JC, well maybe?

 So,

Last year I order a couple of these awesome little jungle boat from Sarissa Precision and promptly put one together. As some know, I floated down the river of some of the most famous rivers in the world in Anaheim CA, well when I saw these I knew I had to have them for some pulp gaming.

Keep your hands and arms inside the boat!

These boats are modeled more after a famous movie called the African Queen and is very l close to its namesake boat Sarissa Precision has done a great job in capturing the feel of the boat and its very easy to assemble.

Never get out of the boat man!

Well as I said, I got this about the middle of last year and got it built, then sadly it sat on a shelf (boat on a shelf for xmas?) and I did nothing with it. Well last week I wanted to work on something other then model railroad stuff, so I took down the boat and decided to paint her on up.

New paint for the old girl

I painted the whole thing with a Krylon Beige paint as and under coat. Then the out side got painted with Reaper/CAV Blitzkrieg Grey on the outside of the hull, followed by a wash of Army painter soft tone. The inside deck was kept beige with the soft tone wash and the roof canopy (which is tissue paper over the top) was painted khaki and washed as well. Boiler was painted black, then Pig Iron from P3 and washed with strong tone.

No what to call her???

Well there you go, painting took less then a day and I really like how it came out. Now I do have another kit and I think I may modify it to look like my former ride that I use to work just so I can have two different looking boats.

Hit it skip!

TK

Son of Kong

Welcome back to the Jungle pulp fans!

Well I completed another great figure for my Pulp games, this time the Great Ape from Wizkids. As soon as I saw this model I knew I needed to pick it up and it will be used! I actually had been looking for a giant ape for sometime, as I had seen other companies models, but this one git the bill perfectly. 

I am the King!

Perfect size for 28mm figs

King of Apes meets King of Dinos!

I really look forward to seeing what other creatures I can pick up from the Wizkids AD&D line, the price is perfect and they are primed and ready for paint. Really can't say anything bad about these, great figures, great looking models, easy to work with, paint up very nicely and great price, everything that I look for.

TK

Land of the Lost over here!

 Well,

Completed the next Dino for a future game, this time the mighty Triceratops! This is another Wizkids AD&D model and looks awesome on the table. I only made one mistake, I covered up the seam line on one side of the model and totally forgot about the other side of the model. I usually am pretty good catching these and I had thought about going back and trying to fill it, but I used various washes on the model and not sure if I could blend it.

The good side.

The bad side.

Fighting off the Raptors.

Next up the Mighty T Rex.

Holding the T Rex back.

All in all I am very pleased with these models, I hope Wizkids keeps adding to the line with more Dinosaurs, the price is right and they look great. I also have had my eye on ordering a few Reaper Models as they have a few dinos as well.

TK

Dinos everywhere!

 So,

I had this crazy idea for another group game using FFoL or Pulp Alley, the FFoL idea is to do a Cowboy vs Dinosaur game based after a old movie called Valley of Gwangi as well as doing some sort of Pulp game on a mysterious island with Dinos.

About a year ago I bought a Tyrannosaurs Rex from Wizkids from the D&D line, then they came out with a Triceratops and just recently they released Velociraptors . Well this weekend I started working on the raptors and got them all painted up, next will be the Triceratops, but here are the completed models.

Raptor pack

Raptors take on T Rex

Movie set or real life adventure?

These are the strangest cows I have ever seen!

TK

A village is born!

So,

A few weeks ago I ordered a few new buildings for some gaming from Sarissa Precision. I wanted some South Pacific looking buildings and ordered the Far East Bundle. First off, It only took about a week and a half to get my order from the UK, that was amazing with everything going on in the world. Secondly these buildings are awesome, I love what the Sarissa guys are doing!

This past weekend I decided to work on getting them assembled and started to "Plus" them up. What I like from these kits you can use them as is or dress them up as much as you like. So first these kits I added doors (used the extra MDF left over from the cutout) and a couple of small hinges I have. I also plan to do a corrugated tin roof to give them more a Hollywood flavor to them. For the corrugation I am using the same card board I used for the Spanish tiles but making them larger and not over lapping them. In fact I am cutting them up at various widths and not placing them touching each other as to have that run down sort of look.

First building with a new roof!

 You will also notice that I already did the texture to the bases and the buildings are not glued to the supports, so when I do start painting I can paint up the texturing under the buildings and adding grass and some plants as well.

