The Morning View

    My days, weeks, months in a nutshell.

    Here's the view that greets me when I sit down to sculpt. I usually have between 30 and 50 figures in various stages of completion. Probably a product of adult Attention Deficit Disorder, self-diagnosed, of course. Some of these figures will never be completed, but most will eventually be rotated into the front row where the lucky winners reside.

    And the view when I sit at the computer to post, check orders and answer email. These are the lucky winners. I sit them in front of me so I can see what progress has been made. It's a little disappointing when I finally do get enough for a master mold and have to send them off. But slowly the ranks fill out with new work, making room to start more of the ideas bouncing around in my head.

    The problem I've had since I started sculpting miniatures has been that everything I see on TV or read becomes fodder. I start mentally working through the problems of sculpting the subject. The next step that naturally follows is, "How do I make money from this idea?" I've come to the realization that it's OK to not complete everything and not everything has to become a finished miniature cast in metal. Sometimes the whole lesson is working through one part of the piece. Or maybe it's that the idea really sucks and shouldn't be pursued along those lines. It's all part of my creative process and it's all good, even when I rip a figure from the stopper and throw it in the garbage. One just has to keep the momentum going, building on previous successes and learning from past mistakes.

A Greeting and a Farewell

    In order to complete my Viking commission I had to clear off some of my rubber stoppers so I had more available for the personality figures. The first sculpt in line to wrap up was a new Space: 1889 Martian to go into the personality pack.

    Say hello to the Hill Martian shamaness/ priestess. She'll eventually get three male companions and be sold as a set in the Hill Martian line.

    And now for the farewells. As I complete more of the 15mm Blue Moon French and Indian War figures, I feel comfortable letting go of the 28mm guys I've had sitting around for years. Most are unpainted but there are some painted miniatures that I want to sell to a good home.

    Any thoughts on this? I have two 15mm FOGRE MK III tanks, both boxed. I'm keeping one, and selling the other. It's a prototype model with metal and resin bits, but the hull and treads are plaster. Make me an offer.

    Right now I have 6 SWAT, Bobby Jackson sculpts, but I'm not sure who the manufacturer is.

    I'm asking $60 post paid to U.S. addresses. $70 postpaid outside of the U.S.

    I also have a set of 7 Foundry Treasure Island characters that I was going to use as special personalities for the FIW campaign.

    I'm asking $80 post paid to U.S and $90 post paid to other parts of the world.

    Please email me at highlanderstudios at comcast dot net if you're interested in purchasing either set. I also have a lot of unpainted conquest rangers and Old Glory French and British if anyone would like to purchase them as is or hire me to paint them. The list follows:

    22 Old Glory Provincials, Civilians, etc.
    30 Old Glory Courier de Bouis, Fronteirsmenr, etc.
    30 Old Glory French Firing Line
    30 Old Glory British Light Infantry w/ Command

    I'll have 2 more painted sets available shortly:

      8 Old Glory Militia/ Civilians
    12 Perry AWI State Militia

French and Indian Progress

    Several posts ago I showed a couple of pictures of my new French and Indian War project. Unfortunately the Indians were left quite unsatisfied by their vandalism raid at that time. I've been picking at some settlers and colonial militia since then. I've also painted 10 more Indians to add to the raiding parties with another 10 to finished this week.

    The settler on the right I've named Parrish Blake. I'll be using him as the star in my Long Rifle campaign. You can't see it in this photo, but he's armed with a shovel. All the better for whacking the risen dead from the Indian burial grounds and laying them to rest again. It might even be silver to better deal with those pesky werewolves that pop up now and then.

    I've been reading several books about the French and Indian War. Most of them are centered around Fort Pitt and Braddock's road since I live right here in the area. I'm planning to set the beginning of the campaign right after Braddock's defeat. The Virginia militia has pulled back to around Cumberland and is mainly focused on defending settlers against raids in the Shenendoah Valley. Where things go from there only the dice and whim can tell.

    On a side note, sculpting has been going well here. I wrapped up one commission and I have about a week to go on another for Splintered Light. But with all of this reading and campaign planning I couldn't resist working on the beginning of a small line of casualties for the French and Indian period. They'll probably work in a pinch for AWI as well. The first is a wounded officer.

    My thought was to do a total of 8 figures for the set; 4 European and 4 Indian.

    I don't really want to produce them myself, so if you know any current manufacturers who would be interested in making these to add to their 15mm FIW lines, let me know or have them contact me.

Afternoon Quickie

    One of the really quick projects I wrapped up this weekend was a small conversion of the Space: 1889 British troops.

    These guys have been armed with the latest Lee-Metford no. 9 chemical pulse rifle.

    I'm also working on gas masked versions for those who want a more steampunk look to their troops.

Building the Perfect Beast

    About a week ago my head exploded. I was picking away at a couple of commissions and my mind started assembling items that I had seen or had been pondering for several weeks. I ended up with 10 new sculpts on the table with no great amount of progress on any one thing. So now that the armatures are made and the images firmly seated in my mind I can go back to the work that has to be done for a few weeks. I'll tell you more about them in future posts.

    One item, however, was the ruumet breehr sculpt I had been avoiding for several months. It's a larger piece so I don't feel guilty working on it a little when the putty starts getting too stiff to apply to the human-sized 15mm work. For those who aren't familiar with the Space: 1889 setting, the ruumet breehr is a large elephant/ cow beast of burden on Mars. It is used to carry howdahs, tow artillery and pull the great caravan wagons from place to place.

from Space:1889 rulebook

    The problem I was having with starting this creature was the same problem I had with the gashant. The illustrations were not the most interesting and left a lot  more questions about anatomy and bone structure than they answered. While looking through the Caravans of Mars book I ran across a small drawing of one that finally made sense to me.

from Caravans of Mars

    Using the first picture for height and length and the second for the general anatomy, I started building the armature.

    It's pretty big and I hadn't decided on metal or resin for the finished product. So I decided that it would be free standing, at least for now, and started bulking him out with Apoxie Sculpt.

    Here is the first layer over the armature with a British soldier for size comparison. I chose to make him a little taller and slightly shorter than in the first drawing. It seemed a good compromise between the several reference pictures I was able to find. It also makes the beast big without being overly large for casting in metal if I need to go that route. The second layer of bulk was added the next day.

    I was also able to start laying in a bit of head structure with the Pro Create putty. Armatures are all well and good... all right... they are often critical for getting the proportions and pose the way you want them, but I was really excited to get down to the surface detail work.

    There is  a point in the cure time where the putty is too stiff to apply to the finer wires and features of the smaller sculpts. I usually keep a piece of terrain I'm building handy to use up the hardening putty. But this beastie serves the purpose beautifully. I can push and pull the putty around on the solid body for quite a lot longer.

    Here's the latest layers applied. I was working out the foot and leg structures and getting the head closer to it's final shape.

    This last is a picture of the same work from a similar angle as the second drawing. Things are progressing nicely, but I'm still troubled by the choice of resin or metal for the casting. I'd like to have it done in resin, but I'm nowhere near ready to do that myself and the metal can be done reliably. I guess I can always have them made in metal first and produced in resin later on. I'd like to get some metal masters for conversions later anyway. We'll see how it all goes.

    That's all for now. I'll post more pictures in a week or two when it's close to being finished.