The project I kicked off during the summer months is still in its first phases: the Age of Sigmar starter set. In short assembly is mostly done, but painting-wise my progress can be summarized be the picture below. The entire set contains 47 figures, and I’m still working on the first eight of them 🙂 But that’s ok, for me it’s a break from higher quality work. On the other hand higher quality work will be a break from this very basic painting.
Grand Master Belial of the Deathwing, a commission I recently finished. Painted very close to the official color scheme, but there was one thing I had to change: the sword. Being Finecast, the sword was very warped and didn’t look very smooth, so I replaced it with a regular terminator sword. Base is left unfinished because the customer will paint and flock it himself, to be in line with the rest of his army.
I’ve been working on a Vampire Counts commission for the past few weeks. The customer requested the figures to be mounted on display plinths, but with removable bases, something which is always fun to do 🙂
With square bases this is also quite an easy process by cutting several layers of cork plate to match the outline of the base.
The finishing was done using some flock, static grass and pigment powders. I also painted the wooden display plinths with regular Vallejo Inks. A final layer of gloss varnish still has to be applied, but it’s looking quite good already.
Scale Model Challenge 2015 was held on 10 & 11 October. For the first time it was a two day event, with workshops on Saturday and the main show on Sunday.
Due to circumstances I arrived around 14h (on Sunday) when the event was already well underway. For the past few years I always spent the entire day at Scale Model Challenge, which gives the false impression that there’s plenty of time to check everything out. With only a few hours to walk around the miniature goodness filled halls of the NH Conference Center in Veldhoven I really had to rush!
The usual combination of taking pictures & video, chatting with people and spending time shopping and checking out the painting competition entries proved very difficult due to the time constraint. I basically made a quick tour of the show with my camera, the results can be viewed below. Then I did some shopping and spent a bit more time at the painting competition. I met a lot of people underway, spending way too little time catching up on the hobby gossip. On the other hand I also missed quite a few people as well. So sorry to all of you which I have only spoken very briefly, or wasn’t able to meet at all.
When walking around the club area I noticed it was a lot quieter than the last two years. This was probably caused by the fact that there were some extra halls added. Some wargame demos together with a hosted Warmachine tournament were held in a room in the back, just like some of the RC club stands. Another thing which attributed to this was the fact that the catering area was also setup somewhere else. In a way this was good because there was more room for the crowd, but on the other hand clubs are at the heart of the sociable atmosphere of the event, so it’s better to busy.
The trader’s room didn’t change much. I bought some regular supplies: paints, wooden plinths, some new tweezers, etc. There’s plenty of choice if you’re looking for tools, miniatures or accessories.
The competition area had some layout changes as well, and while still pretty crowded I felt that the traffic of people flowed very well. Of course most of my interest went to the SF & Fantasy figure painting categories. To me they appeared to contain less entries than last year, but that could also be caused by the layout of the display. Anyway the overall level was very high and I really had some regret that I didn’t take part this year. Another trend that I noticed is that there’s less and less 28-32mm miniatures being entered. Most of the entires are larger scale and even busts. Sometimes I go to a show and completely miss out on the best of show miniature. But this year I was able to have a good at them, they were really standing out! So I managed to have a good look and multiple angled photos of these entries, which you can see below.
A way too long prize ceremony (one hour) rounded up this short but intense afternoon. Another succeeded SMC, big congratulations to the organizers to keep improving every year. For me it really felt I missed out on half of the fun, only visiting in the afternoon and not entering in the painting competition. So next year I will try to return for a full day 🙂
Below you can see a video I made, followed by some selected pictures.
If you want to see the complete set of 140 pictures, please check out one of these links:
One half of the club area:
The competition area buzzing with activity.
The fantasy & sf figure categories.
The best of show of the figure painting contest. 100% scratch built model.
Scale modeling best of show. Not the hundreds of tiny figures on the ships.
Some other highlights from the competition:
Traders:
The prize ceremony:
Today I am very happy and proud to announce my new website: corvusminiatures.com!
For the last 1-2 years I have been a bit unhappy about my little site hosted at blogspot. Although perfect for blogging, it still required some manual HTML editing here and there to add content (for example the gallery). Also, the shift to social media is still going strong, so I really should have put more time into sharing/following widgets etc. This actually kept me from blogging and instead resorting to other platforms such as Facebook to get my content out.
So instead of retrofitting the blog I decided I wanted to go for something entirely new.I decided to go for a hosted WordPress site, and also bought the corvusminiatures.com domain name. After working on the design on and off for about 6 weeks this is the result.
I migrated part of my gallery over, some of my older work can still be seen on CoolMiniOrNot. The links page still needs work, and I am looking at migrating some of the tutorials and articles over as well, but that will be done over the next few weeks, together with some tweaking here and there.
Together with the new site I have also made the decision to put more content on social media platforms. Apart from the usual Facebook and Twitter accounts, which also have quite some followers, I will also venture into new realms such as Instagram and Pinterest. Please check the icons in the top right corner or check the links page.
I am very happy that you are here with me at the start of the next chapter in the Corvus Miniatures saga, which will undoubtily be a very exciting one! Thanks again and by all means let me know what you think 🙂
Gerrie aka Corvus
