Brilliant! Pt1

Every so often a project idea shoves itself into my brain and refuses to leave until I work on it. It consumes my life, where every waking moment is spent obsessing over each detail.

The ideas generally never pan out and after a week or two testing different theories out, the drive eventually goes away.

My current project was the idea of using LED lights in mini's. Since my current game is Malifaux, that meant using a crew where glowing from the inside was going to be natural. Thank God the Dark Debts boxset was made in plastic

A whole crew that revolved around spreading Brilliance, a corrupt light that the Hungering Darkness could feed off of, was the perfect crew to play around with.

Unfortunately I don't know anything about LED's or how to wire them. After several days reading various tutorials and learning about using resistors to keep the lights from burning out, etc etc...

I found this site. Not only are the lights pre-soldered for me, but they even come with the correct resistors to prevent burnout! It's even cheaper to buy 10 or more! SOLD!

They sell several different sizes, the smallest being the Nano-chip LED. The light is as small as the eye on Washington's face on a quarter. Despite the size, the lights are incredibly bright. Do not stare at them too long, otherwise you'll be seeing glowy afterimages for an hour.

I don't have any Work In Progress pictures as they seem to have vanished, but the general idea for me was very careful drilling using a hand powered drill through the feet and neck area, eventually meeting in the middle. I have a pretty good sense of location, because I generally don't miss connecting the two tunnels.

The wires on the lights are small enough that even using the smallest drill bit I had, I could string in 2-3 lights with little trouble. Of course that only really came up with some of my bigger models.

Once I had the tunnel for the wire drilled out, I carved a little groove to fit the Nano-chip LED inside, generally the chest area and spun out some cheap Fiber Optics cable to continue the journey up to the eyes.

I use the fiber optics cable for the eyes instead of trying to fit two lights inside the heads of my models. Some of them, especially the Beckoner's had incredibly tiny skulls. With the cables sticking out (like slug eyes), I could paint the whole model without worrying about covering up the eyes, and then trim the cables down to normal size.
If you look closely, you can see everyone look like humanoid slugs. :)

Time fly's when you are worked to death!

Long story short, Real Life + Lots of Work = No time for Fun.

It's been a very long two years where I've basically had to stop working on models/games for a good majority of the time. Luckily, I did manage to sneak in several projects during my rare free days and with work stabilizing, I should have a semi reliable schedule again.

A quick run down of my last couple projects and with any luck, a regularly scheduled update every other week! YAY!

 My family and I ended up moving to a small country town for a few months where a game store was a myth. So I needed a board to play on. I ended up making two back to back.

Graveyard shifts = LONG lonely days off.

 I've always wanted to try my hand at a Mining board and scrapped one together with insulation foam for all the rocky terrain and a beat up rail road set from a 2nd hand shop.
The rails are just big enough to fit a 30mm base perfectly.

 It's been a while since I worked on this, but I seem to remember using tons of cheap acrylic paint from the Dollar Store, cheap rust pigments, and a bag or two of some hobby wooden planks.

 Pigments get EVERYWHERE if you are heavy handed with them. I've never used them before and this wasn't what I expected. Don't spill it anywhere. The mess is impossible to clean up.

 I had a couple huge tubs of green grass from a friend who does not like Games Workshop terrain supplies. On this 3'x3' board I think I used up about 1/5th of a tub? A lot less than I figured would be needed.

 Just some toys my daughter used to help me show the scale of the tracks. If I play my cards right, she'll be corrupted into a gamer yet! They always say that good training starts young!

 I will not lie, I get bored painting the same style over and over again. Looking through the Wyrd forums, I came across this post that I instantly fell in love with. Immediately stealing JMGraham's style, I attempted my very poor imitation on my Seamus/Molly crew that I've been desperate to play with.

 The style is very different from anything I've ever done before and it seems to fit Malifaux so very well. I need more practice making everything blend together better and get the layers smoother, but I like my first attempt.

I got my bases from Secret Weapon Miniatures. They make some very well detailed bases and the price isn't all that bad. Check them out here.
Their pigments and washes are nice, their brushes are the best I've used, and the scenic stuff really makes a model "pop".





Painting the Avatar was incredible fun. He is massive. He has incredible personality. He is hilarious.
Even if the Avatar wasn't that great, I'd still field him, because his model is just that awesome.

Molly's crew was a blast to paint until I got to the Crooligans. I'm confused, because I figured painting undead ghost kids would have been fun, but turned out to be a pain in the neck instead.

Rogue Necromancy was my reward for not going insane after the 3 that came in the boxset. Totally worth the frustration!



I also managed to get a swamp board completed, but I seem to have lost my pictures on that project. Not sure where I stuck them, but I'll try to get a few new pics snapped when I have some free time.
I used some water effects from Woodland Scenic and not only are they incredibly expensive, but the stuff is terrible. Not only did it never dry solidly, even a year later, but over time bubbles started forming on the surface.
It would look awesome except when you touch a bubble, it collapses on itself and looks like a broken plastic dome. Multiply that over a thousand all over the board. BLAH.

Finally, something I needed to do after 80hr weeks, 6 weeks straight, no days off.

I'm sure I would have axed someone if I hadn't vented in the most fun way possible.

(Thank God for children bathroom crayons!)