Iron Empire mascot - Jinx

Today is a short update featuring just Jinx.



 Jinx is one of the TGG Kickstarter Mascots.  An Egyptian themed cat with a lot of attitude.

Its larger than a house cat more like a Jaguar in scale though all the harness and jewelry give it a strangely jackal-esqe feel.

This was tough over a black primer and I think I'll do the display version with washes over white
Jinx is shown here with Mortaria for Scale.  Shes rockin' her Zombie Sniper Motif.  They'd make a great team!

Jinx is here with a WiP Sky Captain Drusillia.  Dru is going through washes and re-layers at the moment but should be ready to roll in a day or so.  The 1/4 Ayanami Rei is also making progress so if a get a good block of work in she might roll out as well.

Tabletop World Cottage

 Today is the first of a pair of cottages from Tabletop World.  I'd have normally painted them together but... its getting done as they are located in the big pile of boxes!

This residence is a single room but has a lot of windows including a fancy one in the roof line.

I've stuck with the warm fire lit windows but am still experimenting with the method.  This was a simpler application than the one I used on the Merchant Shop but seems to give a little less depth.

 As usual a fully detailed and accessible interior.  I like the peaked roofs which make it possible to have minis that are a bit taller, or monstrous, concealed within!

 The roof of this one is an earth brown reflecting its status as a common residence.  A combination of dry-brushing and washes helped add a little definition to areas of similar color.

 I located my weathering powders for this cottage using them on the earth colored base strip, mud splattered lower  stones, and adding some light green for mossy effects.  I'll likely go back and add similar weathering to the Merchant Shop. 

I experimented a bit with the GW technical rust and corrosion paints and am making slow progress with them.  I do like these for the bit of texture they add but its easy to over do it.

On the table later today are a couple more figures from Raging Heroes and the 1/4 scale bust of Ayanami Rei from Evangelion. 

Vera Krabbenhoft - Iron Empire Standard

 Vera Krabbenhoft is the faction Standard bearer for the Iron Empire of Raging Heroes "Toughest Girls in the Galaxy" Kickstarter. 

Here are the regular (Helmed) and alternate heads.  The alternate head still features a respirator mask which maintains the infection theme.  They'd also be a good Death Korps of Krieg proxy.   I'm hoping to get some more info on the TGG factions from RH I'm very interested in what their game project will look like.  Hopefully we'll get a bit more of that sort of thing from the art book, when it ships, or some kind of sneak preview about the future game.







This batch is table top quality intended for gaming use.  I also signed up for the Connoisseur package that renders all the girls in hand poured resin which I'll paint to a higher standard and base for display.
 

The eNV faction for our Serene Dawn RPG setting got a little more detailed with the addition of the very abstract ankh shown on these flags.  This symbol will be incorporated into the Corp logo as well as its use in this table top army. 

The flags at the moment just have the main faction logo on them.  As I build the force up I'll add unit designations to the flags and there is a lot of room remaining for battle honors.

I like the Grey armor and cream uniform colors.  The purple is a spot color and will be used mostly for special characters etc...  regular troopers won't have the cape, or the body suit that was featured on the sniper, so will have the purple limited to masks and trim items.

The background fluff is coming along and I'll start putting some of that up with the idea to create a Warzone: X style document and Codex: X equivalents for the unique factions for those who are interested in our games.  

Cheers!

Tabletop World Merchant Shop

 I unpacked the Merchant's Shop that I picked up just before the big move earlier this year.  It was already primed so I couldn't resist painting it up.

I went with the blue roof to underscore the building is commercial, or official, in nature as opposed to a regular residence.  I'm thinking that cottages and hovels will have an earth tone, or thatch/bleached shingle, roof while townhouses will tend towards terracotta or a red brown.  Its just a working idea at this point.

I also picked up the Merchant's goods package... which looks amazing so I'll have to revisit the shop photos once I paint those up!

 This was a good platform to practice some effects like lighted windows and corrosion.  The windows are meant to convey the idea of firelight or candlelight.... but I did the effect from both sides...oops!  I'll have to think about what sunlight would look like on translucent panes.

 Most of the stone was grey and dry-brushed up.  Corner and border stones got an extra brush up of light sand and the hard paving stones, window caps/sills, and the chimney cap were based light sand and washed with sepia.

 Wood was (Flames of War) German light brown camouflage washed with (Army Painter) Light Quickshade Ink.  Metals were based dark grey then brushed with (Fantasy Forest) Rustungs Farbe (a silvery metallic) and washed with sepia then edge highlighted sparingly with Rustungs Farbe.

 I love the fully detailed interiors which will be great for Mordheim or regular RPG use.

 The shop has two fully accessible levels. 

 Here you can see the difference in stone color between general wall stones and harder border stones.

