Post show busy-ness

OK. The dust has sort of settled post-Salute. For me the show was a bit of a mixture. Dealing with the painting competition side of things, I entered 4 pieces, of which 2 made it onto the finalists table - the Flower Knight and the Architect Pin Up. Neither made it any further though, which was a little disappointing, but I didn't honestly see the models that they were up against because I was extremely busy for the whole day working on the Hasslefree stand. In the end a lot of friends managed to snag awards, so it was all good.
The show itself was mental! So busy, and so much happening. We spent all of Friday afternoon setting up, then had to be in the hall again for 7am on the Saturday morning to finish off ready for the rush at about 10am!
Fortunately the HF gang treated us to a lovely meal at the nearby Ramada hotel's restaurant on the Friday night, and I followed that up with a few cheeky beers with Pete (Avicenna) and Damien (Mister Dee) and a few other painty peeps.
The Hasslefree stand was 3 deep with customers much of the day, but I managed to slip off just before opening to say "hi" to some of the Brindie gang and to the McVeys. On my way back I was accosted by Adam of Demented Games, who cheerily showed me some of his and Seb Archer's painted pieces for their upcoming KS Project called "Twisted", which is a Steampunk world with some familiar looking and sounding characters. Most impressed was I, and all the more so when Adam handed me a pre-release cast of Seb's Crystal Brush gold award winning sculpt M'Dusa that can be seen here - LINKY - so big thanks again to Adam for that. I was great to meet you and all the more impressed as you Twisted lot had been globe trotting to Crystal Brush (Chicago) and Salute (London) from Australia in quick succession!

I don't have much to share in terms of new painted toys this time as I've started on a fairly big commission project. What I can show is the fun little commission that I did for Wamp called "Thugz Bunny"...

It's a quirky little "Marmite" piece, but good fun and obviously seasonal :)

It is also well worth visiting the Wamp store in the link above, as Brett tends to stock some less easy to obtain minis and accessories all in one place. Currently, I believe he has taken stock of some of the new-ish Bombshell line of models, which is a range of pin-ups, sidekicks and just plain bizarre (in a good way) sculpts around 28mm size. Then at the other end of the scale there are a couple of the latest Michael Kontraros sculpts, including his Elf Dragon Prince piece. In between you can find the likes of Studio McVey, Hasslefree, Ax Faction and Guild of Harmony, along with paints, bases, plinths and putties, so make sure that you pop along (tell Brett I sent you! ;p )


















I really ought to get final photos of the Soda Pops piece done, but my photo rig is set up especially for the current project, and so it will have to wait for another day.

In the mean time, and with bunnies in mind, I thought I would pop in a piece that I did a little while back, just before the little one was born - wow! nearly two years already! - which I called "Girrrls Gone Wild"...

 

The piece was an idea I'd had for a while based on those cinema poster/DVD covers that you see for youth gang type films, like Kidulthood and such. So, I built a street corner and populated it with a bunch of mean looking girls from various model companies, with a linking animal costume theme and a similar colour scheme. In the scene there's lots of nods to street artists whose art I really like too. I was really pleased with the final look, and despite not being a project that has won any awards or anything, it is still something that I am very proud of as a fairly unique looking piece.

You can see more views (and put votes in if you like too ^_^ ) in Putty & Paint - HERE

And Coolminiornot - HERE & HERE

The next update is likely to be more musings than new stuff too as work progresses and I take a few days off with the family too :)

It's Showtime...

This past week hasn't exactly gone to plan, following last week's bizarre events which I am still wearing the bruises from. Most significant model related ones though have been a couple of accidents with the base of the Soda Pops walker scene, with PVA dripping out of the bottom 3 or 4 days after assembling the underside (for transporting), and then 3/4 of the black paint on the plinth peeling away with the masking tape because I'd left it on too long! My own stupid fault for not thinking about this sooner and a bit of a pain to put right now. Hopefully it won't show if I take it to the show at the weekend, but I'll review that this evening when I do the big pack up...

I'll do some sort of show report for this weekend, but just as a reminder, I'll be working on the Hasslefree stand at Salute, London Excel on Saturday. I shall put a few pieces in for the big painting competition, but mostly I'll be dashing around the stand as things do tend to get pretty busy. If you see me though, say "Hi". We all wear named T-shirts, and there's only one Scott on the stand ;)

I finally got around to uploading some minis onto my Putty & Paint and Coolminiornot albums this week.

