Jakob descends upon Crystal Brush...

There's something intriguing afoot this weekend. At Adepticon in Chicago from the 1st to the 3rd April there's a new miniature painting contest called Crystal Brush run by Coolminiornot. Crystal Brush is somewhat different to most painting contests as it's offering cash for prizes and a might $10,000 to the overall winner. I'll admit having reservations regarding this but I'm not really wanting to form an overriding opinion without seeing how it all goes down first. There's the possibility of much controversy due to the money involved but also the potential for some incredible works of the miniatures art as amazing painters strive for that coveted top spot. Crystal Brush also differs in that it's offering 50% of the selection of the winner to the voting public in a similar way to the various phone in TV shows (though thankfully just via online voting). I'm actually more curious as to the effect of this on the contest more than the money...

But, you know what? I think I'd prefer to offer my thoughts on Crystal Brush as a contest next week when the dust is settling. Easy way out I know but I'd rather give it a chance to shine or explode before ranting one way or another. Instead I'd like to talk a little about one of the entries that will be there. This is a piece by my good friend, multiple Slayer Sword winner Jakob Nielson.



Yep. Bonkers. I immediately love that Jakob has taken this opportunity to produce something totally loony. Plus it's a rare chance to see one of John Blanche's Femme Militant figures. In this case extensively converted into a... crazy... horse-thing... on a ball...

Yep, back to bonkers.

Getting aside from the crazy image that Jakob has concocted it falls back on exxactly the kind of approach I like to use when designing an entry for a contest. I have a list of things I want a figure to have and try to make contest entries tick the boxes. I refer to this as not giving the judges a good reason to knock you out in a tie break situation. Basically you go with...

Immaculate painting - It's the obvious one and obviously this piece is beautifully painted. In fact I'd go as far as to say this is better than Jakob's usually top notch standards. Check out that red and tell me it's not like a slap to the face?

Conversion - Yes, it's good to convert. Sometimes this can be something small just to personalise a piece but I find it's good to get the judge looking for the joins because if they can't see them then they're immediately impressed. It forces the close up look and you want the judge looking closely. That's where you show them that you're the real deal.

Base - You want more than flock, sand or static grass. It's good to have something there that singles the model out but without drawing attention away from the figure itself. Jakob has gone for a nicely apocalyptic look to the base with lots of details to find but in a tightly controlled palette that sets off the figure rather than drawing the attention away. Jakob has also put it on a spherical base. I think this is the first time I've ever seen it done. The ball is weighted and Jakob has a video file on his site of him wobbling the figure around like some demented weeble centaur. I guarantee the judges will want to take a closer look. This goes nicely into the next area...

Impact - You want your figure to stand out from the crowd. Make the judges look at your figure. Jakobs mini screams it's impact in so many ways. The rich colours, the animation of the figure, it's off the wall design and the ball base which all smudges together into an incredible feeling of motion.

Freehand - Freehand is a great one for contest painting. This is where you can really show the judges you know how to paint outside the lines. My favourite freehand on this piece is the painted fur texture. Subtle and not drawing attention but we've already made sure the judges are looking closely. Also check out the playing cards and the checkerboard arm tie.

Storytelling - A little harder in a single figure without extensive basing but it's good for the figure to immediately start asking you the questions of who and what they are. I think the storytelling strength of this piece come out of it being somewhat difficult to define in genre. To me it would be a great character in a new version of the movie Labyrinth where instead of Brian Fround you had John Blanche as the lead designer. Can someone make that please. I'd buy a ticket!

The back - last point is a lovely one. Put something amazing on the figure that can't be seen from the front and make it one of the points that the judges will be blown away by. On this figure it's the clockwork insides of the horse that are visible through it's body but only from the back view as shown below. This is a great plan as, depending on the contest, either the back view is the first a judge sees of the figure so it's a good way to make a first impression or they see it front first and then get a second 'wow' moment when they turn it around.



So, that's a whole lot of thought processes. Is it worth going to such extremes. Hmm... I'd say two slayer sword wins and countless demon trophies suggests Jakob might be onto something in his techniques and I genuinely feel this is one his greatest, and maybe THE greatest of his works.

If this is any indication of the quality of works that will be on show over the next three days then this is going to be an incredible weekend for mini enthusiasts and I can't wait. I'm wishing best of luck to Jakob anyway.

You can check out Jakob's website at this link

JRN-works

and you can find the Crystal Brush Awards at

Crystal Brush

Now, lets sit back and watch the drama unfold...

The curious case of making metal look plastic...

As you can imagine from reading this blog, I'm rather interested in the technology and the ongoing development of technique in sculpting miniatures. I tend to have a slightly obsessive way of looking at models and how they form part of a larger picture. There's something I've been subconsciously noticing in the last few years and it kind of popped into my forethoughts recently when I saw a certain miniature...

For the last 25 years or so, the wider miniatures industry has been turning more and more towards injection moulded plastic as it's material of choice. Games Workshop certainly spring to mind but the last few years have seen a number of others entering the fray whether it be other fantasy manufacturers such as Mantic or the many historical setups such as Perry Miniatures and Warlord. The general way of doing things is to produce plastics for your core range and supplement with metal. Certainly makes sense for reasons I'm not going to detail today, but most of you are probably perfectly aware of.

