Behind With The Times Part 2: In Sssspace No One Can Hear You....

It's a sad fact that these days my miniatures pipeline is, for want of a better phrase, woefully constipated. Thus it is that I find myself posting these catch ups. Which themselves are also hardly regular. What can I say? All those video games are hardly going to play themselves now are they?

But what's interesting about this is that I've got a few bit's and bobs that I've been planning and procrastinating over for months that suddenly find themselves relevant. Perhaps it's serendipitous. Point is I FINALLY finished my goddamn Ice Warrior conversions.

It's funny. The announcement of the Ice Warriors return to the new series actually came a little while after I'd gotten these guys in and started work. It just took me ages to actually finish them. I'd been wanting to make some Silent Stars Go By style Ice Warriors pretty much since I finished reading the book. The idea of Ice Warriors stomping around with big honking medieval style weapons just fits so well. Only trouble I had was finding some suitably ornate weaponry to deck them out with. Luckily for me I managed to find a pack of fantasy weapons by Wyrd miniatures on ebay that seemed to fit the bill. After that it was just a question of hopping over to Black Tree to snag a box of Ice Warriors. The advantage of the box was that the Ice Warrior sculpts in there allowed for better re-positioning of the arms, as well as giving me an Ice Lord that actually has the right sort of hands.

The it's in with the hacksaw and the green stuff to move everyone's limbs about. The Ice Warriors themselves proved to be relatively straightfoward, but I did have some trouble getting the length of the Ice Lords arm right for some reason. Of course one of the beauties of the Ice Warrior design is that, having big honking clamps for hands, it's actually really easy to make them hold stuff. Painting-wise they were pretty much done in the same way as the previous ones. the weapons I decided should have a ruddy sort of look because Mars.

And whilst we're on the subject of Doctor Who monsters that I've been on about recently, here's a Wirrn that's been sat on my table for about as long they were creeping about the Ark In Space itself. Still, he's done now. Pretty straightforward brown and green color scheme. I can do brown and green.

Finishing up this installments lot of Doctor Who baddies we have Omega with 2 of his Gel Guards. I'm quite pleased with the way the Gel Guards turned out. Started with a brown base, and then lots of inking and highlighting with reds, oranges and more browns. The claws were done in black with red /orange / yellow / white highlighting on the tips to try and get a lighting up kind of effect. 

Then we have a leftover remnant from my big Shadowrun project. Black Tree lists this guy as a Cyborg Assassin, but I think he makes for a pretty good Cyber-Zombie. Or indeed good for any time you need a generic military cyborg guy with a big gun. I decided to paint him up in the same style as the Heresy Troopers I'd done previously, as chances are he's going to be the one commanding them.

Speaking of Heresy, here's a Succubus. I was thinking she might be good for a Spirit to go with one of the Mages I was planning for the Shadowrun guys. Plus it's kinda fun to paint a demonic naked lady. I mean, at least then you don't need to worry about buggering up the skin tones, right? I decided to her blue mainly because fuck it, why not? Red demons are so passe.

Of course, having painted one thing blue I couldn't just stop there. And so it is we come to the by now mandatory Owlbear section. This boy hails from Black Cat. And I must admit I was rather stumped as to what I was going to do with him. I mean, I've done enough Owlbears by now that even I'm running out of ideas. But seeing as how the Succubus was looking kind cool I figured why not have a go at a Spectral Owlbear? And, as it turns out, that was actually a good idea.

I have no idea from whence this boy hails. He's one I picked up on ebay. Since he had the look about him I thought I'd try in him with a Sloth-like moldy fur vibe. Which basically just meant going some extra green drybrushing. Still, works okay I think.

Then we come to the final entry for this installment. The Chainmail Owlbear from WotC. Actually quite a nice sculpt. So no wonder WotC killed it. Still, fuck those guys. It's not like there's any shortage of other companies producing decent D&D minis. In a startling change of pace I elected to go with something close to a traditional Owlbear color scheme this time. Brown fur, white plumage  Beyond that I kept it simple as I felt that the serving suggestion version was a bit to flashy. I know I've said this before, but I strongly believe that Owlbears will always look FAR better by at least keeping the eyes plain black.

Anyway, that's it for the moment. We're all caught up for the time being. Hopefully I'll be able to pull myself away fro Recettear for long enough to get on with some other bits and bobs in the near future, but only time will tell.