Thursday 28 February 2013

Warpunk concept

There it be.




I'll update more words later today.

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Miniatures Studio? Yes, please.

Hooray my dear readers,
It's been just over 24 hours and we already raised 405$. If we keep going at this rate we're sure to bust the fixed goal that I've set.

There's a lot to talk about so I'm going to parcel it out piece by piece. Don't worry, we're also going to be working extra double hard this month so there's going to be a lot of stuff to see.

What's awesome about Igra Miniatures Studio that I should support it?

Good question, me.
I hope to bring a new, fresh, interesting and exciting viewpoint on the cool themes that prevail in miniature wargames. My planetFallers are designed on functional principles. The idea is that they can "work" and get dirty and covered in mud as fire and explosions jostle them to and fro. They have articulated armor so they can be nimble. They carry their gear in pouches and backpacks.

Another cool concept I wish to bring to light is the fantasy Warpunk theme. Here's a concept sketch:

EDIT: Updated with a more current WIP of the sketch.


The image depicts a Gnomish War Necromancer. The Warpunk theme is a what-if scenario: What if the industrial revolution was powered by fantasy magic?
It's a merging of your classical fantasy setting with 40's and 50's military flavor.

Cyberpunk is another theme that I wish to explore. Because it's awesome.

These are just a few, but I need to be able to work to bring these to reality. So every contribution counts!

If you want to help found the studio and make a dream become reality please share the campaign with your friends. Tweet about it. Write about it in your blog and the forums you frequent. Everyone can do their part!

Oh, you can also contribute and get two cool figures and have your name eternally etched in the historical annals of miniature wargames.

CLICK HERE to get to the campaign.

Tuesday 26 February 2013

Indie Campaign GO! GO! GO!

IndieGoGo campaign is now LIVE!
I'm so excited to see what happens. Either way this is sure to be a very educational experience.
Click the link to go:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/igra-miniatures-studio-the-quickening/

The campaign is to manufacture and ship the last two miniatures that I've sculpted so I can keep working and make more awesome stuff:



Friday 22 February 2013

Finished: Cyber Punk and planetFaller

Finished! Two in one, so to speak. The 1:35 planetFaller and the 1:52 cyberpunk character.
1:52 falls within the colloquial 28mm range of scales on the higher side. Interestingly enough the first miniature I sculpted was give or take in this scale. Back then I thought it was a mistake in size but as it turns out 28mm doesn't really mean 28 mm. It means many different sizes up to around ~35mm.

The result is really nice. The character, it's features and pose are recognizable from a distance.

Here's pictures.












Wednesday 20 February 2013

Cyberpunk miniature news

This blog update is about this "28mm" cyberpunk character I'm making using Green stuff. The scale is actually 1:52.

I accidentally worked a lot faster than I had intended. I attribute it partly to my hot water technique. It used to take a long time to blend those edges and now it's just zip zap zoom (as Bill Cosby might say).








The face of a cyber punk.

He needs a little cranium implantation but otherwise I'm rather pleased with the head. The hot water is really a helpful new tool. I use it to blend the edges between putty masses at the early stages.

Incidentally, the word Cyber comes from the Greek Kybernetes  who is a "steersman" (a nautical term, I think). The meaning being a "guide or governor". Cybernetics is, loosely, a type of information theory. Cyberpunk and cyberspace the earlier forms of the adaptation of the prefix cyber!







A little Flames of War WIP here. With these PAK40s and the American command team I will have approximately equal point value opposing forces! 




Tuesday 19 February 2013

Hot. Water.

Anamnesis:
Working on a 1:35 prototype for science fiction troopers that I plan to make in "28mm" size. I'm actually intending to sculpt them in 1:52 which is 34mm for a 1.8m height person. I'm also making a 1:52 cyberpunk character and working closely with a reference image I've taken.


The planetFaller is gonna need some shoulder plates and there's a bit of work to finish the rifle. I think maybe the hands are a little thin or off balance; I'll look into it. I'm debating with myself what the shoulder plates should be like, either angular or rounded and how much they should cover.

An interesting discovery. As you know I'm working with the so called "Green Stuff" which is a bi-componental polymeric putty. It's been a little cold around here the past couple of days and the putty was extremely tough and not as sticky when freshly mixed. I assumed before that it was because the putty was old but I just got a new batch and I figured out that it behaved differently because of the cold.

I was drinking tea so I stuck the putty on the side of the mug in order to heat it which caused a remarkable change: it had become very soft, almost liquid. The surface texture was matte. I removed it from the tea cup (it left a mark) and put a piece on a disposable cup filled with hot water. The rest I simply used.

Two interesting developments from then on: I used hot water to heat my tool whenever I wanted to "weld" or blend two masses of putty together. The more liquid state of the heated putty made this a much easier task than it had been before. The other was that the putty on the cup cured at a highly increased rate; It was expected. So while heat caused the putty's chemical reaction to hasten it also made the particles flow more freely. 

It might be early for conclusions but I intend to incorporate hot water into my workflow, at least for mixing edges.








Saturday 16 February 2013

New cyberpunk character!

The rifle leaves some to be desired. It's attached to the arms. Once it solidifies I'll add some strengthening mass and the outer layer after that. I've started on a 1:52 cyberpunk character. I took some reference photographs. I think it'll help me take it to the next step.







Friday 15 February 2013

FOW American paratroops

I finished the recent batch of Flames of War dudes. This time we have the American paratroops. Two machine-gun teams, two rifleman teams, a bazooka and a mortar team. I'm missing the command team and I'll have the entire platoon strength along with the rifleman and MG teams I had completed earlier. Because the points value is high for these guys I'll need to complete a PAK40 platoon to be able to play against the Panzergrenadier platoon.

If you like the terrain you can go digging through this blog's archives to find the tutorials. ;)