New year, new weird creature!

 And so we reach the start of another year. Here is the best miniature that I did in 2024:

In 2024, I did some of my favourite conversions and miniatures. I feel that I got steadily better and was able to put out things that I'd not really expected. I made more classic Eldar (including finishing the harlequins, which I'm pleased about), and had a lot of fun converting various weirdos for Stargrave and Silver Bayonet. I did two Mordheim gangs, which were fun projects. And yet...

I'm getting a bit tired. I am a member of the miniature-making and Oldhammer communities, I suppose, because I miniatures and some of them are old. But I don't feel part of any community, really. At times it feels as if I make another model, enjoy the process of doing so, and then put it away for good. It seems as though I'm just chucking stuff out there onto this blog and onto Instagram and then... that's it, really.

To be clear, I'm not holding myself out as either a great artist or someone who needs/wants/deserves any sort of "clout" in this hobby. I'm an acceptable painter and converter. But I'm starting to get the same feeling from this as I got from self-publishing three fantasy novels: nothing really changes. Blogs and communities don't organically grow anymore (if they ever did). A post that would have got one response two years ago still gets one response. Everything feels rather static.

The obvious answer is "join a gaming club, play some games", but I'm not sure about that. I've met enough powergamers and Space Marine fanboys to be put off playing against people I don't really know. There comes a point where the comedy genius of saying "Heresy!" all the time fades.

So I don't know what I'll do over the next year. I'd like to keep on making things, but I'd like to do something more. Whether that involves playing any games, I don't know. Perhaps I'll try to do some other form of art. We shall see.

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Anyhow, here's my first model of 2025. I found a load of bits that, with some clay and green stuff, fitted together (sort of!). The body and legs come from a Warmachine Cryx model, the head is a GW plastic squig, the knight is a Perry Miniatures medieval knight, and the tail is just green stuff. Together, they made a weird stumpy animal somewhere between a chicken and a deep-sea fish. 

An instagram commenter suggested that it looked quite like one of Brian Froud's creatures for Labyrinth, which made me think that it needed a whimsical paint job. I started with a red body for the steed and steel armour, with some brass bits, but this felt a bit too sinister and chaos-like, so I introduced some green and blue to the scheme. I also made a little carrot out of green stuff to dangle from the end of the lance. I imagine this is how the rider gets his weird steed to move.

Some Kind Of Alien Ostrich Monster

The older I get, the less the whole "grimdark" thing appeals to me. Not for any deep reason, but just because I find it rather dull: too much sepia, mud and inexplicable piles of skulls for my tastes. Of course, people can do what they like, but I find myself increasingly increasingly drawn to make brightly-coloured models of "some kind of robot" or "a space adventurer". Also, outside Warhammer, you don't have to deal with the endless people shouting "heresy!" at each other.

Anyhow, I was in Southampton last weekend, and I visited a Forbidden Planet shop for the first time since the pandemic. If you're wondering, FP is a chain that sells comics, sci-fi and related merchandise, some bits of it classier than others. On the discount shelf, I found several big art books going for almost nothing.

I bought Battle Milk 2 and 3, which seem to consist of design work by a group of film artists, ranging from the realistic to the cartoony and kitsch, and a lavish book called Alien Race, which appears to have been the basis for a film pitch about a "horse" race on another planet and features loads of cool beasts and their weird riders. In any event, it seems that nothing came of it, since all the books were from 2010 or so. I got them for £5: they should have cost £80. 

As an author, it strikes me as slightly sad that books with so much content should be going so cheaply. Anyhow, I found Alien Race quite inspiring, and put together a weird creature of my own.

I had a pair of legs from some kind of mech toy, and a head and neck that I'd used years ago in a failed conversion of the Jabberwock from the Alice books. The neck was from a dark elf hydra, and the head came from a much-chopped squig model. I must have hacked through a lot of metal to make these.

The trouble about toys is that they're often made out of wobbly plastic that isn't very nice to work with (and have dreadful mould lines). The best way to stick this thing together was to use a lot of glue and pinning, and to attach the legs in a sort of full-on sprinting pose, which suited the rather goofy head.

I gave it a bright paint job, influenced by racing cars. I'd had the base lying around for ages - I think it's from a Warmachine model, but I'm not sure how much it's been converted by its previous owner. 

That's me done for now!

Shire Dragon and Red Admiral

 Once again I've been trying to sort out some of the models that have been sitting on my desk for ages. About two years ago, I bought myself a Mirliton Miniatures "Shire Dragon" for Christmas. I assembled it (I remember that a lot of drilling and pinning was involved), put some basic colours on it, and then left it there. I thought it was time to finish him off.

