Mould, phase 2

This is phase 2 in operation Crap-mould of Warriors of Dale.

When removed from the cardoard container, this is how the mould looked like. I continued by cutting loose the models and tidied it up slightly. These figures were already damaged from a previous attempt to make a huge mould, so I didn't really care what happened to these gold nuggets...

... which is the primary reason you can see parts of their fine bows laying to the right in the image above.
    I continued by placing it back in the container, which ideally should've been made out of Legos, believe it or not, and mixed up a small batch of silicone. Around 80 grammes. The first part was made of around 170 grammes. Next step, after curing, is to remove it and cut some vents and pouring holes and this piece of crap is done.
   I have a crapload of work coming up, besides other stuff, so this will be the last post in a while. See you when I see you.

Fabulous Mould Making

Or is it mold without the letter "u"?

With tired eyes, minds and souls we slept and woke up with even more teen-angst tired eyes, minds and souls than Explosions in the Sky* could have ever thought of. Hence, this abortion of mold-making session: I just took the three dudes, glued them with superglue against an empty chocolate box, sellotaped** ...

*) If you ever wanted to internet date a teen girl, then start by PM:ing the commentators under this particular video
**) Not to confuse with cello tape AKA a taped cello:

... some cardboard walls and got the old counterfeit box out of my secret cupboard and presto: Mould part 1.

A spoon, the "prepared" box of models to be copied, some disposable cups and the silicone and its catalyst. That's all you need, and a grumpy, newly awoken mood. A lot of sighing took place, as well as some annoyed mutterings. But it needed to be done. Hobby has never been about having fun. Not the slightest.

The three gringos, the superglue not even cured. Without keys or air-vents prepared. This is the kewl way of making a mould. 
      But, in all seriousness, the reason the whole setup is so shitty is because I have sometimes taken hours on making the preparations, just to accidentally move the box when the second layer of silicone is uncured, making the models move sligthly and screwing up the whole mould. I just can't be bothered, either it works, or it don't, it's not the end of the world.
    There are many ways of doing a mould, this is one of them. 
    Lastly: I didn't even bother putting on a release agent on neither the models nor the container, because I don't think it's needed. I have made over 25 moulds over the years and think I'm getting the hang of it: Removing every step that isn't absolutely necessary is the happy way of making a mould, for me.

Shake well... And weigh part A on your scale, see how much you need for part B, AKA "The Activator" or something similar. Mix thoroughly - real thorough, not Thoreau, not Theroux, but thorough... otherwise you'll have a royal mess on your hands. Uncured silicone is unhappy silicone. "And when silicone is unhappy, you is unhappy."

I gently bashed the cup o' silicone against the floor until "most" of the bubbles came up. A hospital shaker (blood separator) or a vacuum-thingie would actually do this, my "gentle bashing" mainly made the plastic cup break and me smile ever so slightly at my own "integligence". The cynical use of quotations is a hint of my state of mind: Hoping someone will mistake my genuine weariness as "kewlness".

Pour the sticky mess over the guys and don't bother with air bubbles. Just like money, crime, multiculti and politicians, there is nothing you can do about it; sometimes it goes your way, but most often it doesn't. The best counter is of course a knife. 
    "What did you have for breakfast?"
    "I don't know, I panicked... "

A knife is a natural solution to all of the above listed problems that you normally can't do anything about. Just don't get caught like Mihailo when you repeatedly stab Swedish politicians. But I digress... 

(... and joke (at least the part of the knife), which probably is needed to add in times like this - one of the reasons I am so tired is because we had to sit through a "conference" about discrimination and how awesome multiculti is - UNPAYED but mandatory! It had something to do with the ever so elusive term "värdegrund" or "behavioral values"... the term that has killed common sense, which used to be the normal way of dealing with things and people).

The pink colour is camouflage.

The mould is curing in a calm place and will be finished Sunday by cutting away excess silicone and pouring another layer. In the end we will have a classic two-part tin-soldier mould. Again, this is the super-lazy way of doing a mould and you will probably waste a little more silicone than what you probably would want to.

Good night, it's been a long week at work.

Captain of the Palace Guard, phase 3 or 4

This project is soon finished. I painted the model hastily to see what obvious flaws could easily be fixed and then repainted.

