"Build Me An Army"

A fair bit of work has gone into these and I'm proud of the results. A big thanks to Chris over at Macrocosm Games for introducing me to Henry who commissioned these pieces after seeing the original goblin I sculpted over a year ago now. Henry will be looking to release these guys as part of a Kickstarter in the near future along with a few other sculpts we've talked about doing.

For now though I'm here to show off the final sculpts before they get shipped off to the casters. The arms and heads are from my original goblin but it's interesting to see the same old parts changed up just with new poses. The running pose is my favourite, a lot more dynamic than the original bow legged stance.

Next up the Brutes. These were created almost entirely from the ground up this time. Again the running pose gives a great sense of movement but it's the two-handed axe that I'm really proud of.

As I've said there is plenty more to come for this project, but for now I'm looking to finish some other work and maybe try and do some personal projects.
Speaking of finishing work, here's a sneak peak at what I'm working on for a returning client, Shed Games. Enjoy!!

The Return of the Green

A little while ago I posted up a set of photos of my efforts at sculpting a 28mm scale goblin and his orc friend, you know, these guys;

Well, the heads and arms are about done, but the next step for the bodies was a bit more long winded. The bodies image above was never meant to be the finished project, rather a set of very detailed stock poses from which I could make more alteration to once they got cast.

So the bodies have been cast up and the final poses are well under way along with an extra set of arms. The goblin bodies haven't been played around with too much, just a bit of re positioning of the legs to get some more dynamic poses and the same for the orc brute body, though the brute is also getting some extra armour plates over the legs.

A new set of arms with a suitably beasty two-handed axe for the brute. Not finished yet, but if you use your imaginaton you can see where I'm going.

Lastly, I've taken the arms and heads I sculpted for my previous "armed" goblin and stuck them on for test fitting. I'm really happy with how these turned out and I'm looking forward to getting everything finished. There will be plenty more on the way.

Carnage, Thy name is Dragon!

Well this Game of Thrones thing has kicked off something fierce at my local gaming store. We've yet to officially start the map campaign, but so many of us have built forces (more than 1) and are itching to try them out. So for this post I'll be showcasing the work of some of my friends for a change.

This battle was a straight up brawl for control of the centre of the board (marked by Sansa Stark's snow castle) featuring representatives from House Baratheon, Martell and Targarian with the Nights Watch wading in for good measure.

Jon Snow leads his brothers of the Nights Watch....

Grey Worm heads up the Unsullied

Stannis takes the front ranks of the Baratheon army

The Martells occupy the far corner, but the photo I had was dreadful.

Oh! and there was a dragon,I forgot about the dragon. Openning turns of the game saw Prince Oberyn put down by the dragon, but it was a lucky shot from the Nights Watch archers that finished him off.

 The Unsullied march on the Baratheon flank.

With the dragon finally seen off with concentrated archery and Melisandre's magic, the serviving Martells advance.

Snow takes the fight to Ser Davos before getting cut down by Stannis in quick order. Stannis didn't last long past this point however. The combined force of the Unsullied and the Martells crushed the Baratheon lines and the surviving Nights Watch....

 ...before turning on each other. (Real time Got style of betrayal)

  The game finished with the Martells taking the objective through weight of numbers. Grey Worm and the remaining Unsullied just couldn't land a solid hit to claw back victory.

Below are a few (poor) pictures of the minis cabinet at the shop with various people's  contributions to the campaign. I must say I'm excited by the future of this campaign as we havn't even started yet and already it has brought out the best in everyone's modeling and painting. What's more, this isn't even half of the people signed up so when some more armies turn up I'll try and cover the games and opponents I come up against.

Until then, I have plenty of other things to be getting on with.

Ours is the FURY!!!!

Ready to claim the Iron Throne and invoke crotch demons, Stannis Baratheon and his aids lead the Baratheon army (gang) to greatness. As I said in my last post, my local gaming group are running a Game of Thrones skirmish campaign and it's starting to look great.

 I'm really local forward to this and since most of the other players are doing multiple forces, I think I'll try it too. Not sure who else I'd look at yet, but there is plenty of choice obviously. For now though here's a few pictures of Westeros' finest.

Stannis leads the front line infantry with his personal standard.

 Ser Davos Seaworth takes command of the archers.

...And the Lady Melisandre just turns up and persuades people to burn others at the stake for fun.

I plan to add a few more footmen and maybe some cavalry in the future or perhaps build a Brotherhood Without Banners gang as Melisandre is able to ally with them. Until then, keep waiting for Season 7.

Long Silence

Been a while since my last post and I've been busy.

First off, big thanks to the guys who ran Cardiff Indy Comic Expo last month. As ever it was great to meet new people and to catch up with old friends. It was also a good time to shift my own artwork, but that's more of a personal brag than a review.

Since then I've been working on several projects in a variety of materials, so this post will be a tad random and will feature a lot of "work in progress" stuff. Starting with some more Winter of the World art for Cakebread and Walton  their finished RPG book for the series is entering it's final stages and should see release later this summer. Below are a few rough sketches of scenes and places from the novels...

...and a finished piece from the same set.

Sticking to the theme of novels and fantasy, my local gaming group has decided to carry on the Game of Thrones themselves following the end of Season 6. We've all jumped in with home built gangs for a bit of skirmish level fisty-kuffs but there will also be plenty of "behind the scenes" stuff going on to keep things flavourful. I've decided to run a Baratheon force led by Stanis Baratheon and backed up with his loyal Captain Ser Davos and his adviser The Red Woman (currently in the post)

All converted from GW Lord of the Rings figures and soon to be painted. More picture later this week of hopefully some finished troops and some photos of what the rest of my gaming group have been up to.