More Gobbos and Fellowship Members!

Got another 6 goblins finished and two more members of the Fellowship done as well.  Here are the goblins.

Nothing really new here construction wise other than a few different arm poses (like the angled shield guy in the middle).  But, painting wise I did use two new skin tone colors.  Can't decide if I like them or not, one is a light greenish gray color and the other is sort of a "sand" color.  In this next picture, on the far left and right are the two new skin shades, while in the middle is an old figure that has the skin tone that I've been using to date.

I like the variety, but I have to be honest, I think I like the middle one the best in terms of skin tone.  And now onto the two new Fellowship members ...

Pippin and Gimli!  Pippin is obviously a variation of the "hobbit construction" I used for Merry, I just changed the angle of his arms a bit and had him facing to his right instead of to his left.  Gimli is the same construction as the hobbits except that I used a tapered plug for his head/helmet.  I also had to give him the axe and the throwing axe both.  For one, I think it looks cool.  Second, he used both during the time the Fellowship were in the Mines of Moria which is the game that these figures will be used in, at least initially.  The first Gimli I made years ago I used a slightly larger spool to make him a little taller than the hobbits.  With the addition of his feet, it just seemed to make him too tall if I used the larger spool for this figure when I lined him up next to the humans.  So I went with the smaller spool.

As is often the case, the more you do something, the better at it you get.  Pippin's cloak turned out quite nice and better than Merry's.  I got a better angle on the hood, the transition between the spool and the hood is seemless (important because the top of the spool is a part of the cloak when it is painted!).  It is easy to get carried away with these hero figures and try to do too many details on them.  There are a ton of things I could have done with Gimli.  His armor and coat are very complicated (do a google image search on him and you'll see what I mean!).  But he is still very small, and keeping with the minimalist approach with these figures, I decided to pull in the one thing that made him unique in appearance from the other Fellowship members, and that is, beyond his helmet, his blue bed roll slung across his lower back.  It's just a tile spacer cut to fit, but the blue color and the lighter colored ropes not only are indicative of the real character, they break up the high amount of ruddy browns of various shades to give the figure a bit more visual interest.

Pretty happy with them.  Now onto 6 more goblins and two more members of the Fellowship.  Hmmm ... who should I do next ...?

33% of the Fellowship!

Okay, there is no way I am going to be able to wait to post my Fellowship figures until all of them are finished.  I like them too much and couldn't wait any longer to post pictures of them, so here they are.  They turned out WAY better than I even hoped.

Here we have Boromir, Merry, and Aragorn.  Now let's see them one at a time.

Waahhh!  Waahhh!  Waahhh!  Boromir, Son of Gondor, with his famous horn.

And his shield strapped to his back.  He, like Aragorn, was made using the regular old upside down milk bottle construction like I've been using for my fantasy figures for a while now.  Thing is, both he and Aragorn wear a coat-like piece of clothing (not to mention Aragorn's leather armor has a skirt to it), and this clothing sticks out from their bodies.  I could have just ignored this and painted it all on the milk bottle.  But the problem with this is that the milk bottle tapers smaller as you get down to their feet.  So it just would not have looked right.  In other words, had I done that, Boromir's black leather coat would have been wide at his shoulders and very narrow at his feet.  That just doesn't look right.  Speaking of feet, I actually put tile spacer feet on these guys, which is also different than the other fantasy figures I've been doing (the heroes anyway).  To make the coat, I used a piece of regular white paper and cut it to the right shape, put some glue on the milk bottle, and wrapped the paper around the wooden milk bottle.  It was a little fiddly, but honestly, once the glue dried, it is a really sturdy coat.  It only goes half way up the milk bottle but to remedy the extra thickness of the paper, I just painted the top lip of the paper as his belt, which makes it look very natural.  Everything else is standard construction except for his horn.  I just cut it out of a tile spacer.

And now to Aragorn ...

Same basic construction.  His coat/paper piece is the same except that it's a bit shorter in length, and I also cut two levels in it because the green coat is longer than the skirt of his leather armor.

