Amazon_warrior

Coolness! I really like how the sabre-tooth looks in those colours - it's made me like the mini much more. Beg/borrow/steal a better camera and get us some better pics, darmmit!

You could chop up bits of plastic sprue into crystal shapes, then paint them to suit. If you're feeling really flash, you could even try making moulds of the shapes and casting them in clear or blue-tinted resin. Good luck!

My thoughts on this are: Have a mix of Wyrd-only and anything-goes. Like I said, I really appreciate that FF, RH and TT are anything goes, but it's worth noting that I felt like I should have entered a Wyrd mini in them, even though I didn't have to. As a way of saying thanks or showing appreciation, I think. Because you didn't make me, I wanted to. Admittedly, I failed to do this in the TT and RH comps that I've entered so far, but in my defence, I didn't have any suitable Wyrd minis for TT and I tried to redeem myself by buying some for RH but still haven't got round to painting them! D'oh! Of course, this is just how I feel, but it may well be that others feel the same. I think if that's the case, it might be better to keep some competitions open and the goodwill this would hopefully generate towards Wyrd would show across all the competitions. At the end of the day, Wyrd is a company and I'm sure everyone here knows that you can't keep a business running on fresh air and none of us want to see Wyrd fail, so I would sincerely hope that people are not averse to spending some of their hard-earned to support Wyrd-exclusive comps in gratitude for the open ones. Another thought occurs: You might notice a decrease in Wyrd minis in open comps in favour of entering them in Wyrd-only comps. Keeping the "Best of Wyrd" prize might prevent that happening too much, tho.

My 2p: My bf has become quite the fan of SW recently - he's massively attracted to the Deadlands and 50 Fathoms settings (I recommended the Wyrd minis when he was asking about possible Deadlands figures). He ran a brief taster with me when he was over a little while ago and it was a lot of fun. It's interesting to play a system where a basic power is the same across the board, but it's how you describe it that makes it magic/super-power/high-tech. One thing to note about SW is it's quite pulp, even if it says it's generic. If that fits the feel of the setting, then it's a hell of a lot of fun. Watch out for the exploding dice!

I gotta say that I find PP's sculpts VERY variable in quality too. Yeah, they have some awesome stuff, but they also have things like *shudder!* the Gorax. Dunno about Pulp City, but Wyrd and Hell Dorado have quality, characterful stuff.

Did anyone mention a conversion competition yet? Might be cool to take characters from the Wyrd universe and mix them up a little, as mentioned before, perhaps have Perdita as a Rotten Belle or somesuch. The only problem I can see is that it might start off as conversions and end up as sculpting, so perhaps you'd have to specify that maybe a maximum of half the model can be GS/scratchbuilt (i.e., not parts from a Wyrd mini), for example. It might be best to keep it soley judged on the conversion, or maybe have before-and-after pictures of the conversion and then the paintjob, so people can vote on the best conversion, the best paintjob and then you can have an overall winner (whoever scores the most when the categories are combined).

Technically, they'll pretty much all be mini contests! Sorry, couldn't resist! (But to stop being silly for a moment, it's a good idea.)

I think the thing I like best about the Wyrd competitions is that they're so welcoming: painters from ALL levels feel free to have a bash at an entry or two, and there's no restriction on manufacturers, which I really appreciate and which makes me think of Wyrd as the "good guys". I think the vouchers as prizes is a really good idea - I had a lot of fun spending the one I won. It might be nice to have a special edition mini, tho, which wouldn't be available through the store but could be won as a prize instead. Perhaps an alt. sculpt of an existing figure or a new figure with downloadable rules so people could still proxy it if they wanted. Maybe have more than one (one for each faction?) so you can mix it up or so people could request a mini they haven't already won (assuming that people will win more than one). Mixing up the competitions: Perhaps get forum members to choose some themes for competitions or have themes similar to now but choose something (e.g., a colour, the word "cold", a season, whatever) that each entry should incorporate in some way.

Cool idea! I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

That's cause she's hiding in my desk drawer, feeling shy because she's naked. Poor Viktoria! I promise I'll post piccies when I do finally get round to her. She tells me she's always wanted bubble-gum pink hair.

I see you're a Guinness fan, r2-j1! Edit: Here's my work area and environs: I have far too many shineys to paint! There's a lot more in one of the drawers of my desk.

