Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Anatoli on September 04, 2021, 04:40:14 PM
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Long winded backstory for this project:
Earlier this summer I was able to buy a copy of Monoliths "Conan" board game, the Kickstarter edition (Kings pledge). Got it 2nd hand at a good price, after recently diving into some of Robert E Howards fantasy stories. The idea of getting this game had been with me for many years but I had been on the fence up until now and by now most shops had stopped selling the retail version.
The seller was clearing space in his collection, and the Kithai and Stygia expansions, as well as 9+ small expansion boxes were still unopened and in mint condition. However, most of the base game and stretch goal miniatures were primed and painted with thick paint as he had used them with his play group.
This prompted my very first attempt at stripping plastic miniatures of paint since I started the hobby 25 years ago... Had to use brake fluid and toothbrush to clean off the paint, then bathe everything in soap water to clean it up properly. Took me a whole weekend of doing it in batches of some 25 miniatures at a time.
Initially I was not sure I would paint the miniatures either, but primed the various miniatures in different base coats depending on whether they were heroes, bad guys or evil minions. Having played a few test games I figured this would be something I would enjoy more than once which meant also having to paint it all up.
This led med to my second problem. Most of my painted board game miniatures are mounted on clear bases so that I can enjoy both the painted miniatures and the board game artwork. For Conan you have these color rings to show which unit group a model belongs to. The plastic rings that came in the game did not fit with the acrylic bases I had purchased from GreenStuffWorld for other projects. In the end I was able to find a small French manufacturer that made custom acrylic bases and plastic color rings for Conan. (link to my review and pictures of those acrylic extras can be read in my BoardGameGeek thread: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2686581/acrylic-extras-stuff4games-mini-review )
TLDR:
I have been painting up miniatures for the Conan board game from Monolith over the past 2 months at varied pace. Some weeks I get a lot of stuff done, other weeks I get little painted due to "real life" stuff getting in the way.
I have been experimenting a lot along the way, with painting styles, new painting techniques, new paints, oils and washes for some units. Recently tried "AK Streaking Grime" on the mummies and Liquid Pigments on the skeletons. Having a blast painting the models. I try not to let mould lines bother me too much. I attempt to clean the worst, but don't bother with every single one as I simply don't have time and energy for it, and you don't see those when the mini is on the table. I also try to paint things up to a decent tabletop standard, putting some more time and effort into some of the characters and monsters while trying to speed paint my way through the hordes of minions.
In this thread I will share what I have painted up so far and everything that will follow. I made a personal goal of painting everything up before the end of the year, and it looks quite achievable so far and at my pace.
Painted miniatures in this post: Conan, Belit, Hadhratus, Shevatas, Princess, Giant Serpent, Zogar Sag, Hyenas.
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Painted miniatures in this post: Pict hunters, Pict bowmen, Pict warriors, Mummies, Bone Golem, Skull piles.
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Painted miniatures in this post: Zelata and her wolf, SKeletons, Dark demon.
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Painted miniatures in this post: Guards (love these miniatures as they look like the Amn city guards in Baldurgs Gate 2), Pirates, Bossonian bowmen, N'Gora and Belits guards.
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Painted miniatures in this post: More pictures of N'Gora and Belits guards, Skuthus, Khosatral Khel, Outer Dark Devil.
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Some of the chests from the terrain pack and Zaporavo and Valeria.
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Wow! Sounds like a nuisance to get the primed figures stripped and prepared, but your finished result is amazing! Well worth the time, I would say. You have enough figures there to make several forces for various skirmish-level games, too.
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Wow too! You have been busy! Lovely painting that will really enhance the game experience. I hope the game is fun, but as Pattus Magnus says, you can use these figures with other games too!
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Wow three! That’s some excellent painting and the miniatures look fabulous.
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Thanks!
I have until this point been content with just base coating painted miniatures with new primer, but these had such a thick coat of paint it blocked some of the details and would had made a fresh paintjob look bad. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. It was also interesting using stuff like brake fluid to strip paint, but I hope I will not have to do that again anytime soon as the smell was horrible :-X
These miniatures will be used for the board game, but will also double for SAGA Age of Magic and Conan tabletop RPG if I can get friends interested in that. I am sure the painted collection will see use with other games as well, but those are for certain :)
As all the minions are painted up I really only have a lot of characters and monsters for the base game left. Saved those for last as a way of treating myself haha , but I had a surprisingly good time painting the hordes of minions. There are some really sweet looking minis in the expansions such as the Kushite Witch hunters that I really look forward to painting!
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Awesome. I sill have this mostly unopened from the kickstarter. Very impresswed to see it painted!
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:o :o :o :o :o
Absolutely stunning work!!! I would love to play any kind of game with those figures. So realistic!! If you ever want to sell them.... ;)
Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Hitman
8)
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Brilliant work!
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Wonderful painting! I wasn't overly enthused with the game so I sold off most of mine - but I'm impressed with your paint results. I found a lot of the miniatures were a bit too slight for my normal preference.
It's all so glorious looking, particularly the Picts, which I wish I had kept :D
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Great work! +1 to all the above comments.
The quality and quantity both impress.
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fabulous.
best I think I've seen the minis from that game looking - particularly overall / en masse.
by gum, I dislike this whole KS thing of games being available for a while (if you can fathom what's actually being offered, and for what price ... and how long it'll take ...) to then disappear from retail ...
although I suppose I'm missing the point really ... and without KS most of these products wouldn't have existed at all.
you did well picking up that collection for al decent price.
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Thanks for the kind words guys!
Finished Conan as "Amra the lion", guard captain and Thak this weekend. As you may notice it was something of a crimson theme as I happened to mix that on my wet palette from various colors and thought it would fit the rest of the collection - that is being painted a bit more desaturated/gritty rather than bright red.
The guard captain was a bit of a back-and-forth situation. I knew I wanted his armor to be black. And initially all the fabric was super yellow, but as I laid the last brush stroke with that color, I realized that the color combination looked like a sports outfit.... I repainted everything with crimson red to better tie him in with the guardsmen.
The next couple of miniatures which I will start with next is the miniature weird alien miniature of Thog, Conans lion and the sea monster Thaug. I have some ideas for the huge monster that involve oil inks and AK streaking grime to make them look like proper horror creatures. Some acrylic inks that I ordered should also arrive on Monday and will try those out through my airbrush on these large surfaces.
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Amazing job, sir !! :-*
Love the attention you gave to the minis, even if rank and file like pirates or men at arms !
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Thank you! I had originally planned on perhaps rushing through the many minions such as guards and pirates, but found them enjoyable to paint even though they had identical poses most of the time. I think it also helped that I tried something different in terms of technique and color for each group. For instance, I wanted the Picts to be pale but with clearly defined muscles and dark contrasts, the pirates to be a bit more tanned, guards to appear desaturated in their uniform color, skeletons to have pastel colored fabric and rusty equipment and the mummies to have very dirty wrappings.
I can say as much, having an airbrush has saved me tons of time. I was on the fence on getting one for so many years, but have used it quite a bit over the last couple of months. And for this project it has been a super time saver in terms of undercoating models with various colors, laying down base colors directly with the airbrush (for instance the red garments on the guards are airbrushed red, washed with army painted Soft Tone and highlighted with LifeColor tanned flesh).
I also picked up a few new ideas from various YouTube painters over the past months which I really wanted to apply on this Conan project. I just recently started experimenting with AK Interactive streaking grime which is an enamel wash that you thin down 50-50 with white spirit. This can be used with an airbrush to properly coat miniatures in a dark even layered wash. You let it sit for some 10 minutes and then you go over the miniature with a brush, and Q-tops or makeup sponges dipped in white spirit and either dissolve or rub away the enamel layer allowing your acrylic basecoat to shine through. It gives superb and quick results which basically only requires you to basecoat the miniature in basic colors (the brighter the better), wash the model and then once dry some 20-30 minutes later - you only add highlights or additional airbrishing steps with regular paint.
I was also recently introduced to acrylic inks, these are like "super airbrush paints". Incredible coverage, superb contrast, extremely soft layers and no risk of visible small particles as opposed to regular acrylic paint. You thin the ink with some acrylic paint thinner and you are good to go. Excellent for creating shadows from below on miniatures or just adding super high contrast color to surfaces.