Well, the last 25 years of plastics development has been seemingly driven by one overriding idea. How close can we get to metal quality in a plastic kit. It started out 'not very' and has inched forward over the years with plastic kits becoming ever more like metal models. At least up to a point. The quality of cutting edge plastics has been leaping forward these last few years and it's reached a point where I kind of feel that plastic models are superior in most ways to metal. Yes, there's the undercuts issue (promise to do an explanatory article about that sometime) but modern plastic sculptors are learning many ways to minimalise this to greater and greater effect. Frankly, plastics are no longer the poor cousin and metals are more an alternative than a superior option. You know there's still a style difference between your typical plastic and your typical metal figure. And something rather interesting seems to be happening. It crystalised to me upon seeing a certain miniature, as mentioned earlier. And here it is...



This is Wurrzag the Savage Orc Shaman. I'm rather fond of this figure. The curious thing seems to be in the style in which it's sculpted. Wurrzag is a metal miniature but appears to be very much designed to look like a plastic one. All that near-machined perfection in it's lines and the blank, crisp surfaces where before you would have had wild textures (take the feathers as a great example). Now, it's not gone to the point of not having undercuts, that'd be a silly thing to do as you'll want to take advantage of your casting medium but still it's very much in line with the plastic style and this makes sense to me. Plastic has it's strengths in it's ability to produce very fine detail in one plane but has very rigid limitations that can't really be worked around (undercuts due to steel moulds). The obvious solution towards having a cohesive range of miniatures is to stop trying to make your plastics look like metals and have your metals look like plastics. If it gives us lovely, paintable figures like this then I'm all for it. Looking back I see it a great deal in Seb Perbet's metal Skaven too.

So, a move towards metals emulating the plastic look or am I just mad? It's entirely possible that it's the latter and it wouldn't be the first time I was seeing patterns in things that weren't there but a curious situation regardless...

My best sculpt ever...

This is a difficult question to answer of course. I mean I've sculpted a lot of figures over the years, so what do I feel is the best thing I've ever sculpted. Well, actually it didn't take that much thought after all. I just asked myself what was the most fun I had sculpting, what was I happiest with the result on and which did I enjoy painting the most? Well, I came down on the side of one figure who was an experiment in a style that I only used on a few figures as it generally didn't go down too well with people. Typical as I'd love to be sculpting more of this ilk...

So, I give you Ugh the Zombie.



Okay, you're probably thinking... 'that' is your favourite mini you've sculpted. I mean it's proportions are awful. All big hands and stiff posing. Yup, and fully intentional. He was bags of fun to sculpt and a dream to paint. Like most creative types I always fixate on the problems in my work and this is one of the few pieces I've ever been totally happy with. Thinking about it maybe I'll fish out the sculpt and get myself a nice resin master of it to stick on my desk...



There's the little blighter painted. I also sculpted Barnaby the Monk in a similar style though I didn't feel he worked quite as well. Plus Hurk the Noblin was similar though the stylisation was kind of lost on him due to his general nature...

This is the kind of figure I love. The blank canvas, just simple characters that are quick to paint up. I love that this sort of fig can be painted to a high level in little time as there's nowhere to get tied up on.

Alas, Ugh was not a popular choice. A limited edition of 100 and not especially expensive but I still ended up giving them away as stocking fillers when I shut down Spyglass a few years back. I do get a warm glow from knowing that many of the people who did purchase him 'got' what I was going for and had fun painting him themselves.

At a time when I'm re-evaluating my direction in my own miniatures business it would be lovely just to run with a minis range in this style. Unfortunately it falls down on two areas. Firstly it seems that there just aren't many people who would appreciate it and pay for them and then there's the price point. It's very tough to produce minis on a budget these days so I don't know how I could produce them cheaply enough that they could go out at an appropriate pricepoint. As much as I think of sculpting this sort of mini and selling resins of them at £10 each... I think that those are the thoughts pipe dreams are made of...

Under the radar 1... Paul Muller...

We look to the internet for everything these days and there's an assumption that everything is out there and usually easy to find. Not always the case.

Today I am going to talk a little about Paul Muller. He turned up last on my list of sculptors who I greatly admired and the point is that you can't seem to find pictures of the work of his I'd like to show on the net. I'm sure you're all thinking that his sculpts are around and not well hidden. Yep, that's true but I'm talking about his painting...

Yes, Mr Muller is one of the finest miniature painters I have come across. Very much a single figure painter and his work is rich and intensely well painted. Beautiful stuff. Paul was once an Eavy Metal painter and then moved into sculpting. It was at this point we got to see the best of his painting with an entry or two into the Open Competition at Games Day and paintjobs on the figures he sculpted for GW such as his Chaos Cultists, Dark Eldar Urien Rakarth and the Diggas from Gorkamorka. Incredibly beautiful paintjobs all...

Can I find them on the net? Can I hell!

As if to prove my point, I'm writing this post about a painter whose work I love and yet am not showing a single example. It's not by choice I assure you. Hopefully I'll be visiting my parents' at some point and will be able to rifle my old White Dwarfs for pics but for now I can only say 'he was great'. Does Paul ever pick up a paintbrush these days. Who knows? If not it's a shame as his work was gorgeous.

