Command Centurion

Sean bought me some miniatures for a birthday that was a couple of years ago now, including this fearsome Cylon warrior. Just to be different, I painted him gold to make him one of the rare Command Centurions you used to see on the original Battlestar Galactica. 
 

Clumsily-Painted Cargo

 

These will look better if I add some weathering effects. kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Overgrown Ruins

Last weekend I painted and dressed (is that the right verb for adding fake foliage?) these 3D-printed ruins. In contrast to my other efforts posted this week, I'm quite pleased with this piece. 

If it ever becomes possible for me to play games in person again, I hope to put this to use as perhaps a resting spot or a lair for monsters or villains. 

Discarded Backpacks

As game pieces, these serve the same function as yesterday's suitcases: as traps or caches of loot. You could fit a lot of bottlecaps in one of these. 
 

Discarded Suitcases

Who just leaves suitcases in the street like this? People in the midst of calamity, perhaps. Pieces like this can be used as traps or caches of loot in roleplaying or skirmish games. Maybe I'll fill one with land mines and the other with Benjamins. 
 

Books with Skull

Here's a small pile of books topped with a skull. This will come in handy when I need a library of the macabre. 
 

Poker in the Coals

I believe this miniature is supposed to represent an old-style forge, but I could be wrong. Maybe it's a BBQ. Either way, painting it was simple: I just primed the whole thing in black, painted the poker silver, and dry-brushed some grey onto the coals to make them look partially consumed. 

The Eyes Don't Quite Have It

Here's my first attempt to paint eyes. As a first attempt, I hope I can call this a partial success in that the eyes are in roughly the right places and they're about the right size. I used the smallest brush I had, gripping it as closely as possible to the tip for maximum control. Alas, these measures were not enough to create convincing eyes, at least not in closeup like this. But it's a start. One day perhaps I'll even try creating whites and pupils, but that day is months in the future. 

 

Grandfather Clock

I painted this wee grandfather clock the other day, and I'm very happy with the face. Those numbers are almost too small to be believed, but I managed to make them legible by first painting the whole face white and then very carefully drybrushing the (thankfully raised!) numbers black with the smallest round-headed drybrush I had. The results are not uniformly perfect, but good enough to get the idea across. 
 

Tiny Dancer

Here's a versatile 28mm dancer that I figure can be used in all kinds of games. Her costume is simple enough to be almost timeless, and for a wonder her facial features are readily distinguishable. A super light touch with the right wash really helps. She's a little messy when seen in closeup, but on the table she'll be okay. 
 

The Magic Handcar, Part I

For many years now, I've indulged a number of pleasant fantasies about strange magical journeys. Sometimes I'm sailing or rafting down an endless river through tropical jungles; sometimes I'm slingshotting from star to star. But most often I'm pumping the walking beam on my magic handcar. 

When I bought my first Walkman, I often listened to music late into the night while voyaging through the theatre of my mind. I don't remember the exact song that sparked the creation of the magic handcar, but it hit the radio around the time of Elton John's "I'm Still Standing." 

In most versions of the journey, I'm walking along the rails through a heavily wooded forest on a summer afternoon when I come across the abandoned handcar, which leads me to believe that the rail line I'm following must also be abandoned. On a whim, I hop aboard and start pumping the walking beam. There's a long, groaning squeal that sounds like a cry of mixed pain and relief, and after some hesitation, the handcar sluggishly moves forward. Once that inertia is overcome, it takes very little effort on my part to keep the handcar going; indeed, it seems like just a couple of pumps keeps the handcar in motion for dozens of kilometres at a speedy clip, fast enough that I'm afraid to pump much harder. During the time it takes me to experiment with speed and braking, I've already journeyed perhaps a hundred kilometres through a forest that's grown so dense that it's formed a canopy overhead that filters out perhaps three-quarters of the sunlight. Some branches grow so close to the rails that I can easily pluck berries and fruits from the bushes and trees, a harvest so delicious and sweet that I can hardly believe it's real (and of course, it's not - but it is). 

As my adventures and explorations continue, I find that the handcar has an endless cache of supplies accessed by a small trapdoor near one corner of the vehicle. Even though the space revealed when you open the door seems to be only a couple of feet square, it seems to have whatever you need: a book, a beverage, socks and underwear, toiletries, binoculars, and so on. Moreover, along the course of the railway there are occasional rest stops where one can find bathrooms, showers, a picnic site, more supplies, and a myriad of other self-service options that seem tied to the particular function of each rest stop. 

