Category Archives: Miniatures

Pretty tired today

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More emotionally tired than physically, and not really able to think of anything worthy to blog about.  The final part of the Lord of the Rings Online review will auto-post at 9pm.  I enjoyed writing that, enjoyed writing something substantial over a number of days, I may try and do something similar maybe about miniature painting.  Perhaps I’ll pick one figure and blog about the whole painting process.  Maybe I’ll get bored long before that happens.

Grete’s dad is visiting today, staying overnight.  The cats will have to cope with his dog so we’ve moved their food, water and litter tray upstairs so they can continue to do what they do (eat, drink, shit, sleep) without being disturbed.  He’s taking our presents for Grete’s sister, brother-in-law and their kids down south with him when he heads out on Saturday.

Old photo’s

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We spent the weekend in Newcastle, visiting my family (I’ll be blogging about that in a moment), and while I was there I asked my sister if she had all our old photo’s.  I sort of knew she did, she’s been making sure all the family photo’s are kept safe for quite some time.  Grete hasn’t seen them really, despite the fact that we’ve been married for 10 years, so it was a chance for her to laugh at the ones of me when I was younger.  Two in particular caught my eye in respect to my blogging.

tony-paitningThe first one is me sitting painting some miniatures, note that I’m using oil based enamels, big pots of tamya modelling paint as bases (which I’m still using, the very same pots), and that there’s a partly finished mini on the table, an elf in a green cloak with blonde hair.  I still have that mini, and I’m pretty sure it’s still got the same paint job (which since it’s oil based enamel will last for ever).  Click for the full sized pic, yes, I spelled the file name wrong.

The second picture is of me proudly sitting in front of what I suspect was my brand new spectrum.  As you can see it’s plugged into a black and white TV, and connected to an ancient tape deck (complete with mike!)

For bonus points, I appear to be wearing the same shirt.

tony-spectrum Edit: Ah, Grete points out one shirt is short sleeved and the other long, I’m blind. Also, judging by my hair these are probably a year or two apart.

Not in the mood

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As soon as I put the flesh washes onto the three mini’s I’m supposed to be using blending on I knew I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be doing any painting.

Then I tried putting a highlight onto a hand, decided it looked crap and packed up again.

Maybe tomorrow.

Double Dose of Ranting

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EverQuest released a new expansion.  Frankly I’m not really bothered and may not buy it.  However, Grete is kinda interested so I said I’d get it for her account.  This is the first time we’ve not pre-ordered, and enthusiasm is low (Grete’s pretty down at the moment, so her general EQ mojo is low anyway, hopefully she won’t beat me when she reads this), but I said it would be fine to get it for her account.

So I log on to the Sony website, go to the account management page and try and buy the expansion.  I get a dialog which asks me to fill in our post code, select a secret security question and a secret answer.  Never seen the page before, no prompts telling me why it’s showed up.  The drop down list of secret questions is empty (other than the default entry of ‘please select a secret question’).  So I try ignoring it, but it wants me to select something, I try answering a random question but it still wants me to pick a question.

I can’t pick a damn question.

I search, in vain, for some way to update it via the profile, but it’s not there.  So I go to the Sony help site which if anyone’s tried to use it, knows how terrible it is.  I finally opt for Live Chat, and get a form to fill out with 6 questions and a box to describe the problem which I fill with a couple of paragraphs of text, and then click ‘go live chat’, at which point I get a popup telling me live chat is disabled due to maintenance.  Why the hell did it let me fill the form in then, stop me before I put in the effort.

So I finally go to the e-mail help and rant about the problem and the stupid site.  Maybe they’ll fix it, maybe they won’t, but since we were already just on the edge of maybe buying it and maybe not, if they don’t fix it without a lot of hassle they just lost another sale.  This is typical, in my experience, of Sony.  They make everything as hard as they can, so you have to fight to spend your money with them and they still make you feel like it was your fault.

Gahhh.

Second rant.  I e-mailed a shop that sells miniatures and said specifically and clearly ‘are you able to order this particular miniature for us’.  The reply was waffly and didn’t answer the question, but commented on some vague notion of them not getting that mini in the last delivery and ‘maybe being able to sort it out’.  The mini in question can be purchased direct from the supplier in the US, and we said that to the folk in the shop when we were in there at the weekend (before this e-mail), but they said the supplier’s customer service was bad and it can take ages to arrive.  So, I replied to this vague e-mail saying ‘on Saturday you said it would be quicker to order through you’, and the reply to that was ‘it will be if it arrives before the end of the year’.  WTF does that mean?  Why can’t they just answer a basic and simple question.

Q: Can you order this mini for us?

A: Yes, it will take 2-8 weeks or
A: No, we don’t do specific orders, if it arrives as general stock we can let you know or
A: No, but I’m sending a full order in for re-stocking and it’s listed, should be here in 3 weeks

or anything else, other than totally vague randomness.  This is a niche hobby with low turnover and a small market, you’d think they were keen to retain any direct customers they could get.  I was polite, clear, concise.

