Turnip28: Pierre-Louis Pustul de Maggonet and the 281st Festering Carbuncle

Well I whipped up my fodder unit, painting it all super quick and messy - as any good turnip paintjob should be. I started by just spraying a bunch of cans I had kicking around. The colors probably played little part in the end, but I figured I'd just experiment with it:

From here I did a PROPER splotch job on them. I used a big brush and 5 or 6 colors, I just crammed it all in there while the other colors where still wet and didn't really care if I hit the wrong areas.

It's been a while since I experimented with "saving" a paintjob with a wash. What I mean by that is relying on the wash to hide all my sins. Streaking grime did not disappoint here! 

Also I went back with little highlights and some detail work, but only spent a few minutes with each model. It was mostly done with a big drybrush.

Pierre-Louis Pustul de Maggonet went through a few variations, but ultimately I just used a body from the Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors box that I won at Under the Dice Fest YEARS ago.

Here's the ol' bird all done up, in the same way as the messy fodder. I'm not sure if he will remain the Toff, or if I will have a more inspired idea. As I said before my job here is just to get a regiment all done, then I'll work out the lore details.

I did however gloss up the heads pretty good. Just felt like a funny thing to do. I'll probably tie it to the lore somehow at some point, but for now I just wanted real shiny helmets and bayonets. Maybe they put some sort of root slick all over them.

And here's the lot of them, looking ready to march!

Next I think I'll paint up the whelps all at once, there are two units, and the toadies are twins. The brutes are also happening, but it's a little trickier, you'll find out when I post em.

 

Flames of Orion: Dark Demon

Dark Demon is the name I generated using the Flames of Orion Callsign Generator, and dammit I'll stick with it, although I'm tempted to try again. I painted up the mech today while hanging out with the gang over at the Hive Scum HQ.  We had intended to actually play too... but sandwiches and xacto knife dartboard got in the way. 

You know how it goes.

Anyway this mech started off as a Marauder I pulled from a blind box a while ago. My favorite mech from Battletech I've seen! I had already painted this one, but wanted it to fit a little more in the FoO-niverse. I added some greebles and some grit, and I made it a bit more asymmetric and came up with this:

 

She primed up nicely, and I put a wash of a couple GW shades I had kicking around over the very bright white zenithal I had laid over. 

I was already liking the way it looked:

I added some red on a few areas for pops of color:

Then I hit it with some streaking grime, and after that had dried I hit the windows with some red, to match the booster in the back and gel with the red details.

After it was mostly dry I tried to make the base pop by mixing up a bunch of random paint to see what happens. In this case it was Dirty Down Verdigris, a yellow contrast paint, and some sky blue for highlights.

After that I painted to base rim black and called it done! I probably could so more to this, added more highlights etc., but thats the fun part of painting with others for me. I paint quickly and I don't care as much, and usually it comes out better than expected.

Thanks for lookin'! Pce!

Flames of Orion: Bashing a Pilot

As always, spurred on by my friends, I'm excited about a new project. 

As always, I am trying to dive head first into this idea before I lose any steam.

Steve (@sovthofheaven), has been working on Flames of Orion for a while now. I played it in the early playtest days and I liked the game. Steve has gone on to put together a successful kickstarter of the project and people are really psyched on the world he's built. 

For a while though I had gotten my fill of his universe. I was still stoked on the games development, but, well, idk what it is about mechs that doesn't really light my flame... maybe the lack of humanity.

On this new episode of Hive Scum (65), Steve talks a bit about a more RPG focused Flames games he's been running. I dug into it a little with him and well, here I am - excited about envisioning what a mech pilot might look like, and creating ONE mech that will be his to pilot.

This is what I want from Flames of Orion, a world where I feel like I'm living in it. Less about a fleet of robots and more about the story of some hot-rodder, fixing his damn rig and keeping an eye on the horizon for potential threats.

The mech I wanted to use is my favorite mech I've seen for BattleTech: the Marauder. I pulled this from a blind box and was taken by the interesting shape. I painted this up a while ago, and I'm going to add greebles and modify it before I prime over it and paint it again, but that's for another day. 

