3 New Heroes and a New Way to do Doors

I know it's been a while since I posted but that's because last weekend I was at the North Texas RPG Convention.  I had a great time, met some new friends, and really got my old school fantasy rpg fix taken care of.  And best of all, I got to meet Erol Otus (if you follow this blog you know how I feel about him!) and Jeff Dee, my two favorite D&D product artists from my childhood.  I didn't get to speak much with Erol (he always seemed to be running his games when I saw him) but he was a very nice guy and did stop and talk to me (a complete stranger) in the hallway for a few minutes allowing me to go a little fan boy on him.  Jeff, on the other hand, had a booth for his products so I spent a lot of time talking with him.  Also a very nice guy and we spent a lot of time talking about the new V&V release that he and Jack Herman are putting together, which of course I backed the Kickstarter for.  I got to play in a V&V game that Jack ran at the con, which was great fun.  I'm a sucker for a good superhero rpg!

But, because of the Con, I was busy the week before it getting ready, so today is the first day I got something new done.  The following are three new heroes, a barbarian and paladin/knight redo, and a new generic archer figure.  Also, I tried a new way to do doors.  But first the heroes.

The first figure on the left is a generic archer figure.  Could be an elf, could be a human, could be a fighter, could be a ranger, could even be a thief with those striped pants, etc.  Simple construction, milk bottle with a bead as a head, tile spacer arms, bow, quiver, and feet, paper tunic and hood.  I mainly did this figure to see if I could do a hood that has those saw-toothed edges to it (I'm sure there is a term from the Middle Ages to describe this piece of clothing but I have no idea what it is).  In the middle is my 2.0 barbarian.  Lots of differences here from the old guy.  Bead head instead of the axle cap, paper hair, paper short tunic/skirt, and feet.  Still used the egg as the body and the split eggs and split spools as the arms and forearms, respectively.  Paladin/knight redo is on the far right.  Except for the feet, he has pretty much the same construction as the old one except that I gave this one a shield and put a decorative tile spacer "doo-dad" on top of his helmet (it is painted gold instead of gray so it is easier to see).  I have also started painting all the bases black.  I steered away from that for a long time, but I think it works better.  It essentially looks like the shadow created from their body, and it works regardless of what type of terrain or room color the figure is resting on.

View from the rear.

I'm quite happy with them.

And now some action shots with the new door.  I liked my old doors, the construction idea for them I stole from DMG, but because I travel to my games instead of being able to have them in my house, I have to constantly transport my stuff.  The old doors look great, but they are a little on the brittle side.  I wanted something that was a bit sturdier and could stand up to constant transport.  I already had a precut rectangle that was thick and roughly "door-sized" and some larger blocks that could serve as each side of the doorway.  For another project that is now dead in the water, I ordered a bunch of very thick long but not very wide rectangles which I thought would be a good "floor" and "ceiling" for the doorway.  It is especially nice because the thick "floor" piece is the same thickness as the thick foam I use for rooms.  So I glued it all together and because there is so much wood surface touching each other, these doors are incredibly solid!

The following is an "action shot" with my new figures, one of my new dungeon tiles out of the thick foam, and the doorway.  There is also a hallway dungeon tile in the pic that the heroes just came from, some old friends in the form of a roaring brazier and a statue of an elven goddess, and also I painted up a summoning circle insert that I can plop down on a tile wherever I need it.  It's just a large precut thin wooden circle I got at the craft store and I painted freehand a summoning circle on it that I stole from the internet.

Good shot of the door here.  I forgot to say that I added a small mushroom cap to each side of the door as a handle.  It's all a bit oversized, but I think the chunkiness of it looks good with these figures. 

The neophyte adventurers are baffled!  Why is there a summoning circle in front of the door?  What significance does the statue of the elven goddess of luck have in its positioning?  Why is the brazier lit and who lit it!?