The Studio McVey Blog

Al-Raavia

2012-01-26T04:11:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the time since the past post - December flew past in such a blur there didn't seem to be a fraction of the time needed to get everything done. January has been similarly busy, and we've been shut away working on various different projects for 2012. The major one is, of course, Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster, but there will be plenty of blog posts about that in the coming months. Suffice to say, we're really excited about it.

This post to just to show some pictures of the new Limited Edition resin release - Al-Raavia. She is the latest release in our series of Faerie inspired miniatures. The concept and sculpt are by the usual team of Stephen Tappin and Yannick Hennebo, and the end result is up to their usual exceptional standard.

She's in the Studio Store now.

In other news, the entries for the Sedition Wars painting competition have been judged and winners announced over on the forums - some stunning painting and converting. Check out the entries here.

cheers!

mike

Kifaro

2011-12-07T06:18:00.001-08:00

After not releasing any Limited Edition resin miniatures for nearly two months - we now have another following hot on the heels of Azumi. Kifaro is just about as different as you can get from Azumi too! A huge and hulking beast, he stands twice the height (and several times the width!) of most of the other miniatures in the range - over 65mm tall, and ten times the weight in resin of our last release.

It's a beautiful sculpt though, one of Allan Carrasco's finest I think - with a naturalness of pose and level detail that are very rare at this scale.

I had hoped to get two more new releases out before Christmas - but this will be the last. We have some great stuff coming though - for both the LE line and the Sedition Wars range, so watch out in the new year.

Just in time for Christmas, we have also added the option to buy gift certificates from the studio store - just look in the bottom right on the hame page of the store.

If you are still waiting for your castings of Azumi - don't worry they are on their way. The demand for that figure took us by surprise, and we've been struggling to keep pace with the orders. We have castings in stock though, and are working through the orders as quickly as possible - thanks for your patience!

cheers!

mike

Azumi

2011-11-23T02:34:00.001-08:00

Well it's been quite some time since the last blog post - and quite some time since the last LE resin release, so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone!

Azumi is release number 21 in the LE resin series - of course some of those are sold out (Lt Kara Black, Isabella and Ar-Fienel), and another couple are close (one very close...). We have some exciting miniatures on the way though - and if all goes to plan, we should have another two releases out before Christmas.

Azumi is available now in the Studio Store.

Azumi is one we're really pleased with - the concept she comes from was fantastic - it's another great piece from Roberto Cirillo, and I'll post it here some time soon. Yannick (again!) was the sculptor - and delivered his usual amazing work. I'll post some pictures of the resin, so you can see the mind-blowing detail he captured.

In other studio news - we have been hard at work behind the scene on the Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster game, so expect some updates and news on that in the new year (if not before).

cheers!

mike

Katya

2011-09-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

I've just added the latest release in the LE resin range to the Studio Store - Katya.This is the latest in our irregular series of James Bond-inspired miniatures - no prizes for anyone who can guess which film this one is inspired by!I've had the pose for this one in the back of my mind for quite a while, and really wanted to see if we could make it work. I think the sculptor (Kev White), did a really great job of getting the balance and weight just right. It's from an original concept by Roberto Cirillo, who I have been working with quite a lot recently (he concepted all the Strain) and his work is fantastic.

It's quite a delicate piece to put together, and I plan to do a little article here on the assembly of the ropes - they just need careful handling.She's in the Studio Store now.mike

Isabella - dark

2011-08-19T03:10:00.000-07:00

Ali has been posting pictures of two different versions of Isabella on the forums - one with a light colour scheme and one with a dark scheme. Here is the finished dark version.

Isabella was the third miniature in the range to sell out, and I think she has always held a special place in Ali's affections as she created the concept. She was supposed to be a loose cross between a Bond Girl and a character from His Dark Materials. Sounds strange, but I think it's a great miniature.

She's up on eBay for those who are interested.

Things have been pretty manic here since I got back from GenCon - I'm planning a post all about that soon, but I will say that it was a great show, and the response to the Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster demos was fantastic. Roll on GenCon 2012!

cheers!

mike

The Strain have been released!

2011-08-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

The first eight Strain miniatures are in the Studio Store now!

At GenCon now and about to start demoing the Battle for Alabaster rules.

More news later!

mike

Phase 4 Heavy Exoform

2011-08-02T02:00:00.001-07:00

Here's the big-daddy of the Strain exoforms (for now at least!) - The Grendlr. All of the sculpts for the Strain miniatures are amazing, but this one is just stunning - a sci-fi horror masterpiece by Jacques-Alexandre Gillois. The Phase 1 sculpts are all by Remy Tremblay, and the Phase 2 and 3 are by Yannick Hennebo - both have excelled themselves with these I think. Brilliant work all round.

The plan is to have all of the Strain miniatures available on the Studio Store this week - most likely Thursday. I'll send out a newsletter when they are in the store and try and post here as well. They are going to be cast in resin to start with, they may not be limited edition, but they will be available for a limited time initially - I'll post more details when I get back from GenCon. We have tried to keep the prices of the resin castings down as low as we possibly can - but it's an expensive process to produce high quality resin castings, so they will be a little more expensive than the metal Sedition Wars miniatures. The quality of casting is amazing though, and all the horrible detail really shines through!

All the Strain miniatures will be available as metal castings at GenCon at the Coll Mini or Not booth - 849 (along with me!)

Off to GenCon today, in a few hours in fact. Please do come along and try out the game if you are there - it's a very early version of the rules, so you'll be doing us a favour by helping out with the play-testing! We are going to have some really nice posters to give away (with a play surface/map on them) if you buy miniatures or try the game. We'll also have all the Studio McVey painted miniatures there on display.

cheers!

mike

Phase 3 Exoforms

2011-08-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here are the two Phase 3 Strain Exoforms we'll be pre-releasing this week - there are larger pictures over on the Sedition Wars site. The Scythe Witch is a whirl of blades and death, and Brimstone is a walking heavy weapons platform. They will be on sale at both GenCon (booth 849) and in the Studio Store. Tomorrow we'll be showing the painted Phase 4 heavy Exoform - The Grendlr.

Phase 2 Protoform

2011-07-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

Following on from the pictures of the Phase 1 Necroforms, here are the images of the painted Phase 2 Strain miniatures. These troopers are created when the Strain nano virus infects a living victim. As the virus takes over the host, it starts to shed away unwanted organic material and begins to form into a different, more deadly construct.

More soon!

mike

Phase 1 Necroforms

2011-07-31T05:56:00.001-07:00

Here are the final painted images on the Strain Phase 1 Necroforms - pretty nasty stuff! The rest of the phases are well under way and I might even be posting the painted phase 2 miniatures later today.

These (and all the others) will be pre-releasing at GenCon 2011 this coming week (4th - 7th August). We will also have them for sale at the same time in the Studio Store.

cheers!

mike

Phase 4

2011-07-29T02:01:00.000-07:00

This is the final preview of the current Strain line - the big-daddy Phase 4 Grendlr. Ali showed a sneak peak of the painting of this over on the Facebook page - it's quite a beast. Really amazing sculpt (as they all are!) - and Beasts of War guys will be showing an exclusive preview of all the sculpts and original concept some time today.

Just a few days left to go before GenCon - we'll be showing the painted miniatures between now and then and giving all the details of the game preview. Still lots to do!

cheers

mike

Brimstone

2011-07-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

Phase 3 Strain Exoforms come in many different forms - they vary from the fast and agile 'Scythe Witch' we showed yesterday, to the fully weaponised construct that is 'Brimstone'. Heavily armoured and capable of devastating dark matter attacks.

Check back here tomorrow when we reveal the terrifying Phase 4 Heavy Exoform.

mike

Phase 3

2011-07-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Here is the first of the Phase 3 Strain we'll be releasing - The Scythe Witch. At this point the Exoform is fully developed into is target manifestation, and the cellular material of the original host has been combined with none-organic materials to create a deadly killing machine.

Phase three Strain can develop into many and varied exoforms, and tomorrow we'll be showing another example.

mike

Phase 2

2011-07-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

It's been longer than I planned since I posted the last of these, so I'm going to have to pack the updates in this week. Just 10 days to go until GenCon and still so much left to do....

Check back here and on the forums regularly!

cheers

mike

The Dark Emissary

2011-07-11T01:44:00.001-07:00

I'm a few days late with posting news on the new release on the blog - but things are pretty busy right now. There's only three weeks to go to GenCon and the amount of preparation still to do is frightening - we're very excited about showing off the new miniatures and previewing the game though.

Anyway - back to The Dark Emissary! Ali and I both really love this piece. It's from a Sam Wood concept and is yet another stunning sculpt from Yannick Hennebo - his eighth for the Limited Edition resin range (with more to come!). We wanted to have something really dark and brooding in the line - and this one has that in spades. It comes complete with two head and weapon variant parts - and I can't decide if I like the bare head or helmet best. I liked the non-helmet better when the sculpt came in. but now it's painted I think I like the helmet version better.

Available now in the Studio Store.

It's the biggest piece we've done so far too - towering over everything else - even Ruby. He's just over 60mm tall (without the base).

Coolminiornot

Lots of updates to come in the coming weeks - more concepts for the Strain first, then pictures of the sculpts - and finally the painted versions. We're really happy with how they are coming out and can't wait to share them with you.

cheers!

mike

The Strain

2011-07-06T07:15:00.001-07:00

I've been talking about this a little on the Studio McVey forums, but I thought I would show the latest concept preview here (as well as the first two).

I am going to be at GenCon this year (August 4th to 7th) previewing the first Sedition Wars game - Battle for Alabaster. It's going to be a very early version of the rules, and the plan is to release them online for download and open up a section of the forums for people to give their feedback and get involved. We want to make sure that we are totally happy with the rules before we publish the finished game - the last thing we want to do it release rules that people don't like.

Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster is going to be a tile based board game, quick and bloody to play, and hopefully exciting and fun. It features a battle between the Colonial Vanguard and a totally new faction - The Strain. We'll be talking more about the Strain in the next few weeks in the run up to GenCon - they are a constantly evolving robotic nano virus who's only objective seems to be to replicate and spread across the galaxy.

The Phase one exoforms (shown below) are where the virus has colonised an already dead host, so the use of the vessel is limited to hunting down and infecting new hosts. The Phase two exoform is an early evolution of a living host - The Strain has started to re-purpose both cellular and non-organic material to evolve into a more useful and deadly form.

We'll be revealing what happens with the Phase three and Phase four exoforms in the next few weeks.

We are going to have a lot of previews during July - and then in early August we will have preview copies of the miniatures (in resin) available in the studio store, to coincide with the release of the alpha version of the rules.

cheers!

mike

New painted miniature available

2011-06-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

Ali has just finished this piece - it's a version on Captain Kara Black with a alternate colour scheme uniform. I think it came out great. I particularly like the face.

She's available now in the Studio Store!

mike

Battle for Alabaster

2011-06-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

I have been talking about this a little on the forums, so I thought I would show the first of The Strain concepts here too. There will be lots more to come in the next few weeks!

mike

New tutorial video

2011-06-03T04:06:00.000-07:00

We just added the latest painting tutorial video to our YouTube channel. In case you haven't been following this, it's related to a thread on the Studio McVey forums where we have been running a little follow-along tutorial on one of the Sedition Wars miniatures.

Initially we were just going to post a quick video to explain the way we blend - but that went down so well, we thought we add some more videos for some of the other techniques used on painting this miniature.

Enjoy!

mike

Kara's last stand

2011-06-01T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've just added the new version of Lt. Kara Black to the Studio Store. We previewed her to the mailing list yesterday and the response has been fantastic so far. The original version of Kara was one of our most popular LE miniatures - surpassed only by Ar-Fienel, so it's nice to have her back in the range again. We're limiting this miniature to 400, rather than the normal 750 - so I'm not sure how long it will last.

Lots of other things going on in the studio at the moment - the next in line for the LE range is nearing completion, and that's looking really nice (quite large too...). I also have a slightly larger piece for The Firebrand in the works which I'm very excited about. We've also been working very hard on another project, and we're getting pretty close to the time we'll be able to announce that - stay tuned!

cheers

mike

Rumble in the Jungle

2011-05-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show some pictures of Ali's latest creation. We've been talking about doing a Jungle-style base for Kara for ages - I originally intended to do that for the Kara I'm painting (and have been since she released) - but it was fairly obvious that wasn't going to happen any time soon!

