New Tox Trooper scouts, sentries and conversion parts

 Shots of the new metals, hopefully available in a few weeks from Edinburgh Miniature Company.

Heroic scale conversion parts

 Available in store now - heroic scale torsos suitable for Age of Sigmar/Warhammer Fantasy/40k

https://www.edinburghminiaturecompany.com/conversion-parts

Atheros Undead: Wraith Hoplites and Skeleton Warriors

Some test casts have arrived: Undead hoplites. 

I'll be painting these up soon to see how they handle before cleaning the master casts for a production mould (and I'll likely make up some alternatives with head and weapon swaps for variety.

Tentatively aiming to get 4 wraiths and 6 swordsmen in the mould - the shields take up a lot of space. If I'm lucky I'll squeeze in 8 swordsmen.

Tox Trooper Paint Tutorial

Here's a speed paint tutorial for my Tox Troopers. Quick and easy and only 9 steps start to finish.

1. Assembly. 

I always texture the base prior to painting, the barb wire is simply two thin metal wires wrapped around each other for effect. The rest is beach sand affixed with PVA glue.

2. Undercoat. 

Do 2-3 light coats of Black undercoat spray, once dry do a thin wash of Chaos Black (is it still called that?) to cover all the recesses the spray missed.

3. Colour Blocking.

All colours here are from Citadel:

• Stormvermin Fur - for the grey coat and sleeves
• Ushabti Bone - for the helmets face place
• Rhinox Hide - for the gloves, boots and pouches on the models belt
• Steel Legion Drab - for the shoulder pad straps, the boot gaiters and the soil on the base
• Leadbelcher - for all the metal areas on the model
• Mephiston Red/Skull White - for the shoulder pad markings

4. Black Wash.

Nuln Oil - wash the entire mini, only avoiding the boot gaiters and the base.

5. Brown Wash

Agrax Earthshade - wash the base, the boot gaiters, all the metal areas, the faceplate and should pad straps

6. Colour Development

Go back to all the base colours and paint the raised areas/avoid the recesses - the wash has created the shading. This stage is most evident on the coat and face plate. This effect here should be subtle, the next stage will build upon it....

7. Highlights

• Dryad Bark - paint fine edge highlights on the gloves, boot caps and belt pouches
• Baneblade Brown - paint fine edge highlights on the boot gaiters and the shoulder pad straps
• Leadbelcher - fine edge highlight all the metal areas, and then scratches on all the black armour areas (I went overboard here, as usual - subtle is always better)
• Stormvermin Fur 70% mixed with Ushabti Bone 30% - highlight the raised edges on the coat. You can even paint thin vertical streaks at the edges to suggest fraying and damage.

8. Lens Detail

• Paint the entire lens Black
• Paint the bottom 50% of the lens with Mephiston Red
• Within that red area, paint a further 25% of the lens with Evil Sunz Scarlet
• Paint a final tiny streak of Wild Rider Red in the extreme bottom corner of the lens
• In the opposite top left corner of the lens, paint a tiny streak of white 

9. Base

• Drybrush the entire base with Baneblade Brown
• Paint a further drybrush of the entire base with Terminatus Stone
• Daub the metal wire on the base with Skrag Brown
• Paint the edge of the base with Steel Legion Drab
• Dead field grass was applied in patches with PVA glue

Tox Trooper Scouts WIP

New Tox Trooper minis WIP...

Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy

Phew, I've been snowed under with private commissions, and keeping the Tox Troopers in stock to meet demand.

I'm gearing up to start blogging again showcasing new sculpts but a nice distraction has gone live: Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy.

For a few quid a month I'm very happy to support Duncan - I've learned a few tricks from him over the years so subscribing is the least I can do given the current economic climate.

The website was swamped initially, I'm told, but I got registered in less than a minute and have only good things to say about the content.

Go check it out!

https://www.duncanrhodes.com

Hades terrain: the underworld awaits

I must say selling miniatures is a tough gig, with pros and cons. Most recently, it's been a weird one:

Pro- good sales, popular ranges, selling out very regularly
Cons - struggle to keep things in stock, very tiring fulfilling lots of orders, less time to sculpt new stuff

All in all, it probably evens out over time. Anyway, while sculpting for production demands zero tolerance for blemish, terrain making is far far more forgiving...

This is either the gateway or the porch to Hades. Early stages and effectively just an undercoat with some colour blocking, washes and minor drybrushing in places. Maybe about 30% of what I determine the painting requirement to be.

The black is going to be water, one of the many rivers of the underworld. The shorelines of which are teeming with lost souls and makeshift tent towns - poor souls awaiting the arrival of their loved ones from the land of the living.

It's hard to make out at the moment but there's a logic to the stonework leading up from the harbour. I intend to give the borders of the trails a bit of colour, perhaps purple or green corpse glow. The pathway tells a bit of a story on the judgement of the soul with some pivot points where a threshold guardian may stand in audience with the recently departed, deciding their fate and ushering them in  certain direction.

This is the first of many boards I'm making, effectively taking the dungeon crawler tile laying concept and scaling it up!

This will be the largest and perhaps central tile (21"/32"). Once I've finishing this one I'll do several smaller sections like an extended shoreline, corridors/chambers, and maybe some elevated platforms.

I've also got some very cool DIY pillars that will be modular, and can be placed anywhere. Speaking of which - the two facades in the first and last picture will act as either scenario focal points or objectives.

I'm slightly bored with the eternal flat terrain board and scatter terrain... I want to do some vertical terrain on a cliff face, or a catacombs of the dead multi level metropolis. Approaching the terrain as a stage or a film set switches your creative thought process, and you think about dramatic angles, backgrounds and lines of sight that frame your miniatures for a heroic composition.