Sunday, March 9th, 2008

This morning I visted The West Midlands Military Show or WMMS at Aldersley Leisure Village Wolverhampton. I arrived just before 10.00 - opening time, and was lucky enough to secure a parking place in the main carpark, something I had not been able to do on two previous visits.

The show was very well attended and I enjoyed about two hours walking around the hall and window-shopping with the traders as well as checking out all the exhibition and participation games.

I purchased the latest copy of No Quarter - the Privateer Press magazine (I enjoy the modelling and painting articles, but do not 'collect any factions"), a couple of old Tamiya modelling magazines, one D&D Miniature (from the CMG - a six armed ape creature), one figure from Flashing Blades (a 40mm Greek Hopolite, which I will modify for my 40mm Flash Gordon collection) and a box of 40mm figures from Graven Images that was reduced. Not a huge spend - only 20 - 25 UK pounds in total and not even a long visit, but OK for me as I had to be back for lunch.

Tony

Flintloque figures and themed terrain

This evening I have posted some more examples of my Flintloque figure collection and the scratch built terrain I have built to support them.

The first photo shows a scratch built house that I built some time ago. I had tried to see just how much detail I could build in to a model and based the house on another model made by the Spanish company Andreas in 1/32nd scale. The model is constructed on a foam board base and uses a wide range of materials, balsa, Das modelling clay, plastic sprue, carved stones and individual tiles made from small plastic tubes.

The figures show 'Old Nosey' consulting with his most trusted adviseres prior to a battle.

This photos shows a Spanish themed house, again constructed over foam board and covered with Das modelling clay. The window and door detail is made from matchsticks.

The figures show a young officer arguing with a cook that is a modified Obidiah and based on the cook from the TV series Gormengast. I had intended to model a whole host of characters from the series, but to date have only completed three.

The building (only partly shown) is a well housing based on a Hovels resin building, but in this case made from blue foam. The detail being first drawn, then carved and finally textured before being sealed with PVA glue and painted.

The figures are some of my favourite Flintloque figures - the Highland Rats, which were a real joy to paint.

This photo shows the reverse of the Spanish house seen above, window detail from balsa and match sticks. The wagon in the forground is a scratch built wagon with spare wheels and the cover from a pencil sharpener model of a wagon. It has a full load of equipments and is pulled by a horse picked up in a cake decorating shop.

The final building in this set is a barn - based on many GW barn models seen in White Dwarf and at GW stores. It is constructed from balsa over a foam board core with clay tiles from a church model.

The figures show Lawrance leading a group of 60th rifles.

Each of the photos above and those of the Steam Tanks or Dampfpanzerwagons are photographed on my green flocked wargaming board, that is made from three sheets of white foam (ex-packing case material), with a wooden beading surround and covered in paper (manilla envelopes) and PVA glue before being painted and flocked with railway scatter material. The board is over five years old and allthough I have had to repair it and add more scatter is still going strong and counters claims that white packing foam cannot be used for a wargame table!

Hopefully these photos show both my painting style (cartoon like, I know) and my modelling techniques.

Tony

Fantastic source for models

I recently came across this site which imports in to the US Japanese toys and models.

http://www.bcop.biz/

For me it offeres loads of inspiration for my Flash Gordon and Aeronef modelling projects.

Tony

Gary Gygax Passes Away

The news of Gary Gygax's passing reached me yesterday and this morning most of the Modelling and Wargame sites are talking about the effect that Gary had on the industry. I wanted to talk about the effect that D&D had on me personally.

Back when I was a very young school boy in South Wales, I first got involved with role-playing through a group at Swansea University, D&D was still very new and was still played with pencil and paper, rather than loads of miniatures. I enjoyed the fun of those first naive games and sometimes wonder if it is possible to go back to that fun element, rather than rules junky approach which was one of the main reasons I moved away from D&D as I grew older.

The pencil and paper games grew to whiteboards and china pencils with miniatures - mainly in those very early days Citadel dwarves and D&D monsters! White boards moved on to green cloths over mounds of books and building made from beermats, later still scratch built terrain and converted armies. Now nearly 40 years on I still paint model soldiers and roleplay (rarely) but it was that initial kick by Gary and the other designers of D&D that has caused this life-long love affair with the hobby or obsession as my wife would say.

Thank you and rest in peace Gary Gygax.

Tony

Yours in white wine sauce Blog competition - cont.

Around the World in 80 models

German steam powered land-ironclad squad – Chapter One
Progress has been very slow, following the surprising dismissal of the German project leader, Herr Trotter caused by a blazing argument between the Special Projects Commissioner, Chancellor Sachs and Herr Trotter over the best way forward and who should be chosen as the lead designer.