So I bought it over the web from the US supplier, and they shipped in 24 hours after I placed the order and sent me a nice e-mail to tell me so.  I’ll pay the $16 shipping charge on a $7 purchase to get service from someone who’s clear, concise and polite (I actually bought another two mini’s, to take it up to around $12 worth of mini’s, but that’s not the point).

In this day and age, I get very frustrated when technology gets in the way of simple purchases or when people can’t, don’t or won’t answer a straight question with a straight answer.  It’s my money, they either want it, or they don’t want it, but I’m not going to fight to give it to them.

Probably really bad of me

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What motivates you to do better?  Knowing you can still improve?  The pure challenge?  Knowing there are people who can generate better stuff than you but that it’s within your reach?   Totally internal drive?  You don’t need to do better, you just do what you do and see how it turns out?

I’ve covered this in other blog posts, but basically, I’m easily discouraged.  If I find that something I can create isn’t very good when compared to everyone else I’m prone to be discouraged.  It’s odd because I’m really not competative in the normal sense, so I’m not sure where it comes from.

Anyway, after looking around the interwebnets and seeing a lot of very impressive painted mini’s I was feeling discouraged.  But, and this is why it’s bad, I found a huge site with thousands of posted pictures (rated by the site members) and I don’t truly suck.  I’m about average.  I can cope with being about average and not sucking.

That’s something I can build on.

edit: Oh, and the site has a lot of display quality mini’s for sale (rather than gaming style mini’s which tend to be generic) and for some reason, the ones that are out of stock tend to be the half-naked female characters.  You’ll never guess the general demographic of mini painters ….

Blending

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You can practice something over and over again, but if what you’re practicing is wrong, it isn’t going to help.  I look at the work other people do with miniatures and I lament that I can’t achieve those effects, and yet I know why.  Because I’m not using the right technique.  So, I’m going to try and paint the following three mini’s using as much blending and patience as I can muster.

Vampire Blegh

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I knew as soon as I painted the Vampire’s shirt red, and did the hack-black-wash job on the cloak that I’d ruined the entire piece.  Oh well, now I’m just slapping paint on it to finish it up as quickly as possible.

I’ve never been able to do convincing red-clothing, it’s surprisingly annoying.  Although if I did real blending instead of just wash/dry-brushing it would be easier (in the sense that blending works better with reds, but since I can’t blend well it’s a moot point).

Edit: Updating rather than posting a fresh post.  It’s finished – here and here.

Got some painting done

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Did quite a bit.  Finished up the Elmore piece I started an absolute age ago.  Looks ok real-size, looks terrible photographed, I have to work out if there’s a better way (been saying that for 10 years).  Made a start on three Rackham miniatures, did a tiny bit on a vampire and kept going with the 20 zombies.  Doing the zombies is kinda cool, don’t have to be too careful, slap a lot of random colours on that no self respecting heroic single miniature would wear, try out different things to see what works.  The contrast with working on hugely detailed pieces like the Rackham miniatures is incredible, everything takes longer, everything has to be planned out carefully.

The hardest part is seeing what you want to do with the miniature – once you’ve got that in your head it’s just a matter of making it happen.  I’m struggling with the vampire because I don’t know how I want it to look, blacks? purples? oranges? reds? some mixture?  Greys?  Not sure.  Once I have that sorted it’ll be a lot easier.

Happy Geek

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Today I am a happy geek.  I’ve ticked all my boxes.

  • Fantasy Miniatures – check
  • Blogging – check
  • Photography – check
  • Using Picasa to manage photo’s – check
  • Using Picasaweb albums – check

Pretty good day.  We popped into the Games Workshop Warhammer World shop to pick up some paints (white and black) that I’m missing (I can cope with other colours missing, but white and black are pretty essential).  The guy behind the counter was as chatty as they always are in Games Workshop shops, and he was asking what I was painting (I said undead), and if I was looking at getting any other miniatures.  I sort of laughed and said no, I had plenty to keep me going.  He asked what I was interested in, and I had to just say, “I’ve been painting for over 20 years, with some breaks, I’m really not into playing, just painting the miniatures”.

It was a number I plucked out of the air (20 years), but it turns out it was pretty accurate.  Started when I was 14ish, which makes it 23 years.  I’ve probably been painting for longer than the shop assistant has been alive.  When I started painting the miniatures were made out of real lead (probably).

So anyway, didn’t manage to get any painting done this evening but I did end up finding a lot of miniatures I’d forgotten about, and did some web geekery, so yeh, pretty happy.

Fantasy Miniatures, photos

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So I spent the evening going through my collection of miniatures, re-photographing them and uploading those pictures to Picasa.

A disclaimer before you go look (if you were thinking of looking).  Yes, there are far too many half-naked nubile unfeasibly dressed female miniatures, so sue me.  Yes, I suck at painting eyes.  In fact, yes, in general, the painting sucks.  These things are designed to look ok from about 3 feet away and are 1-2 inches high usually, so when you photograph them from 7 inches away and blow them up, they look pretty cruddy (well, mine do).

First up, a collection of my oldest miniatures.

Next, some of my more recent butcher paint jobs.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I’ve not started yet.

Click the images to link to the Picasa albums.  I’ll sort out some photo’s and post some stuff I’m half way done on at some stage.

Edit: In-progress album now up.