In the first iteration, to your right, he looked a bit like Joaquin Phoenix, and that's fine in itself, but not really what the target was. So, to your left you can see his shaved chin and fixed upper lip as well as some minor adjustments.

Not really like Joaquin, though...

... anyway, the modifications made the miniature look even less like Joaquin, which all in all I suppose is a good thing for a Mirkwood Palace Guard Captain.

Lantiroch with water effects...

One can paint over the water effects which had a calming effect upon my soul. The brown things in front of the horses are not magic horse dung, but small and water-polished rocks.

The green water was added after inspecting what Ted Nasmith had done on his beautiful painting of the scene from the book. I mimicked him by sloppily washing some green waste-water on the horsies and presto: White Water Horses. The word lantiroch is a contraction of two or maybe three Sindarin words, which I cannot remember now, but I found them partially here, Hisweloke's Sindarin - English phrase-/wordbook.
  
Thanks are going to misters El Zorro and Scott B.! Thank you for the tips on this one!

Palace Guard DIY, phase 3

Phase three involved a mantle for the captain. What looks like fingerprints are in fact small distortions that occured when I tried to stretch and turn the green stuff a little bit.

I basecoated him to make it easier to find all the minor faults and imperfections. It's always dark outside when I have time to sculpt and the table-lamp is not optimal, so the photographs are really helpful.

His chin has been trimmed down by now, by the way, just need to take a new picture...


Status update on water effects and Water Horses
@El Zorro and mr Scott: After your suggestion on how to best do with the water effects I did a test model and the Citadel Water Effects behaved really well. After the test model had dried nicely, the horsies got a thorough lick of water effects and are currently drying. Also, inspired by Ted Nasmith, some green colours were added to the water. Awaiting final results of that project.

Palace Guard Captain DIY, phase 2.

Phase two has commenced.

The head is large. It is his large chin that is the main problem so it is now hidden behind a beautiful field of pink, as is most of my fingers.
    It would seem that despite using the correct Somali heads to the Ansar bodies, my sculpts/heavy conversions tends to end with a too large of a head for Lord of the Rings. Sometimes even larger than my own head, proportionally looked at.

Shield and glaive. A glaive which whose measurements are based on a Galadhrim warrior's glaive, which was wielded with two hands. This guy will hold it with just one and have a lot of handle left. It might look weird. We'll see how it pans out...

Edit: Tried some other words.

New releases for The Hobbit, winter 2014

Linky to Games Workshopses blog scroll through the Alien-release and you'll find a wrap up. Or go to the pre-order page.
   Archers are made in GW:s notorious finecast, and so are the rest of the release.

Sculpting a Palace Guard Captain

The basic shape is a Perry Miniatures' Mahdist Ansar Somali Gazzi. 
    Quite a lot of times I have seen guys on forums starting a thread that has the wording "Scratch-built" when the model they present is a conversion - sometimes hardly even that! Have I missed something? Is it the Babylonic confusion of tongues that is to blame, have I missed the meaning of scratch-built? Is it a synonym for "small conversion"?
    With above said, or asked, rather, I still would like to call this a scratch-build.

The blueprints are also my working area. The basic shape to give a safe and proportioned start is in the centre, surrounded by blobs of green stuff. Calling this piece of paper blueprints is a stretch, I can agree...

Again and again have I proved I lack the skills to make properly proportioned armatures, so nowadays I go straight for these kinds of shortcuts, and hence my question whether the word scratch-built is the right word to use. "Yes", is the answer expected ;)

The shield I made totally from scratch, though. I have become noticable more effective in use of my sculpting time nowadays, so the project trodded along nicely and I've only sunken half an evening on choosing arms, parts, the glaive (and filing it down from a piece of plasticard) and sculpting the first basic parts of the armor and head.
    The head needs a lot of work since it was a Somali head which needs to look more elven. Somalis aren't Africans per se (racially, geographically they are very much Africans), while they are not an entirely homogenous population (there are quite big differences between the rural tribes and the farmers/city people, for example, I have been told by a friend from rural Somali) they mostly look the same, just like Norwegians have a general look over the population, even if certain family lines may look drastically different from other families. I found the Somali models from Perry to be unexpectedly well suited for making elves!
    Their heads are more Eurasian - than other races in the region - with a portruding brow and other characteristics which has absolutely nothing to do with this post... ! What am I blabbing on about... ? I just like the Perry-box so much, I suppose...

