Semi-Final Update

For those who haven't checked here before, here's the story (which will be mostly gibberish to those not already familiar with Warhammer Fantasy):
My name is Eric McKee, or Darkblood Skullpulper on the Iron Fist League Message Forum. 6 weeks prior to the 2007 Vegas Warhammer GT, I decided to scratch-build a brand new army and use it there. It was a near thing, but I got everything built and painted to a reasonable standard in that time. I tried to keep a blog while it was going on to document the effort, but I really needed every motivated moment to work on the army. Past blog entries talk about the process a bit, but I've probably ruined all of the links to pics by now. This post is intended to give a few brief highlights and stray thoughts, and provide links to folders containing all of the in-process photos that survived, as well as the semi-finished products. I do plan to have another blitz of painting and refinement of the conversion work this Fall, but for now I'm taking it easy.

Take some time to click and then scroll through and you'll see the conversion progress, at least for some units.
The army:
Warlord on Wyvernsquig - only one opponant in 5 got confused as to what this represented and forgot it could fly. I plan to add teeny tiny manga-style wings, plus kit out the Warboss better.
Goblin Hero on Cave Squig - I need to work on the stippling for the skin of all of the monsters with lots of flat surfaces, the effect is way too subtle now to be seen from further than 6 inches.
Goblin Hero on Spider - I cheated and already had this model fully built and mostly painted. I wanted hair, but didn't have time to experiment when my first attempt failed miserably.
Trollsquigs - I think these are my favorite models for sheer goofiness. The shaman leading them is attempting to coax them along with dwarf heads that he's collected. I never could figure out what to do with that Gorkamorka scrap prospector character, and I think this came out well.
Squiggiant - Multiple people have commented on his resemblance to a large fruit. Rolls of fat are not easy to do on a ball-shaped monster...
Wolfsquigs - I really like the way the skin colors jump out on these guys. The riders still need a good bit of work.
Spider Riders - Probably the fastest unit I've ever painted. 10 cavalry models in 3 or 4 hours, I forget which, but that's amazingly fast for me. They too could use some clean-up, but look really nice from a distance.
Boarsquigs - Probably the squiggiest of my conversions, when the head and tail are removed from plastic cold ones, you are really just left with a round shape on legs. I tried to give the orcs squig-hide shields, but I don't think anyone picked up on it.
Boarsquig Chariot - pity the older cold ones that I used on the boarsquig unit didn't fit into the chariot frame, as I am not nearly as fond of the way these boarsquigs came out. The chariot was one of the last things I finished, and has almost no detail work.
Squig Herd - standard squigs from 4th edition Warhammer. I even used the old prodder models, which used to go on a cavalry base. I had to position some of the squigs almost all the way off their base in order to get the prodders into the unit.
Squig Hoppers - All are very different, and I think that worked out OK, though the one goblin not being thrown loose was probably a bad call and I should replace him.
Squiglings - Took some pebbles from my parking lot, added some eyes and legs, and called it done. I wish I still had a pre-painted pic.

So there it is. I have every intention of picking these up again in a few months to get the paint quality higher, maybe sand down a few rough edges (especially the eyeballs), and try for some better color contrast on the big critters. Maybe I'll even post to the blog after I do it.

A gripe

By the way, I'm a little miffed that GW didn't bother to take any shots of the army for the website or White Dwarf. I got lots of very happy comments from lots of folks, and many random bystanders took the time to get photos of the squigs, but no love from The Man. I shouldn't be surprised, though, since most of the GW bits I used were all from older versions and the biggest models were pure green stuff...

End of the blog?

Well, mission accomplished, mostly. I got to Las Vegas with an army I was mostly happy with and had some fun playing it. Four votes for Players' Choice was a good bit less than I'd hoped for, but my army was way way way in the back for the first round when most people were checking out the various armies. Plus, there were three or four stunningly good paint jobs out there, so if the vote was for pure appearance rather than theme, I wasn't even in the same class.

10th place overall (out of 130?) was also a lot better than I'd expected. I'm thinking now that I'll play this same list in Baltimore for the GT, though not Games Day. Maybe I'll try to add some more painting detail or even remodel some of the sloppier modelling work. Heck, I've got 4 months, so I should be able to start and finish a brand new army by then, right? No.

No pics in the forseeable future, I'm afraid. My internet remains broken and Cox has proven itself to be wholely uninterested in this fact. I'm looking to move, so it might be a month before final photos go up.

My internet! It's broke!

