Choose Your Fate

It's almost New Years, and with it, something a bit different!

Wyrd is hosting a contest for a new Fate deck, and with that meaning restrictions are lifted, it's time to resurrect my deck design! Aside from some cleaning up, it's mostly the same deck you've seen before, but I've made sure to revise the face cards to suit the Malifaux world a bit more.

The explanation of the deck is this:

Many of the Fate decks already in existence are what I'd call "out of world" decks - The Puppet Wars deck, the very snazzy decks including artwork from concept sketches of various characters, etc.

There's only one "In-world" deck I know of, and that's Xander's Retro deck. It's a beautifully designed deck, and it very much 'fits' the word. The only problem I have is that it's old, beaten up, and made to look (I think) like they found it when they reopened the breach, sitting on a table somewhere, and thought no ill of picking it up and starting to use it. What I'm going for is different. I want to make the "Modern Malifaux" deck. I want one where any random trader, card shark, or bored kid could go into a shop in Malifaux (or Earthside - currently the city of origin is listed as my own, Toronto!) and pick up a deck much like this and play with it.

Many of the designs are held over from the previous two posts (linked above) so in this entry I'll mostly focus on the differences.

First, the jokers are mostly the same, but they're the least "busy", so they'll show off the background well. Whereas the old one was whatever I could find from the internet to convey the feeling, it was too yellow, and too 'not mine'. I have since revised it with a texture pulled from paper I purchased, photographed, and edited.

More importantly you'll notice a refined and cleaned up back. These are far closer to the fancy designs so often found and admired on poker decks, and the prominent, not-too-fancy M in the middle is a strong reminder of what game it is!

And now the big change: face cards! You can see the damage indicators still in the corner, the large symbols for each suit on the aces, and most importantly, customized designs! The Aces are all going to have large symbols in the middle, to keep Crows from being too fancy, and the biggest modification to this set of royals is the Queen; While I did try to limit the number of in-world characters, I figure someone like Lady Justice is both well-liked and well-known enough to gain card immortalization. The cards feature very bright red cloth, as red is considered the faction colour of the Guild.

Next up are the Tomes. Tomes represent Arcanists, and while they may make a sneaky deck with hidden clues to them, this is not that deck. They were chosen of the face cards because they have large discs, coloured in this to represent soulstones. They have less gold than their Guild counterparts (except the king) but they are coloured varying shades of blue. From the bright cyan in their eyes and the soulstones, to the more muted cyan and royal blue of their cloth, they hold to the Arcanist blue.

The Masks (or Masques) represent the Neverborn. Their colour scheme is made to echo that of the Guild, with a colder, more sinister set of purples (Neverborn's colour) trying to keep somewhat the feel of the Guild reds. The masks on each are made to look both like the suit icon, and also the one worn by the Guild's Secretary, who many suspect to be a Neverborn!

If I do win the contest, and am asked to, I considered snaking some subtle colour inflection through their robes to look like tentacles, but the darts on the King's sleeves kind of work that effect, and keeps the overall look subtle.

Finally, the Crows. This was a difficult one. Traditionally, Spades are the 'highest' suit, but in the world of Malifaux, it represents the Resurrectionists, who are perhaps the most hated faction in the game. As a result, I had to juggle the primacy of one with the hatred of the other, and so decided to go subtle. The ace, as mentioned, keeps the 'tariff has been payed' look, and each of the royals is made to be subtly creepy and undead. All three have sunken cheeks. The Jack has blank eyes, the Queen empty pits, and the King small eerie dots as though the irises have blanched. Their clothes are primarily green (the Resurrectionist colour) and brown (for the earth), with a minimum of gold effects.

It was nice to go through and clean up the royals, since it let me really think on the designs overall. I hope you like them!

LASERS!

While I clean up and upload more painting pics, I figured I'd post something exciting I did just this last weekend.

I'm a graphic designer by trade, so I have experience working with vector files. Lucky me, vector files are used for laser-cutting! I got a chance this weekend to play with a cutter, and I must say, with a few odd incidents, it was an amazing fun time!