BUt then we come to an interesting point and one I'd like to make as this blog post seems pointless otherwise due to the lack of pics. We often assume that we see all the great paintjobs as they're on the net but there are loads of amazing painters out there whose works we never see.

Just in case you ever think you've seen it all...

Getting better...

I was reading an interesting post on Ana Machowska's blog Painting Mum regarding the nature of taking advice. It's good and true stuff about how, if we are to get advice from other painters then we have to be brave enough to show our works even if we don't think they're very good. I wont dwell upon the point and will just give you a link for you to read yourself...

Painting Mum

Well, I'd like to take another part of the giving advice situation. The first step is to ask for advice. As Ana has demonstrated, the second is to show your work that it may be critiqued. Then there's a third stage and it's an important one. It's also, bizarrely, one that isn't always followed...

Follow the advice!

Given my level of experience and a number of Golden Demon awards, it's perhaps unsurprising that I sometimes get asked for tips on painting. I try to offer constructive criticism where I can but am often surprised by the reaction.

Probably the classic piece of advice I have to give is to thin your paints. I've lost count of the amount of people I've offered this advice to and it's one of those parts of painting that with few exceptions, separates the good and bad painters (and I'm sure there are those who defy this rule). But it's good, universal advice. And it isn't followed. The advice is given and then there's a blank look. It's like they expected me to say that there's a great secret to painting. The great painters have special brushes and paints that make your work amazing and if you switch to that then you'll win Golden Demon. But, alas, there are no tricks like this. Use good quality paints and brushes (and most miniature paints and brushes are high quality) and then you're doing the same as 'the pros'.

After the blank look comes the punchline... 'It's okay, I think I'll keep doing things my way. I'll get there in the end'. There's an assumption that painting is about putting in the grind and that if you do enough hours work then you'll be brilliant. It's not the case. It's a classic case of work smart not hard. The hard work will help but the smart work will help more. Work smart AND hard and maybe you get to stand on stage in front of a few thousand people and try not to cut your hand on the blade of the Golden Demon Slayer Sword (yes, that happened).

If you're going to ask for advice on improving your work from an experienced painter the chances are that the advice you get wont be flashy, exciting ideas like 'here's how to paint NMM' or 'this turquoise paint will turn your work up to eleven'. No, you'll get 'thin your paints', 'keep your colour scheme tight', 'simple and neat' or 'take a little care with the base but don't go mad on it'. Pay attention to this sort of thing and it's amazing how quickly people start to produce better paintjobs. And then, of course, comes the epiphany; that the advanced techniques are merely extensions of these basic techniques and that it's really not that complicated at all. It's all just painting neatly and with a little care and attention...

Painting tip... Gold...

Gold is a bit of a paint to paint. Mostly because gold paints have a tendency to be, well, a little ropey. I've tried quite a number of them over the years and never really found one that 'just works'. I tied Vallejo Air Metallics last week and was generally pretty impressed. Nice coverage and control but one downside: For some reason, Citadel washes just wont sit right over them. That's a pain if you're working fast and like using washes.

So, last weekend I had a bit of a think about the problem and came up with something. Perhaps the ticket isn't to find the perfect gold paint but to work out how to not use the gold paint? Now, I use Citadel paints for the most part and their silver metallics are really nice. It occurred that Mithril Silver has very little grey quality to it. So, I got my hands on some rich burnt umber ink and mixed some into the Mithril. Bingo, a lovely rich gold. I chose a rich dark brown as it'd tint the colour with less ink so the coverage would be preserved as much as possible. For a more subtle gold I did the same but with a mix of yellow and burnt umber.Another good result.

Going to have to try this out properly on a mini sometime but my tests have been pretty impressive.

I used Daler Rowney FW inks personally. If you have old GW inks lying around, the Flesh Wash would probably work nicely.

Detail versus simplicity... versus technology...

I've often talked, either on here or elsewhere, about my love of simple miniatures. One of the points that I've often put out there is that for wargaming all that detail is just making our lives difficult. In fact, painting modern minis en masse has been something of a pain. I felt the drive towards it was relentless and was largely due to people seduced by the idea of detailed minis and not really thinking of the consequences of painting them.

We have reached a point where minis are generally hyper-detailed and, for the most part it somewhat annoys me. Mostly because I like painting simple figures even when display painting. But lets go back to army painting. It's a pain. Or is it? The last few years have seen great advances in the quality and level of sculpting but has also brought with it new painting technology. We have Foundation Paints (and similar), Colour Primer sprays, Quickshade Dip and Washes that are formulated to just look good when slapped on. These aren't products designed especially for winning Golden Demon Awards or getting that ten thousand dollar prize at Crystal Brush. No, they're made for getting minis on the table and the dips and washes in particular are making life easier. I've been playing with washes and dips a lot over the last few months, just learning what they can do. Frankly we're at a point where you can pretty much basecoat a miniature quickly and then chuck some sort of wash over and with the minimal care and attention it looks good.

Such techniques are sometimes regarded as cheating. Newsflash, you can't cheat by making your life easier in this way. It's a fun hobby, not a way to torture yourself.

With a little thought you don't even need to do much in the way of highlighting. I've just photographed a couple of examples...



