Rebel Insurgent Conversions

Wow it's been a busy week for selling miniatures! Thanks to all who made a purchase in the last 5 days:Techno Communion have far outweighed the Desert Insurgents in popularity.

I managed to find some painting time today and finished off (well 95% finished) the paint jobs on the Peacekeeper conversions.

This could be as simple as a head swap within the Desert Insurgent Mold 1 set but I sculpted a few small capes for dramatic effect as well.

So “in universe” these guys are either Imperial Peacekeepers who have defected and joined the rebellion, or they're insurgents who happened upon a Techno Communion cache of armour destined for the Imperials, and commandeered the armour for their own use.

Next up on the conversion front will be some Techno Communion miniatures. Then all going plan I can get stuck into sculpting again, I think reinforcements for the Fallen Dwarves are in dire need or some attention...

Techno Communion casts have arrived!

Emails have gone out to all the folks waiting on their sets and I have about 18 left over, anyone who fancies a set ping me an email: sales@miniaturesofthenorth.com

These are quite popular miniatures so they might not last long.

I'd previously reported that the thumb on the Synaxarion (Machine Speaker) had been broken off and all the subsequent casts lacked a thumb. Turns out, upon receipt of the latest batch of casts, it technically hadn't.. all casts actually do have a thumb!

This was discovered when the latest batch of casts went through quality control, one had a green epoxy resin thumb lodged into a metal hand – the thumb had broken off an was stuck in the mold cavity. It took a good 35+ spins of the mold to get it out! Sigh...

Oh also, here's a peak at one of my rebel peace keepers: a simple head swap within the Desert Insurgent set. Followed by Desert Insurgents with some Techno Communion hooded heads... infiltrator scouts.

Desert Insurgents - Personal Conversions and new WIP sculpts

I'm about to go into pimp mode.

No not street vice crime, I mean showing off some of my miniatures with cool conversions and alternate colour schemes.

I've had a nice steady stream of informal sales but that's dried up over the last few weeks, just as the end is in sight for the Desert Insurgent Mold 1! Yep, it's close to retirement. I have roughly 35 sets to hand and will order in my final lot of them pretty soon.

Ironic that at the end I now start talking about advertising and showcasing... oh well.

Here's a squad of Peacekeeper defectors: they've read the Rebellion Protocols and sided with the rebels! They look cool right? They'll get white battered armour to tie them up with the Insurgents. Next up, traitor Insurgents (wrap your head around that). A dastardly tribe bribed by the ruling elite of the super city state... kind of like a CIA funded terrorist unit.. among the “terrorists”.

Here's a few WIP sculpts:

Desert Insurgents for sale

sales@miniaturesofthenorth.com if you are interested in purchasing a set or two. Once I clear the existing stock I'll be able to fund the continuation of the range with new molds!

£15 for 1 full set

£40 for 3 full sets

£60 for 5 full sets

Product info and shots of the parts: http://miniaturesofthenorth.com/#/desert-insurgent-mold-1/4579905428

Thanks folks!

Techno Communion – Paint Jobs

Lost my painting mojo half way through this lot and struggled to the finish line. Gah. The general colour scheme is there but I'll maybe take another pass at these guys in the near future.

I had intended to post these pics in conjunction with having a full quota of them to make available for sale, but alas this second run has all but disappeared so I await another shipment..

In a cool twist of fate I realised earlier that if you take this Techno Communion Mold 1 (you get extra heads) and mix it with the Desert Insurgent Mold 1 you can make a cool little skirmish force. Use the hooded heads for the Techno Communion armoured bodies, and the bare cyborg heads for the Desert Insurgents to make light scouts.

I'll need to schedule in time for that kit-bash...

You like terrain? I like terrain!

Here's the first test for my Rebellion Protocol showcase terrain, there will be 4 boards in total initially.

All I've done is the basic colour blocking, I still have tons to do. Next up is the detail (modelling and painting) then my favourite part: weathering! It might be a while before I get this all finished, I prefer quality over quantity, and to get quality means you can't shirk patience.

For anyone struggling to find suitable boards like this that wont warp, are precise and cheap... I use cake presentation trays. This one is about 45cm square and cost me less than £5. All my buildings are mounted on smaller sized cake boards too.

