some more Infinity figures

Got done with a couple more Infinity figures.  A Muyib for Haqqislam and an Alguacil for the Nomads.

more singing

I got a bit more work done last night on my Choir guys.  One more to go and the team will be complete.

And here's my two backup singers with their boss, who I have cleaned up a bit.  Yesterday I also managed to pick up a couple of new Menoth figures to go with these guys.  I got an Attendant Priest and a couple of Flameguard Cleansers.  None of them are really going to give me a tactical edge in battle, but they're neat looking figures that will be useful in a Song of Blades and Heroes.

Something else I worked on last night was one of my Hasslefree Hazmat troopers.  I got these guys last month as a gift, spray painted them yellow, and haven't worked on them since.  I finally worked up the courage to get one of them started.  Unfortunately, I think I did the spray a little too thick and lost some of the details.  The guy I worked on probably got the worst of it as the rest still look pretty sharp.

As you can see though, he turned out fairly decent.  I'm going to be basing him as well, but that won't be until after I've dipped him.  And, as you can see, I actually managed to pull off the gem effect decently for once!  Hopefully the rest of his team will come out that well.

Choir Practice

Last weekend I splurged a bit and bought a Choir of Menoth set on Consignment from the local hobby shop.  It was only $10, so why not?  I started working on the leader of the group tonight...

I applied a black wash to him just a bit ago.  I'm going to touch him up a bit before I send him to be dipped.  I'll redo the robes so they're more white and less filthy looking.  I'm also going to add more purple to his helmet because as I have it now, it looks like it's a skull and comes across kind of weird.  I think he looks pretty good though, if I do say so myself.

That's about it though.  I started base coating his crew, but they're nowhere near close enough to completion for me to take pics of them.  So, I'm going to go spend the weekend with family and my dog.  No painting this weekend, though I may get in a game of Song of Blades and Heroes.

Zombies & Cookies

I know my brother was getting on my case due to the fact that I've stopped cooking things and showing them off on here.  Well, I'll have you know, I baked....

COOKIES!!!

 Yes, I actually BAKED cookies myself.  I primarily made them for my coworkers, but since there were a lot left over, I got some extras and my parents got some as well.  I ate some a little bit ago and they actually tasted decent.  So, hurray, I didn't screw it up!

Last week, I also got the first batch of my Deadzone Kickstarter stuff.  I got to play around with a bit of it and constructed two things with the scenery:  a landing pad, and an armored watch tower.  The last couple nights I spent cleaning up a bunch of the figures.  While detail is generally very crisp, the flash and mold lines can be a real pain in the ass.  However, I've actually managed to get a few figures painted up already.

These handsome fellows are from the Plague faction.  They were my test cases and I think they turned out very well, especially since I didn't even detail the little spikes growing out of them or their eyes.  Their bases will probably wind up with some sand eventually.  The blood stains were actually a little experiment using Games Workshop's new "Blood For the Blood God" effect paint.  It actually works really well, though it doesn't really come across too well in this photo.

Now, of course, I also had to take some photos of them with my Plague Zombie horde.

Believe me, there'll be a lot more of these guys joining them in the future.  Whenever the second shipment comes, I'll be getting even more zombies to join them, though those new ones will have an aesthetic a bit more in line with the Plague guys.

Now, how about some of those Deadzone shots?

Last but not least, I have a PanOceania Order Sergeant from Infinity.  This guy was a paint test for some Fusiliers I'm painting for my cousin.

The paint gunked up some of the details on his helmet, so I lost a little bit of detail, but I think he turned out alright.  The colors I chose will work pretty well for PanOceania, I think.

Just a small update

I've kind of been neglecting this blog.  How about an update?

For the last few weeks, I've been focusing pretty heavily on working on Infinity figures.  I've actually painted up quite a few of them.  I've also been having a bit of fun with them as you can tell from these photos.

But, believe it or not, I actually started working on some figures that aren't from Infinity!  On Black Friday, I ended up picking up a couple of figures from Privateer Press' Warmachine line.  I got a Khador dude, and a Retribution dude.

