"Watch your Step" - IEDs!

These devices were in the pipeline to get rebased on thin, synthetic cork bases. They are very early designs, left over from an age where I wasn´t as adept in painting and modelling.

To rebase them, I essentially rebuilt them completely. It´s very simple to create these IED-markers from scrap. Take some plastic sprues (preferably round pieces), cut them down to the right size and glue them onto the base. If you have thin wire, you can use them to further enhance the model.

Here I chose to paint them green, like discarded artillery munitions, but you can probably use all sorts of colors to create piles of junk where explosives might be hidden using the same building blocks cut from leftover sprues.

I painted the wires blue and red for an extra eye catching effect. The rest of the piece is created using the usual basing techniques.

Tomorrow,  I´ll show you more terrain.

Suspect Individuals

Here we go with the next minis which I actually finished last week. Again, these were long time residents on my rack of to-do figures which I picked up and finished rather quickly.

These shady individuals will make a nice addition to my Afghan Insurgents or Civilian groups, creating all kinds of confusion on the battlefield.

Painting-wise, I´m not too happy about the skirt on the right figure, I certainly overdid the contrast and created an almost metallic look with too hard edges. I tried to fix it several times and finally fed up with it and left him be.  It will probably not hurt too much when looked at from a tabletop. distance.

Tomorrow, I shall reveal what these two have been up to...

"Falke, hier Adler - Kommen!"

Over the weekend I´ve been trying to get some paint on figures that have long been sitting on my paint rack to get rid of some of the figures in the painting backlog. My rack is still filled with a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but little by little I´m churning through the pile.

This weekend I picked some 20mm minis and terrain to finish up.  Pics will be appearing here throughout the next week.

We start today with an NVA Funker (Radioman) by Elhiem who was sitting around with a basecoat. I took him, smushed over a thin brownish wash and rebuilt the colors from there - very basic paintjob, finished in a short period of time. 

African Rebels & Women Militia

After a long time without an update here, I´ve got another set of pictures for soon to be released models.

As part of a commission, I´m currently working on another set of three Women Militia fighters. The first batch of two sets with 7 figures will be released when these are produced. The entire commission is planned to be around 20 figures strong, but the buildup will be very slow as the customer wants to pay them bit by bit and I need space in the production moulds for other figures,  The sets will be publicly available when released, which keeps the cost down for the commissioner and still makes it worthwhile for me.

 The third model is almost ready, I´m sure a photo will appear in very short time :)

Furterhmore, I have prepared a replacement for the very old  African Insurgents with Kalashnikovs.
The old set was among the very first that I produced - I´m hoping that more people use them as Opfor now that they have proper models with a nicer look.

Both sets are probably coming Late October or Early November!

Walking Pestilence

Hey all,

I´ve been silent again for quite a while, but by no means idle. I´m silently sculpting and painting more figures to show you soon, but not taking many photos - I guess I could work on that if you´re interested in seeing more WIP pictures?

Anyway, today I got a finished model after putting many hours of work into it: The Second Blight King has been completed!

I´ve been experimenting heavily with this guy, working back and forth on different areas until I achieved a look that I´m happy with. I started with an airbrushed base to establish the basic values and colors and worked up on that with many glazes and detail-brushwork to add depth to the figure.

The most challenging and also the most rewarding part was the experiment I did on the kneepad - the Non-metallic effect using a horizon line and reflections of the environment turned out quite nicely I believe.

Most room for improvement is still on the base. I put it together without considering the footprint of the mini, so most of the work on the swamp water is probably lost to the observer. A shame, as the base itself looked quite decent, but was covered up by the monstrous mini and just leaves the less impressive elements (rocks and tree) to be seen.

Apart from that, I probably could have added more shine to the helmet, shoulder blade and axe. My original intention was to make them  look dull, dusty and aged like they do, but the contrast to the kneepad makes it look a little odd.

I hope you enjoy this figure, painting it was a fun experience and I´m looking forward to starting the more heavily armored guy next:

Ruling Elite

Small update for today - I finished painting the African Dictator Set that has been recently updated in my shop.  Also commenced work on some new figures, but they are too early in the WIP stage to show anyhting meaningful.

So, only one picture for today:

Website Relaunch, Product Updates and SALE!

Hi all,

after several months of invisible work, I have successfully launched a new and reworked site, which is now online.
A fresh site was required as several features were broken due to my lack of skill and knowledge while building the site back in 2014. With new experience and learning from past failures, I was now able to build a much more streamlined site that will fulfill my requirements for the next few years.

The most important new and repaired features that didn´t work as intented with the old site are:

• A working search function - try the "search" field on the top right!
• Better Paypal Integration -  Now using Paypal Express checkout
• Better visual layout and design - making navigation on site easier I hope!
• Working Email notifications -  Automatic emails on order updates. These will keep you informed about the progress of your order and allow me to concentrate more of my time making miniatures instead of writing mails
• Working order history -  was broken on the old website, is now back to normal function
• Coupons -  I´m now able to use coupon codes to discount orders. Not yet in use, but will get utilised sooner or later.
• New Administrative functions -  not directly visible to you, but I´ve configures some admin views to my requirements, again allowing me to save time on administration that can be used to make more minis.
• Multi-language-capabilities - the site is theoretically able to handle multiple languages. Right now it´s only english, but I could now think about doing translations for a german version

Unfortunately this update comes with a small drawback:
All customer accounts that were registered on the old site have to be re-registered.

I made a change in the way the adress is configured and I had the bad feeling that importing the old user accounts into the new databse would be a lot of trouble.

To give you an incentive to re-register (or register for the first time) and to celebrate the new Website, I´m offering a Sale on all Sets in Stock.  Throughout the next week (until August 20th), all products are 30% off.

Furthermore, a new batch of figures has arrived while I prepared the switch.
This time, all releases are re-modeled old sets.


The Following Sets have been replaced: 

INS-04:   Insurgent Cell with Leader now contains 3 completely new figures and a reworked Babai-Model with a bit more definition than the old one.

AFR-02:   Dictator with Bodyguard  now contains 3 completely remodeled figures to replace the aged set

AFR-INS-03:  African Irregulars with  FN FAL  now contains 2 completely remodeled figures and 2 massively overhauled figures including new weapons, arms and faces.

That´s the big news blob for today.
I hope you enjoy the new website - if you experience any trouble, drop me a message (PM or Mail)

Thanks!
Robert