The mild mannered Austrian, the good Herr Dr. Lacher – a proven manager and visionary was given the job of ‘pulling the project back on track’. He has employed the very special talents of the gifted Italian designer A. Angellon to design the land-tanks and Krupp’s the German engineering company to supply the weapons and specialised equipment. The Initial designs have been supplemented by some additional design blueprints that were ‘acquired’* from the American tractor company Holts! While a Scottish engineer called Professor Souter has been working with Angellon on the mechanical problems associated with the steam walker.

Mechanically all is moving forward and although slightly behind plan the 80 day deadline is still very achievable.

One issue that is beyond the control of the project team is the lack of steel plating that will be needed for the armoured compartments of each of the fighting turrets, the German Navy has placed a ban on all non-essential requests for armour platting and something will have to be done soon to make sure that this project is ready on time and up-holds the fine reputation of the German Army.

* ‘acquired’ is a euphemism for the black arts of international espionage!

The Fenian Airship (Toucan) – Chapter One
Fenian revolutionary forces on Mars have through the very generous contributions of American sympathisers been able to buy and re-equip two Martian Hullcutter; ‘The Fenian Ram’ and ‘The Irish Folly’. However the inability to procure any other ‘liftwood’ vessels has led the leaders to look elsewhere.

The Fenian engineer O’Driscall has managed to produce the envelope and gas bags for his first dirigible ‘Ireland One’, based on the French ‘Clement-Bayard airship No1,’ and is now looking to American fund raising to supply additional money to allow O’Driscall to continue with his ground breaking attempts to produce the first ever home-grown Irish airship, a bomber!

Some critics are dismayed that O’Driscall has stooped to the level he has in accepting a form of sponsorship from a well know producer of alcoholic beverages and produced the envelope in the company colours of black and cream, a quick witted worker at the factory has volunteer to paint a golden harp motif on each side of the gas-bag! And the airship has acquired the nick-name ‘Toucan’ in reference to an advertising logo used by the brewery.

The construction is proceeding to plans and should, provided that the funding is forthcoming, be proven and flying for the planned celebrations in 80 days time.

Yours in white wine sauce Blog competition

I've entered the 'Around the World in 80 Models' competition launched on the Yours in white wine sauce Blog. see;

http://pauljamesog.blogspot.com/2008/03/around-world-in-80-models.html

I'll try to submit two entries;

A German squad of Land Ironclads, to include a pair of assault tanks, a command tank and an assault walker. I've been thinking about and planning this squad for some time and should have the modelling complete well in time. The issue will be the painting as I am also thinking of experimenting with a 'Flying Circus' colour scheme as seen on WW1 German Jasta aircraft. The scale will be slightly different to my usual 1/300th as I have some 10mm ACW figures I might use.

The second;

A 1/300th scale airship dirigible to support my Irish fleet of 'the Fenian Ram' and 'the Irish Folly' hullcutters. I have successfully modelled the airship Hyperion using the carved foam technique and thought that a second airship painted black and cream with a golden harp motif might have some Irish imagery I could use. If it works, I would think it might be called 'the Toucan'.

Tony

The weekend of March 1st and 2nd, 2008

I've had a busy weekend, but still found time to construct this model from the Japanese animated film 'The Castle in the Sky.' A film that I can highly recommend.

The model is stated as being 1/350th, but doors and walkways look to be closer to 1/300th scale and therefore will fit in with my scratch built Aeronefs.

The model was bought at the IPMS Show in Telford late last year - I think it cost 10.00 UK pounds (which I thought was rather expensive for a model that is only 11 cms long!)

As an aside I would recommend the show to all modellers - a great day out and loads of bargains to be had.

Called Tiger Moth - the airship is the main transport of air-pirates and plays a very important part in the film.
The kit was very difficult to put together, as none of the mounting pins would line up and the fine detail had a lot of flash. In addition the plastic was very brittle and the sprues overly thick.
The model needed a lot of cleaning up and filling, which was in the main done with white PVA glue, the only exception was where the main envelope joined the gondola (see the grey Humbrol filler).

I made two alterations, the first was to do away with the propellers as I will model them with clear plastic discs and the second was that I reduced the wing span by two segments or 10mm per wing, I thought the model looked strange with such a wide wing, now I wish I had only taken out one segment per wing!

I will post more photos as work continues.

My second project was as a result of a post on TMP, see; http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=133439

I constructed my mines to the scale of 1/300th - the mine is an 8mm faceted bead, with prongs from plastic rod and a flag added to the top. I had assumed that the mines woould be painted a bright colour - red being an obvious choice as I can remember seeing a mine at Mumbles Pier, Swansea, South Wales that was used as a collection point for the RNLI.

The only problem with this is that I game on Mars and the red terrain would make the mine all-but-invisible! Therefore I added a yellow flag!

The mine is mounted on an 80mm rod attached to a 40mm base. I would expect to model between 6 and 10 to act as a mine field.

Tony