Indian In The Cupboard Vs. Toy Soldiers

So these are about 6 months ago, at least, but as we were putting up E-bay lots we found them on the camera and I liked them enough to put them on this blog.  I still need to make a 'Light Box' in order to better capture how well they turned out, but this at least gives you an idea of how our skills have improved.  In the case of mine not to much.  So without further ado, here is a journey into Cassandra & I's last foray of painting together.

Cassandra painted this with a metallic cold blue and gold.  It's from an old D&D Board Game, Dragonstrike maybe?  I like the miniature even though its a bit awkward looking.  I dig the overall paint job with the exception of the eyes which came out with out patent 'crazy look', something only topped by Lady Christy's 'crazy look' version of eyes.  Not too shabby though.

I did up this Wight from the D&D Board Game that was released in England when 3rd Edition hit.  It is not a bad game, at all, AND the miniatures that come with it are fantastic.  I'd love to get ahold of the expansions.  So the Wights in this game are decent minis, but sort of a pain to paint and keep the detail.  I think I primed them poorly.  I like the colors and how they work together, but I'm glad you can't see the face as it's pretty mediocre.

It is a damn shame, but there is NOT a Crawling Claw miniature produced anywhere.  That is a SHAME!  So I took it upon myself to make one out of the hands I had lying in my bits box.  It isn't that great to look at, but it is functional and needed.  I have another one to paint somewhere as well.  I tried to use some different skin tones and I do think that this thing turned out alright.

Here was my first foray into painting Warhammer Lizardmen.  I love this model and the other handful that I picked up that were dirt cheap.  This one has already recieved some 'Table Time' as the Lizardfolk Champion the 2nd D&D Group parlayed with last month.  I like how the reds work together, the bronze of the armor, and the contrasting white of the bone helm.  I went black and gold on the weapons.  I think he'll look a LOT better once I knock out a handful of other red Lizardfolk to give him a more uniformed tribe to lead.

This is one of my favorite in this whole group.  I picked up this mini for $3 off of Shapeways just to see how the 3D printing process worked with miniatures.  Cassandra dug it and demanded to take a stab at this Beholder.  The pictured does not do it justice as it darkened it up greatly.  It has a green skin with some highlights on the bumps all over its body.  The thing that puts it over the top is that look on its eyes.  The damn thing looks surly and bored.  Not to mention if you look closely you can see that she painted every little eye on each stalk.  Its a fantastic miniature thanks to her paint job. 

Attack of the 'CRAZY EYES'!  So this is a Alkemy Miniatures guy in the lead.  If you go to Miniature Market dot com and find boxed sets of these guys on the SUPER cheap, like $7 a box.  He was easy to assemble and relatively easy to paint.  Although I didn't have a skin tone that matched my DDM Orcs as much as I wanted so I had to mix a grey and brown to get what I wanted.  The DIP really brought out all the depth in the sculpt and helped take a three color paint job and make it a bit more than that.  Oh and he has a sweet mohawk. 

With this mammoth Orc are two Warhammer Goblins.  I've got a bunch of these little buggers and I'm painting them to by my 4E Spriggans, evil Goblin/corrupted Gnomes in the Feywild.  Or alternatively as Red Cap Goblins.  I like to paint these guys with varying shades of red and change the green of the skin color every once in awhile to give them a bit of personality.  They are quick and easy to paint. 

One last REALLY close up solid look at my Red Cap Goblins.  These little guy have a lot of personality in their faces once they get some paint on them.  I dig the look, the color, and even that static pose.  I think its cool to see how the DIP really shows the braiding the ropes and gives them some serious shading.   

This is Reaper Bones Gnoll, and I dig the way it turned out, BUT it needs the gloss to be taken off of it.  I think I need to go back and hit it with a matt spray.  The Bones line is a JOY to paint.  They are also amazingly easy to mod.  The sculpt on this bad boy is perfect and gives my already large contingent of Gnolls some serious beef.  You can tell when looking at all these minis that I just gotten a new shade of dark red that I was using the HELL out of.  The glare doesn't let you see the dry brushing I hit the face with, but it looks pretty good.  Also you can see where the DIP congealed a bit faster than I would have liked in spots.  It was a bit cold out when I DIPed these.  Lesson learned there.  Overall I really like the way the two Reaper Bones Gnolls I've painted turned out.  I'm dying to paint the last modded one a dull white to make him their albino leader.

This one is a Gnoll from that European 3E D&D Board Game I was talking about earlier.  That game had a TON of Gnolls in it, which have greatly bolstered my Gnoll forces.  I drybrushed the CRAP out of these things to get that change in hair color and felt they turned out really well, which was good because the sculpts are mediocre at best.  I do dig the axe and how improvised it looks, as well as the dinged up armor and shield.  The eyes really pop with that red, as does the tongue, and it doesn't look overly cartoony next to the Reaper Bones Gnoll, it just looks like a pup compared to a full blown adult.

Here is the first look at the Barbarian Horde I finished.  The thing you can start to see here is the blue eyes, which I am very proud of as I helped Cassandra paint them.  What to say here?  Well these are mainly Warhammer Chaos bits, with some additional bits thrown in.  I really like the skull helms, but can't remember where I picked them up, oh yeah MaxMini.  When I do up these 'Chosen' I try and not go to uniform, I want varying colors and styles if I can.  I want it to feel like they are individuals who work together only because of a greater leader of commander who forces them.  Again I'm seeing that red everywhere.  Oh well...