Pilot first:

I pulled out a bunch of "potential" frames to build my dude from. I wanted "chill guy" energy from this pilot. not someone engaged in combat, but someone who might just be sippin' coffee, waiting around for a call to roll in about potential credits he could score. 

Think Spike Spiegel

Ultimately I cut a couple of these bodies up to make the frame for the mini, welding the two with green stuff

Found this head off a Victoria Miniatures sprue, I'd never noticed it on there, but boy does it have the perfect relaxed and kinda cocky look to it. Plus he's got the little rangefinder, for firing his big ass long range cannon.

I wanted his hands doing nothing important. It's hard to find hands like that so I modified two "gun holding" hands I found in my bin. One went into a green stuff pocket and the other I created a cigarette being held up to his mouth with speaker wire strands. Nothing says dystopian than a cigarette.

Cleaned him up a bit, added some little flavor bits and he's done! Meet David "Dax" Bauer

Now to work on the mech itself...


 

Turnip28: Building Brutes

I wanted a unit of Brutes for my Turnip28 regiment, and I also received the moldmoldmold book from my good pal Gage (@noclearcoat), after flipping through it, I thought I'd try and use these brutes as an opportunity to do an "artist study" and recreate some of his style in there. My idea for this unit is they are some sort of Frankenstein creation using root and parts from dead soldiers and animals that get pulled into the mud.

It started off with 6 different similarly sized minis:

These minis are from all over, I just took them right out of the box where I keep my "bodies" which I use as the base models for my bashes. Then I did some greenstuff and bead work on top of the minis:

The wires stickin' out is speakerwire, figured it might look kinda rooty at the end? Anyway next I filled out some arms and crammed some dirt in here and there to fill gaps and build chunk.

After this was the part I was nervous about. moldmoldmold talks aabout using a "concrete concoction" in his book, but doesnt explain what it is. So I mixed plaster, concrete patch mix, and my Readi-Base™ dirt mix. I figured I'd give it my best shot and see what I got.

I wasn't quite sold on them immediately afterwards... but I let it dry, and hung tight, hoping it would be ok.

After priming them, thinking they might be a bit much, I was pleasantly surprised that they do look like monsters made from root and dirt. 

Now onto the Snobs!






 

Turnip28: Building Whelps and Fodder

I've been meaning to get to Turnip for a few years now. As sometimes happens with hobby projects, I kept putting it off, and when it would come up in conversations I would start putting some ideas together, but the project would lose steam and I would spend too long in the thinking/planning phase. 

Brad (@bitsbibsorks) brought up the idea of doing a one day Turnip28 game-day later on this year and it was all I needed to reignite to excitement again for the project, but this time I would do it differently.

The problem I fall into with Turnip is that everyone else seems to have sick ideas and I struggle to come up with a way to put my own spin on the world. So I plan, and I think, and I don't do any of the work because I get stuck in idea-ville.

This time I just started snippin' sprues and gluin' dudes. I think the themes will come together later. I can always expand the regiment or edit things. This is something I've done with Skaven and them Orks. I let the "build" lay out the flavor, rather than the other way round.

Anyway, I dug out some whelps that I had started a while ago, but glued them onto better bases:

The horses came from Warlord Games Black Powder line, the British Union Brigade Calvary. I picked this box up cheap a long time ago and the horses come in handy. Not sure where all the riders came from, but at least a couple are from the same set. I had some other heads on these riders, but I pulled them off and put some 3D printed beaky turnip heads on. After they were on the bases I gritted them up using a mix of baking soda, PVA, paint and some chunkier sand. I also created a movement tray by cutting some MDF for the bottom, which I made too small, and them sliced some balsa wood to fit. the border is real thin because of my mistake in measuring, but it'll do!

Last thing I did was make some ragged caparisons to go over the horse faces, my first little touch of weird for the regiment, then I was onto the Fodder:

The Fodder is made up of Warlord's Napoleonic British Line Infantry, which I also got cheap because it didn't come with bases. I had JUST thrown out some 20mm bases, and only had 25mm leftover from skaven, so I had to dig through some dirty kitty litter in the trashcan for 'em, but found them and based this guys really quick with the same gritty mix I used for the movement tray and threw some turnip heads on 'em, making sure I crammed some baking soda in the wet glue for extra texture.

