Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Murder, Incorporated


These two will make good corporate/mafia enforcer types.

The first one is a Copplestone Castings model that you may have recognized from some earlier posts.





Copplestone's models are wonderfully sculpted with well-defined features that make them easy to paint.




The second one is from Wargames Foundry.  When I was photographing her it showed her face having a rough surface.  This isn't immediately realized when looking at her 'in the flesh' and it took me by surprise.











Sunday, October 18, 2015

Fleur de Lease

I've been in a miniature painting, rather than building painting, mood.  But  I did manage to finish off another couple of GameCraft acrylic houses.




In one of those "duh" moments I realized I could have been using L-shaped styrene strips on the building corners to hide the joints and increase strength.




One of my ideas for enhancing these was to add window boxes.  For these I used quarter round strips.




My balsa strip reserve was getting short, so on these buildings the chimneys don't go all the way to the ground.  I don't think it will be too noticeable.








Basing material was used to add plants to the planters.












Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Dredd 3D


This time around I present two gangers.


You funny.


This guy is a Warlord/Mongoose ganger.  I like him a lot, he's got this goofy look to him that appeals to me.  His clothing places him squarely in Mega-City One.






Inspired by Back to the Future, I intended to have him wearing 3D glasses.  Of course, I gave him red and green instead of red and blue lenses.  I wonder if anyone will pick up on that.







This next trouble maker is from Wargames Foundry.




You!  Yeah, you, the little guy!  I'm talking to you.



He has a mold line over his eye that I wasn't confident in my ability to remove it well, so I left it there to be a scar-looking thing.





His legs are a little wide, but this isn't so noticeable due to his long coat.  His right foot is also somewhat small.

A nice brawler for a bunch of street toughs...





Monday, October 12, 2015

Lord of the Skies

Breetai



Holding the world in his hands

I ordered the Breetai model from Palladium.  Manufactured by GHQ, the model arrived well cast and in four pieces.





This "convention exclusive" model was cast in metal, rather than the plastic that the game's models are normally made of.







The parts went well together and painted up easily.








Breetai  is larger than the average Zentraedi by about a third and this model shows that increase in size well.




One big mofo




Thursday, October 8, 2015

A Dredd-ful Post Title




I am a recent Judge Dredd fan.  As an American, Dredd was not something I was readily exposed to when  I was younger.  There was the Stallone movie, of course.  I think it's sort of a fun movie, now, but it didn't inspire me to seek out Judge Dredd.


I am Da Law

Then in 2013 I saw Dredd with Karl Urban and that got me interested.  I was already starting to collect miniatures to do a sort of Blade Runner/Neuromancer/Ghost in the Shell sort of thing.  Nothing had quite gelled yet and I watched Dredd on cable one night and instantly got interested.


How is this movie NOT getting a sequel???


I've been reading the collected comics ever since and collecting miniatures for a Dredd setting.

For this first Dredd post it seems only appropriate to include the main guy, himself.




This model is from Wargames Foundry, from their 2000AD line.  It is a "heroic" 28mm miniature, which means it's about 32mm tall and chunky.  That seems appropriate for Judges, especially Dredd.




As you can see, this is a well sculpted miniature.  The eagle on his right shoulder is a little much, but it's not entirely out of line with some of the comic art.  His lawgiver is the older 'MkI' style.

He's based on a 25mm wooden/mdf base.  I used Milliput to smooth out the transition from the wooden base and the integral base and flocked it.





This next Judge is from Mongoose Publishing and Warlord Games.  It's not such a good model.  The sculpting is crude and the features are a mess.  I believe this is an older model from the line, back when Mongoose was making Gangs of Mega-City One rather than the current Judge Dredd Miniatures Game they now produce with Warlord.



Fortunately, this is not the best example to show, there are some really quite good miniatures in the line.
This line has variable quality to it.  Some of it is amateurish, some of it is top quality. 

I based him on a 25mm wooden base as well, this time topping that off with tiled styrene cut to fit.  I removed his slotta-tab so that he could be pinned to the base instead.





Side-by-side, the quality difference stands out.  It looks like the Foundry Dredd was the model for this Judge, the poses are so similar.





This Psi Judge is also a Mongoose/Warlord one.  It's got some issues (stubby fingers and the elbow/knee pads aren't so hot), yet it is a significant improvement over the previous model.
My photography isn't the best and the skin tone is quite dark, so the facial features are not evident in this picture as well as they might be.  I like the way her face is sculpted.
I used a darker yellow on her shoulder pads than I did on the other two Judges.  I am not sure which I like more.





I've painted up a number of models for this project so far and continue to complete more.  In the future I will post more of my finished models and my thoughts on them, as well as terrain and other related stuff.