I was slightly surprised to find that I'd used a dark blue wash on the green parts of the model. I'm not sure why I did that, but I decided to leave it in place. I seemed to have highlighted the green scales in two ways, one involving a lighter green and the other involving adding yellow to dark green. Oh well, it seemed to work.

Making the base was enjoyable. The metal model came with a lot of sculpted grass around the lower legs, and I stuck it onto an MDF circle. I added DAS clay to make the ground undulate a bit, and pushed some bits of cork and slate into the clay to be rocks. I painted the base as usual: green flock with patches of watered-down dark green and brown, followed by a light yellow drybrush. I added quite a lot of static grass tufts and flowers.

He actually came with a couple of small human figures, but I didn't add them as they would have been out of scale.

I could have done the wings a bit better (I never like painting wings) but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with that. His face looks nice. In fact, his expression of vague contentment makes me think he's been at the hobbits' weed. 

I also painted another Durgin Forge model. Again, it's a great sculpt: very slightly caricatured, but with excellent detail. This guy is, apparently, a Bluecoat Admiral (I thought that was a sort of butterfly) but I painted him to fit with the other two soldiers. 

A Cat and a Question

 Here's a cat I made to go with the Eldar. It started off as a metal leopard from the game Bushido that I bought ages ago. I enlarged the ears with green stuff, but otherwise it's unconverted. I was under the impression that Grynx - psychic cat-things from 40k that seem especially connected to the Eldar - were blue. Apparently, they aren't, but what the heck. It was a very quick paint job, and while the highlighting could be more extreme, I'm happy with it (and glad I finally found a use for that model).

So, I have a question. I've got some old metal Howling Banshees and Swooping Hawks. Being ancient models, they've got metal tabs across the bottom of their feet. They're all meant to be very athletic, which means that the points of contact with the ground are very small (basically, they're on tiptoe).

Like this

If I use my standard bases, so they're in keeping with the rest of the army, I'll have to cut the tabs off, which will make them very hard to connect to the bases. However, if I use slottabases (as was intended for these models) I'll probably have to use flock on the bases, which will be different to the rest of the army.

Which option should I go for?

Random Fantasy Folk

 Once again I've been trying to actually finish some of the models that I've had knocking around, largely to make some space on my painting table for the unit of cyberpunk elf soldiers I've been planning. I've been working on these guys on and off for the last few weeks.

First up is a Black Scorpion female Landsknecht that I bought at an event last year. As with all their stuff, the sculpting is excellent. The pose really suits her fancy outfit and equipment. I find the casting of their models to be very crisp, which can make the details quite hard to paint, somehow. Anyway, I like the model and I've got a few more of their things to make, too.

Then there are some metal giant rats. Giant rats are handy, as they can fit in with space and fantasy games. These ones are mutant rats from Necromunda, and are very old models. They're good sculpts, though, and look suitably mangy and unwholesome. No doubt the skaven will use them as attack dogs (or possibly dinner).

The next three models are a bit random. They consist of (left to right) a female berserker who came free with an order from Dice Bag Lady; a werewolf I found at the local gaming shop; and a Goth chieftan sold by Warlord Games.

They all had little tab bases, so I stuck them onto normal bases and smoothed out the ground with DAS clay. The two humans were unconverted. The werewolf was from a range called Nastiez or something like that, and was pretty cheap. He's clearly an old model and I found him quite hard to assemble. I ended up using a fair bit of green stuff and pinning the joins. His right hand was a bit weedy-looking, as was the axe that he was waving in the air, so I replaced it with a hand and weapon from a space ork.

Here are the two humans. They were fairly easy to paint, although the camera has washed out the details somewhat. The woman is slightly plump, and the man is really tall - by the usual standards of Warlord models, he'd be massive. They remind me of both Vikings and Asterix.

And then the werewolf. I went for a grey-brown look to his skin/shorter fur, highlighting with pale skin. The shaggier fur was grey highlighted with bone. His axe was painted metal and washed several times with black. I really like this technique for dirty weapons: it produces some interesting effects.

Given that he was a cheap old model that was a pain to assemble, I'm really pleased with the way that he's come out.

Pigsty

 Just a quick post. A couple of weeks back I went to an event, where I picked up a few bits of 3D-printed scenery by Iron Gate Scenery. One of the bits was a nice little pigsty, together with fencing, which I thought would look good in the fantasy town. No medieval town is complete without a few farm animals wandering through the streets, probably chased by a filthy peasant.

I made a base for the fencing out of plasticard, partly to make it stronger and partly to allow me to add some mud to the ground for the pigs to root about in. The pigs themselves were purchased from Warlord Games in a farm animals set ages ago. I think their pinkness breaks up the other colours a bit.

