FKB XCV: Heavy Metal

I'm sorry for the lack of the usual post this week, but I am swamped with other projects at home. The standard program should return soon - and in the meantime, I decided to finally host an edition of a little game between polish bloggers, where one person throws a topic and those who are willing are trying to get something done in a month that fits the theme. It will be obviously in polish, so I'm greatly sorry to those who can't speak it. Tranlation for the curious below.

FKB, Figurkowy Karnawał Blogowy, to trwająca od 95 miesięcy zabawa blogerów, w której co około 30 dni jeden z nich wybiera temat pozostałym (lista wybranych dotychczas i wybierających - tutaj), a pozostali starają się zmalować coś, co się nada. W lipcu 2022 r. hasło FKB brzmi następująco:

HEAVY METAL

Czołgi, czarno-czarna kolorystyka, długie włosy, ciężka kawaleria, armaty, perkusiści, rycerze, półnadzy pakerzy z piorunami w tle, skóra, ćwieki, łańcuchy i edgy nastolatki, temat mam nadzieję wystarczająco szeroki by każdy był w stanie znaleźć coś dla siebie. Można pomalować coś nowego, albo zrobić stosowne zestawienie już gotowych modeli. Nada się wszystko co kojarzy się z głownym hasłem, jakkolwiek byście tego okrężnie nie tłumaczyli. Metaliki w dłoń i powodzenia!

--------------------------------------------------

Heavy Metal: tanks, black and black color schemes, long hair, heavy cavalry, cannons, drummers, knights, half-naked musclemen with lightning in the background, leather, studs, chains and edgy teens - the topic is wide enough for everyone to find something that suits them. You can paint something new or set up your old minis for this. Everything goes as long it's connected to the main theme, no matter how convoluted your reasoning. Take your metallic paints and good luck!

Knight of the Realm #08

Return to the knights for a bit. I am very busy at home right now and I wasn't able to prepare anything more fancy. The painting on this one is also rather simple.

Still, this knight is rather unique, because I had only one of those antlered helmets when I was assembling them. Naturally, this also meant that he had to have a fitting heraldry. Besides, he sports probably the blackest color scheme out of the whole bunch - with some slight color to break it up a bit - and I already have a completely monochrome knight anyway.

Blood Bowl Chaos Chosen - Boshoi Siblings - the Uncleft

So, Bretonnians turned out rather repetitive, so I did a quick change of pace and returned to my weird Chaos Team, The Lost & Damned.

I already painted the Beastmen, they were the last before the hiatus and they are all a dark and twisted take on both Chaos and Blood Bowl. Now it was time for the Blockers, or Champions as I call them - really useful players that command the lesser creatures around them. Here are the Boshoi siblings, a conjoined monstrosity with the bigger half stoping and chomping all around the pitch (talking too) and the smaller half handling the ball and being the brains of the operation.

This guy was painted the most already and was overall pretty simple, so I chose him first. All the general design ideas about them are in the WIP post to be found HERE. Painting was a joy, I like flesh and there wasn't many differen textures involved. In the end, they turned out almost exactly as I envisioned - I didn't plan for dark teeth, that just happened because of the basecoat and I loved it.

Should the Lost & Damned rely only on their chaotic and unruly beastmen, they could just as well go back to the maelstrom from where they crawled out. The true stars, who carry the team on their shoulders, are the four Champions - the rest of the players are just lowly retinues to them. One, or rather two of them are the Boshoi siblings - a conjoined monstrosity, sharing one body with two eyes, two functional hands, two legs, and one mouth. They work and play as one, a terrifying charger out of your darkest dreams. Contrary to what one may think, they actually enjoy their life, more together than anyone else in the world. Boshoi receive every one of their mutations with fervor and make sure to make a great spectacle for the gods out of everything they do.

Sir de Treviers, the Questing Knight

I was a whole week away and the previous one was very work-intensive, I wasn't able to prepare something new - so here I come with another knight painted in the bygone ages, the musician for my Questing Knights. He's part of the same unit as the champion shown previously.

I still wonder why did I put myself through 2 yellow dudes in the same unit at the same time, but perhaps me-from-the-past was just a little more insane. Other than that, it was a rather pleasant project - questing knights are terrific sculpts and all the details really do wonders.

