With some minis, especially tanks, I find there is a lot of depth that can be added by simply adding a little mud splattering.

Here is an example of a very mud splattered tank:

The mud splattering on the sides was created in a few steps. First, I watered down a medium and dark brown paint, and applied it like a wash to the lower portions on the tank.

When that was finished, I took the same paints and and old brush. I filled the brush with some slightly watered down paint and held it next to the mini while gently blowing through the brush onto the mini. This splatter application works quite well for blood also, and I find that the randomness of it helps out a great deal with the finished product.

One other thing to note on this tank is that the treads are painted in browns. These are the same brown paints that I used for the splatter patterns, and help unify the mini’s context.

Another thing I think I should bring up is if you are using mud splattering in conjunction with a base, you should use the same colors on the base as you use with the mud:

A base helps add context to any mini, and when you are adding mud to the lower portions of a mini, it is important that the base suggests everything else you’ve done with the mini. In this instance, I created a base of thick mud for this tank to be crossing, and used the same colors on the base, tracks and splatter.

You’ll also know that most of them heavily feature zombies and couples fighting off the horde.

Well, it has been a while since I’ve had some to post up here, so here are quite a few different couples:

This first one wanted to be the zombies themselves- so we have something a little different going on here.

This set had a few specific ideas in mind- especially the smirk on the groom, and matching the weapon to the brides own guitar.

These next two were similar in some ways, but the choice of weapons were drastically different. I’m honestly wondering if I’d prefer the shotgun over the M-4 assault rifle myself.  Also, it probably is easier to fight off the horde in ABUs rather than a tux.

Of course, it is hard not to think that the ideal weapon choice was discovered by this groom.

Tabletop Gaming News will be starting the voting today on their annual Reader’s Choice awards for 2011.

This  award is rather great.  Honestly, I think that every miniatures enthusiast should peruse their yearly nominations as it usually contains a short list of the best minis/games released in the past year.  The TGN nominations usually include some amazing sculpts that I somehow missed during the year.

So head on over and take a look at all of the great nominations.  And if you have an account (or are willing to create one) go and vote.

Edit:  Due to some hiccups in their system, the first round of voting didn’t show many of the nominees.  TGN has pulled down the voting for this week while they work out the bugs, and the voting will resume starting Monday.

However, they have previewed their first miniature: the Shadow Prince. And I’ve got to say, if they keep this quality up, they really have a winner:

But Janci couldn’t resist getting a single shot for each and every puppet that I painted. So this is a more pic heavy post than I normally put up here.

So, here is a set of minis from Wyrd’s Puppet Wars game.  Players of Malifaux will recognize Zoraida’s voodoo doll versions of their favorite characters.

Many of us were wondering if the plastic trend was going to reach Hordes very soon, but it looked like they had other plans.  Mostly, when we saw the Ravagore and Scythean many people thought it looked like they were making an Everblight plastic kit, but then the minis were released in metal.

Well, it looks like that’s changing now.  In February, the Everblight plastic warbeast kit will be released:

Now, I’d like to point out that I honestly can’t tell the difference between these photos and ones from the more expensive metal kits.  To the point where I’m not sure if I have the right photos here.

But the other factions will require a little more sculpting to create a three-in-one plastic warbeast.

Now, we have photos of the new Circle kit:

These are all clearly new sculpts, and are pretty easy to distinguish from their metal counterparts.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing (although those feral and pureblood metal kits are some of my favorites).

But that does mean that they are pushing forward the plastic kits.  Honestly, the Circle minis would have been harder to homogenize than any of the others- Skorne Titan kits and Trollblood Dire Troll kits are certainly on the way too.

Frequent readers will remember Sergeant Lorenzo

Brother Zael with his heavy flamer and lots of flammable parchment.

Brother Deino- one of the more plain Space Hulk minis from this edition (not saying a whole lot there).

Brother Goriel- who it seems has been more successful in close combat than I’d usually give the marines credit for.

And Brother Omnio.  According to the fluff in the rulebook, Omnio is actually part of Squad Gideon, and Brother Valencio is part of Squad Lorenzo.  However, every last scenario calls for squad Lorenzo to have three marines with power fists and storm bolters, and always puts the chainfist in squad Gideon.

So, Brother Omnio has been conscripted.

Their latest addition is a set of Dungeon tiles

With 30mm squars.  Yep, it looks like it is made for everyone who loves the old 3rd ed Dungeonbowl rules that never had a board of their own (for those of you who don’t remember, those rules actually used the old Warhammer Quest board- and that’s been out of print for an age too).

The Elfball label Impact has put on it implies that they’ll have some Elfball compatible rules to go along with it, and that’s a great bonus aswell.

It is a bit of a shame that the GW dungeonbowl rules aren’t available right now (although I still have a PDF saved from when GW did have it on their site).

Anyway, it looks like a nice product if you’d care to check it out.

These miniatures are mostly sculpted by Gene Van Horne (although it turns out the initial run had some work by Bobby Jackson in it too).

Well, they started out with mouslings that looked like adventuring heroes:

But once all of the core character classes were all covered in the mousling world, well… they started getting pretty crazy with:

Asiago Jones Mousling

Zombie Apocalypse Mouslings (proving they have similar taste to me).

Space Mouslings

And happy drunk Mouslings

From all reports, it seems like Reaper is giving Gene Van Horne an open door for all Mousling minis.  If he makes one, they’ll produce it.

That’s a great deal for him, as it means that he is free to create all kinds of outstanding Mousling minis.

Now I’ve mentioned his name twice, so if Gene Van Horne googles his own name, he might be reading this.  So, Gene, if you are reading this, I’d like to put an idea into your head.

Football Mouslings!

I mean, I’d love to field a Bloodbowl or Elfball mouse team.  And hopefully, you think that’s awesome too.

For the stockings on Collete Du Bois and Cassandra, I decided that harlequin diamonds would be pretty appropriate.  When I went to shade this freehand, I treated them similar to the way I would treat jewel effects (ie, highlighting up towards the bottom).

Another point of interest is that I actually lined the lips.  I do not always do this because I often want makeup to fade into the face, but I found that in this instance it allowed me some added expression on the faces (lining the lips allows you to alter the line of the mouth to extend it in a number of ways that create an expression).  That is something I’ll definitely be doing more of.