Instead of making a dragon on the shield, which I think is not something an elf would brandish - just like I keep getting sooo annoyed at the Games Workshop-articles and GW-blogposts and rulebooks where orcs have white insignias(!) - I just make something palace-y and foresty but try to stay close to the original's design.

  Tough times sculpting the scale armour. Everything's tiny!

He will need a stronger chin but the nose is fine, thank the blue skies... I started this although I "need" to finish the Warriors of Dale, do the mould for the three Dale archers, take some pictures of finished projects and a lot more.
    That's it for now on this project. Below follows some technical updates.


Comments by some people have been lost! Somehow, the "Latest comments" function in the settings have stopped function periodically. This means I will manually go through the latest posts so no one will feel that I don't give a s--t about their input. Your input is highly appreciated, and I wish I could more regularly reciprocate your nice C&C and informative comments more often, but truth be told, I will keep my semi-slow pace of reading and commenting, English is not my first language, and ever since I started to proof read everything (slightly more than usual) it takes forever, even for a simple "GG HF"-like comment.

Blogger's been messing up the format of the blog, lately. I will try out another template as well as change the colours and perhaps get me a nice little... whatever they're called, those pictures with the name of the place superimposed. A header? 
     Good night.

Three days old...

... that's what this year is, despite what the time stamp says. Personally, I am not that much of a celebrationalist extraordinaire when it comes to the anni nulli (or however you bend the adjective after the noun - I learned Latin quite a few years ago, and just barely to be able to incorrectly translate stuff but still sound believable).
   Anyway, it'll be a super slow start on the hobby and the blogging. I had originally thought of making a huge celebration-post of the end of the year and the blogging, but just didn't get enough pressure in the old steam boiler that is my brain. Whatever...

If you look at the image to your right, you will see that in the English Calendar, there are at least three more years coming. My fuck, does it ever end? They've promised the ending of the world, roughly 9000 times a year these latest 3000 years, and it still hasn't come... The calendar above at least gives us three more years of bills, idiots, neighbours that aren't hot young lasses, electric bills, politicians that don't behave like humans (might be a bit unrealistic of me to hope for something else), stale bread, cold, too hot, are we there yet etc etc.
   If you look to your left you see a Scrap and Pearl Event which I will not attend because it sounds super boring.

Highlights of 2013, personal blogging-stuff
This whole list is just a long session of tooting my own horn.

TLDR? A lot of projects have been finished. I got slightly better at painting - thanks to YOU! Also, there are other blogs and homepages which makes really good content which I didn't bother with here. I am also still struggling with some minor and major quirks and grammatical nonsense of the English language. Colloquilisms is a word. Or is it colloquialisms? Anyway, those are fun and I want to learn more of them. Additionally, I want to put babies in washing machines.

Hooting and tooting follows below...

Over the year I have learnt a lot from blogging:

- An Indian Llama-god deity exists! I also learned today that there's someone called Panchalama that is revered by some native group or another in the Andes.

Over at Indian Games Workshop everything's going

 well with their new product: FinePlaster[TM]...

 
- That Games Workshop was not overly difficult to work with when it comes to damaged models: It was my most positive experience with Games Workshop in 2013! It's the last little part, an edit at the bottom.

- - -   - - -   - - -

I have also learned to make a list of the kind below:

... most disturbing comment: By Mr Dan Vincent on Movement tray for Thorin's Company.

Hobby stuff which I liked and need to finish and picturize. Need to make this slot into a "... most"-sentence... What about... 

... most needed projects to finish and picturize:





- Hobbit-project that has potential. Do I have potential?
- The humble beginning of the swan project and proof I actually had an idea of my own! ... and didn't steal the idea from GW. Mine actually make some sort of sense, since the flying-thing is an airplane/boat and the birds pulling it are waterliving. Or something...
- Need to take pics of the finished Werewolf project...
- There are many more but frankly, who gives a shit...

... most competitive post. The prize wasn't all that, sorry about that mr Winner (just realized the winner perhaps wouldn't want his name published here!), I never got the extra goblins that I had intended to ship off to him. Perhaps another chance will turn up? Or is it turn out? Make up? Make out? Most annoying language of 2013: English.


