King's Minis

Friday, October 20, 2017

First day back on hobby

It is only my first day back on the hobby so I thought I would start slow. Just a bit of base prep tonight then basing and priming tomorrow. I am aiming to get back in the swing of things, and slowly work my way back to sculpting. Aquiring lamps tomorrow to that effect. Two outstanding commissions to do.

Most of these minis where just what was on sale at my local bricks and mortar. I nabbed me some bargains.

So here we have a couple of ranges of pirates, official DnD blink dogs, Spoderman villain clix, pulp cultists, Reaper anniversary minis and super rare Sandra Prangle from McDeath.

Oh and Paternoster Detective Agency, Clara Oswald the greatest assistant and the second worst Doctor Who thanks to Moffat. Fite me.

So spot any delicious new minis you like?

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Chessexy

I am no longer homeless! Hooray! No, wait... upgrade that to a huzzah!

Throw in a 'hey nonny no' for good measure. You've earned it.

So yes, I am now a denizen of bright bohemian Collingwood in sunny* Melbourne. It is very gay and very artisan breaddy and coffee snobby.

(*usally pissing down)

So to celebrate my total lack of space, I purchased two Chessex carry cases.

They good. They very good.

You can't buy a case without something to go in it, so some Artisan pirates looked at me funny from the bargain bin. I picked up two Reaper pirates for a budget warband.

Also those stone finished Renedra bases are bound for Funko Pops! That didn't ship with stands.

Hobby time returneth.

I feel like life is restarting. I have a new home, new phone, new job and PAXaus is very soon. See y'all there.

X

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Updatage

Well, I know it's been awhile, but great things are a'happenin'.

Yay.

First up, I am a keynote speaker at NZGC, so if you are in New Zealand come and say hi.

So I have returned to Melbourne, and am now the Art Director at Tantalus Media and it's sister company Straight Right. This means I can afford to get a home soon and my minis shipped back to me, ta da da dum, I am back to painting minis and stuff!

First purchase in a long while... I grabbed some Pulp Hooded Minions packs that where in the bargain bin- awesome figures- guess noone plays pulp around here. Oh well, their loss.

Hope you are all having a great time!

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Guardian (not Eldar- the Other Guardian)

Oh you know, just me in The Guardian...

https://amp.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jul/27/people-have-no-idea-how-big-a-deal-it-is-the-australians-pushing-the-gaming-world-forward

Sunday, July 16, 2017

13th Doctor

I just wanna say I totally regenerated into a woman before The Doctor made it cool.

Welcome Jodie, and safe travels! Can't wait for the miniatures!

Friday, July 7, 2017

Sandra

Labels: McDeath

I arrived back in Melbourne today to start my new job on monday, and as a wonderful omen this wee lassy was waiting for me at my friend's house.

This is Sandra Prangle, one of the McDeath set, which I am now only two figures from having it all its entirety.

I traded her for some artwork a while back, but have only just returned to claim her. :)

Can't wait to paint her.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Fenris Games stock Darkling

Fenris Games now stock my Darkling Minis- and you can buy individual minis from Geronimo as he breaks uo my boxed sets (which I can't do because I have no storage right now).

I will be back in business properly in the next two months, and will get the chance to expand my range then (having all my lovely greens back from storage and a home address!)

Anyhoo- pop over to Fenris to grab some Dwerg and Toad love!

Friday, June 23, 2017

Countdown begins

Something wonderful has happened and I am only one or, at most, two months away from getting my entire collection back!

Big announcement soon- and no doubt a flood of exciting posts here as I finally get to finish off some figures!

Thanks for all the support folks X

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Weta

I got to hang out with Gary Hunt and Johnny Fraser-Allen at WETA workshop today and shoot the breeze about sculpting miniatures. We are all mutual fans. Naw.

Frikking awesome guys, and their work is just awesome. :)

Got a quick tour of The Cave and got to stroke the full scale working Halo Warthog, chill with the green goblin suit, weild the District 9 prop gun and swing a Narnian centaur sword.

Then hang out for dinner with a bunch of old mates from my Animal Logic days.

