“A roll of the die” (week 14)

 

This week’s toss of the coin came up double tails and the D30 roll brought up the figures below from “Galahads” list…

Box 14 (15mm sci-fi alien unit hydra miniatures)

Now these rather nice alien chaps came as part of a swap I did with Matt Beauchamp over at hydra miniatures a while ago, Myles had hinted at doing some 15mm sci-fi gaming and his intention was to buy some of “Gzg’s” 15mm “Stargrunt” figures and was I interested in providing him with some opponents? (It is worth noting here that Myles is yet to purchase his half of the bargain we struck!) Well it wasn’t long after this as I was trawling the net for something to fill this roll (I wanted something alien but with a level of technology similar to that of the humans Myles was looking at, but different) when Matt contacted me wanting to buy or swap some of my Dick Garrison figs, A quick look around his excellent site soon turned up a huge amount of bits I coveted with a vengeance but the “Akarr” figures from their “Xeno15” 15mm range stood out as exactly what I was after as my 15mm sci-fi force, different, alien and with the retro theatrical style I love. The only problem is that the range has no vehicular armourment, and I am still keeping my eye out for something suitable (but as it may of become apparent over the last twelve months I’m a fussy SOB), current favourite is the “Retrovian robot tripods” from my own Dick Garrison range, but I digress. These have once again been awaiting a bit of paint brush attention for too long now so on the painting list they went and their number has now literally come up, so they were glued to pennies (two weeks with out a two pence piece mentioned wow! Oh I just did, Bum! Forget I said that) and the bases blended in with “Tetrion” it was off to the garage for a coat of matt black.

Once this was dry and touched up they were given a liberal dry-brushing with copper and this was then re-coated with another dry-brush of bright gold, this would be the colour of all the metallic parts, next I needed a flesh colour that would stand out against this bright armour, I did consider a pinkish red (ala’ John Carter) but in the end went for aquamarine, now I have used this in the past as a base coat for alien flesh but have always highlighted it with light turquoise to lighten it up, but this time as I wanted to keep the painting pretty simple (I’ve got quite a few to do!) I just left it the darker shade. Next I turned to the long loin cloths they are all wearing and again I wanted a contrast with the colours above but also wanted to continue the almost regal vibe they were aquiring, so a base coat of plum was painted over these and then this was highlighted with lilac. Now at this point I have to say I had a good long look at the figures and I wasn’t at all happy with the quality of my painting, what I was doing I really don’t know frankly it looked like a five year old had done it! The edges between the separate colours weren’t really edges at all more of a splodgy mess, so I went round all these lining in all the joints with black and then re-doing all the gold and aquamarine edges back up to these lines (not a fun job, but so much neater once it was done) that just left some metallic blue “jewels” to be added to their armour and some light grey highlights to the long hair that the leader figure has (he/she is the only one that does) and they were ready for a coat of Quickshade.

When it came to painting the bases I asked Myles how he planned to do his, it being his show after all. Though I have to admit I was rather pleased when he suggested the chocolate brown with terracotta and coffee highlights I use on a lot of my sci-fi figures as it suited their style to a tee. I also added a couple of patches of the red sand we picked up from a floristry supple wholesalers a while back before giving then a final coat of matt varnish to finish them off. Oh well another project underway, I hope I might finish a couple of these by the end of the year! I won’t hold my breath though!

Till next week, Cheers Roger.