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Competition Prototypes II

While I continue to mess around with the display bases I thought I would turn my attention towards one of the dioramas that I have planned. This is "Steady Lads" and again is an all Reaper piece. It is set circa 1880s (maybe during the Ripper murders) and utilizes the British Colonial Troops and a couple of Aliens.

Right now I actually think this one is to small so I'm going to expand the stairway and street sides of the scene outwards to give me some more room to play with. I have all the minis now for this but I'm kind of reached a stumbling block as there are some construction issues I have to think about.

1) The interior floor of the building needs to be higher than the sidewalk.
2) The street wall needs to be longer and needs a bigger window or maybe two windows.
3) The exterior, street side, needs brickwork and/or stone work to compliment the windows
4) A basement window near the corner would add interest
5) The street side needs to be longer so I can space the aliens out a bit more
6) The sidewalk needs to be wider
7) Add a grate for interest in the gutter
8) The alley stairs just need to be wider so there will be a bit more room for the soldiers
9) A streetlamp to help set the date
10) Period posters, again, to help set the date
11) A street sign to help set the location

Really the biggest thing is how to actually go about constructing this, especially with all the multiple levels going on, and what to make it out of. My usual go to material of styrene plastic is not going to be sufficient or efficient in trying to build some of these shapes. I spent a lot of time just staring at the thing the last couple of nights. Maybe a trip to Hobby Lobby or Michaels will lead to a new material discovery.

This is the configuration I'm thinking about right now. I replaced a couple of the Troopers with some other poses that I like better.

The original prototype, I have shown this before.

British in place, The officer with the sword is still in play but the other two are new. I think they provide better direction/action than the two I was planning on using orginally.

Shot down the Alley

Aliens in search of something

The interior walls definitely need to be taller. The bayonet should not extend above the top of the wall!

Leveling Up - Color Matching Brand to Brand

Now I'm a self admitted Reaper fan and I'm heavy user of both their MSP and HD paint lines. However, I don't let that stop me from trying out other brands (I use Vallejo, some P3 and a smattering of GW along with a small selection of washes from Secret Weapon). Since I have been collecting Scale75's ScaleCoat paints I thought I would push forward with some color matching and see if I could match the six Reaper colors that I have been using to create my six color wheel. The ultimate idea would be to create a six color wheel using the Scale75 paints. I'm using these six colors from Reaper because of a question I had asked Anne. Of course she didn't just give me a quick answer, she responded on the Reaper forum and pretty much hit a home run with it. Not only did she list the six Reaper equivalents I asked about (and they are only equivalents not exact matches) she told us how to do our own color matching. So that is what this particular exercise is all about seeing if there are any close matches between the "Reaper Six" and Scale75.

So here are the colors that make up the "Reaper Six" along with their, roughly, artist color equivalents:
Republique Red (61108) - Cadmium Red (a warm red)
Crimson Red (29801) - Alizarin Crimson (a cold red)
Ultramarine Shadow (9187) - French Ultramarine Blue (a warm blue)
Sapphire blue (9016) - Cerulean Blue (a cold blue)
Clear Yellow (9095) - Cadmium Yellow Light (a warm yellow)
Sun Yellow (9008) - Cadmium Yellow Medium (a cold yellow)

We need to compare swatches of color directly against other swatches of color. To do that we are going to make a tool that will surround one color with another to get a good match. I know that sounded weird but basically we are going to make squares of color and cut the middle out. We will lay the open square over the color we want to match and see if we are close. The pictures probably explain it better:

Took one of my art journals (with perforated pages) and layed out a series of squares. The big square is 1 1/4 inches on a side. The square in the middle is a 1/2 on a side. That leaves 3/8ths of an inch for our color on all four sides of the center square.

So something like this

Cut out and ready to use

Important point, You should label the colors on the back, in case you forget what you were using, and you may as well put the stock number as well.