That's a nice tutorial! Looking forward to the next part.

That's very nice- liking the colours and the shineyness of the bottle. Cool!

I'm not sure my painting style is settled enough to have had phases yet, but my purchasing phases are quite obvious! It seems to be all about the cats and dragons. Reaper's Guardian beast (big mechanical cat), a celestial lion, Hasslefree's Libby/tigress, Rackham's Fianna+wildcat (which I bought specifically for the cat, couldn't care less about the chick). I also have a lot of dragons, and have to physically stop myself buying more. Just putting paint on the ones I have now would be a start. I think the pinacle of these trends was my purchase of a Dragonne- half lion, half dragon!

Some very useful suggestions! It's instructive to hear how other people would approach a particular problem. I really should have made this a wip, but there we are. Reaper have a surprising amount of sea-related minis, and they're quite nice. The Fathoms Deep range from Eastern Front has some lovely minis too.

I use a mixture of GW and P3, as a rule, my handful of Reaper and Vallejo was insignificant here! For this fella I based the feathers with bestial brown and the fur with scorched brown. Fur highlights were done with snakebite leather, feather highlights were hammerfall khaki (I think...). I was mainly trying to follow the description/illustration in the Monster Manual. I think the principle trick with brown is to have plenty of pre-mixed options- for some reason, I find it's a tough colour to mix for myself without it just looking nasty. I do really like the P3 paints, and their selection of browns and muted greens is very handy.

I'm very much enjoying the step-by-step osl process. Nice to hear someone's thoughts on what they're doing as they do it. One thing that I think would improve it for me would be to make the base and heart of the flame lighter, closer to white. I think this would make it look even hotter. Other than that, liking what I see so far. Looking forward to the next installment.

Cheers! I'll do my best. Demonherald: the celestial lion is by Reaper. H'mm, tips for brown. Well, I chose a lighter shade for the feathers and a darker one for the fur. The feathers got shaded with the base fur colour, and the fur got shaded with the base colour plus black. I highlighted the fur and the feathers with very different shades of brown, but wasn't 100% strict- some feather highlight got added to the lightest fur areas. I was trying to make the two textures look still distinct, but with elements of the same brown in both, so they harmonised a bit. Does that make any sense? It's a method I'm playing around with at the moment, still working on refining it.

I was wondering whether I should have suspended the fish from wires. My initial idea was to wrap weed round wire and then tie the fish on. I couldn't really find thin enough plastic weed (and perhaps I should have had a go at making my own), so it didn't quite come out as I planned. *Nothing* sticks to that damn stuff (I think they make it that way because of algae), so a lot of fiddling was off the cards unless I wanted naked weed and paint flakes everywhere. If I do this kind of this again (and I can, because I still have more sea-minis), there'll be DIY weed.

Thanks everyone! In my imagination, the fish were a shimmering, suspended shoal. In practice, this was a lot harder to achieve that I'd guessed!

Lol, I see what you mean! Somehow, in my imagination it looked a lot better! Ah, well, we live and learn, and this was certainly a learning experience.

I've been working on this on and off for a while, and I finally made myself finish it. It was a techincal challenge as much as anything else: I made the bits on the base myself out of putty, and I'm especially pleased with the anemone and the mosaic.

Cheers! I'm just glad I inspired someone. Plumber's epoxy sounds interesting. I've mostly used GS in the past, and now some magic sculpt. The greatest problem I have is the stickiness of both. With GS, a bit of water sorts it out, but adding water to MS causes it to dissolve! Means you can get a lovely smooth finish if you're careful, tho. I end up buying my sand too. Living in the middle of Germany means no available beaches! Swiping a handful of sand from a building site could be an option, if I didn't know what cats do in piles of sand... :s

Thanks! I enjoy taking minis that people might not otherwise look twice at and funking them up. It's a challenge! My best (and most radical!) example of this to date was a blue and purple celestial lion:

Yeah, that can be difficult. Mind you, there's a lot of stuff you can rob from the great outdoors or the kitchen which can go towards making a good base. I remember trimming a chunk of fibres off a natural-bristle broom because they had just the right stiffness and thickness to be clumps of dried grass. Painting them was interesting!