All pics are from my cellphone, so no promises as to the quality, but that, my dear friends, is my first ever laser cut project! Sure it doesn't look like much there, but that's because you're not seeing it...

...after having been removed from the bed! What you're looking at there is a paint rack perfectly suited to Vallejo paint bottles, (or similarly sized ones), measuring 22cm by 20cm, with room enough for 48 paint bottles! (Assuming you don't just shove a bunch in the negative space underneath.)

Once I got it home, I assembled it, glue-less thanks to careful sizing (and I darn near risked needing to file some of the gaps larger) and arranged the paint bottles in a hopefully-logical way (it seemed so at the time for me!)

Of course, one does not merely play around on a laser cutter with just one thing, so I decided to do up a few other files for cutting various samples on:

This is an experiment with different types of plastic: A blast template, flamer template, and two types of "camo markers" for Infinity or other sci-fi games. I very much like the frosted green. It's translucent enough to show through to models underneath somewhat, but also holds the look and feels snazzy. The dark plastic is technically translucent, but came off so dark I don't think I'll want to use it again for these sorts of templates. It'd make a neat variant to the all-clear paint rack though: an opaque and shiny black one!

Back at the apartment, here's what all the various things we printed look like. Large and small spray templates, blast templates, camo markers, and along the back, the real test I wanted to pull together; Clear bases! We have, from left to right, 55mm, 50mm, 40mm, 30mm, 25mm, FoW Artillery, FoW Infantry, FoW Command, and a 1" square with rounded edges meant for me to base Dropzone Commander walkers on so I can go a bit more varied with leg positions without fear of them becoming unstable.

What makes the bases we made unique, and what we're refining now, is they all have little indicators at both sides of them. So many games now differentiate front arc from back arc, and there can be disagreement over lines being applied cleanly, properly, etc. These bases come with the marks already burned into them...

...meaning it's just a matter of aligning the model to face the right way in gluing! We're still dialing in the amount of power to use when etching them, and the size needed, which on these ones isn't quite yet immediately distinctive enough from casual glance. We're eventually hoping to make enough we can start selling them too!

I must say I couldn't be happier. Watching the printer cut is mesmerizing, and it's made me excited to make up a bunch more templates and get cutting again!

Contest Entries: Diorama

My final piece for the Wyrd contest was a diorama depicting Santana calmly fighting off a Flesh Construct. I bought the one with the hapless victim about to be flung:

Originally, I thought about making the base incredibly fancy, but realized that would just detract from the models themselves. I used a subdued paint scheme to ensure that the few elements that should pop would do so (the blood, the bile behind the flesh construct, etc.)

For Santana, I experimented with using a more illustrative/painterly style, especially visible on her stomach. I was tempted to source light the entire thing, but with the Wyrd requirement (or so I thought) of a white background, the source lighting wouldn't have really worked.

The Flesh Construct (and zombie) was fun to paint: A lot of grey was mixed into his flesh tones, and I used a colder brown than I typically basecoat flesh with. This resulted in a very pallid, 'off' seeming skintone that was strongly contrasted by Santana's warm olive tones. The brass fixtures were done to feel especially steampunk, and to tie together with the eerie fleshtone. His victim was painted very simply, meant to look like just an average dockworker.

Since Santana has such a solid, no-nonsense pose, I decided to imitate that in her painting. The dusty brown trousers and jacket, the functional white t-shirt, and even her guild-approved reds are faded and dulled. This is no flashy gunslinger, this is a woman who gets things done brutally and efficiently. (Even her garb is functional.)

The base was done in my typical Malifaux fashion: Grey stone, washed with various colours to infuse some variety, then re-drybrushed with grey to fade out the colours more. I added some moss and water effects to get across the grimy, dockside nature of this encounter.

Overall, I like the idea of this woman dwarfed by some necromantic nightmare, calmly dispatching one opponent and lining up on another. I have an idea for my next diorama too, so we'll see when Wyrd next decides to swing a contest our way!

Contest Entries: Single

Next up is a model I was toying around with a bunch, and this was finally the kick to get it finished: Izamu!