Feel free to ask more if you want to know about the above and I'll link you some valuable and informative videos :)
Last night I put some paint on Conan's lion which is a bit big in comparison to a normal man (the hyenas are also out of scale). I also painted the alien monster "Thog". Thog was painted using the AK interactive streaking grime over airbrushed base colors followed by some airbrushing and drybrushing. There is no way I would be able to get this result with a brush in under the total 2 hours it took me to paint this mini.
Next up is the sea monster/kraken "Thaug" (there are 3 monster with similar names in the game Thak, Thog and Thaug lol). Still thinking about the best color choice for this beast. I saw some pictures of a pale version with black eyes which looked quite good and may do something similar myself.
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Btw, a picture of some of the special paints I am using. Liquid Pigments that I used on the skeletons from GreenStuffWorld, then some acrylic inks from an arts store and the AK interactive streaking grime.
I tried making my own grime using Humbrol enamel paints, but it turned to shit and I had to clean the miniatures in white spirit to completely remove it. AK interactive streaking grime costs as much as a single pot of humbrol paint and contains 3 times as much. The reason I bought the Humbrol paint at all was because they had it in my local arts store so I would not have to wait for online delivery.... Don't use humbrol enamels, they have changes a LOT in their formula since I last used them 20+ years ago.
I also purchased proper oil paints (Van Gogh brand, also from my local arts store) but have not yet tried it out more than a small experiment. I think I would want to try them out on a larger minature first - I have some larger display miniatures that will be used for further experiments once Conan is all painted up. However, I may try to mix some oil washes as my small experiment with that yielded good good results.
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Wow! Great job across the board.
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gorgeous stuff well done
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Lovely work there.
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stunning work and excellent choice in colours, look forward to your pale version of the sea monster, from the sunless depths, were no one gets a good tan
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Some excellent painting there
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Really amazing effort! That's a HUGE game with some amazing sculpts.
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So much good stuff! Truly astounding.
And yes, I'm also a fan of using oils. I've tried both using them as washes and for wet blending, which has allowed me to cut times when doing certain parts.
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Thanks again for the interest and very kind words guys! It means a lot :)
This evening I finished painting "Thaug" which is a multi part huge sea monster. Did this in 2 evenings, and it started out a bit iffy. I had looked at pictures of deep-sea fishes (anglerfish in particular) to get color inspiration. I began base coating and layering various colors, and then coated the whole thing in streaking grime. So far so good, but then I think I overdid it with white spirit as the model was bleached to a point where the streaking grime was almost gone. Worth mentioning that white spirit over AK interactive streaking grime cures real matt and faded so a stark contrast and bright colors are needed.
Anyway, airbrushed back most of the colors, and was able to salvage a bit of the "dirt" from the streaking grime. In the end 97% of the miniature was painted with an airbrush, just added some partial edge highlights on the tentacles and some parts of the creature itself. It was harder to take good pictures of it than to paint it though... Now, could it be painted to a higher standard and with more detail? Yes - but... you use this model in like 2 scenarios out of 60 so for that alone I was content with this as my end result.
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water! Great job on that, I could see using it for lots of games - the watcher in the water for LotR, or a sea monster near Innsmouth for Cthulhu games, spring to mind. I appreciate hearing your experiences with the white spirit and weathering pigments and will keep it in mind if I try to do something similar.
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That is a disturbingly good paint job!
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Yeah, that is a great sculpt painted superbly.
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wonderful painting and miniatures.
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Very little Conan painting done this weekend :( Only had 1 session, in which I managed to finish 2 out of the 4 remaining Conan variants (the Wanderer and the Mercenary). Tried painting them a bit more gritty and dirty than the regular Conan which was clean and well tanned.
The fur cape on the Mercenary version of Conan was a bit of a headache. The way it is sculpted makes makes it hard to pick animal for the actual fur. There is no animal head at the top, and the large bushy fur at the top does not match what a fur/skin would look like if you used 1 animal such as a tiger. I figured this would be a mash up of two furs and really wanted a tiger cloak and then added brown fur on top. But the fur does not really look quite right, and I might touch it up a little for greater contrast in color to make it more clear that it is a tiger skin.
If I just let it be this will bother me every time I see the miniature. I may post an revised picture next time.
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Unrelated to Conan, but this is what I spent my Sunday painting session on - tiny minis for Fury of Dracula 3rd edition which I have been playing with my wife the past couple of evenings. Figured I should put some quick paint jobs on the minis, nothing special but a bit nicer than plain grey plastic.
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Wow, so impressed by all your paint jobs. And that's the best Thaug I've seen anywhere! brilliant job.
I painted about half of the miniatures for Conan and really should go back and finish them
Its been a while since I played it but I really enjoyed the game as well. The central mechanics are a lot of fun.
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They are cute! Confused me mightily when I saw the picture before reading the text!!
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After a short break I resumed painting up more alternative Conan miniatures last night and finished the "Warlord" and the "General" versions. While I was at it I also fixed the tiger cloak on the "Mercenary" miniature. The next batch will include some of the villains that I have been looking forward to paint for a long time.
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The kraken is simply sublime. Love that you went flesh tone on it, as well as beady black eyes. Absolutely superb.
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The kraken is simply sublime. Love that you went flesh tone on it, as well as beady black eyes. Absolutely superb.
Thank you Elbows!
Working my way through the remaining 20 or so miniatures which are all characters, heroes, villains and monsters. I will be posting these in groups of 4 or so not to spam too much. I kind of paint these up at a pace of 1 per evening, sometimes it takes a little over a single session to finish some details. Really love these miniatures and having so much fun and enjoyment painting themup. A lot more fun than I thought, especially with a couple of the miniatures which I figured would be difficult to paint such as "Olgerd Vladislav" and the "Hyberborean". Painting up the "Ageera" character was also great fun and I REALLY look forward to painting up the Kushite Witch Hunter pack once I finish the models for the first game.
It is rare to have a painting project with such diverse looks, ethnicities, weapons and armor that Conan the board game has. A lot of mental joy comes out of knowing that I can use these models for so much miniature wargaming and RPG's as well.
Anyway, today I present "Olgerd Vladislav", a "Hyberborean", "Ageera" and "Khemsa".
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This is all amazing work, thank you for sharing
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You really bring these pieces alive. Even the sculpts I am not the biggest fan of look great from your painting.
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Beautiful work!
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Next batch of characters, in order of appearance: Gitara, Constantius, Akivasha and Amboola.
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These all look great. I do especially like Amboola: it's a nice looking sculpt, painted up very nicely.
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That's some high end painting, right there...
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Another batch of characters and villains painted up. I also made a small quality of life improvement on the door tokens since we have a hard time seeing them on the board. I simply glued the tokens onto small wood bases using PVA glue and painted the "floor" surface. I had ordered nice transparent stand holders, but those proved to be both too tight a fit damaging the printed artwork and also covering most of the door....
I don't want to use larger pieces to mark doors on the board as I find that it clutters things up horribly (experience from using lots of cardboard door stands for "Lobotomy").
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And closeups in order of appearance: Sorcerer, Taurus, Pallantides and Nathohk.
I'm very happy with how the Sorcerer turned out. I was not sold on the sculpt, and thought a lot about how to best paint him. I'm happy I went with "organic" colors for his outfit and kept the use of metallics to his weapon alone. Adding textures to his robes also did a lot to improve his look and really made him pop.
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Great work on these!
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Looking brilliant!
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Nice!
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A lot of nice brush work to see here. Great stuff!
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Thanks again for all the kind words guys. The whole family came down with a really bad cold so I did not paint for several days, but managed to finish the last of the human miniatures from the base game/stretch goal box last night. Now there are a few monsters and creatures left, along with furniture before I move on the the expansions :)
These last miniatures were a mixed batch. None of the sculpts were really to my liking, however most came out more than OK and I'm happy with them. The most difficult to paint was the Kothian archer which is cluttered with tiny details that looked like a total mess after undercoating him, and Kerim Shah which is also covered in hair thin details such as the pattern on his vest and weird armor details that I struggled with. While I'm pretty happy with how I managed to paint the Kothian archer I am not very happy with Kerim Shah and I wish I was more motivated to spend an extra hour or two on him for a better result. I think that the miniature would look better if it matched the artwork.
