Tweak Off.....

Hi all

erm.....sorry about the title of the post.... I blame Dave Stone, after all my suggestion was simply that we should compare the various paint jobs of Tweak, a character from the pages of 2000AD, by Simon (Blaxcleric), Bryan (Vampifan), myself and Dave - who sculpted the figure.  Dave was kind enough to gift each of us with a copy of the enigmatic Tweak, who joined Judge Dredd in his trek across the Cursed Earth.  I did have a load of blurb prepared from Wikipedia but Bryan beat me to the punch so here's a link to his excellent article instead here.

So it was my idea to compare each of our paint jobs of the same sculpt for fun, Dave named it a "Tweak off!"  Bryan has displayed his version and Dave's as Dave doesn't have a blog and you can find a link ***

Anyway here's my version.

I went with a Vallejo Saddle brown for the main body and mixed it with some GW Emperor's Children pink for his snout and hands, washed in Army Painter Strong tone and finished with yellow claws.

I have got another Dave Stone special to show but he'll have to stay under wraps until I finish him off.

hope you enjoy

dGG

Dark Judges

hi all

Firstly my apologies for the lack of a Wednesday post, I was learning how to and then actually sticking needles into human beings, so didn't have the time to finish painting the bases for these models.  To be honest I've got a little bit of stage fright with this post as it comes hot on the heels of Bryan's (Vampifan) recent post on the same minis.  His version of the Dark Judges were excellently painted and his knowledge of the MC-1 and all things 2000AD is encyclopedic. So nervously I'm going to present to you my versions of the biggest and baddest DJs ever!  As before these formed part of the prize Bryan offered up on his blog, that I was lucky enough to win.  What you don't know is that the prize only included Judge Fire (previously shown here) Judge Fear and Judge Mortis, which meant I didn't have the nominal leader of the dastardly quartet Judge Death! However the ever generous (and I seriously mean generous!) Bryan emailed me (without prompting I might add) and offered to purchase Judge Death for me, in fact he had already done it and it was on its way to me! Seriously the dude is legend.....

Anyhoo here they are....

Judge Death - Wargames Foundry version

Judge Mortis - indyclix

Judge Fear - indyclix

Judge Fire - indyclix

The Dark Judges

I won't add any commentary as Bryan has already given you the gist, if you haven't read his article - what are you waiting for? i've already provided the link.

hope you enjoy

dGG

Stop Monkeying around!

Hi all

When Judge Dredd the Miniatures Game (JDMG) came out a few years ago, they bought out (for me anyway) the best set of miniatures ever - the Ape Gang.

Now none of my gaming group have the same interest in JDMG as I do, so I just sat back and watched the inter webs with envious eyes as they bought out lush miniatures that captured the fun, gangster like nature of the genetically altered simians. But I recently became the proud owner of these...

Ok I don't have all of them as I haven't got the Orangutan Leader model, but I have got the rest! As part of the very generous prize offered up by Vampifan a few weeks ago.  I did have a little look around for some cheap apes to bolster the gang over Black Friday but I kinda blew my entire years budget on Bushido, the majority of which will have to be gifted back to me as xmas gifts such was my lavish spending of money I don't have......curse my impulsive love for Bushido models.... so don't expect to see those until after xmas, but I promise there will be some glorious times ahead come 2017!!

Some Background

Most animals were killed in the Great Holocaust with the exception of those in zoos. Later the technology was developed to alter the brain-cells of apes to allow them to speak. The freed apes have all settled in a part of Mega-City One now called The Jungle. The buildings are less uniform and feature staircases designed for ape use. There is an establishment called Banana Brunch there. Mega-City Zoo features Gleeps, Muties and now Monkeys.

The first sentient apes appeared in the pages of  2000ad on 19 Nov 1977, with the introduction of "Don" Uggie and the Ape Gang and was very much based on the idea of Prohibition style gangsters.  There are several story lines that follow with sentient apes and they pop up every now and again including the introduction of Harry Heston - Ape Judge



Heston was the brain child of the sadly deceased Stewart Perkins and his friend Jake Lynch.  I had hoped to see Harry Heston in miniature form but alas.

Anyway back to these gorgeous apes.  This is what I got in my excellent bundle...

