday. NOT typical December weather! My Reaper order was estimated to arrive Saturday, so I was stoked to get the figures prepped and primed while Mother Nature was cooperating. Sadly, the holiday shipping madness delayed the box and I didn't get it in time. (Insert sad trombone Wa-WAAA) Now it's raining and cold and the stuff will probably arrive today. Such is the life of a mini painter in winter on the East Coast of the US.

In different news, I have yet to receive the reference photos for the Catthulhu minis, so that's on hold (at least the kitties are paint-ready). In the meantime, getting ready for X-mas has eaten up a fair bit of weekend/evening time (NTM wasting time on Minecraft :-p ). I'm thinking the next thing for Moria is to finish the water terrain.

I've started the GW piece for Balin's sarcophagus too, so that's almost done. You can see the piece in the foreground here. I'll post a pic of my finished version once it's done.

Teaser: Smaug is coming down the pipeline, too! I've had this fig for a while, but I haven't really put paint to brush yet. I really want to make him nice. This is the biggest dragon mini I own. Check out this old bare metal pic I took for scale (the Reaper elf is on a 1" Hirst block base):

It's now assembled and I spray primed him "Dragon Red" with Army Painter primer, so I guess that counts as started. I also have a wooden display base I want to use for him on the shelf that he can come loose from to put on the table (probably on a CD base for SBH rules' purposes).

Cold be Heart and Hand and Bone

Well not exactly.

As a Christmas present to myself, I used the money I made on the initial Catthulhu paint jobs to order a few more Middle Earth type figs from Reaper.

First off, I got three Barrow Wights: the Barrow Warden Lord, and the Barrow Warden 2 pack. The books don't actually specify how many wights there are in the mounds, but three seemed a nice number. I know I could have used the nazgul, but what the heck! You can never have too many undead for Christmas!

Don't be hasty! I also ordered Mossbeard for Ent-y goodness!

Hoom!

The Dream of a Thousand Cats

24 actually, and it's really sort of a nightmare, but still!

I agreed to help on on the Call of Catthulhu Kickstarter by painting the custom cat minis that were one of the rewards. The deal is the pledger gets to send a pic of their own cat in to be turned into a painted mini. Now that the KS has finished and funded, there are a total of 24 cats ordered, now I get to paint 'em up.

The cat minis are from Reaper and glued to some 3/4" GW bases I had in a bag. I spent most of yesterday AM filing and basing them, then applying primer. Now I just need to get the source files for the paint jobs.

While they are supposed to be painted like the individual cats, the fact is these tiny thing (≈1/2" long) are only going to hold so much detail. The delivery date on this is March 2014, so I have a bit of time. However, I suspect that this will dominate my painting time for the next few weeks.

Here a couple samples I did a few weeks ago:

As you can see, there's not a lot of room for detail (at least not with my level of skill). Also, I doubt I'll be able to do customized all the bases like the"carpeting" under the Russian Blue. The "broccoli" base of the mini is not great on top of the flat base, but the legs are too tiny to pin or trust to glue, so I'll just work with what I've got.