Nerd gasm

Monday, June 5, 2017

Miramar Freebooterz

No! You're in New Zealand at The Roxy hanging out with The Miramar Freebooterz.

It's WETA's local gaming group, so naturally the minis are a bit good!

A dirty three way on a table. Pew pew- only one B wing made it out alive!

Lots of pictures of people I don't know looking down on us!

Tomorrow I am doing a talk at Game Developers of Wellington about creature design. Been a blast so far!

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Undead wave 2

Labels: mantic, Undead

I love Mantic stuff for the most part, and the Undead are great funx. This is all from a single sprue of Skellys. More characterful faces for sure; very Sam Raimi.

This batch is fronted by Isabella Von Carstein. A great sculpt. Sadly, she is finecast. I wouldn't have purchased it for myself, but I won't look this xmas vampire horse in the mouth whilst flogging it. Hey, can I get some more mixed metaphors over here please?

All together now!

It's gonna be interesting to see if the paint job ties them all together like The Dude's rug.

It's nice getting back into the hobby. I don't quite have all the tools and lighting I need to do it properly but I am muddling through.

Monday, May 29, 2017

Skeleton Hordes boxed set

Labels: Undead

If you had told me when I first sat down to assemble my Skeleton Hordes boxed set back in 1987 that it would be thirty years until I finished a squad, I would look at you like... "who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my house?".

Oh, and you are an asshole for time travelling back that far and not actually doing anything productive with it.

But, sadly, you would not be wrong. I did paint a few back then, following Phil Lewis's chestnut ink advice at the time. Bad Little me never finished the box off.

So yeah, I picked up a box of broken skeletons about five years ago of ebay and finally dragged them out today. I haven't been able to hobby in a while and my doctor suggested I do something to try and cheer myself up. Naturally, I did what all sane people would do and the set about sticking together walking cadavers from my childhood. Doctor's orders.

*sigh*

The kit was half assembled, well battered and a few poor lost souls where dunked in enamel paint. Apparently noone told the previous owner that black gloss isn't a great undercoat. The eight shown where straightforward, three more needed repairs and are currently undergoing some greenstuff loving.

The last batch of around 8 are, annnoyingly, missing skulls- no doubt adorning some bases and banners out there somewhere. I didn't want to waste all the remaining bodies, so I hacked off their neck stubs and drilled a socket in each ready to accept a wire. I am sure I can find enough interesting helmets in my kitbox over the coming months and maybe even sculpt some faceless wraith hoods for them.

To wrap up this warband, I made up the Warhammer Necromancer from my xmas haul box. I actually liked the model as-is, so the only change I made was to shave off the edges of the square base and mount him on a Rendra base. I was also thinking I may swap his head for something a little more feminine.

His little igor sidekick is a Gnoblar from the Ogres kit, with a head from a Flagellant. I just shaved off the neck stubs and used a ball of Greenstuff sandwhiched between some superglue to pose the head- then when dry filled in the remaining gaps with putty.

I will top off the skellys with some Marauder Minis shields I set aside for them.

I am going to prime these white for a change. My friend Steven has donated me a big box of cote d'arms paints so I can return to painting. All mine are in storage either in Melbourne or Sydney. Which is fucking annoying. I keep getting stranded away from my stuff. I am gonna be leaving limbs behind at this rate.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Skulldred Errata so far

Labels: Skulldred

Here are some errata for the GX Skulldred:

Wildsides
So I just noticed that the entire wildside page is missing entirely from this build.

It works like this- on a 'wild' roll, your model performs its wildside action (bottom left of card).

A hero reads a wild as 2 pips. A leader as 3 pips. Rolling a wild is a good thing for them.

Any model within near range of a hero or leader is inspired and instead read their wild as 2 or 3 pips respectively.

A model within far range of a leader who can draw line of sight to them also gets 2 pips on a wild as they are under command of that leader. Downed Leaders and Heroes do not inspire or command, funnily enough.

Sample wildsides provided in demo are;

Lock up - model loses activation. If engaged in combat, disengage- if you cannot do so, roll 1 critical hit die.

