Progress on the diorama continues but not as fast or smoothly I would like. I managed to get the base sculpted, sanded, and ready for the next steps which is to be frank, one of the less exciting parts of the process so that’s good. I’ve also been chipping away at the remaining minis that need to be painted which has been a mixed bag to say the least.
Past experience painting hobbits taught me that they are smaller than you expect and challenging to paint as a result. I thought I would be smart and get a magnification lens that I can put on my desk and pick out the details as needed with. Unfortunately, I found using the magnification lens tricky because aiming your brush is much harder than I expected. Instead, I mostly used it to check my work and make sure that the mini looked as good or as bad as my eyes suggested. Since I had a couple of spare minis, I thought I’d try this guy first as a test piece.
It is a good thing he was for practice because I couldn’t quite get his face right, especially the jowls. I kind of forgot how I did the shading on Eomer’s face as well. If this was a gaming piece, I’d be totally fine with the painting but since this is for a diorama, I really hoped to get better results on the next mini. As it stands now, I’m going to send this one to friend of the site, Bret, to hopefully entice him to make some Hobbit terrain in the future.
Next up is Farmer Cotton who came out much better even if it took a while to finish. I tried to find places where I could add visual interest since it is a pretty simple and small mini. The leather and metallic surface on the pitchfork were as good as I could come up with. I’m pretty happy with this one and I think it will look great in the diorama.
Unfortunately, I’ve run into more headaches as both of the other minis I bought from Forge World had resin bubbles on them. Generally, they are a minor annoyance but the locations of the bubbles is problematic. One hobbit had a bubble on the tip of his nose! That is the type of thing I’d expect from Finecast, not Forge World.
The other, pictured above has this on the bottom of his cloak. This one can’t simply be filled with a bit of glue or varnish. I’m going to have to try and sculpt the corner of his cloak which is something I’ve never done. I know it isn’t too tricky or hard to do but it is annoying because I paid Forge World prices for these minis, I was hoping for higher quality than this because I’m working on a diorama, and also I shouldn’t have to sculpt something to clean up casting issues. According to a friend who orders from Forge World more often than I do, these bubbles aren’t too uncommon, and this isn’t the type of thing that GW will send you a new mini for either so I will see what I can do. I need to fix the one pictured above because I botched painting the other sculpt’s face and I don’t think its good enough for the diorama. So no pressure to learn some basic sculpting and get this mistake fixed! I’m probably going to step away from the hobbits for a week to clear my head and make sure I’m ready to do my best work again.
Not too long ago, I played my first game of Hellboy: The Board Game and had fun playing the tutorial scenario/case file. Since that time, I was starting to question how much I enjoyed playing it. Part of that is a lot of times, tutorials aren’t as fun as the “real thing” and with Hellboy I was actually kind of hoping that was the case. I liked it but I wanted the game to show me a little more narrative and that it was a bit more strategic and intense on higher difficulties.
This week I finally had a chance to play again and I was curious to see if a “real” case file would be even more fun and satisfying to play or not. I played “Hunting Party” which has a pretty good narrative to it. Your team is trying to eliminate Frogs’ nests and kill the leader essentially. In true dungeon crawler fashion, you don’t know which rooms the nests will be in so you have to seek them out. To my surprise, I got a different set of frog enemies than the last time I played with lots of Transforming Frog Monsters (people who aren’t fully frogs yet and will run away from you instead of attacking but they can turn into an actual frog that will attack you in time) and frog swarms which downgrade your dice and cause doom. When you couple that with a boss monster who hits hard and surprised me by showing up multiple times in the game (instead of waiting until the end, like last time), I felt like it was quite a good game. Unfortunately, I used sub-par strategy and didn’t take care of the Frog Swarms quick enough which advanced the doom track and meant the game didn’t last as long as it could have. I also didn’t roll for the Transforming Frog Monsters morphing into a more aggressive and dangerous type of frog and missed that a group of them spawn with the final boss. All of these things made the scenario easier than it should have been and I just barely managed to kill the boss.