This Bloodletter photographed badly but I can assure you he looks really nice in real life. And that's with my eye as an experienced painter. The figure is sprayed with a red colour primer, the fins and horns painted Scab Red, nails are black and painted the sword gold. Bit of bleached bone on the teeth and eyes. And then Quickshade Strong Tone brushed over the whole figure. Leave for 24 hours and dullcoted. Did the base nicely and he looks nice. I'd have no shame in putting him on a tabletop. A five minute basecoat and then dipped.



This guy photographed a lot better and he's a test for how I may paint a Grey Knight army. Painted the whole fig Mithril Silver, Gold bits painted, Blood Red on a few areas and Adeptus Battle Grey here and there. Little Boltgun Metal on the piping and metal sections of the Bolter. Less than ten minutes to basecoat. Then, flooded him with as much Badab Black Wash as possible. Left it to dry (took a while) and then a little clean up on the blood Red and Bleached Bone. Painted the base brown. Done. Can't wait to try it on a proper Grey Knight.

Neither of these figures will win me a Golden Demon but they're both way better than they should be for the few minutes they took to paint. Hell, I'd be pretty happy with that Grey Knight if he took a couple of hours.

Made possible through technology. The future is getting very interesting...

Those Grey Knights...

I have a number of topics I want to look at in the coming weeks but the new Games Workshop Grey Knight release has somewhat caught me by surprise and with uncanny timing...

Now this is not going to be my gush on how lovely the new plastic Grey Knights are though they are indeed lovely. This is rather something else regarding what has been done with them rather than what they look like...

In my Apple Miniatures ramble last week I was talking a bit about plastic kits with wider options. This has not been how recent Games Workshop kits have worked for the most part. Well, that's unfair. Many of the kits have options, typically two weapon types for example. The new, larger kits, often have a couple of basic builds too. The basic Power Armoured Grey Knight kit goes a step further. Not only does it have a tremendous array of weapon options (and in many cases enough of each to equip the squad) but it makes up four entire unit types from the Grey Knight Codex. To put this in perspective it's not unlike making a regular space marine kit that makes Tactical Squad, Veteran Squad, Assault Squad and Devastator Squad. Okay, the Grey Knights are a little more focused in style so not quite that crazy but still... Four squads! And the Grey Knight Terminators make a couple of squads too... and with boatloads of options too (want to give your entire squad two swords each? Go for it!).

I'd suggested basically that rather than having ten figures on a sprue with a few options it is better to have five on their with lots and lots of options. This seemed like sense to me and was a little unsure why this wasn't happening more but assumed I was missing something. And yet, the day I post this stuff, barely a few hours later GW does exactly this. Promise I hadn't a clue. I knew the Greys were coming but wasn't expecting this...

So, a new way of doing things. Not going to say it's the first (The Blood Angels Death Company were along these lines but not as wide reaching in scope) but is this to be the way of the future of plastics? I kind of hope so as the biggest problem with plastics is that there's a finite amount of frames per release and so we can end up a little limited in options while we wait for future waves. Can't help but notice the Grey Knight range is practically complete with just three kits released in it's first wave. Impressive thinking.

So, what's GW's next trick? Warhammer Tomb Kings are next up so maybe a skeleton kit that does pretty much everything? That'd be nice...

Apple minis aftermath... My opinions...

So, that's the Apple miniatures idea. I've spelled out what I think that Apple's thought process would deliver in the minis world. I like to try and think a bit 'Apple' myself and I'll admit that these thoughts are along the lines of my own. But not entirely. As I followed the thought process I thought sometimes that certain points didn't feel right. So, here as a final addition to the Apple blog posts are my criticisms...

The miniatures -

I largely agree with the ideas but this whole 'all plastic' issue. I agree as a general principle but the extremely tight nature of the product line throws up a sterilty to the line for me. I like the uniformity but that uniformity would be even stronger by a small number of very specialised figures that break the design mould at least a bit. These are the figs that you'd only ever have one of in your army and they are best served as metal or resin. I'd keep all the same design ethos but just a few metal figures would help enormously to the 'character' of the range and no pun is intended. If they wished to keep the number of products right down these could be released in multipacks instead of individual blisters. A single metal box per army perhaps?

The Apple Painting System -

It's funny that I spent quiet a time thinking this up and not really agreeing with it as such. I ended up with this system as it felt very Apple and it throws up something about Apple that is not a major issue in their current market but would be especially detrimental here...

Apple are a company that push creativity. Well, they do on the surface. So many of their products are about creating and you always have that 'you can make beautiful things' idea from them. However, in my experience it's a bit of an illusion. Apple like you to think that you're being creative but they try to do the work for you so everyone gets a good result. They like to use a template based system. Take their software iWeb. You make your own site but it's always based on their templates and with a lack of flexibility. Your site is beautiful by default and has your content but, in the end, it's like everyone else's. The Apple painting system I describe is kind of like this. It pushes everyone to paint in a certain way and the paint range is focused towards this with the colours chosen to auto-complement. The downside is the range is difficult to use to get another result. If you want a bright and vivid figure with heavy contrast you'd need to use a totally different paint range. It's too narrow and it smacks of the kind of control that Apple like to have. I kind of like that in their media products as it means they' just work' as is famously said but in my miniatures hobby I think I need my ability to explore outside the boundaries and I'd like the creators of the line to be supporting and encouraging this. Games Workshop have introduced many painting products that allow a system rather like this to work for their range with Foundation Paints and the new washes but they are not at the expense of the greater paint range and just add options rather than strangling them...

