Sunday 18 August 2013

Yet More Grenadier Miniatures Skeletons.

These have been waiting patiently in the painting queue for quite some time now, so last night as a spot of light relief finally got round to splashing some acrylic onto them:





The top figure is from the Skeleton Knights blister pack. I don't know the provenance of the lower but he is wearing the outlandish mixture of equipment so characteristic of Andy Chernak's skeletons. Good fun to paint though.
Whilst on the subject here is a family shot of the Grenadier Skeleton collection as it stands today:


There are still three unpainted skeleton looters to add to the growing brood as well as a few cavalry figures which will be tackled at some unspecified point in the future. Doubt I'll ever collect them all, for one thing it is quite difficult to find anything like a complete illustrated listing of all Grenadiers Skeletons online, perhaps another project that could be added to the ever changing list.

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Resin Dungeon Room with Cut-down Corner.

Following on from the previous post I thought I had better post a couple of photographs of the concept room with the cut away corner.
Figure 1.


Figure 2.

I wanted to produce a few rooms displaying a little more architectural variety than just the basic stonework featured on most of my pieces to date, the idea being to use them as higher quality areas within the general dungeon complex.
The idea was all well & good, in practice however your average 25-28mm miniature got lost inside them ( see Fig. 2.). You'll appreciate that quite a lot of work had gone into the project at this point & being loath to abort it I used a bit of alcohol lubricated lateral thinking. Fifteen minutes with a very sharp hacksaw & the result was Figure 1, still a nice backdrop for the miniatures but with the added practicality of being able to see inside from a seated attitude.


Sunday 11 August 2013

Resin Dungeon Scenery. Production Underway.

I've finally taken the first steps in getting the modular dungeon terrain into production, there is still some way to go before these sets will be available for sale but its good to have something concrete to show for all the effort so far.
The only fly in the ointment is the continuing wait for the second batch of moulds from my very busy mould maker, its been over twelve months now & I'm seriously considering doing this work myself otherwise it will be another year gone & still no saleable product.

Small gripe over, some pictures of the pieces so far produced:

The basic building blocks to be included in the boxed set.

The basic corner piece with some decayed plasterwork still attached.

20' square room with fancy mouldings.

A simple layout using the basic components.
I think the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, though the weird looking geometry on the 20x20' room deserves a little explanation. I wanted to do a couple of pieces with a bit more than basic stone detail on the walls so in pursuance of this produced some castings with the pillar detail that can be seen in the picture. The only drawback of this piece was the height of the walls which renders it difficult to see any of the interior detail ( or miniatures) from a sitting position. The solution was to take a sharp hacksaw to the finished piece and trim the walls down to one corner. Its weird but it does work. Whether it will prove a hit with the buying public remains to be seen.

Sunday 4 August 2013

Modular Dungeon Production Run Commenced.

Finally made a start on this long overdue project, still waiting on some of the larger moulds from my mould maker but I can start to assemble a stock of the smaller pieces that will ultimately go into the sets.

The Mark 1 entrance stair & a pair of walls for a high status tomb.

Same items with camera flash off.

Two of the basic straight corridor sections, the section on the left featuring loopholes for  darts, gas or water.

Straight wall & corner sections.
Still experimenting with adding colour to the resin, I rather like the marbled effect featured on these pieces but suspect that long term it may be of limited utility.

I should have a few larger bits & pieces cast today if the weather remains un-settled. If it brightens up I may be forced to go to a garden centre after lunch because apparently we need more stuff to squeeze into our already blooming flower beds.