Not the best picture but I learned from my other Ranger figure how easy it is to do a tile spacer bow and glue it on the figures back.  Did that with Aragorn too, as you can see.

And finally, Merry the hobbit ...

My favorite things about this figure are a) the feet, and b) the cloak.  The feet you can see well here.  They are tile spacers just like I did for the goblins (in fact his body is the same 1/2" spool as the goblins), but rather than leaving them consistent in thickness (like a pair of goblin boots would be in my mind), after gluing this figure to the base, I cut the feet down at about a 45 degree angle from the edge where it glues onto the spool body until you get to the end of the tile spacer.  Makes for a nice tapered foot shape I think, especially after I painted the hair on the top of the feet with the toes sticking out at the bottom.

The cloak is just two pieces of paper.  The first is a rectangle glued over the back.  The second is a crescent moon shape that is glued into place to make the hood.  Then I just painted it.  I have done some Fellowship figures in the past where I used craft felt to make the cloaks.  They look good because they are "fuzzy" like cloth (because they are cloth!), but they are pretty tricky to make and only super glue will hold them in place.  And invariably you get super glue all over the fabric which changes its texture and color, or worse than that all over your painted figure because you can't paint the figure once the cloak is on it without getting paint on the cloak, which of course ruins everything.  But the bad part is that you end up getting super glue on the painted figure usually when you are gluing the craft felt cloak into place, which is also a problem.  The paper was a lot easier to work with, I could use regular white glue to put it into place, I glued it onto an unpainted figure, and once the glue dries it is very sturdy.

Good luck at the sword arm and the other foot, as well as the profile of the cloak.  That was another problem with the craft felt cloaks with figures at this scale, they were just too thick.  The craft felt cloaks look more like parkas than cloaks.  Good look at his other hobbit foot too in this picture.

I hope you like them!  I'm working on another batch of goblins now as well as Pippin and Gimli.  Gimli is giving me a little trouble, but I'm confident I will work it out eventually.

Goblin Spearmen!

I have decided to put on a Mines of Moria minis game scenario for the gaming club I participate in sometimes using the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game rules and scenarios.  It's a really fun skirmish system (does sort of fall apart with larger armies, but for the adventures of the fellowship, or the party in the Hobbit, it's a really fine system.

In addition to the Fellowship heroes, the Mines of Moria scenario calls for 36 goblins, 12 with shields, 12 with bows, and 12 with spears, three goblin leaders, and 1 cave troll.  So far I've got 6 shield guys and 6 bow guys done.  Over the weekend I got 6 spear guys done as well, so that's about half of the goblins already finished.  Also, as a teaser, I'm starting to do the Fellowship as well and got Merry, Aragorn, and Boromir finished over the weekend too.  But I am going to save the Fellowship figures and post a picture of them all together when the entire party is finished.

Here are the goblin spearmen.

I am continuing to be happy with the goblins construction.  For the next group of 6 that I do (of each of the three types) I'm going to vary the skin tone a bit (some light green, some sort of a grayish sand color) just to give some variety.  I'm also going to try and stay as dynamic with the poses as I can varying as much as the limits of using spools and tile spacers will allow.  And as before, I can't stress enough, once you get the construction plan down for these wooden warriors, the construction and painting time is significantly less than for commercial figures.  I got 6 goblins, 1 hobbit, and two men finished in a weekend, with a total of no more than 4 or 5 hours total work involved.  Not to mention as Dale said in one of his posts, does anyone else have goblins like these?

Goblin Archers!

Just finished up some Goblin Archers today, thought I would post pictures of them.

Very similar to the other fellows I just finished, except obviously these guys are archers.  With the bow arm, I went with a single tile spacer construction.  Much sturdier and you only have one glue point, where the arm meets the body, so that's better too.  Not the best looking "bow" in the world, but hey, they're goblins after all!  Paint wise, I decided to give these guys more "hide" looking armor, so I just painted different sized circles and semi-circles to create the hide effect.  I also did not paint the bases beyond a dark gray color (in other words not floor tiles painted on these).  I'll see if I like them in the long run.

