New Fogou terrain and more !

Hey there, Pretty chuffed to show you these today, I've been working on a bit of scenery as a back burner and it's starting to pay with many pieces coming to an end (and many more still in progress ^^').
Now today is special since it's also the opportunity for me to reveal one of the latest Fogou designs for a most excellent range coming !
We're mostly all familiar with Starwars, Madmax or some of us might even be into more historical settings, bottom line being we're mostly all interested in getting good looking adobe buildings right ?
Well look no further, these are the ones !

Khorne Blood Slaughterer and a little rust tutorial

We all have one of those, I 'm sure you do. I'm not specifically talking about a Khorne Blood Slaughterer but I'm talking about that one model most people find shitty (and which we partly find shitty too) but that we love for some obscure reason...
I'd like to think there's no shame in loving those because as long as it makes us happy and annoys no one, then it just makes the world a better place.
Well the model above just happens to be one of those. I must have discovered it in a WD a loooong time ago and I was immediately shocked by the concept.

Fresh blood and a tutorial for the champions of Law !

So here we have 3 more members for my warband of champions of Law ! Since I've been painting those for some time now, I'm thinking about making a break to avoid making this a habit or something tiring and since I'm making a pause I thought I'd do a little tutorial on how I paint them. Make no mistake, they're not up to high standards or anything and I intended them to be speed paints from the start but I find the recipes I used served the purpose of having a nice warband rapidly so why not share ?

The Helpful Hobby Guide : Sculpting tools

It will come as no surprise if I tell you I am not much of a sculptor...

However, part of our hobby involves using putty at one stage or the other (unless you're a plastic-only kind of modellist) to simply fill gaps, repair damaged detailsor even add new ones for conversions.

In all those circumstances, you have to learn by trying. learning from other people's experience though is allowing shortcuts though.

Though many painting techniques are covered in magasines and all, I've always felt that you don't get much sculpting tips or tricks and that basic techniques aren't as well known as they are for painting.

The aim of this post is is no way to tell anyone what to use as I'm clearly out of my jurisdiction here but it's aimed to share with you what I use and learn from your tips and advice, critics and comments.

The tool below is the first sculpting tool I got when I started pushing putty back in 2000. You can see it's not the most precise of tools. I think when I got it it had already been used for dentistry or something has it was clearly not brand new. It did what it had though and I quickly switched from Milliput to Green Stuff (I won't go too far on the subject of putties as it clearly exceeds my very limited knowledge of the only 2 I use).

The Helpful Hobby Guide - How to make a wet palette

Probably the greatest tool in miniature painting history after the brush itself

Most of you must have heard of wet palettes before and many of you might already be using one or maybe some amongst you have tried and hated that.

If you haven't heard of these or have but never got to try it, here's how I made myself another one.

Now because I find my palette is my best friend, jus press play and see for yourself how life can be made so much easier :

The Helpful Hobby Guide - How to store models ?

We hobbyists all have one thing in common, no matter what game or range we use, no matter if we're painters, collectors or gamers mostly. STORAGE. That's right storage. This hobby has an unavoidable problem : it takes space. The more models you collect, the more you paint, you will have to put them somewhere... every time you finish a model you can hear it, that is the sound of inevitability Mr Anderson...

So what I'm offering today is my take on the subject. It's probably not the best solution ever and there are many ways to solve the problem but this is the one I found and have used for 10 years now.

"I'm super excited, how do I do that ?" I hear you say. Alright, alright, here's my recipe. (Just bear in mind that all measures will be in metric system and currencies in euros, but I promise it won't matter much really since all of you wonderful people are super good with google).

Steal your face - part 2

Some conversions require dedication, yep, that's right, dedication.

The venator bounty-hunter for confrontation are not a gang you cast "resurection" on that easily...

I took some plastic bits anddid some dry builds (well with some blue-tack) for them during new year's eve :

 but I was looking for some proper heads.

This resulted in me trying to steal the heads of other miniatures by taking prints and casting them in resin but it proved to be quite a failure as you can see in that post. 

The idea of making the band has no left me at all so I took a little trip on the background  side of the venators to see what could be done.

The necromunda redemptionists are going to offer their heads in sacrifice to the Venators but Mutantdale made me feel remorses about cutting the heads off of them for this purpose only. So I decided to go back on the copy way...

This time it would be pressmoulding.

After some very interesting discussion with Shoebox, I opted for Oyumaru and greenstuff and used this tutorial by the very same Shoebox.

Oymaru is the exact same product as instant mold, the only difference being it is not sold by the same companies and comes out with silly colors. 

I opted for Oyumaru because :

- It's cheaper

- You can have many colours (though it has no impact on the modelling whatsoever)

- It's japonese (Yes I'm that superficial)

Basic ingredients are simple :

- Some Oyumaru sticks (I used the pink ones because my daughter asked me to)

- some models

- some hot water

- 3 minutes

Pour some hot water in a mug and make yourslef and your wife/husband a nice cup of tea with the rest.

Cut some oyumaru pieces and put them in the hot water for 3 minutes.

Put the  pieces in sime absorbant paper to avoid having water drops on it.

And then apply them on the heads of the models like a maniac, screaming horrible things in a mad laughter...

It looks fairly similar to the siligum and resin casting so far doesn't it?

Well now you will see how the dreaded pink-blob gang is far superior to the blue-blob head gang...

Forget the flashes around the heads, this will be fixed, i even think I'll do another batch ut making sure the oyumaru mould is perfect, I kind of rushed on the first batch and I've lost some details but second batch should be good. I'm really liking how things are turning out. The lady on the far right side won't have the complete masl but just a part like a sort of venitian mask.

While I was at it, I also built the 2 nobles I had in mind :

They will have fancy hairdo like this :

or this 

If I manage to sculpt them of course...

Apart from that, you can see here that the nimber of Work In Progress is quite high on the table at the moment. 

- 20 red redemption cultists

- 9 chaos androids

- 7 sensei gangers

- 1 sphincter beast

- 1 plastic Kaleb Daark

- 1 adventurer paladin

- 1 adventurer cleric

- 10 marauder archers

- 10 chaos warriors

- 1 chaos lord

- 12 slaanesh cultists

- 3 dark elf crossbowmen

- 2 minotaurs

- 1 wizard

- 1 chaos grav-attack

Hopefully I should be able to lower the number a bit...

Just when I didn't need anything more on the "to do" list , I decided to build bases for my chaos dwarf swivel guns... (sorry about the very bad pictures but you get the idea)

I guess I can consider myself busy for the time being... ;)

The Helpful Hobby Guide to Oldhammer : How to strip models

It's been quite some time I was thinking about doing a tutorial about how I strip minis and after reading Orlygg's very useful post about it, I thought it was time to give it a go.

While Orlygg's article concentrates on the power or Dettol, I will try to offer another approach.

Being french comes with some drawbacks. Most people will think about poor personnal hygiene or constant whining but as far as oldhammer goes, the major drawback is that France lacks Dettol. I only came across some after a little trip to UK which gave me the opportunity to buy 4 bottles of the stuff. With that said, you'll understand my experience with the stuff is not the best you can find around.

However, I've been stripping minis since the late 90's and I am pretty sure those who are new to the thing and those who use different methods can find an interest in what I'm about to tell.

I apologise in advance if I seem like smashing through open doors here but I Think I'll start with the basics to be clear/