The long journey is solitary but pleasant, and the rails take me across jungles, deserts, mountains, along coastlines, through ghost towns and mines, and sometimes forwards and backwards through time. I never seem to see anyone, and yet I sense that there are multitudes just beyond my reach. 

Minor Wordle Triumph

Yes, I've been on the Wordle train for a couple of weeks now, caught up in the fad like so many others. A few days ago, I opened up the latest puzzle and guessed "PLANK." With all five letters clear misses, I resigned myself to needing at least four guesses to solve the puzzle. I started from scratch with "MOVIE," and my eyes bugged out as all five letters came up green. I imagine this will remain my best Worldle score, and it comes not from skill but from random chance. 

 

Crimson Scorpion

This fellow from the Pulp Figures collection is called Crimson Scorpion. 

 

Luggage

And here we have two tiny pieces of luggage. 
 

Crimson Companion

Here's a companion for yesterday's hooded villain. Looks crude, amateurish. Still trying to apply Jeff's tips, but while the spirit is willing the flesh and eyes are weak. Well. More practice required. 

The Crimson Murderer

Here we have The Crimson Murderer, no relation to the Evil Hooded Minion Master found at Pulp Figures, of course. I'm afraid my figure doesn't have as much depth or realism as the example found at the Pulp Figures site linked above, but my version isn't horrible, either. Certainly it's good enough for tabletop play. 
 

Earl's Lumon Business Card

 

Sylvia and I have been watching and thoroughly enjoying Severance, a mysterious horror/satire that addresses late-stage capitalism and the banal inhumanity of office life. And in a clever bit of viral marketing, you can now create your own custom Lumon business card--even if the thought of working at Lumon fills you with dread, as it should. 

Electro-Pulse Cannon

Tonight I painted a pulp-era doomsday weapon. I was tempted to paint it silver and black to make it look like it came from a black and white serial, but in the end I added some copper elements and a slightly blue beam emitter. 
 

Civilization? I'll Stay Right Here

After just 5,454.9 hours of play, I have unlocked half of Civilization V's achievements. This amazing milestone comes just 11 and a half years after I bought the game back in September 2010. 
 

The Creature and the Count

 

A black lagoon, a blacker heart
Fins and fangs of fear
No escape from the uncanny
If you venture here

Cosmetic Revolution

If you're so inclined, you can buy fake eyelashes to enhance your appearance. And yet, as far as I'm aware, you cannot purchase fake ear hair or nose hair. Imagine thick, lustrous noselashes and earlashes sprouting from nasal and aural cartilage! It would be difficult to bat them, though. 

Solar Bathos

The sun's kiss
Bathes my laptop in golden rays
Beams that obscure this text and all text
For my monitor is covered in dust
And my keyboard is filthy too
In astra, veritas
Where are my wet wipes?  

Shorty Shotgun

Here's a 1930s-vintage mobster type. I call him Shorty Shotgun, because his flat base makes him look a little shorter than most of my other 28mm figures. I tried a different colour scheme for this guy, giving him a burgundy hat, tie, and shoes and a grey suit. 

Close-up photography reveals that I missed painting a tiny bit of Shorty's sleeve and hat. I may rethink the base's colours. I was going for "sidewalk," but missed. You can also see that I had too much ink wash on my brush. Poor Shorty, going out without washing his face. 

It took a steady hand to add that shock of red hair, which is probably less than a millimetre thick. 

Stoic Survivor

Here's an unnamed survivor miniature for Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. This time around, I'm actually happy with the face; I tried to follow Jeff's advice about how much ink was there should be on a brush (very little), and that advice seems to have worked--at least for the face. I'm afraid I miscalculated how much ink the rest of the figure would require, and as a result, her clothes look a little muddy. I could have wiped off the excess, but I kind of like the look; these characters, after all, live in a grimy post-apocalyptic environment. 

I'm pleased with the wooden floor and the discarded boards atop it. I wish I'd noticed the patches on her coat; I would have painted them different colours. 

Captain Oopserang

Here is Flash arch-enemy Captain Boomerang in 28mm scale. My results here are mixed. I like the base and his jacket, but his boots, gloves, scarf and shirt--all the white parts, essentially--look mottled and unnatural to me. I was painting with the lightest coats I possibly could, but the white paints I've found have a bad habit of clumping. Oh, I know what I should have done--thin the paint with water, maybe?