Off with the Old and on with the New-FTS

I think this is the second or third installment of my project to strip off old paint jobs from when I was a wee lad and update to something more modern.  No question the old FTT troll with the female captive on his back looks much better.  As I was rummaging around I ran across an old bag of mins that go all the way back to my first purchases ever, something like 45+years ago.

Yes these guys need some TLC! 

These are pre-slota base skeletons from Citadel's Fantasy Tribe Skeletons (FTS).  I have always been fascinated by skeletons especially fantasy miniature ones.  I place that blame squarely on Ray Harryhausen and the skeleton stop motion scene from his 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts.  It seems that this has been mentioned by many other hobbyist similar in age.  As noted in my Digging Up Bones post, I've been collecting them for my entire hobby career.  Citadel was clearly head and shoulders above most miniature companies in terms of quality, detail and variety of their products in the late 70's and early 80's.  The Fantasy Tribe series dates from 1979-1983, after that it became the C series of codes.

I immediately knew I had to get some of these great miniatures.  Wargaming and RPG mins were not easy to come by back then but I was relentless in my search. Whenever I went on vacation with my family I would comb the yellow pages (if you dont know what those are I dont know that I can explain them to you!) finding any and all hobby shops in our destination.  If they were close they would indulge me, if not I could only dream of the treasures that I was missing out on. I'm fairly confident that these miniatures we actually ones that Ral Partha produced under license from Citadel and distributed in the US in the Ral Partha Imports line.  I managed to find a pic of one of my actually mins on ebay still on the blister.

I had these guys in an old 2L bottle diorama that I learned how to make from an copy of Military Modeling magazine back in the day.

 

They had what I thought was a brilliant idea, nowadays I think it would be referred to as a hack.  Back in the 1900's, (okay 1980's but using 1900's sounds older) the the 2L bottles of pop were a two piece creation.  They had a clear bottle that was rounded on the bottom and a black or appropriately colored bottom that squared it off so it could stand up.

The article shows you how to pop the bottom off the bottle, cut the top off where it started to taper and then attach the bottom to the freshly cut piece, instant display case.

Or you could attach it to a wooden base and accomplish the same thing

There guys were in a similar work with lots of cotton balls stretched out to simulate fog.  Actually quite brilliant of my younger self if I don't sound too boisterous.

Fast forward to today.  Like anything old they clearly need a fresh coat of paint.  So off we go.  First are a few close up starting pics.  Clearly I had no knowledge of inks, washes, or dry-brushing yet.

 

 

You have to love the menacing red eyes!

After a good soak in Green Stuff for the better part of a month or two.

 

Primed black in preparation for apex shading.

 

Some apex shading with pure white.

Next update will have some color blocking.

Attention Pt 2

 A follow up to the last post.  I'm calling these finished.  I might clean up some of the details but I'm happy with them.  Not my best paint job but not the worst either.  As for the Reaper Bones product, these are the original white product that they first debuted and the detail is ok.  Clearly not as sharp as metal in some cases but not horrible either.  That is partially the reason that I'm calling them done, I don't know that I have the skill to improve on the areas where the detail isn't good.  With that said, for the price I can live with the minor detail issues.  I was looking at a new blister of the Black Bones product and it looks to hold detail better.  I'll have to give them a try soon.

A few individual shots

 

 

 

 

I originally gave the Illyrian's a purple color but wasn't happy with the results.  I then found that an old pot of Warlock Purple (more on the fuchsia spectrum) that was actually still good.  Used the new jig saw mixer and some of the Army Painter stainless steel mixing balls to reinvigorate it.  Put a little on one of them and was much happier with the look and converted both over to that color.  I need to work on the pluggers eye above.  On Keith's website he shows them painted similar to a human eye, I might go something alien looking for the iris.  I'll post a pic once I decide.

 Yes that's an old one.

But not as old as this one!

This is the first group/project that I have wrapped up in awhile.  I will shift focus to the Diehard bounty hunters and try to get them wrapped up over the next few weeks.

The Greatest Miniature Hack Ever!

Well the intro says it all.  I stumbled upon what I consider probably the greatest hack for the miniature painting hobby of all time.  It is truly pure genius!  for quite awhile I have been racking my brain to come up with a way to mix hobby paints.  I tend to paint in mad fury for a couple of days to a couple of weeks and then suddenly lose interest or get tangled up with real life responsibilities.  That means my paints sometimes sit for weeks on end between uses.  As you can guess I tend to have some serious settling issues when they sit idle that long.  I have tried a variety of avenues.  I played around with my kids Erector Set and an electric motor.  I tried to craft something out of their Lego's.  I tried a few other approaches with absolutely no success.  Being the frugal miniature painter and gamer I just couldn't bring myself to buy one from Micromark at $65, I mean how many miniatures could you buy for that!  So I just resorted to shaking them manually until my elbow hurt.  That was until this weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what site I was on but as I'm browsing through photos of other peoples miniature projects I stumbled onto a photo that just floored me.  What was it you ask?  Well lets answer that with a riddle.  What do you get when you cross a bar clamp with a jigsaw?  This!

