I finally reached the end of this demanding miniature. Truthfully, it wasn’t a blast to paint at times but I’m glad it came out nicely in the end. Its not perfect but this one is hard to paint perfectly by the nature of its design. I should add that I will probably add some shadows to the back of the miniature when I know where that is going to be. I need to place it in the diorama and figure out the direction it faces to do that but for now, we’ll consider it done.
I had hoped to take a nice video of this on the turntable but it was too big for Instagram (for some reason, Instagram cuts off parts of the building because its too tall) so alas, you only get non-moving pictures of it. Interestingly, the picture quality on the video is not as good as with my camera. The colors are less vibrant which makes a big difference on this building anyway. I thought that I had posted some pictures with size comparisons of this building but just to be safe, I took some new ones.
Here is with a fairly tall Warhammer miniature. As you can see the Empire State Building towers over it!
And here is a comparison with a 75mm miniature which is a bit shorter too.
And while this is not a size comparison per say, it shows you how Hondo looks next to the Imperial State Building. They should make a nice pairing in the diorama which is nice to see.
I’m going to take a break from display painting for a bit and work and on some gaming stuff, especially considering the holidays are coming up which usually means some time away from the hobby desk. I have plenty of primed minis sitting on my hobby desk so who knows what I’ll work on next!
The sharp-eyed, Nicolas at Lair of the Lagomorph, has already asked me about this and truthfully, I’d mention discuss the news regardless, but Modiphius is releasing two busts for Fallout. I can’t say I saw that coming, though I have thought it is a good idea in the past. Here are the two busts with my thoughts to follow.
These are both iconic designs from Fallout so I’m not surprised the either was chosen for bust treatment. Full credit to the studio painter at Modiphius for doing an excellent job on both of these as well. They really look sharp. I do think the T-60 bust would be a very time consuming project and it also has quite a bit of repetition to it since its all metal. It would definitely take some focus and determination to see it through. I would love to see a ghoul get the bust treatment as they have a lot of variation in their skin surface and colors. There’s lots of other cool characters they could make busts of and I’ll be interested to see if these busts are commercially successful or not. These busts are 1:12 which is on the smaller side for busts but only by a little bit. Even with them being on the smaller side, it requires different skills to paint a bust like this versus Fallout miniatures in a much smaller scale so I could see some people being intimidated unfortunately.
Truthfully, I’ve always thought that Games Workshop is missing a trick by not doing larger scale or busts of their properties. If you look at those scales, a lot of the stuff out there is Warhammer adjacent (I’m not implying that they’re simply copying here, more so that they have their own versions of a lot of the same things like elves, dwarves, chaos warriors, barbarians, etc.). For now anyway, that is not something GW has shown much interest in so I say kudos to Modiphius for taking a chance on something new and different.
Kuribo's Painting 
Great finish on the Empire State building Jeff, and adding the shadow once everything has it’s place in the diorama, is a good idea, as you will be able to see how much is created naturally, and what needs enhancing.
The busts look great, and I can imagine would be very time consuming. GW have had a range of busts and large scale models though Forgeworld over the years, but they dropped off quite a while back, around the time the cancelled specialist games, the money counters didn’t think they were viable options.
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Thank you, Dave. I should see if I can find what those busts look like because I’m curious now. Do you happen to remember the name of them or the line? One thing I should mention (and didn’t think of when writing the article) is that I’m pretty sure some Warhammer fans are using parts of the Joy Toy figures kind of like busts now. Its not exactly the same because those are action figures and not designed to be busts specifically but that is at least something GW approved that is adjacent to what we’re discussing anyway.
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Have a search under Forgeworld collector series, I think that covers the large scale mini’s, s for the busts, they were just listed by what they were, there was the commisar, and an Orc bust, can’t remember the others I’m sorry.
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That was very helpful! Its hard to find pictures of any that are nicely painted but I did stumble across a page that has them prior to painting and its very interesting to look at. They had the usual surface problems that resin tends to have, especially older resin but beyond those headaches, they don’t look bad at all. GW could easily outdo them nowadays, of course, but its really cool to see that GW dipped their toes in those waters anyway.