These guys highlight one of the more desirable things about wooden warriors.  In a little over a week, I put together and painted 12 miniatures to a standard I would be more than happy with putting on a gaming table.  And I really did not work on the archers much this week, maybe a total of 4 hours to produce 6 figures across 4 days (I started them on Monday night).  And a lot of that time is drying time, so I could have been working on other figures at the same time.  I can be pretty fast with my metal and plastic commercial figures, but not that fast! 

WWII British and Early War USMC Infantry Tutorial Build

Blog reader tradgardmastare asked for some pictures on my latest build, some WWII British infantry, so that he can see the process. Sure! Here you go. Don't be put off by the number of steps. It takes more time to take the pictures and post than it does to actually execute the steps, but it is always good to do to repeat a little bit because new readers do not always go back into the blog and see the previous posts telling how, and I am always refining my process, so it does not always come out as I put out new posts. So here goes, and thanks for the suggestion tradgardmastare.

When I was making my Austrians and Prussians, I started by gluing the figures that I was building straight to the base that was going to be used for gaming. The primary reason for this was:

1. The figures represented formed troops where the men stood close together.
2. When figures are packed in, many details simply cannot be seen by the gamer, especially details on the front of the figures that are in the second and third ranks and the details on the rear of the figures that are in the first and second ranks. Painting those details is often a waste of time.
3. I wanted figures in specific formations on the base in order to visually represent different troop types. Handling the figures often damaged their paint jobs with hot glue.

Because these figures – although they will continue to have multiple figures per base – they will be spaced much farther apart and thus all details will be easier to see by the game. Although I will not be painting a lot more details than previously, those details I do paint will have to be made consistently on all figures. For that reason I have switched to painting all figures separately, off of their bases.

Construction

I start with a craft stick, which is really just a very wide popsicle stick. I glue the cube bead directly to the stick with white glue. I will later pop off the completed figure with a straight-bladed craft knife. (A small dab of superglue will also work.)

 

Next, I glue the furniture (screwhole) plug to the top of the cube bead. For those that don't know what I mean by furniture plug, you can see them in the picture below, highlighted by the red rectangles. These are small wooden parts that are pressed into the holes where you screw furniture parts together. They come in various forms, such as flathead, roundhead, and mushroom or button plugs.

As you can see, the button plugs look like the old 'pie plate' helmets used by the British and Americans in WWI and the British in WWII. (The Americans still used them in 1941, but they were replaced in 1942 with the helmets we are all familiar with.) Because they look so much like them, they make a great starting place for these helmets. As I noted in an earlier post, I think that the headgear is probably the single most iconic piece gear when it comes to identifying what a miniature represents. Get this right and you are a long way towards having figures you are happy with.

I would recommend a small dab of superglue (I like the new Gorilla Glue Superglue Gel) on one piece and a small dab of white glue on the other. The water in the white glue will help the superglue set faster.

Another stock of the trade is a flat toothpick. In case you are unsure of what I mean by that, it is shown in the picture below. It has a blunt point on one end and is rounded on the other. These are not usually found in grocery stores anymore, but can be found in the craft stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael's.

 

I use small snips to cut the rounded top of the flat toothpick off. These snips can be found in shops that support plastic modeling (they are used to snip plastic parts off of sprues), but they can also be found in the beads section of craft shops. This is where I obtained mine. (I keep one set for wood and another for plastic.)

The top will be used for the 'feet' of the prone figures. Not something you have to do, and in fact is something that you could do for all figures, if you wanted. (Especially if you want your figures a little taller. Hmmmmm...)

Note that Peter Pig's Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI) uses casualty markers. To be honest, I always thought casualty markers were a complete waste of money and time. I simply use red glass beads for this sort of thing. But given that these figures are so inexpensive to produce and quick to build and paint, I decided to splurge. These are the start of those markers. Note the 'imperfect' placement of the feet.