One of the miniatures, the "Spartan", is not really a part of the Conan game as such, but was an added promotional miniature for the next Monolith game. But there are stats and a hero sheet for him under the name "Othryades" and as a OCD completionist I had to paint him up as well since he has a slot in the insert alongside the other Conan miniatures.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the latest additions in order of appearance: Othryades, Pelias, savage Belit, Kothian archer, Balthus, Slasher, Kerim Shah.
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More pics of the above mentioned heroes and characters:
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And final pictures of the latest batch:
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They are amazing, really great paintjob!
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Great stuff... I have not attempted mine yet but I just hope they are somewhat close - but they will not be...
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Well, 190 miniatures later the Conan core box and stretch goal miniatures are all painted up. I began painting mid june by stripping most of the miniatures of paint or previous primer and finished painting the last miniature this evening.
This is the most I have painted in a single year for as far I can remember. As soon as there will be a sunny day I will take a group picture of the entire 190 mini collection. In the meantime, there is still some small terrain pieces to paint from the stretch goals. And of course, a bunch of expansions to paint as well. I have no acrylic bases for the small boxes yet, so I will begin with the Stygia and Khitai expansions.
I will take a short break before I start painting again but you can expect more stuff in this thread shortly.
Here are pictures of the final batch containing: giant spider, giand scorpion, gray man ape, forest devil, swamp devil and the camel.
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More pics
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Wow! That's quick work but great PJ's as well. Time for a group shot :)
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Such beautifully work, you really get the best out of those sculpts.
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just knock-out.
Really admire you painters that have such a great feel for shadow and light and how to use it effectively on miniatures.
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Great painting on those miniatures - you have created quite a vibe with these.
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Love the man-ape, and especially the camel.
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Thanks, the camel was the last miniature I painted - it's a pretty useless miniature as it barely features in a single add-on scenario. But I still wanted to paint it, and even though it started out as a struggle trying to figure out what colors to use and paint the layers of textured detail I ended up enjoying it more than I should :)
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The camel is just as excellent as all of the models you've shown us before. I really like it as much as all of them and it is a proof that you perfectly know how to mute colors on certain models and brighten them on others. I have a close eye on that subject. Well done that man!
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The camel is just as excellent as all of the models you've shown us before. I really like it as much as all of them and it is a proof that you perfectly know how to mute colors on certain models and brighten them on others. I have a close eye on that subject. Well done that man!
Thanks Michael! Know that I initially thought about employing your painting service for this lol But it turned out to be such an enjoyable project that I kept grinding through the whole collection :)
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We have a total shitshow at home with sickness going around for the 3rd week in a row now. This week’s feature was my wife coming down with tonsilitis which means I am spending all my free time caring for our 16 month old son to prevent him from catching the plague... :?
But over the last two nights I slowly finished the treasure chests. They are featured in every single scenario, making them a boring but essential painting project. The sculpts are great though, really love the square model and will sure use them for other games as well. Next up will be the rest of the terrain from the Stretch Goals (chairs, tables, sarcophagus, braziers and book shelf). Then I will move on to the Stygia big box expansion :)
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Finally got to paint some after several weeks of sickness in the family. The things our son bring home from preschool.... never been so sick in my whole life as I have been over the past 5 weeks :-X. We had 3 different consecutive colds and stomach flu layered on top of that. Needless to say I'm quite tired and exhausted, but I wanted to get the Conan painting going again so I don't completely lose momentum.
I pushed through the remaining terrain from the stretch goals so that 100% of the plastic from the core game box and stretch goals have paint on it before I proceed with the Stygia expansion box.
Nothing special really, and the varnish is not yet 100% dry on the book shelf, but I thought I would share some pictures of it all anyway.
I imagine this terrain being perfectly suitable to any kind of wargame and tabletop RPG I play, so even if this was quite dull to paint - it will see plenty of use.
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Great terrian.
I hope you are well after the sickness. It does get better as time passes with little kids.
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the terrain stuff is beautifully painted :-*
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Thanks guys!
It has been quite rough but that is also what I hear about the first year of pre-school.
Started painting 5 assassins and 5 eternal guards last night. Did some basecoating with the airbrush and added streaking grime effects to darken/dirty the colors. Hope I can share one group of 5 finished minis later this week :) I will have some spare time for painting this weekend so I hope I will be able to push through the 10 humanoid minions, the assassin character and the bad guy Thoth Amon before the week is over.
I already did a test run for the scorpions on the single giant scorpion that was part of the core box stretch goals - so those should be fairly fast and easy to paint up. The large brood mother scorpion miniature looks badass and I may do something extra for that one!
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Less painting this week than I had planned as real life and work came in the way, but I at least finished the Stygia expansion assassins, the player character "Ikhmet" and painted up one of the Eternal Guards as a prototype for the remaining 4.
I struggled a lot in color choice for these miniatures. Initially I thought about painting the assassins and assassin playable character in darker clothes, but I think the brighter colors make them more interesting. The Eternal Guards have some horrendous mold lines that I tried to clean up as good as I could but the plastic of these miniatures makes that a bit difficult. I settled for "good enough" in this department.
Btw, I can really recommend the technical colors from Green Stuff World. As I already posted previously, their liquid rust and patina color range is very good. For this batch I tried out a bottle of "True Blood" that I bought on a whim with my last order from FantasyWelt. Imo this is comparable to the results you could get my mixing super old Games Workshop Red and Black Inks, but easier to use with a great finish. Dab it on in layers to build up the depth.
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Eternal Guard prototype and the hero Ikhmet
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brilliant :-*
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Fantastic painting!
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Wow, Stygians look great!
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Thanks for the kind words once again guys.
I finished the last miniatures for the Stygia expansion this afternoon. The scorpions are not particularly inspired and you could probably paint these up x10 better with some time and effort. I settled for layers of airbrushed paint followed by washes and streaking grime. Just opened the Khitai expansion to check out the minis and they look like they will be rather time consuming with lots of details on both the honor large guards and the spear throwers.
Will see if I'll jump on that right away, or if I'll treat myself with some of the small expansion boxes. The Witch Hunters is one particular box that I have been wanting to paint up since I started this whole project - so I might just paint them up in between. Still waiting for more acryllic bases for the small expansions that a friend of a friend offered to cut for me. Hope to have those next week as well.
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And the Eternal guards finished as well, based on the prototype mini I painted up a couple of weeks ago.
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Finally got some time to paint again this week, and treated myself to my favorite set from the small expansions, the "Kushite Witch Hunters".
Figured I would paint some stuff that I knew I would enjoy, before taking a plunge into the Khitai big box expansion thjat has some fairly complex and time consuming to paint miniatures.
The expansion includes 4 Kushites. 1 Kushite was included as a stretch goal with the original Conan KS.
I may paint up Yogah of Yag next since he is used in a scenario along with these witch hunters.
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Last two Kushites
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Good job on Slasher, that wolf-like creature 2 pages back.
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Good job on Slasher, that wolf-like creature 2 pages back.
Thanks! That was a tricky miniature to paint as the sculpted fur was patchy and I had several doubts about various color choices - it turned out better than I had hoped to be honest :)
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Yogah of Yag, the alien creature from the story "The Tower of the Elephant", and found in one of the small expansion boxes.
Can be played as a hero character in the game.
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Started painting the Khitai expansion box. I had big worries about how to paint the miniatures since they are quite detailed and complex sculpts compared to most of the other Conan stuff. I wanted a vibrant color scheme for the miniatures and was hesitant to start on this box because I was worried it would be too time consuming and tedious to paint it up.
However, after pondering about color schemes for a couple of days, I decided to go all in on trying to airbrush and then use oil washes to finish as much as possible of the miniatures so that I needed to spend just a bit of extra time to touch them up and paint the details with acrylics. My goal of finishing all of the Conan sets I have before the end of the year may not happen, but with this shortcut I will have at least finished the main game + stretch goals + the two big box expansions.
I'm very happy with the result, and shocked at how good it looks in relation to how few hours I spent on getting this far. I also got colors and color transitions that I would be hard pressed to replicate with just a brush.
Earlier today I finished the Khitai sorcerer, and will move on to his human minions and the Khitai hero next. I will save the Foo dogs for last as I am still thinking about how to best paint them to replicate the artwork.