I like her painting on this one even better than the original - the face in particular is just amazing.

Here's her cmon posting.

Up on eBay for those who are interested!

I have also just added a new product to the Store. I've had the Firebrand bases set ready to go for quite a while, but have only just got round to officially releasing it. Really nice detail and casting on these.

I did hope to release the new LE Kara this week, but we had a minor production hiccup, so she'll be on sale next week.

cheers!

mike

Triples

2011-05-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

This weekend (21st and 22nd of May) is Triples, and as we actually live in Sheffield we thought it made good sense to go along as a trader. I've never been to Triples before, but have heard great things about it from lots of people. We'll be taking the full range on Studio McVey LE resins and the Sedition Wars ranges - we are also going to have some preview copies of the new LE miniature we hoped to have ready for Salute.

It's called Kara's Last Stand and is a conversion of the original miniature that spawned the entire Sedition Wars range. It shows Kara in the same fight as the first version, but looking even more bruised and battered. She's out of ammo for the heavy SMG and is down to knife and pistol to finish-off her unseen opponent.

As it's a conversion of the original, we thought it right to reduce the the Limited Edition run to 400, rather than the normal 750. She'll go on general release either next week, or early in June - depending on how production goes. We'll have a limited number of castings available at Triples, so if you're there and want one - come and see us early.

In other news, the second part of the blending video tutorial we put together is up - check it out.

Cheers!

mike

Blending tutorial video

2011-05-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

Ali has been running a little project over on the Studio McVey forums for the past week - painting the same miniature as one of our members so she can demonstrate how we paint. It will mainly be illustrated with stage-by-stage photos, but we thought we would take the opportunity to do something we have been thinking about for quite a while now - shoot some video.

You can see the original thread here, and the video itself is embedded below.

This is an ongoing project for us - but we're reasonably pleased with the results. There are still quite a few technical problems to iron out - but we have some exciting plans for the future - stay tuned!

mike

The Blight Witch

2011-04-29T05:13:00.001-07:00

We previewed this miniature ay Salute a couple of weeks ago, and she proved to be very popular - she is now on general release in the Studio Store!

As I mentioned in the previous post - this miniature is from an original concept by Shannon Tindle. As Shannon works as a character designer in the animation industry, we wanted to draw on some of the themes and design ideas that you might come across in that field. So drawing on some of the dramatic theatricality you might see in early Disney films, he came up with this. I'm going to be painting a version of this miniature myself and will be sharing a little painting diary here (and on the forums) in the coming weeks.

I think JAG has done an amazing job of capturing the slightly stylised nature of the concept while still retaining his realistic rendering - I'll be showing Shannon's concept art here shortly so you can judge for yourselves.

cheers!

mike

Salute 2011

2011-04-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

This Saturday is Salute 2011 at the Excel Center in London. Last year was our first show as Studio McVey and we had a great time - Ali even managed to win best in show at the painting Competition with her Ar-Fienel. Things have been so busy lately that she hasn't had the chance to put another entry together, but we will have some new and exciting miniatures there for you to buy.

First up is the Blight Witch. This is going to release properly next week, but we are going to have castings to sell at the show. This is yet another great sculpt from Jacques-Alexandre Gillois, this time from a concept by Shannon Tindle. Shannon is one of the genius character designers who worked on Coraline (amongst other things), but he's a miniatures guy too, and it was a real pleasure to work with him on this one. I'm quite sure it won't be the last piece he'll do for Studio McVey. I'll be showing his beautiful concept here when the Blight Witch officially releases next week. JAG and Thomas David (who sculpted Vitharr and Sharro for us) will actually be in the booth right next to ours at Salute.

We will also have two new Limited Edition Resin miniatures from the Sedition Wars line. We have previewed Vokker here recently, but we will also have a Vanguard male trooper on sale. Both these miniatures will be available in strictly limited numbers though - the full LE resin runs will only be between 50 and 75 copies of each. After that they will only be available as metal castings.

Speaking of Sedition Wars - we will be releasing the metal castings of the first five Firebrand rebel miniatures at Salute, I'm not sure how many of each will will have though. Up until now, these have only been available as Limited Edition resins, but from now on they will be available as unlimited metal castings.

There is one final thing - but as I'm not 100% sure we'll have it ready in time, I'm going to keep it as a surprise. If we do have castings there - they will be in very limited quantity, so you'd better come and see us early just in case...!

So lots of new stuff! The really good news is that we will be running special Salute only prices - and almost everything in the Studio McVey ranges will be included.

We are also going to have Daral from ElodieMae with us - and will be selling his miniatures and bases on our stand.

We're at stand TG03 (right next to the painting comp stage) hope to see you there!

mike

Ar-Fiach Concept

2011-03-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

Just a really quick post to show the original concept for Ar-Fiach - another really nice piece from Steve Tappin. Beautifully brought to life by Yannick Hennebo and available now in the Studio Store. Steve also concepted the first group of Firebrand miniatures - and they are currently away being mastered for metal - we hope to have the castings ready in the next couple of weeks - in time for Salute.

Salute is only a few weeks away and we're starting to get everything ready - we'll have all our miniatures on sale there, and hopefully a couple of new releases. One of those is being mastered for resin at the moment, and another just needs a few tweaks to be perfect. We're really looking forward to Salute again this year, so if your going to be there, please pop along and say hello.

I'm currently working hard on a project that won't see the light of day until later this year - but Ali and I are already pretty excited about it. Stay tuned for news on that (but don't hold your breath just yet...).

Cheers!

mike

Ar-Fiach

2011-03-16T07:44:00.001-07:00

All the news seems to have been about the Sedition Wars range recently - so I thought we'd better put something out for the Limited Edition resin range!

Ar-Fiach is another in our irregular series of Faerie miniatures - so far we have Ar-Fienel (now all sold out) and Al-Vianna on one side, and Y'Sala and Y'Sydira on the other. Ar-Fiach tips things back into the light, but maybe not for too long...

The others are available in the Studio Store.

This one is another fantastic sculpt from Yannick, and based on a concept by Stephen Tappin (site under construction). It's a really beautifully detailed, evocative piece. I'll post the concept here soon, along with some more pictures of the resin casting.

In Sedition Wars news, I am expecting the first batch of Vokker resins soon, so we should be releasing the limited run of that soon - possibly even next week. Ali is hard at work painting it as I type, and it's looking really nice. The first batch of Firebrand miniatures are away being mastered in metal at the moment, and I hope to have those on sale in time for Salute next month - more news on that soon. I recently added the resin Vanguard base set to the Studio Store.

cheers!

mike

Firebrand preview - Vokker Dargu

2011-03-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

Just got the first resins of this miniature, so I wanted to give a quick preview of him. He'll be available as a very limited resin run shortly over on the main website, then he'll be off to be mastered in metal. In the mean time, here's some background.

All the other Sedition Wars miniatures are available in the Store.
-------------------------------------

Conscript Vokker Dargu
Height: 1.95 meters
Weight: 92 kilograms
Eyes: Cybernetic implants – no retinal imprint
Hair: Black
Gene-Index: Human/ Pre-augment Conscript
Inception Date: 201.10.4036 Solar Reckoning
Augments:
· Kyoshi Heavy Industries AG field generator
· Omnium Systems Meta-Cortical implant
· Kyoshi Heavy Industries Integrated Control Optics

Profile:
Corporate insubordination charges led to Vokker Dargu’s downgrade from Full Citizen to Conscript Servile as an industrial technician third class. Due to an aptitude with gravity manipulators and a bio-signature with a low rejection threshold to cybernetic implantation, he was involuntarily augmented and promoted to industrial technician first class. After serving in this capacity on good behaviour for thirteen years, his conscription restraints and cortical clamp were removed, and he was granted Provisional Release autonomy.

During a warranty based upgrade to his meta-cortical implant an unclassified code-entity breached his cortical firewall. The entity obliterated AI personality controls designed to keep his mind in check. System upgrade records indicate that the entity transferred in during an allegedly secure software upgrade. Without AI fail-safes in place, Vokker was free to act without worry of personality suppression.

His escape resulted in the deaths of twenty-eight medical and sixteen security personnel.
As per Rogue Conscript Protocol a warrant for Terminal Reclamation was issued 028.23.4039.1
Traceback disable commands to his cybernetics have failed and his whereabouts were unknown until the Conscript insurrection on Achilles.

Vanguard intelligence analysis indicates that his systems have been modified beyond current specifications, and he has been altered cosmetically to conceal his identity. His bio-signature was present during the co-ordinated attack on the Vanguard Bastion Arms of Sorrow, in which four hundred and seventy three Vanguard troopers and twenty four SDG elite were slain before the Arms of Sorrow could repel the six thousand attacking Conscripts. He was not among the casualties of that battle.

It is likely Vokker is serving as a combat co-ordinator in the Conscript uprising – Using tactical systems and precognition to lead pro-active counter-attacks on Vanguard forces. To date his bio-signs have been detected in fifty seven combat incidents with Vanguard troops.
He remains at large.

Capabilities:
Qualified for a Master level license with an AG generator, Vokker is an expert with kinetic fields and gravity suppression. His AG implant is capable of shifting a hundred kilograms of mass without strain. For manipulating larger masses he must be coupled with an external power supply. Even without external power, he can strike with kinetics to inflict lethal blows to anything within range of his AG field effectors.

His meta-cortex implant is a moderate grade cyber-brain. Vokker’s mind may house one or more expert systems capable of serving as tactical analysis and intelligence gathering meta-routines. Note that the Omnium implant allows limited quantum prediction, granting Vokker low grade precognitive ability and enhanced predictive instinct. Combined with his proficiency in AG field manipulation, he may be capable of deflecting directed projectile weapons fire. His sixth sense will be able to detect dangerous situations with a moderate degree of certainty. This is probably why he has avoided Reclamation for so long.

The Kyoshi Control Optics suite linked to his meta-cortex allows Vokker to index and co-ordinate the efforts of several other conscripts through remote communication. This system no doubt aids him in tactical unit co-ordination.

All of these systems are well concealed. Vokker can easily pass for a full citizen - albeit augmented - as long as his conscription transponder is suppressed and his conscript ID tattoo remains concealed. Assuming that these safeguards have not been removed already.
This combination of systems and his inconspicuous appearance makes Vokker effectively a sleeper agent capable of sensing events minutes before they occur and fading away from danger undetected. In addition, the rogue electronic entity that is currently installed within his cortex may have further capabilities that enhance him beyond his current specifications. His termination is a high priority, and reclamation of his systems vital to understanding the threat facing the Vanguard and the Solar Conglomerate.

Brute bodyguard

2011-02-17T06:38:00.001-08:00

I've just added a new miniature to the Sedition Wars website, and the Studio Store. This is the Limited Edition resin version of the Jaggernat Heavy - and it is a very limited run. We're only going to cast 75 of them in resin and when they are gone, it won't be available again until the metal version launches in the coming months (not quite sure when this one will be out, but it wont be for a little while).

It's a brute of a miniature - standing 45mm tall and very nearly as wide. He comes with a 40mm scenic resin base - and that will be available separately in resin when the metal Jaggernat launches.

Quick update on the metal range - It's looking like the very end of this month or the very beginning of march for the first group of Vanguard castings.

cheers!

mike

Firebrand concepts and metal update

2011-02-10T01:57:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to post these Firebrand concepts for quite a while now - great drawings by Steve Tappin. He's concepts a couple more too - one of which is sculpted and awaiting painting, the other is currently being sculpted.

Finally some news on the metal release. The first batch of Vanguard miniatures (which are currently only available in resin) are currently being cast and I should be releasing them in the next two week - might even be sooner. The casting quality looks great and we're just working out the pricing.

The resin stocks are also getting low in the store for the Vanguard LE resin miniatures, here's what we have left in the store (after which they will only be available in metal). I'm taking the resin range out of the store once the metals are available - if we have any left we'll probably just sell them at conventions.

Captain Kara Black - 18
Morgan Vade - 4 - EDIT - this is now out of stock and won't be available until the metal range launches.
Akosha Nama - 14
Barker Zosa (he will be available in two different configurations in metal, one with each weapon variant) - 16
Trooper with Las Carbine - 14
Trooper with Multi Launcher - 14

The same will be true of the Firebrand resins - once the metals are available, I'll take the resins out of the store. They won't be in metal for at least six weeks though.

cheers!

mike

TGN awards and shipping news

2011-01-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to post quickly about the Tabletop Gaming New awards. Studio McVey managed to snag a first place and a runner-up in The Reader's Choice section, and three first places and a runner up in the Editor's Choice! Needless to say, we're absolutely delighted!