Some questing knights want to prove themselves as soon as possible, while others take their time. Treviers is definitely of the second category - he started as a rather young lad, and now, a man in his prime, he's still not anywhere closer to the goal than he was years ago. Unlike Sir Chiegane, he doesn't really make it longer on purpose, he just enjoys his life a little too much to focus on the Quest itself. Helping people along the way, fighting beasts, writing and performing songs about his deeds, and seducing all the lonely ladies left by their husbands. He's in no hurry to serve under a lord and be bound to a small piece of land. His compatriots warn him that death may find him earlier than the Grail, but he isn't particularly bothered by it. Better and worse than him have already fallen before tasting from the Grail, so he's content leaving his fate to the Lady's plan.

'

Bretonnian Knights - Conversions

Between all the rank-and-file knights I have been working on the characters and command groups. Wanting to make them more distinct and fit my backstory a little better, I wanted to do some conversions on them since... forever. Seriously, some of those guys were my first attempts at conversions, first experience with greenstuff, etc. Of course, I had to change some of them to not be embarassing, but the idea stays mostly the same. I apologize for the mess with the undercoats and paints - I was convinced many times that they are ready to be painted, only to get them back to the conversion phase later, after already starting.

First is the "main character" of the whole army, Earl Sagremor, based on the "paladin with an axe" model from bygone ages. Main idea - his horse is a manmade unicorn, fitting his heraldry - this horn may be actually from 2008, those are easy to make. Second idea - the shield should be covered with a dragonskin - and this is perhaps the 4th or 5th attempt. Third idea - he should have a big sword. The first version of this was a translucent plastic sword that I got once in a restaurant to eat french fries with! It broke off sadly, was brittle as hell. Everything else on him are "modern" conversions to fill him up with details.

Second one, his older son, the Battle Standard Bearer. His horse is also a manmade unicorn of course.

Here, having already made a pretty impressive standard for a different knight, this one needed to be extra extravagant. So, my 2008 self sculpted this whole big "altar" on top of the standard, with the rays and shields. I only shortened some of the rays for better effect, but overall, not that terrible. Only the "ribbons" on the back side were super bad, so I remade them according to my current skills.

Now the younger son, a champion for the Errant Knights.

Nothing too complicated here, just some bits to make thim stand out more. And a unicorn-hat on the horse, of course.

Standard Bearer for the Errant Knights.

This one was actually a magic standard used on WFB 6th edition, it cheaply made Errant Knights significantly stronger - so it was always used. I liked the fluff description on how it was carried through countless errantry wars, was tattered and sewn together from many different smaller pieces, so I wanted to represent it on the tabletop. Nowadays I would probably give it more tattered parts and make different stitches, but it works good enough here too. This conversion is almost unchanged since 2008, only the hanging chains were added recently.

Last conversion for now, a champion of one of the Knight units. The idea came to me when I saw cardinal Richelieu's heraldry and wanted to do something similar - right after that the concept evolved to make him a priestly knight. Such a function probably doesn't exist in Bretonnia's fluff, but the aesthetics work well enough.

His helmet has this "bishop's hat" style and there is a lot of flowing details, all to make him regal and important.

Only one conversion still isn't made - Cadret the Black, a special character of my own invention. That one involves reposing the horse, sculpting the barding from scratch and many other details, so that one will come much later.

Knight Errant #01

A slight change - an Errant Knight this time, one of the younger, inexperienced knights. They are using the same kit, the only visual difference being they don't use the extravagant helmets of standard knights - that's why I'm working on them at the same time as the others, it's just a long production line anyway.

Wanted to give them another difference, I decided to paint their lances wooden-color, thinking that maybe they break their weapons so often, nobody really bothers to paint them properly. At least it'll make them more distinct as a unit.

I don't even remember how I came up with this heraldry and colors, but now I can only think of him as a German or Belgian football fan...

Knight of the Realm #07

A late post, unforgivable! Sorry, I had the photos prepared, but the internet broke down when I wanted to set them up online...

Another knight - this time in a white-blue color scheme, I don't think I had any of those. I decided to use light gold and yellowy-brown for the leather parts to make him all look rather bright and friendly. That's definitely a pleasant change of pace. I'm not sure how to excuse having a breaking wheel on his coat-of-arms in-universe, but I still think it looks cool and I wanted to make something like this since I saw such a heraldric concept on Wikipedia a long time ago.