Here's another shot of the Horde.  In it you get a better look at some of the guys in the back.  I think this might have been one of the first sets of minis I painted where I painted some black hair.  I know that sounds crazy, but painting in black is really hard for me because it is far more unforgiving when I screw up.  Which I do a LOT.  Again you get a good look at those cool skull helms from MaxMini, which are really cool for any Chaos or Barbarian Army.  Also you can see how I took Cassandra's use of the metallic blue and applied it to a Chaos sword, what you can't see is the fact that I painted the raised runes in a different color, or at least can't see it very well.  The guy on the bottom right with the double axes is one of my favorite miniatures in this batch as the DIP really made his helmet look dinged up and worn.

Here is the leader of the Horde.  I think he's a Warhammer Chaos Chosen.  I went with that dull, dark red again.  I went bronze on a lot of the ornate parts of the armor and rivits.  I think honestly the weapons might look the best as the handles of the axes look worn and the silver looks tarnished.  The light silver/grey on the knife sheathe looks good though.  The sad thing is the best part of the damn miniature is the fur cloak on his back which you don't get to see in this picture.

I WISH the light would have been better for this picture.  This is a Barbarian Female and she looks harder than a coffin nail.  Believe it or not she was a HUGE pain the ass to finish as there is a lot of wavey detail and crevasses in her hair and around the tiny bits of 'armor' she is wearing.  She also has a fur cape that looks good with the dry brushing.  Its too bad you can't see her that well in this picture.

Here is one of the Chaos Archers that I got off my copy of Battlemaster, a FANTASTIC game that is out of print.  Seriously, if you can find a copy for under $50 BUY IT!  It is a Warhammer game so it has that aesthetic.  I wish I had taken some time to take off the mold lines on these bad boys.  The picture doesn't do the miniature justice.  Since they all had mohawks I went crazy on the colors of each of them.

This an up close and personal look at one of the Barbarians with the MaxMini skull helm.  This was a mini I put together in the first year I started messing with modding and painting and you can tell.  I cut that right arm to get a different angle and didn't have any way to fill the gap so you can see it if your paying attention.  I've gotten way better since, and started using Green Stuff to fill some of those gaps when I get a little mod happy.  Not a bad looking miniature besides that point of mangled anatomy.

Another skull helmed Barbarian.  This is one of those rare cases where the poor lighting really makes the miniature look MORE menacing.  Looking back its funny to see how I misused Warhammer 40K pauldrons on fantasy miniatures.  In the end it only addes to that hodge podge feeling I wanted these guys to have.  I really wish I would have known someone who could have sat me down and helped me wrap my head around how to mod.  Now I have Diamond Dave Wheeler and Mighty Mike, and a number of others out there.  These early attempts aren't too bad, but when I think of what could have been I can't help but feel slightly disappointed.   

I love, LOVE, the helm on this miniature.  It looks fantastic.  The lighting doesn't allow you to see any of the detail on the face, or hell any details at all.  He's got a decent paint job, and like the 'vibe' of this miniature.  he actually looks like he could be a PC miniature.

I'm not sure where the head came from on this miniature because it isn't Game Workshop.  It does work perfectly with the body though.  I don't think the sword is a Warhammer weapon either.  This guy is a just a patchwork of stuff.  Again there is a WH40K pauldron on him as well. 

This is one of my favorite of these amalgamations I created.  It's a Warhammer Empire Flagellant on a Chaos body and it works perfectly!  I also love the off hand holding the human head, which by the way was a pain in the ass to paint I had to find a way to make it look old and dead, but not zombie like.  I dig this miniature a lot.

Again the Battlemasters game is a GREAT place to get some fantastic old school Warhammer miniatures.  This is another Chaos Archer.  I can't see the mold line on the face here, and even with the bad lighting you can see one of the eyes very plainly.  Overall it think the thing I dig most is that bright green hair.  I'm not sure why.

There he is again, the double axe guy!  Again I think the light doesn't help here, but it doesn't hinder either since it creates a bit of a mood, IF that was I what I was going for.  I love the pose, I dig the double axes, and that horned helm just make a great match.  I went dark on except for the the pants and the thing over his mid section where I went red and yellow, why I don't know.  The DIP really makes that very light skin tone come off as dirty and gross.  I like it.

And now for something completely different.  This is the back side of a DCM coffin, for whatever reason the shot of the front is blurry.  These things were SUPER easy to paint, however I wish I would have dry brushed them or maybe gave them a very dark initial paint to make all those lines in the wood grain pop out.  Very nice miniature, which is what you get with DCM, fun & easy to paint.

I wish this one wasn't as blurry, but I left it in.  It is something from a Warhammer kit or another.  It's a bunch of skulls used as a marker.  I have a handful of them and like to use them on maps because they look cool.  You can't see it but this bad boy has some colorful mushrooms on the backside of it as well.

Last but not least is another case of 'CRAZY EYES'!  I think this was a Rackham miniature, I think.  It's a nice looking miniature regardless of who sculpted it.  He's floating so I figured maybe he's a Vampire or a very powerful dying Mage.  Really I think he turned out pretty well with the significant changes in color tone between the bone white skin color and the dark royal purple robes with the dark red accents.  The silver and gold just help tie it together.  I just wish those damn eyes weren't taunting me.


Alright well there you have it a look at some of the painting we've done.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.