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I’m surprised they had surface problems as all the ones I had were perfect, but then there are a lot of inferior knock offs to be found on the internet, there was a trader that got banned from the shows for selling Forgeworld duplicates, they were really bad quality.
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Hmm… I was going to share the website where the photos reside but I’m not so sure that it isn’t a recaster upon second glance and so the products probably are inferior like you suspect. I should have known!
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Looks impressive, Jeff, and good to see it and Hondo together! 🙂
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Thanks, John! It was nice to see them together for me as well 🙂
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Well done for getting that finished, it looks awesome! I actually thought the first bust was Krieg related at first… you’re right of course, GW could definitely get into the display/bust market, as much as they say they’re a model company first, they do seem to err more on the side of gaming pieces first. Maybe they’ll get into it one day..?
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Thank you! I can see the connection between Krieg and the Courier from Fallout New Vegas as well. Part of me wonders whether GW worries that it might confuse their customers to sell busts or large scale miniatures that aren’t used in a game? They’re pretty good about making their miniatures fit across a number of games and selling larger scale miniatures would definitely go against that. Its an interesting thought!
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You might be on to something there! It’s interesting because Forge World used to lean into the sort of display stuff, with the primarchs and whatnot, but they could still be used in games couldn’t they? It’s definitely untapped potential there, though I definitely wouldn’t be good enough to try painting one!!
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The building looks awesome! Really cool to see the comparison shots, really helps show the size of it! It’s going to be one crazy diorama when it’s done.
Thanks for the call out! Those busts just screamed you 😉
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Thanks, mate! I didn’t think of it but a picture of the building next to a ruler could be a good way to show its size as well. My hope is that the diorama is larger than life like Godzilla but we shall see!
You’re very welcome!
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Oh hell yeah! That picture of Hondo with the building is what I’ve been waiting for 🙂 Taking a break if you’re burned out is smart, all of this stuff will still be there once you’re ready to dive back in.
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I was waiting for it too 🙂 I’m really glad you like how they look together as well. The saying Rome wasn’t built in a day applies to this diorama. Its one where patience and persistence will pay off, I reckon.
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The ESB looks great – the increasing light as you move higher up is particularly effective. Reminds me that I need to get around to finishing more of my own small-scale buildings, but I kind of burned out on a lot of those after my frenzy in the middle of the year. I certainly appreciate the pain of painting in all those tiny windows and doing the building frame around them!
It certainly looks good next to Gen.E.Honda. I wonder – will the diorama also feature a building that has already met with the General’s wrath?
Regarding the busts.
A lot of the work on the power armour seems to have been done by airbrush, which appears to be pretty much an essential tool when painting larger scale models and busts like these. Which makes perfect sense.
GW used to do a few busts in the past via Forgeworld. I even have a couple of them here to paint one day (or not) – A Skaven, a Commissar and a Slayer from memory. The thing is they’ve been moving away from resin models in large part, and certainly away from “collectables” which they can just licence and make free money from without taking sculpting and marketing manpower away from creating next month’s FOMO boxed set.
Easier to just let JoyToy or McFarlane pay them for the privilege of making them instead!
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Thank you, mate. I think we feed off of each other with our respective projects. You got me inspired to start on this diorama and now its nice to be returning the favor.
I’m glad you like the pairing with E. Honda too! 🙂 I’m thinking about trying to buy a Monsterpocalypse building, chopping it up, and slapping an explosion effect on it. That’s definitely new ground for me but I think the diorama would really benefit from it.
I’m not surprised to hear that you own some of the busts! I’d love to see you take a crack at them. They are not as high of quality as modern busts but they still give you plenty to work with and its definitely a different way of painting as well. I learned on a lot from working on the one proper bust I’ve attempted. With that said, your description of GW’s current business plans are spot on. They’re big into licensing and trying to build themselves into a big IP by getting Warhammer in as many different spaces as they can.
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