Added some more grit to the duders, and made them a movement tray (this one better measured) and these guys are done for the time being.

At the end of the day, the desk is a mess, so I put it all way and now it's clean for the next session.

I'm really stoked for this project, and excited to have an army, even if it needs some flavor adjustment down the line. 

Next up I think it'll be some Brutes!

xoxo

Black Templars for 3rd Edition

Gage (@noclearcoat) and Tyler (@tylerisalrightatpainting) got me really stoked on making a small 500 point list for a 3rd Edition City Fight idea they had. Tyler has been working on this insane board, which you'll see on here if we end up rocking some games.

I was with Gage at the Hive Scum studio late one night, bashing up some Orks for our ongoing Sargos 40k campaign, when I stumbled on a half-built firstborn marine in the bin. I always thought there was something charming about these little fellas, and they are, well everywhere, as no one seems to really want them.

I remembered then that I had a ziploc bag of 'em at home that I'd never done anything with, which I found in a tacklebox at a thrift store a few years ago:

So I went, dug them out, did some sorting, some listbuilding with what I had (newrecruit.eu) and added them to the dudes I had taken from the bits bin at the studio and came up with this ragtag team:

I bashed up a leader, Castellan Luthair Bremaan, wearing some snazzy Terminator Armor and onto the next step.  Here they are after being primed, sponged on with some gray, and then drybrushed white. I also went over the pauldrons in white to get ahead of it.

Next I debated on using decals (I've had microset and sol kicking around for ages) but ultimately decided that doing a messy freehand would give these guys a looser, more impressionist look.

Then I painted some red on the crew:

After this I painted the faces of the helmetless dudes, which I forgot to photograph, then I hit 'em all in streaking grime. Bottom pic is a little side-by-side because it's been a while since I've used the stuff and I was happy with the result.

After this it was all just clean up, a little highlighting, and I like to make my banners out of comic books, and then add some small freehand/unifying color work over the unwanted bits. I forgot to photograph this process, but I will at some point in the future. Here's how they came out! I'm stoked for 'em. Space Marines (firstborn specifically) are a blast to paint up. I'm gonna continue to add units to this army, and I'll post up with I do.

Barfing up your Cake

 Paulie Mordheim linked a video yesterday into our group chat, I’ll link it here:

I listened to the whole video, and found myself initially defensive, then understanding, then confused and ultimately realized that the video's creator had read way more fantasy than me and I could agree on the parts that I felt qualified to agree with. I had to chalk the rest up to finding out if I eventually read these other fantasy books. 

I spent a long time last night with it bouncing around in my head. She sums up the video basically saying if you write with a formula it’ll always be derivative and it will, at most, just be “entertaining” and it would be hard (if not impossible) to create good “literature” by writing this way. As I said, my thoughts went all over, and I started thinking about what books are if they aren’t made commercially available? There’s no way I’m gonna find something if I can’t - you know - buy the damn thing. So I spent my time not really sure what to do with the information she just laid out. 

Ok - so it’s all derived, formulaic, and expendable, but if modern fantasy is ALL just Tolkien run-off, how would it be possible to actually break away and sell your book?

Then it dawned on me, as most obvious things do because it takes me forever to process info sometimes haha - that she isn’t saying we should break away from the formula with the end goal of being the next Tolkien (although she loses me when she talks about being on the bookshelf next to him), but instead she is saying that we should throw caution to the wind and write. Just do the damn thing. Get out of our own way and just let the words flow. We’ve gotta stop thinking about our work as a commodity to be bought and sold, and instead as a vessel for self discovery. 

Tolkien did this (and she starts the video by saying such). He was just having a grand old time being silly and serious in his made-up world. The rest of us took it and ran with it. 

