Winter is Here

White Walkers

Last summer I scored a bunch of Foundry vikings at a game club swap meet. There were a lot of doubles in the set, so I decided to do something different with them.

Then I got an undead bear from one of Tim Prow's excellent Kickstarters, and added in a couple of converted Hordes "white walker witches", also from a flea market.

And behold! A Frostgrave team- or a Mordheim Vampire gang. That's the nice thing about undead- very versatile!

In the backstage lot. 

Eagle knight Zombie

8 deer gets ready to take a bite out of his lunch.

Antediluvian Miniatures

My pal Andrew Taylor, owner and proprietor of  Antediluvian Miniatures knows my love for the Aztecs, and was kind enough to send a pre production cast of this Mixtec Eagle knight zombie from his new kickstarter line.  Needless to say, it got primed and painted ASAP!

Growing up in California, and in a working class white and Chicano neighborhood, the lore and myths of the Meso American culture was all around me. Even our Jr. High School mascot the Warriors, was an Eagle knight!

Because of this it has been a passion of mine, especially the art- and in particular the art from the Codex Nuttall, a wonderful book from the period. Sadly few of these books have been discovered, but there are recordings of the Spaniards burning thousands of them.  Dover has a wonderful facsimile of the codex. The original is in the British Museum.

Buy this book! 

It was the color choices in the Codex that inspired my painting palette; yellow ochre, that dark red and the jade/ malachite greens, along with white.

I went a bit brighter on the yellow, to help make the mini pop a bit

A page of the codex, for reference

All in all it is a wonderful miniature to paint, and I thank Andrew Taylor for the early Christmas present!  Looking forward to getting the rest of the set!

Did I really use that many paints on one mini?!

Triumph of Death II: First casts and the foibles therein

always exiting to see this!

 The Magic and Perils of Mold Making

Seeing a master old is like Christmas. There is always that chance that whatever was put in the mold will either melt, explode or get squished. My master molder is really good but even then, as this time, something happened.  Read on if you dare!

 Some shots of first casts.. looking grand so far...

The usual M.O. of my caster is to spin the mold a few times and send me those samples for review. Once I give the thumbs up on a piece it is ready to be cast enough times and then recleaned and put into a production mold.   Many of the pieces like the horse and Pestilence, and the weapons and shield were gang busters, but then I looked at the crossbow and pike. Hands... hands were the issue.

Here we can see in this image that the hands were not casting properly. Mold issue? Actually no! After showing these to my sculptor he figured quickly the issue. He used some super glue around the hand area of some of the masters. When super heated the glue expanded into a "foam" of sorts, which filled the hand areas. Bummer, but mystery solved.

So, masters have been checked and recleaned, and go back into a mold. It's both art and science, and a learning experience.
 I love getting these kind of things out of the way pre- Kickstarter. 

Triumph of Death: painted stretch goal minis

As soon as I got the first review casts of the last stretch goal minis, I primed them and put paint to them!

Zweihander attacking. 

The Abbot

Both the Abbot and the zweihander minis carry on the fish and crown motif, on the breastplate, and on the crozier and miter cap. I didn't even know the fish was on the crozier till I started painting! Sweet.

Standard bearer

The standard bearer comes open handed with the flag pole and hangar style sword attached to the base. This gives you lots of options with this particular model.

Armored Javelin variant

Javelin with hat variant

These latter two "variant" models are cast open handed so you can again have many options. I am jumping at the bit to do a pike block with them!

All of these models are the finishing touches on one of my high end painted backer rewards. They've already been boxed up and shipped out.

Triumph of Death: Have you got a flag?

Have you got a flag?!

Jaye Wiley has created a sweet suite of flags for my Triumph of Death Kickstarter, and I just got them back from the printers. Of course I had to dig in and see how they'd work.

 I took two of my open handed skellies and added some 1.5mm copper wire flag poles to them, dashed some paint upon their leathery hides, and then added some flag action.

skeleton marching open handed with a traditional long standard pole.

Skeleton marching arm close using a "baton" landsknecht style pole.

 Once painted up, I added the flags, gluing them on with watered down white glue. You can also use a glue stick, which lets you peel apart the flag if you don't line it up the first time; just make sure you seal it afterwards or it can come apart.  I used an exacto to "age" my banners, touching up the edges with a bit of paint afterwards.