... most smeared out lipstick posted on the blog 2013.

... most* hottest babe of 2013 on this blog (yes, it is Lollo again, though she looks a bit too old for my taste in this one).

*) Get the feeling I crowbared in this particular "most". Listmaking aint easy.

… most unexpected rant on leftists (after visiting the Vasa Museum):

The museum-people are a bunch of no-good leftist, "humanist"-globalists as well, which might explain why our guide was mainly talking about how badly women were treated and how we already in those days were "an immigration country - already a multicultural place". I didn't complain on her further bashings of Sweden and silently left the group to study the ship on my own. I was there to look and learn about the ship, not to get lectures on how bad white, middle-aged men supposedly were and are. Idiots...

  ... [sort of] the most disturbing little text (had I cared) written by myself - which I found on the post about buying a Flamespyre Phoenix for 400 SEK:

Price: 3/5. I find the price more than acceptable. It is still just one model, though. And for 400 SEK I could sponsor a New Delhi-low cast family of nine for almost ten (10) days! Lucky for me I do not wish to sponsor a family of nine (9) New Dehlians but rather buy this one (1) phoenix-model.

I find the comment above honourably honest and it seems like only a truly stand up guy could've typed this in a relaxed and a'sum way - not at all a keyboard warrior-esque character that likes to play War of the Ring and play hooky from work...
     *Sigh*, time to grow up... 2014, here I come! Less honesty and more political correctness!

Gandalf the Blue was finished (bye, bye). Painting 

grey was harder than expected.

… most satisfying end of a project. Gandalf's Cart.


... most anticipated releases and premiers not relevant to Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: Salad Fingers 10 and BoC's latest album! The BoC-release can be found somewhere in the post-history and Salad Fingers 10 can be found by "clicking" the "link". I would not recommend watching Salad Fingers 10 since it is one of the more disturbing ones. Still, a great one. I like how David Firth took the time to make it, considering he's been working for what feels like 8 years now on not-Meadow Man 4 or 5 or 6 or whatever number it is on...

... most enjoyed personal favourites of 2013: Laughing Ferret's Blood Bowl teams and other creations. Tell me a Tale Great or Small-blog: Experiment in soft lists in LotR-SBG. For some reason, the linked article was such a joy to read... Read the rest of the posts of course, but this one is my fav.
    I also liked this disgusting post by mr Dan Vincent. Spiders truly are the real worlds OtT when it comes to looks, there aint nothing GW have designed that looks even close as disgusting as a "normal" spider from NZ or Oz. Especially when impaled by Anduril.
    There are many, many more fine examples, but I've been typing for over an hour, so it is time to conclude this post, the first of 2014!

Hopes for 2014
After the highlights and downlights of 2013, it is time for the hopes and dreams of 2014. I hope for peace on Earth and that all badguys dissapear and that I finally learn how to spell dissappear. Oh, I meant: " ... that all badguys - with the exception of myself, should I happen to be one - disappear." As the old saying goes: "Be careful for what you wish for... ".
    No honestly, my hopes for 2014 is that we get a lot more hobbyists doing Lord of the Rings-stuff. There are a bunch of us in the bloggosphere but still not enough! That's my only hobby-hope: More hobbyists and more images and inspiration and Middle-Earthian-hobby projects. That and that I get a new place to live in so I can buy me an airbrush and try out that whole affair...

Lastly, I am so ***-damn tired of blogger, everything that comes from MS, google and blogspot... If it is not so hyper-complicated that "user friendly" means "knows java, HTML, C++" it is instead super-dumbed down, like if a washer machine had only one setting: On. A big fucking red button and a hole to put one's ugly hiphop jeans and t-shirts with images of wolves on. A machine that washed everything in 20 C so idiots could wash their clothes without fear of destroying their white shirts when washing them with their red socks or bloodstained gloves... Blogspot does the same nowadays, dumbs everything down or try to format when there is no need to format. Still, I am happy that we have this platform to meet and post BS like this, so it all evens out, I suppose.
    Just to end on a positive: If washing machines really had just a single button and a hole to put clothes in, you'd still have idiots washing their babies in them, you'd still have idiots just pushing the button with their clothes still on their bodies - surprised and annoyed that their clothes still were dirty...

So, that's my hopes for 2014: A washing machine with a single button I could wash dirty babies in.