Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Frozen

My daughters (aged 5) have been looking at Daddy's figures for a while now, so I thought it was time they got some figures of their own. For display, mainly, maybe a bit too soon to get them playing, I guess. As they like/love the Disney movie Frozen, I looked around for some figures matching that. Annie, the ever lovely Dice Bag Lady @ Bad Squiddo Games has some North Star figures called Two young Fire Elementalists that would be a nice match for Anna and Elsa, if painted in the right colours. Olaf was a bit more difficult, but a bit of a search in Thingyverse and help from a colleague at work who is a 3D printer fanatic got me figures for them as well. Now I guess I'll have to go source some Kristoffers and reindeer as well ;)

Some progress pictures:
Annas and Elsas blockpainted and ready for wash, Olafs primed grey

Annas and Elsas closer up

First set as good as done, some details left on the girls and forgot Olafs eyes

Second set at the same stage, set in the background. 
All figures were primed light grey with Vallejo Surface Primer. The girls were then blockpainted with thinned down paint and washed. All the blues were washed with Drakenhof Nightshade, thinned down in various degrees for the light colours, almost straight for the dark blue on Anna. Faces, red cape, fur (on the cape) and hair were washed with (somewhat thinned down) Army Painter Strong Tone wash. After that, all the colours were highlighted to various degrees, the blues on Elsa with several shades, the other colours just with the basecolour again. Thinned down paint, so the application of one or more layers gives different hues and shades.
Olaf was just wetbrushed several times, then the nose, "hair" and arms painted and highlighted. Some white highlights on the body, and the eyes and buttons painted black. Now I just have to paint in the eyes and eyebrows.

Varnishing and basing left to do, pondering whether to have one large base for each set, or individual bases per figure...

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Secret Santas

I'm quite pleased with the stuff I got from my Secret Santas :)

This year I participated in 3 of these, one was Chris Stoesen's, where you paint something for your "target". The other is the original Secret Santa by Ian and Catherine Wiley where you send your target something wargames related worth around £15. Finally we had our own little Penguin Santa thingy between Jocke, Thomas, Laffe and me, with some meddling (errr... help) by Chris ;-)

I've received 2 presents to date, and have been told the 3rd is on it's way. I opened them on Christmas Day, together with my daughters (well, I let them open the presents, there good at it, having had loads of practice again this year ;-))

Out came these two nice presents:

2 packs of Perry dismounted Union cavalry

Perry British 6pdr for North Africa

Both of these were on my wishlist, and will come in very handy. The first as skirmishers for our SP2 ACW project, the other for our ongoing CoC North Africa project. I'm planning on getting both painted soon ;-)

Thanks very much to my Secret Santas ;-)