Many thanks to all who voted for us - I can't begin to tell you how much it means to us.

I also wanted to warn people who have ordered Ruby recently, that the packages are very slow going out at the moment. It's been a bit of a catalogue of disasters with the production vendor since mid December - heavy snow falls, missing deliveries, failed moulds, family tragedies - they've had it all. All those things coupled with the normal Christmas postal madness have hit our production schedule very hard. Things do seem to be back to normal now though and we are starting to produce decent numbers of castings every day. It is going to take some time to get caught up though - she has been very popular...

If you are thoroughly sick of waiting, I am more than happy to fully refund your order - just email me (address on the main website). If you can be patient with us a little longer it would be appreciated - it's been quite a testing few weeks.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

mike

Edit - I have just posted an update on this in the Forums, and will be posting all future updates there.

Ruby concepts

2010-12-20T07:36:00.001-08:00

Thought I would just do a quick post to show Sam Wood's concepts for Ruby - really great drawings as always. One of the things I have always loved about Sam's concepts, is he is great at creating evocative characters - not just designs.

Ruby has been unbelievably popular so far - really far more than we were anticipating. The high demand, coupled with some unavoidable delays with casting (mainly the weather, but some unfortunate other things too), means that we are going to be a little slow fulfilling all the orders. The first batch will ship out in a few days and we will be packing and shipping between Christmas and New year - hopefully we can get it all out in the next week to ten days.

Thanks in advance for your patience - I'm sure most people are aware of what the bad weather has done to the UK's shipping systems!

cheers

mike

Wild, wild West

2010-12-16T05:19:00.000-08:00

Just added the latest release in the Limited Edition resin range to the Studio Store - Ruby.

We previewed this one to the mailing list yesterday, and the response so far has been fantastic. The original concept was by Sam Wood and Jacques-Alexandre Gillois pulled an absolutely stunning sculpt out of the bag - the detail and 'realism' (not that cowgirls on dinosaurs are particularly real - but you know what I mean) has to be seen to be believed.

Great paint-scheme by Ali too - she's been putting in some long hours at the painting desk recently. With this one and all the Sedition Wars miniatures to do, she's been pretty busy!

I'll post pictures of the resin, and the concept art soon - either here or on the forum (possibly both).

cheers!

mike

Finally...

2010-12-03T05:06:00.000-08:00

The Sedition Wars site is finally live! Not only that - but we also have both a new store and a forum. We've been frantically trying to get everything ready to go live at once, and bar unforeseen mishaps (and there are almost certain to be some), it looks like everything is working.

There have also been some changes over at the main studiomcvey.com site - mainly that we no longer have any direct e-commerce functions there, but we have also added links for the new websites and forum.

So check out the new stuff and let me know what you think in the forums.

cheers!

mike

Another one bites the dust.

2010-11-10T10:56:00.000-08:00

Well we've just sold the last of our stock of Lt. Kara Black, making her the second sell out miniature in the Limited Edition resin line. Kara has been consistently popular since she released just under a year ago, and I always thought she was going to be the first to go - until we released Ar-Fienel who rushed past her in about half the time on sale.

If you missed buying Kara from us, and still want one, not all is lost - Coolminiornot still has some left in stock, but once those have gone that really is it - all 750 (save for our few personal copies) will be gone.

You're going to be seeing quite a bit more of Kara soon though - though it will be Captain Kara Black and the scale will be a little smaller. We just received the first small batch of resin castings of the Sedition Wars version of her - and they look absolutely great. Beautiful clean castings. We plan to have the first limited edition resins of the Sedition Wars miniatures on sale by the end of the month. The unlimited metal versions should be (reasonably) soon afterwards.

Thanks to everyone who bought her!

Just a quick update on Al-Vianna - we have just finished packing the latest batch of orders, and they will be shipped tomorrow. That should bring us up to date for orders we received up until this morning. Apologies for the delay in getting the orders out - she's been incredibly popular.

mike

Edit - I forgot to say in the original post. We haven't forgotten about the prize draw for this miniature - we'll be picking a certificate number soon, and the winner will win the Studio painted version of the miniature. We'll announce that here when it happens.

Confirmed kill.

2010-11-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to share the latest of the Sedition Wars characters - Akosha Nama.

Akosha is the sniper currently attached to Captain Black's command group, and is equipped with a 713-Maglev gauss projectile rifle, and several 'special duty' rounds.

I'll be adding small bios for all the characters we've shown so far to the website when that finally goes live. We're aiming to have the limited Edition resins on sale before the end of the month - and they really will be quite limited, we don't plan to do resin runs anywhere near as large as the ones we do for the current Limited Edition range. Once the resins are gone they will only be available as metal castings.

cheers!

mike

Al-Vianna concept art

2010-10-29T02:53:00.001-07:00

Here's the concept art for Al-Vianna, a beautiful piece by Steve Tappin. As you can see, there are some subtle changes from the actual miniature - mainly the lack of fish on the finished piece. We tried the miniature with them swimming through the dress, but I just didn't think it worked the way I wanted, so we decided to do the sculpt without. I think it was just one of those things that can work well on a piece of artwork - giving it an almost magical-realism feel, but it can be hard to pull off in 3D. The artwork has a strong pre raphaelite feel to it, and this was captured really well with the sculpt - and painting.

The response to her this week has been exceptional and we have many orders to get packed and shipped. Inevitably, there is going to be a slight delay with getting them out - but hopefully not too long. The first (fairly small) batch will ship tomorrow, and then we'll be shipping more from early next week. We certainly hope to have all the order placed this week, out by the middle of next week.

In Sedition Wars news, we're going to be sharing the latest character shortly, most likely this weekend. So check back soon and have a look.

cheers!

mike

Water magic

2010-10-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

With all the excitement of the Sedition Wars announcement, it has been easy to forget it's new release time! Actually, that's not entirely true, we have been excited about this miniature for quite a while - we both think she's going to be pretty popular.

We sent out the mailing list pre-release offer on Monday evening, and if that's anything to go by, it's going to be hard to keep her in stock. We've only had one miniature in the range that sold as well before release, and she's sold out now...

I think Al-Vianna is a stunning piece - she's full of atmosphere, and the detail is beautifully rendered. She comes as a single piece casting, but still manages to be full of life and movement. I'll show the concept art here in the next day or so - and as always with Steve's work, it's fantastic.

In other news, there are going to be more Sedition Wars sneak-peaks in the next few days, I have a several things to share, so just need to decide which one to talk about first!

cheers

mike

A little background

2010-10-19T01:22:00.001-07:00

Sorry, this update comes a little later than promised (no real surprise there though...), but here it is none the less. I thought I would do something a little different this time and share some of of the background story behind Sedition Wars - in the form of a short piece of fiction by Rob Baxter. Rob's been a fantastic help with the background, and universe building side of the line, and there will be plenty more of his work on the site when it goes live.

Hope you enjoy it!

Captain Kara Black

When I was promoted up the Vanguard line, it wasn’t something I thought I had wanted. At first I thought the promotion was SolCon’s way of decorating someone who made good PR. The Vanguard had been getting a bad rap what with losing Cpt. Gheried to the conscripts, and how we had handled the riots on Vassal and Feor. That hologram of me taking on the spider mammoth on Ashraf – colonist evac lifts in the background, and me piling rounds of hot fire into a ton of chitin and muscle. Valour, honour, and standing between the darkness and the peoples of the Solar Conglomerate. I guess that image alone was all they needed to kick the recruitment campaign into high gear.

While I recovered from my war wounds, they made a hero out of me. Overnight LT. Kara Black got promoted. I learned about the status upgrade while nanotech was still purging mammoth poison from my body in the tank. Some official from Vanguard High Command dropped into my dreamtime simulation and delivered the news. Newsfeeds into my sim-sleep fed me the details. I was a hero, the hologram splashed across media feeds throughout the core worlds. I was the pin-up recruiting banner for the Vanguard.

Awkward.

I’m not as pretty as the holo though, I suffered some battle damage. The medics had to replace my arm with a prosthetic – the toxins from the spider mammoth had gnawed away any viable nerve endings for a cloned replacement. It started as a scratch really, but the poison those things spit could kill a Chagrin blade-ox. I had been lucky, and stemmed up to the gills on Accel and a dozen other battle stimulants at the time.

By the time I spilled out of tank rehab the cyberlimb wasn’t the only change. My uniform had been changed out for a Captain’s tunic and battledress. Now I have a whole company under my command. Two personal squads, and a cadre of specialists. I'm just getting used to being saluted to all the time. And finally, I just found out we’re shipping to Alabaster.

The up side to this is that I don’t have to do a tour of home worlds and recruiting stations. Awesome.

The down side is the situation on Alabaster.

Some group called the Firebrand have taken over the Alabaster star port, the planetary defense grid, and a handful of lunar mass drivers. Over 80,000 organized conscripts in revolt, paralyzing an entire world. How the hell did they do that? The tech and logistics required to slip the control net for these guys is mind-boggling. Intel is saying outside help.

Some say the Firebrand are the equal of the Vanguard in many respects, they lack training but they make up for it in conviction. It doesn’t help that most of them are equipped with industry grade cybernetics or genetic augmentations. They are formidable in close quarters combat, I'm not sure anyone has tested their logistical and tactical limitations. Well, we're about too.

After two months in the tank I’m itching for a fight.

Medic!

2010-10-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

Here's the second miniature in the Sedition Wars line - the medical officer from Kara's squad, Corpsman Morgan Vade.

I'm going to leave this post really short, and update again before the end of the week.

cheers!

mike

Captain Kara Black

2010-10-07T08:54:00.001-07:00

Just a really quick post to show a rear view of the new Captain Kara Black miniature along with the original concept art. The concept is by Sam Wood (who did the original Kara concept). Sam drew the concepts for all of the first release, and they were all sculpted by Kev White (who sculpted the original Kara) - there's nothing like a bit of consistency!

We've had a really great response since we announced the new range, thanks to everyone who commented here or on other forums - I'm even more excited about this project now than I was before, I hope we can live up the the expectation.

The initial release of miniatures is going to feature this version of Kara, and the other members of her specialist team of Colonial Vanguard troops. I'll be previewing the other miniatures here in the next few weeks - starting with Corpsman Morgan Vade, the squad's medical officer, who I will be showing here early next week.

I've been working with a lot of talented people on this project so far, and I'll get round to talking about all of them in future blog posts, but I just wanted to start by thanking Tears of Envy for her great design work on the logo and other elements she has worked on. Whether you know it or not, you will more than likely have seen Tammy's work on other amazing gaming industry products, such as Incursion. Check out the fantastic work she has just done on her print and play game - Dune Express.

talk to you soon!

mike

What Kara did next...

2010-10-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Okay - time to reveal a little about the new range we've been working on! We have quite a lot to talk about with this project, but I'm going to start slow and just show one of the initial miniatures - and it's a familiar character.

The inspiration for this range comes from the Lt Kara Black miniature we released in the Limited Edition resin series. She has always been one of our favourite (and most popular) miniatures, and it just seemed she immediately had a strong character with an interesting story behind her. Indeed, the original plan was to release her as part of a vignette showing her in the heat of battle - as seen in the artwork. For one reason or another (mainly the higher cost and risk involved) we decided not to make the beast - but to come back and re-visit the idea later. When we started to think about her again, we decided to take a different approach and develop the background and universe around her into a 30mm gaming range. The end result is Sedition Wars.

As you can see, there's not a great deal to see on the new website at present, but all that will change in the next month or so. I'll be adding regular updates to the blog about the development, and hope to have the website live and miniatures on sale in the next 4-6 weeks. Initially they will be available as very limited resin releases (most likely around 100 castings), followed by unlimited metal runs. Why do both? For me it's simple - we want to produce a small number of 'perfect' copies of each figure to appeal to painters and collectors. I realise that the price point for resins could be a prohibitive factor for those wanting to game with them, so the main runs will be in high quality metal.

This isn't going to be a huge and sprawling range, it's going to start slow and grow fairly organically. Making high quality miniatures is an expensive business, and we certainly don't plan on over-stretching ourselves. We have some really exciting things planned though - and I believe we'll have a fantastic line of miniatures.

