Cancon 2018 trip and the loot bag

Another year and another trip to Cancon.  I entered my Anonymous bust, the Spirit of the Forest and the Antarctic Explorer in the Crystal Brush competition but as per usual didn't place.  Starting to get annoyed about my lack of progress on this to be honest.  The wife has learnt not to bother talking to me on the way home :)

The second hand stall was in a bigger area this year which was great.  But with all the pre booked/early access tickets I didn't get in until after 12:30pm and I suspect much of the good stuff was gone by then.  Seems the prices were higher than previous years with more people wanting to make some money rather than just offload stuff they don't want.  Things were cheaper than retail normally, but not cheap enough for impulse buying.  Plus there is always the unknown of buying an incomplete game.  I did see Talisman Dungeon (which I already have) in box for $30.  A 30 year old Talisman expansion still in box!  Why not Talisman City, why!

Second hand stall purchases

Supermarine Spitfire Mk1A 1/72 - $5 

Why not?

Ospery Battles of WW2 - $5

Some nice photo references for 1/35 work

Stormcast Eternals - $7

I wanted some dramatic figures to paint/modify.  $7 for 5 figures was great.

Little Buildings expansion for Carcassonne - $4

The kids wanted it.

Great Battles - Leipzip - $2

Ospery Napoleon's Guard Infantry (1) - $5

Time to embrace that inner Napoleonic painter in me this year I think

How to draw comics the Marvel way - $5

More for a sculpting reference.  A number of sculptors have referred to this as a good guide.

HR Giger's Retrospective (1964-1984) - $15

Love HR Giger.  His issues have issues.

Purchased Items from vendors.

Various Reaper Bones figures - $15 (I think)

Some for me, Mouslings for the kids

Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figures - $40

Faramir mounted and on foot, Isildur and Elendil.  Wanted all of these for awhile.  One day will get around to painting out the rather sizeable Gondor mounted force I now have (18 now?)

Battlefield accessories Village Ruin 2 - $14

For Terminator Genisys.  Nice and cheap base of a building that I can add to.

Greek style pots - $16

Nice for the diorama work

Terminator Genisys and new Eureka Hawkmoon figure

Terminator Genisys

Not much this week as the mojo is rather low.  In preparation for Cancon I fiddled with some of my past figures seeing if they needed any changes.  Suspect I may have made my Banshee Anonymous bust worse however.

Terminator Genisys

I also finished off the two Terminator Genisys figures and prepped up a figure I got at Cancon last year, 'Baron Meliadus of Kroiden on foot' from their 28mm Hawkmoon range.  Always liked the Order of the Wolf.

Baron Meliadus of Kroiden

For the rest of this week probably more fiddling and then off to Canberra for the weekend.  Hopefully many new toys will be purchased and the second hand stall has some goodies (and I get there in time too).

Ex-Manus Living Nightmare and some Terminator Genisys

This week I fiddled around with the Antarctic Explorer, mainly on the base.  I think I just wasn't ready yet to call that one done.

Ex-Manus Living Nightmare

My next figure will be the Ex-Manus 'Living Nightmare (COM-011)'.  I picked this figure up at MOAB last year.  Haven't ever done a demon figure so this one looked like a nice example of the type.  The base is integrated into the figure and just needed a bit of putty to fill in the gaps.  Other than that a pretty clean figure.  I did my usual black undercoat with a white highlights pre-shade.

I thought I had a colour scheme all ready but once I sat down I realised it wasn't going to work.  So I've put this on pause while I think about things a bit more.  I thinking rolling clouds/smoke.

To keep some paint flowing I started doing the base coats on a couple of Terminator Genisys figures.  Still not sure when I will ever have a game of this to be honest.  Maybe with the kids where they are older.  But I'm enjoying the terrain building and ideas from it.  I really should get back to doing LotR figures as I have 17ish Gondor knights to paint up.  So many horses to paint...

Reaper Antarctic Explorer part 2

Reaper Bones Antarctic Explorer

Sometimes the paint just flows and it did last week.  I pretty much polished off the Antarctic Explorer figure.  Everything just worked out well and I really liked the way the snow effects came together.  Having documented this previously on this blog (part of the Prince of Novograd figure) also helped as I didn't have to re-invent the wheel.  I did add as a final step the 'Snow Microballoons' by AK.  These are really nice and make a great gentle fine snow cover.

On the figure some of the colours I used (I'm finding I'm using more Jo Sonja's paints every figure)

Pants - VMC Black/Grey + VGC Beastial Brown
Shaded - VMC Dark Sea Blue / Black
Highlights - JS Orange/white
Jacket - JS Hookers Green + VMC English Uniform.
Shaded - VMC Red and Violet Red.
Highlights - added English Uniform, Yellow, White
Jacket lining - white/yellow, shaded down with VMC Smoke.  Point highlights with white
Belt - VMC Black/Grey + English uniform
Gloves - Black grey, highlighted with JS Warm White
Gun Strap - Beastial Brown + Black
Highlights - orange/white
Backpack - VMC Red/Black/Brown
Shaded - black/brown
Highlights - Brown, white
Snow Shoes - VGC Leather Brown

Really happy with the jacket (the Hookers Green is very much like the old Citadel Dark Angels Green) and the backpack (even though it gets covered with snow).

After the figure was done I glue it down and used some more modelling clay to blend the figure base in.  Normally I would cut off the integrated figure base but couldn't in this case as the figure base had the snow shoes sculpted in it.

Originally I didn't have the bag on the base, but the composition looked a bit lacking without it.  Luckily the wife reminded me to put in footprints.  I was going to do them, but kind of forgot.  I also added on some snow material to the top of the figure.  I find people go a bit too heavy with snow on figures.  Anyone moving around will naturally shake the snow off themselves so it should really only build up in catchment areas (brims of hats, cuffs, etc).  Not the huge lumps the size of your head on each shoulder.