MM90 painting countdown 16

So here is our next subject: Dauger. After the alleged man in the Iron Mask WIKI.

I have two samples of this miniature but both are very soft on detail, so I had to do some repairs.


So here you have it Clam, lets get it on!


Small update, not there yet, but getting there for sure!

And Clam beat me to punch again, basterd...

https://clamshellsandseadogs.blogspot.ae/2018/05/mm90-painting-countdown-17.html

He did a great purple version, but same like me this mini is terrible. Probably the worst in the range, details are soft, nothing on the mini of any interest, bland and boring... anyways the final product:

And a group shot, I've put him at the back, so we don't have to look at him too much, damn ugly Dauger...

MM90 painting countdown 17

So, Clam chose to go with mr. Big Ears (whom I dubbed Smith, after Will Smith because of the ea... ah well you got the idea) for the next challenge, and boy was it a close call. He managed to post his completed picture just minutes before me. I actually already finished Thursday evening, and was just checking out the CDO forum, and BAM, this Mr. Lamebeard had his completed work up already, even though he assured me that he would be busy and wouldn't have time to paint until Friday, basterd, can't trust a chaos dwarf now can you  >:-)

Anyways here is Clams attempt:

And here is my finished puppy.

It was a great mini to paint, I really focused on the big ears, because they draw all the attention.

And a group shot just for fun:

MM90 painting countdown 18

So this was a rather quick one, just plain full body armour bronze. I put a lot of highlights in there but it doesn't really show on the picture. Since I didn't have bronze I went with a mix of gold, brown and touch of black, highlighted by adding silver.


My good friend Clam dubbed him Miley Cyrus, because, obviously, the wrecking ball. I liked that reference but will keep it simple and just name him Cyrus, sounds a bit more manly also, and I don't want to hurt his feelings...


By the way this is my favourite of the MM90's so a bit sad that I had to paint it in such dull colours...

 

And a group shot of the work so far:



And the results of the battle so far, mine on the left Clam's on the right:

Press casting shields (Scibor style!)

Alright, for my MM90 painting project I will need a lot of Marauder style shields. Fortunately I do have a few originals, but I don't have any of the coffin lid shaped ones. These are the original ones made by Marauder, they are the same shields used for their undead line of miniatures:

On ebay I found a lot of the round ones with a Bat and a Rat, so I have plenty of those now, but I decided would sculpt some coffin ones.

Here's the start, a coffin lid shaped piece of plastic and then adding the details with putty.

What I learned was, that next time I will start with the rim edge and then add the details in the middle, because it was really hard to make the rim nice and straight due to lack of room and access, ah well, we live we learn.

Then I took the finished product, lightly brushed it with Vaseline and created a shell of putty around it making sure it was pressed firmly around every little detail.

After the shell was dry, I brushed the inside again with some Vaseline and then pressed a blob of putty into again making sure it filled all the details. Let it harden and then, voila, a duplicate of your shield design!

Tutorial; making tiny frikking rivets.

So recently I repaired two chaos MM90 Chaos Dwarfs that were mutilated, FUBAR:
http://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.ae/2018/03/repairing-two-mm90-chaos-dwarfs.html


And for this repair I had to sculpt 9 of those ietsiepietsie teenieweenie little rivets that are used on all the MM90 Chaos Dwarfs. I did the free style by placing a small bit of putty on the spot and then trying to get it to stick and shape it into something roundish.


This was frustrating and time consuming, I needed to find a better way. I tried a fineliner pen with the tip taken off but these rivets were too big and left too much putty around the edges. Fine liners are great for making indented rivets but not for protruding rivets.


Now I'm in the process of sculpting several Chaos Dwarfs that will need a sh!tload of the pesky tiny rivets, no a very tempting prospect. See here:
http://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.ae/2018/04/filling-alys-gaps-hmmm-that-came-out.html


So I had to come up with something to make this process easier, so I made a tool:

I used an old pen, made a tip out of putty and then used a needle to make a small hole in the middle of the new tip. I then covered it with superglue to make it a bit sturdier (putty is quite flexible). So why is this better then a fineliner, I hope this illustration explains that:

Where the fineliner will make a nice round rivet, it is however too big and it will leave a lot of putty remaining around the edges at the same height as you want your rivet to be. The tool I made will flatten the putty around the rivet, making it easier to smooth it into the surface and with a lot less residual putty.