All-in I think that the whole Apple Miniatures idea feels a bit 'contained' and the product of a control-freak and perhaps it shows how Apple are not really the company to be doing this sort of thing. That's great as I'm sure they haven't even the slightest interest in doing so. But it's been an interesting road to explore. I know it's got me thinking in different directions and that's always good because I think the Apple thought process is a good one. It's just we need to know when we should apply it and when we should not.

So, I think we can leave Apple to their own iDevices...

The Apple Painting System

I could go on forever about the little details of how Apple would design and market their miniatures range and game but it'd get rather boring so this is the last part of the Apple Miniatures series (well, sort of and I'll get back to that at the end).

Steve Jobs is on the stage...

'So we've told you about our plans for our game and we've told you all about our miniatures. But there's one more thing... These miniatures are meant to be painted and, for most of us, this is difficult and we get poor results. Now, we thought long and hard about this issue. We didn't want to pre-paint as it's a poor substitute for the feeling of painting your own figures and we didn't want to just leave you to struggle. So, we've come up with something that we'd like to share with you now. We call it the Apple Painting System and it's designed to make it much easier than ever before to produce beautiful painted miniatures.'

So, the Apple Painting System. It's a three stage system that has been inspired by Army Painter but rather tweaked. The three stages are ground, colour and finish.

Ground - Apple don't produce a black or white spray for priming. They feel sprays are annoying and unreliable especially when dealing with mostly small figures and in small numbers. Their plastic figures don't need priming so much as metals would. Instead they offer two paint on products called Grounds. Ground is a one coat paint designed as a undercoat and base colour for the whole figure. It's acrylic based and designed that it can be largely slopped on and will shrink nicely into details leaving you with a beautiful, perfectly matt finish to work over. The two colours are not black and white though. They call them Ground: Warm and Ground: Neutral. Warm is a slightly dull chocolate brown and Neutral is a dark Grey. The thought is to allow the style of painting associated with black undercoat, leaving dark in the recesses but not so harsh. Plus it's easier to get coverage over a dark colour than a very dark one such as black. So, that's the ground stage.

Paint - Apple's paints are traditional water based acrylics. The range is surprisingly small. Maybe twenty colours. Also, surprising is the palette. Rather than the staples we are used to we get very specific colours in a fairly tight tonal range. Typically the colours are slightly grey or pastel and colours are not dark. In this respect they are quite similar to Citadel's Foundation Paints. The theory is that Apple can build beauty into the final painted figures by making it very difficult to clash your colours. Their painting system is based around a neat basecoat leaving keylines of the ground showing. The slightly grey pastel colours mean that opacity is kept very high and everything is one coat coverage for quick painting. No real thought is put towards highlighting or shading as in traditional painting. As they put it, acrylics can be mixed and so you can do whatever you like but the system is designed to get good results without having to work so hard.

Finish - Finally we have two 'varnishes' which make up the finish stage. These are Finish: Warm and Finish: Neutral and are designed to be used with their corresponding Grounds. The Finishes are a water-based varnish type product with a brown or grey tint. It falls into the middle ground between Army Painter's Quickshade Dips and Citadel Colour Washes. The colouration in them is more more subtle than either of these. It's designed to be painted on and has been engineered to dry slowly to give it time to settle. It's a little gloopy but self levels well to avoid brushstrokes. The low pigmentation means that surface colours are barely stained and remain without blotches but it does gently shade just enough to bring out the three dimensional quality of the figures. It also matches the ground colour so as it seeps into these areas it naturally neatens things up a bit. The Finish layer also protects a little but, with all the minis being plastic, no great protection is required and the emphasis is on the look rather than the protection. The finish is dead matte too.

And so we have a finished, and if Apple have done their job right, a nicely painted figure ready to wage war.

Apple produce a series of painting guides in print. Quite short but lavishly illustrated with photographs to show how to work with their system. The books are also available in app form which allows for inline videos showing you the intangibles such as 'how much finish to put on the figure' and so on. These videos are also available via the web.

So, that's my vastly incomplete look into Apple's minis venture. It's been a fun ride to try and think along Apple lines over the last few days. As said, I could go on. There's marketing strategies, packaging, sculpting and tooling technology (safe to say Apple would be sculpting digitally rather than traditionally) and a million other considerations. It'd also be fun to play with what the minis would look like but, alas, I don't have a spare few months to do such things. So, I'll leave it at this stage.

But there's one more thing... As I'm an Apple fanboy of sorts it'd be easy for you to assume that the last three blogposts haven't so much been 'how would Apple do a minis and gaming range?' as much as 'how would Steve Buddle do a minis and gaming range if he had the budget?'. Well, that's what I'm going to talk about tomorrow. In writing this I was trying to think 'Apple' and I think that it's not a bad set of ideas but I don't necessarily agree with them all. I decided not to inject too much of my own opinions here and instead, tomorrow, I'll be adding my own thoughts on what I like and what, more importantly, I don't...

Apple's Wargame - The miniatures...

Yesterday I wrote about the idea of Apple producing a minis game. Not something that will ever happen of course but it's fun to postulate what such a product would be. I've already talked about the wide decisions of the range and now we get to, as I put it before, the meat and potatoes: the minis themselves.