For now I'm focusing on the war torn suburbs, and trying desperately no not make it look like Tatooine from Star Wars! Instead I want to emulate District 9 or Elysium style, only set in the likes of Khartoum or Amman. I've got big shipping crates, market stalls, palm tree's and other bits and pieces in the works... oh and my prototype vehicles will take pride and place as abandoned bits of terrain.

Sigh. I wish I could do all this stuff full time... I love it.

I have a dream: about flying trucks in the desert.

When I say dream I mean daydream, and by daydream I mean sketched it out on a post in note at work. This is the mock up model.

• First I did a little paper versions.
• Then I built one quickly from plasticard, all from scratch.
• Then I decided to give it a lick of paint.
• Then I stuck windows in it.
• Next up, I’ll get some suitable decals for it and then pigments and weather it all.

It's pretty basic and scratchy but I'm going to use it as a scenery piece for Rebellion Protocol.

The idea behind it: along the lines of tug boat – it's a flatbed truck that flies. Simple. A little ubiquitous work horse for doing light run around's and delivery stuff. I have ideas for a few variants, like a longer one for transporting big loads, and a little jet bike in the same style.

Here's the catch – the Desert Insurgents, the good guys of Rebellion Protocol, like to steal these from the city states and mount big guns on the back/side of them for hit and run raids !

Sounds cool right, I'm planning on making that next (along with the jetbike).

I could construct these and get them cast up in metal, but the thought of building these in metal is a bit meh for me. In all honesty I'd be quicker scratch building one than cleaning up a metal model then pinning and gluing it. Not to mention it would be lighter. (Seriously, I'm sure it shows, but cutting and gluing all this took me about 2hrs total)

I'll do a full blown tutorial for making them. Maybe I'll get the crew, gun, stowage and the jetbike cast up though, much more metal friendly.

The final tutorial version will have a few tweaks to the design, this was just the mock up. For example, the bed of the truck is 1mm too narrow for getting a miniatures base in there. Naturally it would be nice for the rest of my soon to be fleet if I could get mini's on the back...

Not bad for about 4.5hrs work...

Update dump: 28mm, 10mm, 6mm...

Time for a little blast of what's been sculpting...

… and scratch building.

Well, I nailed down a gun design for the phase 2 Peacekeepers. Proper “blaster”. I can now start posing the rest of the sculpts around this design and aim (no pun intended) to get a mold filled with a good mix of Peacekeepers: leader, heavy, grunt, etc.

I had a terrible flash of inspiration and rattled out a few 10mm scaled miniatures. Very stylised, comic book feel I want to get with them. This may or may not come to fruition, by that I mean having them molded up and making them available to folks. They are about half way done, rifles are simple stand in at the moment (0.5mm plasticard). I've also done a little power lifter suit, minus an operator, and various other bits and bobs. More on all this later, but I really like the thought of robots and mechs dominating a 10mm game.

Here's some more exploration in 6mm, I really can't lock into one scale or style but I suppose I'm still finding my feet and experimenting... I mean, I'm only 30, I can still fantasise about having time to model/paint/game in multiple scales right? Hopefully by 40 I'll have merged it all down into one scale... but which one??

Note the same Desert Insurgent miniatures done a few different ways. The version at the front is actually just under 6mm and the scale and style I'm going to run with. All the others as you can see, are a little taller or wider. For me 6mm is all about massive mechs, tanks and aircraft, with the miniatures being in there to show just how huge everything else is. For that reason I'd like to get the basic human looking just right.

They say 6mm is gods own scale: 1mm represents 1 foot in real life. If that be the case, the first Desert Insurgent is about 5'10.

Some personal conversions in there, basic rogues for Rebellion Protocol, with the guy on the right being my first 28mm scale done in Super Sculpey Firm... well, the legs and torso at least. Still not got the hang of it yet...

Practice/development at muscles here, super shredded or a bit more bulk (Like Rambo1 vs Rambo2 maybe...). That guy on the left will be a fantasy Egyptian... the right is a red skinned desert Orc thing (Khozards, maybe.. enemies of the Fallen Dwarves).

Some more shots and work on Grim Regions, a Napoleonic style clockpunk horror project. Probably shooting to have things ready for October this year.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!