ON TIME!!! WIIIIHOOO! You all said it was impossible, I was ridiculed and cyber-beaten but I perservered and here we are! In your face!
Please note that I have directly translated my native language into English because frankly, I am tired of trying to adapt my lingual flow into another type. Next update will be better, so please bear with me.
This goddamn project has been 0% fun and 100% work and it proves various things about me and the Western human-mind, which we will not dwell on at this particular moment.
The weird spears are captain Ahab ljusters, or maybe harpoons?
Empty, huge 160 mm base for my enjoyment. To decorate and then to destroy with bad water-effects from GeeDubb. I think it was mr Scott of Scott's Wargaming that pointed out that other companies make better water effects... only problem is I am a big cheapskate and want to finish this bottle before buying another one (whatever the brand may be).
This is one way of making seaweed. Kelp is made in a similar way, but the individual strands are much wider and longer, around 4 mills wide and 60 mills long.
I made seaweed in GS, for the more visible parts of the big model.
Enter watery mess... It may look unorganized and messy but is actually worked after a plan...
Biggest issue this last day on working with the Big F has been the feet and how to best fixate them to the big base... There are still needs to be satisfied when it comes to the connection between the polystyrene feet and the SS-legs. GS will likely be the remedy.
Last angle. I had for some reason planned to paint it before beginning of October, but I may give myself some leeway here... That is all for today fellow hobbyists, nerds, Ardaists and assorted human beings.
This weekend was not entirely used for sculpturing, as one might expect when looking at my very, very slow progress with the giant turtle. No, I also had some sour herring (surströmming), which is fermented herring. Herring has a distinct taste in itself when dragged up from Botnia (not sure how it tastes in other parts of the world, what the fish eats, and what kind of water it lives in tend to have a great effect on how it tastes when you eat it... as we all know but I felt obliged to state this, nevertheless) and when fermented for several months, it tastes really bad. All the traditional stuff around it helps to make the taste less offensive for the unused, poor souls tasting it for the first time.
My table-lady ate them whole with potatoes.
The tiny uncooked filet in the upper part of the picture was all I dared eat that night since the taste and smell is near-rancid. It is still considered a delicacy, and I tend to agree with that statement.
Mildly connected to the sour-herring above is this creature's shell. The red dots (barely visible since they are close to the beast's waterline) indicate where I will add barnacles; the dotted lines where I will try to make seaweed, the X and Y marks the spots and so on. I will really try to force myself to go to town with this otherwise bare shell.
You can see a strange, uncured piece of SS in the upper right, and that is how I "sketch" in 3D. From the beginning I planned to have a destroyed little boat (eka) resting on the shell or perhaps even attached in some way to the shell.
This silly little miniature wreck has taken me nearly two hours to sculpt (with breaks and long periods of sighing instead of working - I was bored out of my chair), and it is finally done.
Project Fastitocalon has been a demanding project and there are only two days left to work on it! I am slowly getting some form of basic confidence that I might actually be able to pull this project off, and make it look if not stunning or great, then at least nearly satisfying. If not for the design, then for the correct execution of a bad plan! Your thoughts on my philosophy here? Add a comment and let me hear what you have to say on the matter. That is all for tonight, Llama out!
General Blogging Update!
As you all know I am currently concentrating on making a bunch of models, in a slightly better quality than I typically do, and this has made me have to cut some other parts of the hobby off, namely the Battle Companies-project. I have decided to remove this project from my consciousness and thank those who have given me material (namely mr Legatus Headlius, the hobby-world's most elegant man!) and rest assured that I will come back to it someday, perhaps even before end of 2018!
The WotR-revampation project went belly-up after I accidently set fire to the HDD that I stored the project on (this is actually true, although I do not believe many people will believe me!), but I have since started redoing the army-roasters, and am currently looking to fix the magic and other things I disliked about the system.
The problem is that there others doing the exact same thing and better! So we shall see how this concludes. I should probably have added links to both mr Legatus and the guy redoing the WotR-rules, but I am not at my normal computer, so it has to wait to another evening.
In other news, I watched Turbo Kid (after watching Kung Fury (made by Södermalm-Swedes, fucking idiots, but they still managed to make an acceptable movie)) which was charming, just charming!