Note that I assembled these guys with Gorilla Glue! guffaw guffaw... ahem, sorry about that. Once assembled and the bases sanded I gave them a spray of grey car primer, then onto the painting.  First of all I decided to paint the Gorillas.  There are three of them and as apes generally garb themselves anyway they can, it gave me carte blanche to paint an eclectic mix of colours.

base colours

sorry about the fuzzy pic, but with shade and highlights

a little extra detail on the dress with some yellow patterns

With the Gorillas done it was onto the Chimps and the single Orangutan sniper.

the Ape Gang!!

So there we have it, I will be looking out for a suitable leader model and maybe add some of the ape bikers that were produced by Warlord (but not reduced in their sale).

hope you enjoy
dGG

Mega City - 1, more offerings

Hi all

for today's post, I give you the next three judges that I've manage to paint up from my fantastic prize win recently.

First up is my Med-Judge, with my medical connection this Judge has a special meaning for me and the mini's sculpt is perfectly represented.  Bryan intends his version of the mini to represent me in his upcoming campaign (which I wish he would stop teasing us about!! ;-P) and I intend him to be a total no-nonsense medic, informing the patients in no uncertain terms to "man up!" hahahaha. I also want him to be able to kick-ass too, so don't expect a "do no harm" type medic!

I went with the black uniform with navy drybrush and gold shoulder pads combo that I used for JD and JH in my last MC-1 post, so I won't go on about it here.  There are some versions of med judges wearing green shoulder pads in some of the comic strips and it seems like there is a confusion about this branch of MC-1 Judiciary and a sorry lack of source material. In fact I can't remember any specific story lines that involved the Med Judges in any detail - grrr! I will have more detail coming hopefully at xmas when I get my Judges Handbook for the game but until then....

Next up I have the Special Judicial Squad or SJS.  These are the Judge hunters, internal affairs type boys. Tracking and dealing with rogue judges.  Although looked on with some distaste they are vital in keeping the most dangerous people in MC-1 under control - the Judges!!

They will certainly come in handy when I start to develop my own campaigns as I already have a few ideas for them!

anyway that's it for now

hope you enjoy

dGG

  

Mega City - 1, the first batch

Hi all

after a little break due to mounting deadlines and a little Bushido tournament, I'm back painting the huge pile of lead and plastic sent to me by Bryan "Vampifan" Scott in his amazing giveaway!  Last time you saw the awesome ABC warrior "Hammerstein" - a 55mm giant robot, he bullied his way to the front of the painting queue because of his magnificence.  So what was next?  

Well, this time I had to clear some things up.  In among the unpainted glory was some 2000AD Indie 'clix with their factory paintjobs, this could not be allowed to stand! Now I'm not adverse to the basic jobs that the nice folks at 'clix do - usually, they are normally sufficient to game with until I can get around to adding some shade/highlights etc to better suit my sensibilities - usually.  Until Judge Fire came along and I knew I had to act....

This could not stand! I'm not sure what effect they were going for but it sure as heck didn't work. So into the stripping jar it went, however goodness knows what paint they use at 'clix because all that happened was that the base melted!!

The two Judges I chose to repaint at the same time were Judges Hershey and Dredd, these two weren't bad at all but still needed some work.  Anyway back to JF and I had to go back to the beginning, I had a choice here to either black undercoat and paint individual flames, which would be more like the comic strip of JF being a charred skeleton with flames licking up of it. But I felt the detail was too soft in places to truly get a good look going in this direction, so I thought I would go the other way and paint him as a being on fire completely and just improve the original paintjob. This isn't too far from the comic though as JF would often be consumed completely by fire when he was dishing out the hurt on a bigger scale!  So I went with the white primer.

Then going back to my usual way of painting flames, I had to think of where the source of ignition was.  This was a bit more difficult because essentially the source is within JF himself, so he then got another coat of paint this time a light yellow mix 

Unfortunately I forgot to take anymore WIP photos, suffice to say I used a orange brown to work up the flames and finished with red washes and a dark, smoky red for the tops of the flames and then pure white highlights throughout.

