Warzone - resurrection slowed down

I actually painted these three miniatures a few months ago but haven't really got round to taking pictures and writing about them. I guess a got a bit discouraged after the end of Kickstarter. It seems to me that Prodos Games used the KS campaign to properly launch their product and use the backers as beta testers of their unpolished and not-final version of the product. The new miniatures released by Prodos are nicely packed in colorful boxes with great artwork. Also, the quality has improved significantly. What's more, many miniatures now have either new versions or are an improved product compared to initial KS releases. Anyway, for what's it worth, here are the minis I painted.

Alakhai the Cunning. My least favorite of the whole KS bunch I got. It's one of the most famos Dark Legion characters and the original artwork by Paul Bonner is amazing. The miniature is not that well cast. The proportions are OK and the level of detail, while not impressive, is satisfying. Still, there are some things that I don't really care for. First of all, the cloak - it just looks bad, as if he had a hump or the wind was blowing from all directions at the same time.

Razide is much better. The miniature has great proportions (for an evil mutant - the oversized arms fit perfectly here) and it just looks mean. As always, my camera lies when it comes to red color. Even a bit of red causes trouble and when a miniature is mostly red, it completely shifts out of focus. I haven't found a solution yet and have pretty much given up on it.

Golgotha is another of well known characters from the Mutant Chronicles universe. The miniature I got was cast from a different type of resin. It was very light grey in color and much more flexible that the other minis. That's one of the reasons working on those thin, elastic limbs was so challenging. Overall, I like the miniature but her face is problematic. It's lack of expression and lack of detail is really disappointing.

And that's pretty much it for WZ from me right now. I will eventually get back to working on these miniatures (especially the Undead Legionnaires which I really like) but for now I'll be focusing mainly on Malifaux.

Night Shift

"Night Shift" was Stephen King's first collection of short stories and as such it suffers from noticeable lack of skill and polish. Most of the stories here are way too ridiculous to be treated seriously. The actually read like class B horror movies. How can you seriously treat stories about :
- a murderous industrial laundry press ("The Mangler"),
- a colony of mutated rats living in the basement of old textile mill ("Graveyard Shift"),
- an astronaut who suffers from a strange virus he was exposed to during a space mission. As a result, numerous tiny eyes start appearing on his hands ("I am the Doorway"),
- a man who suffers from a fungus-like mutation ("Grey Matter"),
- evil cars taking over! ("Trucks"),
- a man threatened by an army of... toy soldiers ("Battleground"),
- a terrifying experience connected with mowing the lawn ("The Lawnmower Man").

To me these show that King was either still searching for his place and establishing his style or he was already good enough to take horror fiction with a pinch of salt. These stories are actually funny rather than scary. There are also other, better ones in the collection. Some are loosely connected with King's other novels, such as "One for the Road" and "Jerusalem's Lot" (references to "Salem's Lot"), or "Night Surf" that takes place around the time of events described in "The Stand".
"The Ledge" is a Hitchock-like narrated story about a man making a very risky bet with a mobster. The 'stakes are as high as it gets (money and gangster's wife or death) and the trial begins...
"Sometimes They Come Back" shows how traumatic past can unexpectedly catch up with you. The protagonist is a teacher (something pretty common for King) and has problems with a very bad-mannered student who very much reminds him of a hooligan who killed his brother many yeas ago...
"Children of the Corn" is one of King's most recognizable titles - I even remember seeing references to it in Family Guy. While it also lacks certain polish and has the class-b-horror feel to it, it is still one of the most memorable from the collection. It has this oppressive, dark atmosphere and takes place in well defined American rural setting.
"Quitters, Inc." is a story that I can recommend to anyone trying to give up smoking. It tells a story of a company that specializes in successfully helping people give up smoking. Their methods are quite unusual but the treatment is almost always successful
"The Woman in the Room" was probably the most powerful one from the whole collection. The protagonist is a man who struggles with the idea of euthanizing his terminally ill mother and helping her escape from the pain she suffers every day. His thoughts and actions are morally ambiguous and it's really hard to judge his deeds.

Just After Sunset

I had mixed feelings while reading this collection of stories as some really good ones were combined with a few rather mediocre stories. 

The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates was probably my favorite. It explored an interesting idea of the dead communicating with living. In this one, a deceased husband calls his wife and starts a conversation.What makes it quite powerful is the fact that he's not emotional and doesn't seem to understand what happened to him and where he is. I think it's a pretty neat way of presenting what is commonly referred to as limbo. Willa, another story in this collection, also deals with the subject of afterlife. Here the main focus is on he protagonists understanding that they're dead and the implications of their status. I really liked how King shows their attempts to communicate the fact that they're no longer alive to other ghosts and are ignored and rejected.

A Very Tight Place shows a man's desperate battle for survival in extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable circumstances. As usual, King depicts all the emotions accompanying extreme situations very well. However, other than these descriptions, the story is completely unremarkable.

The Things They Left Behind is a story in which King seems to be coming to terms with the tragedy of 9/11. It explores the idea of survivor's guilt and deals with the subject in a rather elegant, unobtrusive way.

Stationary Bike shows a man's gradual immersion in insanity as his obsession with losing weight seems to take over his entire life. He has trouble distinguishing figments of his imagination from reality and even begins openly questioning them, trying to convince them (or himself?) that they don't actually exist.

The other stories weren't really memorable. N. is another of King's attempts to create a Lovecraft-like metaphor of madness, Ayana and Mute are stories that are both very short and do not have interesting plots and show and The Cat From Hell is just too grotesque to be treated seriously.