I am also going to build a .30 caliber Browning machine gun team. Almost every picture I see has the gunner sitting upright behind it and the loading lying or kneeling to the left. I decide to put some 'feet' in front of the gunner and behind the loader. In hindsight, I should probably have put some 'knees' between the 'body' and the 'feet' of the gunner. Who know? Maybe later.

As my wife will tell you, I don't get rid of the scraps because I will always find a use for them eventually. I use the pointed end of the flat toothpick for the casualties' arms. I normally don't do that for normal infantry (which I will show later), but these seem perfect for casualties.

I am not using two arms for every figure. I am not trying to be morbid, I am just assuming that some casualties will have arms folded under them, at their sides, and such.

Arms at the side of the figure are pretty easy to make, but arms sticking straight out, like with the gunner and loader, is much harder with my normal method. I will use the toothpick stick for these figures also.

Ignore the excess white glue. It will shrink when it dries.

What I normally use for details is a product called E6000 Allure Dimensional Adhesive Paint. It is a thick, glossy, plastic goop that will set in about 15 minutes and harden overnight.

To the business end I attach a fine applicator tip so I can place a finer bead of goop to the figure.

I have applied white gesso to the figure so that it is easier to see the goop. I apply a thin bead to the bottom outer edge of the 'helmet' to make the rim.

Note that the idea of getting a thin bead is thin measuring top to bottom. The goal, however, is to make the brim expand outwards more prominently. The image below left is what you want while the image below right is not. The latter  just won't show after being painted.

 

Everything about figures in smaller scales has to scream exaggeration. If the figures are not 'cartoony', then it is probably too subtle. If you don't like that style, you will probably not like the results of the figures as they will probably be colored blobs to you when looking at them at arm's length.

Of course, you don't want every detail exaggerated. You need to pick and choose which details get highlighted and which are not necessary. For me, the headgear is what the eye of the gamer sees the most, whether viewed from behind (the figures you are using) or from across the table (the figures your opponent is using).

Now it is time to start making weapons. I used a piece of flat toothpick and the snips (above) to make the stock, receiver and magazine for the BAR and a piece of dowel for the barrel.

I do the same for the NCOs armed with the Thompson submachine guns. Don't worry about the gaps as that will be filled in with good, glue or paint.

Glue a length of dowel to the chest of the riflemen. Put it at an angle so that the right 'arm' will drape over the weapon while the left 'arm' will come up under it.

A few wood scraps for the loader of the Browning .30 cal machinegun to represent the ammo box and belt.

Time to start 'making' the 'arms'. More E6000 Allure goop. Two little blobs to show where the hands will be. Do all of the figures this way first, so that by the time you come back to do the next steps, the goop for the hands will have started to cure.

Making the arm is as simple as painting a bead on the figure. Here the right arm is draped over the stock of the rifle, gripping the trigger area.

Again, do all the right arms before moving on. It is so easy to brush across the uncured goop and have it ruin your work so it is best to do one step at a time.

Now paint the left arm on with the good. This is easy, easy, easy and quick.

Guess what? We are done with construction. Unless there is some extra detail you want to put on, like blobs for cartridge boxes, haversacks or gas masks, that is all you need. Me, I am stopping here.

Painting

I am not going to show a step-by-step progression of the figures, but simply go over the paints I used and the order.