For a little while, I've been slowly picking up the occasional Retribution of Scyrah figures.  Why?  Because they aren't the typical fantasy depiction of elves.  Warmachine is a fantasy/steam-punk wargame.  The general technological level seems to flop all over the place with some figures looking like they should be fighting in the trenches of WWI, while others look like colonial militiamen from the American Revolution, and yet still others are straight up knights in armor.  Of course, then you also throw in magic, power armor, and steam powered giant robots and dudes who carry handhelt lightning guns.  Like I said, it's all over the place.  However, there is still a general fantasy-esque feeling to the whole thing.  Then you get to the elves.  They're not fantasy.  Not at all.  In fact, they're pretty damn sci-fi!  The Retribution troops have a sort of ornate WWI look to them with lots of smooth, rounded armor and equipment all over them.  Sure, you've got guys who are carrying around halbreds, crossbows, and swords, but you also have guys carrying what look like laser rifles and powered armor.  I think Warmachine's depiction of elves is probably one of the more militaristic and utilitarian I've ever seen.  They look like soldiers that can not only take a beating, but dish one out as well.  Plus they look like they'd make great Exodite Eldar for 40k.

Anyway, I picked up a Dawnguard Scyir from the local hobby shop.  He's basically a high ranking officer decked out in Sentinel armor (that's what their heavy infantry are called).  For the most part, he looks like the regular Dawnguard Sentinels aside from a few small odds and ends here and there and I really like the design.  I had him all painted up and ready to go last night, but then I got the bright idea to put a wash on him and pretty much ruined the figure.  So, today I stripped the previous paintjob off and redid him in a darker scheme and with a different highlighting method.  I've pleased with how he's turned out.

Here you can see him with one of my Dawnguard Halbred troops and a Mage Hunter Assassin.  Despite using different colors, he fits in pretty well.  I deliberately used a darker scheme so I would be able to immediately tell him apart from other Sentinels that I may eventually purchase, yet not break the overall color theme of the army.

If you couldn't tell, I was going for more of a desert theme for these guys since I only ever see people painting them in either bright colors or in the official off white.  Neither really fits the more utilitarian aesthetic their troops have.

Garo: Soukoku no Maryu

I've had this movie sitting around and finally got around to watching it this weekend.  For those who are unfamiliar with the Garo series, it's a series consisting of several tv shows, movies, and videos that follow a group of people called Makai Knights, which are basically modern day knights who use magical armor to hunt down demons.  The series is absolutely NOT for kids and was billed as something along the lines of being a "midnight violence action hero."  The series as whole tends to have a lot of violence and nudity.  The series also has a very strong horror theme to it, as if that wasn't obvious.

The first series, simply called Golden Knight Garo dealt with Saejima Koga, the man who holds the title and armor of Garo.  Supposedly Garo is the strongest of the Makai Knights.  The first series obviously introduces the setting involving the hidden war between the Makai Knights (and Makai Priests) versus of Horrors.  Horrors are demons born of human emotions that can either possess people or consume human souls.  The plot of the first series initially deals with Koga coming into contact with a normal human named Kaoru who by chance is caught in the middle of a fight between Garo and a Horror.  She is accidentally doused with the blood of the horror which has the unfortunate side effect of not only being extremely toxic, but attracts other Horrors as well.  So, much of the series involves the relationship between the two as Koga tries to not only protect Kaoru, but also try to find a way to save her.  As it goes on, another Knight is introduced and the plot becomes more convoluted as it turns out a corrupted Knight is controlling things behind the scenes to not only corrupt Koga's handlers, but also summon the Horror's god into the human realm.  Here's a trailer for the original series:

The first special follows which involves the introduction of another new Makai Knight and the revival of new menace, Legules.  Basically he's a demon on a whole different level from the average Horrors.  The overall plot involves Legules attempting to tear down the wall between the human world and the Horror's world.

Following the first special is the first movie, Red Requiem.  I had a hard time placing where this was actually supposed to occur in the series' chronology.  I think it is supposed to occur after the first show and the special.  This one introduces a new Makai Priestess named Rekka along with several others.  The plot mostly involves them trying to track down an Apostle Horror, one of the most powerful types of Horrors they ever encounter.  The movie was alright.  It was a 3d movie, for some reason.  I was a little disappointed in it actually because no new Makai Knights were introduced and the Garo armor itself was barely in the movie.  Here's the trailer to that though.

