To direct the merry band of Pulp City villains I started last month, I needed a Leader. Luckily, I’ve been able to get my hand on 100 Voices and his Voicelings recently, after trying to find them for years. As an indie Leader, he’s a perfect match for my rag tag group of criminals. And his henchmen just work so well with him, both thematically and in game, that I had to paint them together.
Making modern urban bases is simple, and that might be why it is hard to find them in resin or as 3d files. Most of what is available out there is for specific sub settings (like industrial), slightly past or future looks, or in rubble for war zones. However, if you want clean, “normal” bases, where civilians could take a stroll, you are mostly on your own.
I needed bases like that for my Pulp City civilians when I painted them some years ago, and developed a simple technique to make them. With my recent indie villains requiring similar bases, I decided to make a quick tutorial at the same time, in case others might find it interesting. It’s nothing revolutionary, and I am sure you could find other similar tutorial online, but it’s always good to have options. Here we go!
I started tracking my painting and my playing about 6 years ago. I don’t track wins, or much other info, mainly just the games and who I played with. I find it interesting, and it gives me pointers to what I should get to the table again. Looking at the file, the only game I played every of those years is Pulp City. That is only fitting for my favourite game.
Late last year, I decided to expand my options, as my only painted models were for the A.R.C. faction (the Ape Revolution Committee), and some civilians for the scenarios. I decided to start by painting the indie models from the two alignment starters. I did paint Tekkna for the heroes, but to change things up, I followed that with the villains. I got 2 of them painted before the new year, Aurelius and Anansi, but without their bases though.
Back in 2019, when I was still posting semi-regularly, I got into a terrain challenge, and I even published a couple entries I made, a ruined temple and a cabbage farm. The first piece that I made but I didn’t get to share was for the game Anyaral, the world of Twilight. It’s for the Casanii faction, for which I don’t even have a force, but I felt inspired by their look and theme.
I don’t remember the exact prompt we had to build toward, but it was quite simple, something like “building”. I made multiple sketches to make a small village, but the piece for the challenge was a single large dwelling. I don’t have all my pictures from back then, but I’ve gathered some I had not erased, or that I had published on Twitter.
It has been a long time since I’ve posted in this blog, with a small exception last month. More than three full years, to put a number on it. Lots of things can partly explain it: selling a house, moving, a pandemic, a sick partner (thankfully on the mend), mostly stopping commission work, etc. The list goes on. It was taking time that I didn’t want to put in it. But writing that quick post about the Bushido crew last month reminded me that I do enjoy the writing. Also, I’ve realized that now that I don’t post all the projects on my FB page, it’s harder to track down pictures.
So, I’ve decided to give it another go this year. I don’t think I’ll often publish big posts, but it will be a hobby diary, with quick picture galleries and updates. Even if I end up being the only one to go through it occasionally, it will already have a good use.
Our group got into Bushido just at the start of the pandemic. It limited our playing capabilities, but offered us time to get our models painted, at least. I painted my whole first faction, the Open Rebellion box, before even having a game, which is kind of new for me. Since then, I got in a new sub-faction, the butos of the Silvermoon Trading Syndicate, a kind of yakuza-like crime group. I got those painted in the last few weeks, and I’m quite pleased with them, especially with the challenge of the tattoo work.
My Ruined forest temple last month ended up winning the judges’ votes 3 to 2, and moved forward to this month’s round. It was really close based on the judges’ commentaries, and could have gone both ways. That’s always nice in a friendly competition. It was also great to have the opportunity to read judges’ notes!
For October, my imposed theme was “farm“. I struggled with that theme more than the previous months. One personal goal I gave myself was to make terrain that I could use in games, and nothing was really coming to mind early on. Eventually, after painting Laios, I went through my shelf of games again, and a bright light popped up. I would build a rabbit-run cabbage farm for Burrows and Badgers! That would be a good incentive to finally work on those minis.
I was recently contacted to paint a large scale model from Delicious in Dungeon (also known as Dungeon Meshi), a manga I hadn’t heard about at that point. The model is a large resin garage kit, at an unspecified scale, of the main character Laios. The kit is from the Charagumin line by Volks.
This was my first time working on such a big piece, at least scale-wise. It was fun to work with metallic paints, as natural light and reflection work better with a large piece like that than our usual 28-32mm gaming miniatures. It was also a good practice for my airbrush skills.
Earlier this year, I decided to join a terrain building challenge, the Rogue Sculpts Craft-Off Competition. The gist of it is, each month, all participants are paired up, and each pair is given a random theme. At the end of the month, a panel of judges reviews the work from each pair, and the winner gets to advance to the next round. Rince and repeat, until there is only one, Highlander style.
This month, the theme I got was “Ruined temple”. I did a sketch of a forest temple for Endless: Fantasy Tactics a while ago, and it was the perfect time to work on that project. Unfortunately, I could only start late in the month, so I had to reduce the scale of my piece. I ended up doing an 8 by 8 squares board, the quarter of a full EFT board. When I get more time, I can build the other parts, especially as the rest of it is easier and simpler.
December has come and gone, and with it, 2018. The month itself was slower than others for the hobby, but I used that time to clean up my workshop, and it will let me start 2019 in full swing. It was a pretty good year for the hobby, positive in general, with many new cool projects and discoveries. Let’s dive in!
| This month | Yearly total | |
|---|---|---|
| Models painted: | 3 | 54 |
| Models sculpted: | 0 | 10 |
| Terrain built: | 0 | 2 |
| Terrain painted: | 2 | 4 |
| Games played: | 6 | 56 |
Continue reading “December Monthly Update and 2018 Year End Review”