JH and JD had their uniforms repainted black and then a dark navy drybrush to finish. Their pads are a mix of GW's "knarloc" and "sybarite" green, washed in "thrakka" and highlighted back up. Then I used a shiny gold for the Eagle pads rather than yellow. New flesh tones to faces and a lightening of JH's hair tone and red trim around the edges of JD's helmet and voila...

base colours

all three finished except bases

 As I wasn't going to use these figures in a heroclix game, they needed to be rebased and I used some plain 25mm rounds.  I'm going to keep the bases simple in my 2000AD collection, so it was a simple sand and drybrush finish.  However having seen Bryan's excellent job on Hershey's base (see here) I decided to pinch the idea shamelessly.  Casting my gaze around my many boxes of bits and bobs I couldn't decide what to do, initially I was going to build a cantina table or something, then I thought about using the crumpled form of a defeated perp but I couldn't find a suitable mini, in the end I settled for a bit of girder made from a bit of sprue and then I added a crumpled newspaper from a sheet that Bryan had sent to me some time ago.

Hershey about to bravely (foolishly) land a kick on Fire!

so those are the first three models sorted. I have a few more on the table including a med judge and a couple of SJS judges, Zarjazz times ahead!!

hope you enjoy
dGG

Hammertime!

Hi all

firstly, my apologies for you now having the MC Hammer song in your head for the rest of the day....

Recently I was very fortunate to win one of Bryan "Vampifan" Scott's fabulous prize giveaways.  If you can't remember what the prize was, the link is here.  Among all that 2000AD goodness was this awesome dude.



Sergeant Hammerstein of the ABC Warriors, I lifted this straight off of Wikipedia to save myself writing a ton of stuff....

Hammerstein is described as a Mark III war droid and was commissioned in the early 21st Century to fight in the Volgan Wars. Hammerstein's right hand is a hammer that is used in hand-to-hand combat while on the back of his left he has a missile launcher. There are tank tracks on his feet to aid mobility. Hammerstein also has two sockets in his waist to attach auxiliary arms but he finds these embarrassing. During combat operations his head has a grim human like face but after he was decommissioned this was replaced with 'civilian' head that features a single square 'eye'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerstein_(comics)

The ABC Warriors are/were in my top ten best thing about 2000ADs universe.  I loved the characters especially the sarge and his human consort Terri - who believed she was a robot! They were also involved in the plot lines of one of my favourite comic characters of all time - Nemesis the Warlock. Fab times!

So imagine my delight then when this 55mm monster blasted his way into da Grotto and demanded to be painted first!

Sgt Hammerstein unbased at the back, you can see the size of him compared to the 28mm figs.

First of all though he needed to be based, originally he comes as a single piece with a integral metal base, but considering the size of him this was woefully inadequate and he couldn't stand up unaided.  So rooting around in my bits box revealed a lovely 60mm round mdf base that I'd bought for my Bolt Action medium machine gun crews.  As it is a really big base I didn't want it to be too plain, so I found some scraps of foamcard that I had used in previous projects and with the judicious application of sand and cat litter produced this...

Knowing that the primer spray I use would melt some of the foam, i covered parts of it in PVA leaving some areas exposed to produce a ruined masonary look that is fairly generic looking.  I then covered the grey primered base in a home made black ink and drybrushed it with Vallejo "Medium Sea Gray" and then again with a drop of white added to the gray.  I then painted Sgt. Hammerstein in a mix of GW's "Runefang Steel" and "Mournfang Brown with a drop of GW "Averland Sunset" to create the golden brown colour.  Then picking out the joints and feet/tracks in black and drybrushing with runefang steel.

base colours and drybrushed joint/feet

after that I used Army Painter's "Strong Tone" and washed the whole model in a really heavy coat. Once that was dry I highlighted with the base mix and then gradually lightened it up with successive tones by adding more "runefang steel".  I picked out the ABC markings in pure white and finsihed the base off with some yellow sector markings and one of Bryan's wanted posters that he'd sent me months ago as another gift!

no gold paint was used in the painting of this model

he's massive!

does my butt look big in this?

are you sure?

As for use for the Sarge, I've got loads fizzing about in my head! from generic robot for almost every futuristic setting to the boss level beastie in a Judge Dredd RPG encounter to finding more of his ABC buddies and running them as a skirmish faction for the JD miniatures game!

What ever I use him for you know that he's gonna be a big hit.......groan, I'll get my coat....

hope you enjoy
dGG