2016 - I - What, a new year already............?!

Well the last couple of weeks have definitely flown by at an incredible speed. Haven't had too much time to do much blog work, aside from some Star Wars related musing over on the Garage Gamers blog (I, II & III).

That's not to say I haven't been busy with the hobby, quite the contrary actually, spent more time on minis these last two weeks than the full month before. There are even a few finished models to show off, starting with Alucard (Infamy Miniatures). Part of the Big Smoke range/game, I had an absolute blast with this guy. There's an absolute ton of tiny details all over this finely-cast and rather menacing-looking, resin model. He can't possibly be up to anything good with all that gear.

The Big Smoke world promises to be a rather bleak, dark and alternative view of early 20th century London with automatons, legendary monsters, half-robotic monkeys, an evil Homes and Watson and Tesla himself trying to stem the tide. A setting that challenged me to go back a few years to a painting style I've drifted away from further and further - 40K / John Blanche's grimdark approach. Been mostly painting more light-hearted pulp and scifi models these last two years, which generally invites brighter color schemes. Going back to something dark, mixing all your colors from scratch and using about a dozen different shades of brown was quite a nice throwback and something I will stick with once I get around to the other Infamy models on my to do-list!

Now Alucard isn't the only finished model, though the Barrow Wight (Warploque Miniatures) is most definitely an entirely different beast. Certainly no less detail, the sculpting style on this one almost pulls a 180. While Infamy's range is more and more becoming a 3D render-centric product, demonstrating just how wonderful printed models/masters can be, Warploque's Alex does all his sculpting by hand. This has lead to some extremely distinct, characterful and much more organic models, which naturally lend themselves (or force the painter) to a different approach.

There's a lot more blending and free flowing brushwork possible on these models, something I think may very well end up influencing my general painting style. I do not believe this model has had a general release yet, though that may very well change in the near future. In fact, for anybody interested in the Arcworlde models and game there will be a big starter set coming later this/next month:

Thirdly, there's a 'get them painted already'-project from my long, long to do-list on the hobby table at the moment: Relics' Ridend faction (from Tor Gaming). About time these lovely, little models got some attention, there's even some quite challenging stuff in there. The Dragon Tower promises to be quite the challenge, with all those tight spots.

Amusingly enough the simply undercoating process made me change my mind completely on my favorite models in the group. Really like mounts and dragon models, but now the Ladies of the Court have jump to the head of the pack. Really charmed by all the small details, the posing and just how many layers there are to their dresses.........guess I like princesses then ;-)

And yes, yes, part of the reason for my sudden motivation for these is down to the Kickstarter for the newest C'thu faction for Relics (link). Hey, at the very least it will mean more models painted than added to the pile ;-)

Regardless, it's been quite a productive year. Hope everybody out there is having a great new year, both real life and hobby-related, as well!