Kimera Models – Lokaris IV

I was in the thick of things on Lokaris last weekend and didn’t have enough to show off, but I’m back with another update on this ambitious and long-running project. I tackled one of the most important parts of the miniature to me, which is his wolf shoulder plate. Its really draws the eye and of course, its cool-looking so I want to get it right. It is tricky because its metal and it has pretty fine details with non-traditional shapes. If you look closely at people who have painted this miniature, everybody’s done it a slightly different way, which I usually take to mean that its hard to get it right.

While I can spot a place or two where I can smooth the paint job out further, all-in-all, I think I did pretty well on it. One of the reasons why I’m determined to do well with this part of the miniature is the last 75mm miniature I painted didn’t do as well at MMSI as I expected/hoped and I know I need to do better to earn another gold there. if you’re curious which miniature I’m talking about, its this one right here.

There’s a lot more to go but I’m hoping that in the end, Lokaris ends up being an even better paint job and shows that I’ve improved since 2023 or 2024 when I worked on Minerva. With that in mind, I think now is a good time for me to take a short break on him. There’s been a lot going on outside of the hobby, which I’ll get into soon, and I want to try to do my best and its hard to do that when other distractions are going on.

As a follow-up from my last post, I have made a couple of recent hobby related purchases. The first is that I bought one of the Fallout Wasteland Warfare First Edition rule supplements that I don’t own which is long overdue. This supplement provides rules for miniatures I own and a couple I’ve even painted so its well past time to be able to use them in future games! I think having this supplement will get me a bit more excited about painting those other minis too as I keep pushing them off in favor of other things even though I really like the sculpts and they look fun to work on. At some point in the future, I’ll do a review of the Commonwealth supplement as well which should be fun to write.

I also picked up another Monsterpocalypse skyscraper which I’ll need to get prepped and primed in the near future. Lokaris has taken my attention away from Monsterpocalypse for a bit but I will come back to it sooner or later and I will keep picking up things I need for it as well since the supply of miniatures and terrain for the game will only diminish with time.

I’m a little amazed that I’ve gotten as much done on Lokaris in the last two weeks as I managed. Real life continues to suck. There are a few things I will likely never discuss here. Family issues and work stuff. One of the big reasons is because that is not why you are here and I don’t want anybody I know to potentially find me rambling online about them. While there have been issues related to both of those things going on off and on this year, more recently, I’ve had weirder and worse issues that I can discuss a bit.

I live in a condo building and our garage is accessible to the alley behind the property. In Chicago, most people put trash and recycling in the alley to be picked up. This is one of the reasons why the city has historically had huge rat problems. Its like a buffet line for them in every alley. They chew right through the trash cans and have a feast every night essentially. The alley splits condos/residential buildings and a private school/church. Long story short, some guy, who is certifiably crazy has convinced himself that he’s going to do a service for the church by moving all of the trash and recycling cans in front of people’s garages because when they’re in the alley anywhere else, they’re on church property. This is not legally how it works but the guy is pushy and creepy and my wife and I have both had unwelcome interactions with him. We tried to talk to the church about him, hoping they would help, and essentially were told to call 911 (the police) on him. The woman we spoke to claimed that he is dangerous because he blew up when they wouldn’t let him get involved in something at the church but her evidence that he’s actually dangerous was not very persuasive. While he is creepy and pushy, he’s not doing anything illegal per say so it seems crazy to call an emergency line on some crazy guy who isn’t doing anything especially dangerous. In Chicago, there is very real crime, some of which is a bit disturbing and scary truthfully. The police aren’t going to come out because some guy keeps moving the trash cans against our will. After we talked to the church, the crazy guy seemed to disappear for a while and I thought maybe somebody from the church had finally spoken to him. He came back today, moved the trash cans in front of the garage again, and so this problem will go on for a while. I have come across some weird people in my lifetime but this guy is unsettling to have to talk to and so nobody in our building really wants to deal with him which makes it hard to get him to stop doing what he’s doing. We keep in touch with the church and politely pressure them to do something about him because he’s doing all this in their name and tries to make it seem like he’s with the church. Hopefully they will step up to the plate soon so we can put this ridiculous situation to bed.