1. I applied white gesso on those parts of the figure that were added after applying the  gesso initially. Normally I apply it once, at the end, but I thought it might help you see the bits added during the build if I painted the core figure white at the start. Gesso is important when using unfinished wood as it helps clog the pores in the wood so it does not soak up so much paint, giving it a dull color. On beads that are painted, or are plastic, gesso helps the paint stick better to the material. The E6000 is also very glossy and plastic, so the gesso is almost necessary in order to get paint to adhere.
2. I painted the helmet with Evergreen craft paint, mostly to cover the white and give a dark base. I then dry-brushed Vallejo Reflective Green on top. This allowed the rim of the helmet to pop and gave the appropriate battle-worn patchy look.
3. The main uniform is Ceramcoat Khaki craft paint. I usually use old Citadel paints or Vallejo paints for large areas, so this was an experiment to use cheap craft paint. It took 2 1/2 coats, but I am very satisfied with the color.
4. I use a medium brown color – Citadel Vermin Brown, which is now Games Workshop Skrag Brown – to paint a band of hair on the figure. I used to paint the hair so that it fell above the next, leaving a thin ribbon of flesh. Not this time. I also used to paint the hair around where the ears would be. This time I decided to paint a 'wall' of hair and add the flesh back in to break it up.
5. Next came the flesh color. I used the old Citadel Tallarn Flesh, which is now the Games Workshop Cadian Fleshtone. Basically I just painted the face and hands with the larger brush, then painted a dot for the ears and a line to make a little bit of exposed neck under the ears. This method was much faster and viewed from the tabletop, produces the same result.
6. The rifle was painted using Games Workshop Dryad Bark.
7. The end of the rifle and the bolt mechanism got spots with Games Workshop Leadbelcher (Citadel Boltgun Metal).
8. Finally I finished the figure off by painting the eyes and mouth. Actually, I used a fine pen for the mouth. I used that same pen to put lines around the arms to give it better definition, as all that khaki just blended together.

All in all, I am very happy with the figures. I am still putting the finishing touches on the platoon leaders with their Thompson submachine guns, the BAR teams, and the .30 cal machinegun team. I haven't built the Browning .30 cal either, as that will be built after the figures are painted.

Next up, the special figures of the USMC and the start of the Japanese SNLF platoon.

Goblins!

I've been busy doing some Mage Knight figure repaints for my D&D game, but I worked extra hard this week on them so that I could get to the Craftee goblins I've been wanting to do as well.  As I said in an earlier post on the Skaven, I've always wanted to do hunched over goblin figures and I've never been happy with any of the probably six different constructions I have tried.  I think I'm finally happy with the design for the ones I finished tonight.  I should go to bed, but I wanted to do this post before turning in.

I am now convinced of several things.  First, the addition of the feet to some of the monsters really matters.  These goblins look so much better with the tile spacer feet than without.  Second, and more importantly, I dig these little guys!  It's so easy to make goblins that just look ... well ... wimpy.  These guys look like the last fellows I would want to run into in a dark dungeon hallway!

The body was essentially the same as for the Skaven.  1/2" x 1/2" spool with a split spool glued on the top, flat side down, to make the "shoulders."  The head is a split bead.  Tile spacer arms and feet (and weapons in the case of the blades).  The shield is the usual small precut thin wooden piece, and the spears are toothpicks.  The ears are tile spacers cut to shape.  Really easy to make and paint.  Now for some action shots!

Just as our small adventuring party with hireling torch bearer was about to investigate the chest on the table, an angry group of goblins streams forth from the dark hallway opposite the adventurers intent on ridding their underground home of these surface-dwelling interlopers!

I didn't want to paint the goblins green ... I almost painted them yellow ... but instead I decided I wanted to use some color that was neutral, but would also give a nice "washed out" look.  I considered several different shades of gray, but that is sort of a "cop out" for these figures, I think.  But they do need to have a neutral skin tone and they need to look washed out.  After all, these guys are not exactly soaking up the sunlight every day!  There is a craft paint color called "Mississippi Mud" which I thought was perfect.  I'm happy with this choice for the goblin's flesh, although I might do some greenish or yellowish ones in the future for variation.

Next up, goblin archers!  I need to put on a Mine of Moria Lord of the Rings Fantasy Battles Game for my gaming group when I get enough goblins done!

WWII British Troops in Small Scale

I am getting to the point where I usually hate to rebase my troops. If I decide to work in my smaller scale, using beads for troops and using a minimalist design, I can construct, paint and base these troops in about the same time that I can rebase traditional metal or plastic soldiers, basing them in a 'realistic' scheme using glue, sand, gravel, flock and paint. (If the troops were fixed to the base using epoxy, I might not even be able to rebase the figures.) Some of the troops I have, especially those painted and based by professionals, I could never replicate the look, so I really don't want to take them off their bases in the first place.

