Featured sculpt surprise

I recently ordered the army painters wet palette after years of using a homemade one with foam and greaseproof paper.

The palette came with a little army painting guide booklet that I quickly flicked through before it went into the recycling... I got a nice surprise and saw a very old sculpt of mine was in there as a painted example.

This little guy, painted green and red was originally sculpted back in October 2012 (I had to check the tags 'Crowmantia' on this blog to find the original post.

I'd only really been sculpting properly for about 3 years at this point, the sculpt was actually OK, it's just the anatomy and overall style I look back and question now. I dug out an original resin cast from my stash but could not for the life of me find the original sculpt. On the right of the original cast however is the original sculpt of the dolly... I made several such in the early days and re-used them multiple times. The sculpt is in grey procreate and you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a resin copy.

At the time I was really liking the Victrix Napoleonic plastics and I did an entire range of steampunk/low tech science fiction minis to match the exact scale Victrix were using. Pretty much every post on this blog from 2012 up to 2015 was done in this style - the original tox troopers, desert rebels, imperial borderers, cultists, aether pirates etc. 

'Slimline' is probably the best way to describe some of them.

So old I've lost the original image and photobucket have watermarked my online version!

I contacted Anvil Industry in 2012 about casting some of my dollies in resin for me and they kindly accepted the commission. Once I'd got some finished sculpts in order using said dollies, Anvil put them into production for me. And that's how I really got started with licensing, casting and getting my sculpts out for sale (well, actually from about 2008 I was active on the Troll Forged sculpting forums and had some stuff put into production by them in the states, my sculpts weren't the best but the owner/operator was a very kindly a supportive chap who gave lots of aspiring sculptors a chance).

Bit of a nostalgic post about nothing, but I got a genuine little smile seeing this sculpt in here. It's also quite timely, I've had a slew of emails from people asking if my sculpts can be featured in their upcoming rulebooks recently so I might have some surprises like this in the years ahead.

Cultist sculpts (the silly hat brigade)

Here's some WIP shots for the continuing expansion of the Tox Troopers range. 

I had intended to park this line to focus on my mythology ranges, but one last mould for Q1 should round off the line.

The minis are single part, minus the heads, so I'll have more space in the mould to fill that's usually taken up by a rifle sprue (this might equate to 1 or 2 extra minis).

I wanted to avoid the usual tropes of hooded heads, gas masks, executioners masks etc. and went with a slightly amusing conical skull cap. That said, I'm already prepping alternative heads with the usual tropes.

This should prove to be a versatile squad - heroic scale versions of my Desert Insurgents spring to mind.

More to follow, I'm doing a mutant/scavvy squad next along with a few more characters.

Black Praetorians - WIP sculpts

I sculpted a few of these a couple of years ago now I'm finally getting round to finishing a full squad!

The idea and design for these goes all the way back to 2008! At that time I was just getting into sculpting, and Troll Forged miniatures were casting and selling some of my stuff (I think some of my sculpts are still on sale there to this day).

This will be the second time I've sculpted the mini's! The first lot were more pulp sci-fi. I think they're probably stored away in a box somewhere at Troll Forged, never having made it to production. In fairness they were quite rubbish as sculpts go!

I've even got a full on mythology drafted for them, sci-fi based. This incarnation of the Black Praetorians are however clockpunk styled! So I'll need to edit the text and bring into line with the tech and setting.

In my last post I mentioned I really loved the Victrix ancient plastics. I also like their Napoleonic stuff...so it should be no surprise these are scaled to match that range!

More to follow on these in the near future.

Oh and while were talking Napoleonics, here's a little test I'm doing for some 10mm stuff!

### EDIT - oh shit look I found some really old stuff in my photobucket! Black Praetorians and Redcoats! This takes me back... my "House Crowmantia" stuff with Anvil Industry is also from this mythology. Very gothic horror, originally Sci-Fi, now transplanted to the 19th century!

All that should give you a rough idea of what I want to do with this range! 

WIP – Borderers, Cult Leader & Crowmantia

2 Squad leaders and a communications/pidgeon guy.

Very early stages with these....

House Crowmantia Icon bearer/Squad Leader and a Cult Leader:

Crowmantian Squad Leader and Heavy Weapon

Complete Leader and Heavy Weapon trooper for House Crowmantia.

When it comes to converting I have in mind chopping off the cannon barrel and replacing it with a flame thrower head...

Lots of minis ready for paint

Finally got round to my own personal casts of the Borderers and Crowmantians!

Lots of pics to share, I'll be doing some tutorials for my website as I go along on these.

House Crowmantia – Leader and Heavy Weapon WIP

Paint Jobs! Crowmantians

On sale at Anvil Industry.