Home connection has been gone for 3 days now, so no new pics, since I'm not going to mess with those from work. I'm down to all touch-up and detail work, except for the heroes, who will probably take me most of tomorrow to finish. It'll be down to the wire, but only with regard to quality of the artwork. Everything will be painted, but there may be some blotchiness.

On Monday I got a chance to field test the army! I may have a chance to not go 0-5! There were a couple of points during the game where things could ahve swung my way with a little bit of luck. Not even insanely unlikely luck, but just some ordinary slightly-above-average luck could have done it. Of course, I was playing a fairly balanced list which should not at all be indicative of what I'll face in the GT. Maybe as I sink lower and lower into the loser's bracket, I'll find some kindred souls with other gimmicky or silly armies...

Probably won't post again before the tourney, but there will definitely be pics after this is all done with.

A new hope

Hey! It looks like I can do fast & nasty if I really put my mind to it. The models have a lot to do with it - the 7th ed. spiders are very forgiving and have lots of well-defined ridges and texture that lets me blow right through the painting. Probably 5 minutes for the spider (post-wash) and 10 for the gobbo (post green wash on skin). With any luck I'll get all the spiders done today plus the savage orcs and trolls.

5...

And, returning to a recurrent theme - I cannot seem to paint fast. 8 hours and counting just wokring on the wolfsquig riders. Still a good bt of touch-up and highlights to apply, but I just have to move on. I've got "centerpiece" models I haven't even put a basecoat on yet. Urghh. This was supposed to be fun, right?

Cool shield design anyway, right?

Interesting job ahead

So, I had some extra watered chestnut ink from working on the spiders today, and decided to get a better idea of what I'll be dealing with on the trollsquigs. Man, that's some busy skin texture. I originally had a smooth putty surface meeting the rough gravel of the body, and decided to add some wrinkles to the smooth part and smooth bits to the rough part... I think I've got convincing wrinkles on the troll above, but the other two it doesn't blend as well and looks more like boils or some other sort of growth on the skin. Since these are supposed to be river trollsquigs, I wonder if I should try to paint it as pondscum/seaweed. Again, this could be a huge time-sink with my deadline looming, but rather than fiddle with the modelling, I'm inclined to work with what I've got.

6...

Well, after the doll-hair fiasco, I did still manager to get in a couple hours of painting and finished up the "squig herders" that I had base coated earlier in the week. Four of them are the old two man teams that used to be on cav bases, but end up taking almost three gobbo bases. Luckily, I checked this out early in the process and repositioned a couple of the squigs so that each appears to have almost wandered completely of of his base. It makes them all fit, though.

51% done.

A questionable idea pursued in lieu of progress

The title pretty much says it all. Feeling better because of the impending 3 day weekend, I decided that my giant spider REALLY would look cool with some tarantula-ish hair. It probably would, but synthetic curly doll hair isn't the way to get there.

7...

One week to go.

Hey, two comments so far, both apparently from completely random strangers who read random blogs for kicks. And only one pornographic one! Nice to see such support from my gaming group.

Current status: 43% finished. Looks like I'll be taking off from work on Memorial Day after all.

Check out the scratch built squig hoppers. Not the best sculpting - basically take a rock and add legs and teeth. It works better on the squiglings since they are so small that you can't see the flaws. Plus, these were the last things I sculpted, and was starting to feel the time crush.

















I did the goblins much differently from my normal style. Besides being much more fast and nasty, I forwent my olive drab skin tone and white eyes, and instead went with scorpion green highlights and the GW standard yellow eyes and red pupils. I managed the high contrast that I was looking for, though I do hope people look more at the funny models instead of looking at the technical skill behind the paint job...





















OK, gotta fix the border on those fingers before I go to bed... I'll resist the temptation to touch up and retake the pic...

11 days to go

I really can' t decide whether or not my feeling of impending doom is justified or not. Still plenty of time, in theory, but I also was extremely underproductive this weekend. Saturday I mostly goofed off and so had to spend 10 hours today making up for lost time. My hand is one big cramp.

In any conversation regarding the slowest painters of all time, surely my name must be thrown into the mix somewhere. Friday was a couple of hours of base coating the squig mounts, Saturday I drybrushed a little, so Sunday was nothing but the detail work. Still not done. They are close, and should be final by tomorrow, but that's still pretty far behind where I thought I'd be by now.

On the bright side, if we count these as done, that gives me 33 out of 100 complete. Maybe I'll end up with a presentable army after all...

2 weeks to go

And so the clock keeps ticking down... I'll be staining all the teeth and finishing up the bases for everything at once, but otherwise these guys are done. Not bad, not great, but acceptable in the time span allotted. All 12 squigs for the herd are now painted, so that's almost 20% of my 66 model army! Unfortunately, 32 of the models are mounted, and there are some big ol' critters with a lot of real estate to get painted yet to go. More realistically, I'm at 10% done now.

