Always look on the bright side of life... (and give-aways)

(...Says the guy who adds a header full of hung corpses and pillaging skellies)

Some of you might have seen that this place has slightly changed its look and those who have are right.

For a time it sort of annoyed me to have a header composed of a stolen picture from the net, poorly cropped to fix my lack of talent and ideas to have anything else instead.

There's a point where one has to make the right call and ask to those possess those talent and ideas and it's why I asked Zhu to make me a header for this blog.

It's far much better than the older one isn't it ?

I can only say that Zhu's design exceeded my expectations and that he managed to both get the very blurry ideas I had given him and his own touch to form that excellent result. Just have a look at the little details here and there, it's those kind of things that make illustrations evocative for me. It's the kind of details that do not make you think "ok, it's that way" but which make you think "wow, what's behind that ? and why's this?", the kind of details that ignite imagination...

Check out Zhu's post on this piece of artwork HERE.

Another Oldhammer WE Debriefing by a bloody french...

So here we are, it's been a month since I last blogged and a tad longer since I painted anything...

Why is that ? Well just throw moving house, holidays, business journeys and the fact I still don't have internet at home and you rapidly come to that sort of results.

Does that mean I haven't been doing anything hobby wise all this time, noooope ! I certainly haven't been painting much (but that's going to end soon) but I've had the occasion to make myslef anothr hobby place (probably the only upside of moving home) PLUS I've had the occasion of attending BOYL 2015 (aka Bring Out Your Lead, the Oldhammer event in Newark) this year.

This year, I made myself a little present by staying 3 whole days there and I can tell I never got a minute spare or got the chance to get bored.

As usual, it seems the only games I have are abroad, last one was in Montréal in Febuary with the most Excellent Iannick. This year, just like last year, I managed to get 5 games in the WE and all were very different and yet very fun.

Let's have a look at those games :

GAMES I PLAYED :

Inquisimunda : The quest for the Golden Phrogg

This game was a spin-off for the Campaign organised by Andy Hoare from Tales from the Maelstrom, and it was the occasion for no less than 9 players to gather around a table for a huge Royal Rumble.

The Game took place at the Warhammer World which I had never visited before and was organised by Job from Magpie and Old Lead and it was extremely nice to game on such a lovely table with vintage lead (you could see some people being very intrigued).

Players were divided into 2 groups : Graham (Greater Harlequin) and his genestealer cult, John (or Just John if you want) with Space Santa and Chris (Antipixi) with his ash waste nomads. Facing them were Gadge with his rogue trader, Colin (Whiskey Priest) with an inquisitor, Paul (Cheetor/Sho3box) with another inquisitor and Myself with my trusted Sensei warband.

Great table, great guys in a great venu, what could go wrong ?

The Helpful Hobby Guide : Sculpting tools

It will come as no surprise if I tell you I am not much of a sculptor...

However, part of our hobby involves using putty at one stage or the other (unless you're a plastic-only kind of modellist) to simply fill gaps, repair damaged detailsor even add new ones for conversions.

In all those circumstances, you have to learn by trying. learning from other people's experience though is allowing shortcuts though.

Though many painting techniques are covered in magasines and all, I've always felt that you don't get much sculpting tips or tricks and that basic techniques aren't as well known as they are for painting.

The aim of this post is is no way to tell anyone what to use as I'm clearly out of my jurisdiction here but it's aimed to share with you what I use and learn from your tips and advice, critics and comments.

The tool below is the first sculpting tool I got when I started pushing putty back in 2000. You can see it's not the most precise of tools. I think when I got it it had already been used for dentistry or something has it was clearly not brand new. It did what it had though and I quickly switched from Milliput to Green Stuff (I won't go too far on the subject of putties as it clearly exceeds my very limited knowledge of the only 2 I use).

Rogue trader Hoverbot D.I.L.D.O.

Robots, probably one of the most evocative subjects... they do everything we do far much better than we could, they're smarter, stronger, more resilient ad they speak with such awesome voices (when not simply making 'bips') that just looking at them makes you jealous not to have been born on Cybertron.

You may remember that a little while ago (well last year), I posted about robots in Rogue trader...

Hey there...

  And at that time I had built the basis for a scratchbuilt hoverbot :

Well, thanks to constant reminders from Christian B. on the Facebook Oldhammer community page, I finally took the time to finish that model that had sat half basecoated for months in front of me ion the painting range.

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