And from the front

A selection of the Scale75 ScaleCoat Blues plus one yellow (there are only two yellows in the whole line right now, a sad deficiency)

Now with the Reds plus the only other yellow

Reaper Color Matcher using the "Reaper Six" and the two Scale75 Color Matchers trying to see if we can emulate the "Reaper Six"

The Blue Color Matcher (plus a yellow)

The Red Color Matcher (pluse a yellow)

Republique Red is pretty close to Antares Red (Reaper Color Matcher on top, normally I would compare against a swatch of color but I didn't want to get the paints back out)

Crimson Red is a bit darker than Deep Red (the darkest red that Scale75 makes). Probably close enough in the long run.

Clear Yellow is a tad lighter than Sol Yellow. Again probably close enough for our purposes

Sapphire Blue is a bit darker than Mediterranean Blue. Mediterranean Blue is not as "cold" as Sapphire Blue.

Ultramarine Shadow is a bit lighter its closest match Navy Blue. Navy Blue is not as "warm" as Ultramarine Blue

I didn't even bother comparing Sun Yellow against Tenere Yellow. They aren't even close. In fact I might argue that Tenere Yellow isn't a yellow at all, its almost ivory in color. I suppose it might be a yellow tone.

So that's the tool. Its small enough to fit in my journal that I'm tracking my ReaperCon 2015 projects in and that will also help flatten them out. I'm thinking I need to mount them on a thicker stock of something. I'll figure that out later.

ReaperCon 2014 - Day 4 Wrapping it Up

Sunday is my day at the convention. I think I managed to sleep in till almost 7am with nothing on my schedule in the morning. I spent a lot of time in the contest room giving miniature critiques and I was able to talk to a couple of the artists whose pieces I really admired (and had judged as well). I think I started off with Tonya Lynn's (Nissiana in the Reaper Forums I think) ReaperCon Sophie (I think this is the 2005 or 2006 convention Sophie). Its a beautiful piece and I had a good time talking to her about what was great and what could be improved. I think I followed that with getting to talk with Erin Hartwell (Corporea I think) about her New Ride diorama. And yes it has a few flaws and it could be improved but its a fabulous piece and earned every award it was given.

After that it was auction time, where I get up to face my fears about standing in front of a large audience and auction stuff away. I love every minute of it. There was some great stuff on the table too, hardwood dice from Artisan Dice, a painted miniature from Corporea (Erin Hartwell), A prototype resin master of Dragons Don't Share II (coming as part of Reaper's 2nd Kickstarter; The Return of Mr Bones), a prototype resin master of Nethymaul (in the original larger size) and of course a ton of stuff with the Reaper and convention logos on it. The show ends with the end of the auction and I think its great that we end on such a high note rather than the show just fading away as people leave.

A few more pictures, mostly from the artists' area and some misc. I'm sure I have a few more on my camera when I get around to downloading the card.

Jason Wiebe and Tre Manor, they might be discussing sculpting, but more likely its along the lines of "I killed a bear with my bare hands" kind of conversation.

Angela Imrie and Rhonda Bender already talking about painting

Gene Van Horne, soon to be moving back to Colorado!

Adrienne Hawkins, she keeps things running smooth...or else

Heidi (Pixel) in her first game of the con, I believe her dinosaur is about to eat Shannon (ReaperBryan's wife). Yea, it was that kind of game.

James Wappel, attending the show for the first time. I don't think we scared him off. Was able to talk with him on Sunday night for quite a while about painting. Really has some great ideas.

Aspen Modeling Company Horses vs Calamity Miniatures

It has been a long time here without a single post. Traveling for work has really killed my hobby time. While I have managed to get a miniature painted here and there I haven't really been able to focus on getting anything completed. From a request on the Lead Adventurers forum I managed to find my Aspen Modeling Company S and O scale horses. Aspen's products are geared towards model railroading but a lot of their components are quite useful for gaming purposes as well, especially if you are doing a little extra detailing on your western buildings. I was hoping that their horses would be a good scenic item as well. They are nicely sculpted and the price is pretty good. I started off by ordering a couple of S Scale horses which arrived promptly. These horse were cast in beauty and look like they will paint up nicely, not that I have had time to paint.