I'll update again in the next couple of days.

cheers!

mike

Beauty and the Bot resins

2010-10-02T02:27:00.000-07:00

Two posts in two days - must be a record for me. Actually this one is a bit of a cheat as it's going to be very short. I just wanted to share the pictures of the resin castings of our latest piece. Ali said this one was a joy to paint - very clean and precise sculpting and casting. I really want to paint it myself, I have a completely different colour scheme in mind.

The next update will be on Monday - and I'll be talking about the new Studio McVey miniatures line. Anyone who picked up the latest Mantic Journal will have got a sneak peak already though.

cheers!

mike

Bot concept art

2010-10-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

What a week it's been. We're finally moved, and at long last the broadband is working after four days of being disconnected from the world. The office is a total mess, but I've cleared enough space to set up a desk for my computer and see what I've missed. We have quite a lot of catching up to do, not least with the promised updates!

First of all, here is the concept art for Beauty and the Bot - an absolutely beautiful drawing my Christophe Madura. This was one of those concepts that needed practically no art direction, Christophe just immediately 'got' what we wanted. Really great work.

2nd up date will be tomorrow morning, and that will be some pictures of the resin. More news to follow after that...

cheers!

mike

Pulp!

2010-09-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

Well another month has flown past without many posts here from me - I could apologise again, but the apologies and promises of articles are probably sounding a little hollow by now! It has been an exceptionally busy month though, as well as moving house and office (still in progress...), we have also been working very hard on the new Studio McVey miniatures line. There is going to be preview of that in the second Mantic Journal, and I'll be sharing some news and pictures here in the next few days.

Anyway - I've just added this months Limited Edition resin release to the Studio Store. Inspired by 1950's pulp movies like Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still, and with more than a nod to Metropolis, we are proud to bring you - Beauty and the Bot!

I have to say I absolutely love this one - and just couldn't be happier with how it came out. Both Christophe Madura and Yannick were right on the money with the concept and sculpt. It's exactly how I imagined the scene to be, the barely conscious Greta, being carried down the steps of the palace by the mighty Zyndor!

I'll add more pictures of the miniature here in the next couple of days (honestly!) and definitely the concept art - which is absolutely beautiful. Look out for the announcement on the new miniatures range too!

Thanks

mike

Gone!

2010-08-25T00:29:00.001-07:00

That's it - Ar-Fienel is completely sold out from the Studio Store. The only place you're going to get one now is from coolminiornot - I sent them a small re-stock last week and I don't think they will have received them yet. Should be today or tomorrow though.

After they are gone she will be officially sold out!

As I said in the previous post - we're sad to see her disappear from the range, but happy she's been so popular.

Cheers!

mike

Going, going... Nearly gone.

2010-08-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

Well I have just sent out the 700th Ar-Fienel (and have a few more orders for her left to fill), so that officially means we have less than 50 castings left before the entire run of 750 will be gone. We always keep numbers 1-10 (for the sculptor, studio painting copies, and a rainy day), but we won't be selling what's left of those any time soon.

She's been phenomenally successful considering she was only released in late April - passing the high water mark set by Kara Black (who is not too far behind in sales...) about a month ago. It'll be sad to loose her from the range, but we're delighted to have our first sell-out miniature.

So this is just a warning - if you want an Ar-Fienel, you'd better move quite quickly, as I don't expect the current stock to last too long.

cheers!

mike

Y'Sidyra

2010-08-05T03:22:00.000-07:00

I've just updated the main website and store with the latest release in our Limited Edition resin range. Y'Sidyra is a seven-piece resin kit, and I think it's our most exciting and dynamic release so far. I particularly love the movement of the miniature - he looks both active and balanced at the same time - quite a difficult thing to pull off in a sculpt.

This is Yannick's forth sculpt for us - and I think they just keep getting better and better. The base is a work or art in it's own right!

Ali's painted version is extremely striking - and the Japanese inspired colour scheme really suits the sculpt. She took plenty of pictures of this one while she was painting it, so we'll have no excuse for lack of tutorials this time. Hopefully we'll have the first early next week. The painted version is on Coolminiornot - please show it some love!

Pictures of the resin and concept art will follow soon.

cheers!

mike

GenCon

2010-08-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

This week sees GenCon 2010 kicking off in Indianapolis,USA. Unfortunately Studio McVey won't be attending this year's show in person, but we'll be there in spirit. Coolminiornot will be the exclusive stockist of the Studio McVey Limited Edition miniature range, and should have all of them available at their booth. They will also have a few of the Studio painted miniatures in their display cabinets. Check out their booth - #826 in the back of the Exhibitor's hall.

If you've never been before - GenCon is quite an amazing event. Four days of non-stop gaming (literally, there's always something on, day or night). Hopefully we'll be able to have our own booth in the coming years - but for the moment, make sure you stop by the Coolminiornot booth and have a look at our miniatures.

cheers!

mike

Board art

2010-07-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since we published any how-to articles on the blog - so this is really long overdue. We always have the best of intentions every time we put a new miniature out, and discuss all sorts of different things we could publish tutorials on. When we try and find the time to put them together, it's a different story.

This is just a quick run through on how Ali achieved the graphic pattern on Lisbeth's sky-board.

I'm going to leave the text to a minimum as the pictures are fairly self-explanatory. The key to this technique is the use of masking tape to create the design - in this case we used Tamyia masking tape as it's really smooth and finely textured, perfect for precise work. You can gently stick it to clean plastic card to cut it, and it peels away and re-sticks several times without leaving a trace. Try and use a brand new scalpel blade to ensure the cuts are as neat as possible. As with all of this sort of freehand work, a great deal is in the preparation - if you plan and sketch the design before you start, it will be far easier.

You can apply the colour to the exposed areas with either a brush or a sponge - both will give different effects. Try not to over-work it though or the paint can bleed under the edges of the tape and spoil the design.

The first pictures (1-6) show the basic weathered paint being built up on the board. This is achieved with thin, patchy washes - deeper at first, and building up the highlights over the top. You really don't need to be too neat with this - the desired effect is a battered, well-used board.

Pictures 6a-10 show the tape being cut, applied and the first colour added. Pictures 8-16 show the second application of tape, and the next colour. The last two pictures (17 and 18) show the edges being worked on a little and some definition added to the board itself.

There are plenty of different applications for this sort of masking work - it's great for vehicles and large smooth surfaces.

We're going to do another quick tutorial for the back side of the board to show the lighting on the hover engines.

cheers!

mike

Lisbeth concept art

2010-07-16T01:09:00.000-07:00

Just thought I would share the original concept art for Lisbeth. This one went through quite a few different incarnations before we settled on a slightly darker, more serious look. The drawing is by Christophe Madura.

Just a quick update on shipping orders - we have been exceptionally busy so things are running a little behind (no change there then...) - the good news is we shipped a lot of orders yesterday and more will go out today. After that we'll be close to up to date.

We are also planning to do some how-to articles about Lisbeth - in fact Ali is working on the first at the moment so I hope to have that up here early next week. We always plan to do more painting content for the blog - but the busier things get, the harder it is to find the time. Hopefully we'll find a way to do more in the future - we always considered it an important part of Studio McVey.

In slightly more cryptic news, we are finally just about to start pushing putty on a new Studio McVey range. I won't say any more than that at present, but I hope they will see the light of day by October...

cheers!

mike

Lisbeth

2010-07-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

New release time!

I'm know many miniature collectors in the UK grew up reading the weekly comic 2000AD, just as I did - so I'm sure quite a lot of people will immediately see where the inspiration for this miniature came from. The name is also a clue for where we got the inspiration for doing a tough, streetwise female character...

Funnily enough - after planning to do this miniature for a the last few months, we had just put the sculpt into a mould when this popped up on Coolminiornot. He just beat us to the punch! Really lovely piece though.

The concept for this was by Christophe Madura, the creative genius behind the Smog miniature range and the person who concepted our first ever release - The Raven Priest. The sculpt is by Yannick - who seems to be fast becoming a permanent fixture in our range!

I have to say, of all our releases so far - this is the one I think works best as a composed scene. I think she looks just great.

She's in the Studio Store on the website now.

mike

Darkness Resin

2010-06-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

Just a really quick post to show the resin of Darkness - quite an odd looking beast, but I think he's got a really brooding sense of power and danger about him. I don't think I would want to meet him when he's fully formed...

I meant to post this last week - but the guys over at Dragonpainting.net have been holding a painting competition featuring our very own Pan. You can see the results for yourself at the site. The results were just great - all of them had a totally different take on the miniature. I particularly liked all of the bases - we put a lot of thought into the bases we supply our miniatures on (if they come with sculpted bases), so it's really great to see some thought going into how the painted versions are presented.

Great stuff! It's really exciting for Ali and I to see people painting Studio McVey miniatures.

Just a quick shipping and orders update. Things have been very busy since we got back from the US, so we are just a few days behind with orders. We're getting a re-stock of Ar-Fienel (who has been astoundingly popular - odds on she'll be the first miniature we sell out of...) tomorrow, but apart from that we have everything in stock and should be up to date with orders by the middle of this week.

cheers!

mike

Y'Sala resin

2010-06-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

I thought I would share a shot of Y'Sala on her own so you can see the details all the way round, it's a amazingly detailed sculpt. I find the detail on the top of the stocking particularly astonishing. Someone asked me if the clothing was press-mouded, and I can tell you that none of it is - Yannick sculpted the whole thing traditionally. Pretty amazing... I've also got a single picture of Darkness that I will post here soon.

Just a quick shipping update - as of today we're up to date with orders placed before we released Y'Sala, so if you are waiting for something from before then - it's on the way to you. We'll start shipping out orders for Y'Sala either today or Monday, and there shouldn't be any delays after that. We have plenty of stock of everything, and now we're back in the Studio, we'll get back to regular shipping procedures.

Cheers!

mike

Y'Sala and Darkness

2010-06-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

I have just added the new release to the Studio Store over on the Studio McVey main website - and there are no prizes for guessing what it is! The response to Y'Sala and Darkness at Salute was great, and we have had a similarly enthusiastic response from our mailing list (just in case you don't know, I generally pre-release miniatures to members of our list a couple of days early).

I did promise to show pictures here last week - but with one thing and another (travelling back from the US, BA strikes and jet lag), I just never found the time. Apologies for that - but I do plan to have several blog posts in the next couple of weeks to make up for it.

We're thrilled with this set -it the first double release we have ever done and the sculptor (Yannick - who is fast becoming a Studio McVey favourite), also drew the concept. We supply the set with a 40mm base, but Y'Sala is also tagged to fit on a base on her own.

I've got pictures of the two pieces separate from each other, so I'l post those tomorrow.

Cheers!

mike

Salute and status update

2010-05-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry things have been quiet from Studio McVey for the last couple of weeks, truth be told it's been incredibly busy for us, and it's been hard to find the time to post.

Salute was a really great event for us - it's was a tremendously busy day and we had a great deal of fun meeting people we had only previously talked to online. Ali entered the painting competition (her first ever!), and managed to win the overall prize with her Studio version of Ar-Fienel. I was absolutely speechless when she walked back to the booth with arms full of prizes - I just wish I'd taken a picture, the look on her face was priceless! There are a couple of small pictures on the Salute site if you click the 2010 winners link.

Right after Salute we had Adam and Anna from Kingdom Death staying with us for a couple of days - great people and they are making a wonderful job on their miniatures. Quite inspiring to see some fresh ideas.

I'm actually writing this from the US - we're spending a little time over here on some work matters, so we have temporarily re-located Studio McVey here for a couple of weeks. It shouldn't make much difference to orders - except people who order from the US will get orders quicker, and people who order from Europe will get them a little slower. Apologies if you are adversely affected by this arrangement - it's strictly temporary and normal service will be resumed soon!

We are a little behind with filling orders though - Ar-Fienel has been extremely popular and it's been hard to keep pace. The last two months have been great for us - first Isabella and now the new release have both gone down really well. That's the problem with us being such a small operation (just Ali and I!) - when things go well it can be a struggle to keep up. We're not far behind though - just a few days in fact, and I certainly hope to have all outstanding orders filled before the end of the week. We have increased our production capacity quite a lot too - so I certainly think we'll never see the sort of delays we had with Kara again!

As always - thanks for your patience and understanding if your order takes just a little longer to get to you than normal.

I plan to update the blog a few times in the next week. I have a few things I want to show here - the concept art for Ar-Fienel, some more shots of Ali's painted version, and some pictures of next month's release. Pictures of Y'Sala have already made it online - taken at Salute, so I have been meaning to show some official pictures. I'll definitely get to that soon - she's an amazing piece and I'm excited to share some pictures of her.

cheers for now!

mike

Ar-Fienel

2010-04-23T00:59:00.000-07:00

New release time!