Another Weird Rider

 Most of the time, I work on one model at a time. However, sometimes I'll chip away at a miniature a bit at a time, in between making other things. 

I've been making another weird rider for a while. The basic steed was a de-boobed steed of Slaanesh. The rider's lower body and head came from a high elf wizard. The hardest aspect of the conversion was getting the legs to sit on the steed. I had to cut away quite a lot of its hips and thighs - too much, actually, as I had to fill some of the legs with green stuff. The legs still didn't quite meet, and I ended up using Das clay to smooth it all together.

The upper body came from an old plastic eldar, and the arms were skitarri (I've got a lot of use out of that kit!). I had to bulk out the waist with clay and some space marine boxes, as it looked rather spindly and didn't fit the robes. I chopped off the top of the helmet to get away from him being a pure high elf, and as a nod to the big, flat-topped hats favoured by some of the characters that the artist Moebius draws.

As with the other riders, I used a similar colour scheme to that in Moebius cartoons. I wish I'd kept some work in progress pictures of this model, but I'm pleased with the outcome. 

Home On The Strange: Weird Riders

 A lot of the time, I'm making models for a specific army project: at the moment, Chaos and Tau. But every so often, it's a matter of looking at the bits boxes and thinking "What would be fun to make now?"

This was definitely one of those moments. I'd had some steeds of Slaanesh knocking around for a while, and, while I like the models, I'm less keen on the daemonettes that ride them. So, I decided to use the steeds as the riding-beasts of some other models, in some kind of weird science-fiction way.

The first step was to carefully de-boob the steeds. I cut their tongues off too: too many Warhammer monsters have their tongues out. Otherwise, they were put together as usual.

I made two riders. The first had the legs of an eldar guardian (not much else would fit around the steed's body!) and the upper body of a long-trashed Mordheim soldier. The arms came from a Skitarri ranger (I really wanted the ornate scrollwork on the gun), and the head was from an old Warlord Games Russian soldier. 

The second rider would be a robot, slightly like IG-11 from The Mandalorian TV show. His lower body came from Necron parts: specifically, the broken necrons on the Ghost Ark. I got them ages ago in a sale of other bits, and at last I've found a use for them!

His upper body was all kinds of stuff. The arms came from an Imperial Guard stormtrooper and an old Eldar; the head was some sort of Tau device, and I've no idea what the chest and backpack were. With the help of a wheel from a 10mm tank, they looked reasonable, as if he'd been in a few fights and done a few repairs to himself.

The paint scheme was very much inspired by the pictures of Moebius, who I've mentioned before (HERE). I used bright orange and red contrast paint on the steeds to distance them from the usual pink and purple of Slaanesh, and used blue, white and purple normal paint on the riders, along with some fading. They're weird, but I like them!

The Sea Dragon

Here's another thing that I've had lying on my desk for a very long time.

Ages ago, I bought a skaven abomination. With the help of a lot of DAS clay and a Tyranid head, I made the lower half into a dragon. I was never totally happy with it, and I decided to give it a sprucing-up and repaint to match my pirate ogres. It would make a good sea monster, that they had induced to help them.

I added fins to its body, neck and tail. The body fin came from a high elf dragon, and the other two were left over from some river trolls (which also joined the ogre army). The head received some "ears" from (I think) an ancient plastic dragon kit, and the crest was elongated with plasticard and green stuff. The barnacles on its back were just blobs of sculpted green stuff.

I made the base out of coffee stirrers and a small stick of dowell. There's something weird about painting wood to look like wood, but it works far better that way. I don't have a work in progress picture, but for comparison, here's the GW skaven abomination:

And here's another picture of the sea monster. I gave it quite a dark paint scheme, to suggest something that lives deep underwater. I'm not sure why it's got all those stitches all over it (perhaps a helpful ogre repaired it after a big battle) but it looks mean enough to join the ranks of the pirates. Arrrgh!

Space Whale!

Time for yet another model that I've had lying around on my desk for months. By and large, I'm not a huge fan of the models in Warlord Games' Gates of Antares. They tend to feel a bit dull and generic. However, there are a few scupts that I really like, and one of them is the Isorian Tograh Transporter Drone.

I picked this thing up in a sale at the new year. It's normally the steep price of £35, which seems an awful lot for a four-piece resin model with no customisation. It's not all that huge, either: for a transport drone, it would have a lot of trouble transporting anything larger than Christmas cards. But it is a cool shape, and has an interesting bio-mechanical feel, with bone-like armour and things that might be wings, flippers or intake vents. I like the way it looks Gigeresque without being a big snarling monster.