Turbo Kid is "new retro", as seen above...
I am pushing Super Sculpey around and I am having problems with the fastitocalon, as was expected... super difficult, I should have made a definite blueprint instead of three combo-versions...
When stealing other people's ideas (see innuendo-afficionado carrot-sucker above), such as the Great Beast of Gorgoroth, everything is a lot easier (see above again), but when trying to make something entirely from scratch it is much more difficult... See below, this is how the Big F is going forward. This is a near-literal interpretation.
Picture above is to illustrate in a non-comical way how I go about my days nowadays, and perhaps in some ways tying into the problems of being not-as-creative as I had hoped to be by my mature age of circa 35.
I tried to update my wardrobe as well... Didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Everything is going to crap, but I will try to fix it, after all I have three days left to work on the Big F!
Yes, yes, it is all about the ugly fastitocalon. All updates are now just about this ugly project which actually seems to scare my readers away.
But what is actually a fastitocalon? Well I can tell you, he is an awesome 50% salamander, 50% turtle, 50% tortoise, 50% sea dragon and a whopping 1000% fastitocalon. Zero percent failure, aaaawyeaaah!
It is also the project which upon contemplating the choises in design, that has given me most to ponder upon, and also given me most headaches - also, it was hard to design.
As you might have noticed, the old Swedish saying "han gör hellre än bra" (literary translation: "he does rather than good") suits well. The saying is a bit hard to translate but roughly means "he'd rather do it than do it well", it sounds a bit more passive aggressive-funny in Swedish, because there is a mildly camouflaged linguistic subtlety in it's Swedish form.
Back to the saying: I am trying to say that I have had a bit too relaxed view on sculpturing, and I am trying to get better, to actually study animals, skeletons and muscles to get creatures that look better. Designing has always been a problem for me, because I think everything looks over the top, but the problem is, an exaggerated model looks much, much better than an understated one. Especially when the understated design is not only not following simple biology/joint-physics, it is also executed by a mediocre sculpturer. Despite all this (I am talking about my own woes here), I intend to drag this whole affair over the line, finish it and by God will I try to make it look good!
The head needs some extra details, although I have yet to find a satisfying solution to that. It looks to bare at the moment.
Seemingly unnatural hand-pose, but actually copied from a similar creature. No muscles to "explain" the weird pose might be what breaks it. I have still decided to keep it as it is.
Mock-up raised position using aluminium-balls and uncured SS.
The black and yellow lines of paint are there to help me raise each giant scale slightly, when I start working on the later phases of the shell.
After giving the GBoG a good overhaul the originally lacking paintjob became atrociously bad and I am now under good way of repainting it, inbetween working on the giant turtle/Fastitocalon/Big F, which understandedly (is that even a word?) is not getting a lot of love. Myself, I love work-in-progress pictures and bare green stuff, armatures and naked skeletons, but according to blogger-stats, most of my readers for some reason prefer the finished product, a painted model. I typically find painted models boring - whether they be well painted or Llama-painted. And why is that? Why, because if they are badly painted they are uninteresting to look at, and if they are painted too good it is a discouragement of the sort "oh, vey, I can never paint as well". Hence, I prefer the potential of the unpainted, unfinished ultra-conversion!
Despite all that, here is a painted version of this totally home-sculpted Gorgoroth Beast.
Basecoat of Bleached Bone (or the equivalent, I use Vallejo or AP:s colour, not entirely sure since my computer is located at another table than my hobby), covered with a sloppy wash of Panzer Grey, Negro Black, BB and some red (to get a warmer feeling).
A second wash was added. Base and creature are inseparable in my Mordor army, which is how I want it. All the Mordor bases are drab and dreary, just as my unispired paintschemes of said models.
Unpainted eyes makes it look as it suffers from a certain syndrome.
With and without howdah... some reds to tie it further to Mordor.
I should start this post by stating that I am well aware that the actual word is "sculpturing" and not "sculpting". With that out of the way, we continue with these images:
This ugly Fokke-Wulf is the next stage of my Big F, a k a Fastitocalon. This is a mock-up of how it will look with it's feet right on.