Members of the mailing list got to see this yesterday (and it's already made it on to quite a few forums!) - but here is April's release - Ar-Fienel.

We're absolutely delighted with this miniature - it's a great addition to the Studio McVey range. This is Yannick Hennebo's first sculpt for us, and it certainly won't be his last. The concept is from Steve Tappin, and with all the fine detail he put into it, I almost wish we could have done her in a larger scale - 54mm Studio McVey miniatures...? One day maybe.

I'm going to keep this short as we are rushing round like crazy, getting ready for Salute - we leave in a couple of hours and still have a frightening amount left to do. Hope to see some of you there!

cheers

mike

Salute!

2010-04-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

Salute is this Saturday (April 23rd), and it's going to be Studio McVey's first show. Both Ali and I are super-excited about it, and we've been really busy getting ready. We'll have all the miniatures in the range available and a couple of new ones... The first will be the new release for this month - that will officially go on sale on Friday, and we'll be taking stock to the show. We will also have a number (not quite sure how many yet) of preview copies of May's release - and that's actually going to be two miniatures that go together in a set. I don't want to spoil the fun by saying anything further about it - except we think it's petty great (but there again I would say that...).

We'll have all the studio painted miniatures on display, including the new releases - in fact Ali is sitting next to me putting the finishing touches to one of them as I type.

Please come and say hello if you're going to be there - we're at booth TG12 towards the back of the hall.

See you there!

mike

Abaddon

2010-04-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates recently - things have been pretty full-on at Studio McVey lately. I thought I would share a recent commission piece (actually I painted it last year, but only just got round to sorting out the pictures). Abaddon is one of those classic GW miniatures which I've never painted before - it was interesting to paint, though it's always a bit of a struggle to cope with all that surface detail and reach a coherent look. I wanted the scheme to be quite muted and am happy with the results - though not the pictures, metallics are always difficult to photograph successfully.

In other news - we are running a little behind with orders at the moment. Isabella has proved to be really popular, and it's been difficult to keep up with demand. Production is going well though, and I certainly don't foresee the sort of delays we had with Kara (who we now have stock for - hurray!). I'm off down to see our resin caster today to pick up more stock, and see where we are with the new miniatures (yes I said miniatures). Once I know exactly where we are I will be announcing our plans for Salute - so check back tomorrow).

Cheers

mike

Irregular magazine

2010-04-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick bit of shameless self-promotion. The latest issue of Irregular Magazine is available to download, and I contributed an interview to this issue. Despite that it's a great read!

- check it out.

mike

Studio McVey Facebook page

2010-03-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to announce we have started a Facebook page. Ali will be administrating it - I have stubbornly managed to resist getting involved with Facebook, so wouldn't know where to start.

Stop by and say hi if you have an account.

mike

Isabella concept art

2010-03-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to share the original concept art for Isabella. Ali drew this one and you can see how faithful the sculpt is to the original idea. Great reception to the miniature so far - I think she's going to be one of the most popular in the range if the initial demand is anything to go by!

Cheers

mike

Isabella

2010-03-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

New release time!

I have just updated the main website, and added Isabella to the Studio Store. We previewed her to mailing list subscribers yesterday, and we pretty thrilled with how she's been received. Ali drew the concept for this one (we'll be showing it here in the next couple of days), and it was brought to life by Jacques-Alexandre Gillois, it's his 4th sculpt for us and there are more to come later in the year.

We're absolutely delighted with this miniature - it's amazingly true to the original idea and concept. We wanted something between Mrs Coulter (from the His Dark Materials books), and Blade Runner - and that's pretty much exactly what we got. The character in the sculpt is just amazing - I especially love the interplay between Isabella and her little companion. The monkey is just tiny - JAG sculpts figures with very realistic proportions, so even though she is 34mm tall, her head is smaller than most 28mm miniatures. So the monkey's head is just impossibly small...

Great paint job by Ali too. She always beats me to the punch with painting these miniatures, and it's a hard act to follow! I've nearly finished my version of Kara, and Seraphine in underway (I'm doing quite a different take on that particular miniature!). I'll post them here once they're done.

Hope you like Isabella.

cheers

mike

Pan Base Tutorial - part 3

2010-03-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

Here's the finished base with the miniature attached. Pan's a really nice miniature to paint, great mix of detail and smooth skin areas. I wanted the whole effect to be quite natural looking (to suit the subject matter), so I kept the colours quite warm throughout. The only cool colours I used were in the shadow areas.

I kept the sprites nice a bright and clean to make them really pop out from the base and Pan - I wanted to make sure I kept the visual relationship between the three miniatures as clear as possible.

Very enjoyable piece to work on.

In other studio news - we are now up to date with Kara orders. Well at least I have just received enough castings to fill all outstanding orders and even have some in stock - I feel like cracking open a bottle of champagne! Thanks to everyone for being so patient with us - it's been a very trying situation all round, and I really appreciate everyone's patience and support.

We are also going to be releasing a new miniature this week - Ali is just putting the finishing touches to the painted version as I type. As usual we will be previewing it to the mailing list members a day early, but I expect the general release to be either Wednesday or Thursday. It's a cracker too...

cheers!

mike

Pan Base Tutorial - part 2

2010-03-17T03:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the second part of the basing tutorial for Pan.

Photos 9 and 10 - This shows the basic painting complete. The groundwork has been (quite roughly) drybrushed with lighter shades of brown, and the bark texture on the wood has been highlighted in lighter tones of grey. Once the highlights on the wood were finished I washed over it again with a cool dark brown – but kept the paint thin. I wanted something half way between a wash and a glaze, enough to re-define the recesses, but not dark enough to significantly darken the overall colour. I also added some streaks of green to the wood to represent moss. I used quite a strong olive green but built it up in thin glazes. I kept the effect quite subtle at this stage. I also picked out the exposed inner-wood in a tan colour and washed it over with a warm deep brown.

11-12 – The main addition at this stage was the moss. This is very fine flock glued in place with a thin layer of PVA glue. Once the flock was in place I decided I needed to strengthen up the green glazes on the wood to better match the moss colour.

13-14 – The whole base was looking quite bright and garish, so I wanted to knock everything back and make it more natural. I use a lot of artists pastels on my bases these days – so I purposely keep the painting quite simple. I shave a little powder off the colours I want to use with a sharp blade – mixing them on a piece of clean white plastic card, almost as you would with paint. I apply the powder with an old brush. In this case I dusted it over most of the base (including the moss) to knock the brightness back, then added lighter colour in patches as ‘highlights’. It doesn’t quite come over in the pictures, but the pastels give the whole base a very realistic, matte finish.

15-16 – Once I was happy with the painting and ‘weathering’, I added a layer of leaf litter. I used the Hudson and Allen leaves and crushed them up a little before application. I added another layer of full leaves over the top of that, glazing over some of them to give a little colour variation.

17-20 – This is the finished base. The last thing I did (before removing the masking), was to add some Ivy. This is a mix of rubberised horsehair for the branches and beech seeds for the leaves. I used the seeds that had been dyed green, but I still added a little additional colour when they were in place. I find the best way to apply the ivy is with super glue – I put a little spot of glue where I want the branch to attach – then give it a quick spray of zip-kicker. I apply the leaves by holding them with tweezers, dipping one end in glue (I put a little blob on some greaseproof paper) and sticking them to the branches. The last thing to do was peel away the masking tape and fluid, and touch up any bits that were unpainted.

I’ll post the finished piece with the miniature attached in the next few days.

Cheers

mike

Pan Base Tutorial

2010-03-11T02:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry it took a little while to get this tutorial up, things have been busy in the past few days. Here's the first part - I'll try and get the second part up a little sooner!

1- The first thing I did was to locate the resin scenic element (which comes with the miniature) onto the display plinth. I used Apoxie Sculpt A&B putty for this and just added it quite roughly in the shape I wanted. I built up the shape I wanted with little pieces, not bothering to smooth them in at all at this stage.

2-4 - When the overall shape was roughly how I wanted, I added a small piece of real wood for a broken tree stump. It's actually a little piece of driftwood. I added some more putty round the base of that and then started to shape and texture the whole base. I sculpted a sharper cut-away under the resin piece, so it looked like it was on top of a low bank. Once the overall shape was what I was looking for, I added some texture to the surface. The broken ground texture was achieved by dragging a sharp edge across the surface - the Apoxie sculpt works well for this as it crumbles when wet. More elastic putties like greenstuff don't act like that. I put the sprite in position at this stage, just to make sure there was space for her. I didn't work too hard at hiding the join between the resin parts and the putty - there are plenty more elements going over the top that would hide the joins later.

5 - The next stage was to protect the display plinth while I was painting the base. Once you have acrylic paint on something it's very hard to get off without leaving a mark, so I always mask round the things I am going to paint. I use Humbrol Maskol for this, but any other masking fluid would do just as well. It's applied with an old brush as it's very hard to get off the bristles.

6 - Once the masking fluid is dry (it usually goes clear), I tape over the rest of the base with masking tape. Tamiya masking tape is great for this as it comes off without leaving a mark, it also comes in lots of different widths.

7 - Once the tape was on I undercoated the whole base with in grey and started painting. The ground was given a coat of Scorched Brown - I wanted to give quite a natural look to the base, so I chose a light warm grey for the wood. If you look at the bark of trees (especially gnarled oaks), it's usually far more of a grey colour, rather than brown.

8 - Once the base coats were dry I washed over everything with the same colour - a mix of cool dark brown and matte medium. This was thinned down quite a lot and applied liberally.

That's it for this part - the next article will look at the rest of the painting and detailing on the base.

Cheers!

mike

Sharro's base

2010-03-10T04:33:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I mentioned we used a base by Daral Jones for Sharro - well he's just started selling bases and resin accessories from his website, really amazing work and I urge you to check it out.

We are currently working with Daral on a Studio McVey project - more news on that later in the year...

Cheers!

mike

Sharro concept art

2010-03-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

Thought I would share the original concept for Sharro - it's really a beautiful piece of art by Chippy (Brian Dugan) and it lends itself perfectly to being a miniature. Not a great deal else to say about it really!

I've also just finished my painted version of Pan, and will be posting that here in the next few days, along with a tutorial on how I made the base. I just need to size the pictures I took and write a little text to go with them

cheers

mike

Sharro

2010-02-25T02:26:00.001-08:00

Sorry things have been quiet for the last few weeks - I have been working on a couple of blog posts (a tutorial for Pan's base being one of them), but just haven't found the time to get them finished. In the mean time here's something far more exciting - a new miniature release!

I've just added Sharro to the Studio Store on the main website - she was sent out as a preview to members of the mailing list yesterday, but now she's on general release. This miniature is a little different from the others in our Limited Edition series - she's 32mm scale rather than 35 for a start. I felt she wanted to be a little finer and more delicate than our other miniatures - to me it just matched the character of the concept.

Taking of the concept - Sharro is based on a beautiful piece of artwork by Chippy, and we'll be showing that here in the next few days. The art has got a great feel to it - it's not clear if the figure shown is a human with cybernetic enhancements, or an android. The slightly stylised feel of Thomas's sculpt captures that really well I think.

Unbelievably good paint job by Ali as well - it doesn't really come across in the picture just how small and fine the miniature is, but when you see the actual model, it's hard to believe how she has got all that fine detail into the painting. I'll show a scaling picture some time soon.

She doesn't come with a scenic base - the one we put her on is by Daral Jones and it's just perfect for her. Daral will be selling a range of scenic resin bases from his website - and I'll post a link here as soon as he's ready to launch. The detail on his work has to be seen to be believed - stunning.

cheers!

mike

Pan concept art

2010-02-03T04:56:00.000-08:00

Just a really quick post to share the original concept art for Pan. As I said in a previous post, this is by Stephen Tappin, and we have more from him on the way soon.

We plan to have the first of the Pan tutorials up on the blog early next week - better get moving on it!

cheers

mike

Tiny Sprites!

2010-01-28T03:37:00.000-08:00

I just took a quick picture of Pan with a penny next to it - I wanted to show just how tiny the Wood Sprites are and what an amazing job Jacques-Alexandre did with the sculpting. They even have facial expressions - the one looking up at his hand on the knife really looks shocked and scared!

