Optimus Prime--28mm

"I am Optimus Prime"
-Optimus Prime (duh)

Optimus is the best Transformer ever; the one character that is unarguably a pop-culture icon and tremendous character, and not just a toy. If I could pick a fictional character to be president, it would be Optimus.

Gushing concluded, then, let's look at the figure.

The figure chosen is the Optimus Prime figure I showed off last post.
As noted in that post, there wasn't a lot of modifications necessary to make the figure look like the iconic character: just some modifications to the sword, the faceplate, and then filling up the screw holes in the body.



The tones I chose were washed out to demonstrate Prime's age and experience. Prime has always struck me as a very old and very sad character, being the leader of the heros' never-ending grind against an unstoppable evil in a several-million year war. Thus, the reds are dark, the blues are greyed, and both are scratched up with silver.



Even the eyes turned out fairly sad looking... I feel like it caught the character I was going for.



His army card is here (excuse the pink markings on the left. You'd just cut that off when printed.)



Well, what do you think? Penny for your thoughts, Autobots?

-BG

Bumblebee--28mm Conversion

"My name... is... Bumblebee,"
-B-127, Bumblebee Movie

Bumblebee reignited my interest in the Transformers franchise. While I have always had some interest or other in the franchise, having owned comics and toys as a boy, I always steered clear of the films despite my interest in them due to their rancid reputation and contradictory lore.

All of that changed with this new prequel/reboot however, which has become one of my favorite films this year, being just loaded with heart.

As a result, while I'll no doubt eventually do a Bumblebee as a Camaro in a more classic look, I wanted a figure that really caught my emotions coming out of that film the second time.



The figure converted was a broken Major Q-10 on a custom 40mm baseplate. I used greenstuff to sculpt on wheels, fenders, and the face mask as well as other small details. Charlie on the other hand is a SceneARama civilian modified to look more like the character from the film and to stand just a liiiiiiitle bit shorter (she was kinda in Bumblebee's spotlight before.)

The film was so motivating to me--after coming out of a flu that really sapped the energy out of my hobby--that I just NEEDED to make a figure, but I couldn't find a cake topper or happy meal that got the gist across (which is what I've done for my other attempts at transformers characters.) I feel like America is in trouble when a movie about the most marketable toy in a line of marketable toys doesn't have enough merch for me to buy!

I've never had a problem converting figures with beards and hair and fur and even robes via green stuff in the past, but metal is a whole other animal. I've only recently felt comfortable making swords for a separate project. Thus, it was truly daunting to add these metallic bits. However, with a whole lot of water (and some plastic bits for the front bumper piece) I created some panels that look like the belong on the character.

I've gotten mixed reviews from the guys in my gaming group about Charlie's inclusion on the baseplate, so I figured I'd have to explain my logic a bit.

Bumblebee since his inception has been the humans' friend on a personal level. From Spike to Sam to Sari to Charlie, Bumblebee has always been the personal pal of the humans, and that's the element of the character that Bumblebee zeroes in on. Thus, in a game, I get the complaint that it looks awkward for Bumblebee to be hovering over this human girl. However, to me that relationship was what made the movie work, and if I wanted to capture that feeling, I had to have Charlie incorporated.

Also, here is his Army Card.



And that's Bumblebee! What do you think of the little guy and also, what do you think of this post, as it is more in depth than what I'd normally do for a figure?

-BG

Logan--Heroclix Repaint

"I'm the best there is at what I do."
-Wolverine

Wolverine is not a superhero that I grew up with, but is one that is fast becoming a favorite of mine. After binging Wolverine: The Long Night, I cracked out my paints and snatched my favorite Wolverine heroclix sculpt for some miniature action! I'm more than a little bit pleased with the result.



Being inspired by The Long Night, I wanted to go for a more natural 'Logan' look rather than a superhuman 'Wolverine' look.



I'm very pleased with the blood effects on the shirt/claws. I usually avoid blood effects on minis. Something about it just feels sort of tacky and gory. However, I think it suggests the savagery of Logan,  as well as his stamina, and I think the finished product still maintains a decently natural look.



I also added a little log on the baseplate, to accentuate Logan's connection with the natural world and with the world of animals.

So there you have it! Personally, this might be my favorite Super Hero repaint that I've done, but what do you guys think?

Thanos and Spider-Man Heroclix/scape Repaint

"Mr Stark, I don't feel so good."
-Spider-Man, Infinity War

Two new superhero repaints for your viewing pleasure!

First up is Thanos, a repaint of the 'scape figure. I wanted to add more metallic gold than the original figure and accent the purple more to remind me more of how the character appears in the MCU before he removes his armor and goes into casual friday mode on our heroes.


