Final Skaven Pictures

Here are the last pictures I took while building the Snitch Diorama.

The street surface was entirely sculpted from Fimo - which was a bit of an experiment as I had never used it before... I made a little press shape to make the cobbles and drain section - a piece of aluminium tube that I sharpened and shaped to give the oval shape I wanted. The shape of the flag stones were defined with a sharp sculpting tool - I found fimo pretty good for this sort of work - it doesn't have the surface tension that greenstuff has - so it's pretty easy to get sharp edges. The sewer hatch was salvaged from a Land Raider kit, with all the detail sanded flat and a couple of rivets added. I scratched and scraped the surface to give it a worn look.

The wall of the building was constructed from plasticard and balsa wood, with the window from from an old train-scale building.

The painting was fun - I wanted there to be a contrast between the colour palette of the street level and the sewer tunnel. I painted everything below street level in dark and dank colours - everything shaded down with brown and green tones with lots of stains and dark, damp patches on the walls. I also used a gloss varnish to add areas of wet shine to the walls. At street level I tried to keep everything a brighter and cleaner, so used less muddy colours for shading. I painted the shutters green to tie the two level together.

I always think there is a fine line to walk when painting dioramas - you need the scene itself to be interesting enough to give character - but not so bright as to clash with the miniatures who are on it.

Lots going on in the Studio right now, but more of that soon...

mike

Construction pictures

Just thought I would add some pictures I took while constructing the Snitch diorama. The basic frame was made from plasticard and square section plastic rod, and the sewer and access hole were constructed from pieces of ABS pipe I found in a local DIY store. They were all joined together with plastic solvent - you need the sort that works with ABS though. The hardest thing was joining the two tubes together - that required a little careful accuracy in the cutting and gluing, and even then there were some small gaps to fill.

I wanted the outside box itself to be as smooth as possible - so I filled and sanded all the joins, the aim was to make it look like a solid plinth.

I clad the inside of the pipes with brick textured plasticard - and cut out some of the bricks to make the surface look a little uneven and worn. The rungs were made from brass wire, and the platform he's standing on from plasticard and copper wire mesh.

I filled the whole box with plaster of paris - I wanted it to have some weight, and stability. The tricky bit with that was to ensure there were no holes in the construction...

I'll post some pictures of the street level, and the painted scene soon

mike

RATS!

Been working on this for the last few weeks - it started as a commission to paint Deathmaster Snitch, and it got a little out of hand.... I was looking forward to painting Snitch, it's a pretty old miniature (1987...?) but the sculpt still really holds up I think. Still the best miniature in the GW Skaven range in my opinion.

I was thinking about how I was going to paint the miniature, and what I wanted to do for the base - and I came up with this idea.

We generally put all our miniatures on display plinths of different shapes and sizes, and I thought it would be a fun idea to have the miniature inside the base... Originally I was going to drill out the centre of a wooden plinth, but soon abandoned that as unworkable, and scratch built the whole thing. I took some pictures of the base construction and will be posting a short article here soon.

It was one of those ideas that I could picture every detail of right away - so it didn't really take any planning, I just had to build and paint it. I painted the miniature in a slightly lighter scheme that I might have done with a different base - but I wanted to make sure that he popped out from the sewer tunnel. The paint scheme is really a bit of a homage to the time period when the Skaven first come out - when John Blanche made checks a classic miniatures decoration.

It was s lot of fun to be making a diorama again - even a small one like this. It just makes me want to build something a little more ambitious... Mind you - the time I put into even this little scene reminds me of how long those complex dioramas used to take me!

mike

More Rat Pictures

Extra pictures of the diorama - I can't seem to get multiple images to work in the original post...

Emperor's Champion

I actually painted this one last year, but I was disappointed with the way it photographed, so I never got round to posting it here. I always have trouble photographing metallics - and as this one is 80% metallic, it was a bit of a nightmare. The trouble is that my studio lights are so bright, they create tiny reflections in the surface that just can't be seen normally. You'll just have to take my word that the surface is smoother and flatter than it appears in the pictures - it almost looks like it's covered in glitter...

I also think that I shot them on too light a background - it just makes everything look a little washed out. I much prefer the deeper colour we are shooting everything on these days - it gives much more contrast and punch to the images.

Anyway, apparently we mentioned that I was painting it in an earlier post, and someone just emailed and asked if I ever finished it.

mike

Hello again...

Okay - so it seems that a couple of things were bugging Ali about the Kitty miniature - so she fixed them last night and we re-shot her.

I wasn't really that happy with the pictures anyway, they weren't as sharp as they should have been. I think it was partly due to the fact that she's quite tiny, but partly because I think I over-exposed the pictures and blew out some of the crispness.

Anyway - we both think she looks better now.

She's also going up on Ebay this afternoon...

mike

Hello Kitty

Here's Ali's latest piece - and personally I think it's the best thing she has painted in ages. She's really not painted a great deal in the past year - but she started this one quite some time ago, and only just got round to finishing it. It's another great sculpt from Hasslefree Miniatures - Kev White just does this sort of subject better than anyone else, I don't think there are many people that can sculpt female miniatures as well as he can.

It's also amazing how small this miniature is - I have been used to painting Space Marines recently - and she is just tiny in comparison. I don't understand how Ali manages to get the level of detail she does...

Ali has also posted it on Coolminiornot - please show your support!

mike