If I had used the rules correctly, there’s no way I would have won so I don’t consider this a win, mostly just a learning experience. Playing again got me more excited for playing Hellboy and now I’m convinced that I do in fact, like the game pretty well and made a good purchase. That is ideal considering I’ve spent roughly $300-400 on it! I’m also looking forward to getting more stuff painted so I can play more cases which was my secondary goal in playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if I paint another mini or two on my brief break from the diorama.
Kuribo's Painting 
Very nice work. I’ve never used a magnifier but I’ve heard they can take some getting used to
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I generally just use strong readers, and I’ve tried magnifier “glasses” and they defiantly take getting used to. It’s like trying to poke something in a glass of water, the bit just doesn’t;t seem to be where your brain things it should be!!
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That is the perfect description of how it feels! If I could go back, I think I would go for some glasses of some kind instead of a desk lens. The lens isn’t as easy to work with as glasses would be once you get used to wearing them.
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Cheers and it really does. I may never get used to it so my eyesight better be good the rest of my life 😉
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Excellent job on both those hobbits! I’ve painted a few in my time and I know how tiny they are, so to get the quality you have there is excellent work.
I’ve added a magnifier with a light to my painting table recently, and have found it to be quite useful but it does take time to learn how to aim as you said.
For the bubbles it always worth asking Forgeworld for a replacement, the worst they can say is no. The bubble on the cloak should be relatively easy to fix but a bubble on the face is pretty tough.
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Thank you, mate! 🙂 I’m impatient with getting good results so I could see myself not using the magnifier much unless I have to but we’ll see. I can definitely see needing practice with it now though.
I should have asked FW about a replacement before I primed them. I realize that now. I was able to fix the bubble on the nose okay and just botched painting the face so I’m hoping to avoid having to re-buy these minis to try painting them for a second time. We’ll see what happens when I fix and paint the other one in the nearish future.
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Great work as usual mate! I am sure Bret will be pleased and Cotton looks spot on.
Those resin bubbles are concerning given Forge World prices. Greenstuff is easy enough for even me to use so I a sure you will have no problem but that nose may be tricky.
I am glad to hear you enjoyed Hellboy. This hobby is awkward in asking for a lot of time, money and effort up front before it really pays off with that sweet, sweet enjoyment in a fun gaming experience.
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Thanks, mate! I think the bubbles are pretty common with resin so there’s always a chance you’ll get some when you buy FW. With that said, I’ll see what I can do with green stuff to try and fix the one mini. If nothing else, it will be a learning experience for me, I suppose.
You certainly take a bit of a gamble when you start on a new game. Its best to go slow and play the game early on to make sure you really like it. I haven’t been seriously burned by spending a lot of money on something only to not like it yet but it is very easy to see that happening at the same time.
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I meant to say….. I tried a magnifier stand and found it too annoying to relearn how to handle the brush as you mention. Mrs. GG still uses her magnifier but I switched to a magnifying headset visor. That was much easier to get used to. I very much miss the 20/20 vision I used to have.
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I’m glad to hear it isn’t just me who has had trouble adjusting to a lens. I think a headset would be better overall. Unfortunately, it is a lesson I’ve learned after buying the stand but that’s the way it goes sometimes…
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Great work on these – especially Cotton! I think he’ll look great on the diorama. The thing about Forge World is that they’ve always been pretty notorious for quality control issues – and as someone with a decent chunk of their stuff (that I need to paint one day) I can concur that their QC very much has the words “good enough” as part of their mantra.
Good to hear that you had fun with HB – and making mistakes in your first several games of a new system or game is pretty much always a thing, so just keep treating them like a learnng experience and once you’ve mastered the system a bit more, even things like the missed mechanics should be less likely to curbstomp you as they do when you’re new to the game.
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Thanks, mate! I didn’t know that about Forge World and have mostly heard compliments, if not outright drooling over FW products. Maybe this is a situation where if you spend big money on it, you’re more inclined to like it or look past the faults?
I couldn’t agree with you more on making mistakes. I’ll probably focus on playing Hellboy for the near future so I should have opportunities to nail down the rules and see just how much I like the game. At some point I’ll write a review up too but I need to get some more games in before I can do that.
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That is some amazing painting. Do you find that the magnifier is making a difference to the end result or is it just that you spend more time on minutiae?