Common meeting Hut

This bundle set is perfect for a little village and I am really looking forward to painting them all up. You will notice that some buildings are just planked siding, the one below is a woven looking sort of building, nice little touch.

Woven or thatched siding.

These kits just have so much character and I could see them being used for a few games for sure. Because of these buildings, I need to order more Pulp Figures (Castaways set) as well as Island Natives for this as well.

Another nice looking building!

Animal pen or cheap overnight accommodations? 

All in all I am very please once again with Sarissa's offerings and will be buying more of there products in the very near future. Stay tuned for more pics as I work on these lovely kits...

TK

A Very Pulpy weekend.

 Hey folks,

This past weekend was a very productive weekend and it all focused on Pulp. A couple of buddies this weekend were doing a sort of Hobbycon weekend working on the new 40K box set that just came out and were looking for folks to join along. Well I am not interested in 40K nor did I buy said new version, I decided to work on what I had, so Pulp miniatures were on tap.

Models completed on Saturday

 I was able to complete five figures on Saturday and as Sunday rolled around, I busted out a few more models. Four out of the five are more old west, more like Mexican revolution, but they can be used in Pulp games, and the fifth model was a true pulp adventurer all from Pulp Figures..  

What a Wild Bunch we have there.

So I was able to get another five completed and as I was working on these, I got notification that my Sarissa Precision  order would be delivered today! So not only would I have completed 10 figures, but I was getting some terrain today.

Box from the UK smelling of burnt wood!

I ordered the Far East building pack, a dock and two Steam Powered launches all intended for Pulp gaming or Pacific WW2 gaming.

My terrain haul!

I was so excited to be getting my terrain that I started work on them as soon as it showed up. The first item I set about building was the dock, pretty straight forward kit, although I decided to add rope wrapped about the supports for the dock. Just some natural twine used for bracelets, which adds a nice little touch to the dock.  

part of the dock which includes another section, so a Paradox!

Once I had the dock assembled, I turned my attention to the steam launch, and I was very happy to be assembling these. And if you know me, I was a skipper on a very similar looking boat trudging down jungle rivers for many years. This kit is a neat little kit, in the picture below I have the hull completed and just have the canopy sitting there, my plan is to extend the canopy all the way over the boat and I will be using tissue paper for the canopy and making another set of frames to hold it up. The Steam boiler does go up towards the front, but I will be making a replacement that looks more like I am used to seeing in the boats I piloted. 

I get paid for the number I take out, not how many I bring back!

here is a combo picture of the dock and the boat together, which is perfect for what I am going to use it for!

Watch your step and don't step on your watch!

I ran out of steam and was not able to finish more on the boat, but will be working on it throughout this week. So stay tuned friends, more dispatches from the Jungle soon! 

Kungaloosh!

TK

Quiet on the set!

So,

This weekend I busted out a few Pulp Alley & Pulp Figures miniatures to work on, I love pulp games and I wish I got to play more of them, but my local group is not as interested as I am. But that not withstanding I still paint up figures and terrain for games I will run.

This Weekends painting

Not sure what got me in the mood to bust out these, maybe the GW info about Blood Bowl that had me down, but I felt inspired to paint and pretty much the whole weekend to do it. I just have to say that I really love Pulp Figures miniatures, they are so charismatic and in a way, very simple to paint. Unlike GW which are very detailed almost to the point of over detailed, Pulp Figures are much more of a joy to paint for me and I always get great results. 

Take 81!

Pulp Alley miniatures are in the same vain as the Pulp Figures and this was my first set of them to paint up. I had used these models for years when I ran demos, showing people the figures that Dave was now making. So I decided to paint them up finally after all these years.

And Action!

I also tried a new Red hair color on the Red Queen model from Pulp Alley, I have always gone with an orange with a red wash, this time I started with the same color as I used on the model on the left below, its a color called Yellow Ochre from Americana. I then used a red wash that was watered down and applied that. Once it set I used a Reaper Marigold Yellow 09007 as highlights, its more a yellow/orange color and looks awesome as a high lite for much more realistic Red head. 

Pulp Girl & Red Queen from Pulp Alley

Anther shot of these beautifully sculpted models.

I also got around to getting this Limited edition Empire of the Dead model painted up, which I named Professor Cox, a crazy nar do well bent on about bringing all kinds of calamities down on society. I have a tendency to name some of my characters after friends, this one is no different, He is named after my good friend Noel Cox, who I used to work with at Disneyland. Noel went on to work as an animator on the Simpsons and most recently is now working at Knotts Berry Farm in the living Calico players as the Deputy Mayor of Calico.  I shot a picture of the mini to Noel, and one day I will have him going in a game so he can bring his creation to life on the tabletop!