I did a bunch of research for this guy, attempting to make him as accurate as possible for a samurai. back banners are relatively accurate, the armour colour seems to be incredibly common, and I replaced his casual use fan with a Japanese war fan. His weapon is curious; it's a Chinese weapon (Dadao) in blade style, but a Japanese weapon (Nagamaki) in handle comparison. I ended up just going with a simple verdigrised gold/brass handle with leather wraps, a bright metal blade, and gold rings.

The fan is a curious one. Samurai were known to have the typical folding style fans, often metal-bladed and meant for when a weapon was not permitted. (A short club, hidden as an accessory!) That said, they were very unlikely to be brandished on the battlefield, especially not by a blood-crazed giant of a man (spirit?) like Izamu. I did what I figured would be his more logical choice, and gave him a General's war fan. The latter was used in battle to both mark characters of importance, and to direct troops in the chaos of combat. Izamu seems first of all like the General-sort, and also the kind who would want to command his troops in battle, even if they are just figments of his own broken psyche.

I also kept his warrior mask on, but rather than the full-face version given in the box, I cut it back so it more resembled the traditional variant. Samurai often wanted to look as fearsome as possible, and a certain division commander even enjoyed bright red armour and big horns off the top, which worked great until he was sniped.

All the metal on his armour is likewise verdigrised and tainted, which goes with the tattered look of his pants, and the plethora of arrows sticking out of him. Unlike most of my Malifaux models which live in a world of bricks, cobblestones, and mouldering docks, Izamu lives in a world where he's still on a feudal Japanese battlefield, and I wanted to represent this with the bright green grass, flower bushes, and of course, a half dozen other arrows on the ground around him. This last bit was to hopefully explain he doesn't just suck at deflecting arrows, he's weathered a full barrage!

Most annoyingly, I discovered as I painted him: I suspect when making the CAD file for this, the designer mirrored the legs to make the pose. His clan symbol 'twists' two different directions depending on the leg! I had confirmed this to be the case too late in the project to cut and putty, so I just reflected the paint on the back banners in the same way, so they twirl different directions depending which side of the banner you look from.

I am honing my NMM-style metallic painting, and am particularly happy with the way his blade turned out. I'll have to start infusing colours, and see how that fares next!

Contest Entries: Crew

Well, the Wyrd contest winners are now revealed, and alas I was not included. That said, it was fun to try to paint a bunch of stuff in one month, just to push myself. I don't know if I will push thus again, but still...

That said, to start off with, my Viktorias Crew!

One image, as posted, and I'll go through them in detail below:

The Viks themselves, as before, are meant to look relatively utilitarian. They're well-off mercenaries sure, but they're not exactly rolling in it. As a result, their armour isn't entirely clean and polished, the clothing is relatively drab in colour (except Vik of Blood's red pants and black leather jacket), and the swords have a nice nod back to my first iteration of purple. I am still a little frustrated that the woman with arms in opposite directions has a level-chest, and the one with arms mostly leaving at the same level seems to have an anti-gravity boob, but that's something to discuss with the sculptor, and not really an issue in painting.

I love the new Taelor: I'll do a direct comparison soon, but man, more awesome pose, more practical clothing, a relic hammer that looks bizarrely old, the new clockwork arm is fantastic... My only issue was the ponytail going over her head. There is no way her pose makes her hair do that, so I put it in the more logical location of flowing down.

I gave Taelor and the Student of Conflict almost an identical paintscheme. I liked the idea of the Student latching on to this powerful potent figure, and that while Taelor may be all kinds of condescending to the various mercenaries and ne'er-do-wells in Malifaux, this child with a brave heart would speak to her. The garb for the Student is very utilitarian, and so I matched that paint-wise with a rough-and-ready wool fabric, boring scabbard, etc.

Also, hard to see in the pic is Taelor's boots are visibly steel-toed. There's a few scuff-marks where the metal shows through. I don't especially like the boot design for her or Vik Ashes; there's a weird run of fabric and belt buckles that sent me back to the illustrations just to find out what was going on.