Next up is a repaint/conversion of a Spider-Man heroclix into his sick new PS4 costume. The PS4 costume isn't super different from the classic costume, so conversion was simple: a little green stuff around the ankles, and a little padding on the knuckles, with a little extension to the spider on his back to complete the look. The rest was up to white paint to differentiate him from the classic costume, and I'm fairly pleased with the result.


Don't snap your fingers!


So what do you all think? Sound off in the comments below!

Indiana Jones 32mm

"For fortune and glory,"
-Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones, and as a huge fan of the adventure genre, Indiana had to be a character I'd handle. However, finding a specific miniature for the character proved to be a hassle, seeing as though I wanted him to be in scale with the other Heroclix figures that I've repainted rather than in a strict 28mm scale. After some digging, however, I figured the best place to find a fedora is on a cowboy! This figure is a western figure from Black Scorpion, with a few modifications that made him turn out pretty Indiana-ish if you ask me.
Here is is, front and back, on some raiding adventure. Note the R2-D2 hieroglyphics on the base...


Not happy with the bullets on his belt, but I guess you can't win them all, Otherwise, a little greenstuff made for a pretty convincing whip and satchel.

And that's Indiana! Sound off in the comments if you like the choice in mini or if you've found a better one that fits the scale!

Wild West Terrain Gunsmith

Here is the gunsmith's shop, all painted and pretty! I decided red would be a sufficiently aggressive color for the birthplace of every firearm in town!

The shop is simply 'Dziubek and Sons,' a nod to my and my brother's surname. I'm also very pleased with the oxidation details on the copper sign.

Not at all happy with the windows, but it has given me an idea of what to do better in the future.

A few wanted posters adorn the back. It looks a little like barn from the back.

Oh look! The circus is in town!

And a shot of the corrugated metal roof. You can't see it well in the picture, but there is a little picture of a wild west gunsmith on the inside so you're not looking into an abyss when you look through the door.

Penny for your thoughts, pilgrim.

Wild West Terrain WIP

Going back to some Heroscape stuff, I wanted to get started on an old west town along the lines of my pirate town made last year. Here's some wip shots of the Gunsmith shop.

The structure is a simple arts and craft style build: popsicle sticks on cardboard.

The sign is made out of cereal box cardboard, but honestly it looks so rough I've already covered it during the painting process with a new sign.

The corrugated sheet metal of the roof is just corrugated cardboard with the surface removed and some wet paint to smooth down rough edges.

A penny for your thoughts, pilgrim?

The Pirate Project 3--Mr. Gibbs

"Mr. Gibbs, you may throw my hat. Now go and get it."
                                          -Jack Sparrow, At Worlds End

So here's an actual named character: the ones the Pirates screenwriters refer to as the "beacon of hope for humanity," Mr. Joshamee Gibbs.

It's hard to hate Gibbs. Gibbs appears in every movie, and never betrays anyone ever. He's the only guy you can really count on in a film series flooded with back-stabbery.

Now, perhaps it's odd that the first character I'm showing off is Gibbs of all people instead of... ya know... Jack.

I have a design and Army Card for Jack... but alas, the figure is in the mail still! Gibbs is a figure I already had... a Black Scorpion Pirate.

So here he is! Mr. Gibbs!




And here is the Army Card for Gibbs. His usefulness is as a First Mate to spur on your crew... and he does that very well!



So what do y'all think!? Sound off in the comments below!

The Pirates Project 1

"I have no say in it, Mr. Gibbs. It's a Pirate's life for me, savvy?"

-Jack Sparrow, On Stranger Tides


While work is still being done on the BoTF Project, another project has been launched: The Pirates Project!

The goal of the Pirates Project is to make a variety of characters and terrain (which I will sneak in with my characters or the sake of keeping things condensed, if this is alright with our mods) from the Golden age of Piracy, namely as represented in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (of which I am an avid and slightly ashamed fan XD) While there will be a few characters and such from other pirates lores, my plan is to focus on Pirates of the Caribbean (savvy?)

With that lengthy intro, allow me to show you our buccaneer squad characters and the board we have set up for them!

The figures we used for our buccaneers are Black Scorpion miniatures (as will be most of the pirates ya see.) They are about two millimeters short (being 32 instead of 34) essentially a heroic 28mm but they do the job nicely and are really beautiful resin (I believe?) sculpts.

These are of course a common squad that could be assigned to any pirate crew, although one of them just happens to look exactly like Mr. Cotton, the toungless pirate of the Black Pearl.

The Arrrrmy Card is a square (we’ve switched to all squares for our customs about a year ago.)

A simple but effective batch of bad eggs, wouldn’t you agree?

Captain America--Repaint

"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- No, YOU move."

                                                                                         -Captain America, Civil War: The Amazing Spider-Man

Here is a Captain America figure I painted up for Heroscape. 