Professor Cox and Evil Doctor of Mayhem!

I also did up these two, the model on the left is Pulp Alley while the model on the right is a Pulp Figure, both fit the bill as Good Cop and Bad Ghestpo agent and will be used in many a games.

You do know I am holding a Tommy Gun right?

So there you have it, some daring Heroes, some lovely ladies and a few bad guys thrown into the mix, all and all a great turn out of characters for some pulp games.

TK

The Sea Duck

Well, 

This took longer then I thought, but I got the Sea Duck completed last night. This is a Lindberg 1/48th Grumman Goose kit which I will use for Pulp gaming. if your old enough you will recognize this plane from the Tales of the Golden Monkey series that used to be on TV back in the 1980's.

1/48th scale kit

This kit is a fairly simple kit and the detail is not that great, but as a gaming piece, its perfect and the price is very reasonable, I think I paid $15.00 including shipping.

Built in only about an hour, that's how simple of a kit it is.

As I was going to be using this as a gaming piece, I assembled the entire kit in about an hour and even glued in the windows as I would paint over them. The kit has no detail inside, so that was a major reason I would paint over the windows.

All built and ready for the paint. 

I sprayed the entire model in a nice looking gray from Tamyia (actual IJN grey). I then waited a week for it to dry and then masked off the areas to be painted black and shot that color on. I wanted to use all rattle cans for this project. Once I let that dry, I cam back in and hand painted the cowls red with thin coats of Reaper Red. I then painted up the engine and washed it with strong tone wash.

At this point I realized that I sis not do a great job of masking off the aircraft and some of the black bleed through, no worries I thought, I would just touch up and color match the areas. Well that did not work and now I had different colors. I contemplated re shooting the plane and masking off the areas (cowlings) in the grey, but after thinking about it, I decided to use Reaper Blitzkrieg Grey (from the CAV line of paints) to repaint the aircraft to more of a white color by hand. Now being a gamer, I am used to that, but was worried about it as I use thin coats of paint and when I started on it I thought I messed it up even more. So I went to bed and hoped that the plave got lost in the Bermuda triangle or something.  

Looks much better!

Well after sleeping on it, I went back to the plane and started another coat of paint, this time it went much better as the first coat was not covering it completely but the second coat was. This gave me hope and I pressed on. I touched up the black areas that I had made a mess on and finished the windows. Now I am happy to say its completed and doesn't look to bad (still not perfect, but as a game piece it works).

Nice clean lines

So now all I had to do was come up with a name, which I decided that it would be called The Sea Duck (from a animated TV show) and came up with a back story for the pilot, Jonathan Harrington, dashing explorer, daring treasure hunter and all around good guy!

This was supposed to be a quick project, but it lasted longer then I had planned, but its nice to call it done and now I can move onto other projects.

TK 

The Mummy's Revenge - A Fistful of Lead Gothic horror game!

So, last Halloween I ran a Halloween game using the Fistful of Lead Gothic Horror Rules which was a blast. (which I forgot to post here, will have to correct that). Well this year I have decided to run another game but basing the game after the Mummy movies. This would allow me to use most of my extensive Pulp collection for the game.

But first I wanted to finish up a few items for the game, I thought I had much more to work on, but it seems that I had already painted or assembled those. But what i did have was three market stalls from Sarissa Precision that I wanted to jazz up.

The Bizarre is open my friend 

 The stalls include two tables per each stall, but I knew I had to add some wares to the tables. The first vendor would be a container or jar merchant, these were just beads that I had from another Pulp project. All I did was use some green stuff to make the lids on a few of the jars/containers. I also added tissue paper with watered down white glue to the roofs to provide some shade to the stall.

The finest of quality jars for you my friend.

 The next stall I wanted was a cloth merchant because I wanted some color on the table. The bolts of material are just green stuff  again rolled or folded into shape.

Very nice material my friend, only the best here!

 The last stall would be a fruit stand, I built the boxes holding the fruit out of plastic card and then green stuff for all the fruit. I was surprised at how easy it was to do, I had been putting it off, but once I got going it was pretty easy.

The most delicious fruit for you my friend!

