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!

Some painted minis...

Managed to get some minis finished and photographed recently. First up is the citadel C28 giant from earlier in the blog and a citadel/asgard hillgiant.

Next up a couple of preslotta citadel goblin and orc types.

And finally an Asgard Nightmare. I painted this one to look like a ghostly steed rather than the ad&d version which is jet black with flaming mane and tail.

New recruits...

Managed to get hold of some more giants recently. Here are two more C28 giants along with a lovely old minifigs cyclops.
 

 The cyclops is a pretty small figure by todays standards similar in stature to some of the old citadel/asgard hillgiants. I think that as long as they hit really hard in a game they're height isn't an issue!

Next up I managed to get these two figure pretty cheaply in an ebay auction.  On the left is a Ral Partha frost giant and far right another C28 giant. ( Foundry viking added for scale!!).

Having 3 bodies and 3 heads gives me some options as to the arrangements of the giants. I intially though of putting the viking style head on the body with the scale mail tunic, then the eye patch head on the body holding the cannon ball in his left hand. ( This combination was the one used in the drawing from the first citadel compenduim). That would leave the chaos head to go with the head hunter body. Hmmm decisions!

Did a bit of conversion work on this fellow to give him two weapons. The axe I had in the bits box but the handle had been snipped of years earlier. I remade the handle and drilled a hole in the hand. Then it was a case of gluing in place and the sculpting a hand around it. Think he will look pretty mean when he's finished!

Thanks for looking!

Vintage figures primed...

Just some pics of a batch of vintage lead all prep'd and primed. We have a selection of giants from left to right: Minifigs Mythical Earth giant, Ral Partha frost giant and an old Citadel hill giant.

And here is the classic Ral Partha Jabberwock and a lovely old Asgard Nightmare.

C28 Giant...2

Here's the giant from the previous post all primed and ready for painting.

c28 Giant...

I won this fellow on ebay a while ago and he has been kicking around the workbench for a while now. When he arrived his nose was pretty damaged and flattened like he'd been dropped on his face more than once. I greenstuffed a new nose which lead to a pretty extensive facelift! Been tinkering with him for a while adding bits of putty here and there.

I didn't really like the weapon he came with so decided to make a basic wooden club for hi to bash things with. A plastic paintbrush seemed like a good size and shape so it was cut down to a decent club size.

It was pretty simple to then add a thin layer of greenstuff and add a bit of texture.

Phobos marine...

Here's a pic of the finished Phobos helmet marine.

Phobos helmet...

Here's the first cast of the helmet from the last post! Will call it the Phobos helmet!

Medic conversion...

Took a pic of this fellow today. The body was originally a medic which I didn't like all that much. Now for a while I'd wanted to put a different style of helmet on a power armour body thought I'd give it a go on this figure. Once I'd made the new helmet I decided not to glue it until I'd made a mould so I could cast it in resin. Will give me extras to play with and some for anyone else who may be interested!

Brother and Sister Reeves...

Probably my favorite trooper figure from the old marines is this Brother Reeves mini. Lucky I got 3 in a joblot! I've converted one into a female marine by doing a head swap with a female mini from ERM.  Will paint the parts separately and glue when finished.