So how to use? The best I way I found was to roll a bit of putty out and while holding it on the spot where you want the rivet, you push the tool onto the putty, but don't forget to lubricate the tool or the putty gets stuck to the tool:

The second picture shows me pushing it down on the table top and not the miniature but that's because I only have two hands, one of which had to hold a camera, but you get the idea. After you push the tool down pull the putty away.

And voila, you have a perfect tiny rivet, smooth around the edges a bit if needed, but that's it!

MM90 painting countdown: 19

So my dear friend Clam has called the next challenge after he finished his Spikem which can be seen here:


http://clamshellsandseadogs.blogspot.ae/2018/04/mm90-painting-countdown-24.html


He has chosen to paint MM90/6B

I must admit, that I hate painting yellow. so this one is going to be a challenge for me. Since Clam has accused me of cheating here is an unpainted picture:

And here is the work I've done yesterday, just base colours so far.

And finished, darn I have at least seven highlights on that yellow, but it still looks bland as heck, anyways, pics:

MM90 painting countdown 21 and 20

Over the weekend I had time to do some painting and added two to ranks of painted MM90's in the same colors as the originals: the sorcerer and the Assyrian looking bloke (or as I call them Garga and Pilsner, after my favorite bad guy sorcerer from the Smurfs; Gargamel, and after Tiglath Pileser III, founder of the first real Assyrian Empire).


For Garga is wanted to go full NMM, but I decided to do a mix so while incorporating many of the NMM techniques I still used the traditional gold glitter paint, but mixed in with normal paints.


For Pilsner I went with same approach to the gold parts and the greens are normal blended highlight, nothing fancy. Without further adoody, pics:

Group shot!

Filling Aly's gaps (hmmm, that came out wrong...)

Alright, this is about something completely different than the title suggests. A few months ago I wrote a post on my love for the MM90 Marauder Chaos Dwarfs.


http://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.ae/2018/02/the-marauder-mm90-chaos-dwarfs.html


Shortly after publishing this post I received a private message on the CDO forum from fellow member Threadbare, pointing out a post in Steve Casey's blog. This post contained pictures from Aly Morrisons personal sketchbook from his Marauder days.


http://eldritchepistles.blogspot.ae/2016/01/aly-morrisons-marauder-miniatures.html


Apparently Aly did a lot of sketches of miniatures he was planning to sculpt, so the post is full of lovely pictures of sketches that became actual Marauder miniatures. And of course my attention was drawn by the sketches of the Chaos Dwarfs!
A total of 17 of the ultimate 24 MM90 Chaos Dwarfs are sketched very recognizable in the book. It's impressive to see how close the actual sculpts turned out compared to the sketches, really shows that Aly knew what he was doing.


In the book there are not only sketches, Aly also used to paste some pictures in there for reference and inspiration I assume. And one specific page drew my attention; a page with 27 cut and pasted pictures of Citadel Chaos Warriors. Some of these pictures were crossed out while others were still blank. We all know that many of the MM90 Chaos Dwarfs are Mini-Me version of Citadel Chaos Warriors, and here we see the actual selection process went into that project.


But there are still gaps in the picture, and those gaps sparked my interest! Have a look at this picture:

In the picture I have crossed out all the Citadel Chaos Warriors that have a MM90 counterpart and I have circled the ones that were selected by Aly but never received their Mini-Me in the Marauder range.

Now I’m by no stretch a sculptor of the caliber of Aly Morrison but do manage to crank out a decent Chaos Dwarf on occasion. So that’s why I decided to start filling the gaps (finally, there is your topic title).

As my friend Clam has pointed out many many times I am not a fast sculptor. Besides work that requires me to travel a lot and my feeble attempts of building some sort of social life, sculpting isn’t a number one priority. But!!! I managed to make a start:

 

MM90 painting countdown: 22

And number three is done! This is the repaired 'Spike' (you see 'Spike' because on his helmet he has a... nah you get the idea). Also known as MM90 5D.
When I got this miniature it was properly mangled and some work went into fixing him up, see this post:


http://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.ae/2018/03/repairing-two-mm90-chaos-dwarfs.html


Now to add to the excitement (woopidoo!!), my fellow CD collector, Clam, proposed to turn it into a Paint of, see this post:


http://evillittlebuggers.blogspot.ae/2018/04/weve-got-challenge-on-our-hands-mm90.html


Well Clam, sorry to say, you are one behind (that's what you get for calling me slow back in 2012).


Without further ado, pictures:






Again, damn difficult to match the exact same colour blue, so not 100 percent happy but it will do for now!









Now it's up to Clam to choose the next one to paint, gives me some time to focus on sculpting, more on that later on!