 I also wanted to add another group to the mix, these will either be for the mummy or against, not sure which. Most of the figure just had clubs, but I did add a few swords and machine guns to them from Bolt Action left overs. I think they came out great and were nice little conversions to do.

For or Against the Mummy

 Last batch were these three, I wanted a few more townsfolk to populate the town with, a dancer, bad guy and another fez dude. I can use them for lots of different types and need to get paint.

Dancer, Bouncer and Professor 

So there you have it, some of the upcoming characters and set pieces for my next game, now lets see what else I need to paint?

TK

Big Time Painting

So,

A few months ago, my friend Jeff up at my local game store had a few larger (54mm) scale model on his paint desk. I asked where did these come from and he said Andrea Miniatures, which is a company that does larger scale figures for display. Jeff showed me their website and I was totally blown away by what I found.

Now a little back story, when I was much younger, I used to go to my local shopping center/mall and visit a store called The Military Shop in Lakewood CA. I remember that they had tons of models on display and a ton of Historical miniatures on display (as well as a few nude miniature models too). I would spend hours looking at all the models and dreaming of being able to paint just like those.

So when I saw these Andrea Miniatures, I was transported back to my younger days of youth. So I told Jeff that I would order a model to try my hand at painting one of them. Jeff told me, that painting these models helped him immensely with his painting and that I should give it a go.

Well after looking through the online catalog, I settled on a very iconic figure, another from my youth, their 1930 Adventurer, which has a strange resemblance to a certain Doctor Jones from a certain set of movies. (Okay lets just admit it, its Indiana Jones!) 

Doctor Jones I presume?

So after plunking down just this side of $30.00, I awaited my figure. It arrived the following week and I took it home to inspect my new purchase. The figure is 54mm and was rather nice with very little flash on the figure. The only issue was his whip, it was a cast piece of metal and was nearly broken already, so I knew I would have to replace that.

All laid out for inspection.

As you see from the above picture, it would need some assembly but it all went together perfectly. The nice thing is they give you a little instruction booklet for assembly and painting if you have never worked with metal figures before. Only reason I mention this, is that a few of my none gamer friends wanted this same model, so the instruction booklet would be perfect for them.

I think there is something in my foot?

Red mark is mounting for original figure, pin hole I added.

I was not happy with the way the model mounted to the provided base, the red mark on the above picture was were one foot attached to the base. I added a pin to his other foot and drilled a hole to mount him there as well.

All mounted up

Size comparison, on left, 28mm Pulp Figure, on right Infinity 28mm figure.

You can see in the first above picture the model all mounted up on the base, minus his whip. I forgot to take pictures of how I made the whip, but basically it is two pieces of floral wire wrapped together and then bent to desired curves. In the second picture above you can see the size of the model next to a few 28mm models (the scale I usually work with). He is a much larger figure that's for sure.

Base color for the base

Base all finished up after a few hours of work.

I primed everything in a flat white and then decided to start working on the base, I wanted to start with something easy first! One thing I kept telling myself was to take it slow, I am a pretty fast painter, but I really wanted to take my time on this whole kit, the base alone took me well over two hours to do! Why you may ask, well you cant see it, but there are 6 different colors on the base and I use a couple of washes, I waited until each one was completely dried before starting the next color.

Hey I got some sun on my face!

Another size comparison

So once I was done with the base, I tackled the man himself. After priming white, I mounted him onto a piece of balsa wood to make it easier to handle while painting. I started on the face since that would be the real focal point of the model and that this was a very recognizable figure. I will admit, I painted the face about 5 times until I liked what I was doing. The first couple of times it looked like crap and I started over, but once I got a nice smooth base coat down, I started in with washes and lighter tones of flesh colors. The face really drove me crazy doing because I wanted to get it right. Also Jeff came over one night, and said, "You know, its not going to paint itself" and that comment spurred me onto getting the model finished.

Getting closer to being done

Are we ready yet?

 Once I got over the hurtle of the face, the rest of the model painted up rather easily. One thing that I really like about this model was the highlighting on his jacket, the detail really pop and for some reason I just dug painting it!

So after about two and a half months, here is the completed model!

I have to say, this was a real challenge for me and I think my painting has gotten much better, at least my brush control has. I am now looking forward to my next model from Andrea Miniatures and I am leaning towards a certain Hollywood Pirate form a certain set of movies, but we will see. I would highly recommend these figures for any level of painter and if you are not interested in painting, you can even order the models all assembled and painted up for you, so take a look at Andrea Miniatures.

That's a wrap!

TK