Space slanns are back !

Zaba Krobosh, emissary for the intergalactic Slann committee.

So here we are, I got my set of Colony 87 models on Sunday night and couldn't help but rip the package open to see them in the lead !

Boy I can tell I wasn't disapointed ! Sculpted by Michael Anderson from sketches by Will Beck and under the most excellent supervision of Jon Boyce/Axiom, these models have been released via a massively successful Kickstarter that will grace us with another wave !

When I opened the package, not only did I find a little gift inside in the form of a badge but I also found 6 perfectly well sculpted and cast models.

I prepared the models and based them the morning following and tried to decide which one I was going to paint first...

Inspiration from comics... the oriental side

Well since the presentation of my comics collection seems to have been of interest, I think it's only natural I present you another part of it and specifically all the production from asia (mostly Japan and Corea).

Like in the previous article, I'll list the different titles in the order in which they appear in the shelves.

I'd like to explain that Japanese comics and animes arrived in France in the 80's (well a bit earlier but that's when they became that big). Thanks to TV channels buying them because they were cheap and to visionary publishers who understood that France (being a country of comic books) would welcome diversity, the whole genre has become as natural to people born in my generation as any other thing. Since this is also the time when I discovered miniatures, fantasy, sci-fi, Heavy metal and all that, I just cannot dissociate all those now and they all merge into what drives me now hobby wise.

The great permeability between french and japanese cultures (not apparent at first sight) has lead to changes in many fields (sports, cooking...) and comics and anime are only one of them. TV series like 'Ulysses 31', the 'mysterious cities of Gold' or 'Jayce and the wheeled warriors' are probably one of the consequences that may be the most familiar outside.

This is just a way for me to express how Japanese culture has been influencing French culture for more than 30 years even for those who're not into it as deeply as I am with Kendo, Taiso, comics or gastronomy.

Some of the comics I'm going to present here are true classics but some others are a little less well known. The description I'm making of them may often seem disturbing or not very welcoming but as much as I do love those titles, I know some of these leave no middle ground between hate and love.

Technical warning : It may come as something obvious to those who read a lot of them but more and more mangas (if not all nowadays) are published in their original sense of reading (meaning right to left). This is of course the best of things as it doesn't change the original work and avoids silly mistakes when transaltions of left/right do not match the reversed picture or when full page pictures don't get reversed and become awkward.

If the idea of reading from right to left is worrying you, know that the human brain is a wonderful adaptable thing that it will manage to learn and forget about the issue in no time making it as natural as reading from left to right.

Helmawr gangers

Patrick Landmait, Jefferson Murdoch and Steve Taylor

Just try and guess what we have on today's menu... Oh good ! You've been following then ! Yes , more Helmawr gangers indeed !

I had planned to blog a ganger after the other but for once painting happened faster than blogging (can't really complain here) so here are three new entries for the gang !

They are all different in styles and definitely are something different from the previous members. I hope you'll agree they go together quite nicely.

Just try not to think about this song if you can... (from 1991 like confrontation)

So who are our new candidates then ?

Pierce Gavestone - Helmawr Gang leader and Jokaero

Pierce Gavestone (with caryatid) and Gordo the Jokaero

Back In April 2014 (yep that's more than a year ago) I was in my preparations for BOYL14 and much of my attention was on confrontation.  A year or so later, not much has changed (on the hobby front  only) with me still preparing myself for BOYL and with my attention still highly focused on confrontation.

You may remember from a post at that time that I had modelled a couple of Imperial nobles but my studies on confrontation and the whole Necromunda setting and a few interesting trades lead me to consider a whole Helmawr gang.

For those of you who are a little less familiar with the background of it all, Lord Helmawr is the Imperial commander of the whole Necromunda Hive world. His position makes him very influential and important. He has to rely on many mercenaries and bounty hunters to work in the shadows for him (like Venators to cope with the pyskers and mutant threat) but also on his own gang for tasks that require unquestionable trust.

Imperial commander Lord Helmawr

The Space Hobbo - Oldhammer Legacy Warband 2015

OK so it's the time of year when I wake up and try and fulfill my promises. One of my commitment was to model something for the Oldhammer 2015 legacy warband. After painting my transgender Asgard barbarian last year for the 2014 warband (see this and this if you don't get the meaning of it), I had to paint a turquoise pirate for Rogue trader.

I knew I wanted my pirate to be immediately recognisable as coming from Rogue trader so after some thoughts, I went for a plastic marine body from the RTB01box.

Since none of the heads were looking like I wanted, I opted for a plastic modern Space Wolf head (kindly donated by a generous belgian member) and opted for the full 80's way with the help of some putty. I wanted my Space pirate to be a mixture of all those icons below (I hope I'm not teaching you who they are) :

Lemmy Kilmister

Inspiration from comics... the occidental side

Being of an obsessive kind comes in different flavours... spending a lot of time/energy/money on little soldiers is one kind but obsession rarely comes alone...

One of the obsessions that has been accompanying me for as long as modelling has is comic books. I'd even go as far as to say they're 2 sides of a same thirst for escapism.

I was reading Colin's articles about 2000Ad publications and about the Incal and thought I could probably add a few inspirations of mine. The inspiration used to create the Warhammer universe through books and films (Starwars, Alien and many others) is well known but there are plenty of sources that are either not as well known and which have influenced game designers in the past OR new material that can inspire them and most importantly US hobbyists.

I'll take this occasion to share my collection, or at least part of it, with you and I really hope I can give you the will to open some of those. (I'm not posting it to brag or anything but more to let people get the exact references and see what others things I read I didn't mention here).

Now my collection is an atrocious mixture of comics of all sorts and origins (both in time and space) so I'm going to split this review into east and west like in good ol'days. I'll start with the occidental side of the collection based on pieces from Europe (and therefore UK) and the US with a slight southern America detour...

Being french, you'll find that all this is very oriented as all countries don't have the same access to the same titles and the translation issues may also have helped or handicaped some of them getting to France or getting out of it. My point is that I'll comment on what I know of the french versions of the titles (except for a few for which I've had the opportunity to compare with originals).
Not all of those titles will be available abroad depending on where you live but if you ever feel like giving a go at one of them, please do not hesitate to ask me for help/advice.

Since I'm failing at finding a proper order for all this I'll just list things as they appear on the shelves. The way books are placed in the shelves is due to the place available for a good part but I've also tried to keep a certain consistency as you'll see... (I'll be skipping some titles that have little relevance to the kind of models I paint but that doesn't mean one bit they're no good, far from it).

Chaos grav-attack !

Alright, some things get in our way sometimes... when I moved (back in December 2013) to the house  I'm living in right now (and am about to leave), the first model I started with was the dreaded chaos grav-attack.

Being of the obsessive kind, I knew I wanted my grav-attack to look like the original glorious grav-attack designed by Rick Priestley :

Picture from Solegend

And that meant starting on a deodorant stick base.