This is my attempt at Tony from Hasslefree. (All Thumbnails, click for full pictures)
A base is worth a thousand words, or something, so I do plan to put him onto a proper base soon.
Edit: In fact, this base.
Oh, and at one point, he looked like this,
Despite the fact that I’m not painting anything at the moment, I just bought a whole bunch of miniatures from Hasslefree, because they’re superb sculpts that I’d love to paint (in the part of my head that thinks I can).
They had an offer on to raise some cash, allowing you to buy credit with them and then spend it when you wanted with some bonus credit added on. I spent it all in one go (they understand the difference between profit and cash flow for small businesses, and they needed some cash flow).
So if I do finally get my painting mojo back on – I have plenty to go at.
I really enjoyed writing the Sasha Dubois painting diary posts (start here), they actually made the process of painting the figure more interesting. I thought I’d try stepping things up a notch, have a go at one of Hasslefree’s awesome sculpts (Eve), and write a few posts on doing that. In terms of anatomy, relative sizes and detail it’s probably the best miniature I’ve ever tried to paint. Usually things like belts or leg straps are 0.5mm or more in depth on miniatures, if you consider the scale (28mm being around 168cm) then a 0.5mm strap is about 3cm deep (I think), which is clearly unrealistic. However, we’re talking about ‘representative’ miniatures, so it’s never been an issue for me. Hasslefree sculpts are on the more realistic side of the barrier, so leg straps have a tiny depth (see image), barely any higher than the surrounding leg. Painting this figure is going to be a challenge.
To add to that challenge, there are some amazing paint jobs of Eve on the Hasslefree site, the people who paint those mini’s are real artists and their attention to detail, brush control and fine touch is beyond me. So I just hope I do the figure some kind of justice in my own way.
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So I’ve been ordering a bunch of miniatures recently, a couple or three from a range of different places to find out which ones I like best. You can get an impression of the miniatures from the on-line shops but you’ll never really know what they’re like until you get some. From Hasslefree I bought Ceril, Eve, Kat, Tony, Sadie and Shimmer. I can’t believe how clean the molds are, virtually no mold lines and absolutely zero flash. The mini’s are really delicate and very fine. They’re beautiful, but I fear I won’t be able to do them justice when painting them, and personally I think I tend to prefer slightly over-scaled miniatures (heroic scale, 32mm, whatever you want to call them) with slightly exagerated features. We’ll see how they work out.
From Heresy I bought Big Boris mk2 and some green stuff (modelling putty, to fill gaps when I’m putting multi-part mini’s together). There was quite a lot of flash on the axe, but hardly any mold lines or flash anywhere else. The figure is pretty big as 28mm scaled figures go, I’ll get a photograph of them all together sorted out with a ruler or something. I got Big Boris because I wanted a go at painting flesh with a lot of area to work with, and he fits that bill. I’m eyeing up the sci-fi range at Heresy, so you may see some more stuff from them soon.
I bought three mini’s from Black Scorpion miniatures, really to see what scale they were and get a feel for them. I got Echo, Sheriff, and Black Jack Davey to see what the various ranges were like. There’s a lot more flash on these figures than Hasslefree or Heresy, and some quite large pieces of metal left over from the molding process. They’re also much more like the figures I’m used to when compared to Hasslefree (they’re slightly less realistic and more overscaled), but that’s good, because I think that’s what I prefer. They’re nice figures.
Then last night I found a link to another UK miniature place (Copplestone Castings) on a forum, and ended up buying a few miniatures from them (clearly, not arrived yet), to see what they’re like.
Most of the Hasslefree miniatures are multi-part, because the angle of the arms or various weapons prevents them from being cast a single pieces, the Boris mini from Heresy is also clearly multi-part for the same reason and also so that several options can be provided. The Black Scorpion Miniatures likewise, have several bits. So over the last couple of weeks and for a few hours yesterday I’ve been glueing them together using super-glue. I don’t think any of them are large enough to need pinning (strengthening the join with metal pins), but I guess we’ll find out when I try painting them if they fall apart.