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Cheers, mate! I would say that the magnifier didn’t slow me down much. It took more time than expected because of some of the techniques I used on the leather, in particular. The magnifier did help me get the eyes right on Farmer Cotton which I might have not caught until I took pictures (and then I would have been annoyed because at that point, I would have thought I was done with the mini at that point). So if you’re thinking about trying out a magnifier, I’d say give it a go!
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I like the hobbits! 🙂 I’d probably be quite at home painting them given that most of my figures are 20mm scale! As far as the bubble in the cloaks concerned I’d superglue a short length of plastic rod into the hole to use as a former to support greenstuff added around it. I’d probably give up with the damaged face or ask for a replacement since it can’t be repaired. Glad you enjoyed the Hellboy game!
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I’m glad to hear it! 🙂 I think you probably would be right at home scale-wise with hobbits. Many of us who paint to game are used to at least 28mm or higher, I would guess. I appreciate the advice on fixing the resin bubbles as well. I’ll certainly take any help I get with this problem! 😀
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Shame about those resin bubbles from Forgeworld. I take it that hunting down the original metals would be even more cost-prohibitive? I must admit, I have never checked.
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Cheers, Dave. The metal sculpts aren’t too expensive in the US anyway. The hobbit metal sculpts lack detail unfortunately and the FW models really improve upon that so that is the main reason I went with the more expensive resin option. Having said that, I certainly didn’t anticipate the issues that I have run into and it makes you think twice!
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Great work on the Hobbits Jeff, when dealing with smaller models, sometimes less is more, as the amount of paint you would put on a normal size face, can make a smaller one look muddled.
As for the holes, the one in the cloak is an easy fix, two ways you can go, first fill the hole with green, and shape while wet, making sure to blend into the existing area, second would be to fill larger than needed, and then shape with a scalpel and emery board when fully dry, with the nose I would definitely go for option one.
Sounds like the game has a lot of merit, and good that you enjoyed it, don’t worry too much on the rules, as your still learning the system, and before you know it, you’ll barely have to look at a rulebook.
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Thank you, Dave and I completely agree. Its not hard to mess up a face on a newish GW sculpt. I’ve run into that a couple of times now and it is very frustrating.
I appreciate the advice and will certainly follow what you’ve laid out here. I reckon looking around on Youtube to see how people do this won’t hurt me any either. Luckily for me, I already have some Green Stuff coming so at least I’m one step closer to fixing this problem in that regard.
Hellboy is definitely a solid game if you like the franchise. I don’t know that it is the best game of its type but its certainly well worth it, if you’re a fan which is the most important thing.
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Welcome to the world of dioramas! Unfortunately some aspects of a build can get dull and boring but the time invested usually pays off in the end as I’m sure you are all to aware of. Nice work on the figures but I understand your frustration with the resin bubbles. Faced with similar problems I tend to mask the flaw with weathering, mud being an obvious choice, but appreciate this might not be an option for whatever you have in mind. As for the use of magnification I have always used a head visor with 10x magnification. Yes it took a little while to get used to but my rationale is simple, if it looks good that close up then to the naked eye it will look perfect! 🙂
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At the moment, I wish this was a bit more dull, mate! 🙂 I think the only way to fix the problems is to do a bit of sculpting which is something I need to learn anyway to be better at dioramas. 10x magnification!? Wow! I think what I got is 2.25x or something close to that so it really doesn’t change the view too much. I can believe that took a while to get used to, especially considering how I’ve struggled with a much smaller amount of magnification!
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Lovely job on the ‘Hobbitses.’ Farmer Cotton looks great, and I like what you’ve done with his pitchfork.
Hellboy sounded good and I feel I missed out when I had the chance of picking it up cheap some time ago. At the moment, though, I’m trying to steer clear of anything containing miniatures – I don’t want to add anymore to my ever-increasing backlog😉
Looking forward to hearing about further plays🙂
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Thank you, Justin! The pitchfork was the trickiest bit to get right and a friend helped me get it looking decent so I’m feel lucky there.
