Tuesday 19 December 2023

Prompt : : :

 Just for fun. 

 Generate some images of a hobbyist painting wargaming miniatures in a caricature style





Could be worse. Has trouble rendering small faces but the overall impression of the figures is fairly decent.

Create an image of a master miniature painter, building a diorama.





Much better. The first in the batch is accidentaly meta.

Created with Microsoft Copilot.


~J~


Thursday 5 October 2023

GW & Plastic Waste, Part 6b - Single Use Plastic

I started writing this draft back in January, so predating the sprue collection scheme now running in GW stores. Good news then, in principle. Now that this critique is largely moot, in future I might write about using alternatives to fossil fuel plastics for mini manufacture. 

***

Government announces widespread ban on single use plastic. Rare and uncommonly good piece of good news from this wretched government.

But let's consider what defines 'single use' in the context of a Games Workshop plastic sprue.

Obviously, the miniature on a sprue is far from being a single use object. 

A standard Necromunda gang box has two identical frames, and makes for a perfect illustration.
So consider the Delaque ganger sprues below...



A sprue has one job - to safely harbour model parts until it gets into a customers hands. A sprue really doesn't have to be like this, at all. 

***

A sprue can be so much more than this to a hobbyist, but change is hard, and people often don't like change. 

~J~

(5/10/23)

Friday 9 December 2022

McDeath, part 4: first dress rehearsal

 It's late, I'm bored, I can't watch anything on streaming because my mobile data speed is utter shite. 

So here we have a field rehearsal on a piece of wood from my bro's workshop. I was prevaricating between 10 or 12 inches, in the end my dad just pulled a sheet of offcut and oh look it's 11 inches wide. Choice made and it split the difference. 

What now. An electric drill so I can pin together the Dart mini. Buggered if I ever do that unpowered ever again. I need an alternate Chaos Hound so I can perform a head swap. I need to fashion a Quicksure. I've been studying late 80's multi-part knights, and I think they will do. I need more fighters for the good guys. I have some dwarfs to add, but matching the Goodwin style is challenging, and I might include some Asgard barbarians. Just a few more running orcs, but lots of orc casualties to litter the foreground.



There is no suggestion that Banquo is a'reddy deed going by the scenario book. I have a mind to have him as a ghost in the background.

~J~



Thursday 22 September 2022

McDeath, part 3: Klinty, or how we got Treebeard all wrong

Project diary... 

Before I settle on a base size, first I need to map out the positions of the central protagonists. I am deconstructing a 2-D painting, so I need to have a sweet spot, a perfect viewing angle that most closely reassembles the John Blanche painting with the miniatures. My chosen angle is 30°, seen roughly by the line of sight of my phone lens below...


Now I have a rough map of positions, the next step in planning is deciding just how much battle is going on behind the cast. That is for the next post.

Now I want to talk about this fellow below. Klinty, aka Treebeard from Citadel's original foray into Lord of the Rings licensing, has always been put together wrong in every image I've seen in print. I had this before but sold it years ago, and I had assembled it as per the original catalog pic. I think pretty much everyone did the same. After stripping the paint and breaking up this new one, I looked at it with new eyes. 

I didn't notice anything until I had cleared away some residual milliput from the recessess of his feet. Then it was crystal clear that Treebeard is walking, the foot of his left leg is planting a step. The arms have some leeway (i.e. rotation), but it looked correct to have his right arm reaching out, the head lines up with the direction of the step. With this pose I have much less work to do to match the painting. 

~J~