Catching Up With The Little People

It appears that I've been somewhat remiss in keeping up with my miniature painting activity of late. Not that I haven't been doing any. I've been pottering around with various bits and pieces in between bouts of video games and suicidal depression. It's just that I haven't really been doing very well at posting any of the results.

So then let's rectify the situation in no particular order.

First up, some troopers from Heresy. Lovely pieces, these. But then what do you expect?

As may be obvious from the style in which I've approached these guys I got the inspiration after playing Halo ODST. They have options for bare faces, but I was in full on Halo fanboy mode, so none of that mucking around with pesky skin tones. Plus the masked helmets look way more badass.

Of course, the real beauty of them is that they're just generic enough to be used in any relatively high tech setting. Need some future UNIT guys to fight of an invasion of Earth? Galactic Alliance Troopers to fight of an invasion of Peladon? Shadowy paramilitary types to invade somewhere else?

I do appreciate a degree of versatility. Even better, since the Shadowrun Online Kickstarter succeeding means I'll be getting Shadowrun minis in a civilised scale, these guys will make for excellent Corporate guards or Black Ops types.

Of course, having grown up on 40K, all squads must be a minimum of 5 strong and contain a special or heavy weapon. So I picked up the Chem Thrower guy as well to round things out. I'm not sure why, but there's something I really love about the sculpt on this one.

After finishing up the troopers I decided that I should finish up another Heresy piece that had been sitting on my painting desk for far to long. Doctor Hugh AKA definately NOT the 10th Doctor. The eyes are bit... variable. But then I'm still working on getting eyes right. Otherwise I was actually surprised at how straightforward he turned out to be.

Having come out of the 10th Doctor fairly satisfyed I then switched to the pile of Harlequin stuff from Black Tree I'd got for the 8th Doctor. And blow me if he didn't come out even better. It just may be that I'm finally starting to improve a bit. This now gives me a straight run from 7 to 11. At this rate I may even give the 6th Doctor a go, although I'll probably bottle it and go for the Real Time blue suit.

Then we have Urak the Tetrap. Now, I actually quite like Time & The Rani, and I've always thought the Tetraps were a pretty cool design. And I was rather pleased at the way he came out. Somehow I managed to get the shading just right for an almost professional tone overall. At least on the furry parts.

The "Giant" Robot. I'm really surprised at how small this guy is. The mini isn't really any taller than a regular guy. Which if you've seen the actual suit from Robot you'll know is rather far from the mark. That robot was BIG, even before it did it's King Kong impression.

Dratho on the other hand is about right, towering over the other robot. A sweet design to be sure, and easily painted using the classic Cyberman method. I.E. MOAR SILVAR!!

And then we have an original character of my own design. Meet Delta Cenauri, intergalactic arms dealer. After I painted Alpha Centauri I thought how fun it would be to give him some guns. Then I realized you could put a cowboy hat on him and a star was, as they say, born. A tricky conversion to say the least. The guns are from Heresy, and came with hands attached. Which I figured would be a bit easier to attach. The hands were filed down, pinned into place after some strategic tentacle removal, and then filled in green stuff to try and make it look more claw like. The hat comes from Black Cat bases. 

Sticking with Black Tree for a while, here's an awesome combat mech.

And here's another one. I wanted something for Delta Centauri to be selling, and combat droids seemed just the ticket. The fact that these were sweet anime style mechs is just the icing on the cake. In keeping with that anime vibe I decided to stick with bright primary colours. Curiously one of the trickiest parts of painting these was the white pads. They were simply to bright, so toned them down by drybrushing a bit of grey over the top to wear them down a little, after which they looked fine. Like the troopers I figure these guys should be fairly versatile in terms of gaming. At the very least it's a safe bet that if I ever end up running a Shadowrun game some corp or other is going to be working on combat droids.

Then we have a little 40k diorama I'd been plotting for ages but never actually gotten around to. I call it No Rest For The Wicked. I think it came okay, though it could probably do with some some sort of smoke effects as it does feel a little to clean. The armour is an old plastic Chaos Space Marine, and the spirit is a new wraith or something. I forget what exactly. All I really remember is that you didn't used to have to pay eight quid for a single metal miniature, let alone a bloody PLASTIC one. Taking the piss much GW? The base is from Black Cat.

And in case you think I've been slacking off, here are some Owlbears.

I decided to try this guy in an Orangutang style colour scheme, as that's where my thoughts were taking me after the last lot. And even I am running out of colour schemes for Owlbears at this point.

This one I went with more of a desert tone than the more regular brown. I'm actually rather pleased with him, considering the prime motivation was basically a case of saying to myself "sod it, let's try this colour".  It has a certain appealing simplicity.

Sadly I have no idea where either of these Owlbears originates from. I picked them up as a pair in ebay.

So, there we are. All caught up for the moment. Perhaps now I'll be able to get on with some of the pile of other stuff that needs to be painted.