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Your thread is packed with amazing paintwork. Yogah is even better in the sculpting paintwork than it was in my imagination from reading the book… not something that commonly happens. I can not stress how much I respect and admire your artistry.
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my goodness, missed the stuff from the kushites onwards - stunning stuff.
and as far as the Khitai figures go, to paraphrase billy cobham talking about keith moon - I've no idea how you're doing it ... but just keep doing it!
interesting take on Yogah of yag design-wise. Looks more Giger-like than other illustrations etc I've seen of the elephant tower dude [although not that character I appreciate].
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Somehow I've missed these up to now. Those Frazetta paperback covers are works of art and you have absolutely captured this in your work. Impressive in both quantity and quality. These will be wonderful to game with! Top drawer stuff.
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Thanks again for all the feedback guys! Means a lot when slogging through 200+ miniatures for a project like this.
@Grumpy Gnome,
The Yogah of Yag in this game is certainly better looking than any of the previous artwork for that character released up until now. Usually he is depicted with a normal albeit oversized elephant head which looks a tad silly. This one looks menacing and almost "Predator" like!
@Bloggard,
Yeah definitely Giger inspired.
@James Morris
Thank you so much for your kind words!
Today I can share some Khitai "Tower guards"
I cannot begin to tell you what a struggle these were. Initially I had basecoated them with airbrush and washed them in oils which gave me a nice starting point of wonderful red, green and yellow colors. At least that was the plan. As I finished my first prototype model I was happy enough, but once I started painting up the remaining 4 I had alarm bells sounding in my head about the color choices. It just did not look right.
I was dead set on having them in red "Samurai" armor, but that did now work at all with yellow pants, white sashes and brown shoes combined with the purple cape and green tinted shields. It looked awful.
I then consulted my wife and she said I should maybe try out adding faded blue instead of white, so I repainted those parts - still did not look good.
Finally I googled "Red Samurai armor" just to see how the real stuff would look like - and as I suspected most of it was complimented by black fabric. Red and black is imo a boring combination, but having repainted my original "Prototype" mini I agreed that was the only way to salvage the red armor and a color contrast that worked with both the cape and the shields that I refused to repaint in any other way.
I tried to make the red and black areas as interesting as I could using various shades and highlight. Adding some white extreme highlights in places on the red armor to make it look like red lacquered armor. This whole roundabout painting these guys up took me about 3x the amount of time it should have taken.
Fortunately, the Honor guards will be painted up with a Jade colored theme and are pretty much halfway finished once the airbrush and oils have been applied. And there is less room for mistakes as those miniatures are much simpler in design and detail. I hope they turn out as I imagine them and not need such extensive repaint as the Tower Guards which in all honestly ended up wasting much of my prep work.
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Lovely stuff.
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Brilliant work yet again.
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Beautiful :-*
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Khitai Honor guards painted up. They turned out fairly OK, but were not much fun to paint. Will start painting the Khitai javelin throwers next.
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More nice stuff. Well done.
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After a short Christmas break I managed to finish the Khitai Javelin throwers, leaving me only with the Khitai hero and the 5 "Foo dogs" left from this large box expansion. The Javelins were a bit banana shaped on some of the miniatures, not much that could be done about it either...
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Well, I managed to work through the Foo dogs in just a couple of hours - so just the Khitai hero left to paint from this expansion, hope to share him tomorrow along with a group shot of the whole box content.
Also - it was not until I was almost finished that I noticed that these "dogs" have two sets of eyes!
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The Khitao hero painted up, which completes the Khitao big box expansion set. Now I have just a couple of small box expansions left to paint before my whole collection is complete. I will not be able to finish it before the end of the year as I had originally planned, but hopefully during January of 2022.
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amazing.
your paint-jobs are fantastic - I suspect they make the figures look better than they actually are ...
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amazing.
your paint-jobs are fantastic - I suspect they make the figures look better than they actually are ...
Thanks! I would not say that the quality of the miniatures is bad - it is fairly average and sometimes there is a distinct difference in "sharpness" between some sculpts and casts. But the type of plastic used for them is difficult to clean and remove mould lines. That and the soft bendy quality which affects spears and such is also a bit frustrating but I have learned to just cope with it.
I'll see if I will be able to get hold of the Conan the Conqueror expansion and how those minis look. Read somewhere that the quality was slightly improved. I just really want to get my hands on that huge add-on and the single player mode :P
Edit: I took a couple of (bad lightning) photos from my last game with my wife trying out the new Khitai content playing the scenario "The magnificent three". Super difficult for the heroes, we played it twice and swapped during our second game but I have a hard time thinking how the heroes can beat it. That is the way some of the Conan scenarios work - still love the game though.
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Worked on several models at the same time as a lot of airbrush, washes and oil washes were involved - and finished the Sabretooth tiger and the Demon of the Earth miniatures today. Currently waiting for the oil wash to dry on the Vanir Valkyrie and the Black Dragons before I resume painting them.
The Demon of the Earth miniature really reminded me of the "Myrkridia" monsters from the old PC game Myth II: Soulblighter (wish someone would remaster that old gem...). The likeness is so close I really wonder if the artist was inspired by them for the artwork and the sculpting for this game.
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Painted up the Black Dragons today, not overly happy with the painting but they turned out "good enough" to move on to the next miniatures in line. The Black Dragons were not fun to paint due to how they are sculpted with lots of tiny details that are cast poorly. The less cluttered a model is with tiny details the better if the miniature is made out of this type of plastic.
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Stunning work mate, that tiger in particular!
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superb.
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Lovely as usual. I love the tiger stripes!
The Demon of the Earth miniature really reminded me of the "Myrkridia" monsters from the old PC game Myth II: Soulblighter (wish someone would remaster that old gem...).
I think there are a few fans here of that old game. I'd love to see it redone but the plot kept the same (so immersive) I'd love to see minis of it all made, there would be so many different factions for a tabletop game.
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Thanks guys! It feels so damn good to be able to see the finish line for this project - 21 miniatures left to go (10 wolves, 10 crossbowmen and Baal-pteor)!
And Nemesis: Lockdown arrived yesterday which will need some painting once Conan is finished.
Lovely as usual. I love the tiger stripes!
I think there are a few fans here of that old game. I'd love to see it redone but the plot kept the same (so immersive) I'd love to see minis of it all made, there would be so many different factions for a tabletop game.
A miniature game based on the Myth world would be awesome! Soulblighter is to this day one of the most immersive games that I have played. The chilling soundtrack and storyteller in between the missions is just so perfect at setting the mood. I still have my old CD-rom version of the game but it did not want to run properly on my modern computer :(
...
This evening I finished the Vanir Valkyrie. This was a model that I was not looking forward to paint since the sculpt is very "soft" in its details. I approached it with a lot of patience and it probably took more time than I would like to admit to paint her up but I am pleased with the end result. I will use her as a stand in for a custom "Red Sonja" that I put together in the excellent and free to use "Overlord companion" https://the-overlord.com/Companion/Conan/#encyclopedia
Tomorrow I will be base coating the wolves, crossbowmen and Baal-pteor for a final push to finish this project before the end of the month. My vacation also ends on the 10th which will limit my painting time a bit as well, so I hope to paint up as much as I can before then.
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Took a short break from paining, and the near end is always the most difficult step in any large painting project for me which is why I had my last 21 miniatures basecoated for a week while playing PC games and doing other stuff.
Today I rushed/speed painted through the 10 giant wolves, leaving 10 crossbowmen and Baal-pteor left. I really hope that the crossbowmen will surprise me just like a couple of other fiddly sculpts did by being more fun and easier to paint than I initially thought. Fingers crossed for that to be the case.
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red Sonja's great - it's your chiaroscuro effect I love so much - it's brilliant.
wolves are great, speed-paint or not; sculpts make 'em look a bit cuddly tho' :D
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Good looking wolves- nice choice of colours and variations.
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Wow, you have a painting speed and quality which I cannot but admire.
Foo dogs and Red Sonja are my favorites. I do have the King‘s Pledge, but lost my painting mojo when I hit some of the mediocre sculpts. Anyway, the game is indeed fun and captures the Conan stories quite well!
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Thanks guys!