Finally the Ronin. I figured rather than in any way attempting to make them look subdued, I'd do quite the opposite and make them stand waay out. I remember a fluff-tale for the Viks involving them eschewing armour for speed, and I figure they've passed this on to their disciples. I also wanted to theme each of them with tertiaries, since in the crew they kind of are. Viks are the primaries, Taelor's the secondary, and then there's the Ronin.

I ended up making the Cyan ronin almost look like Wendy (the mascot) and she is paler than I usually do skin, with vibrant teal/cyan clothes. the back-armour has the kanji for "ronin" on it (I hope), and bright red hair, which I'll probably do a tutorial at some point for.

Purple was made with a mind to using colours I rarely do: gray, and muted purple. I know it doesn't look as muted in the photograph, but it is. In keeping with the tertiary concept, it's a blue-purple colour.

Finally comes my Latina Ronin (I know, anachronistic or what?) I intentionally shaded her skin darker, and attempted to imitate a bright, strong, Spanish-style colour mix. The colour fade on the sleeves and stockings match, but I kept it simpler for the kimono and sash, to help them stand out more. At first I was tempted to go complimentary as a detail colour, but realized I should just go black. The yellow-orange and orange-red was so strong that to just go with the opposing colour would have looked off.

I kept the bases mundane, with cobblestones and water effects, figuring this is a crew that does not spend its time in the finer areas of Malifaux.

And now, with this wall of text for all, I shall see you next time! I may edit and upload singles-pics to intersperse in this post, after I've uploaded all three entries. Then, another post about Infinity stuff! I am now counting off days until we get to enjoy the Icestorm starter set!

Pandora and Teddy

At long last, Pandora's at a state I am willing to declare 'done'! There's still some minor tweaking, as there always is, but with her done, and Teddy almost done, my Pandora crew is almost complete and table-ready! Tonight I'll be basing them, I hope.

Her cape's purple is the same as Candy's dress and Teddy's belly, which helps tie the crew together a bit. Her boots got a plain leather. I'll have better pics of her when I get the chance to take them on a day with better lighting. After a bunch of back-and-forth, I went with a relatively basic metallic colour for her box of evils, figuring doing anything too ornate would pull attention from the rest of her.

I'm happy with how the wisps of power look coming out of her box. It was well worth covering with blu-tac!

Next up is the beast that is Teddy. His claws have earned their gloss black, and I've painted the patterns on the patches. I wanted to make them look like parts of kid's blankets, as though they were sewn in after being 'found' elsewhere. I still can't decide how to do the eyes though. Glowing green, red, and fiery orange are all possibilities, as well as just leaving them as dark black as I can make them.

Something else I'm debating is whether or not to gore up the teddy himself. On the one hand, it fits the style. On the other, I've never been much a fan of the heavy use of gore on models, and I want him to appear adorable if you take a quick glance, with increasing creepiness as you really take in the various elements of his enhanced form...

I'll probably sit with this for a while, and then perhaps add some gore if he makes a particularly noteworthy kill in-game.

Update for May 2-4

Somehow, this weekend is not the holiday, despite being the 24th. That said it's time for a painting update! I've had a busy week and not had a lot of chance to paint, but I have gotten some things accomplished.

Pandora's skirt is fixed, and I had the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Somehow, mixing 50/50 dark angels green and snot green, and leaving it on the wet pallette for a few hours turns it into a colour-change, neon-green! Goes on subtle, ends up crazy bright!

As a result, I'll have to down-blend some of the squiggles, rather than highlighting them...

I also started painting the Teddy yesterday. My intent with him is to make him appear faded, for the most part, since they're turned into these horrible monstrosities from old kids' bears. The detail level is crisp enough that a drybrush works to bring out all the details. I'm going to go with ivory teeth and gloss black claws, with probably pale stitches and glowing eyes. The bow will be green to match with Candy's dress, of course!

Finally, I've narrowed a Nomad scheme down to the point of tweaking final elements. I know the colours aren't the best in this shot, but it's drab green gun, boots, and webbing, dark red pants, pale armour with white shoulderpads, and a bright cyan blue for data link and guide-lights on his backpack. I'll be adding more distinct elements of rank and delineation to his shoulderpads, and likely a bit more ID-type stuff to his helmet as well, before moving on to the Wildcats!

