Mods and Painting

My first die-cast car mod 

Months before May, I was at my parents' place, looking through the old die-cast cars that served my siblings and I growing up. Picking up one of the first Hot Wheels cars that my younger brother received and noted all the scratches and the bent axles. I had been watching those videos on YouTube of people modifying their Hot Wheels cars. So naturally, I slipped the car in my pocket and took it home to do at least a repaint and present it to my brother, who's birthday is in May.

I took apart the car and stripped/scraped the paint off, sanding it with a very fine grit sand paper. Removed the axles. Took the axles and wheels from a Francesco car (from Cars 2) to do a wheel swap. The axles are too wide for a Hot Wheels, so I snipped them and stuck them into place with super glue and green stuff. Then I did it all over again, but using lengths of that plastic coating you sometimes find on paper clips to hold the clipped axels together and make them less prone to be de-glued and pushed through the green stuff lump. Painted the car with treated craft acrylics through my airbrush. had to repaint 4 times to get it looking half decent. Used a chrome pen on the parts I thought would be chromed in real life. Put it all together again and...

Not the greatest pic, but the only one I took before giving it to my brother.

The ongoing saga of me painting Blacklist Fantasy 1 minis

I painted the skeletons. I modified them a bunch as well, giving one a spear and a bow to another, clipping off some shoulder pad spikes, and shaving off a couple hoods. Made a pretty nice variety. Took a long time to get around to painting them.

The guys who kept their swords.

The guys who got other weapons.

And a Mage Knight mini

This guy was painted all black with a couple of grey and gold highlights, but it hid all the detail on the sculpt. He was also missing his left foot and clicky base when I got him. Stripped the paint. Molded a green stuff foot. Repaint and rebase (on the bottom half of a clicky base no less)...

One side...

...and the other.

Guns into spaceships

As quite a few of my posts seem to begin, some time ago I bought a bag of random stuff at a thrift store. It contained little army men, sandbag piles, and a few large action figure-sized guns. Don't think I'd never use them in as they were. Well, I pulled a couple out to ponder what I could do with them and got the idea that if they were cut in strategic places, some of the resulting pieces - if painted up - would work quite well as spaceships. So here's some before and after:

Before. Though I did start sawing apart that big green one before thinking of a picture.

Pieces selected for transformation.

Three painted to match, perhaps to serve in the same faction or group.

Two more chosen to join one of my already existing painting themes.

And finally, the ones that I didn't really try to make fit anything.

Not too bad for simply cutting and painting, eh! Someday I'll play a game with these. Someday.

"Aaas yyooouuu wiiisshh!"

 One of the one hundred Heroclix I received those years ago had modification written all over it from the moment I saw it. Looking at it, I know without any reservation, exactly who I wanted this figure to become. It's just taken me this long to actually get to work on making the transformation happen.

The original was called Swordsman. He's arrayed in a purple costume with a mask and swashbuckler's boots, sword drawn and raised, pointing out from his shoulder. A moustache and jaw line to match that of Neville Sinclair in the Disney production of The Rocketeer.

Using pictures from the film, I made a few add-ons: shaved-down some parts of Swordsman's suit then adding head covering, belt, lapels, poofy-ness in the shirt sleeves, and fly-out parts of the gloves out of green stuff. A 97% black repaint would turn this sculpt into Wesley, aka: "the man in black" or the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Of course he's wearing all black, so I tried to differentiate some things to try and make his appearance a little less boring. First up was a zenithal highlight on the black primer. Then, after painting all the black, I chose some elements to be "less black" like his belt, boots, gloves, and headband. These were dark grey mixed with black. I works slightly better for viewing in real life than for these pictures.

Just need to base it now, but I couldn't wait to get some pictures on here.

Repair and Repaint: Woodland Scout from Mage Knight

A couple years ago I thrifted a little baggie of Mage Knight minis. Mage Knight as in the precursor to the much more popular Heroclix. I've seen some talk here and there on the webz about these figures and certain disparaging remarks about their level of sculpt detail and quality of paint jobs. Even in the handful of figures I picked up, there is a range of quality levels in both fields. But also in my handful of figures, there were a number that have been damaged. The worst case is a skeleton archer missing its bow arm and both feet. I hope to be posting more on the skeleton later, but for now, I want to show off my first repair and repaint from this fantasy range.

Enter the Woodland Scout. She appears to be an elf, having obviously pointed ears. The only thing broken appeared to be a weapon she was holding up; looking up pics on Google, it was a sword.

I decided the pose was too awkward looking for how the sword was being held, so I decided on a pole arm instead. With green stuff I'm not a great weapon sculptor, so I stuck to a simple enough blade on the end of a piece of paper clip. The paint wasn't great, but I liked the green, so I stuck with that colour. This was my first time stripping paint from a miniature before repainting, too. 

So, this compared to...

...this.

Will likely be joining a game in the near future.

Painted my first human sculpt

In spurts and starts I've been painting.

First up was my first human figure completely sculpted by me.

She looks a little too happy to be going to battle. Also, a bit too pasty to have been doing this long.

A Little More D&D: Painting

A couple of weeks ago, our little group played our first session of Dungeons and Dragons. Two players dropped out so we are six, including the DM. My ranger's paint job must have been good enough, three of the other players asked me to do theirs. So I'm posting the finished paint jobs here, in order of completion. All miniatures were provided by the DM and they are all from the Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures line.

The three newly painted adventurers (and my ranger in the back).

The male half-orc barbarian. 

I dry-brushed silver on the leather scale coat hoping for a bit of the effect of some metal scale also attached to the armour.

The female Aasimar paladin.

The female tiefling rogue. But, the DM only had male tiefling rogues available, so after seeing if it was ok with the player, I performed a little plastic surgery to the one she chose to make the sculpt a bit more feminine-looking.

The before

The changes made:

- cut off some chin that kind of looked like a goatee,

- thinned down the torso from waist to shoulders,

- used some green stuff to widen hips, fill out the bust, and add hair. 

The player gave me a character picture she liked for use as a reference for paint color, so I fashioned new upper body clothing and cape to resemble what's in the picture.

Tried to get the face visible, kind of got it here.