I think that overall they are going to be to small for my purposes. Compared to most of the miniatures they are closer to ponies than horses. However, miniatures vary a great deal from manufacturer to manufacturer so I have some side by side comparison shots for you to make your own opinions from. As a side note when looking at the pictures, I have removed all the original bases from my western miniatures and re-based them on lower profile bases so side by side they can all be measure from the same ground zero (there are a few differences in height for those mounted on "interior" bases because of the green stuff used to carve the wood floors).

Here are the S Scale (S Scale is 1/64 or one real inch is equal to 64 scale inches):

To be honest I don't remember who makes this mini. If you know drop me a line.

Knuckleduster

Dixon

Reaper

Black Scorpion

Wargames Foundry

To be honest I don't remember who makes this mini. If you know drop me a line.

With the horse mounted on its own base it would base for a smaller horse for some of these miniatures a mid sized horse for others and a small horse or pony for the largest (Reaper and Black Scorpion). I decided that S Scale was probably not the right choice, so I ordered a couple of O Scale horses from Aspen to see how those might work. The O Scale horses are cast in resin and are a little rough but should clean up okay.

Here is how the O Scale horses stack up (O scale is 1/48):

To be honest I don't remember who makes this mini. If you know drop me a line.

Knuckleduster

Wargames Foundry

Dixon

Reaper

Black Scorpion

To be honest I don't remember who makes this mini. If you know drop me a line.

As you can see the O scale horse is going to be large even for the tallest minis and gigantic compared to the smaller ones. While I can see getting some use out of the S Scale versions I think the O Scale ones aren't going to work at all. Someone on the Lead Adventurers forum mentioned that Perry Miniatures had both a pack containing a horse holder and four horses in their ACW line. I think that might be the best way to go to get some horses to tie up outside the various businesses of Calamity.

Lead Aventure, Lead Apocalypse Entry

I have been hanging out on the Lead Adventure forums a lot lately, mostly because they have a dedicated Old West board. Part of the spurt to get so many Calamity citizens finished was to post in the Wild West Painting Posse thread, kind of a painting club, but with a maximum of 100 entries allowed. There is a new painting club running the Lead Apocalypse club featuring post-apocalyptic miniatures, with the restriction that the entry had to be human or mutated human. So I decided I would try and get a figure done for this one, they were already at 70+ entries when I found out about it. I rummaged through my miniatures and found a suitable Reaper mini, 4 hours or so later I had mine done and posted him to the forum.

By admission he is kind of a rough and ready paint job, certainly acceptable for table top use though. I could have been a bit more precise with the camouflage on the paints and the shirt though. I also tried to give the metal armor a rusted look, which I think utterly failed. I may go back and try and fix that.

So here he is #74 Boris Barayev, from Reaper Miniatures. #50002 in the Chronoscope line (it was even still in the original packaging with the yellow Pro Counters card (the Chronoscope cards were not ready for the initial release at ReaperCon so my first three all have the yellow Pro Counter card on the back).

Citizens of Calamity - In Between Trips

I managed to get another citizen for Calamity finished over my few days at home. I wanted to be able to sit down and finish something so I set the Marines aside and decided on another western mini. This one is from Reaper Miniatures in their Savage Worlds line, #59005 Huckster. Now there is a little story to go with this one. The sculptor is a friend of mine; Bob Ridolphi who I have become friends with over the years at ReaperCon. I'm pretty sure he worked from the original artwork that graces the cover of the book "Hucksters & Hexes" by Pinnacle Entertainment for their Deadlands RPG. The original artwork for this cover was painted by an old friend of mine; Dan Frazier in Boulder CO. The "model" he used for that cover is another friend of mine Dave McMillen. Seems like I was pretty much destined to paint this piece, its not often you find a connection to mini like this.

Top Charts Searches 2014

Competition Prototypes II

Leveling Up - Color Matching Brand to Brand

ReaperCon 2014 - Day 4 Wrapping it Up

Aspen Modeling Company Horses vs Calamity Miniatures

Lead Aventure, Lead Apocalypse Entry

Citizens of Calamity - In Between Trips

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