A well overdue update

Hey guys,

Lee here again after a rather busy hiatus from posting. 2013 saw the studio take flight from part-time commissions, to being a full-time single artist and growing to include more artists, higher levels of work and the beginnings of 'greatness' adopting the ongoing work to paint the Drake product line.

2014 is off to a great start, with the addition of Arthur to our lineup, the studio now paints 100% of the Drake product line and has a few new commissions to show off over the next few weeks, including some collaborations! Another element I'm now putting a big focus on is 'community', which is something that really attracted me to the hobby to begin with. This year I was able to head up Drake's efforts to be a part of the GottaCon event, and to join Kelly Kim in judging the painting contest. He has put up a post covering the Small figure category on his Blog Sable and Spray, which you can find in the followed blogs section. The coverage of he other categories should be up soon - if not already up(my bad on the delay).

There are a Lot of cool things I'd really like to talk about going on at Drake, but under NDA I can' really talk about upcoming releases - so just stay tuned. What I can talk about are releases that ARE out and painting we've done. So lets look at some recent work...

We recently did a bunch of blitz work for the product line, all a bit of a rush job really. In the end I did get a bit of an extension on the project and was able to get the 5 models done in 6 days, including cleanup, assembly & basing.

5 day speed-paint

I think with a bit more time for the project I could have done substantially better, especially with the deadly whisperers, but overall I'm quite happy with the result as they turned out in the photo shoot. he Velocidron is probably the model I'm happiest with, as you can see below, he didn't turn out too badly for a rush job.

The Rivercrest Unit Commander ended up with a lot of weak points, but I Like how he shield turned out, but maybe that's just because of a little victory over a few challenges getting my TMM to head in the right direction - lesson learned regarding certain grey paints. In the coming years I'd really like to revisit the sculpting on the cape. Our newer models have far more stylish fabric areas, I'd really like to see what Adam can do if he comes back to this model.

Nothing super technical about this one, but I think I'm fairly happy with the result. I did have something in mind for the stonework, but there wasn't time for the layering and freehand involved so I went with something a bit more simple and effective. Maybe I'll do my own up when the model ships and post it back here as an update. I did forgo a bit of the TMM and left model more on the shiny side of things as it's meant to be crystallized chant energy(as are all the power marks).

And last and definitely least, the Deadly Whisperers, Princess Acadias personally trained assassins. you can see some of the newer cloth-work I was talking about previously in this post on the crouching pose.

On a similar theme, I'd like to take just a second to throw out some pics of a personal project, which is actually an elective speed-paint, so to say. This is somehing I've been working on for about 4 hours in 20-30 minute bursts. It's part of my larger menoth collection, which will be entirely done up as rusty speed paints. It's not the most brillian work i've done for sure, but for less than a half-days work I think this WIP is a good starting point.

I really was hoping to complete the model in one sitting, but I have too many commissions on my plate, so I get a few minutes in on this each day before work.

Next up lets look at some actual Commission work, you know, the guuuuud stuff. Recently I had a chance to team-up with Arthur on a mini, another Kara Sloan conversion. The concept here being not only the standard re-posing request, but to expand upon that and give her a lot more of a sniper feel. We were aiming a bit more for dark and subdued aesthetic. I did the sculpting and Arthur did the painting - Kudos Arthur, sexy stuff!

So First-up here's the sculpt without the paint.

Ok, I know, I really have to stop taking shots for the blog with this crappy phone camera. Lets see how that looks with Arthurs point and shoot.

Alright, I'm not going to exhaust myself for material in one post, I'll leave it there for today. Gord should have some pics of a collaboration I did with him coming up fairly soon so there'll be more eye-candy to come. If he doesn't throw up something soon I'll get up shot of some of the things I should have done by the end of the week - along with some announcements regarding Drake stuff.

1 Day Pro-paint, Pre-production Yeeve 3D print

Hello hello,

It`s Lee here with another update on my activity. Today`s post covers an 'emergency' 1-day Pro-paint of a pre-production mini for action games miniatures. The game they produce, Drake, is currently shattering it's Kickstarter goals and will be launching soon. As part of their campaign they were putting together a rules video, to demonstrate gameplay.

