This was a hard article title to decide on because I’m going to show you not one, not two, but three different things I’ve been working on. I figured a surprise title might entice readership. I wasn’t really planning on dipping into Hellboy but I’ll explain how that came about eventually. The short version is: I had a little downtime in working on Lokaris and so I grabbed another Nazi Knife Fighter and got it done in pretty short order.
Truthfully, this one has some bad mold lines and sometimes with Hellboy miniatures you can’t see them in my pictures but I wanted to go out of my way to highlight one of the mold lines which is pretty bad, I’m sorry to say. This guy has a mold line on his cheek!
That is just not a good area for that kind of thing and the mold lines are tough to fully remove on Hellboy. I did what I could in a reasonable amount of time and its still pretty obvious unfortunately. Hopefully that is an area where Mantic can improve in the future. And finally, here is a look at the triplets. Hopefully, I can get the remaining three done in due time as I’ve not made much progress on painting Hellboy stuff this year sadly.
The other thing I got done was the last card holder for the Arkham Organizer. I don’t have cards to put in it yet and you’ve seen a nearly identical version of it already, so I didn’t bother to take a picture. Instead, I thought I’d put away all of the pieces that belong in one of the two boxes and see how it works. This is not the greatest picture but it shows off how snugly everything fits in the organizer.
This should really make setting up a game a breeze in the future and to have four game boxes condensed into two will be fantastic as well. I look forward to buying the final expansion and more card sleeves so I can put the rest of the organizer pieces away in the hobby closet.
And that brings us to what I’ve mostly been working on and that is Lokaris. I’m still not done with it, though I’m getting closer and closer. I assembled the final piece which is his second cloak and that was a disaster, I’m sorry to say. I had no idea where to apply glue and I ended up putting on way too much and I’m going to have to try and hide that with paint. None of this is in an area that’s visible but I still want to do what I can to cover it up since this is a competition piece. I was also a bit surprised because there was a considerable gap in the cloak in a spot where it is pretty noticeable. Here is a photo of I took of the gap.
That is no good at all! Fortunately, I contacted Dynamic Dave Stone, who hopped in his Concord Jet for a hobby emergency house call and he got me sorted out. I needed some new sculpting tools as I only have a dental set and with the aid of some clay shapers, I was able to patch the gap and get it painted up. You would never know that gap was there and I can’t believe I was able to work green stuff well enough to do this. Of course, its all courtesy of Dave’s sage advice as well so a big thank you to him for his help!
The cloak is shiny pretty shiny from glazing with Lahmia Medium and I need to put some matte varnish on it but I think the pattern of random scratches turned out pretty well considering I was just making it up as I went along. The one thing I have to decide is whether to adding any soiling like from dirt along the bottom. For example, the studio version has it.
It is very light and it looks good. If I’m going to attempt it, I need to use the same light touch. I’ll give it some thought as I try finish up the miniature this week. The tufts I purchased still haven’t shipped and MMSI is about three weeks from now so I guess I’m going to have to inquire about that soon too because I’m not too far off from needing them. All in all though, I’m in a good place to finish this up on time and no corners will be cut which is the way I prefer it.
That is all the hobby progress I made this week. I did promise that I would share pictures of the 75mm Odyssey miniatures when I saw them and that just so happens to be now. Here is Odysseus, which is a stunning miniature.
I love how this one comes with so much scenery and his victim as well. It really is a complete scene which very few 75mm miniatures achieve. You can also switch out his head for a non-helmeted version and you can have him with a sword and shield instead of the bow so its a fairly versatile kit.
And here is the other one for Athena.
That shield is a real work of art and so is her armor and helmet for that matter. The only thing I don’t like about this one is her face which is not bad but its lacking a little something to my eyes. I’d almost rather see her with the helmet on than with it halfway up. That’s just my personal taste though.
Unfortunately, these are limited edition miniatures and they cost over $100 a piece and that doesn’t include shipping (from Europe, I’m pretty sure) and tariffs. And yes, you’re going to start seeing this lovely sticker every time the T-word is mentioned from now on.
All that is to say, it is going to be pricey and I don’t need big new display projects right now. You can also argue that Athena has a lot of similarities to Minerva so I might be treading familiar ground there too. The Odysseus miniature is very tempting though and if it wasn’t Limited Edition, I could see myself getting it in a couple of years, if it were still available then.
The big reason why I don’t have a ton of spending money currently is that Modiphius has a surprise Clearance sale going this week that included a lot of Fallout minis. And yes, that includes the ones pictured above. It seems me that Modiphius is getting ready to retire quite a few sculpts and the only way to get them in the relatively near future will be by 3D printing STL’s which isn’t super convenient for me right now so I decided to buy up pretty much everything that was available. It was $160 with shipping and I got something like 9-10 sets of miniatures (3-6 miniatures in a box) and 3-4 special promo miniatures on top of that. It was an incredible deal in other words. The kind I felt like I couldn’t pass up. If I remember correctly, the website said I saved something like $440 in total and most of the minis were 60-75% off so as cheap as they’ll ever be. With this purchase, my backlog continues to grow which I’m not necessarily thrilled by but its all stuff I would have wanted to paint and own eventually so it made sense to get them. I’m certainly going to be busy with Fallout in the coming months which is a good way to be.
Kuribo's Painting 