@Bloggard, agree on the passive pose and look of the wolves, they are copies of the Zelata wolf from the stretch goals. Made sense to have a domesticated look for that wolf, but kind of wish these looked more savage. Still easier to paint than my of the other animals so thats a plus :)
Interesting comment about the chiaroscuro, I'm a fan of that style but never thought about my painting looking like it. Now that you mentioned it I might actually try to emulate that in more closely in future painting projects once the last 11 conan minis are painted up. I have some "Nemesis: Lockdown" and "Death knight rises" minis that wait to be painted!
@Pattus Magnus,
Thanks! Having an airbrush does make things easier to be honest. I basecoated them white, then added shades of black, brown and tan colors. Gave them a was of AK interactive Streaking grime which I then cleaned up with mineral spirits, finishing the miniatures by giving them a heavy drybrush of bone white, white, grey and brown - finally adding nose and eye details. Quick and dirty :-)
@DivisMal
The Foo Dogs were surprisingly fun to paint, Red Sonja was a miniature I dreaded and saved until very late because of how "meh" the sculpt was. I will not lie, there have been a bunch of miniatures that I struggled with to just put paint on them. Sometimes it was due to the sculpts being too cluttered with details, other times because the minis were boring. Fortunately they all end up looking good with some paint on and that feeling of finishing a miniature and have it ready for play is rewarding as hell.
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Alright, last miniatures from the original Conan kickstarter and expansions - Baal-Pteor and the Crossbowmen.
I had to break up painting the crossbowmen over several nights since they were a pain in the ass to paint. So I painted them using assembly line method and added a few colors each night until they were finished. They are painted to be "good enough". The sculpt itself is quite nice and if it was a single model or maybe 5 tops then I would have put some more effort into it.
Baal-Pteor was fun to paint because it was a lot of skin. The miniature itself is a bit bland though, and the new Baal-Pteor miniature from the Conan: The Conqueror expansion is much more dynamic.
Tomorrow I will assemble the entire collection of painted miniatures and take a few "collection photos". Should be some 200+ miniatures :-)
Now I will take a short break from Conan as I paint up the "Nemesis: Lockdown" miniatures before returning to paint "Conan the Conqueror" expansion and stretch goals! (Yes I managed to get hold of a copy of the expansion from a nice fellow in Sweden who was kind enough to sell it to me). Now I'm on the lookout for the Tales of the Red Brotherhood and Shadow Kingdoms as well as the Hidden Chambers expansion.
And finally, I have to say that I have grown as a painted, experimented more and got myself quite the range of technical paints while painting up the Conan collection. The latest addition are these 3 "Dirty Down" range paints which are pure magic according to YouTube videos that I have seen of the effects. Luckily we have 1 store in Sweden that sells it, they ain't cheap but I really look forward to trying them out on some of the upcoming miniatures!
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Some pictures of my Conan collection, 269 miniatures (+ some terrain pieces) later.
There is enough here to play several wargames, RPG's and of course most of the scenarios available for Conan the board game.
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More pictures
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More pictures, and a preview of the Conan: the Conqueror expansion + stretch goals that are next up.
It looks as if the new miniatures from the Conqueror are much better quality than previous minis released so far. Somehow they look more sharp and clearly defined. Hope they paint up well.
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what a great result. :-*
regarding my use of 'chiaroscuro' - I guess I just mean a very strong sense of light and shade particulary going down into deepest shadow.
but whatever - your style is fantastic, and you 've made a marvellous job of those figures.
looking forward to seeing the 'Conqueror' results in due course.
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Like...WOW !!!!! :o :o :o
Fantastic work.
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That is….massive…and awesome! Wow. Really impressive.
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Thanks a lot guys!
More Conan coming up next month (hopefully next month) as soon as I finish painting Nemesis: Lockdown + stretch goals. Feel free to check out my "Nemesis" thread over at the Sci-Fi subforum :)
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Great stuff. I have them all in my basement but have not even started on them yet....
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Started painting some of the miniatures from "The Conqueror" expansion, had a fun time painting the Manifestation of Mitra and the Ghouls so far. Manifestation of Yog is currently finished but I'm waiting for the oil wash to dry before I can hit the miniature with some matt varnish and take photos.
The Ghouls were inspired by the Fallout 1 artwork from way back when, and the blood is Greenstuff World "True Blood". The Manifestation of Mitra is painted with Dirty Down "Moss" and "Verdigris" specialist paints to add some interesting weathering.
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wow the stone-guy is epic ... can't remember which story that's from now ... superb paint job!
have you any kind of detail /instruction about your oil-wash technique posted anywhere btw?
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wow the stone-guy is epic ... can't remember which story that's from now ... superb paint job!
have you any kind of detail /instruction about your oil-wash technique posted anywhere btw?
Thanks, the stone fellow is from the story "Black Colossus", in that story the god Mitra is described as a stone carved figure on a throne. I suppose that this is a concept of the stone statue coming alive.
About the oil wash and the enamel paints I use. I love this stuff, and would use it on everything if I could just not be so impatient. It takes roughly overnight for both the oil wash and the enamel wash to try. I have purchased a medium to mix with the oil paints to make them dry quicker but have not used in properly yet so I can't tell what impact you can expect in waiting time.
Anyway, I mix both enamel paints and oils with mineral spirits. You can get it cheap in a large bottle, or pay extra for a small odorless bottle at an arts and crafts store. I would recommend the odorless (still have to ventilate the room as you work though!) since it does not give you the smell and headache while using it.
I have a dropper bottle with a roughly 50-50 mixture of AK interactive paint and mineral spirits so that it is ready for use. I apply this to a painting palette and use a synthetic brush for application on the miniature. The wash spreads evenly and runs down crevices. The more spirits you add, the more runny it becomes. I usually stick to my 50-50 mix as the whole idea is to "dirty down" the surface, leave it to dry for some 20 minutes and then use a Q-tip of makeup sponge dipped in mineral spirit and go over the miniature removing the wash where you don't want it, soften up patches to make the paint underneath the wash pop up and generally make the wash settle in corners, folds, crevices and nooks on the mini to simulate heavy dirty. It does darken and desaturate the surface color onto which it was applied. The longer you leave it sitting ,the more dark and desaturated colors you will get. If you apply it, in wipe it clean with mineral spirits you can get your original colors back easily.
I used streaking grim on a bunch of stuff, such as the mummies, and alien monsters on page 1 and 2 in this thread. The general rule is that you should use bright colors to get the best effect and bang for your buck when using the AK interactive streaking grime.
Great video showcasing what can be done with AK Interactive "Streaking grime" enamel wash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU39faMqvxc
Oil washes are somewhat the same, but you have to mix them yourself to a greater degree than the enamel wash. You need only to buy a couple of colors so that you can mix your own stuff according to the color wheel. Oil washes create a very nice and smooth "filter" effect if you apply a very thinned down oil wash with a little paint and lots of mineral spirits. You can also get a similar effect to the Streaking Grime by applying a more concentrated wash and then use Q-tips or makeup sponges tipped in mineral spirits to re-activate and wipe away paint.
Best use for oil washes is to use them for pin-washes as the oil naturally spreads and runs into every little hole and dent on the miniature with almost no effort (even without using gloss varnish on the surface beforehand). And also to use them for filters to give surface colors as specific and soft tint by painting on a very thinned down color.
It is a bit awkward, messy and smelly and also time consuming to use the enamel and oil colors compared to the instant drying acrylic paints. But I have found them to be a great addition that can be used both in the middle of your painting as one of the steps - or as a final step when your painting is all complete.
I always go over the miniature with paper towels after a few hours to wipe of any excess paint that has still not fully dried, and then hit the miniature with Vallejo Acrylic Matt Varnish spray to seal the enamel/oil paint which allows you to continue painting additional layers with acrylic paint. If you don't seal the enamel/oils your paint will have a very hard time to stick, and may end up mixing with the oily residue and get discolored.
You really need to experiment a little. My first attempt was a complete failure as I used too much enamel wash, and also too much oil paint and the test minis never dried despite waiting 3 full days... The key is using mineral spirits and really thin them down, it accelerates drying time as the mineral spirits evaporate and leave behind the pigments.
Don't know if this was helpful - if I still had my blog I would do a proper tutorial. There are youtube videos on how you can use oil paints for miniature paining such as this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_pxojd7kp8
One thing that the Conan project has got me doing, is to consume lots of painting videos and trying out new techniques :)
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my goodness, Anatoli - thanks so much for such an extensive reply.
