Kimera Models – Lokaris II

Its been another busy week hobby-wise and there lots to talk about including a few things I promised to discuss so I won’t waste any time. I continued to work on Lokaris and worked on his many belts. While they certainly look cool, it reminds me of a lot of anime and Final Fantasy characters like Lulu below.

Regardless, so far, I’ve been enjoying working on this miniature as I’ve been painting stuff that I’m pretty familiar with like gold and leather. It will get more challenging from here and I will be trying some new things outside of my comfort zone.

Something that I am proud of with this project and didn’t discuss yet is that I’ve already had to jettison my original plan for this mini. My initial idea was to have him look more like a barbarian with a different color palette. I even found what I thought was a pretty good piece of art for inspiration that I unfortunately can’t easily share because of the image’s file format. When I realized that the original idea wasn’t going to work, I gave it some thought and figured out a different way to go that will still look cool and different than the other painted examples I’ve seen. I’ll delve into this more when Lokaris is closer to being finished.

I can’t say for sure that I’ll keep working on this project this week however. My brushes are pretty “tired” and missing a lot of their bristles and while I tried to order new ones over a week ago, I learned a hard lesson about how Michigan Toy Soldier works. They seem to be constantly reordering Rosemary and Co. brushes, which take 2-3 weeks to arrive each time they sell out. I thought if I waited until they were in stock and then placed my order, I’d be able to get them faster. I think the opposite might end up being true and when they get them back in stock, most of the brushes are quickly spoken for. So I’m currently waiting for the next batch to arrive from the UK while my brushes continue to wear down. Sadly, I don’t know exactly when I’ll be getting those new brushes which is obviously problematic. I broke down and got a new Winsor and Newton one on Amazon that will get here tomorrow and hopefully it won’t be defective like the last one… If it is, I may be stuck doing gaming stuff for a week or two. All in all, I’m learning a lesson the hard way with paintbrush supply and demand. I may need to start looking for other options as this isn’t something I want to deal with again anytime soon.

Next up, I tested out the Monsterpocalypse buildings that I currently have with the other miniatures I own to see how they might look in a diorama to try to pin down what size display base I need so I can grab one in the near future. I actually haven’t looked at the pictures I took a couple of weeks ago until now because I forgot to and so I’m looking at them with fresh eyes as I write this. Here’s a look at what a 10×10 base looks like.

While I’ve heard its a good idea to go smaller and more compact with your dioramas, I can see some pros and cons to this size. The emphasis is definitely on the two fighters which is nice but there is limited room for any other city stuff. I also won’t be able to incorporate many monsters in it because its so compact. I also tend to think that Hondo and the enemy kaiju are too close together to be realistic considering Hondo’s rocket truck.

Here is 12 x 12 with some monsters included. Obviously there’s a lot more open space to be filled, some of which is needed for streets and cars, but there is definitely room for some of the smaller creatures at this size and maybe some other surprises as well. Before I looked at these, I was leaning towards 10 x 10 but now I think I prefer 12 x 12. Seeing these two layouts reminds me that I need to buy some more stuff for this diorama as well so I better get on that. Of course, if you have any thoughts, advice, or opinions, I’m happy to hear it too!

Moving into a bit of belated hobby news, I’m glad to see that there is going to be a Starcraft Miniatures game coming from Archon Studios. I’ve said before that certain types of video games would be a great fit in our hobby and RTS games are very high on that list! I prefer Warcraft to Starcraft by a slight margin so I don’t think this is a game that I would get into though I’m happy to see it getting released. However, I have it on good authority that John@JustNeedsVarnish (who is getting a shout-out two straight weeks no less!) is a Starcraft fan which surprised me because its a pretty hardcore game. Needless to say, if nothing else, we’re all collectively a bunch of enablers, and so I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I think he should absolutely get into the Starcraft game! If you know John, as many of you do, feel free to apply pressure in the comments as well! I don’t dare guess which faction is John’s favorite but it looks like Marines, Zerg, and Protoss will be there. What more could any avid Starcraft player want!?

And finally, I promised another friend of the site, Spalanz, that I’d talk a bit about something I’m doing relating to comic books and card collecting. While I said I was going to collect Dune cards on this very website, I got distracted by Upper Deck’s release of Skybox Batman Metal. Its a cool looking set that I’ll talk more about later on when I’ve got something interesting to show off. This might surprise you, but I’ve barely read any Batman comics up until recently. I tried a few of the commonly recommended books like The Long Halloween and Hush but nothing hooked me. I’ve also kind of been in denial that I like Batman for many years. Maybe its because the character is so popular but I’ve never thought of myself as liking Batman all that much. The Nolan Trilogy of movies challenged that and the Arkham Asylum video games really won me over but I still never read Batman comics for whatever reason. Since I decided to start collecting Batman cards, I’ve finally accepted that I DO like Batman quite a bit and it has left me with a fun challenge. How do I start reading Batman, one of the most popular and heavily published characters of all time? It can be a daunting task, to be sure!

Well, for me, the path was pretty easy to find. I’m going to collect cards for certain characters and so I’m starting my reading journey by following a character that I’m interested in and seeing where it takes me. I’m starting with Harvey Dent/Two-Face and will talk more about him and what I’ve discovered once I’ve done more reading but I found it has been pretty easy to find recommendations online for things to read by just Googling “best” or “great two face comics” and digging into the results a little bit. So far, I rediscovered my love for The Long Halloween and found some other pretty cool comics this way. I still have quite a bit more to read before I can say that I’ve read a lot of Two-Face stories but I’m certainly well on my way to feeling like I know the character and Batman much better.

This is not the only good way to find comics to read (I recommend good ones from time-to-time after all!) but if you can narrow down things a bit, it can really help you find stuff that you might like. For popular Marvel and DC characters, there’s so much content out there and if you don’t know many writers and artists, it is overwhelming. But fortunately, there is a lot internet content, including Youtube, designed to help people find something to read so definitely get out there and do some research and you can’t go too far wrong. Marvel and DC both have affordable subscription services that let you read unlimited digital comics, except for really new issues so there is a treasure trove of stuff at your fingertips nowadays, particularly if you have access to a decent tablet. I hope this helps Spalanz get inspired and if you ever find yourself wanting to check out superhero comics, this is one approach you might take to find success. The main thing is not to be intimidated by how much is out there or feel like you don’t know enough to read books about a particular character or set of characters. You also do not need to start at the first issue of Batman or Superman (which are really, really old now) and read everything in chronological order. Chances are, if you do, you’ll give up out of boredom well before you get to the more modern era of comics.