Hellboy seems like a great game if you don’t already own any of the Warhammer Quest games GW has put out. I get the impression that Hellboy has the same DNA as those and while I’m sure it has a few unique things, I’d imagine you can get a fairly similar experience from one of those, if you want. I hear you on the backlog. I’m absolutely at my limit and can’t take on any new games right now. I may be in a retirement home before I finish everything I’ve started already 😉
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My first thought when looking at the hobbit you are so kindly giving me is the Simpsons meme of old man shaking fist at cloulds!😂 Then I realized his hand was open vs a fist. Trying to get me to go down a hobbit hole? That is a dangerous one that I have avoided (until now)
I tried a magnifying glass for awhile but it seemed to get in the way more than helped. I tend to take pictures along the way to see how my painting is going, especially when doing faces and eyes.
It’s easy to miss rules when trying a new game by yourself, glad that Hellboy worked out.
I played Arkham Horror (revised edition) with my niece and nephew a couple of weekends ago. My niece had played it several times so she kept us straight on how the turns went, etc. We managed to kill the Great Old One in the end due to fortuitous die roles. It was quite fun, my niece got stuck in the hospital for several turns and it took me longer than it should have to close a gate but an enjoyable game.
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Forgot to add, it wouldn’t hurt to ask Forgeworld, especially for the pocket on the nose. It helped Grumpy Gnome to ask about his problem (which you suggested). You can always claim you have thousands (ok, hundreds, ok tens) of followers on Instagram and your blog so you need a clean figure. The worse that can happen is that you show up on r/ChoosingBeggers on Reddit.
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Haha, if I end up on Reddit, I wouldn’t know it because I rarely visit it! I already primed the minis and I fixed the one with a hole in his nose surprisingly. I may send that one to you because I can’t get the face painted to a standard I like. It’d be a good tabletop piece though and you’d have a bit of it painted for you already. I’ve got some green stuff coming so I’m going to try and fix the other hobbit and get him painted up fairly soon.
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Haha, no, he seems to be a friendly hobbit even if my version somehow has more in common with Christian Bale’s character in American Psycho, which is a movie I don’t care for as it turns out. I can certainly try to tempt you to visit the Shire anyway 🙂
Yeah, the magnifying glass clutters up your hobby space and I can’t get used to it so it probably is going to end up being an ill-advised purchase on my part. At least I can check my work with it, I suppose.
Do you mean Arkham Horror the card game or Arkham Horror with a really big board and lots of cards? It sounds to me like you’re talking about the board game which is a classic. Its a great game to play with 3-4 people, especially. I don’t have a copy anymore but I would definitely say its a classic and well worth playing!
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Arkham Horror the board game that we were lucky enough to have a table big enough to play on. My niece did a great job of reading everything in a tone that set the mood for the game.
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That’s fantastic and if you play with the right group of people, you can really have a good time with it.
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OMG I love the hobbit farmer with the cutesy wutsey whittle grey furry on his feeties.
What I don’t love are sir bubbles on castings. Especially bc Forgeworld charges a premium for their products and need to produce quality. I’d be pissed. I’m pissed for you. If I wanted to mess about with that stuff I would go cheap.
Glad you liked HellBoy in the end. It’d be a shame to drop that much money and effort to be disappointed. It’s the risk we take of course. I dropped $500 to start the AWI but at least the miniatures can be used in a variety of rules. HellBoy miniatures are kinda specific. 😀😀
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The Hobbits look great, but those holes are ridiculous given FW’s prices. “Quality control” seems to be a banned phrase at Citadel HQ, along with “value for money” LOL!
I’ve got a cheap ($17) magnifying visor that I bought off Amazon about three years ago. It’s still going strong, although the LEDs are a bit temperamental and it’s on its second elastic headband 🙂
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Forge World is the worst part of GW’s catalog to have issues because it is noticeably more expensive than their plastic kits but alas, that is what I’ve run into here unfortunately.
I saw those visors which are still about that price and I thought, nah, it won’t fit very well or be comfortable so I went with a more expensive option. The egg is on my face now since I don’t like it and wish I had gotten the visor instead. You live and learn!
