Al-Vianna concept art

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

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

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!

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

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...

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

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

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