Vanish- model dissapears back to the dark realm it came from, cackling as it goes.

Blind Fury- make 1 move action towards nearest model and attack it- friend or foe. If two or more models are equal distance, Roll die to determine which player gets to decide which is chosen- on a hit- owning player, on a miss, opponent.

The full rules have dozens of wildside options, each giving you more points the more terrible! Advanced rules include terror- which blocks inspiration and command, standard bearers and musicians which chain command from a leader to distant models and spells which impose wildsides on heroes and leaders.

RELOADING

If a weapon is marked as 'reload', place a reload counter next to the model or on its profile card.

A reload action takes 1 pip.

Some weapons require 2 pips worth of reloads- they get two reload counters on their card.

JAM

When any ranged weapon rolls zero hit dice, it has jammed or it requires some attention before it can fire again. Place a reload counter on it.

Have fun X}

Skulldred GX Aus demo version released!

Its buggy, with typos and yeah... I don't care because it is 3am and I jump on a bus in a few hours to get to Sydney. Here... take it, print it, play it, have fun and don't whinge about the crappiness until I get a chance to fix it. Yes, the forces are not balanced- I didn't have time to set up the scenery cut outs and did I mention I am exhausted? bkwgfequwegfuwegfouwqegfuwgqefwannasleeeeep

Proper, proof read version coming after GX. Promise X

http://www.darklinggames.com/eavyledd/skulldredGXdemoWeb.pdf

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

More SKulldred GX Edition

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Kings Minis Patreon Rewards in works.

Hey you. You look nice today. Done something different with that drooling Nurgle infection?

Anyhoo... I shall just leave this here...

Sample tutorial for my Patreons

I have half a dozen articles done just needing to be layed out. Also up for grabs is my original RPG system from when I was a teen as a fun little extra reward.

Okay, gotta sleep. Stay frosty!

Saturday, April 8, 2017

King gets a Kingpin

Labels: Bones, Heroclix, supers

Don't ya just love ordering a bunch of minis online, then losing your job the next day? Yep.

Oh well. I am getting used to bad things happening. It's really toughened me up. I am like a honeybadger. A big, dykey honeybadger. In a ninja gi. Probably with an eighties film gang member headband. I am now so tough, I could be a backing dancer in Michael Jackson's Bad. Scary.

The good news is that now I have time for Darkling Games and my Kingsminis video channel. I am back at The Arcade and things are looking great. One day a week is full time on Darkling minis orders, sculpts and kickstarters, one day is dedicated to Kings minis TV and it's Patreon rewards- including Skulldred and Stardred betas. The rest of the week will be focused on video games asset creation and commissions. I officially open for business next monday.

Sooo aaanyway...

Heroclix. Got some. Mainly for my inner ten year old who was so dissapointed by Iron Fist I needed to give her a decent Marvel fix.

First things first, off with those huge pointless bases. Shazam!

A butter knife is a great way to pop these off. A katana, not so much. Good god they hold katanas badly in Iron Fist. *sigh*

As you can viddy, my droogs- Kingpin got himself some security. Well, they are actually gonna be backup for the two IMEF minis from PAXAus. They will probably spend most of their table time blasting the brains out of walking dead and project Z zombies. I have to convert them, I hate fielding identical minis.

Heroclix have some pretty cool sculpts, but as I am not a huge comic nerd I tend to only know the characters from my teen years- and that means Secret Wars I era. Most clix are... mmmmm less than ideal for repainting. The clix game itself holds no interest for me either, but the challenge of making a prepaint look good? Well, that I can get behind. I have buckets of DnD, Horrorclix and Starwars prepaints in my lock up, so you will no doubt see me tackle them at some point.

I think I am gonna recast this JJ in the role of a cthulu character. He looks particularly at home with these new Wizkids' Blink Dogs. $7 for two blink dogs? Hell yeah.

Yes, I buy all the dog miniatures. All of them. Frikkin' Wyrd know this. Next time I have M£N€¥$, I have to catch up on my Malifaux undead dog collection. Giant undead dog with a gut full of rats? Yes please. So yes.