Forces - Despite Apple having huge financial muscle they don't want to jump into the market with a huge, huge range with loads of armies. Questions are asked as to what is the optimum number of forces to initially be available. One is obviously no good and two is the bare minimum to allow for gaming beyond same-force setups. But two is dull and three becomes the realistic minimum; it offers more variety in games and a wider range. It's decided that it should go one step further and there should be four forces. This is the level where variety and choice start to open up without being an overwhelming project as a manufacturer. This leads into...

Product range and size - We enter an area where Apple think rather differently to most companies. Apple do not have large product ranges and like to stick to a small number of items. If you look at their computer ranges they are very small. Apple continue this thought in their miniatures range. They want a small and concise miniatures range and settle upon initially offering two plastic sets per force for a total of eight miniature products. This thought is enough to give many of their workers with experience of the minis market heart attacks due to the lack of product. Apple, as Apple do, have other ideas and are thinking in different ways to most manufacturers.

What are the forces - Apple look to archetypes for their ranges. It's been decided that the game universe will be based on humans and evolutionary offshoots of the species. The four forces are...

The Knights - Humans in Powered Armour. It didn't take much for Apple to note that Space Marines ar 'it' in the minis world and will be making their versions though they go for a different vibe and avoid the superhuman idea favouring an idea more like Iron Man but carrying guns.

The Evolved - Humans who have become ageless and developed their minds and skills (an elf archetype). A fragile force who are all specialists and good at what they do. Small numbers backed up by floating robotic servants.

The Muscle - Barbaric 'roided hulks (an Orc archetype). Lots of hand to hand weapons and limited firepower. Hard to kill and big, chunky figures.

The Workers - High gravity humans (dwarf archetype). No beards... These guys are strong but slow but favour impressive technological weapons. They have a hold back and pound the enemy from a distance vibe.

It's thought these four forces will each play in a significantly different way and form an excellent core for the game.

An Apple Miniatures Range (one force) - As said, each force will have two plastic sets. This seems initially limiting but Apple are approaching in a much more modular fashion. In concept design it's decided that each force will have a tight visual style; a uniform if you will and this means modularity becomes yet easier. The boxes will break down into trooper box and specialist box.

Trooper Box - Rather than a double or tripple sprue with, say, ten troops on Apple go for a single sprue with three multipart troops. Probably body, legs, arms, head, weapon. Multiple weapon options are given though they do not push for three of everything as space is limited and they don't want to waste any with duplicates. Instead the idea is pushed that you get multiple sprues in a box and that the box doesn't get you one unit, it makes several. If a unit is three to five, the box contains five sprues allowing three to five complete units to be built. You can't build all with the same weapons but Apple will push this as promoting variety in your forces and encouraging trading for parts.

Specialist box - Another single sprue with parts to upgrade to several specialist figures. One of each type though they will still be based upon the same component types as the troopers allowing you to use the extra legs, bodies, heads and so on here for extra variety. There will also be a few non-standard bits here. Some floating robots for the Evolved and extra armour to plug onto the Knights for a heavy version. The Muscle get some extra-roided huge torsos. As design has decided that all Muscle weapons are wielded single handed these remain compatible with regular arms. The Workers get an anti-grav bike though torso and heads are still swappable. This box contains a single sprue of the specialist upgrades and two of the trooper sprues for the base parts. A point is made about you ending up with a few spare guns left from the troop sprues which can feed back into your basic units.

Between the two boxes you should easily have enough variety for small opposing forces.

Price point - Apple consider that they always produce premium product and never worry about being the cheapest. Games Workshop are the current premium product that has most in common with what they are doing and prices are set accordingly. All boxes are set at $40

Expansion

Stage one - Oddly enough, Apple produce a blister range. They call these Bolt-Ons. Each Bolt-On blister contains a small plastic sprue with extra parts on it. Sometimes they are a single new figure (using the same modular system) and sometimes they are upgrade parts such as extra guns. After a few complaints about basic weaponry being at a premium a basic weapons sprue is made available for the armies and one is dropped into the basic trooper box. It's also available as a Bolt-On. Apple start to introduce character parts to upgrade models and the game begins to evolve into a more traditional wargame. Bolt-Ons are $7

Stage two - Taking a nod from War Machine, each race gets a new plastic kit for a larger specialist war machine or similar. The Knights get a Walker, the Evolved get a flying Hunter-Killer, the Muscle get an Uber-Mutant strain and the Workers get a Gun Emplacement. Each kit comes with multiple build options.

Stage three - Invasion. A big thing has been made of the human-centric universe of the game so a big thing is made when they introduce another army. Either an alien race or some kind of extra-dimensional 'beyond space' threat...

I'm getting vaguer and vaguer as I go on and further from initial product. I think you get the idea. So, this is a rough version of what I think the Apple miniatures range would be. To be fair, I'm sure their process would have been a lot longer than my brainstorming over the last 36 hours and making a lot of it up while I'm writing but hopefully I'm thinking in a somewhat Applesque way. I kind of like that the above product range would be quite extensive in possibility but would work very well with a basic rack system for a retailer. By the end of stage two you have three plastic boxes per force, a rulebook and a small number of blisters. Quite easy to plan a rack system for. Of course tomorrow I'll put the cat amongst the pigeons and talk about what else would come alongside this stuff...

