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Sunday, January 25, 2009

GitD &Adepticon Rocks & Craters Done

Well,

The Rocks & Craters or the GitD & Adepticon tables are doneso here are the GW craters that I mounted on MDF.



Here are the finished rocks, once our event is over they will be sent of to Chicago for Adepticon.





Not much tonight, but at least the terrain is ready now...
TK

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Another table for GitD

Well this past weekend a few guys came over to get in some practice games for GitD. Well I put up my two tables out in the garage and covered one table with a generic looking table. Well Tom O of Ponatowski's Legions http://ponatowskislegion.blogspot.com/ brought over his Osgiliath table that he has been working on, you can see more shots over on his blog. Also you will see some of Toms Rohan riders he is working on as well. You may notice a few men of Gondor as he was proxying a few models that were not done yet. So here you go:









In the next few shots you see Mike's Uruk-hai that I painted for Mike last year for the GitD.



So there you go, another table for GitD...
TK

Sunday, January 18, 2009

GitD Black Rocks

Well,

First off the Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl! Gotta love that, go Cardinals!
Anyhow, besides the great game today, I got all the rocks for GitD/Adepticon finished being coated with Liqutex, but the also got primed flack black. These will be used for a Mordor table for the GitD and then shipped off to Adepticon to be used there for the LotR events. So here they are:





So there you go, a short update, next up will be painting the rocks and craters...
TK

Friday, January 16, 2009

Gathering in the Desert Art

Okay, small update, I got back the artwork for our Tee shirts for the Gathering in the Desert (GitD). The original artwork of the rider was drawn by Jerry Autieri & the rest of the image was done by my good friends in house graphic artist (Jon) over at AZ hot Shots http://www.azhotshots.com/


The print will be on white tee shirts and everyone that pre-registered will be getting a free one. Any extras will be able to be purchased for $10.00 each. Thanks to all that signed up & a big thank you to Jerry for doing up the rider artwork!

TK

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Castle Kits, GitD & LotR

Well,

Its Wednesday and another update, wow I am doing good, I wonder how long it will last?? Anyhow on to todays update, One of our Sponsers for GitD is Castle Kits http://stores.castlekits.com/StoreFront.bok run by Iain Martin who offers kits made from Hirst Arts Castlemolds with Hydrostone plaster that is white in color unpainted. He is a fully licensed by Hirst Arts and is an authorized distributor. Well I was put into contact with Iain by Brent Sinclair over on Adeptus Windy City http://www.adeptuswindycity.com/blog/ and Iain grasiously donated two kits, one or terrain & the other for a prize.

Well today this box arrived today and one first inspection, I was worried what I might find inside. You see there was one little Fragile sticker on the box & the opening scene from Ace Venture Pet Detective came to mind!



Well thank goodness that was not the case, as I opened up the box it was full of packing peanuts and carefully wrapped cast blocks. Iain did a great job on the packing & from other reviews I have read this is the standard way that things get shipped. I am happy to say after looking at the packets, that there is no broken blocks at all.


Here is a close up of one of the packets, the blocks are seperated by a piece of cardoard so as not to damage the blocks. It must take Iain alot of time packaging these kits up. I will be writing up the kit as I assemble it and will further review these fine kits.


Another Item at GitD is that we will be holding a is a Master-class Auction for 2009. The following Golden Demon painters have all volunteered to donate a Lord of the Rings painted miniature to us so that all proceeds can benefit the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. We’d like to thank; Tim Lison, Jamie Welling and Dave Pauwels. Well I got another package yesterday which was Dave Pauwels figure, Gimli that won a Golden Demon 2005 in Atlanta. Gimli arrived in one piece and will be available for auction at the event.



Another event that we will be having at GitD is the “Red Dragon” painting competition, with the following categories: LotR Single Miniature (25mm base), LotR Large Miniature (40mm or larger base) and LotR Battle Scene (diorama) as well as a terrain building competition. You do not need to be playing in the GT to enter the “Red Dragons”, everyone is welcome. So since I can not play in the tourney, I will enter a few models in the event. Now the store staf will be judging the figures so there is no biased votes towards the organizers. Here are a few options I am thinking about.
I was going to go with an all Gandalf entries by doing a single Gandalf model (25mm), Gandalf in a Cart (40mm or larger) and Gandalf & Saurman dueling it out (Battle Scene). Well I finished the Duel scene, almost and here are the figures and base:
I am struggeling with the base, one one hand I like the flat black base, but then again my buddy Rob thought I should make it glossy. Not just a touch of gloss, but glossy like glass. I am still debating on this.
I have decided to change my 40mm or bigger to one of these figures, a Mordor Troll,
Or the Dark Lord himself, I am thinking the the Dark Lord my win out on this. I like how the the Dark Lord looks and I think I will let you decide, so if you have a vote, leave me a comment.