Captain America has always been a favorite of mine. His WWII roots make him all the cooler in my eyes, and his throwback stories are sometimes the best ones in that respect.

We have some big plans with Super Heroes here at the Fellowship, but I personally have found from a hobbyist's perspective it's just WAY too hard to copy Hasbro's machine paint jobs, baseplates, or cards. So, we're starting from scratch: new style, new methods, same Scaping ;)

Captain America from the front

The Figure is a straight repaint of the Horoscope original (and not a terribly complicated repaint.) The baseplate is cardboard with dollarstore gravel flocking over part of it to serve as the road.

Cap from the back

One thing I tried to do differently with the figure, however. For example, I shot for a more muted, 'Old Glory' color scheme rather than the popsicle red white and blue the original figure had. Additionally, as a nod to the movies/modern costumes, the white on the shield is replaced with metallic silver, and is covered in dings and scratches showing it's 75 some years of use.

'Murica

Pose for maximum patriotism (even if it is a blurry shot.)

The Good Captain's Card

We've developed a whole new Card for super heroes now as you can see. It's the same heroscape design on a new, more easily replicated square card. Cap looks about American as it gets... leaping right out of the panel with the constitution in the background. You can almost hear the eagles screaming... or at least those fake red hawk things we were all told were eagles.

So what do you think? Is our new Cap setting a good precedent for our more outlandish super customs? 

-BG

Mos Eisley Spaceport--Custom Star Wars Scape Terrain, from Jek the Amigo

"If there's a bright center to the universe, then you're on the planet that it's farthest from."
                                                                                                    -Luke Skywalker, A New Hope

To begin, here is some custom terrain I cooked up for the Heroscape system. Herein I display some neat Mos Eisley Terrain I put together to go with custom Star Wars units for the game.


I wanted to create a nice set of terrain for the Star Wars customs I was intending to make, and decided that there was no better place in the entire Star Wars canon to set up on than the hive of scum and villainy.

Ben Kenobi goes wandering through the Jundland Wastes in an epic quest for Blue Milk, or possibly Jawa Juice. The rocks were from a plastic animal bucket that my Church was so kind as to let me keep when we were finished using it at Sunday School (where I serve.)
I based the rocks in white primer--since the paint just wouldn't hold to the rubbery plastic--and then used a couple drybrushes and a few shading lines to get the desired effect. Using card board for the base and dirt from the side of my road for Tatooine sands, I found myself very happy with the result.
Maybe one day I'll make a set with the white Sandpeople runes on it, like we see in the newest Battlefront game.
 
But gasp! The Stormtroopers ALSO want Blue Milk, and decide to kill Ben to get it.

Ben runs into the spaceport and the troopers run after.
I was very pleased with how the main Mos Eisley building--a used droid shop that presumably has fairer deals than those ripoff Jawas--turned out. Using a variety of low budget supplies--a small cardboard box my miniatures came in, a half of a Styrofoam ball for the roof, paper mached in regular white paper and based the same way I did my rocks, I made an appropriate hideaway for my scum and villainy figures :)

Ben holds his ground!
The door was a plastic Sci-Fi platform kit I picked up many years ago. To get the signature round Mos Eisley door, I took a paper, folded it in half, cut it in a half oval (to make it perfectly symmetrical) and then glued it over the plastic piece and blended it in with the wall. Worked like a charm if you asked me!
The sign above the door is actually a mutagen canister from a TMNT busy books set (back before they made Heroclix as the best alternative for TMNT Heroscape characters) and it says 'droid' in Aurebesh on it.
The attena and generater thingy are pieces from some knock-off lego sets.

Heavy Stormtroopers place their gunners on the roof.
While I didn't want to ruin the asthetic with hexagons, I consider the roof totally playable: just watch where the figures are placed in comparison to the rest of the board!

Ben hops atop a power generator to fight his way to victory!
This was made from more of those plastic Sci-Fi platform kit pieces. I don't remember the gent who dug these up on Heroscapers so many years ago... but they're real nice for Star Wars stuff!!!

Ben is chased to the Munitions Tower.
The tower is made the same way as the shop, only with a salt can rather than a box.
The door is cardstock rather than plastic, as I couldn't get the plastic to curve (and didn't want to waste it. I am, after all, broke!)
It reminded me so heavily of a munitions tower I saw while I was in historic James Town that I wrote the word 'ammo' in Aurebesh on the side. I foresee plenty of Rebel weapons raid scenarios in the future :D

Then Jack Sparrow comes by and kills them all by accident. -_-
But seriously, here is a few Falcon's eye views of the spaceport.

What do you think!? Sound off in the comments below!
It was very fun making terrain that--as far as I know--only one other Heroscaper attempted (Grishnakh) and he did it a very different way. I'm happy with the finished result, but what do you all think? What else does my hive of scum and villainy need? Thanks!

-BG