For different factions and different games, the fluff changes as to just how unified a force should look. Everything from Warhammer 40,000′s codex chapters with their matching color coded shoulder pads and helmets, to Malifaux’s loose affiliations of mercenaries and scum. Sometimes you paint all of the troopers the same, and other times you pick colors or styles that tie the troopers together.

My wife and I decided that for our Super Dungeon Explore set, we weren’t going to tie the minis together in usual ways. Rather, the minis were going to tie together stylistically: each and every Kobold will be a different color, but they will all be painted using black lining and color book-ending.

That reminds me that I’ll need to do a write up on the bookending with a little show and tell. It is a technique that I learned that helps make minis look brighter.

Here are the first three finished Kobolds. If you know just how bottomless the pile of Super Dungeon minions is, you’ll know there’s more on the way.

Ok, Alien Dungeon isn’t a company that has made much of a splash for itself. You probably haven’t heard of them. And the name Fanticide doesn’t mean much to anyone right now. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it isn’t even a word.

But the names Rick Priestly, Andy Chambers, Earnest Baker and Alessio Cavatore are well known among people who have played Games Workshop games over the years.

Rick Priestly is the man who made Warhammer what it is, and more recently is responsible for the award winning Hail Caesar historical rules set (and Black Powder too).

Andy Chambers was responsible for some of Warhammer 40,000′s best years and updates, and had a big hand in Necromunda. More recently, he is the lead designer for the science fiction World War II game Dust Warfare.

Alessio Cavatore designed some great rules for GW’s Lord of the Rings line (like making Tom Bombadil somehow work in a miniatures game without breaking the fluff). He is the lead designer for Mantic Games’ Kings of War.

Ernest Baker- there’s a name I didn’t know before now. He was a general manager of North American sales for Games Workshop also, and is now running Robot Peanut Studios. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from them in the future.

So, what do you get when you put all of these people together? Well, apparently, it involves flying monkeys in a place called Nowhere.

Really, I’m curious to see how all of the rules and world look in the end. It sounds like they’ll have a number of interesting new rules, including event cards and rules to design your own units (to include miniatures from other ranges). Right now, I’m keeping my eye on this one.

Ok, for those of you who haven’t been following, the Crystal Brush was Coolminiornot’s idea for creating the most competitive miniatures painting contest in the world. They started out by offering huge prize money for the winner ($10,000) and got some outstanding entries for the effort.

This year, they’ve been offering prizes around the world to the winners of various prestigious painting competitions passage to Adepticon.

It follows that the winners this year have produced some of the best miniatures that any of us have ever seen.

Congratulations to Jose Manuel Palomares Nunez. GEA really is a worthy champion.

I don’t know that there’s a whole lot that needs to be said about him:

A few times, I have been asked to share my methods for painting the more detailed freehand coat of arms and murals.

The first thing to do in every instance is to break the shape you want down into basic shapes- the ones you learned about in elementary school (like circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles etc).

For example, a skull can be created out of a semi-circle on top, with circles for eyes and a squat trapazoid where the teeth attach.

You can actually break up pretty much any image into these kinds of shapes. It is sometimes best to use references at this stage. For example, when I first started painting lions, I actually took a good long look at the Lionhead Studios’ lion to figure out how to create my freehand:

So, after you have a basic idea of the shapes that make up your freehand, paint on an outline in your darkest colors. Shading on a flat surface is a lot more difficult than simply highlighting up, so I always start freehand with some of the darker colors.

Highlighting is an odd process here. Basically, I fall back onto what I know of miniatures, and imagine where I would highlight the insignia if it were a three dimensional mini. For example, on a face, I would highlight up to the brow, cheekbones, and leave darkened areas in places like below the lips.

I tend to work with one color at a time, and then move onto the next one by starting over with basic shapes again. For example, I first painted the outline of these characters, then painted each color separately, adding details like teeth and eyes after the rest of the faces were completed:

One last note- depending on the look you are going for, it is often best to go back in and add dark lining to the freehand that you’ve finished. Dark lines help different areas pop- especially from a distance. From my examples, you will notice that I often add lining in this way, but not always. Just be aware that lines that are very dark can add a sort of cartoony/comic book look to a miniature.

It is often good to fall back on some basic freehand designs that you may have used in the past. I use the same methods for jewels, flames, lightning, or starscapes as part of complex murals as I do when I’m painting them as simpler effects. I’ve even used quite a bit of Object Source Lighting techniques to add some zest to the freehand.

That’s pretty much it. Like all techniques, the more you push yourself to stretch, the better you’ll get at it.

I still love these little minis. They’re very small, and have some impressive details on them, but it is also nice to see the sort of parody of Malifaux characters being played out.

For painting them, I feel that it is necessary to try and play up the parody by using colors that evoke the ‘standard’ studio versions of the characters.

It turns out that Easter minis can be pretty awesome. And why let Scibor have all the fun?

I’m a little surprised to see that a colossal comes with some little mechanikal solos.  I suspect that they’ll arc lightning back and forth to the stormwall.

The price is now known at $134.99.  That’s higher than anything I’ve seen from Privateer Press, but the mini is larger than anything they’ve released also, and as far as giant resin minis go, you could do worse for the money.

Also, they’ve given us a comparison photo for scale.