And a final note here. I'm pretty sure the designers would come up with better force names than Knights, Evolved, Muscle and Workers. They'd probably come up with a nice name for the game as well. I think my brain is too busy with ideas for the physical nature of the product line to think about decent names...

Apple descend upon the miniatures world...

Welcome to an alternate universe. It's rather like our own except that in a giant boardroom, out in California, the corporate juggernaut that is Apple have decided to enter the miniatures market with their own miniatures and associated wargame and accessories. Now, what would that be like?

Truth be told I'm something of an Apple junkie. I'm not going to defend the company as being perfect but I like their products and am writing this on my trusty iMac. Anyway, the point of this article is that Apple are THE company success story in the world these days. Theirs are the must-have products and Apple have a rather singular way of doing things. My personal life ethos boils down to 'elegance through simplicity' and this is a description that could be applied to Apple as well (might explain why I'm so fond of their products). Apple have a very specific thought process, design style and way of doing business. We'll ignore the internal politics and practices regarding competition as it's not the point of this article. Here I will simply run with the idea of wondering what the Apple product would be...

Pre painted or paintable model kit? - The first thing that would come up is the idea of pre-painted minis. It's quickly thrown out as Apple are always trying to be cutting edge and there's currently not a system in place to allow pre-painted miniatures that are beautiful. It falls back on 'if we can't do it amazingly then we don't do it'.

Genre - I think it's safe to say that Apple would end up on the side of releasing a Science Fiction game rather than fantasy or real-world. Real-world is difficult to defend IP so other companies would easily offer support product. Not so good for world-conquering plans. Then it's just fantasy or sci fi. Sci fi fits the design aesthetic for Apple and they would also look at the largest success stories of the market: 40K and Warmachine. Both are fantasy tinged Sci Fi games (it's certainly guns and technology). Apple would go a little more purely sci fi as it both plays to their company image and differentiates them from the main competition without losing the ability to tap into the same marketplace. So, it's Sci-fi.

Style - As said, this would be a more pure sci-fi so in actuality closer to Infinity than 40K but Apple wouldn't take the Anime influence and would go for a more western vibe (that's 'the' west not the old west). The visual design would be always considered towards clean lines and carefully thought-out design where there's a level of plausibility though not at the expense of a more fun aspect.

Miniatures design style - Realistic versus exaggerated? This would take some thought on their part but Apple's strength has always been in asking the right questions. They would quickly realise that they are designing gaming pieces and that a level of exaggeration in styles makes the figures more durable and practical for game usage. Concept artists are briefed that their designs should take this into account and avoid areas that would be fragile on a finished mini. There's an immediate thought that the illustrations should reflect the miniatures and so a future without 'fiddly bits' is designed.

Production - Say hello to injection moulded plastic. Apple are designing from the ground up and have a decent budget. A clear way to start is to say that everything will be plastic. Unlike other companies the business model is not to use metal, resin or any other materials. Injection moulded plastic or nothing.

Game type - Looking at this as a start up the decision is made to make the game more of a skirmish level game of small unit actions. Something of the scale of early Warmachine or the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game designed around 20-30 models per side. Scaleable in either direction though not really designed for mass combat. As the range develops, the average game size is pushed upwards with an optimum level of around 50 models per side.

The rules - We return to elegance through simplicity. There's an immediate push towards a very lean rules set. Easy to learn and with a lot of tactical depth. Thoughts turn to a rulebook less than 50 pages long and still with enough fluff and visual falir to be beautiful. This would be a culture shock to some but one of Apple's strengths is the ability to take something that appears to be a downside and rebrand it as 'this is a better way to do things'. The rules are available in print form and the concise nature of the rules means an app version of the rules for iPad and iPhone is very useful. A few thoughts are vented towards using a computer to run the mechanics of the game but are shot down in favour of dice and physical interaction being the appropriate 'user interface'. In the actual writing of the rules Apple poach Jervis Johnson from Games Workshop. Jervis is a master of lean rules and tactical depth. Thoughts turn to his system Epic 40,000 and the legend of his turning up at the GW studio with the first version of the rules on something like five pages. And apparently it worked very well...

So, there we have the first part of my 'Apple does miniatures' article. Right now I have plans for a couple more that should arrive in the next day or two. Next up I get to the meat and potatoes of this idea: the miniatures range! That's an interesting one. Then I'll move onto other accessories.

One little point before I sign off. I know any discussion that involves Apple tend to turn into an argument on whether they're saints or the second coming of Satan. Please don't let us get into that. This is purely an exercise in applying their design ethos towards minis rather than computers and media devices.

painted something...

Yup, it's a rare occasion these days but I grabbed my brushes last night and, to the curious beats of Professor Elemental's Fighting Trousers, I actually painted something.

Yesterday I received a few tubes of Jo Sonja's acrylic paints. A week ago I'd never heard of them but then I discovered the painting works of Sang Eon Lee. He doesn't appear to have a website but is on Facebook and a google image search will yield many examples of his remarkable work. Mostly larger scale military pieces but I found his work via some studio paintjobs for Kabuki Models that he has produced. I'm not sure the painting style is entirely my scene (with some very OTT NMM effects) but the technique is astounding. I saw a few WIP shots on his Facebook and discovered that he was working over black undercoat. Unusual for a top-end painter but it immediately got my attention as I do the same. I then found out he uses Jo Sonja's Acrylics to paint his figures and so I thought I might give them a shot too.