Now - just when I thought I was getting set to go with a certain 'new' (for me) approach to painting, should I experiment with this .. ??? :D
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Manifestation of Yog from the story "Shadows in Zamboula" and Conan the pirate painted up. Conan the pirate may be my favorite alternate Conan so far, love the look and the pose. Both minis were lots of fun to paint up.
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Really lovely stuff, wonderful figures, but I will stick with my 70s stuff!
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You just continue to wow with the quality of the paint jobs. :)
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You just continue to wow with the quality of the paint jobs. :)
+1
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Not much painting being done this week, but with the wife and kid away over the weekend I spent most of Saturday painting up N'Yaga and Zenobia.
I think the models are nice, but the 3d artist went completely mad adding the amount of details that the N'Yaga sculpt is covered in.
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Conan the conqueror painted up, which means all 8 alternate versions of Conan from the base game, stretch goals and "the Conqueror" expansion are done. I sadly do not own any of the small box expansions by Brom and Xavier Colette and they are a bit too expensive to buy off ebay for my taste so this will probably be it for now regarding Conan sculpts.
I find it truly great that Monolith went as far as doing 8 versions of Conan. Listening to all the short stories and longer books while painting both broadens my understanding and knowledge of Conan as a character and as such it is great to be able to play with him at various points of his adventures.
With that said, I have some clear favorites, and least favorites with my list going:
Conan the barbarian - the standard hero from the core box still is my favorite. The pose is imposing and I love his bulky appearance.
Conan the pirate - my second favorite sculpt
Conan the mercenary - something very Warhammer Fantasy battles Chaos Marauder about this version
Conan the conqueror - initially not interesting, but once painted I love this dynamic full swing action pose
Conan the warlord - huge two-handed axe and a power stance, looks like he means business
Conan the wanderer - I love the look of Conan, but the limp pose is a bit strange and thus brings it town a notch
Conan the general - not really a fan of the hunched pose which hides the many nice details of the armor
Conan the king / Amra the lion - my very least favorite sculpt and the only one I dislike. I think the sculpt is half OK, and if the axe arm was raised above his head and he would be shouting or doing something more dynamic it would have worked. He also appears to be the smallest out of the Conan versions which makes him feel to be from another collection/game.
I do confess that I am a late bloomer when it comes to Conan. Up until last summer my knowledge was limited to the Schwarzenegger movie and the crappy version with Jason Mamoa. But since last summer I've had an increasing Conan craze where pretty much all spare time revolves around painting minis, listening to audiobook and recently I got into the PC game Conan Exiles LOL!
I just wish I was able to play the board game more, but will play through the single player campaign once I finish all mins from this expansion.
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They look great! I was introduced to Conan, too, via the fantastic Schwarzenegger movie — arguably the best movie ever made.
The novels have some mediocre stories, but some are a real blast and very entertaining.
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fantastic work.
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Today I'm sharing something a bit different. I began working on the 10 Khitan Acolytes from the Conqueror expansion earlier this week. I had an idea of how I wanted the end result to be - yellow-green robed cultists. I also thought that these particular sculpts would make an ideal testing ground for "liquid masking" which I had purchased a while back but never tested.
As I finished a prototype model this evening, save for matt varnishing, I thought I would share my ups and downs and some thoughts about a few things.
First of all, I wanted to cut corners as much as possible, so that was where my idea of using the liquid masking came in. I thought I would undercoat the models in a yellow tone, then mask the top robe and undercoat a green on the lower robe. If all went well, I would have a major part of the mini half finished.
The liquid masking was a pain in the ass though. My particular version is from GreenStuffWorld and comes with a synthetic "nail polish brush" attached to the cap. The brush was a bit too large and unwieldy for this job and it took more time (about 1,5 hours) to mask the minis properly. I was also slightly nervous about how well the result would be because I had no idea how thick you need to apply the liquid masking. Once I had undercoated with the green color it was time to remove the masking, which is done very easily as the dried masking fluid has a rubbery texture and peels off easily.
The masking was 95% successful. I did notice that two or three models had slightly "chipped" yellow paint showing the red basecoat. I think the fault was that the paint which was masked had been applied in too thin a layer. It is possible, but should not be required, that you varnish the surface first.
I was decently happy with the result, and thought I would cut more corners by doing some oil washes over the entire models. This is when things did not work out - I fumbled and made the wash too dark, and even after I had used mineral spirits to clean most of the wash away once it had become semi-dry it had unfortunately stained the green and yellow paint to a dull finish. I admit I was at a loss on how to proceed and not sure my imagined end result would be possible.
Nothing to do but to matt varnish the miniatures and begin painting with acrylics. Beginning with the yellow which I really wanted to be very bright I used one of my old "Base" colors which is a decently thick dark yellow paint with good coverage. Thinning it down some I began sketching away on the robes, while keeping the shadows. Working my way around the yellow robe in two layers I then mixed in what started to pop the paintjob - AK interactive "Radiant Yellow". I had read that this yellow paint worked wonders, and I had purchased it on a whim last time I was doing some paint shopping. This was the first time I tried it out.
I mixed it 50-50 with the dark yellow paint to get a layer for transition, then added 1 layer of pure Radiant Yellow, and it looked fantastic. Probably the best yellow paint I have ever used. Finishing off with some white adding extreme highlights to parts of the yellow robe I was very happy with the end result.
The green robe was painted using an old Flames of War "German Camo Bright Green" color as my base, then mixing in "Escorpena Green" from the Vallejo Game Air series. Final layer was a mix of Escarpena Green and Radiant Yellow, and pure white for extreme highlights. And the end result was exactly as I had imagined it from the beginning - but the way to get to this stage was not as straight as I had planned.
The whole process of finishing the miniature beginning from the airbrushed and oil washed stage was about 1 hour which is great. I will do the remaining ones in a split batch of 5/4 miniatures and share the whole gang once they are finished, varnished and based properly.
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whatever the ups and downs of that approach with regards to these first efforts, the end result is great.
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After a two week break from painting I finished the 10 Khitan acolytes this evening. Will be painting some more characters and monsters before I push through the 10 pirate archers and 5 pirate ballistas.
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I know I said I would paint characters first, but as I was undercoating a bunch of stuff this morning I ended up doing all the base work on the Deep Ones as well. Layered colors with airbrush, then lots of oil washes and oil paint. Will probably take at least a full day or two before they are ready for highlights and detail work.
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The acolytes look very good - great colour scheme, well executed. The deep ones are coing along nicely too. Looking forward to seeing them finished.
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Deep Ones finished; a speed painted process that turned out OK. I could have spent more time on them, but honestly painting time has been limited these past couple of weeks and I just want to finish stuff as soon as possible whenever possible. Big monsters present an opportunity for speed painting as they often are ideal for more "broad strokes" painting with airbrush and washes.
Next up will be the 3 remaining characters from the Conqueror expansions before I start working on the giant apes/children of Ghullah.
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arrrgh - brilliant !!
and I say 'arrgh' coz I wish you wouldn't keep on saying that such great paint-jobs are 'speed-paints' lol
the results look fantastic.
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That “Manifestation of Yog” creature is amazing!
Dan
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Thanks guys! :)
Of course my sons cold moved on to me, so I'm sitting with a headache and a runny nose - but super pumped to get the next few characters painted up. Especially the grotesque looking "Gorm" who looks like an ogre lol Also very happy that Monolith decided to do another take on Baal-Pteor as the original sculpt was both too slim and very boring, new one is bulky and have a great "head crushing" pose :D
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You've done an amazing job here.
Someone really needs to make a Conan TV series, GOT was a hit, possibly paving the way for something like conan but not that cartoon (which I loved as a kid)
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After a very long break I returned to painting my Conan minis this weekend. Simply had no energy or inspiration to paint for a long stretch, perhaps a bit exhausted combined with lots of stuff going on at work. Anyway, I hope this will spark another painting spree to have me finish the remaining miniatures from the Conqueror expansion.
Today I finished "Gorm". Next up are the two remaining characters/villains from the Conqueror expansion - a much better looking revised version of Baal P'teor, and Xaltotun.
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Xaltotun painted up.
Painting this character up I got the Ten Commandments images flashing in my head lol
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Your figs continue to impress...
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Thanks Mellis!
