From the Vaulted Realm of Pluto

No, I can’t well just leave well enough alone with silly thoughts and how to implement game mechanics into a thematic army. Here, I finally dragged “Clash of the Titans” onto the table.

It really was a segue from an idea after seeing an owl being used as a mount.

From here it proceeded on to the possibility of a Hearthguard unit of flying figures. With the experience of the hippocampi I think I’ve trod down that road far enough to consider four figures likely won’t work. This should be a significant single unit for visual impact.

As it is a piece to be looked at with awe and wonder my brain went from what could be done admiring natural splendor to the whimsy of the ever famous Bubo!

This will either be a warlord on flying mount or another lieutenant like the one riding the flying carpet I had on my Arabian Knights. All in all The Hunt, as Gerry put it, is afoot and I think there are quite a few trophies scored during my time in the wilds of The Interwebs.

I’ve hit a small painting wall but getting some magnets into the trays for the figures has been positive movement for the project. I’ve also ordered more to complete securing the army to the transport plate. This lot of lovely ladies grows more attractive all the time. 😆

I had the hippocampi(?) that I wanted printed and I’ve been looking at how I’d need to kitbash the legs of some Dark Temple Guard Praetorians from Shadowforge to use as a unit of Hearthguard. I’m not a fan of the cast spears. The polearms look more like ranseurs with tiny details of skulls that I just won’t be able to replicate in a material I feel will be durable for regular handling so they will be kept. The legs will be hacked, repositioned and the armor frill replaced on the finished legs. I don’t think too much work will need to be done on the shield arms but I’ll see what happens in the seating of the figures.

A not on the prints is that they came out very cleanly with minimal fuss for the supports. My friend printing them did a bit of custom supporting in tapering the terminal points where they meet the model. It’s a trick that seems to minimize the scarring of the contact points and my need to run sandpaper for smoothing.

On a separate topic of photos I’ve tried some more with natural lighting and using thin EVA foam as a backdrop. Tooling about with 5600k WB, 100 ISO and 1/30 sec shutter seemed to have worked with these pics. I’ll look more into the difference between this and my “studio” photo setup with table lamps.

Considering the hunt for more minis I’ll give this all a bit of a twist to put in some more 1s and 0s. This all makes sense as far as a change of pace as I’m pulling in aquacav(?). With the Jason and the Argonauts feature of Poseidon I thought a little bit more could be drawn in. Seahorses in the non-standard idea will be good. As an addition I’ll be kitbashing some stuff I got in order to keep the visual motif.

So as I’ve just watched the XLBS for the week I have been pleasantly surprised to see the Harryhausen Greek project featured. I agree to the idea pointed out of “The Hunt” which has gone on in building this army. Starting from initial seed concept and cultivating the development as it grows is a curious business like bonsai. Going back and forth with pruning the notions can be tricky as it can be a really good idea that you shut down in the effort to try and fence in your efforts.

That being said I’ve come up with jumping onto the Shadowforge figures carried by Eureka out of Australia. Nic at the shop has been quite helpful for this project and I’m sure anyone tossing him an order would be well received and taken care of.

My thoughts to mull over recently has been more monsters. In the Arabian Knights there are all sorts of fantastic things to see (truth be told I found a few more I might add) so this army needs just the same. I do this as my brain cannot wrap itself around a war machine to put in. Pulling out what I can from the film I might just hammer in some things from Clash of the Titans as well.

The minotaur has been completed. It’s not a great painted piece but it works for what I need. I can say that having it done is better than what it was before so I’m happy. I did what I could to avoid NMM where I could. I’ll keep at this and feed myself aspirin for the rest of the painting.

I’ll complain about more 3D models and sculpting in future as I found things to add to the army. Creativity is a double edged sword

The leader of these Amazons is perched atop a chimera with a golden fleece saddle (it seems that there is more than one out there and may be a Chinese knockoff, who knows). A minor modification using a spare plastic head from the Wargames Atlantic undead chariots was done by cutting out the skull. Her sword arm was repositioned to be more dramatic and avoid the helmet. Her legs were cut near her hips and pinned to accommodate the width of the chimera. Overall, a good figure with little needed done to it to work better.

As far as paint, Speedpaint is a helpful tool for basecoating. Sand Golem for the lion bits, Orc Skin for the snake and Gravelord Grey for the goat parts made the beast easy to start feeling less daunting. From the overall mass, it felt good for the detail work to be done which made the mini pop. I feel happy about the end result and think there is understanding by some 3D sculptors that Death by Detail can hurt your models.

The downside to this is I now have to run NMM for my foot troops to match the bronze helmet of the Warlord *sigh*. In happy little accident fashion the winning colors are as follows:

Vallejo Model Color

Saddle Brown 70940

Buff 70.976

Pale sand 70.837

The fauns from the plastic centaurs box are done. I’m glad to be finished but I feel as if they’re just too scrawny for my tastes and will work better as an addition to the army I gave to one of my friends. To these minis I say goodbye and good riddance.

Working over the female collosus has been good for my sense of accomplishment. It’s smaller on the 80mm base than the previous one but no less impressive when compared to the 28mm standard of the army.

As it is different from the other I decided to distinguish it with more blue in the patina. Using less pigment this time around I utilized straight rubbing alcohol as my carrier. Essentially going over the model with a dusting of pigment as if I were rubbing chalk on it the color settled where I sprayed. The “highlight” spots were purposeful and accidents. This model had corrosion sculpted onto areas that I touched up with dark and light blue. There were a few spots that the pigment fixer flowed and ended up carrying color where it was just too much for my taste.

Overall it’s done and I can only warn others to use dry pigment in moderation. I’ll also add that pigment fixer acts as a flow agent that will wick the dry pigment into areas you might not have wanted them. It works the same way as if you added a glaze over a matte varnish finish because of the surface tooth.