Fanboy's Craft - Ironsides Troubleshooters - OSL Oxfordians!

[iamfanboy]

I don't think of miniatures as art. Rather, I think of them as craft.

What's the difference? Well, art only has to be beautiful. A craft has to be beautiful AND functional - no one would use a sword that had a mural painted on it in acrylic, or a quilt that has fluorescent light bulbs sewn into it, or a chessboard with pieces made of ice. Its beauty has to take second place to its function, and in a wargame that function is to serve as an identifiable object to mark a game piece's place on the board.

So while I am CAPABLE of doing carefully blended NMM and paintjobs with multiple glazes (I've several anime garage kits sitting on my shelf testament to that), I refuse to for wargaming miniatures. I can appreciate those who do, but I've accidentally broken, dropped, tipped over, or otherwise done horrific things to my wargaming minis to ever, EVER spend that much time on them.

Which is why I've set up my display of Colette's Showgirls as a movement tray as well - something that, when done, I can place on one of my metal trays and not worry about as move it around a tournament or my house. All my miniatures are magnetized on the bottom for ease of transport and storage, and I've created storage trays on risers along these lines:

Please forgive my camera; my sister lent out the good camera and I've had to color compensate the picture because my supposed 'light box' works about as well as taking pictures on my desk with an ordinary light bulb.

I painted most of these long ago (2011?) and I'm considering repainting them. There's a lot of empty space on the stage because I'm eventually going to have all of the "Showgirl" models as part of this display - or as many as I can fit! I may well rebase one of the Performers onto my more general 'Malifaux dirt" as the Mercenary model, if I start to run out of room.

I picked Cassandra out as African because she's described as being from the American South - and I wanted a variety of skin tones. I missed the description of her as a blonde in the old story (or mixed that up with Colette's description, seeing as how I made her blonde!), and I think I like her better this way. Unfortunately the eyes aren't showing up properly - rather than black, I picked out blue and green, and for some reason the color correction has washed that out.

I think if I were to repaint her, it'd be as more of a mulatto (Southerner term for half/half) to contrast her with the Ironsides I plan to pick up.

Now, Neverborn. I actually have a full Pandora crew done along with the starter box stuff, but without Testor's Dullcote they're just so... shiny I don't want to show them. These haven't been sealed yet.

She's not done yet - I want a dress of some kind for her, splayed out on the steps, as she's just changing her skin from tan to African. My sculpting attempts at a bodice failed, but it gives me a reason to look forward to a TTB character box. If I make a Neverborn display, she'll be in a doorway of some kind, hidden in back. She took me about an hour to finish, judging by the episode count, and I'm pretty happy with the result.

So it upsets me that somehow the model's seam is clearly visible in the image and yet I somehow missed while painting and patching. I'm gonna have to get a bit of magic sculpt in there. The dress colors were chosen to resemble Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth, with yellow added as more contrast to Widow Weaver's skin.

[iamfanboy]

So last Tuesday, I went on a binge painting spree and did almost all of the Ironsides Troubleshooters crew box in one four hour spree - this post has all of my M&SU in it, but the only thing I did that day was Ironsides, Mouse, and the Oxfordians. I didn't get the Captain done until yesterday, however, and he's still not sealed (damn rainy weather!)

I decided on a 'safety orange' color for the Ironsides crew to contrast with the blue magic of the Oxfordians; it makes me sad that I didn't think of it for the Union Miners and they may get a strip and repaint at some point to bring them in line with that.

Ironsides came out okay, if not spectacularly; I still need to work on my african-american skintones. Her blue eyes do show up and make a nice triangle with her pants, though. I put her on a bit of debris to make her stand out some more.

Dapper. As. Fuck. I tend to do 'magical' weapons with a blue ink over silver, which I figured was perfect for the Relic Hammer. The yellow also helps him tie in with Colette's crew, because he has nothing in common with the M&SU minis aside from the base.

Now for what I really can't stop feeling good about when I look at these: The Oxfordians!

All three, with O'Flamefist in the center. He's my least favorite of the three, and I had to stretch out his cape so it looked more in line with his compatriots.

McFloatsen here is middle of the road - I took an upper angle picture to get the 'glow' coming out of his cape properly imaged, but I wish I could afford an LED lighting affair to put in the bottom there. The OSL in his hands was fun to do; trying to figure out where the light would hit if it were perfectly centered in his hands was a challenge.

Firebender Francine was my favorite - you'll note that I delineated how far the 'glow' extends by the light on the base, which is why the far leg isn't lit up. The cape, however, is fluttering so I figured that it would have some glow to make it look like it was being moved away by the force of the fire.

 

So I finally sprung for a Foldio2 portable studio and it has made taking pictures.... just... so much easier. Like, 500% easier. I'll be posting pics of my Neverborn and better shots of my Colette crew soon - if only to establish how bad they are so I can strip and repaint them later as part of the Painter's Challenge.

[FoeRender]

Iam not seeing the pics ,