Imitation Terminators!

So here's a finished test model of my first terminator.

Confession time: these are actually knock-off products from aliexpress.com, where you can apparently buy replicas of almost anything. A friend told me about the website so I ordered a squad out of curiosity... and turns out the imitation is as close to the real thing as makes no difference.

I realise at this point that I'm probably the last hobbyist on the planet to have discovered that you can buy cheaper knockoffs, but there you go.

The terminator pieces arrived after about 3 weeks. Not only where there no components missing, but they also sent me the close combat AND ranged weapon sets even though I only ordered the CC one.

Quality of the models were top notch; there were no defects, detail was great, plastic didn't melt or spontaneously combust when I applied paint.

So if you're unwilling to pay full GW prices I have to recommend you try aliexpress. I don't think I could have known that these weren't the real thing if they hadn't arrived out of the official packaging.

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New blog design! Khador painting! Madness reigns!

Welcome to the shiny new Ministry of Miniatures. You've probably noticed that the blog's undergone a bit of a revamp. I was getting really, really sick of the stock-standard Blogger templates and found them very limited and a bit dated, even with a bunch of changes applied. So I ended up looking at 3rd party designs and settled on this one, originally made by MyThemeShop for Wordpress and converted for Blogger by BloggerTheme9.

There was some fiddling around to get everything the way I wanted, which was an entertaining experience with no CSS experience whatsoever. But I got there! Hurrah!

(Also I finally got around to getting a custom domain name, smurfsinspace will now be redirecting to ministryofminiatures. You don't have to change your bookmarks.)

During the meanwhilst! 

Khador is still happening! Namely the Butcher, with his impressively large axe and penchant for running screaming into large groups of hapless victims. Here's some progress photos:

So shiny! So green! 

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GO-wait. Wrong game.

As always my trusty wet palette made the blending a lot easier. I used Vallejo model colours for the green, mixing together gradiants between the light and dark green. To help the paint blend together I'd also dip the brush into the water immediately after painting and carefully feather each tone step into each other. 

Blatant product placement. This blog is selling out, man.

That's all for now! 

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Gallery Update

Just a quick note that I've updated the official lightbox piccies for my force commander, chaplain and command squad.

CHECK THEM OUT HERE YO.

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Logging Off

In interwebs hobby news that you're probably all aware of by now, Ron from FTW had a tree fall on his studio. 

I googled angry tree images. Yeah, I don't know either.

His blawg's all about the GW stuff but his painting and modelling articles are useful whatever your particular system/collection happens to be.

If you enjoy his blog why not leave a kind word? Because nothing mitigates a huge log smashing your painting room to bits like kind words on the internet.

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Cha Cha Cha Chaaaaanges! Also: Warjacks.

As you may have noticed from my deliberately crude banner change (don't worry, it'll bug me after a few days and I'll do a proper redesign) this blog is undergoing some changes! Like for starters I'm posting an update OH SNAP SEE WHAT I DID THERE.

The long, dark tea time of my painting hobby is over as I have found new enthusiasm dear readers, and all because Vomkrieg basically got onto his hands and knees and with tears coursing down through his magnificently trimmed beard, begged me to take up Warmachine with him.*

And so here we are! Have some pictures.

This is Sorscha. Sorscha carries a huge hammer, wears a cool hat and is a hard bitten fantasy-Russian mage who can control giant steam powered death robots with her mind. Awesome huh? She also wears heels which is a bit dumb, but that's male game designers for you, sadly. 

This is the leader of my Manowar squad. They're huge hard-asses who walk around in steam powered armour, which can sometimes overheat and cook them alive. Of course they're too tough to worry about such trivial things! Swig back some more potato juice and tromp off through the snow to glory!

This is the Destroyer, one of my two heavy warjacks. I LOVE the redesigns of these models, which have a surprising amount of poseability. For this dude I wanted to give the impression of shuffling along, pausing to aim his canon to unleash ranged hell upon the enemy. To contrast with....

 ...this badass, the close combat Juggernaut. Arms outstretched in the classic 'come get some pain, you soon to be flattened bags of cat droppings', which sounds way cooler in Khadoran.