I don't know what's wrong with me either.

Doc Ock is my favourite. A touchy feely Roy Orbison in pajamas? Sold!

Venom? Looks like he belongs at a KISS concert. Or roadkill. I dunno. I will figure out what to do with him later.

Look, I will be honest with ya... I got the set for Ock, JJ and Kingpin. The Spidey looks like he is soooo bored, and it is rubbing off on... er... Gobbey... Greenie? Whatever. When I think Spiderman, I think dynamic mid swing or crouching. This one looks like he is handing a bus ticket to an inspector.

I wonder who will get the Marvel license after Knight? Kinda hoping Mantic after their Walking Dead triumph. I would snap up some of their figures but... well, snap is the optimal word for their products (yes I am still pissed about my Harley mini snapping at the stupidly thin ankles) and I can't justify $25 for one Racoon when I can get a box of 25 zombies for $50.

Welp, gonna love painting these up. Just need my paints back from my former work.

Monday, April 3, 2017

He'll be back

Labels: 40k

Ged doo dah choappah! Remember that big assed bag of imperial guard Cadians I got from a bargain bin a while back?

Welp, did a quick test peice painting directly over the original paint job.

I started off with an overbrush of Cryx Base to flatten out the original glossy finish. A wash of army painter dark, then I dusted up through the dirt colours of my base. I forget their names. Dirty McDirt and Soily McSoil, with a Tyrant Skull finish.

The skin was done using a neat trick I have been using lately- by mixing the shading wash into the base paint colour coat, it both flows more easily and ties tighter to the shade. In this case Reikland Flesh mixed in with a VMC flesh that shall remain anonymous for... uh... reasons. Look, I haven't slept much lately.

I am tempted to fix the arms seams by building over those gloriously ridonkulous deltoids with a little green stuff- however as my sculpty kit is packed away, that will have to wait.

Overall, he was fast and fun to paint. I have a small squad picked from the bag that I will do for now so I can use them to play Stardred with. The rest will have a lovely bath in dettol to easy away their pains. They may become parts for freakish cultists. Because that's how I roll.

My Cryx army arrived today. Not a bad paint job on them at all- however they are destined for tutorial video fodder- so they too shall know the delicious kiss of dettol.

Okay- gonna go bang gorgeous chicks in a satanic blood orgy of wanton destruction the likes of which makes angels tremble. Kidding. It's cup of tea and bed for me. X

Saturday, April 1, 2017

Painting handles

I discovered there is a Bunnings Hardware superstore next to a Petbarn superstore next to a Craft Superstore. I am in this little nirvana now. I am a happy little warcrafter.

Seriously, if you don't make use of these stores in your mini adventures you are a fool. I pity you. Hell, Mr. T probably pities you.

An example of the wonders to be found within these treasure troves would be my new painting handles. Look, behold... gander even.

It's a lightweight, flat bottomed, flat topped ball just the right size for a human or even a wargamer's hand.

I have cunningly clad this bad boy in bluetac to make with the 'gripping of the miniature'.

This is especially handy now I switched to minimal bases. Slippery little suckers.

Another handy thing you can get are these precut balsa wood blocks, which are ideal for sculpting miniatures on. You can stick the foot wires into them easier than cork, and they rest comfortably in your palm, so your fingers don't get tired quickly. My advice is to wrap them in masking tape to stop them getting your hands and hobby environment dusty. I cover the tops in a fine layer of milliput or apoxie, which I sand to get a smooth, even surface. This makes sculpting the feet flush much easier, and you can sculpt little details like faces and shields on them before moving them to the main figure.

I will be doing a video on these tricks and a PDF for my patreon supporters shortly.

Got any craft store tips? Comment below! X

New Oldhammer minis

So... I was looking for modern sculpts of oldhammer minis and it's actually a lot harder than it looks. I can find kickstarters but no online shops.

Pantheon of Chaos seems to have vanished, there where some great space orka I can't find and star civilians. Zoats too... but where?

Are there a stack of oldhammer moulds out there not being sold? Can I do something to change that?

Comments below. ;)