Ali and I are talking about what sort of painting articles to do for this one - if you have any preferences, feel free to say so in the comments.

cheers.

mike

Pan

2010-01-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

The latest Limited Edition resin miniature is available now over at the main website!

I have been wanting to do a miniature with more of a fairy-tale feel for a while - something that looks quite innocent at first glance, but when you look a little more closely there's definitely a darker edge to the scene.

The initial illustration was by Steve Tappin, who's one of my oldest friends - I first met him at Games Workshop in 1987 when he was working in the art department. Some of the more 'mature' readers may remember his work from the original Rogue Trader and Realm of Chaos books. I'll be showing the drawing here in the next few days, and Steve has already completed a second concept for us, which is being sculpted at the moment.

The sculpt for this one is by Jacques-Alexandre Gillois - and I think it's just astounding. The detail has to be seen in real life to be believed. I plan to take a picture of the miniature with something next to it for scale - just to illustrate the size of the wood sprites. It's not just the detail though - the talent Jacques-Alexandre has for anatomy is second to none. Amazing work.

Pan's up for sale in the Studio Store right now. Hope you like him

mike

Sgt. Lorenzo

2010-01-14T02:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the first painted miniature of the year - and it's one from Ali. We bought a copy of the Limited Edition Space Hulk box set last year - with the intention of painting some of the miniatures between projects. I painted Brother Goriel last year, and Ali just got round to finishing her first Terminator - Sgt. Lorenzo.

I think this is probably the best miniature in the box - it's hard to believe it's a plastic, the detail and animation are just beautiful. Unusually for Ali (or me for that matter), the metals are all non-metallic. While we are both pretty committed to using metallic paint in most instances, it's nice to change every now and again to keep things interesting. Ali thoughtthe fine details on this miniature would be better served if they were picked out with flat paint rather than metallics.

Can't argue with the results!

He's up for sale in the Studio Store on the main website if you're interested.

We are continuing to send out orders for Kara, and are slowly getting caught up (I think). Thanks to everyone for your patience with this, it's really appreciated. Even with the hold-ups with Kara, we still hope to have a new miniature out this month - the green (a truly amazing sculpt from JAG) is being mastered right now, and we hope to have studio copies to paint in the next few days.

cheers!

mike

Happy New Year!

2010-01-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to wish all our friends a Happy New Year!

2009 was an exciting year for us - we launched the miniatures range six months ago and it's exceeded all our expectations. We set out to produce the very best miniature we could, and hopefully we are doing just that - personally, I am proud of every miniature we have released so far. We got a nice little recognition of the range so far when our miniatures were nominated for tabletopgamingnews.com Readers and Editors awards - hopefully next year we'll be able to go one better and grab one of the prizes!

We have plans to continue the Limited Edition series of miniatures in 2010, as well as release some other things that are top secret at the moment! More details will follow here when we are ready to talk about it.

Just a quick note about Kara - If you have already placed an order I would ask that you continue to be patient with us, we are still a little behind with filling orders and shipping them. This miniature has proved a great deal more popular than we anticipated! The Christmas break and holiday mail delays also haven't helped... We are getting through them though, and ship orders as soon as we have stock in. Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for reading this blog for the last year - we hope to make it an even more worthwhile place to visit for miniature lovers in 2010.

cheers!

mike

Painting camo

2009-12-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

We've had a few people asking about the camo paint scheme on Ali's version of Kara - so I've managed to persuade her to do a quick tutorial on how she did it.

She used quite a simple technique, but it produces great results. She paints the pattern, in this case - a base colour and two additional colours over that - then she simply glazes in the shading to give some form and definition. On the original version of Kara she went back in and added some simple highlights to the prominent areas (like the pockets), once the other areas round the camo were finished.

She has very usefully drawn up a quick illustrated version to show this along side the painted miniature. Her are some brief notes to go with the pictures.

The base colour was a mid greeny-grey, the second colour applied was Kommando Khaky with a little bone added. The third colour was a very dark brown - Scorched Brown with a little blue ink added. She kept the dark shapes smaller than the light ones, and always overlapped the edge of a lighter area.

Once the patterns were down in a way that looked right (don't be frightened to go back and adjust the way they work with each other), Ali added the shading. She mixed up quite a dark 'dirty' colour from Graveyard Earth with a little dark blue added - and used this to carefully glaze in the shading. The glazes were built up in gradual stages that are allowed to dry between applications. Obviously - the more applications to an area - the darker the shading comes out. Don't go too deep though, or you will obscure the camo pattern.

When you are applying camo schemes it's good to treat it like any other detail painting - keep the colour a little on the thin side, and don't overload the brush. Use a good brush with a fine point. It's also really useful to work from reference - so you can clearly see things like what patterns are used, and how the colours are distributed.

That's it! It's really best to keep things simple - if you try complex shading you will tend to lessen the effect (and go insane trying to smoothly apply highlights across all those colours...).

Just a quick update on orders for Kara - things are still moving a little slowly I'm afraid, but we are sending out orders as soon as stock arrives, so things are moving. We didn't expect her to be this popular! Thanks for you patience and support - we'll get miniatures out as quickly as we possibly can.

cheers!

mike

Kara concept art

2009-12-11T02:09:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share the concept art for Lt. Kara Black with you. It's by Sam Wood, who has been working in the games and miniatures industry for many years. Sam did a lot of the concept work for D&D 3rd Edition and has worked on too many fine gaming products to mention here. We loved the concept he did for Kara - it was one of those pieces that I just couldn't wait to see sculpted.

The original idea for her was that she would be fighting an 'opponent' in a sort of mini diorama - and Sam did that concept for that piece too. For one reason and another we decided to just make her for the time being - but we may well re-visit the subject at a later date and let everyone see what it is she's been battling against!

The reaction to Kara has been extremely positive - beyond our expectations really, so we might be a little slower than normal filling orders for the next few days. Don't worry though, if you've ordered already, we have shipped one batch out this morning and there will be more going out soon. She's a great miniature, and I hope you agree she's worth the wait - thanks for being patient with us!

I have just about finished my painted version (hopefully she'll be done over the weekend), so I'll be showing her here soon after.

cheers!

mike

Lt. Kara Black

2009-12-09T03:03:00.000-08:00

I've just added the latest miniature in our Limited Edition resin series to the Studio Store over on the main website! The latest miniature is our first non-fantasy release - we're delighted with how she came out, and it's a subject we certainly plan to explore further in future releases. The concept was by Sam Wood, and Kev White sculpted her in stunning detail.

I particularly like the pose of this piece - depicting her in the midst of a fierce fight with an unknown assailant - the recoil from her gun kicking her backwards. Kara is scarred and bleeding, but undaunted! She comes complete with a scenic base insert showing some great details - like her discarded helmet and a slime covered skull.

I have another painted version on the way - and that will hopefully be shown here in the next few days. Ali and I also plan to collaborate on painting another miniature, which we will show in stage by stage form on the blog. I'll also be showing the original concept here soon.

cheers!

mike

Blog Stars

2009-11-30T02:16:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post about some of the blogs I have been reading (well mostly looking at the pictures if I'm honest...). A quick warning before I begin though - if you start looking at these blogs and clicking on the links they contain - you could loose hours of your life...

The first one is Dead Fish Painting - which is Sebastien Picque's work. I absolutely love his painting on the Smog miniatures - which is without doubt my favourite miniatures line at the moment. The creativity of Christophe Madura is just mind blowing, and Sebastien's painting complements it perfectly. Another amazing painter who has done some work on the Smog line is Angel Giraldez who is the staff painter for Corvus Belli - there's a lot of great work on his blog.

The next is Jerome Otremba - Amazing work here... I especially like the larger scale busts he has painted (and in some cases sculpted too).

Another painting and sculpting blog is Darkeden, featuring the work of Remy Tremblay - who produces some of the most frighteningly realistic painting I have ever seen - just look in the SFX section and you'll see what I mean...

This blog is by a painter who work I wasn't familiar with until recently, Guillaume Hemery. I just love the bright intensity of his colours. I like my miniatures to have strong contrasting colours, but he has really taken it to 11... His Bad Moon Orcs are just stunning.

Great use of colour on the work in this blog by Roberto Chaudon - really nice sculpting too.

I'll leave at that for now or I'll get lost in all the links between the different blogs! Plenty to look at though, and I have only shared a few - inspiring stuff.

cheers

mike

A plague on you!

2009-11-26T03:18:00.000-08:00

Just finished the Skaven commission I mentioned in the last post - pretty happy with how he came out. I loved the miniature as soon as I saw it - except the banner... To me it totally unbalanced a beautiful sculpt, the figure itself has some of the best animation I've seen on for a long time.

I clipped the banner off the back-plate and built another from brass tube - decorated with elements of the original. I've always liked Japanese style banners for Skaven - and I wanted to give him a banner that looked like it has been around for a while, passed down between warlords - tattered and faded. The cloth is made from lead foil - the sort that you get on old battles of port or sherry. It's really soft and pliable and perfect for banners - I have a small supply that I hoard away for miniatures I really like.

The paint scheme is obviously quite similar to the GW studio version - and that's totally intentional, I really love the way that one's painted, and couldn't see the point of doing him in different colours just to be - well, different... I also think the bright red armour fits well with the slightly Japanese feel.

There's a lot going on with the miniature and banner - strong colours and fine details, so I wanted the base to be quite simple and muted. I didn't want something that fought for your attention with Queek himself. I cut out a small section of tube, lined it with brick patterned plastic card, and built a box round it. It's good to break up the smoothness of the brick pattern by cutting out some of the bricks to make them look like they're loose or broken.

Ali is pretty much done with painting the next Studio McVey release and we should be able to preview it next week - looks good, just talking about names!

cheers

mike

Studio Update

2009-11-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to give an update on what's happening in the studio at the moment - updates have been conspicuous by their absence lately.

We just got the first resin casting in for the latest Studio McVey release - in fact Ali is sitting here painting it as I type. It's a great mini - and another first for Studio McVey, I'll let you guess what that means for yourselves! I had originally intended to have this one out before the end of the month - but I think it might just spill over into early December. We'll most likely preview it on the mailing list first - as we have done for the last couple of releases.

I have been busy with all sorts of things in the last couple of weeks - some of which I hope to talk about here at some point in the next few months, and filling in my 'spare' time with a commission from the new GW Skaven range. I'm really enjoying painting it - it makes a nice change from 40K miniatures, which I seem to have painted a lot of lately (when I say a lot - I mean a lot for me!). I hope to have it finished soon.

I have also been meaning to post a link to the WAMP Little Angels charity painting contest - it's for a great cause - the details can be found here.

More details about the next release soon!

mike

Ali's Vitharr

2009-11-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts recently - we just seem to have been really busy in the past week.

Here's Ali's version of Vitharr - a very different look and feel to mine, I think you'll agree. I really like the gritty realism on this one - and there's some wonderfully subtle painting.

I have finished a few commission pieces lately - so as soon as I get round to processing the pictures, I'll post them here.

cheers

mike

PS - Dropped off the next Studio McVey sculpt at the production company today. It's actually one half of a pair... More news on the release soon!

Seraphine : Take 2

2009-10-29T02:01:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show the fully finished version of the Seraphine Ali has been painting for the tutorials - I think you'll agree it came out great...

What I find really interesting is how you can change the character of a miniature by highlighting and shading the face differently. Compare this one, to the Ali's original version and they look like different people.

She's also over on Coolminiornot, and just in case you want to take a really close look at the actual miniature, she's up for auction too!

cheers

mike

ps - tutorials on Vitharr coming soon...

Race for life!

2009-10-28T01:40:00.000-07:00

Ali just finished painting this great little miniature - it was sculpted by the very talented Andrew Rae as a prize for a fund raiser for Cancer Research UK. A couple of the chaps over at Frothers Unite are running a raffle and Ali's version of the miniature is one of the prizes. It's a great cause and tickets are only £10 each - but hurry, the draw in on November 1st!

mike

Vitharr Bearclaw!

2009-10-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

I have just added the latest Studio McVey miniature to the Studio Store - Vitharr Bearclaw is a six-piece resin miniature, and as with the previous releases it is limited to 750 castings. As I mentioned over on the main site - like previous releases, we are continuing the free prize draw for one of the Studio painted versions - either mine of Ali's. My version is the one shown here, and we'll be showing Ali's version on the blog soon - I have to say it's well up to her usual standard and is looking stunning...