I received nine tubes of the paint. Now the Jo Sonja paint isn't quite like the hobby paints we are used to but it's also rather different to artist's colours. In fact, it most resembles craft paints (like Decoart and Inscribe) but higher quality. I did a little experimenting and found them an intriguing paint. First off they're a lot thicker than hobby paint but generally more fluid than artist's colours. One good thing is that they're generally opaque and they thin with water without losing this to any great degree. Certainly if you try this with artist's paint you tend to have problems. So, need thinning ingeneral. I decanted mine into pots as using tubes for the amounts used in mini painting is just a pain. I might pre thin them a bit too (especially the black as it's like tar out of the tube). My favourite thing about these paints is the finish. They are totally dead matt in finish. When I varnish figures, it's not for protection, it's to get the finish and these paints have a finish like dullcote and don't lose it even when heavily thinned.

Anyway, last night's painting session was set up with the task of painting a mini using nothing but the Jo Sonja's paint. My little girl zombie seemed like a good idea as she would be quick to paint and had no metallic areas to worry about. Painting her didn't really throw up any issues with the paints. I'll have to get used to the levels of thinning required as I tended towards either over or under thinning but that'll come with a little practice. I'd also like to get a few more paints. The difficulty for me in buying my first batch was not wanting to buy too many and having to select the colours via online colour charts (notorious for their lack of accuracy). So, get a few more soon before I tackle something a little more sophisticated.

But I painted a mini, so here she is. Quick paintjob, just around an hour. Photograph seems to have flatted the effect a little but I'm pretty pleased and she's only about 17mm tall. Quick fun paintjob.

Painting: thinking backwards...

I've never been one to follow the trend when it comes to painting, though I'd hardly describe my output as a particularly off-the-wall painting style. However, I do tend to have a bit of a strange way of looking at things.

Let's take undercoat as an example. The conventional wisdom seems to be white for bright colours and black for darker minis. Oddly I see it the other way around. I usually use black undercoat and like to paint rather vibrant minis. This isn't especially unusual as many painters do this but when I want a very dark result I often look at a white undercoat instead. This may seem utterly counter-intuitive and a way to make work for yourself but the advantage of white undercoat is maintaining the richness of colour in your paint and this is just as true of deep colours as it is of the brighter ones. If I want an extremely deep red or blue it's easier to get it over white. I find doing so over black just means it looks like black, maybe with a little tint. Haven't actually done this on a mini in ages so perhaps I should try painting a really dark figure sometime...

There's another area that speaks of my whimsical and experimental nature in painting techniques. It comes down to the time taken to paint a mini. I've no interest in spending 100+ hours on a single 28mm figure and so I tend to look for interesting ideas on how to achieve wonderful painting effects in less time. For this I rarely look at the techniques of display painter but look at army painting techniques and ask myself the right questions. Okay, so this looks pretty damned good for an army paintjob. The figure took 30 minutes to paint. Is there a way to use the core techniques of that 30 minute model with more care an attention to achieve a great deal more. Case in point: I have recently been playing around with The Army Painter's Quickshade dipping products. They are very interesting and give a rather more subtle and refined result than I'd have expected (assuming you use it with care and attention rather than dunking your mini in a vat of the stuff).

The lesson, I feel, is to not be constrained by what technique is meant for what type of painting but just to see them all as 'just painting' and experiment with all the painting techniques and apply them as you see fit. It's a wide world and there's no point in compartmentalising 'how to paint minis'.

So, what's next? Well, I'm messing about with underpainting techniques for quick army figures, using dips for display figures and thinking about painting a display quality army in next to no time at all. That last one could be quite an interesting trick, especially if I were able to pull a couple of Golden Demon finalists (or even trophies) out of it. It's a challenge but a fun one.

So think outside the box.

Personally, in the back of my mind, I'm playing with a few ideas for the 'fear minis' with the trick of painting a crazy scary mini in just a couple of hours and making it look great. Again, it's quite a trick but would be a laugh to give it a try...

The Asylum...

Well, an interesting journey so far this is to be sure. I started this blog on a whim and it was up and running about an hour after my first thought of actually doing it. Pretty good for one of life's chronic procrastinators...

And here we are little over two months later and I've just hit 50 followers. That's pretty cool and traffic is increasing all the time. Yesterday was the first time I received over 200 page views and it ended up at 275. Not bad at all (as far as I know). All in I'm well on the way to 6000 page views since the blog first appeared.

At this early juncture I'd like to thank everyone who is reading and commenting. I have a fairly good idea of the direction I'll be taking the blog in the coming months though I'd love to hear any thoughts you have so feel free to add your ideas in comment form.

Oh, and I'll not leave you without anything relevant today. My good friend Neil paid a visit to Spyglass Towers today and brought with him some painted versions of my 28mm zombies. Neil purchased these from me a good while back to use as peasant civilian zombies in WW2 games. He's gone for a dark and gritty feel which suits the subject matter perfectly. And check out the bases. They really evoke the right atmosphere...