I am going to stick with my idea to have the more... aggressive units in this army depicted more brightly coloured. Hellcats and Tomcats will retain some of their aggressive colouring, as would be appropriate for people who launch into battle from above!

More to come once I manage to get some painting done!

Designs and Drawings

Well, I'm back from a laptop panic. My macbook is from 2007 and is being quite temperamental. I had to play around in Unix to make it behave again, so I've not finished as much since then as I'd like to have.

First up, the deck! I have decided to custom-create the designs for the royals, which may take me a while. I am going to have to consider what each of the suits would mean in a Malifaux context, but also in such a way as won't too directly reference the 'evil' side of Crows and Masks. If I can't find a design that works, I may stick to the defaults. I'm also likely to replace "Jacks" with "Mages", at least visually. Malifaux is a world populated enough by magic that I figure any deck of playing cards would reference them (the icon will remain the same of course.)

That said, here's the full deck laid out (still the old royals) with likely the background pattern I'll end up using:

But wait, there's more! I've been working on fancying up Pandora's dress, and I am frustrated by the skirt join. I have done everything I can think of to obscure the join line, and it still shows. I may have to do something scandalous and put epoxy putty on even though it's already been basecoated!

Here she is. I've tried to capture a better shot of her face that shows off the makeup. You can see my translucent skin effect on the legs, and the swirled designs on her skirt. They'll be further highlighted as I go along.

With computer problems sorted out for the most part, I should have more time now for painting, and can hopefully figure out what to do about that annoying fabric join...

Pandora Progress Update

I have at long last managed to finish off Candy, and along with have made progress on Kade and Pandora herself. Just today, before the rain set in, I managed to get the Teddy sprayed, so I will hopefully be able to get the entire crew done in the next week or so! (After that, I think I'll go back to Flames of War for a bit: try to get my LRDG and SAS crews finished up.)

Without further ado, progress on Pandora!

You can see the green line no her skirt where, despite my previous attempts to fill the gap, it remained anyway. Luckily, a little more liquid green stuff after I saw the gap, and it should be fine now.

Her hair was also causing me problems: I have a red that for some reason refuses to go as bright as in the bottle when actually applied (Vallejo flat red), but the Bloodletter red glaze from GW really brings the colour up to a good pure red! (Plus, adds that fresh glossy well-washed look!) I would normally make the 'red' a more natural redhead colour, but as with her skin tone, I wanted Pandora's appearance to be slightly unnatural, and so I went with a good strong red.

I also have managed to finish off Kade. The only thing not painted in this photograph is his hair, which was applied afterwards. Oddly, Kade went really quickly painting-wise, since he's essentially just three colours: Skin, diaper, and blade. (And eyes, I guess, so four...)

The skin here is also meant to be slightly eerie, but much paler still than Candy. It makes the colour scale lighter as the Woes appear older.

I like the new look for Kade, even if he is slightly oversized. He's more baby-like, sitting on his butt rather than stalking forward with his teddy bear. His overall countenance also seems more baby-like: Less manic glee over killing, and more brooding in a way, eerily enough, I've seen too many infants do.. >.>

And finally, Candy herself, finished until I inevitably find something I missed:

I must say I love this model. The slightly in-turned feet, the two-handed cutesy hold on the basket, the placid, slightly pouted face, the elaborate hair.. She's also a ton of fun to paint. Previously I posted the dress that inspired her lace, and now she has her hair settled. I picked Purple ribbons for her hair for contrast with the strawberry blonde, itself achieved by layering up from Leather Brown with a light wash of red at about the halfway point. I will likely keep her eyes blank white, as with Kade.

 I was looking up possible Victorian dress colour schemes and came across an odd one that mixed green and purple. With the subtle red of her hair, and green being a predominant colour in any Pandora crew, I had to try it for her waistline ribbon. White would have mixed with the lace, yellow would have been too straightforward, and the acid-strength of the green adds a kind of eerie quality to her outfit in general.