Thats it for tonight, now to go sort of Blocks...

TK

Sunday, January 11, 2009

GitD & Adepticon Terrain weekend

Well,

Been busy this past week and this weekend. First up was the painting of 140 counters for the Gathering in the Desert Indy GT. One of the cenarios that we are running requires 7 counters, 6 Rock Counters and 1 Treasure Counter. So I have been working on these for about 2 weeks, which started with 150+ 25mm counters from Gail Force 9, provided by a friend over at Adeptus Windy City (Thanks Jay!). Then add in a bag of aquarium rocks and some Liqutex and a lot of work and you have 140 counters! The chests are from GW with a few others thrown in.
Here is a close up of the Rocks and the chests.


Besides the counters I am also working on a Mordor table using some GW craters as well as some foam rocks. Now I have volunterred to help out with some terrian for the LotR tournament for Adepticon. So I will be shipping these out to Brent & Jamie so they can populate a table. So here are a few WIP shots. First up is the GW craters, you will notice that I have based these on masonite like the rest of my terrain. I did this since the craters are slightly warped and did not sit flush on the table, so I based them. I used my Resin Sand Liquetex around the edges and and the whole thing will get sprayed balck & painted. Here is a couple of shots of the craters.


Here is what the rocks will look like, basicly they are Blue, Pink, or White covered with Liquetex Stuco. I did a few of these a couple years ago for my local shop & just recently did a few for myself, here is what they look like painted up.

Here is an Easterling captain for scale of the rocks.

Here are the work in progress 5 that will be at GitD & Adepticon. You will notice I use all types of foam (Blue, Pink & White) and you may be asking why? Well, there is no reason except that I just grab what I have in a big bin from the garage in no particular order.






So this week the rocks will get coated and hopefully by the end of the week I will have paint on them. So stay tuned...
TK

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Tanks galore

Well,


One of my goals this year is to get more WW2 to the table since its a period of history I am really interested in. So a few weeks ago Rob & I were talking about doing a cool large group game using his WW2 rules Hammer & Anvil (A mod of 40k & LotR). So after talking about it, we choose to do a Normandy game based on the Villers Bocage & Hill 212 engagement, where Michael Whittman became infamous for destroying a ton of British armour.


So Rob & I started planning it out and decided that we would need at least an 8'x8' table to do it right. Now I will say we are cheating and using the Flames of War, Villers Bocage book for inspiration. So in the next few months we will be tackling the terrain, but besides cool looking terrain we are going to need Armour! So since we are doing this in 28mm, we dove in and started buying 1/48th scale armour from Tamiya. We figure we need 4 Tigers, which Rob has 2 already & I have one, but we will also need something like 12 British tanks. So Rob has already posted his pictures of his Firefly & Cromwell's here http://dspaintingblog.blogspot.com/

So here are my two tanks, I still need one more Cromwell and I am waiting for it to arrive, but my Firefly and 1 Cromwell are done. So here they are, first up the Firefly.

As you will notice I weathered up my tanks to match Robs, using the Liquetex method and black wash, although my wash is a little less extreme than his.

You will also note that the commanders hatch is open on the turret. I plan on putting a TC (Tank Commander) up there once I pick up the Tamiya British crew set.


Next up is the Cromwell, which is weathered up in the same manner as the Firefly.



I have to say I really like how the "mud" effect came out on these tanks & Robs. It was simple, just smear the Liquetex Resin Sand on the tanks, mash in some coarse ground foam & throw in some static grass and let dry. Once it is dry, I used Americana color Mississippi Mude and painted it on the "mud". After that it was a black wash and that was it. Pretty simple really and I wonder why I have not done this on my Imperial Guard tanks...Hmm, I see another project comming.

One last picture, I have three cats and they love to be in the "Game Room" while I work. Sydney happened to be sitting on the other side of the game table when I was shooting the pictures of the tanks. It sort of reminds me on the old "Kilroy was here" cartoons the GI's used to write on walls & vehicles, so here is my "Sydney was Here" picture.

TK