The video’s creator is saying that by sticking to a formula, we are selling ourselves short. We are cheapening the actual goal of creating any art, which is to act as a funnel and translate all of our interests, loves, and fixations into a blender and dump them out on the table. Then move that sloppy mess around until we come up with something deeply personal and meaningful, which probably isn’t - ummm very “good” in the eyes of the publishing houses (or maybe even your friends ha!) but it moves the chains along into personal discovery. It’s hard to explain our personal identity to another person in it's literal sense - but barfing up something creative, helps to do the translating, and helps us better understand ourselves. 

I thought about this then through the lens of wargaming and RPGs. These worlds are also kinda derivative. I’m not sure from where exactly, and I’m not gonna say Warhammer and DnD because it’s older than that for sure (and I don’t want to be yelled at), but we've got a lot of stuff that feels kind of the same, with a different skin over it. However RPGs have certainly broken away in the indie world, while Gage would know more, I can say Ten Candles,  De Profundis, and A Quiet Year as examples of stuff I’ve heard of but never really played (sorry!). Wargaming though kinda struggles right? I mean OPR, Warhammer, Forbidden Psalm? Kinda pretty similar. 

Then I thought about Space Gits - how Mike Hutchinson made something that feels so fresh to me. Something that seems to have his individual stamp on it, his own flavor. Something that was very passionately made, something that in my eyes breaks the mold. It is possible, even if it requires a bit more tooling around with.

Another example of this is Bread & Puppet theatre (Cheap Art) which does a better job breaking this down more poetically than I ever could. Shout out Chris (@landlines on IRWT) who was the one who sent this my way, and made some amazing stickers using the manifesto as inspiration!

I’m rambling a little bit, now so let me tie it all up. We’re in a competitive age, everyone is slipping on the ring, vying for the Eye of the Almighty Dollar to please see it and send all the orcs their way. It’s become the end goal for most people, in fact, making money on something has become so engrained in creative pursuits that usually the second thought after “this is kinda fun” is “I gotta find a way to make money on this.”

To find out who we truly are before we die (sorry!) we’ve gotta break free of the “grind set” thought process. We’ve gotta break free of the industrial assembly line way of making stuff, and we’ve gotta start just enjoying the act of DOING again. The barfing on the page, canvas, miniature, whatever - and seeing what the hell comes out when we funnel our unfiltered brains into them. 

In the eyes of the people running around wallets in hand, it’ll probably “suck.” But it’s your damn baby, let it grow and develop until it becomes a monster of its own.

A little slice of cake you get all to yourself

Make First, Think Second.

Analysis paralysis is a helluva thing to deal with. We’ve all been there, excited by a new technique, a new art form that we've never tried, maybe it’s someone's style we are gripped by for the moment or perhaps we get an idea for a wargaming scenario or campaign we’d like to develop. 

Whatever it is, it gets us excited, and our brain fires on all cylinders. We’re stoked to get going. It's that little kid energy. Then we freeze up. We're adults. We don’t know how, we don’t know how to do it like the person who gave us the idea, we get nervous that it won’t quite look right. So we dive into the Pinterest boards, the YouTube videos, the Google searches and look for the answer. 

There we find that there are about 100 different ways to skin our cat, and of course there’s someone telling you somewhere along the way that there’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” of tackling your project. By this point, well, you’re probably discouraged, maybe you realize “oh this is expensive” or start doubting your abilities. Well, don’t worry because you’ve blown all you excitement staring at your computer screen. Or dare I say, just as bad, you’ve listed out your game plan in a notebook or drawn some ideas in your sketchbook and have now gotten yer fill of it.

Also now there’s some other shiny idea that’s crossed your path and your off chasing another butterfly 

Here’s and alternative though. Give it a go, trust your abilities and instincts. Let your hands do the thinking for you. Grab a mini and put paint on it, or a canvas and slap that brush here and there. Drill that 2x4 into the wall, jump on the skateboard before you jump on your keyboard and search “how to…” 

Try to work out the idea in your head as you go. 

In an era of perfectionism, public display, and scrutiny, it's hard for us to get out of our own way. We see these people who've "figured it out" and think we've got no shot so why try. We've forgotten, or maybe never learned, how to improvise. No one's got it all figured out, and no one has ever learned how to face problems by trying to solve them before they even arise.