Next, I'm working on Pandora's dress. It has three distinct layers which I want to bring out more strongly than is currently represented on her illustration. I'll do a dark, slinky black-to-green for her slip, translucent where her legs push against the fabric, followed by the midtone green of her dress, and topped by (possibly faded) black for her cape. All of this will hopefully have little bizarre designs and swirls in the highlighting, unless when I try it, it looks bad. More soon!

Let Me Show You What's In My Box...

I've started working on Pandora's crew a bunch. I love these models. The poses are so much stronger, the detail is fantastic, and in a lot of cases they've cleaned up the look of the models as well.

First up is Pandora herself. I wanted the skin-tone for her to be dusky, but also slightly creepy. I mixed my first brown layer with a bit of purple, and highlighted up from there, so she seems just slightly off in a way that's hard to put your finger on.

Then, I highlighted up to my proper skin tone, before giving her makeup. Green eyeshadow and lipstick adds to the unsettling quality of her skin and look. I'm debating how to do her clothes, though, so she ended up sitting for a while, with me debating tones, detail level, patterns...

Next I decided to work on Candy. Her skin treatment was similar, but I went far paler overall. With her dress I wanted to be not the goth black of her new look, nor the bright pink of before per se. My fiancee came up with the idea of a plum dress, which worked marvelously. I was also lucky enough to find an illustration of a dress that is almost exactly hers!

I wanted to do the white lacy frill around it, so first I painted that lower hem of her dress in grey (as with the wide collar) and then carefully painted an almost-white grey over top that, before accentuating the highlight sections:

Starting with just the basic pattern as you go around will let stuff dry, and allow you to touch up as needed.

(Sorry for photo blurriness) eventually I had a nice lacey pattern. I'll likely go back and really accentuate the lines once I know I'm done the rest, and am not worrying about stuff rubbing off.

The gloves were painted before I realized in her illustrations they're not supposed to be, but I prefer the look of her having nice cute white lace gloves. The wrist bangles will still be a good dark black though.

Also around this time the new Teddy came out, and I had to get one to accompany Kade. The new model is head and shoulders above the old one. Both in physical size and design. My one issue is something that is also 'wrong' with the Pandora spirits as well, and is an issue it seems with a lot of model makers. I'm tempted to call it the Miley Syndrome. Why does everything have to have tongues sticking out?! It's not terrifying, it's not even truly creepy, it's just goofy! On the Teddy, the old model's row of needle-fangs was just all danger. Whenever I see one with a giant snake of a tongue sticking out, I just picture them chomping accidentally on it!

That said, the new plastic would also provide much more (and much easier) conversion opportunity for those who want multiple Teddies; wholly separate head, head in two parts right along the jawline, and arms that are actually split at the shoulder combine to make this a model with great potential for modifcation.

My final photo for this version is the Teddy in dry-run assemble. I'll have to fill in a bunch of mold lines, and convert the mouth so his tongue is properly inside, but otherwise it's a sweet model.

Viktorias Crew 1.0

It is time for more photos! I have now managed to upload the rest of the photos for the first Viktorias crew. I am not entirely happy with some of them, but I've worked them enough I don't think I can improve without a full scrap and redo.

First the ronin: I had to convert her hat to the one that comes in the accessory blister. The dinky little cowboy hat that she has is not a period piece, it's made I think exclusively recently. The rest, to fit her cowgal motif was border town, mud floor, and plain coloured clothing. I have done some fancying up of her swords, but I wanted to make her look relatively down on her luck. As with the Ten Thunders, I decided to have a single colour used on all models in the force, and in this case it's the bright purple of her sheaths. The blue ribbon makes an appearance in one or two other places, but that purple was the one I primarily wanted everyone to have.

Ronin 2 was also painted fairly plainly. I did a few embroidered roses on her coat (perhaps one for each of her kills to date) and limited the brighter elements to a shirt and of course, her swords. Her gloves and pants match, and her duster is basically just a browner variant of the same colour because again, I wanted them to seem rough and ready women, mostly wearing practical gear but with a splash of unique garb somewhere.