Now I need to catch up with notes on other books that I've read in recent weeks (as well as some Warzone miniatures that I've painted...).

Back to the Brush!

I haven't been posting pics of new works as I've been quite busy recently. Also, there's the Burnt Offerings painting competition so I can't really show what I've prepared for that before the voting ends. Anyway, here's a Wyrd miniature I've painted recently - the new Flesh Construct.

Painting it took me much longer than I had expected. The dynamic pose of the victim makes it much harder to judge where highlights and shades should be placed. Also, working on larger skin areas is never easy, especially while working on rotten zombie skin.

I used a 40mm Wyrd Morgue base insert. I think it suits this type of miniature perfectly. A Frenkenstein-like monstrosity that has turned on its creator. A Morgue seemed like a perfect scenery for this situation.

New crew artwork and a Wyrd painting contest

Justin has recently shown this artwork on the Wyrd forums together with a short introductory poem.

Jacky Jacky Jack Daw,

Hanging on the tree.

I asked him for his secrets

But he would not speak to me.

I've written before about how much the quality of Wyrd's model has improved since they switched to plastic but these look like the most sophisticated designs so far. Gruesome, true but the design is impressive nonetheless.

There's also a new painting contest, finally one run by Wyrd on their website. You can find the details on their Summer Painting Contest here.
And last but not least, new issue of Wyrd Chronicles is now available for download #12.

Wild Hunt

What I've been up to

Long time no post... I guess nobody who visits Independent Painters wants to read this kind of stuff so I'll jump right in to the content.
I've been recently working on another Dreamer crew with some extra minions, some of which I haven't painted before. Here's the core of the crew with some close-ups of the master(s).
Chompy's skin was a big challenge. U used several highlights to bring it up to pale ghoul-like tone and then followed with glazes of brown, green and black. As a result it doesn't have a homogeneous look, which is something that I'd been aiming for. Red loincloth adds a much needed distraction by adding an element of contrast. I've also added the blood effect on his claws and around them. I did that after varnishing to make sure that i get a glossy effect and the blood looks fresh.

The Dreamer needs his totems to act so here they are - three little Daydreams. I really like these minis, they have this slightly comical 'little evil' look to them. I chose to use more vibrant colors on them as I thought this would go well with the funny sculpts. And yeah, the blue one is definitely my favorite.

Next up are the evil twins - Lelu and Lilitu. As always, I struggled with taking pictures of red colors. For some reason my camera gets the red wrong, especially when it's highlighted to slightly orangish tones. I loses focus and the balance of red is wrong. I haven't yet found a solution to this problem so you just have to take my word that it really does look good in reality.

Alps, the mischievous little imps are a lot of fun to work with. Their exaggerated features mixed with short legs and long arms make them look like some kind of small mutants. Their ragged clothing adds to the feel. The pics turned out a bit too dark so the highlights are really not that well shown here.

The same goes for Wicked Dolls - the pictures are way too dark for my liking but it's already getting grey outside so I'm not going to have better lighting for pictures today. These creatures may look 

inconspicuous so I've added some gore effect to their claws to make them look a bit more menacing.

These two were a lot of fun to work with. Insidious Madness is just... well, I don't know where to begin. It's an out-of-control miniature and it's really hard to say what it actually presents. Some kind of magical-biological mutation with arms, teeth and eyes. And that's about it.

Widow Weaver is an interesting character. When you look at her from the back she looks like a regular elegant lady. However, when she turns around you can see that her face is quite disturbing. Her grotesquely long arms are also pretty nasty. She feeds on children's nightmares and turns them into her creations. Such as Teddy...

Speaking of Teddy, I finally had a chance to paint a plastic Wyrd miniature from wave 2. When I first saw the digital render of this miniature I wasn't impressed. It seemed somehow flat, with hardly any noticeable details and an overall lack of texture on the fur part. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the miniature. It's really well detailed and the fur texture is as good as it gets. The only potential problem with the model is that the main body is made of two halves and you need to work over that with GS to recreate the fur texture along the line which marks the area where the halves are glued. It's something that people new to the hobby might find tricky. It's not a big deal but it can look pretty bad after painting as there'll be a dark line along the whole body of the model.

I used Wyrd Orphanage base inserts for most of the minis from this batch. They are absolutely fntastic and have very nice details like ghosts trying to come through a carpet (as seen on Dreamer's and Lilitu's bases), weird tears in the wooden floor (the texture of wood is exceptionally well cast) or little bits like toys lying around. I also painted a tic-tac-toe pattern on Teddy's base, with three winning Os crossed out with blood. A bit creepy I know but I thought it would go well with the haunter orphanage theme.

The only exceptions are Wicked Dolls as they have resin casts from Micro Art Studio. I also couldn't really fit the Widow on a 40mm Orphanage base insert. The bear pelt and the chimney pieces do look great but with a large model like her it's just impossible to fit everything there. I ended up using another base insert and painting it with the same color scheme as the others, only adding some bluish effect where the sand is supposed to be. Here's the whole lot shot from above. 

And one more thing - another Teddy that I painted along with the first one. This one features a Bayou-themed base (if you look closely you'll notice a crocodile there!). The Bayou base inserts have a stunning amount of detail. I didn't really know what to begin with at first.
Painting his fur isn't as easy as it may seem. Plan drybrush won't do the trick here as the fur is way too thick and covers almost the whole body. I worked with glazes and washes to shade the recesses before moving on to brighter parts. Took a while but I'm pretty happy with the effect.