When you come up with an idea, in your heart, you know what to do. You've gotta act. You've gotta start. You've got to exorcise that idea, and you've gotta do it quick. 

Get something down, do something, and when you hit a problem you don't know how to handle - don't look to the internet, look inside yourself, how can YOU solve this problem. Even if it's not the "right way," it's ok for something to be "your way."

After you've gone and done it, then comes the thinking - what went well, what could I do next time, do I wanna do a next time? At least you've done it once. A lot of times, riding the first wave leads you to the second. The stoke builds - because you see it in action.

All of life is improvisational.

Anyway, just a little rant I thought of in my shower last night. Don't worry so much, no one is looking, so fuck around a while and see what happens. 

I bet you'll have more fun anyway, maybe get those hands dirty.

Did y'all know you can just turn it off?

Since having a daughter a little over a year ago, I've learned quite a bit. Both about raising a little animal which runs around my house, but also what it means to be a human animal myself. I've grown increasingly negative (ok, I've been a hater, Matty Knucks will call me a luddite) towards technology. This started before having a kid, but it has fired up tenfold since having to navigate what my personal time looks like now.

I'm a pretty routine driven person, a creature of habit, and loving the modelmaking/miniature painting hobby, I made sure that that time was protected for me. After my family all snuggles up for the night, I slink away to my dungeon and chew at whatever project I'm working on for an hour or so before turning in myself. 

Aside from that peaceful hour, I have been feeling more and more like I spend the rest of my day racing. One thing to the next. Emotions always running high, and when I do hit a bump in the road, I become overwhelmed. I'm topped out - how could I possibly fit fixing the washing machine into my already packed-up schedule.

Now, like I said, I already knew this little box in my pocket where all my friends are (to borrow a phrase from my friend Brad @bitsbiborks) was a huge timesuck. So I did some of the work of breaking away from it. I put a limit on my discord time, and only my wife knows the password, and I'd feel defeated asking her for more time. I've deleted the Instagram app after years of trying to find a healthy way to use it (I still have my account just in case I want to go back!! It's tendrils lie dormant within me!). However I still feel like - even with those apps stifled - I end up on some stupid shit like youtube shorts or pinterest, being pummeled with ads and bullshit "hacks." I look up from my phone and 10 minutes have passed and I feel braindead, more overwhelmed and no better for it. I'm so attached, I am constantly responding to people, checking emails, the weather, my bank, whatever - and for what? To fill my already limited minutes?

That's when I got the beautifully stupid simple idea of just turning it off. When I don't need it, why even have it on? I have an iphone - and this stupid thing takes like 15 seconds to boot up, then all my messaged and apps have to load back up, which is enough time for me to say "eh, it's not worth it" to check how old Danny DeVito is, what day daylight savings is, how is Bam Margera doing or see if it's going to rain later. This last week I've been doing this whenever I don't need my phone. My wife has my work number if there's an actual emergency, so I'm not too worried about some catastrophe happening. 

I've gotta say - the world has really opened up. It's too annoying to boot this shit back up so instead I just either do some task/chore I have to do, or I just look at stuff like we did when we were kids. Seems so dumb, but I just putt around and find something to do. I have my sketchbook, I think about what I'm doing in the workshop, I go find someone at work to bug, whatever - but I don't close off to the world like I used to do with my screen. I feel less overwhelmed and braindead, and I can focus (kinda haha). I know what I have to do, I have no reason not to do it, and it's more appealing with out the allure of this dopamine mine in my pocket

If you feel up to it, just try it, even for a half hour. See how many dumbass reasons you pickup your phone only to realize that it is not only unneeded information/action - but that this would probably lead you to being in a phone-hole looking up the economic state of Egypt in the 1890's, with nothing to do with this information other than to promptly forget it when you pull yourself away from screenville.

You may not be "more productive" (which is another trap I won't touch), but you might find that maybe you can breathe a little bit and that the red cardinal that just flew into the bush looks awful bright against all this damn snow you've been cursing on about.

xoxox