Note also the dock and pool of water she's standing on!

The final Ronin has the same sword painting style as the Viks themselves, and her clothes are equally mundane. Plain sturdy jacket, plain rugged pants, and with a light, possibly silken shirt. All three are mostly makeup-less as well, since one does not do fanciful makeup just to run out and smudge it in battle!

By the time I was working on metal-Taelor, plastic-Taelor was already revealed, and I knew she would be the one I'd use. I don't dislike the metal one, it just doesn't seem to fit her style quite as much. She's meant to be a crass, strong, dominant woman who's good in a fight. I can't imagine any such woman wearing a shirt like this unless that's all she had left/clean. What then to do with this model? Hmm, a figure that has had to sell the shirt off her back, but still cares about the weapons that are the tools of her trade? Sounds like a desperate mercenary candidate to me!

Durable denim jeans, covered with some kind of waterproofing chaps for mucking around a sewer, heavy durable boots, armour only on the side she doesn't have to aim with, and a detailed, if sturdy pepperbox pistol make the model. I used the hand from a discontinued Fantasy pikemen set, green-stuffed it to fit as a dueller's glove or a single nice thing she owns (also conveniently the purple thing for this model) and then tried to paint her skin and hair with a darker tone.

I do this on purpose to make this crew as varied as possible. The three metal ronin are fairly clearly one 'white', one 'black', one south-east Asian, so with this model I have a good variety of races represented. I also like the idea of the Viks being a pair that collect to themselves the mercenaries that would otherwise not get good paying jobs (if there's still issues with income equality today, imagine then!).

Speaking of, here's the ladies themselves. I've done the careful sword highlights, and otherwise the colour scheme is identical to the avatars. I love the poses of this pair, nicely mirroring one another like they were meant to be back-to-back.

Masamune's sheath is relatively plainly painted than I was tempted to do, but with its bling in intervals down the blade, trying to do any true detail would have been frustrating.

And finally, along with the Viks comes their sister, Vanessa! I know the box art has her dark-haired, but no way was I doing a black-haired sibling to two blondes! Other than that change, she too is 'rough and rugged' in painting, other than her bright glowing staff. If Wyrd keeps on the transparent model vein, I'd love to see her done with the staff at least done in clear plastic!

This Isn't Even My Final Form!!!

Finally photographed, continuing from the last post, here's my finished version of Viktorias, Avatars of Slaughter!

Their faces are manic, which I attempted to accentuate as much as possible, and their skin has been made red-tinged. Otherwise the clothing colours were entirely picked to be identical with their non-avatar forms, which I painted alongside.

You can also see the final touches on the lantern: Cracked glass and a few shards on the ground itself.

The barrel, after all its washes and drybrushes ended up looking wonderfully weathered, and once the stones had a final black-line wash in the gaps, they felt right as well. You can see the blade is also done with a more red-gold than I would typically use, simulating the sword's desire to suck up blood. Otherwise, the models have little to no blood displayed, which I'm debating whether or not to change. On the one hand, adding it to the ground makes sense, because slaughter. On the other, I kind of like the way it looks right now and don't want to mess with it!

From the other side; the Viktorias blades have been painted using a NMM-style, but with metallic paints, which I prefer because you still get the light-glint, and have enforced the classy NMM look. I may yet have to touch up a few things, I suspect, as is always the case when someone starts looking at photographs of their models.

You can see the one thing I had to convert for these models; Viktoria of Blood's arms did not have the armour that her non-epic version has! It's so clear these models were made to imitate the former, and the detail level on the forearms is thin enough I suspect it was supposed to be there, and was just forgotten. I can't imagine she takes the time to remove armour while going all Avatar...

And for those who are curious, here's a focused shot on the giant sword. You can see how the light picks up the shine, and the gold's ruddier look. To get that, I first paint the gold parts silver, then wash over it with my gold paint thickly. Next it's a wash of red (currently I'm using GW's red wash) and then Agrax Earthshade (dark sepia brown, also GW) before re-touching with gold and silver to bring out the highlights again. For consistency, all the gold on these two was done that way.