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ForgeWorld *sigh*. They are the only ones who produce most of the GW Star Players for Blood Bowl and/or some special packs. I’ve had a few FW minis that were pretty sweet, but a lot of garbage too. I feel like I’d be better off throwing away my money on lottery tickets! The Hobbit’s face looks a little weird up close, mostly because of the stark contrast in flesh tones. At a normal distance, I imagine he looks great though. I would probably maybe try to soften the contrast between layers, but that would only be if it still looks weird from about a foot away as I’m painting for gaming. For magnifying, I use a pair of Reading Glasses. You can get them in magnifications of 1.5x on up. I think I usually use 2x and if I need even more detail work will pull out a pair of 3x. The nice is that they are light, comfortable, and cheap. I’ve tried painting under a standalone magnifying lens, wasn’t crazy about it. Also tried the headlamp things, not crazy about those either. Though most of them sport a light, which would be handy sometimes.
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It is similar with LOTR. If you want certain miniatures, you have to get them from FW. The contrast did come out to strong on the hobbit and I used the wrong shades as well which didn’t help. There are better ways to paint a face than use Reikland Fleshshade as it turns out. I’ll have to give reading glasses a try. That would be comfortable to wear and should be easier to get used to. Thanks for the suggestion!
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Ah, that’s too bad for LotR. I actually use Reikland still. I just use different flesh paints than GW’s. Though you seem to have them down pat better than me. Most days I’m using Reaper paints for flesh now. Though next month I’m hoping to pick up some flesh pains from AK’s Figure line.
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Reikland looks good if you want to give the face a single pass and want the shadows to have a reddish look. I’m finding using pink and a bit of purple really provides lifelike results. Perhaps there is something along with Reikland that can make it work better. I’ll have to experiment more to be able to say for sure.
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Oh yea, purple shadows can be awesome. I haven’t tried adding in a bit of pink though. That would be interesting. I mainly like the way that Reikland lines and the color matches most lighter skin tones.
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Excellent work on the farmer, I think the details you added worked, any more would be overpowered.
I full understand your issue with Forge World, I must admit I’ve always found there stuff a bit hit and miss.
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Cheers, mate! I am learning that about FW. If I had known that they’re inconsistent going in, I might not be as disappointed by the quality as I am. I guess that is one of the pluses of us sharing our opinions and experiences here in the blogging community as well.
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Nice work on the Hobbits Jeff,shame about the bubble holes.My pet hate is flash on the plastic sets I buy, boy does it get annoying trying to get rid of it!!!
I’m looking forward to seeing your diorama as one of my daughters wants me to make a hobbit one but I’m not sure how to approach it.
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Cheers, Pat and I agree that flash is pretty aggravating. Resin tends to be easy to sand down but certain kind of plastic are a real pain. I’m glad to hear you’ll be making a hobbit diorama as well. Does your daughter want it to have a hobbit hole? I would guess so since many people like them, including myself! 🙂
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I had some brilliant resin ones but I tended to be a bit rough and break bits of until I got used to them, and although the hard plastic ones are easier to clean up they don’t lend them so to well to the boil method that I use a lot 🤔.
I haven’t really thought to much about it but I would assume a Hobbit hole is the front of the house in a hill 🤔. As for finding Hobbits I will have to investigate further as I checked out the one you mentioned but not being an expert I will have to get Fi more 𝙸𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚜𝚝 👍🏻🤓
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Resin is definitely fragile and takes a bit of extra care. They are bendy though and often require hot water to reshape which is annoying!
For hobbit miniatures, take a look at Games Workshop using this link: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Middle-earth?N=1777647504+2991458413&Nr=AND%28sku.siteId%3AUS_gw%2Cproduct.locale%3Aen_US_gw%29&Nrs=collection%28%29%2Frecord%5Bproduct.startDate+%3C%3D+1665268620000+and+product.endDate+%3E%3D+1665268620000%5D. They might be slightly bigger scale than you’re used to but not too much since the Hobbits are so small. Forge World makes hobbits too and they make Hobbit hole “facades” so you’d just need to build out the hill with one of those. Here’s a link for that: https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Hobbit-Hole-Terrain-Set-FW-2020. I have a diorama I’ll get around to one day of a Hobbit Hole so that’s how I know so much about this 😉 Let Fi tell you what she wants though and go from there!
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Thanks mate I will check these sites out 👍🏻having just spoken to Fi I think it’s the hobbit hole that’s needed for great effect, as for the figures they sound a great size for the show but she will have to pick them 👍🏻🤓. Cheers Jeff much appreciated .
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