Aaaaand that's some of my starting force. Stay tuned for more Warmachine updates! There'll be painting! Custom transfers! Bad Russian accents! Death in the snow! For the Motherland!

PS: check out Gravitas' blog here. He got bored of waiting for me to get writing again and made his own place. It's so beautiful when they fly the nest.

*This may be a lie. More truthfully he snuck into my house in the witching hour each night and whispered things about steam powered death robots while hiding under my bed, his subliminal message slowly making its way into my waking thoughts. As one does.

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Back Later, But First...

Baggies: also for modelling stuff.

Well I've been a bit slack what with some foot related setbacks and being distracted by other projects and not being bothered to blog-ness.

BUT SEE AN UPDATE.

As you can see to the left, quite a while ago I received some cool bits and pieces from the good folk at Armourcast. They specialise in neat little extra bits for your super space soldier* models, such as cinematic gun flashes, transfers and even missile launched hamsters.

"AND YOU WILL KNOW MY NAME IS THE LORD..."

Just look at that detail. Beautiful stuff, like a page from an old bible or something which is exactly the look one wants in an army of gothic religious nutters in powered armour. 

It's a recipe for space muffins.

Three different kinds of space muffins.

The transfer set also came with a whole lot of thin strips of text which are perfect for using on purity seals. I really, really suck at painting thin lines of text for those and had resigned myself to a bunch of okay looking blank seals. But no longer! 

The transfers themselves are great detail-wise. My main note is that they're a bit thicker than the GW ones and so require some extra care with the micro-sol. I found that after a few extra goes with the stuff they stuck down pretty well, but it does take more of the solvent than usual to get them sitting nice and flat. 

"Red ball, corner pocket..."

 Also I got three sets of missile launcher add-ons, which include the launching rocket (test fitted above) and a plume of smoke that comes out the back of the launcher. Like the muzzle flashes (below), they'll require some pinning to secure in place.

KKK prototype hats weren't quite there. 

Pretty.

Above you can see what the muzzle flashes and rocket launch effects look like painted. Courtesy of some dude on the internet. Thanks, some dude!

"AND THE BEAST SHALL HAVE TWO HEADS..."

Also: my christmas pressie from the friendgirl, which was unwrapped today since it's too heavy to take on the plane with us tomorrow. Awesome new desk lamp! I call it... THE HYDRA. Sure it only has two heads, but still. HYDRA. 

"WAAAAUGHoooh I fancy a cuppa"

Coming in the new year... ORKS! Well I had to have SOMETHING to pose against my Ultramarines with, plus I seriously needed a break from painting all that blue. So what better contrast than a bunch of lovely murderous greenskins. Plus I think they're kinda cute like boxer dogs. I especially love the deffkopter pilots in their little hats and goggles. Adorable! 

Don't worry, I'll still be doing Ultramarines too.

So that's a wrap this year from me. It's been a great few months and I'll be sure to take some photos of my stuff over the holiday period to inundate you all with next year. Have a great holiday if you get one and be sure to complain loudly if you don't. See you all again in X weeks. :-) 

* Fits perfectly onto your space mar...moset! 

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Week Off

Image blatantly stol I mean borrowed from GW! 

Howdy peeps. So the last week has been pretty rough due to coming off the pain medication that I've been on for the last three months, and I'm still a bit dizzy and tend to fall over and walk into trees a lot. So I'm taking a week off from this space marine blogging lark and will be back when I feel able to pick up a paint brush without my toes dropping off.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with the soothing sounds of the Codex Approved Battle Hymn No. 34: "Die Choking On Your Own Blood, Alien Filth". *

*You'll  have to imagine it. 

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Rocky Road

Gravitas pointed out that the rocks I was using for basing needed to be painted up, and after an experiment I totally agree. So I've updated the tutorial post to reflect the additional steps and put some more pics in.

This afternoon was thus spent painting rocks to look like rocks so that my rocks could be rocks.

Rock on.

I'm also going to experiment with a bit of brown dry brushing around the base of the rocks to tie them in with the ground a bit more. CAN THIS GET ANY MORE EXCITING? I think not!

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