You can view the video here: Drake Rules Video

Ben gave me a call on Sunday saying the mini's would arrive by courier Tuesday and the video was shoot was set to start on Wednesday 10 am. I didn't realize it at the time, butt I would actually be painting a pre-production 3D print of the model. They have a lot of their lineup currently already in pre-production metal casts, but this mini is not one of them; but I digress... I was to paint the Yeev of the Rish force.

So the project was something really exciting for me as there were 3 models going in for the painting to 3 different artist, one by Nick from Else-Where games, who I will be mentioning at a later date. The other model was headed off to Chad Lascelles, who's work you will see all over the Infinity line. I was very excited to see how my work would stack up to a well-known international painter's, seriously his work is awesome.

So here's a shot of what I received at 1pm after a discussion about scheme:

I know it's really hard to see much detail from the shots above, but most of the mini is covered in a very strange texture that just wouldn't fille or sand off, and of course I had to be gentle with the prototype, as there wouldn't be time to get another one shipped from Texas in time for the next days video shoot.

The above picture shows the primed and based mini. I primed the model black and then hit it with white to help a little with some zenithful lighting. The mini had to have a lot of contrast for use in video as the shots wouldn`t be closeups. After the prime, I took the airbrush to it with a custom dark blue, I can`t remember what I used for the airbrush basecoat. The scheme needed a dark blue back and a grey belly with some flesh tone worked in, so I used the flesh on the wings, and based the wings on both sides with the same colour. Now I mentioned the texture of the printbefore at this point the texture started impacting upon my stress level as it would just suck paint up and leave exposed areas with a stippling, stripey effect, so layer after layer, after layers, after layer were applied in rapid succession to get coverage in clog up a bit of the texture to even the surface out somewhat(i know, but you totally can`t tell on the final result).

to make the wings shading I used different washes in series over the creases in the folds of the wings, Sepia on top and ogryn flesh, sepia & agryx shade on the underside, tapering towards the exposed sections. The base was primed with a very watered down Cardon granite, which is wonderful as it fills in between the gaps, gives full coverage, but doesn`t clog up detail. The horns and teeth were done with my darkest brown, with a transition to desert yellow, then hit with a heavy dose of agryx shade, tapering away from the base of the horn or tooth. The belly was painted a dark grey.

The mid-tone and highlight stages were a nightmare, moving between techniques to get around the texture issue, from a standard transparent layering technique to a brutalised version of wet-blending and then combining to ensure nice clean transitions and clean edges. at this stage I started transitioning the grey belly into the blue hide and shading the inside of the legs, feet, throat, etc. 

The highlights on the hide were brought all the way up through blues and into white, then hit over with a very watered down blue to ensure that the blue tone wasn't lost. The horns and teeth got a hit of menoth base, then brought up to full white with white scar. the grey was highlighted up using a standard layering technique with exceptionally watered down paint to ensure that little errors wouldn't show.... at this point I'd vowed never to paint a 3D print without having at least a day to fix the texture before painting... the tail was hit with an additional stage of white and then a cover of blue to make sure it stood out, as the video was going to be mostly top-down shots.

The wings were brought up through flesh tones from the GW line, then washed again, then given another watered-down hit of a very bright flesh tone in multiple layers transitioning into the extreme highlights. I think i used a watered down ulthan grey as the highlight on the belly, just picking out the edges and a giving a freehand bit of transition through the shoulder to give the impression of musculature.

The base was finished off using various mid-tone browns as dry-brushes and overpaints with a light hit of a watered down sepia wash to add a touch of red contrast to the base. The rock base was a quick effect i use on rocks all the time, using heavy Agryx shade and sepia washes in opposite directions over a grey basecoat, then dryrushed very very lightly with the grey and then highlighted lightly with a watered down white. I spent a bit of extra time adding the static grass and flock to make sure the base didn't look like a hack job.

And here's a terrible shot of the final model.

The next day I went down to the set, to help and meet the rest of the team. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet Chad, but I did get to put his work side by side with mine, here's another aweful shot from my phone:

I was very happy with myself for producing something, that was not only very comparable quality(obviously his is a little better, but they are very, very close), but that matched his scheme so closely with absolutely no direct communication, which I think definitely paid off for the video, here's a better shot of the whole army.