Curve of the model is naturally intended. It is to be placed traversing "dramatic" rocks. Dramatic within bunny-ears.
Huge, remodeled tail. Uncured, sketch-sculpey to get a general feel for the apperance of the critter.
He has that particular look that all the models sculpted by that woman over at GeeDubb has: Gaping maw and right front limb raised. Look at the Dark Elf Dragon, the monsters for Storm of Magic etc - they all look the same! And now I have settled into that mini-crowd with my Big F.
I have begun working on the head of the beasty, and have tried four different versions and settled with this, the less dramatic one.
Also, I am waiting for my monthly salary. It seems that one of the jobs I worked last month has decided to "forget" me, it was an in every way unprofessional work-place and it was the first time I just left without even having my papers in order, so there might be some form of retaliation going on there (I worked in a obscure part of their administration making boring calls to boring people and filling in very important but equally boring forms!).
For Christ's sake, when I wandered into the production part of the small facility I found out that they had employed "paperless" people (illegal immigrants!) that worked for what seemed like Chinese wages! All the signs and instructions were in Arabic or Cyrillic!
So, I might be going full-on retard on the matter if I do not get my paycheck, which means: No updates for weeks to come. So I hope I can solve this with another phonecall, or perhaps a soft legal threath (of which I know nothing).
We shall hold our thumbs and hope that I will not be able to use this as an opportunity to avoid sculpting on the Big F.
In other mildy interesting news, I have been working on the Big F (that's the Fastitocalon, for you!):
This is the general stature of it, it will be mounted on a coastal base with either craggy rocks or water-polished rocks, surrounded by ship-wreckage things like barrels and broken planks.
Picture below is the underside which is really not important since it will not be visible. I have sawed off the legs to simplify the sculpting process of them. Originally there were no plans of adding scales on said legs, but I will weer off that path and make some god-darn scales to avoid them looking as bland as they otherwise will.
The creature, although fantastical in it's own way, has a very vanilla taste, in my opinion. It is bland, despite being a giant sea monster, and that is how I intended it. You can very well make something more dynamic or dramatic, but this is how I have always imagined them: Close to friendly, but still a stupid beast (like a giant tortoise or a dolphin).
You can see that the legs look a bit stumpy and weird, which is naturally because they are just bare armature and await muscles and scales - or at least a more interesting texture. Below, I had just added some white spray paint in order to better see cracks, fingerprints and the overall lacking texture - this is something I have to do in each project, I have realized, to get a better end result.
Legs sawed off, and an orc for size-comparison hidden in the black background, surrounded by the giant re-done tail. The tail will hopefully make Big F a bit more dynamic but still without compromising the lumbering, slow feeling of the beast.
The biggest base available: 160 mm mûmakil base.
A long title for a short update. First off, I can tell you, as I said in the previous update, that I have been doing other things instead of the hobby. Secondly, the deadline for finishing this giant turtle/fastitocalon is closing in rather fast...
Here is where I am at right now, not very far, as you can tell.
This is where I want to get to within the end of next week (PHOTOSHOP SKIII11LZZZ!!! LOLZ!). A lot of filling out, working on the silhouette (spelling?) and some small detailing work. The detailing will be the last and I will not fall in the classic trap of having a too low level of detailing, just because the model is a large one. Un-detailed large monsters look bare and naked and the little of impressivness in their stature and posture is lost, in my opinion. Over-detailing makes it typically high-fantasy. Not to say that this is not a high-fantasy creation...
When searching for inspiration for the base (I will make a simple ground-base with sand and water effects but instead put my work into a lot of debris and ship-wreckage, as if it has just destroyed a small boat!) I found this... Australia. How I miss that country, one of the best places in the world I would say, if not the best. Not for it's fantastic nature and coastal areas and surfing and all that - no, it's the people. Fantastic land, interesting culture and a place where women are women and men are men!
This is a project I have been secretly collecting bits and parts for. I lost the name of the creator of the image above. It is a tad too manga for me, but it still holds some truth in the portrayals. I will make my Sauron in his beautiful version, before he was overtly fallen. Images above and below are purely for slight inspiration. I have already made my own (bad) sketches. Not sure on the sizes, but I think the 40K C'tan models on 40mm bases are something to aim for. Some of the Valar I will make slightly larger, but try to anchor them as obvious giants with either their bases or by adding some details that shows that they are indeed 28mm models and not 1:48-scale humanoid models.