The concept for this one was by Karl Kopinski and the sculpt was by Thomas David - who has done so much amazing work for the Helldorado range. The detail on the sculpt is mind-blowing - and I have to say it was a pleasure to paint. As with all well sculpted miniatures, so much of the work is done for you by the crispness of the detail.

We've included a little scenic base insert with this one - just to give him some extra atmosphere. It fits neatly into the top of the 40mm display base. He also comes with two variant heads - with and without helm.

We'll be doing some stage by stage articles here in the next couple of weeks - maybe not for the entire miniature, but certainly looking at painting some of the features of this miniature.

Hope you like Vitharr - we think he hits the same mark for quality and character as the previous Studio McVey miniatures.

Cheers!

mike

PS - Just in case you aren't signed up to the mailing list - I'm afraid I have to tell you, that you missed an exclusive offer on the release of this miniature...

Seraphine snake tutorial

2009-10-20T02:57:00.001-07:00

Sorry it's been a while since the last Seraphine painting tutorial - but here's the next part, painting the snake!

It may look quite complex - but when you break it down into individual stages, it's quite a straightforward process. The photos are fairly self-explanatory, but here are some additional notes.

The first step was to paint the entire snake an off-white colour. In this case it was a linen colour from the Foundry range called Moss - it has a nice natural feel, so suits a 'live' subject very well. The snake was then highlighted by adding white to the base colour. Even though a lot of this (nearly all in fact) is going to be covered, it's a good idea to highlight at this stage as it gives some 'shape' that will help you with the rest of the painting. The highlights help to define the upper and lower halves of the snake - thankfully it's very realistically sculpted and that makes the painting a lot easier.

It's really important to find some good reference for things like this - the added realism that copying from a real subject brings can make all the difference. Once Ali had found some reference she was happy with she broke the pattern down into logical steps.

The first picture shows the white highlighted and the pattern painted in black - try and be as neat as you can here, if you aren't happy with the markings at this stage, you can change the shape and neaten them up with the base colour. Once you are satisfied with the layout of the patches, paint inside each one with a camo-green colour. This is applied quite thinned down in two coats, for a slightly blotchy effect which makes it look softer and more natural.

Once you are happy with the patches, paint between the markings with a mix of greeny-brown and white - this is applied very thin as a controlled glaze to tint over the base colour. Leave a little of the base colour showing in a line round some of the markings.

The final stage is to add some pure white highlights to give the skin a natural sheen. These were applied as dots of pure white that were quickly blended in with a damp brush.

Ali has finished painting this version of Seraphine now - and I will be publishing it here in the next few days. In the mean time keep a look out for the next Studio McVey miniature - Vitharr Bearclaw!

cheers

mike

Brother Goriel

2009-10-09T08:07:00.001-07:00

I picked up a copy of the new Limited Edition Space Hulk box set a little while ago - not for the game though, I have never played Space Hulk (or many other games for that matter...) - but for the fantastic miniatures. I think the plastics in this box are amongst the best GW has ever produced. There is some amazingly fine detail on the Terminators, and they have been really smart with the way they have designed them - creating strong animation with minimal drafting (which is what causes some of the detail to be smeared on plastic miniatures).

Alison and I plan to paint some of them over the next few months - just between other projects really. I thought I'd start with Brother Goriel - I like the pose and detail a lot on this miniature. The Genestealer head also offered a good opportunity to add extra interest.

I've added him to the Studio Store on the main Studio McVey site

mike

Seraphine face tutorial

2009-10-06T01:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the second part of the tutorial about how to paint the skin on Seraphine Le Roux - this time concentrating on the face.

It's generally best to paint the face separately from the rest of the skin on a miniature - especially if there is a lot of skin showing. This allows you to really concentrate your efforts on the face - it's the focal point, so will draw the most attention when you're looking at the miniature. Of course you need to make sure the face matches the rest of the miniature for colour and lightness - so it might be worth taking notes while you're painting the main area of skin. Actually that's another whole discussion - do you paint the face first or last...? Either way - it's a good idea to make sure the colours match!

Ali used exactly the same colour palette as the rest of the skin - a rich chocolate brown highlighted with a warm skin tone. See the previous Seraphine tutorial for details. The photographs are largely self explanatory, but here are some brief notes.

1 - First highlights. There are quite a few different areas to concentrate on when you're applying highlights to the lower part of the face - the cheek bones, up the sides of nose, down the bridge of the nose, top lip, chin - picture 1.1 shows where they are applied.

2- Highlighting the forehead with the same colour.

3 - Mainly going over the same ground but with a slightly lighter shade. It's important to take these first highlights up the sides of the nose - there's nothing worse than hard lines down the sides of the nose.

4 - Gradually bringing the highlights up further - covering less area than the previous layer.

5 - Lighter again, and then dots on the forehead, nose and chin to give a reflective shine.

6 - The rest is make-up really - the eye sockets are darkened after the make-up is applied there. Note how the eye make-up is taken higher than the natural level of the brows.

7 - A light flesh tone is painted into the eyes. Don't use white here - it's far too bright and stark looking. The eyebrows are added following the line created with the make up - this gives her a very 'arch' look. You obviously don't have to do it this way, but it does give her a little more attitude...

8 and 8.1 - The lips are painted dark pink - the underside of the top lip is darker because the light doesn't hit there. The bottom lip is highlighted in a couple of stages, and two spots of a light colour are added to give the lip fullness. Ali also added a final highlight to the top eyelids at this stage.

The last stage is to paint the eyes - not a great deal of advice we can give here.... Use a really good brush, get the paint to a consistency where it will flow smoothly from the tip, and keep your hands as steady as possible. Ali painted the iris deep brown, then black for the pupil and a final white dot to give the eyes shine... I know - makes you sick doesn't it! She says it's lots of trial and error...

General face painting notes - Use a fine brush and quickly blend the highlights as you apply them - work on small areas at a time. Female faces have less sharp definition than male faces, so try and get the blends as smooth as you can. Concentrate on lighting - if you get the lighting right, the whole effect will look much better - things like that final highlight Ali added to the top eyelid make a huge difference.

Ali will be finishing up this version of Seraphine soon, and we'll show it here. I don't know if she plans to take stage by stage photos of the snake, but hopefully I can persuade her...

cheers

mike

Seraphine survives rabid dog attack!

2009-10-05T01:01:00.000-07:00

Well maybe not actually rabid, but definitely vicious - well probably not that either, but it was definitely a close call! The above picture was sent to us by Andrew McLellen - who's dog, Ellie got to the post before he did the day the latest Studio McVey miniature was delivered. Seraphine managed to escape completely unscathed, but her certificate met the full force of the 'attack'.

We're sending him a replacement certificate - and we'll be happy to do the same for any other animal related damage...

Seraphine skin tutorial

2009-09-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

As promised - here is the first part of the Seraphine Le Roux skin tutorial from Ali. She didn't take pictures of the original Seraphine - so this is a whole new version we'll be showing stage by stages photos from over the next few days.

The photos are largely self explanatory - the shots of the palette go with the picture above, and show the progression of the skin tones lightening as the highlights are applied. Here are some quick notes to accompany the pictures, the numbers correspond to the photograph -

1 - Base coat with a rich chocolate brown, being careful to not apply it too thickly and obscure the detail on the face. As usual - it's best to apply several thin coats rather than one thick one.

2 - To highlight black skin, add a warm skin tone (the one Ali actually uses is Butter Fudge from the Foundry range). Adding white would totally skew the colour and make it far too chalky. Follow the lines of the limbs when applying the highlights - apply small amount at a time and carefully blend the edges with a damp brush. It can be useful to hold the miniature under a desk lamp - and see where the light naturally hits the surface.

The highlights are applied thinly and build up slowly in layers - the successive coats will become more opaque and intense as they are applied. Just keep going until you are happy with the effect. You'll find that you cover a lot of the base coat with this first layer of highlights.

3 - The next layer is quite a bit lighter - add more of the fudge colour and some light flesh tone for this. With this application you will cover smaller areas of the surface - usually in the centre of the last area of highlight. See picture 4.

5 - Ali wanted her skin to appear sweaty and glistening, so there was a big jump in the final level of highlighting - and it was applied in very specific places. - A thin line down the front of the leg and dot on the knee, down the length of both forearms, a dot on the bottom edge of the belly button, a dot which is blended horizontally across each breast, the bridge of the foot, curve of the thigh, base of the back, and shoulder blades and buttock.

6 - The final stage was to add some deep shading to better define the shape of the body. This was a mix of the base colour and blue ink.

That's it for the body - Ali took pictures while she was painting the face (which is usually a different process), and I'll post them here shortly.

cheers!

mike

Broga finished

2009-09-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay with posting the rest of this article - things got a little busy with the release of Seraphine...

Here's my version of Broga finished. There wasn't really a massive amount left to do after the last stage - add the freehand design to the cloth, paint the back of the cloak, detail the face, and paint the shield.

I did originally plan to take stage by stage photos of the freehand design - but once I started painting it, I don't think I moved (of breathed) until it was finished. I do plan to do an article about freehand at some stage though.

I decided on a different take on the shield - it's supposed to be made from dragon bone and scales for extra protection from fire attacks. I wanted to make it look like bone - but with a slightly strange colour cast to it. I painted it quite a warm colour initially - and then shaded it down with quite a lot of blue.

I really enjoyed painting this miniature - it suits my painting strengths I think. Next up is Seraphine - and after Ali's version I am a little unsure about how to approach the colour scheme. It's a hard act to follow!

mike

Voodoo magic

2009-09-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd share the original concept with you for Seraphine Le Roux. This one is by Ali - yet another string to her bow... It certainly won't be her last either, in fact we are talking about ideas for future minis Ali's going to concept at the moment - one of which we're really excited about...

We've been blown away by the response to Seraphine - in fact it's been pretty much all positive. It's always a nerve-wracking couple of days around the release of a new miniature - we're always confident in the quality of the work, but taste in miniatures is very subjective. What one person might like - another will absolutely hate.

Ali has already started working on the skin tutorial for this one - and I hope to have it up here some time next week. In the mean time I will be getting back to the Broga tutorial (I know, I'm sorry...) in the next couple of days, just as soon as I can really - but we're going to be quite busy with packing and shipping ...

mike

Seraphine Le Roux

2009-09-22T01:14:00.000-07:00

The third Studio McVey Limited Edition resin miniature is now available! I have just updated the main website, and Seraphine is now on sale in the Studio Store. Of course this is old news to anyone on the mailing list! We pre-released her to members of the mailing list at the weekend - so don't forget to sign up if you want to receive pre-release offers and exclusive news.

Seraphine is our first female miniature - and what an woman to start with! Ali drew up the concept for this one, and she was sculpted by Jacques-Alexandre Gillois (who also made The Raven Priest) - it really is a beautiful piece...

As with our previous Limited Edition miniatures, we will be giving away the Studio painted version in a free prize draw. Once the full run has sold out we will randomly draw a number between 1 and 750, and the holder of that certificate will win the studio miniature of their choice. I haven't painted this one yet - but I will be surprised if I come anywhere near the quality of Ali's version... So it should be an easy choice!

Ali is going to be doing a step by step article on the blog soon, to show how she paints darker flesh tones. In the mean time Ali has posted her over on Coolminiornot - please show her some love!

We're really proud of this miniature - so we hope you like her!

mike

ps - I haven't forgotten about the step by step Broga article, I know I promised to get it all wrapped up before the next release, but the best laid plans...

Assembling and painting Broga Hourigsen pt.4

2009-09-17T07:08:00.000-07:00

Here's the next part of painting Broga. As you can see, things have moved on a little from the last stage! I do have pictures of that stuff - but to be honest, it's not particularly interesting, so I thought I would skip on to the skin and talk briefly about the bits I missed out.

Since the last stage I painted the inside and outside of the cloak. The inside was painted in the same way as the armour - I took the highlights quite pale and then glazed and deepened with red ink. The colours were different to the armour though - I kept the whole thing darker and deeper.

I also painted the scales - these were base coated with Chainmail, washed down with green and black ink (with a little matte medium added) and re-highlighted with Chainmail. I picked out the shape of them by adding a fine highlight to the centre ridge and the points with silver. I glazed a few of them with thinned down turquoise.

The skin was a fairly straightforward process - mid tone first, then shadows, followed by highlights and warmth. The base colour was a mix of mid flesh with a little brown added. Our favourite flesh colours are Wargames Foundry - Flesh 5, then I add a little Dusky Flesh 6 to give it some depth and warmth. As with most areas - apply a few thin coats of paint to get a good, even coverage - rather than one thick one.