So I have been on here too long talking about the Yeev for too long and have to get back to my Khador commission, but I'll find some time to post about that this week before I hand the models over to the client. I have one finalised and I'm down to the details on each of the other minis and will be painting a mini a day at this point (yee-pa!) So stay tuned for that and some more from Gord. We have our next projects and will be posting in updates on those as well.

Comments always welcome, if you like our work, please share the blog, and tell your friends we are accepting new projects!

Orks Update: Trumpeter Salute 40k Tournament

Hey guys Gord here again with an update of my favorite boyz. The Orks.
This last weekend I took them to a local tournament. The Trumpeter Salute 40k tournament. It was good times with lots of good people. The event was TOed by Lee Baxter. Thanks Lee for putting on a fun event.
Not super competitive. But that didn't stop me from losing two of my three games. :P Anyways I didn't come home empty handed as I won one of the raffle prizes. One of the GW 40k Trench Lines Terrain boxes.
I also won the best painted trophy. Yay me!

So I was up until 1:00ish the night before trying to get my objectives and Defense Line finished up. Here's a couple shots of my army.

As you can see in the front I used the Citadel Urban Barricades and Walls as a defense line. If you chop two of them in half then it all comes out to the same size as the Aegis Defense Line. Four long pieces and four short pieces.

Here's a close up on the defense line and you can sort of see the Objective markers in the back. I used the little markers you get in the Munitorum dice set only I chopped the Servo Skulls of the top and built some totems from plasticard and random Orky bits I had laying around.

So now I'm adding to the army and changing some things around that I find didn't work so well in preparation for a larger tournament in a couple months. I've also got a possible commission coming up so I'll post up progress shots and finished shots of those. Until then.

Exciting times; new Commissions

Hi, it's Lee here with another update from my side of things...

I did promise to upload some shots of the final Kara Sloan project and my Protectorate of Menoth list, but I have to delay that for a while.Firstly, I can't find my cable for my camera(my fiance's shoes cover most of our house and thankfully haven't invaded my studio yet), and I've had to sideline the Menoth for now as I've had some new work come in. Positives on that point, I have finally obtained and stripped all the last few models needed for this list and am hoping to get in a game to test out the list later this week - will report.

What I've been doing:
So first off I've got another commission I'm doing for a Khador player, cool little battle group of Kherchev the terrible and 5 Berserkers, all done out in an off-whit blue winter scheme. The project started off with some customisation and this little bit of work turned into a monster project as for some reason my drill bits kept snapping. Now that's only ever happened to me once so to have this happen to me 6 times is a big wake-up call on which products to buy and from where.

Here's the story on the customization:
So for everyone thats not aware of the berserker model, you can find it here:
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery/khador/warjacks/berserker

if you look at the arms, the "biceps" are basically a few thin pieces of material connecting some rather large weapon arms and the clients were constantly bending during play, so he wanted me to come up with something to make sure that the pose was more stable and droop effect came to a halt. now the biceps are essentially 2 pistons and a strut. I've reduced that for effect, to simply being 2 pistons, which i felt gave a greater look of this being something animated.

The next customization was to repose Kherchev to be leaping off a cast wreck marker, so I rotated the whole lower body, re-pinned the hip joint and raised the leading leg.

Just a note, I have also since changed the pose so he doesn't lean so far forward, it's actually a really nice pose you can see in the group shot below. So I've also given myself a massive headache by not wanting to wait to buy white primer, and simply priming black to help the metal shading, bad move, it made the basecoats turn into a 5-coat affair. but I now have the basecoats and shaded mid-tones down on most of the models. leaving a lot of the detail areas unpainted for now, those will be quick fill-ins once the armour is complete.

I still also have to put all the snow down on the bases, but I figured this would be a good chance to show off the colours of the base. Since the final result of the armour is going to be a very subtly blue white, I've made the bases a very subtly red shade of brown dirt.

SO, what else is going on?

Well I've been speaking with a local manufacturer and we're looking me spearheading coordination of the product from renders to casts, which is awesome! I get to bring the mini's to life, what a cool gig! Also they have some new models coming in from the casts tomorrow and have a promo video to shoot the very next day so I will be putting the Khador aside for a 1 day pro-speed-paint. Thats a real push for me, but I think I can handle it as the model isn't oo complex and will be exceptionally cast if it's anything as well cast as the last model I painted for him.

