Kickstarter live!

I've put together a little kickstarter campaign called Wings and Warts to raise funds for a new company called Toad King Castings. I'm offering the Giant Toads and some Stirges as rewards and have added some barrels and crates as add-ons.

The response to the kickstarter has been amazing! The funding goal was hit within 24 hours and has continued to rise. I'll be including some new original sculpts to the campaign over the next 6 days.

This little fellow was added as a free stretch goal reward for Toad pledges if we hit the £3000 mark!

Warts and Wings!

Fire toads finished...

Some pics of the completed Fire Toads! Now they're finished I'm already thinking of colour schemes and painting methods.

Firetoads

I've been previewing some Firetoads I'm working on over on Lead Adventure. These will form part of a small kickstarter launching soon to fund the start-up of my new minis company called Toad King Castings. Some 28mm vikings shown the size of these beasties!

Barrels and crates...

Here are some pics of barrels and crates I've been working on. Should be good for fantasy and historical settings. The masters were moulded and these are some of the resin castings which turned out nice and clean with no airbubbles. Will have these on the painting table soon.

Security bots!

Here's a pic of some robots I've been working on for a while now. Originally the plan was to have lots of body and head variants. I got as far as sculpting a fair few bodies but the project ended up completely stalling for a long while. Recently I took my two favorite bits and decided to make some castings from those and these are the results.

This bot could either be presented as moving on a ball wheel or floating with the ball providing the gravity repulsion. Shown next to old rocket launcher dude for scale.

A few more rebased minis!

I posted these on LAF a while back but forgot to pop them on here. On the left is Gronk from the old citadel Strontium Dog pack. Next to him is marine Dmitri "Double D" Dorokov. This is the mini with the Phobos helmet from an earlier post. Finally a bot conversion based on a reaper robot with a gzg comms bubble for a head!

Re-basing and new photography!

So last week I decided to re-base my figures on 3mm mdf bases. Gone are the low profile 1mm bases I had been using. I really liked them a lot but honestly they may have been too plain and they just didn't have the right look and feel for a project based around vintage minis.  Basing is a real pain and I'm always looking for a method which is quick and looks good. And yet honestly prepping these mdf bases isn't all that quick. Each base gets a couple of neodynium magnets embedded in them and then a coat of matt black enamel. All this even before the minis are attached. Then a mix of cat litter and sand is glued on. The actual painting of the base is quick enough though using the same grey mix as the previous bases.

Also today I've tried a new lighting set-up for photographing minis. It consists of a daylight lamp above the figures with two desk lamps on the left and right. Photographing figures has been a major source of frustration for me over the years so this may a big step forward! 

Squat heavy...

Some pics of a Squat heavy weapon I've been tinkering around with. The Squats were some of my favorite figures back in the Rogue Trader days. They just had so much damn character a with that "irregulars" vibe. They looked like mercenaries or adventurers and that really fired the imagination.

The original face on this particular figure had a great big smile! I hadn't intended to change the face so much originally just adding some putty to his beard but after playing around he ended up getting a total face lift resulting in a much sterner face.

I worked a bit to get the hands to fit neatly to the handle of the conversion beamer. Also worked the area of the weapon that met the shoulder for a neat fit. Cutting a small section from of a cocktail stick gave me a small disc so I could make a sight that lined up with his right eye. It all comes together nicely now and will be painted separately.

Some more Orks...

Some more Orks this time troopers from the first box set. Got a lot of these figures so naturally a wee bit of conversion work is in order, if only to add a bit of individuality to my duplicates. Left to Right we have Punky, Cool Shades and Brillcream all lined up and ready for a planetary skirmish!!

Ork conversions!

I haven't had an awful lot of spare time to play around with minis these past few months hence the lack of posts but I'm still tinkering away when I get the chance. After concentrating on some old fantasy minis for a while my interest has swung back to sci-fi minis. I've dug out some more of my Rogue Trader collection and been getting some more minis up to the primed stage.

As things stand I'm gonna be needing a lot more Orks. Regardless of what rules I'd be using they're always going to be low quality troops and as such would need to out number most other races. Here's a pic of a couple I've messed around with.

A lot of gamers will recognise the fellow on the right as Hhruk from the 1980's space Ork Raiders boxed set. That's his right arm attached to the cork! It's been converted so he will be holding the gun low instead of up in the air. It'll make things easier to paint them separately. He'll end up being one of the leaders of the Orks when they make it to the table.

Don't know a lot about the fellow on the left but he can be seen in a White Dwarf advert from the time. Can't make out he was given a name. I've tweaked him in a few places and placed a spike on his helmet.

Grenadier Ettin...

Popped this fellow off his old base in order to rebase him in my current style. Couldn't resist a wee bit of tinkering to get a bit more detail into the faces!