I thought that it resembled a whale, so I painted it in dark blue on the top and light blue underneath, with a thin wash of purple ink to suggest living flesh. I added some bits of phosphorescence to break up the blue colour. I doubt it's meant to have eyes, but I painted some on, and I think they look quite cool. To be honest, I think this is the sort of model that would really benefit from an airbrush instead of a bit of torn sponge.

"They Laughed At My Camel"

I'm still looking through my boxes of unpainted miniatures, many of which I picked up at events purely because I thought they looked cool. I found a camel among them, which I got at an event in Newbury for reasons that I've long forgotten. My main memory is the guys I was with saying "Why the hell would you want that?"

I also happened to pick up an old and broken Necromunda juve in a sale of various old models on ebay. I like some of the old juve sculpts: they have some good poses and expressions. This guy, who is from House Cawdor, was missing his pistol and most of his left hand. It occurred to me that he looked rather as though he was pulling hard on something instead of bracing himself against the recoil of his vanished gun.

So, I put him together with the camel. I drilled a hole in the juve's hands and the camel's harness and connected them with some string. Then I used green stuff to repair the juve's hands, so he would be clutching the rope with both hands, trying to get the camel to move. In my first attempt, the camel didn't quite look stubborn enough, so I cut its neck and bent it back slightly.

Here's the end result.

 

I doubt he'd have any function in a game, but he could make for a reasonable objective.

I've got a few other models that would work as desert-dwellers and other folks from a supply caravan. I might have a go at making a group of caravaneers.

Prince Rupert

Here's the finished model of Warlord Games' Prince Rupert, leader of the Royalist cavalry from the English Civil War. I painted him very much as I felt and didn't attempt any historical accuracy.

He's assembled as per the standard model, although I replaced his small (and realistic) cavalry hammer with a slightly larger Warhammer axe for drama. The model also came with Prince Rupert's dog, who I haven't added as I wouldn't have had room on the base.

It's a very good sculpt, and I particularly like the leaping horse. I'd like to say that he was a pleasure to paint, but frankly the model was terrible for paint chipping off. That said, I'm pleased with the painting, especially of his horse.

The Top Five Horses Of Wargaming

Everybody likes horses, and it's a poor wargame that doesn't include some sort of cavalry. One thing that wargaming companies cannot agree on, however, is how big a horse actually is. Sizes range from the diddy ponies that the Empire knights and Warlord Romans ride, to the yak-sized things that Brettonian knights use when they run out of coconuts to bang together. Here, then, are my top five (horses, not coconuts):


5. Archeon

Archaeon is the Abad'un of Warhammer Fantasy Battle: a chaos lord who leads chaos lords. Back in the good old days, he used to ride The Steed Of The Apocalypse, which looked like a horse that's taken steroids, grown spikes and acquired really weird hooves. Arguably the most metal of the horses featured (although see below).

Sadly, when Age Of Sigmar reared its ugly head, Archaeon's mighty horse was replaced by this goofy-looking thing, which sums up a lot of my complaints with AoS.

4. The Green Knight

The Green Knight is a mystic character for the Bretonnians, who materialises from the forest and is exceedingly difficult to kill. He has the Arthurian look of the Bretonnians and is basically a cool idea. While his sculpt is very old, the way his horse is rearing up, and the intricate barding, make it a rather good horse.

4. Marius Leitdorf (featuring Daisy)

Marius Leitdorf was a nobleman of the Warhammer Empire, and made a change from the usual stern-faced tedium by being a lunatic in a hat that would shame a 1970s gangster.

His horse gains points on account of being in an interesting pose - she seems to be shying away from danger (or perhaps turning) rather than charging into it - and having a name: Daisy. Daisy had the same profile as all other warhorses, but stands out for personality. And headgear.

2. Robohorse

Another pick from the Empire: this time it's the horse-shaped mechanical steed that the Empire engineer can take. My rulebook tells me that it's formally called "Meikle's Equine Effigy of Dynamic Locomotion" and was invented by Frau Meikle, the first woman to be allowed to join the Imperial School of Engineers. Despite having a mane and tail made out of leaves, it looks properly mean. The only reason the engineer is riding it is probably because it told him to come with it if he wanted to live.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite make the top spot because it's not alive and it reminds me too much of this:

1. Prince Rupert

Prince Rupert of the Rhine was a noted cavalier in the English Civil War, and led the king's cavalry in several battles. He is a Warlord Games model, and while Warlord's humans are sometimes a bit basic, they do know how to make a good horse. As luck would have it, I bought this model recently and will be painting it soon. This particular model was painted by Scott Merrifield.

So, that's my guided tour (or canter?) through Wargaming Horses To Look Out For. It's nearly Christmas Day, and I'm going off to wrap presents and eat ham. Have a good Christmas, and in the meantime, here's a picture of one of my favourite horses that I made a while ago: the Tau Space Pony.