Baal P'teor painted up, which finishes all the characters that came in the "Conan: The conqueror" expansion box. Lots of monster and pirates left to paint though.
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Excellent paint work on these minis
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I always find this thread so motivational. Thank you for posting and sharing your art.
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The second Baal model is a really good sculpt. Your painting speed and skill continue to amaze me. Impressive!
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Thanks again for all the kind words and encouragement!
After another short break I speed painted the 5 "Children of Gullah" minis in one evening. Granted that I had base coated them over a month ago. I could have spent more time on the fur, but I focused on the skin since that is what will draw your eye on the table. They are the definition of tabletop standard - looking good from a small distance. Not the most fun sculpt to paint, but not all that horrible either. I really need to push myself past the remaining pirates from the core box (and the giant spider) before I start rewarding myself by painting up the huge monsters from the stretch goal box.
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fantastic.
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Beautiful work! I'm working on getting my base box painted now. Love the game!
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After a long break I'm back to painting and finishing the remaining parts of the Conqueror expansion box and stretch goals. Pirate ballista teams and Giant spider painted recently. The ballista teams were painted for something like 1 month, with tiny amount of progress done every now and then due to the fact that they were very not very fun or easy to paint. During painting I had removed the loader and painted that mini up separately to get better access to the gunner and ballista itself during the process. In the end the ballista crews are "good enough" and far from my best or most satisfying work. But better to have them painted - than not, so... I did experiment a little with skin tones on these pirates, and that will probably carry over to the archers as well.
I had previously painted the pirates from the core game in a very uniform appearance and a bit too clean. I wanted the pirates to look rougher and dirtier. The result is most likely something that will bother me when mixing models from the core game on the board, but there is no way I will force myself to repaint the 30 original pirates.
The Giant spider is one of very few models that does not come with a base. I'm pondering wheter or not fix it to a base or not. At the moment it has a great little nook in the insert for the models. Adding a base to the spider will make it not fit any more and require separate storage.
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Your “not best work” is pretty darn good, in my opinion! That spider turned out great - my wife would go straight up a wall after seeing it!
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Yeah, that spider is excellent, great painting.
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Love the latest editions especially the spider.
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Thanks guys - really can't wait to be done with the pirates and get on with the awesome big monsters!
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Very natural-looking colours on the spider. You might confuse it with the real thing someday.
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That gives me the creeps. This is why I don't paint spiders realistically.
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Thanks for the kind words. I used the "recluse spider" as inspiration for the colors :-X
I too hate spiders, and am very happy that I live in Sweden were most spiders are small and not poisonous. It freaked me out as a kid and even now as an adult when I see giant house spiders of cave spiders indoors or at our porch!
I put mosqito nets over all windows in our old apartment and had peace of mind, but in our new house that is not possible since the windows open upwards and outwards instead of sideways and inwards. Really miss those old windows lol
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Final stretch of the Conqueror minis. Pirate archers painted up (finally) and work begun on the 5 epic monsters which I had been saving for last on purpose.
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The pirate archers look great and I really like the big troll-like epic beastie. I can see all of those figures being useful for a variety of games aside from the board game itself.
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That is an excellent spider. Very good.
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Great work! Especially that spider… I can feel my arachnophobia kicking in, so you have clearly brought it to life with your brush work!
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Thanks for the kind words guys, happy you like them!
Servant of Ahriman painted up as a huge dirty albino horror from the depths of some dark pit. The stats on this thing in the game are pretty insane, heroes do best to stay far away.
Conan and N'yaga for scale. There are a couple of even larger epic monsters left to be painted.
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The Hydra and Son of Set painted up. Two more monsters left to paint before all the minis in my current collection are finished.
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Those look brilliant! I like the hydra model a lot and the colours you chose suit it quite well.
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Thanks! I re-uploaded new pictures today as the matt varnished had cured over night.
The minis were painted with regular Army Painted and Vallejo paints, Army painted washes, a black oil paint wash, Dirty Down streaking grime and Daler Rowney Inks. Most of it painted by airbrush followed by various amount of washes and varnishing in between.
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Really wonderful work on those serpents
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"The Winged one" from the Conqueror expansion painted up. This mini was something that really required a sudden burst of inspiration to get painted. Initially I thought this was the least interesting and most unappealing mini from the whole Conqueror set. However, this evening I finally decided how to paint it, and ended up going in a less dark colored direction. Pretty happy with the end result, and while the mini is still goofy and brings that Simpsons episode to mind where Mr. Burns sends out his flying monkeys (to their death), it really makes a huge difference putting some paint on the gray plastic.
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You do keep delivering great work. :-*
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Thanks again guys!
This is the final "mini" in my current Conan the board game collection, the Nameless Horror. Very difficult miniature to paint and to photograph as camera focus was all over the place. Hopefully the Monolith store will open soon so I can get the few sets that I am still missing.
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He's cute. :D
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This is such an inspiring thread.
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marvellous as ever :-*
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This is all great! I even like the winged ape - with your paint job he does not look goofy at all to my eyes.
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Thanks for all the kind words guys!
It feels strange to not have a painting queue for the first time in 15 months... realized I have a bunch of other minis from various places and different games to paint which had been all but forgotten lol
Will perhaps take a short break before I jump onto the next project (I have some very nice Westfalia miniatures "medieval Star Wars" minis from their Kickstarter).
And then hopefully Mythic Games will open their online store and have some of the items I am missing available. That store has been talked about for YEARS ::) So it will probably be a bum rush of thousands of eager customers once it opens lol
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As fortune would have it, I was able to fully complete my Conan collection with all the items I had been missing up until now (all collectors boxes, the dragon, black ones, red brotherhood, hidden chambers, shadow kingdoms). I will be sharing pictures as I paint up this last batch of minis for my collection, hope to have them all done in before the end of august.
Finished this pair today, Conan the Thief and Belit Queen of the Black coast from the "Brom" collectors box.
It was extremely tricky to clean the female minis in all collectors boxes from mould lines....
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Great work!
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Thanks Grumpy Gnome!
Finished the Dragon this morning, quite hard to take pictures of this model with such light as to not have it look completely grey and drybrushed. Painted mainly with oil and enamel washes. Conan for size comparison. I was suprised at how small the model was as the box for it was huge (and also smaller than what I imagined from reading the Red Nails story). It also did not come with a base, which is quite rare for minis in the Conan collection.
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King Conan and Belit the princess from the Xavier Colette collectors box painted up. This may be my favorite Belit sculpt in the game so far. Also great to have an aged Conan.
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Two years of painting! I backed Kings and gave up after the terrain, undead, and picts. :P
Well, sort of. Turns out the Kings Pledge has enough melee and ranged mini's for various enemies in "Five League from the Borderlands" and probably "Sellswords and Spellslingers". Here's actually a free download for a Conan campaign for S&S!
https://miniaturescrum.blogspot.com/2020/03/striking-back-against-covid-19-free.html
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@Ced1106
Part of painting up everything is also to be able to use it to play SAGA Age of Magic using the minis ;D
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Thulsa Doom from the Shadow Kingdoms expansion. This is to be honest a horrible sculpt, but I was hell bent on trying to make something interesting out of it rather than just a indistinguishable dark mess as the artwork suggests. I also could not find a lot of painted up references either. I settled for muted pastel colors on the robes/cloth/whatever he is wrapped/dressed in.
Before I even began painting I fought a minor battle removing the miniature from its cast plastic base. Took some work with both a knife and clippers, then lots of trimming with an exacto knife to even out the bottom so that it could be put on a clear base once painted.
I was considering doing an enamel wash to finish off, using AK "Streaking Grime", or perhaps a dark/sepia oil wash - but decided against it, not wanting to risk messing up the paintjob of the many tiny scratches and highlights.
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Nice job there.
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Taramis and Valeria "The warrior" from the Paolo Parente guest box painted up. I really like the Valeria sculpt from the core box of the Conan board game, but this one is a very close second.
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Nice Work.
The Thulsa Doom came out really nicely, the pastel colours worked well for it.
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King Kull and Brule from the Shadow Kingdoms expansion painted up. Initially not a fan of the sculpts, but painted up I think they are quite decent, Kull more so than Brule.