So I have a million and one things to do tonight, including a work-order with the the chief over there and finish off this mid-tone tonight, tomorrow is going to be insane, so I'll leave you all for now, and promise to upload some shots of that work when I'm allowed.

Please comment if you found Gord's rust tutorial helpful, I'm thinking of putting up a complimentary tutorial, being that I do rust the exact opposite way Gord does it anyone interested in seeing a different side of rust and being able to have a bit more of a transition into unspoiled metal?

Or how about you tell me what you want a tutorial of and I'll put one together, I have a couple cool tricks coming, up I'm just waiting for the chemistry to happen.

Commenting is good for the environment and creates employment opportunities for artists with too much work to do, please comment and support your local professional artist.

Orks: Quick and Dirty

Hey guys. Long delay but here's that post about fast but nice table top quality weathering that I promised.

I was putting together some custom Lootas and thought it would be a perfect chance to get some shots for showing off the process.

Now this process uses washes and a couple other techniques that I won't go over in detail as I hope you already know how to do washing. If there is a demand for some basic techniques I might do up a future post on the subject. For now I'm going to gloss over those things generally.

So first off I customized my guys with plasticard and extra bits I had so that they would fit with the other lootas.

When I prime my Orks I like to give it a shot of black from the bottom and then hit it with some Army Painter Leather Brown from the top. It gives it a god brown base to start from and also lightens up the final product a bit on the top while giving the bottom an extra bit of shadow. (it also makes them look like chocolate) ;) If you don't have brown primer it's no big deal. It just means a tiny bit more work on the next step.

After the priming I like to hit the whole model with a big brush and get some warm dark brown all over it to start the rust base. Sometimes you can add a tiny bit of water to help get more coverage easier. If you didn't have a brown primer then at this point you would want to put a bit more work into getting the whole thing browned up. If you did have the brown primer you can half ass it a lot and not worry about full coverage as the primer would just show through.
After the deep brown I would use the same big old brush to lightly splotch on some reddish and browny oranges to give it the look of super rusted metal. You don't need to focus on places that won't be rusted later on like flesh and what not. Though it's nice when it's on clothe and straps and such so later on you could even leave some straps and pants this way and it could look fine with nothing but a wash.

Now we do the chipped paint. This is probably the trickiest part because we want it to look like naturally peeling and rusting paint. I use a regular sized brush and sometimes an older brush that's starting to split and fray a bit. When applying the paint try to get it in the crevasses and deep areas where stuff wouldn't bump into it and scrape it off. if there are rivets and bolts on the model sometimes you can put some paint on it and then use your finger to wipe it off the outer edges. Don't worry about how dirt and grime will collect on the surfaces right now. That's what washes are for. You just want to apply the paint in areas that you don't think it would have rusted or been scraped off yet. I'll also just do a bit of a dry/wet brushing on any bare metal parts that I don't think would be fully rusted yet.

After that we just paint any clothe and straps and what not and give everything a nice liberal brown wash. this will add some shadow and dirt to the plates and clothe and leather. When painting the chipped paint and clothe I try to use a lighter colour so I can just wash it and skip any highlighting. It saves you lots of time on loads of table top quality guys and looks almost as good.

Now we add the metal scratches. The quickest way to do this is to use a fine sponge. Like the ones you used to get in old blister packs or you can get flat pointy ones attached to sticks at a local hobby shop.
When using a sponge I like to dab it straight on the paint and then dab most of it onto a paper towel so you can spread the paint around on the sponge a bit before applying it to the model. Like when using a paintbrush you don't want to much paint on your sponge or you'll end up slapping too much onto the model.
Now you could start with a dull silver first and then do a brighter silver after or to save time you can skip straight to the brighter silver. It just depends on how much time you want to save and how nice you want them to look in the end.
After doing the sponging you can use a brush to hit any hard to reach areas or spots that you think could use more metal scratches.

Here I also did the skin but you can really do that any time you want. If you do it earlier you just have to be careful not to get any silver on it.

And here's the final product after adding some weathering powder to the base and doing the eyes and face paint and base trim. Good enough for the table top and in good time yet without being sloppy and unfinished looking.