Shake Well?  Damn right I will!

I saw a photo of a similar contraption and was floored by its simplicity, versatility and effectiveness.  So much so that I had to run out the next day and get the necessary supplies.  I already had a jigsaw, in fact I have two so there wasn't any cost to me for that part.  It does look like you can get one for as little as $25.99 on Amazon and possibly less at places like Harbor Freight, at a home improvement store.  Our Menard's had one for $18, looks like Walmart has one for that price as well.  You might also be able to pick one up at a garage sale for less. All those options are way less than $65 and you get a dual purpose tool out of it.

Next up is a bar clamp.  I picked up this set at Menard's for a whopping $4.99, $4.55 if I send in the rebate!  A very nice set with 2 bar clamps and a variety of clips.  I went with a 4"-5" bar clamp.  I was concerned that anything larger might no fit into the chuck of the jigsaw and why spend more than you need to.  This one fit in nicely with the chuck and I was done.  That was it, nothing more.  I did go ahead and remove the base/foot off the bottom of the saw just to give me more room to open the clamp jaws up.  

 Citadel Old-Check (Yes i know its a P3 paint but same type of pot!)

 Citadel New-Check

 Army Painter/Vallejo-Check

Craft Paint-Check

Does it work?

Older Citadel Metallic (white liquid is the separated acrylic medium)  

Post 30 sec in the mixer.

I'd have to say yes it is a resounding success!
 

To be honest this saw is the lower quality of the two I own so I don't imagine it will every get used as a saw again.  I can fit any of the hobby paints in it with no problem.  I was worried about the dropper bottles having very little surface on their tops, if it becomes an issue I can always rig up something to help hold it in place.  I had to share this, it was just too good to keep to myself.  Good luck and enjoy.

Wow What a year 2020

 

WOW what a year 2020 turned out to be! I have neglected this blog terribly, just too busy and wound up about the whole COVID to be able to get into the hobby.  With a new year I thought I would try to get back into the saddle with some WIP.

My son got me the incredible Reaper Bones Cthulhu Model for my birthday over the summer.  I’ve been eyeing this for a very long time but was never able to pull the trigger.  It was a very thoughtful gift and I feel like I need to do it justice and get it painted up!   

 Right now I’m working through the mold lines, not as easy as lead (or is it Led?) to clean up but working my way through it.  The head is the worst with some mold lines on the facial tentacles, difficult to get into some of the spaces.

One tentacle is off a bit will probably have to green stuff it.  I might try some of the GWS liquid green stuff to see if it is easier to use to correct the molding issue.

 Another WIP of my SciFi range.  These are Diehard miniatures from one of their Kickstarter campaigns.  A group of bounty hunters that I’m actually painting up in a Judge Dredd color scheme.  I think they are coming along nicely.

 That is all for now but more to come as I get my groove back!

WIP and miscellaneous ramblings

Not much content to this post, just a few WIP shots, a question, and some rambling.  I changed out the blog title from the Latin to English.  Not sure why just decided to do it.

First up are a few WIP shots of the green lads and the off/on troll.

I have blocked out a few color sections and have at least one skin tone highlight on these guys.

Here is an update on the Off with the Old and On with the New Troll.  Stripped down.

And primed up after a little file work.  Clearly my 12-14 year old self didn't do much clean up work back then.  There were a few mold lines to resolve.  He is beside the next of my Jes Goodwin C23 ogres to get paint.  I think I'm within 2-4 of the complete set!





















Here is the first round of color blocking.

Speaking of the troll, can anyone identify the logo stamp on is base?  maybe Asgard?  Which is weird given he is also claimed by Citadel.  Any help with this mystery would be appreciated.

Now for the rambling.  If you are a G+ user you know that the end is near which is a shame really.  I like the platform, it had a good amount of traffic but not overwhelming.  Let you include blogg posts like this automatically.  Was well organized.  Wasn't as big brotherish as Facebook not that I have a lot of data for them to harvest and sell!  MEWE looks to be similar but not identical.  One annoying feature, your group gets dropped from the directory if it doesn't get a new post every 7 days.  I created a Oldhammer group, thanks again to Zhu for the use of his Oldhammer logo.  I'm sure it's just me being grumpy since the change of platforms not by my choosing.  Lets how that it gets more traffic and people start to participate in the groups.  Back to painting!