 The fire lit windows were dry-brushed light sand then washed with (Secret Weapon) Yellow Snow then back-filled round the edges with (Vallejo) Scrofulous Brown... a really useful color that I think was discontinued some time ago.

 The interior detail extends to the inside of the roof.  I painted it but I'm not sure when it would ever be seen in any use of the building that I can envision... still... its cool so I painted it anyway!

Playing around with the GW technical paints for the green patina.  I'm still not really sold on this approach but will continue to experiment.

Mortaria Noctis

 For the first stab at painting a mini in five months I worked on the iconic sniper, and self described "Hit-Woman" , Mortaria Noctis.

A lot of bad habits I developed over the years painting GW figures came back to bite me on this project.  Techniques that work really well on very deeply inscribed detail are not as effective on the RH sculpts so I', going to have to get back up to speed on regular painting.  Fortunately I've a couple of iterations of this one so I'll be able to track my progress.

This version sports the alternate head but the next one will have the death mask. 

 The color scheme is was developed for the eNV Corp operatives from the Serene Dawn setting.  I'm going to use it with some modification for the Iron Empire troops who will be used primarily as a Mechanicum flavored Astra Militarum force that has been fighting both the other TGG factions (Kurganova and Jailbird) and has only recently rediscovered by the universe at large.  They have infected with a weaponized disease by Contagion (a Death Guard Based Warband and system wide nemesis for all the factions) and have responded with dark, forgotten, science and an unhealthy obsession with Mortuary cults.

Picking up the brush again

 I've finally unearthed enough stuff and set up a painting space!  I was kind of pushed into it by the arrival of  Raging Heroes Wave 1 of the TGG Kickstarter.  The friendly folks at Raging Heroes held my order for me while I moved... ( which naturally occurred at the very moment the first wave was released!) and sent them out to me once I got into my new digs.  They were certainly worth the wait!

I set to work on some Iron Empire Heroines, Mortaria Noctis and Vera Krabenhoft. The fist is an ultra cool hit woman/sniper and the second is the faction Standard Bearer.

I jumped on Mortaria first because I want to add her to the minis I'm building in the Serene Dawn game I've been tinkering on.  With two heads I get a couple of deadly eNV Zombie infiltrator/snipers to add to the ones I have from the first Reaper Bones KS!

 They clean up easily as is typical of the RH offerings.  They are much more petite and a little taller than GW.  Each of these came with an alternate head... a helmed neo Prussian with a mask and an un-helmeted version.

 Vera without a hat.   I had to pause and furiously scribble up some background so I could gel on some iconography (a highly stylized ankh for the faction symbol) and ended up creating a number system and a format for an Egyptian flavored script... fun fun!

 Vera from the rear.  this is a fun pose full of motion but could be modified easily to get some variation in pose.  The resin material is very nice and a has a little bit of flex to it so the minis are not very brittle in spite of the fine proportions.

I did the basic work a big batch of Trenchwork bases from Secret Weapon just to get a little paint on the brush and get me in the right frame of mind... I'm gonna need to get some more of these.  I like how waterlogged the wood looks here.  A little dust/dirt/mud and some scraggly vegetation will see them off.

... and then this happened!  Ayanami Rei in 1/4 scale from Evangelion.  I found this monster at the Mandarake in Akiba, Tokyo.  Om nom nom nom!  of course... I still haven't located my airbrush...grrr!

Back to box safari... be very very quiet....

Tabletop World Arrives!

 
 A few month back I finally gave in to temptation and ordered a village of 28mm buildings from Tabletop World in the Czech Republic.  They arrived yesterday and I could not contain my anticipation to unpack and oogle!

I was stunned!  I have a fair collection of terrain from various manufacturers and was expecting to have to do a lot of nasty, resin dust spewing, clean up... probably with power tools... before I could jump in and have some fun with the models.  Boy was I wrong!

 These things came pre cleaned up!  flash removed and filed and parts all pre-fitted and snugly so at that... wow...  These models were spendy, of course, but the value of being able to paint these straight out of the box is, for me, hard to over state.  I'll be getting the new releases from these guys as they come out and am sad to have missed out on some really cool stuff that has been discontinued.... sigh.

 Finally a couple of views of the assortment all together.  It'll make a great village for skirmish games or RPGs since the roofs all come off and the interiors are fully detailed!  I picked p the assorted merchant goods, gravestones, and some really excellent furniture to make these spring to life! 

I love it when a plan comes together...  I'm officially a fanboy of Tabletop World .

I'll be on the road a bit for the next few weeks so the painting frenzy might have to wait until I get back in town.... but it will have to be a very aggressive since I'm leaving the Land of the Rising Sun this spring and head back to the US for a few months.