And that's the Avatar! Soon I shall have the rest of the crew up as well, and comparison shots of avatar/non-avatar Viktorias. Enjoy!

Crafting A Base Worthy of Avatars

I knew I wanted to do something special when it came to the base for Viktorias, Avatar of Slaughter. It's a 50mm base, and they're not exactly very large, so there's lots of space to fill. I intentionally kept the bases of the Viktorias crew very straightforward and mundane, because they're meant to be a bit the dregs of the Malifaux world. Cobblestones, dirt, basic pavement, docksides, all preferred for those whose jobs are not taking them into the fancier halls and districts.

That said, these are avatars! So what I figured I'd do is combine the mundane roadside with something that would distinctly reference their character. Something appropriate to both. After debating it for a good long while, I had the idea of again using a lantern, but this time depicting it sliced in half, broken to the ground, and a keg split likewise. Both would be victims of the wild sword cuts these two women engage in during their avatar unleash.

First up, the road itself, and lamp post. It's the pike shaft whose hand decorates my metal Taelor model, topped with plasticard to form the core of the lantern. I knew I wanted to do clear plexi, since the lamp's been shattered. The road itself was kept as mundane looking as possible, since I still did want people's eye drawn to the model itself, not what they're standing on.

Next, as with all good rivet-counter-y projects, Math! Plasticard and pencil make a great erasable pair, and you don't have to go searching again for the scrap of paper you wrote it all down on. I, being a genius, accidentally figured out the area of my keg diameter, rather than the circumference, so I cut off twice as much plasticard as needed. (I'll find a use for the other barrel's worth of plasticard on some other model, to be sure.)

Next came careful scoring, the plugs for either end, and a length of plastic rod to act as a spacer in the middle. Eventually, knowing this keg would be sliced in half, it would need to be gone, but while I was gluing the curved pieces in, it was absolutely necessary.

Next, after cutting out each piece, they were filed so they tapered towards the ends. I was okay with them not meeting entirely flush - after all, this is going to be for a wrecked barrel anyway - but I did want them to line up somewhat properly. Here my awesome ruler holds them for the camera, and also to keep the drying pieces from accidentally adhering to my cutting surface. Each piece was pre-curved, dry fitted, sanded, and glued in.

Once I got near the halfway point, I carefully used a craft knife to extract the central peg, leaving the barrel empty looking but in one piece. I glued the rest of the slats in, and then scored the beams lengthwise to look like wood.

After that (and unphotographed) was taking a jeweler's saw and cutting at an acute angle across the barrel. I wanted it to look very anime: A slice so keen and swift the barrel was entirely bisected before it had the chance to move or react. (Before cartoonishly gushing forth 'blood' in the form of water, just like a samurai manga!)

Here's the barrel and lamp in place: The barrel was given some liquid greenstuff on the cap to texture like wood, and help adhere the planks. After this I wrapped a thin band of tinfoil around to simulate the metal bands that hold a keg together for real. Next it's painting time!

First, the stones get a drybrush of grey, followed by a drybrush of pale sand. The barrel too at that point got a heavy drybrush of pale sand to make it look like old dead wood. A mild brown wash and some more sand drybrush and it looked appropriately like a nice weathered old keg that would be left out on the street.

For the cobblestones, I mixed up a very thin wash of each of the following colours, and selectively picked out stones in: Leather brown, scab red, a pale green, violet, and darker grey. This helps break up the overall drab of the stone, and done subtly enough, imitates the natural colour variance of cobblestones without seeming too brilliant.

Here's a larger shot of the final stone effects and the keg in weathered form. Note the bands have yet to be painted in a darkened metal colour, nor the lamp post cleaned up to shiny black paint with chips taken off.

The final step is adding self-leveling gloss gel to the bucket (in thin coats) and road itself to simulate the water draining out of the barrel and into the drain. Before painting the ground water, I washed the area it would go with gloss black, to make the stone look wet.

And that's the base! As soon as I can photograph and edit the pictures, I'll have my finished Viktorias crew up and online, with the finished Avatars and their base!