After the first movie, we get the second tv series, Makai Senki.  This one once again involves a corrupted Makai Knight running wild.  Unlike in the first series, the villain this time around is not completely possessed and knows full well what he's doing.  The villains mission is to use the power of the Horrors against them and destroy them once and for all.  Of course this doesn't work.  This show did a LOT more world building, introducing the Senate, the governing body that presides over the Makai Knights and Priests, the history of the Makai Knights, and it introduces several new Knights.  The show ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger with Koga entering into a contract with a demon called Gajari in order to save everyone.  The show ends with him having to leave to a place called the Promised Land to fulfill his contract.  And here's the trailer for that:

The Third series, Yami Wo Terasu Mono (the one who shines in the darkness) is pretty much unrelated.  It's set an unspecified amount of time in the future.  Koga is gone, what happened to him is never explained.  A new cast is introduced with two new Makai Knights ( who have very cool looking armor) and a new Knight bearing the title of Garo.  This new lead is called Dogai Ryuga.  He's not as cool as Koga and tries to be something of a rebel.  The plot of this one involves a self contained city-state in which Horrors have infiltrated key business and political positions and an evil human attempts to take control over a sealed Apostle Horror called Zedom.  This show was okay, but there were times they tried to be kind of artsy with it which got kind of annoying.  Plus the horrors seemed to lose a lot of their more unique designs from previous series and it was a lot more CG heavy.  Zedom was somewhat interesting in that he's the first high-ranking Horror seen in the series other than Kiba that's male.  All of the previous powerful Horrors were female.  Zedom is also interesting in that he is almost purely mechanical whereas every other horror has been pretty much organic.  Might as well put the trailer for this series as well:

Following that, there were two more movies.  One, a spinoff called Garo Gaiden:  Tougen no Fue.  It follows a pair of Makai Priestesses and has no other characters from Garo in it.

The other is Garo:  Soukoku no Maryu, which is the epilogue for the second series following Koga as he travels into the Promised Land.  Here's the trailer.

I was surprised by this one.  First, this is probably the only entry in the Garo series that could be considered family friendly.  There are no Horrors, nobody getting eaten or brutally murdered or worse as often happened in the shows.  I don't think there was even any blood in this.  Hell, there wasn't really even any nudity, and all 3 shows and the first movie all had nudity in them.  Those weird looking white, fish headed women in some of those shots were technically nude, but you really can't see anything, so I'm going to say this one is child safe.  The movie also has surprisingly decent CG.  That's really shocking because Garo has never had good looking CG.  The sets and creature designs are all extremely weird and look pretty much like what you'd expect from something from Keita Amemiya, the series' creator.  I could swear I'd read that the movie was supposed to be influenced by Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and it pretty well shows.  Actually, what this movie reminded me the most of was The Labyrinth or The Neverending Story.  The strange fantasy setting with all of the bizarre looking monsters really gave me that vibe.  There's even a strange, hallucinogenic party sequence that comes totally out of nowhere and reminds me of the ballroom dance sequence from The Labyrinth.  Something interesting with this movie, while the backgrounds are all CG and only a couple monsters are CG, almost every other creature is a puppet of some sort.  One of the characters even seemed to be a marionette.  It was very surprising to see how many creatures were done with practical effects.  I have noticed though that the marionettes seem to have carried over into Amemiya's newest show, Shougeki Gouraigan.

Overall, this movie was a surprising departure from the usual formula of the shows and was unusually tame, but still enjoyable.

Just a little update

The little bit of model work I did this weekend was on my Tau Devilfish.  As I said, I bought it to use it with my Enforcers.  Once my Deadzone Kickstarter stuff comes in, I'm going to have a ton of urban terrain and parts to build a landing pad.  Problem is, there's no aircraft to land on it.  So, I figured I'd just use a GW one.  The Tau tanks look enough like aircraft, I figured I could get away with it.  Last week I'd started painting it up.  I had a tri-color splinter camo pattern on it.  Unfortunately, I had to paint it by hand and I thought it looked really bad.  My dad didn't seem to think it looked that bad, but I wasn't happy with it.  So, on Saturday I repainted the whole thing and this time I used painter's masking tape to block off the camo pattern.  The results were way better.  Though, this time I stuck to just the base color and a darker color for the splinters.  Tonight I got the markings done and painted the engings.  So, now it's all done and ready for a spray sealant.  Well, that and I need GW to hurry up and send that missing drone sprue.

 It's a little hard to see, but here's the nose art I gave it.  I wish I had something more traditional, but this was the only one I had that actually fit.  Well, it was either this, a boar, or a crude looking skull.  This one gives it a tad bit of color, which I wanted, so that's why I chose it.

You can also see I got the viewports all painted up.  I'm not sure if I should do anything with the chin gun or those little antennae fins though.