Inspiration!

Veteren Standard Bearer

With all those fancy flags,I'm in need a grizzled veteran standard bearer for the next stretch goal of my Kickstarter! This fellow is sporting a metal skull cap and mail bishop's mantle and wields a katzbalger sword. In his right hand he holds the landsknecht style baton banner pole, which will be cast separately onto the base.  A worthy warrior for a worthwhile stretch goal

 Speaking of Kickstarters- my Triumph of Death Kickstarter  has 3 days left as of the posting of this blog- so if you have not checked it out, please do so! 7 stretch goals have already been unlocked and we are closing in on the standard bearer- Go- go now!

Triumph of Death Kickstarter Launch Date!

I'm very excited to announce my upcoming "Triumph of Death" Kickstarter launches Friday May 12th! 

A true legion of undead.

Every idea or mad scheme starts with a back story...

The first miniatures wargame I played in was an epic battle between a Renaissance skeleton army and Romans run by the notorious Alan Lucien. The miniatures were old Minifigs models from the late 70's or early 80's, with stylized Romans and a fantastic undead/skeleton army. They were possibly the first skeleton minis ever made and modeled after Hans Holbein's Dance of Death, or "Totentanz" renaissance wood block prints from the 1500’s. They weren't the best sculpts, but man - did they catch the essence of the period. Those skeleton hordes and that "Totentanz" style stuck with me like a first crush. Older than Oldhammer, my bell had been rung!

Hans Holbein's Death and the Landsknecht

I've always wanted to recreate an updated line of minis in the Totentanz style, but never had the sculpting chops to pull it off. Last year I became friends with an amazing sculptor, Drew Day Williams, who shared my passion to create a range of 28mm skeletons in the vein of Renaissance artists like Holbein, Dürer and Peter Breugel. This is how the "Triumph of Death" (or ToD for short) range of miniatures came about.

A detail from Breugel's " Triumph of Death". This is what we are making!

The goal of Triumph of Death is to create a line of Renaissance-inspired 28mm white metal undead skeletal miniatures for collectors and for use in RPGs and table top wargames. In a word, Skeleton Landsknechts!

skeleton marching open hand, with javelins and coffin lid shield

Thanks for stopping by and I hope that I've whet your appetite! 
Cheers!

Triumph of Death: Skeleton Landsknecht Pike

While working on the upcoming kickstarter, I started playing around with what other unit options could look like, and I converted a couple of javelin models into pike.

Really happy with the outcome, to the point where I'm having the javelin model remastered to be open handed instead. The hat is from an old plastic Mordheim set.

What do you think?

Triumph of Death: Carrying a Torch for You

Two officers patiently wait for the S'mores fixin's

ToD Torch Bearer

Adding to the list of command models for my upcoming Kickstarter is the new torch bearer/ standard bearer. This model is a blatent homage to the wonderful Minifigs models of yester-yore.  He'll be one of my standard bearers for my upcoming Triumph of Death minis line, and dear to my heart as an Iconic skelly.

I'm figuring on doing different color fire for unit I.D.

Taking shots in different light settings, to see what looks best.

Armored Commander

These pics are a bit over exposed. need to figure out my lighting better

Love this guys casual but in charge stance.

This stalwart gent is based upon the Holbein woodblock "Death and the knight"
After doing a couple of concepts with him holding a lance, I opted for the flamberge sweihander.

I'd love to do this as a vignette someday. Maybe a stretch goal?

My concept, from which the talented Drew Williams worked. He's a miracle worker!

  A Question of Scale

I've been getting questions about scale of the models. Here's a pretty comprehensive review with companies doing late medieval and Renaissance or other undead. If there's a mini you'd like to see scaled with, or even a full unit,  just put them in a bubble wrapped envelope and send them over to me :) As you can see below, the models work well with most all ranges, and measure 28mm to the eye similar with GW, Copplestone, Maurader, Steel Fist, etc.  I'm really excited of having them with my LAF Breugelbergers!

The goal was to have my ToD line really work with many groups

Minifigs true 25mm next to ToD. So cute!

The Breugelberger is immense, and beautiful. May just have him commanding a unit of ToD