Final Thoughts: Now remember that these guys are just table top quality. There's a few things you can do if you want to spend more time to make your models a bit more showy. The only highlights I did was the metal scratches. If you wanted a display piece you could highlight the chipped paint and the leather and clothing before and after the washes. I would put a lot more work into the skin. Their skin just received a single base and wash again like the rest of them. highlights and colour variation on lips and elbows and such would greatly enhance them. You could also do the hairspray technique for the chipped paint but that might be a bit of overkill on rank and files guys.
Well that's it for now. Hope this helps some people. I'd love to hear some feed back and find out what people think and what I could improve so please comment.
Until next time.

Boobies & Dragons

Boooooobs!

...yes I am now painting a Malifaux miniature with massive breasts, and looking forward to her see-through tank-top coming to life. Pics coming soon!

But now that I have your attention, I'd like to make mention of something you really need to check out. If you are in vancouver you'll know that we have a huge community of gamers, and most people play at least 10 different games, but there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of LOCAL support, products or companies. Which if you think about it is actually really odd...

How many artists do we have this city, with companies like Lions Gate Studios, EA Games, to name just a couple of the huge producers in town and exactly none of the amazing small to medium producers and design houses.



Well NO MORE ! Drake is a very unique game that truly blends the elements of a 28mm miniatures game with Collectible card game. The play is fast and interactive and allows for a millions different dynamic and adaptive types of play. Right now they are blowing up on Kickstarter and are set for a full-scale launch in April.

Right now the deals offered on Kickstarter are incredible, get a deal while it's hot, and most of all please support our first local game manufacturer. Think of it this way, this will be the first company where you can actually phone them and talk to them, or go meet the guys locally, or play with the guy who created the game and works on the rules!

I had a chance to play with him one rainy Sunday when the game was still in beta testing, very shortly before the release of the quick-start rules. Trust me this game is awesome!

Drake Kickstarter

For some or other reason the website is down today, but you can usually see some final versions of painted minis on the site, find the link in the sidebar

Latest project update and phone pics.

Hey tabletoppers,

Just a bit of an update here, mostly going to be pictures, so I apologize in advance they were all taken with my phone... only 5mp - BOOOO.

Ok so (the client) wanted a conversion of Kara Sloan under the P3 Cygnar line. The concept was to customize her pose into a sniping pose and then build a custom base for her so she would be posed inside a building, behind a wall and aiming out through a window. He also wanted me to include sandbags, razor wire and paint the figure at an "advanced" level with directional lighting was coming in through the window and over the wall.

Kara's base is a standard 30mm base, and for play and competition  reasons, the base needed to remain the same size, so here's what I put together for the base....

Customizing the pose wasn't too bad, though if you aren't detail oriented, I'd give the advice to get someone else to handle this customization for you. the detail lost in cutting the parts was some of the smallest detail on the model. The cutting went by pretty quick with my nifty diamond blades and Chinese knock-off dremmel.

And that's how far I got before the weekend....

Here's what I managed to get done over the weekend; now admittedly there are still some things left to do including the razor wire, font and center, so it may seem a touch incomplete, but i'll post up a much better picture of the final sometime before the hand-off this weekend.

Painted base...

Kars's first few licks of paint....

End of yesterday...

As I said, I'll upload something later in the week, when the model is complete.

Personal Intruduction. (And Orks!!!)

Hello and welcome all. I'd like to start off by introducing myself. I am The Machine God. But my girlfriend calls me Gord. I'm mostly a 40k fan but I've got some Fantasy and some Warmachine in my collection amongst piles of boardgames and some newly acquired X-wing miniatures. I'm an avid gamer and I also dabble in some game design. (maybe we'll see some future posts involving that. We'll see)

I'd like to thank Lee for asking me to come and contribute to the Blog. I'm really not much of a writer so my posts will probably be more pictures than anything.
I love converting models and weathering the hell out of their paint jobs. So Orks are one of my favorite armies to work on. I try to convert almost every model I can. Snikrot above didn't get converted just because he's an amazing model and didn't need any more embellishment.

I took my Orks to Gottacon in 2012 and so I had lots of boyz to paint up in a short amount of time. In the process I came up with a pretty decent way of doing weathering at a nice table top quality very quickly. In a future post I'll go over some of the techniques you can use to produce a similar effect.
I'd also like to hear what kind of things people would like to hear about for other future posts. Until then. Here's some more Orks!!! Waaagh!!