I am just destroying my traffic-rates here, but it is not important.... Just wanted to explain why there will be no hobby updates this weekend: There's been some serious boardgaming going on right now. Some cardgames and also, the now-classic Tw1ll19ght 1mper1um. Tonight, I won!!!
After all the other seven players ganged up on me, I lost the capitol-planets and was not allowed to score points anymore, but I managed to win the hexagon with a special condition that allowed you to win on 9 points, and since I was on 9 points (which was the reason why all my Swedish, socialist-marinated co-players ganged up on me - the nail that stands up must be nailed down!) I won the game! This was most satisfactory, and I would even go as far as say as it levels on getting a hot 10 to melt! I mean, the same time of money and time spent is roughly the same - as is the prestigue. At times, we were actually quite angry with one another, which feels rather healty, being a non-confrontative Swede (well, I am not, but I thought it was something good for the co-players).
Red rings shows how few forces I had left after the others had ****-r*ped me with their over-whelming forces. But in this game, it is all about the points! I did some sneaky, gobliny backstabbing though...
All in all, I could feel my beard grow a few mills after winning this and squishing a few hands in friendly hand-shakes. Not sure if I will get invited next time though, I was playing some serious cloak and dagger traitor-shit right-heeeurr, aaawyeeeah!
Also, I am working on the fastitocalon, but haven't got enough to be worth a separate update. Perhaps on Tuesday... We shall se...
The base creature is nearing completion, you could say that I am one step ahead of the armature and am now fleshing the beast out. I have three sketches for the head, and they all look quite bland, since I necessarily do not see it as an evil creation. Evil models typically get that screaming, open-mouth syndrome, which I dislike, but is quite effective in it's "transmission" of intent.
Claws are from the kit I used to make Kraken, a 40K-kit which I prophetized I would get some extra use from, and so I did. There are a lot of good monster-bits in that Tyranid-box...
Speaking of monsters, here are my monstrous Photoshop-skills. This is how the Angband Beast will hopefully turn out when I am finally finished with it. Every step with this creature has been uphill and I force myself to add a tiny bit of GS or SS every other week. The design was flawed, and hence the sculpting has turned sour for me. Really, I should just throw it away and restart, but I insist on doing this, or rather persevere.
Mordor Work Troll turned out atrociously bad from the front, so for an image of the finished project you will have to settle with a paparazzi-picture from behind. His arms looks unnatural and the face is way too simple. I might go back and finish this within the end of this month.
All in all, the projects have been a bit uninspired, a bit forced, so I might have to rethink my philosophy of having a "release schedule", even an informal one seems to press out the litte joy I get out of the hobby. I have always looked at our hobby as bordering to labour, or work, and adding an informal release date, it finally crossed the border to work.
I will do some soul-searching on the matter.
Model is now reserved for mr J.A.
As promised, I will now sell or trade Thranduil on Elk. The painting isn't really that good IMO. Some WIP:s follow below - this project took me a lot of time, it was a work of love but I thought I'd get rid of him for various reasons (I need to buy food this week!).
If you are interested in getting this original model, fire off a comment below and we can continue on other canals of communication. If there are no-one interested, I am just as happy because I really love this model and would rather keep it myself.
GW's version retails for 330 SEK (circa 35 EUR) and is a mounted and a foot-version. He is mounted on a horse, in their instance.
In my instance I also ask for 330 SEK for my single, mounted Thranduil (on an Elk!). Postage is payed by me, as well as you, if you want to make an exchange (postage to send me some surplus LotR-models instead of paying money, that is - then we don't have to bother with bank-transfers). If you pay by bank-transfer, I pay the extra cost for making the international payment.
Typically, I do these kinds of trades on a forum, but I hope that I now I have enough readers that someone might want this guy. Some WIP:s for your perusal (most pictures were never published here on Llama's jaows.blogspot, but rather on my now defunct wordpress-account, so they might be news to some people):
He is based on a resin base, but can easily be rebased by being put into some water covering the base and two mills of the Elks hind-legs.