This weekend, I'm gettin' squiggly.

Day 23 or so

Oh yeah, I can talk a good game. Yup. 3 hours painting. Yield: 6 squigs.

Damn, and they aren't even as detailed as I'd like... they're not bad, and certainly better than my lousy photo skills can do credit to, but still not super detailed. My own fault I guess for deciding to have a slightly different shade on each squig. I think for the wolfsquigs and boarsquigs, I'm going to have to go assembly line if I want to have any hope of a fully painted army.

Just a little work today. Looks like all it takes to offset the light shades of the ballast is some static grass. Not that I really need the ballast, since I used spackling for most of the bases. Anyway, I think the basing color scheme is set.

I'm going to get away from my normal painting style, mostly because one model at a time and 1-2 hours per infantryman just won't cut it. Besides, I tend to use very subdued naturalistic shading that looks really nice from 8 inches away, but very murky at 4 feet. I've won a few painting contests, but regularly score in the middle range for painting scores at tourneys. So, for both fast painting and high contrast/attention grabbing effect, here's what I'm going with:














I suppose the situation could still be classified as dire, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the coming weekend. Don't we have some sort of holiday coming up, too? Labor Day or Memorial Day or some such?

Day 19

Still haven't gotten serious about painting, but I'm close. Doesn't help that my Blazing Orange is dried out and the red ink has that weird effect when ink goes bad where it wicks to the top of every surface rather than hitting the crevices... Looks like I can't replace these for a couple more days; lame-assed Compleat Strategist closes at 7 every day except for Wednesday. They'll probably be out of the paint I need anyway.

Anyway, here's the solution to yeterday's dilemma:

2/3 eye and 1/3 lid seems to work really well, and I think I can do this pretty consistently on all but a few of the models.


I did mess with some colors for the bases... I really wanted to use the "ballast" I've had sitting around for years, but it may be too close to the squig color to give me the effect I want. Check out what I mean below.. Oh, and don't worry, that's a fast and nasty paint job on the squiglings just to get an idea what I'm working with. I didn't post any squigling pics before, basically because they are just rocks with eyes and legs.

Hmm. The pics are awfully small, but it's late and I'm lazy.

Day 18

Good/bad use of the weekend time. I put in somthing like 10 hours finishing up all of the modelling, but as a result, didn't much feel like painting on Sunday. I did get the stuff primed, and messed around with some color palates and such.

I could probably use some feedback on one item: how to paint the eyeballs. I can either go for lidded, or just a big eyeball sitting on top of the head. The former (lid) has a little more realistic look, and gets me around the fact that both my orc on wyvern and goblin on cave squig are resting their boots on the back of the mount's eyeballs. On the other hand, the big uncovered eyeball just looks cooler, never mind the realism. Extra shading might help the lidded look, but I didn't model an any eyelids, so the painted on look is going to look kinda fake on close inspection...

So tell me, is it just me, or is the lidless look so much better that I should just ignore the realism?

Pretty soon, I'm gonna have to start some sort of countdown. 2 weekends to go - I wonder if that is time enough, or if I'll need to take a sick day or two from work...

Day 14 or so

Busy weekend, and not nearly enough of it was devoted to squigs. So, still no primer, but I did get all of the O&G riders trimmed and ready to prime. I still need to do touch-up and smoothing on the various squigs, but that's not nearly as much fun as the first stages, so I worked on the big stuff instead.
The wyvernsquig is the closest to done. The spots and horns on the back make it look like more than just a blob, but it still needs to be smoothed out.
The great cave squig looks awfully clamlike from the front, but I'm hoping to flesh out with some texture on the skin.
The giant squiggiant is big - check it out next to a regular squig. Rolls of fat are very hard to make look good, and I'm thinking that my attempts may end up looking more like ridges than fat, but again, at least it'll provide texture. Note the prehensile tongue. Since giants are prone to picking up things at inopportune times, I decided this one would need some way to do so...
The trollsquigs don't look nearly as funny with noses and lips. Something's not quite clicking here; maybe I just need bigger noses.

This weekend finally I will neither be working or travelling out of town, so there should be much that I can do. The new hopeful timeline: get everything modelled by the end of Saturday, prime and begin painting on Sunday. That still leaves 2 1/2 weeks for painting...

No more in-process photos for a while. I might post when the big guys get all the way modelled, but otherwise, I'm holding off until I've at least got basecoat plus inks on.