A good basic thing to remember after this is to keep the shadows fairly cool and the highlights warm - so at its most basic level this means, add a little blue for the shadows, and yellow for the highlights. In reality it means that I add some flat brown (and by that I mean a cool tone) and just a spot of deep blue (nothing too strongly pigmented) for the shadows and highlight with a warm bone colour. I do add some quite strong blue round the eyes and to the side of the nose - but applied very thinned down and in a controlled manner. I think this gives a little extra depth round the eyes and makes them stand out. You can see from the second picture in sequence where the shadows were applied. It's common sense really - the more recessed the area, the deeper the colour. So the sides of the temples are a little deeper than the base colour, but beneath the chest and main shoulder muscles the colour is really quite dark.

After the shadows are in, it's simply a case of building up the highlights. I start with the base colour and re-apply to the areas next to where the shade tones have been applied. Then I add a little light flesh tone, bone and warm off-white as the highlights get lighter. I like to 'light' the miniature quite strongly from above as it gives more of an out-door look, and apply the highlights accordingly. When the highlights are finished I add a little colour to the sides of the cheeks, lower lip and nose - you have to be quite subtle here of you can get more of a clown look than you might have wanted... I add a tiny spot of red to a deep flesh tone and apply as very thin glazes. I then add a small highlight over the top to blend the colour in a little.

The stubble effect is a mix of the base tone with a little mid-grey added. Again - I apply this in thin, controlled glazes, and add a highlight over the top. The last picture in sequence shows the skin basically finished (I do tend to go back in a smooth things out if/when I see something I don't like), with some lining round the areas that border the skin, and the eyes and mouth blocked out in deep brown.

That's it for this stage, I'll try and get another part out tomorrow - as I said, I want to get it all wrapped up before we release Seraphine! Ali has just finished painting her, and if you're on the mailing list, you'll be getting a preview ahead of the release.

mike

Assembling and painting Broga Hourigsen pt.3

2009-09-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the next stage on my version of Broga - actually there are two stages here. The first thing I did was to glaze the red armour. Unfortunately that process didn't photograph very well - the changes in colour are so slight between each glaze, I would have to show lots of photos that look basically exactly the same... So the first photograph in the series above is when the glazing process is finished.

I applied around 12-15 glazes of ink - and as I have said before, it's very important to use transparent ink for this process - it gives an intensity of colour that glazing with paint simply couldn't achieve. The glazes are applied very watered down and very evenly - if you allow it to pool on the surface, the finish will be patchy and messy. Dip your brush in the glaze colour and then dab it on a piece of paper towel to remove most of the liquid from the brush before applying to the miniature. You are aiming to apply a thin, even layer consistently over the surface. You may think 12-15 glazes will take a long time to apply - but if you give the miniature a quick blast with a hair drier between each layer, they actually don't take very long at all.

I used a series of deepening colours for the glazes - starting light and getting deeper as they go on. I also change the area that I hit with the glaze each time according to the highlight areas - so the first glazes is a mix of yellow and red (I aim for a rich golden yellow), and this is applied to the whole area. Subsequent glazes are deepened with more red, and painted onto the miniature avoiding a little more of the highlight areas each time. So the final glazes are deep red and are only applied to the areas with no highlighting - this effectively shades them down to a deeper, richer red. For the really deep tones (in the most recessed areas) I add some blue to the glaze mix. It's important you don't glaze over the highlights with the deeper colours, or you'll tone them down too much.

The trick with glazing like this is to be patient. When you apply the first glaze, there will be hardly any difference - but as you go on the colour will get deeper and richer.

The photos sequence above shows the loin cloth being painted. I knew I wanted to add a freehand design to this area, so I planned to keep the whole thing quite light and simply shaded. The base coat was a mix of bone and off-white, with just a little black added to take the clean edge off the colour. The next step was to roughly apply the shading - this is the base colour with a little more black added. I didn't bother blending this stage very carefully as I knew I was going to cover it again. When that was dry I used the base colour to clean up the transition between the colours. The next two steps show the highlights being added - and these are a mix of the base colour plus more off-white. There is actually about four stages of highlighting on those two pictures - just adding a little more white each time, and blending the colour in with a second brush.

The final photo show the loin cloth finished, and cloak with the base coat applied - it's just to show how much neater everything starts to look when you fill in the unpainted areas.

That's it for this time, I'll get the next part up soon. It should take to long to get through the rest of the miniature as I only took stage by stage pictures of some of the parts. With any luck I'll get through the whole article before we release the next Studio McVey miniature! Ali is currently painting her, and I know I am biased, but both the sculpt and paint job are absolutely stunning...

talk to you soon

mike

Assembling and painting Broga Hourigsen pt.2

2009-09-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the first set of stage by stage photos for Broga. I decided to drive straight in and tackle the largest area of the miniature first - the armour. I decided right away (as soon as I saw the sculpt actually) that I wanted to paint the armour red and base the whole colour scheme around that. I went for a really strong saturated red - as if the armour was enamelled.

A lot of my painting, especially for strong colours like red, relies on a combination of over-highlighting, and then glazing with ink. I take the highlights quite a lot lighter (and paler) than I want the finished effect to be - then I put the depth and saturation back in with ink glazes. You really need to use strong, transparent inks to do this successfully - glazing with paints just won't work the same.

The first step is to get a good solid base colour to work over. I wanted a strong red that was somewhere on the deeper side of the final mid tone - if that makes sense... Basically it a little further towards the shade tones than the highlight tones. It was a mix of GW colours - Blood Red with a little Scab Red added. I also thinned the consistency down by adding red ink rather than water. It took me three coats to get a good flat base with no patchy colour.

The highlight tones were created by adding yellow for the first few layers of highlights, then off-white for the top levels. As you can see from the pictures, each successive layer of highlighting covers a smaller area until the final highlights are just picking out the sharp edges.

I took a picture of my palette to show the progression of colours. I like to complete areas like this in one go if possible - that way you can ensure continuity. Of course it's possible to stop half way through and re-mix the colour, but it can be difficult to get it to match exactly... I make sure to mix a lot of the first level highlight, as that's the 'pool' that you work from - adding a little more of the highlight colour to it at each stage. I also try and pick a time when it's not going to be too warm so the paint doesn't dry quickly.

You can see the armour looks far too pale and pastel at this stage - but that's what you need with this technique. The ink glazes will put the saturation back in the colour and make it almost glow. I also add shading at the next stage and smooth out any mistakes in the highlights.

mike

Mailing list

2009-09-10T02:18:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to say that we now have a mailing list! Please sign up and you will receive exclusive updates, previews, news and offers.

Thanks to Poots for setting that up for us! - Check out his great new miniatures line, Kingdom Death.

I'll be posting the next part of the stage by stage Broga article today, so check back later.

mike

Freebooter Mermaid

2009-09-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

Ali just recently finished this piece - it's a Limited Edition Mermaid from Freebooter miniatures. Werner Klocke's sculpts are quite distinctive and paint up really nicely. I love the base Ali added to this one - she drilled out the top of a wooden display base, just quite roughly, and then lined the hole with greenstuff to make it a more natural shape. The little rocks were also made from greenstuff - as was the starfish that's nestling in the pool. Once the separate elements (including the miniature) were dry, they were glued to the top of the base.

Ali painted the inside of the pool in mid sea-green colour - getting lighter towards the edges. The rocks were picked out in various different shades or pale grey, sand and brown. There is plenty of great reference for beach rocks on the internet - a distinctive look is to paint faint veins of lighter or darker colour running through them.

The water was added with Gedeo crystal resin - it's very easy to use, but make sure you mix it really thoroughly or it won't set properly... Ali actually added a couple of drops of ink to the resin to give it a turquoise colour - it's very easy to colour, but you have to mix the ink in very thoroughly to it's consistent.

If you're interested, she's up on eBay. Ali also posted her over on CMON, so please show your support!

mike

Assembling and painting Broga Hourigsen pt.1

2009-09-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

I managed to take some pictures of Broga as I was painting him, so I will be publishing them here in stage by stage format - much as we did with the Raven Priest. As the whole miniature is finished, I will be able to get the entire series published here in the next couple of weeks (hopefully!).

Just a brief article to start with. There's not a great deal of cleaning to do on this miniature - most parts are good to go without doing anything to them, but three of the parts have sprues to remove. These are added to the miniature to give the resin a place to feed into the mould cavity. I have indicated these of the photograph - though it's petty obvious that they are not part of the actual miniature. The best thing to do with them is simply remove them with a pair of clippers, then trim any unevenness away with a sharp blade.

There are very few mould line of any sort on this miniature - but due to the complexity of the body, there may be a mould line down the side of the cloak (where indicated on the picture). Most of the castings I looked at had no line there at all - but this one did. It's a nice smooth area with no surface detail - so it's very easy to trim down and smooth flat. I use a sharp blade to get rid of the line - then smooth it down completely with a needle file. Part of the beauty of resin is that it's so easy to work with - and mould lines can be removed very quickly with no trace remaining.

Once all the parts are cleaned, they are ready for assembly. I just glued the pieces together with super-glue. The only parts that I pinned for extra strength were the lance and right arm. It's a good positive fit - but the join area is quite small and the lance very long, so there is a great deal of leverage on the join. It's a simple matter to drill two small holes and add a short length of wire between the pieces. I did add pins to the two different heads - but only because I was painting both of them for this article, and wanted something to hold them by.

I tacked the shield onto the body for undercoating, but removed it after that to make the body easier to paint.

That's it for this part, I'll have the next part up in the next few days, and will be looking at painting the armour.

mike

Completed Raven Priest

2009-09-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

So here is the finished Raven Priest. The last few steps were quite quick and easy - the hands were matched to the rest of the skin tones, the teeth and eyes were added in, all the bangles were painted gold and the straps and necklace were picked out.

Once all the little bits and pieces were completed, I very carefully removed it from the base it was mounted on for painting, and added it to it's scenic base. This was carved from a slab of dry plaster (well hydrostone actually) and painted with sponging and washing.

This step by step was a fun project to do - I hope that it was at least a little interesting to read about!

The finished piece is up for sale in the Studio Store over at the main Studio McVey website.

I have just finished off my version of Broga - which was great fun to paint. I will be showing step by step photos of that one too - starting soon, maybe even tomorrow.

Talk to you then!

mike

Assembling and painting The Raven Priest pt. 8

2009-09-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here's the next part of assembling and painting the Raven Priest - after Ali completed two parts of the miniature last time, I thought it only fair to push on and finish it off. The last two areas to paint (apart from some small details) were the sword and the spell-effect birds - both of which are small, so quick to paint.

Sword - The first version I painted of this miniature had a bone sword, but with this one I decided on a straightforward steel effect. I gave it a base coat of GW Chainmail - being careful to avoid filling in the fine rune detail on the blade. I wanted to keep the shading nice and subtle, so I mixed black with just a spot of dark brown and watered it down to a glaze consistency before carefully applying it to the blade. I shaded down the bevelled edge of the blade, and close to the hilt - building up the colour in thin layers to get deeper shading. I kept the effect subtle as a lot of the shape would be picked out with the highlighting.

The first level of highlights was picked out with Chainmail - I concentrated this to the edges, with a wider patch of light added to the curved end of the blade and another half way down. The metallic paint was applied quite thin and the edges carefully blended out. The second and final highlight was GW Mithril Silver.

The final picture in the sequence shows a little faint blue added onto the shaded areas - this gives a colder, harder feel to the blade and suggests that there is some reflected light hitting it. This was applied as controlled glazes of very thin light blue paint.

Birds - These were painted with three colours - turquoise, light bone and black. The base colour was a mix of turquoise and bone - when this was dry I faded the colour (not very subtly) by adding more bone towards the base - and more black towards the end of the birds. The next two stages show how the effect is made to look more subtle - basically by filling in between the colours with intermediate shades. None of it was blended - I just worked quickly and kept going back and forth between the colours where the 'blend' needed some work. I like to mix plenty of paint on the palette when I am doing things like this - and work quickly before it dries out. That way I have every shade I need right there in front of me. It handy to have a hair drier to speed the drying time on the miniature.

I have just finished off all the small details (mouth, eyes, straps, etc), and am waiting for the base to dry before attaching the finished miniature. I'll post pictures of the completed piece tomorrow.

cheers

mike