So that is one annoyance and the other has bigger implications for me. Chicago also has budget/money problems as a city. They’ve had them the entire time we’ve lived here and going back years before that from what I understand. Since the pandemic, downtown has not really recovered. A lot of people work from home now and so they don’t frequent downtown as much which means businesses and restaurants aren’t making as much money. There are a lot of empty storefronts in places that were thriving pre-pandemic. This doesn’t impact me directly or so I thought. To offset the lack of taxes revenue from business real estate downtown, residents have been hit with crazy high property tax increases recently. I knew that people were starting to get hit with them but I figured until I saw how it affected my wife and I, it would be alright. Our property taxes have been stable for nearly five years now but not any longer. I found out this week that the increase is to the tune of $8,000! It is insane for anybody to be able to absorb that kind of increase but its especially challenging in my household.

My wife and I have been living off my income while she dealt with some personal challenges for about two years now and its been hard, of course. I do okay but not enough to easily support a wife and dog. There’s been a lot of financial cuts made and we don’t eat out a lot (which sucks because Chicago has amazing food), for example. My wife just started working at a local grocery store as a cashier because we could use the extra income and jobs are hard to come by these days and it felt like we were finally going to have a little more financial wiggle room but that is clearly not the case. It has been hard for her for the first two months because people are horribly behaved and having stand with very few breaks for 5-7 hours is not easy. I have a much greater appreciation for what people in retail have to go through. Its not an easy job at all and while I always try to be polite and easy to deal with, I feel like I have an even greater awareness of that now. I mention this because based on my initial financial calculations, she needs to stay at this job until she can find something better and even then we’ll just barely be breaking even.

It feels pretty bad because multiple things have broken in the house and I had just told my wife that this year we’re going to get a bunch of them fixed. A week or two ago, we had bad storms and a window started leaking water. So obviously that has to be repaired but there’s a lot of other stuff that needs to get done so we can eventually sell this place and move elsewhere. With the property taxes, its hard to say if we’ll stay here in the long run or be forced to move some place cheaper which would really, really suck. If there’s one thing I’m proud of besides being an award winning painter, it is that I left my hometown and moved to some place that many people would be jealous of. To have to potentially move away to a cheaper and less exciting place would be a bit of a crushing disappointment to say the least. That is a long-term problem though because the mortgage rates are so bad, there’s no way we’re moving in the next year or so anyway. Being an adult is hard and I’ve had a lot of challenges in the last couple of years going on “behind the scenes”. All you can do is keep trying, even when you want to give up, because you don’t have many other good choices, I reckon.

I should also note that I’ve realized that I need to stop buying cards (Dune and Batman both) specifically until our financial situation changes. What modest spending money I do have will go towards miniatures, comic books, and video games here and there, most likely instead. Its crazy timing because I just finished up my DC Comics subscription and was ready to write an article about Two-Face in modern comics. Of course, I can still write it but it feels like a hollow endeavor now that I won’t be continuing to collect Batman cards. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we expect them to and this is my attempt to be responsible and try to do everything I can to ease stress on my wife and I as I’m sure you can understand.

And finally, to get back to something hobby related (and more positive). I saw some Middle Earth minis were teased at Adepticon this week and color me impressed! New plastic cavalry is a fantastic new release for the game. I’ve heard the old Rohan cavalry miniatures would break really easily and they’re also 20+ years old at this point. The new Rohan cavalry have a really nice cinematic look to them as well. It would be easy to take this guy and turn him into a little diorama/vignette battle scene I’d say.

Even the Dunlendings look pretty darn nice and like they’d be fun to paint which is saying something because they barely show up in the movies!

I have no idea how MESBG does sales wise for Games Workshop but I’m glad they still support the game and are releasing new stuff. Its been a long time since I painted anything from MESBG but there are miniatures that tempt me, including these! Perhaps one day I’ll get back to it and see what I can do with some of the more recent GW sculpts.