Awesome Space Wolves custom Imperial Knight
This awesome customized imperial knight, called "Iron Werewolf", is an incredible piece built by ComradeQuiche. I had been following his progress throught his Instagram Account (browsing Instagram by some warhammer tags it is so easy to find nice photos) but this last weeks have been really busy and I hadn't seen the finished results... and oh, boy!
Such a great modding (and 3D printing) job that Forge World should hire him to design an official resin kit. The painting is also so well done that makes the miniature shine even more.
There's a nice gallery and details on the construction of some pieces on this Tale of Painters article.
The Elder Diary: #20150202
More than half a year later since last "diary update", but from now on I'll try to post more updates at least monthly (if I don't finish any painting/modelling project, that is).
The main update is the following photo of how's my progress with the Imperial Knight:
As you can see, excepting the base and decals, main body is finished. I also have already painted the shoulder pads and currently working on the arms. With some luck I'll have it ready for decals soon (and probably tackle one of my modelling projects, which without painting I don't even feel like showing here). It's been a huge amount of work, especially because the crappy Citadel gold paint mix has "separated" and before painting it needs heavy re-mixing and around 4-5 layers until it looks like real gold (and this painting over a silver layer, else needs even more layers!). I'll probably try Vallejo's equivalent of gold for the future, now I'm so near the end I don't want to change color and have more problems. I've also given highlights to blues, some silver parts and to the gold (using silver) and it definetly shines and looks way better. Combining with the washes, despite my poor painting things look way better :)
Apart from that, and due to the recent addition to the family of a young golden retriever dog, my sleep cycle and free time is quite chaotic now, so I'm focusing on either playing Diablo III or Hearthstone from the laptop near the dog, or reading books.
Whenever I can escape a bit to the "workshop room" I'm either painting or trying to finish assembling Deadzone miniatures, as I finally received wave 3 shipment and still have (quite a few) minis to assemble from the two earlier shipments. Definetly one of the best kickstarter projects I've backed regarding price/content ratio... lots of minis (5 factions + zombies), lots of scenery, lots of extras...
I also have pending buying some powerful white lights to improve the room's lighting for photos, currently is ok for painting but far from adequate for photos.
So, let's hope I come again soon with some cool photos!
Terminator T-800 1/5 Scale Model Kit
When Terminator 2 arrived in Spain, my father (who was specialized as a films journalist), wrote a big article about the movie, and at his newspaper wanted a "different photo" instead of the typical press materials, so they went and bought a T-800 1/5 scale plastic model kit. I was really fortunate because after the photo shooting my father was able to keep the model for himself and gift it to me. It was just assembled, fully unpainted, but even in grey it looked awesome. You know, the past times when instead of selling you plastic Alien models for up to 99$ you could buy a huge model kit (this one is at least 30 cm tall!) and build it yourself.
The model has an amazing level of detail (that's why they choose it for the article), it really looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and there are lots of small details like the guts going outside of the chest, skin pores around the beard, bullet holes all around the jacket...
But I started to paint it (imagine my "quality", with 10 or 11 years), and left it after painting almost only the head and chest. And it was waiting at my mother's house until a few weeks ago I decided to bring it home and finish the job. Some hours now and then later, here it is the resulting Terminator. It is far from awesome, as has not much light/shadows, but enough so at least it is not plain. Also being mostly black and so big was hard to paint lighter areas even with a dark grey without being too noticeable, but I did my best.
Painting such a big miniature is not easy, after a while gets tiring to hold it and the base layer didn't hold on perfectly so it peeled off once or twice when placing it on the table.
There are a few more photos at my Assorted Photo Gallery.
Next will come finishing my Warhammer Imperial Knight and a different phone stand for my girlfriend (who liked mine but wanted something "less spooky").
Tags: Miniatures Painting
Warhammer Visions Decadence
I wrote my thoughts after a few WH Visions numbers a while ago. It wasn't too good but as we are nearing a year of issues and there are some rumors of no more numbers after 2014 (due to the failure it has been), here's how it has become even less valuable from my point of view.
First, is a mostly a showcase of "trending miniatures". Example: If you don't like Dark Eldar, you're going to get minimum 1/3 of the magazine dedicated to them. Although there are always different topic sections, throwing away sometimes half of the pages because "is not your army" is not very appealing. And as there is no lore text, you're probably not going to start an army only by looking at the paint jobs. The tactic of bombarding once an again during a month with all the new minis doesn't works on me at least.
All official articles have too many minis. Games Workshop seems to want us to only play at Apocalypse scale, because now you see dozens of vehicles and usually no less than 30 miniatures per photo (excepting close ups and the like). Battles have gone insane, like with the Dark Eldar bomber... it is somewhat cool, but really showing 3 of them plus other flyers as a detachment? Or around 30 wracks, when a box is only 5 models? Or probably around 100 tyranids each time they appear?
It is also a tactic so that we see the need of having bigger and bigger armies "like WD guys have", but I kind of miss the old, less packed photographs, so many models distract me and I don't give as much attention to the details as I did in the past, when I could stare at each photo for minutes appreciating everything.
The best painted miniatures are no longer the White Dwarf or Heavy Metal team ones. I didn't like at first the Parade Ground section too much, always displaying winners and honour mentions instead of "also non winners", but now they are usually the best painted ones. Probably due to having to paint so many minis for so many photos, quality is uneven, and, despite doing too much mud watering/painting, Forge World photographs are also quite cool. White Dwarf ones have cool illumination and backgrounds but... They are no longer the coolest guys in town, it looks like "mass pro painting" instead of "awesome painting" (still years ahead of my painting skills, of course).
Same happens with conversions... The only conversions you see are Kit Bash articles and Parade Ground ones. GW has like forbidden showing converted minis, so no imagination, no creativity, only different color schemes. And half of the Kit Bash articles are too basic or uninteresting.
Blanchitsu is unclear of authorship. John Blanche is a great illustrator, a cool miniatures creator, but come on, I don't even remember the last time the minis showcased at his section were from him. Most minis are from other people, and while they are really really cool there's only a small text fragment saying the name of the real author. I don't like the misleading look of the section, as if all were from him.
The "how many nurgle chaos lord conversions in this issue?" joke is too much already. The same mini appears at every single issue, in all sorts of cool, normal and crappy conversions and/or paint jobs. It gets really tiring to see it once and again. While is a good mini (I have one in fact) it really annoys so much lack of variety.
So, counting with the not precisely cheap price, the too narrow content variety of each issue and the complaints I've put... I'd recommend at the very minimum to peek an isue before buying it.
Let's see if WH Visions survives this winter.
THE ELDER DIARY: #20140517
I'm slowly progressing with the Imperial Knight. Everything except the arms has the basecoat, head is fully painted, parts of the hull metallized and I'm working on the shoulders and upper caparace.
Apart from the lack of free time, my main problem is that (at least my paint tin) painting gold is really tiresome. It needs around 4 or 5 layers to be fully opaque. Still, I'm happy with how is looking and I prefer to go slow but leave it as I please.
I finally put to play today most of my X-Wing boardgame ships collection. We did a 3 vs 2, 100 points battle and I loved the rules, especially how you must guess enemy movements and plan accordingly your paths. I like the painted miniatures a lot, but using them also has felt so good.
I also got as a gift from my friend Vicente the awesome Battletech Introductory Box Set :_) Combined with the minis from the 90s version that I have, quite a good mech force to play games!
I've been also reading a few comics so more reviews will come soon.
Tags: Boardgames Miniatures Painting
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