Listened to the audiobook "The Shadow Kingdom" featuring both Kull and Brule while painting these. Pretty cool story with "classic" Conan mystery/intrigue, and I can see how R.E. Howard easily swapped Kull for Conan later on. The characters are basically identical. I had not read or listened to anything about Kull up to this point, but will have to check if there are more good stories in the Kull series.
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Black Ones from the story "Pool of the Black Ones". Not particularly interesting miniatures to paint, and the paintjob is not my best but good enough for the tabletop.
Also, to anyone that consider buying acrylic bases from Customeeple - don't. The bases are not laser cut but rather sawed which gives them a very ugly and scratched look from the sides..... 😠 Purchased over 200 bases a few weeks ago, but willI not use them as the end result is not up to standard with all previous models...
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I highly recommend buying from another source, such as Stuff4Games if you are in Europe. Up to this point I had bought all my acrylic bases from there, but as I was purchasing some overlay for other board games from Customeeple I thought it was convinient to restock on bases from this unfortunate source.
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Hi guys, small update about the bases I complained about yesterday for those interested.
I ended up emailing customer support of Customeeple with a detailed description of the problem and comparison pictures. I very rarely email complaints to companies, but by the end of the day I started thinking "what if this is a machine error that can be fixed and they don't know about the problem". This morning I got a reply that showed some surprise at the end product that I had received.
They offered to replace my bases, trying to cut new bases to my previous clear and smooth standard that I wanted. Doing so they would check them prior to delivery to see if they looked as I wanted. And if that did not work out, they offered a refund.
I accepted a replacement of the bases, and really hope that they can tool their laser cutter to make a smoother job. Hope to hear from them again in a few days.
Until then unfortunately my projects are on hold.
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Things are going slowly with the replacement of my acrylic bases from Customeeple. Talked to them over the phone two days ago. They said the issue was that there are two types of acrylic sheets, and one of them is harder/more durable but also ends up with those jagged edges. The problem was that their supplier could never tell them which type of sheets they are being supplied with....
They promised to run tests and give me either a refund or new set of bases next week. That will unfortunately mean at the very least 2 more weeks without bases for my miniatures....
With that in mind, and not wanting to wait any further I finished the Serpentmen from the Shadow Kingdom expansion.
I started by removing them from their bases and trimming them so that they had a flat surface. Then I attached them back to their original bases with a tiny drop of glue, primed and painted them. I saved one "clean" base as a template for the correct footprint/positionining of the miniatures once I get some more bases.
Sadly the red bases makes it hard to fully appreciate the paintjob. But I removed one of the miniatures and placed it temporarily one the last good 30 mm acrylic base I have left so you can get an idea of what the paintjob actually looks like.
The miniatures are paitned with a "cut corners" method of airbrushing the base colors on the robes, base coating the skin, followed by oil washes. This was then sealed with matt varnish and followed up with regular acrylics before being sealed again with a final layer of matt varnish. I'm pretty pleased with the red color on the robes. Especially considering how little time and effort was put into these minis that were the last unpainted Conan miniatures in my collection.
I will post again as soon as they are all based on acrylic bases.
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Hey! Mostly a lurker here but thought I'd chime in that I've been enjoying seeing all your paintjobs! Fantastic work!
Also, the red bases for the serpentmen don't look bad - they have a red marble look to them! Perhaps you could gloss them up and then repurpose them as bases for some sort of terrain?
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Hey! Mostly a lurker here but thought I'd chime in that I've been enjoying seeing all your paintjobs! Fantastic work!
Also, the red bases for the serpentmen don't look bad - they have a red marble look to them! Perhaps you could gloss them up and then repurpose them as bases for some sort of terrain?
Thanks!
No, as soon as I get acrylic bases these minaituers will be based just like the rest of my collection. The reason why I removed the miniatures from the bases initially and re-attached them with a tiny bit of glue was that the miniatures were case as one piece with the base. The large footprint required a lot of effort to remove them, and doing that after the paintjob was complete would have ruined the painting. As it is now, I can easily snap them free and attach them to acrylic bases.
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I salute you, Sir!
Your work is amazing and inspiring. I know you have shared some of the paints you use in previous posts, but I'm most intrigued about the use of oil washes.
Which ones do you use?
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This whole thread is inspiring.
The bases are not laser cut but rather sawed which gives them a very ugly and scratched look from the sides.....
You might be able to salvage them using the old model aircraft clear canopy trick. If you are in the states the product is Future Floor Polish. If in the UK it is pledge multi surface wax. You just paint it on and let it set. It will make rough areas on clear acrylics and plastics clear again even if sanded. Might be worth a go if you run into it in future.
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I salute you, Sir!
Your work is amazing and inspiring. I know you have shared some of the paints you use in previous posts, but I'm most intrigued about the use of oil washes.
Which ones do you use?
Thank you very much for the kind words. I make my own from oil washes from oil paint thinned with white spirit/thinner. The oil paint brand I use is called "Van Gogh". They are 40ml metal tubes that will most likely last a lifetime each. I bought about 6 base colors that can be mixed to create new colors as well as a pure black one. Depending on what I'm painting they can be used as a heavy wash and then gently cleaned off using a "reduction methid" leaving paint in recesses and folds. Sometimes I use them as very thinned down filters, but that takes a lot more care and patience. A good hairdrier and a proper ratio of thinner-to-oil paint is important if you want it to dry and be able to continue to paint during the same painting session.
It took me a couple of attempts to figure out how oils work and how to mix them. My advide is to try out different techniques and methods of mixing the washes on some throwaway miniatures before you do "live" paint on your actual models.
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This whole thread is inspiring. You might be able to salvage them using the old model aircraft clear canopy trick. If you are in the states the product is Future Floor Polish. If in the UK it is pledge multi surface wax. You just paint it on and let it set. It will make rough areas on clear acrylics and plastics clear again even if sanded. Might be worth a go if you run into it in future.
Great tip, thanks! Will check and see if we have similar products here in Sweden. I did not throw away the faulty bases as I figured they could perhaps by used for something else than bases (tokens/markers perhaps?) in the future.
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Received bases from my french supplier Stuff4Games today so I rebased my Black Ones and based the serpentmen (now with corrected position of eyes).
Still waiting for replacement bases from Customeeple, but things are agonizingly slow on their part. Maybe will get the replacements from them in 1-2 weeks.
At the moment I have enough bases from Stuff4Games to last me through the upcoming delivery of Cthulhu Death May Die and any potential Conan KS 🙂
Also, I did not buy the Nordheim expansion (the maps looked very bland and the scenarios were rated quite low by players. There were a bunch of cool miniatures, but at the time I felt it was a purchase I could skip. However, since then I also got Blood Rage and I figured I would be able to use some Blood Rage miniatures as stand in models for the Vanir and Aesir warriors and the giants among other things.
Currently have all the viking models sent to a comission painter, but I painted up all the monster myself. Took a size comparison of Krom next to the big guys. Will try to make custom tiles for the other man sized monsters/minions. They will be cool for custom scenarios imo.
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Great tip, thanks! Will check and see if we have similar products here in Sweden. I did not throw away the faulty bases as I figured they could perhaps by used for something else than bases (tokens/markers perhaps?) in the future.
This might help for finding the right stuff in Sweden. https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/44131 (https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/44131) Last time I checked it was pretty up to date with product changes.
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Finally received my replacement of acrylic bases from CustomMeeple. They did deliver good bases in the end even if the whole process was well over a month.
I took a picture of the CustomMeeple bases and one base from Stuff4Games.
The new bases from CustomMeeple are almost as good as the ones from Stuff4Games (would rate them 9/10). The difference is that the CustomMeeple bases are not quite as smooth as the ones from Stuff4Games.
However, the most important improvement that CM did was to swap the acrylic sheets and tweaked their production so that the new bases don't have jagged and notched edges which gives a "frosted" look.
Very happy with the end product, and now at least I'll have two valid options for acrylic bases in 2mm and various sizes. Now I have enough bases to last me at least 2 kickstarter boardgames LOL.
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Great job on all this! Thanks for posting, I use this a lot for ideas to get through all my Conan stuff :)
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What a wonderful painting campaign. Beautiful results, filled with a lot of painting tips and experiences made during the campaign. Thanks for sharing.
With kind of glue did you used for glueing your minis on the acrylic bases without getting some white, dried spots of glue?
Love your stuff - well done :-*