Here's the P&P link, where there is a selection of my better pieces of the past few years and most recent offerings - http://www.puttyandpaint.com/Scott_Hockley - you can also access it from the link on the right of this post if you are on the full desktop version. ^_^

Also, I have uploaded the following to CMON. If you can stop by and pop a vote on, then it would be much appreciated...

 Cassandra

http://www.coolminiornot.com/355231

The Watcher

http://www.coolminiornot.com/355234

Laurie The Archivist

http://www.coolminiornot.com/355232

The Architect Pin Up (from my 1st post)

http://www.coolminiornot.com/355233












I shall most likely submit a couple of these for the Salute competition, but one I definitely will take along is my version of Kingdom Death's Flower Knight...

This is also in both of my albums - CMON link - and is a slight conversion of the Flower Knight where I have added a set of wings from Studio McVey's Ur-Fidyr model. Both sculpts were by Thomas David, so meshing the two together worked almost flawlessly. The build and paint of this model was a long project, but well worth it.

See you at the show! ^_^

Light at the end of the tunnel...

It's been a strange couple of weeks, not least because I seem to have been subjected to numerous personal injuries and accidents of late that have left me a bit worried about sitting at my desk for fear of some terrible Omen-like final tragedy befalling me!
What I have managed to do though is clear the desk of a load of nearly done pieces and get the two main pieces that I've been working on most recently very close to final completion.

The big thing this week that has prompted me to get some of the pieces done was to get some new matt varnish that I can use easily in my airbrush. It would appear that the matt lacquer that I've been using for years, Testor's Dullcote, is soon to be very difficult to obtain here in the UK. So I went on a little mission to find a workable alternative that wasn't going to break the bank. What I bought and have successfully used is Winsor & Newton UV matt varnish, which I picked up from the Range for under £7. A few drops mixed with Tamiya thinners and popped in the airbrush was enough to happily coat a model and due to the speed of drying when using the thinners, I could add a second coat almost immediately. It also gives me much greater control when I want to avoid varnishing metallics or areas that are deliberately glossy. All in all, a happy discovery and a product I would recommend whether you use an airbrush too, or want a decent brush-on varnish. :)

So, armed with said varnish, I needed to finish off Cassandra. The last instalment had me weighing up a couple of options for the base. Originally I had a smooth surface with little electric glows where here feet touched the floor in my head, but while digging in my spares box I found a couple of pieces of leftover parts from old model kits that I thought would suit entirely. One was a broken robot body from an old Statuesque sculpt, and the other was a spare head from the old Kabuki Hellenika sculpt. Stuck the two together and I had one (male) vanquished enemy robot for her base. I quickly cobbled a stone floor together and here is the result...

 

With that built, it is now just a case of drilling out for my transit bolt underneath (for transporting her to shows), creating a plaque, and gluing it all together.

Here are some "final" shots of Cassandra in place, with a few extra details added to the dead robot. The plaque is kind of built and the drilling yet to be done, but this should be done this evening.

 

I also tried out a new background to my photos which make things quite (melo)dramatic!The background was just a free download that I printed onto a piece of A4 paper, which when set far enough back from the model creates a really effective look. In fact, I was so pleased with the new varnish and  back drop that I took the camera to a whole host of models in the cabinet, some of which are already in my various galleries, but some have never been shown in their final forms, so I thought that I would show them off in the next few blog posts while I am busy with commission pieces that I haven't got permission to show yet.

This is one such model...

This is "The Watcher", who is the end of game boss model for basic box of the forthcoming Kingdom Death: Monster game (incidentally, both this sculpt and Cassandra were created by the enviously talented Thomas David). There are in fact several add-on bosses when the game finally drops, and I do have a couple of other models from the game to do.

I have plenty of others to show soon, plus the Soda Pops Walker vignette is nearly done. I was unfortunately too tired to take photos last night when I assembled the scene, but I'll get some decent shots up once I add the accessories and tidy up where I glued it all in.

Oh, and it's just one week until Salute. I'd better get some sleep in! lol ^_^