Afghan Village is growing (Part 3)

More progress on my afghan terrain...

First two tiles are almost ready, I need to paint the wood on ladder and well into a darker brown-tone - that should do it.

Tiles 3 + 4 are in preparation:

My plan here is to have a small enclosed field on the left tile, together with a little storage house and an entrance. The right tile will be finished by adding 2-3 trees growing inside the compound. Which is a bit difficult as I can only mount the trees after basecoating the tile, otherwise I´d have to repaint it (no need in my opinion, the trees look good as they are)

Afghan Village - Part 2

I´ve spent a little more time on my Afghan terrain improvement, added a few barebone tiles and set them up to show how things could look later on:

Just 4 shots of many different compositions.

Don´t worry about the openings on the edges, I´m planning to straigthen them out later on when adding the sand layer.

Building an Afghan Village

I´ve been working on my terrain recently after visiting the home improvement store and fetching some material.

The first tile is almost finished as a test piece, now I´m building the other modular sections of the compound.

My plan is to create a set of interchangeable pieces that are compatible with each other. I´ll be doing a number of compound-tiles as above, wall-sections and single buildings to create a customizeable village.

This is kind of a long-term sideline project next to all the sculpting and painting, so don´t expect any regular updates.

More Russians...

almost through with the russians on my commission list.

This chap needs to be based and a better facemask:

These want to be packed up and cast as well:

New Enfilade stuff: US & Russian Squads

Time for the announcement of the new figures in my shop, some of those have been in the shop for some time without me promoting them.

Pack number 1 is a Russian Infantry Squad, 7 men in 2014+ Ratnik gear with all the equipment you need to field a squad.

And the second pack, an expansion of the already available US fireteam into a full Rifle Squad of 9 men. Wearing IOTV body armor, suitable for Late Iraq, Afghanistan, or any current or near future hypothetical conflict with US involvement!

 Klick on the banner to head straight towards the shop :)

Multicam - Again...

Painting US Army means painting Multicam... and those of you who´ve been around for a while know that I´ve a history with that camo pattern, trying several techniques and approaches. Well, time for a new try...

Two fotos with two different light settings on my camera.  I think the first one is closer to the real look, but I like the different feeling of the second pic a well.

Meanwhile, Chocolate SAS have been finished, starting of with the next two throughout the next days, but I got to go back doing some Russian first...

Chocolate Commandos (SAS)

Not real chocolate though ;) 

I needed a break from sculpting orange minis all the time. I really like the orange putty, but sometimes I reach a point when I need another color to work with. So I threw in some blue, sculpted some dollies that I could use for a variety of ranges (Cold War British, Modern Germans, Cold War Germans in Cold Weather Gear, anything wearing a parka actually) and cast them in metal.

Then I mixed my orange and blue putty to try a new color, and the result was... chocolate brown!

So, these are new SAS, expanding/replacing my first set of Commandos with M16. These will be skirmishing, two more firefight-poses are being prepared.

Meanwhile, I´ve resumed work on the playtest version of Code Red - the german version will enter playtesting soonish, the first draft has been issues to the testers for proof-reading and pointing out any obvious mistakes. A lot of work is coming along...

Winter Offensive - Part 3

Hey folks,

I took some photos after painting today - finished up the bases of two Taliban and prepared the US Infantry for their next layer.
Hope I haven´t messed up the pictures completely by editing them slightly... they were again pretty bad, can´t wait for summer to come as I can´t really afford better photo equipment :(

And my US Infantry... Still early WIP

I´m also busy on the sculpting front, but that´s stuff for another post in the future!

2 Years of Sculpting

...can´t believe it´s actually that much already O.O

Anyway, this post is a short look back. Two years ago I wouldn´t have imagined to run a small webshop selling my own stuff (though honestly it´s just a hobby store, nothing that makes any money) and taking commissions from other people.

Some of you might remember my first attempts when I started in January 2013:

Well.. yeah...

Let´s quickly skip ahead to the figures a year later, January 2014:

These were already looking a bit better and people began starting to ask nagging questions if I´d have some of my 2014-vintage minis cast and made available to the public. I had made a test-run with casting a selection of Africans mid to late 2013 but never considered selling these on a regular basis. With time going by I started considering that option, as more and more figures began piling up on my shelf which would never see any action as I merely built them for my own enjoyment.
I started weighting costs, risks and opportunities and made a decision: I´d build my own, low-cost website to distribute my figures and put some venture capital into the buildup that wouldn´t yield any return on the bank anyway at th current interest rates.
So I started programming and designing the website, learned some new skills and finally opened the shop in June, fully expecting it to be a side-occupation. Being able to invest all income from the shop into new figures, I slowly built up my ranges and continue doing so.
Though the ranges are growing there is still a long way to go - but I will continue if time and money allow me to :)

And speaking of old figures - I´m dropping the price for some of the older sets to make them more attractive - they are below my current quality level, so they should be below the price of current sets as well.

My plans for 2015 are: 
-Expanding my portfolio with new sets
-Releasing "Code Red" as an alternative modern ruleset to FoF. (In german, guess the english version won´t be ready in 2015)
-Design & Offer suitable starter packs for Code Red
-and probably much more I can´t even conceive right now.


So todays figures, current quality level -  you already know him:

Modern Russians

Made some progress with my modern Russians, today I´m able to present the first pics. Two poses still have to be painted before they´re moving into the webshop.

Took some photos for you - beware, I had to desaturate them quite a bit to bring out the real colors, so there might be some color distortion left. I did my best, but I´m no professional photo editor.

Sculpting Real Stuff again

After getting back from building snowmen, I immediately continued to work on the more durable sculpting projects, expanding the range of Modern Russians:

I also started to paint up the first batch of Russians that arrived from my caster during my christmas break:

And for people who are interested in playing a clash of superpowers, I have more opponents for these in the pipeline as well:

This is the second part of the US Rifle Squad which will contain 9 men - these 5 and the previous fireteam I made.

Sculpting Snowmen

As some of you might have guessed by the silence on this blog the past few days, I´ve been away throughout the christmas holidays and new year and didn´t have much access to the modelling stuff.

However, we did sculpt some lovely snowmen when it snowed on December 30th/31st.

The right one is the classic version, his companion on the left has a sculpted face.

Unfortunately they didn´t last very long, severe heat damage killed them, the next morning they where just to shapeless columns of snow :(


Now that I´m back, work continues on the more durable sculpts. I received a package with the new Russian sets which are being painted right now and will enter the shop very soon. I also received a pack of new weapons which enables me to continue on new russians and several other projects I had to delay for the lack of proper firearms.

So, seeya soon!