So, if I want to try a new set of rules for a period where I already have figures, but they are not based correctly, I have either converted the rules to use the basing scheme that I already have, or I simply set the rules aside to collect dust. One of those sets of rules were Peter Pig's Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI). Although people say that you can use troops that are based for Flames of War, it involves a bit of conversion, which I am not going to get into. So for years I have simply set aside those rules. When a new version of PBI came out I resisted the urge to buy them, as I had not played the original version in all these years and I found out that the basing scheme was essentially the same, so why bother. I would still have the same issues.

Now that I am on the tail end of my Seven Weeks' War project – I am finishing the last limbers and expanding my cavalry units from four and five figures each to six figures each – I started thinking about a new project. Mind you I still have other projects in the works, such as the Spanish 1808 and the 25mm DBA Hun army, but still, I wanted a minimalist bead army project. That and I wanted to create new figures in new periods, as that seems to be what I enjoy the most. I like to see what I can create.

Having looked at Wyloch's Armory's work (see previous blog post) and being inspired about the possibility of creating simple vehicles from wood and plastic I decided to go for WWII, and specifically to finally build forces to give PBI a go. As I have never built a British force in Flames of War and because the British seemed relatively simple to create with button plugs, I decided to start with them.

The British infantry consists of two main pieces: a screw hole furniture plug with a button (or mushroom) top and a cube bead. In this scale the plug is 1/4" and the bead is 6-8mm. The rifle is a simple miniature dowel and I used Allure dimensional adhesive paint (see previous blog post) to create the arms and hands.

Note that these plugs are the same ones I used for my 1866 Prussians. In order to make it a little more 'pie plate' looking, I put a thin bead around the edge of the 'helmet'.

Very simple to build, very quick to paint and very easy to base.

Next up I wanted to try a Bren gun team. I wanted these troops to be prone, however.

If you look at the edge of the gunner's helmet, you can see that I did a better job with his helmet than with the others. The trick is to lay down the thinnest bead you can along the bottom edge.

The Bren gun itself is made of the mini dowel and two small scraps of wood. The first one goes on top and represents the magazine with the rounds.

The second scrap was glued under the barrel and then cut into a '^' shape to represent the gun's bipod. I simply painted the empty space black. This is minimalist after all!

I have to admit, the part that makes me smile was painting the bottom of their boots with mud. The boots are simply the rounded top of a flat toothpick, which I use for all sorts of parts.

I am still thinking about who I should choose to oppose them with. I did some prototype Germans, which I will probably show when they are finished, but given that I have nice German Grenadier and Panzergrenadier forces based for Flames of War I was really thinking about trying something else. I have some prototype German Fallschirmjagers being built, but if I did forces for the Battle for Crete then the British should be in a different uniform (I believe). But it could easily fit in France 1944 where they could fight the British or Canadians.

My next thought was doing the German Gebirgsjagers (mountain troops), which fought in Italy 1944. Once I started looking into them I found that the fought the French, Americans, and Poles. So these 'British' troops could actually be Poles. That might be interesting. I might have to look a little closer into that.

Finally, I thought about the Italians. Of course, the thing that leaps to mind the quickest is the Desert War, but I had not painted the troops for the 8th Army in the desert gear. So that probably meant fighting them in smaller campaigns (the Balkans?) or in Sicily or even hold-outs in Italy 1944. The funny thing is, Battlefront produced those books for Flames of War after I stopped buying their stuff, so I don't have any of that as reference.

For a tank, it will really depend upon what period I end up with. I was strongly considering doing a Matilda,  just because I have nothing like that, but that would really mean France 1940 or Desert War 1941.

Decisions, decisions. WWII really is a huge subject because it covers so many theater and rapid technology changes. I will figure it out though and let you see the results. Honestly, a driving factor in this will, as always, be the 'hats' and 'helmets'. I have long ago determined that with model soldiers the singular piece of gear that is iconic, and helps a player determine what he is looking at, is the headgear. Having to create custom shapes with putty or dimensional paint is okay for two or three figures, but is a pain when the numbers are approaching 50 figures.