Changed the blog to allow annonymous comments, but still can't figure out how to make links pop up in a new screen rather than taking the user directly there. Too much to do...

Day 9

Well, I didn't slack yesterday; my camera batteries died on me. Really, though, two plus hours of putting spots on the wolfsquigs wasn't that photo-worthy in any case. Still, that bit is done now and I'm pretty much down to smoothing the green stuff, basing and priming. Given my time frame, I'm hoping to get these to a rough sort of evenness, and figure that the painting scheme will have to cover a lot of the flaws.

Much like the wolves, I decided that the boarsquigs had to lose the tails. I was pretty tempted to add big ol' ass-cheeks, but instead opted for a smooth continuation of the general ball shape.

The boar squigs are nearing completion as well, with only one lacking a full face, because I decided that one needed a tongue. I might need to go back and adapt a couple of wolves as well.

I also added lips to most of the models. It seems to add some character, and occasionally gave me a jowly look as well.

Tomorrow it's down to trimming the mold lines off the spiders and all of the various riders, and I hope to throw together a fast conversion of a Gorkamorka scrap prospector into a savage shaman. His unenviable task will be to use his mighty leadership 7 to keep the trollsquigs in line... Anyway, probably no new pics for a while until I make some progress on building the three big models.

Day 5

Back from the Colonial now, which was great. I won a gaming table. It's huge and I have no space, but it's pretty good-looking.

Only worked on the squigs for a short while - decided that the tails had to go on the wolfsquigs, and that I really should work on covering the fur. The hardly looks like wolves at all anymore.

Things remain on the dire side, though. My new self-imposed deadline is to have the boars and wolves done by the end of next weekend and get them and the plastic spiders at least primed.

Day 3

The theme of the day is cheating...
Cheat #1: I'm blogging at work. I probably shouldn't do that.
Cheat #2: I didn't do any work on the army yesterday (too busy gluing shields and making all my bases match for the Colonial GT this weekend), but did do some after my last post, so I'll post those pics instead. Just messing around with the boarsquig design, only did these 4.
Cheat #3: I'm not going all squig, but will instead cut corners and use some spider riders out of the 7th ed box.
Cheat #4: The giant spider that my lucky little goblin BSB gets to ride... well it's not only built already, but painted as well. It's made of coathanger and cork, so it fits the theme as far as that goes. I'm definitely using it, the only question is whether or not I should try to incorporate this somewhat creepy craft supply item I picked up.
Cheat #5: Only a potential cheat so far, but if I'm seriously running out of time, I'll be using a Forgeworld spiny beast as my great cave squig. I was hoping to use this list once or twice and then sell on Ebay, but that will definitely not be the case if I have to use my FW beast.

Must...finish...work...

Day one

OK, it's really Day 4 from the start of the conversion process, and something like Day 20 from the time I officially decided to do this. I'm still in the process of learning this thing, and realize that my time would be better spent actually working on my squigs than blogging about it.

Here's the skinny - I've got until June 1 to whip up an entire army from scratch, using the theme of everything squiggly. All orc and goblin units are to be replaced by big ol' squig proxies. 66 models in all, and I've already decided to break my one rule and use the spiders from the 7th ed box set as spiders rather than try to make some spider-squigs. I'll post more about the list later, but for now I'm going to try to post some pictures of my very first efforts. Currently, I'm sitting about about 5% of modelling done, 0% painting done. Things are dire.

Here's the starting point for the wolfsquigs and the initial puttying and further more puttying.

Here's the starting point for the boarsquigs. Unfortunately, the boar squig chariot will not fit the large hind end of those fellas, so I had to use a different version of the cold one for chariot steeds.

The trollsquigs are going to be hilarious, I hope. I'd love to get the rest of the model to mimic the gravel texture. That 2-part plumbers putty sets REAL fast. Three minutes or so... not a lot of room for finesse work. Luckily, it hardens solid as a rock.

For the great cave squig and squiggiant I tried some different plumbers putty. It's been 48 hours and no sign of setting yet. Plan B may launch soonish. Too bad - the negative impression of the Elmer's glue bottle makes for a really funny mouth.

OK. 22 minutes from the time I started uploading the pictures to this final line, and that includes a software install. Dunno if I'll keep this up throughout the process, but the odds are only slightly worse than those for having this army turn out as cool as the version in my head.

Edit Hmm. The links to my photos just open the whole catalog for anyone to view - good thing I have no naughty images in there. Or maybe it's just sad that I have no naughty images to post. Anyway, I'm leaving things as is for now, and will learn better tricks on another day.