Happy New Year!

Hello hello! I trust everyone’s holidays and beginning of 2016 is so far going well!

I ended up ringing in the new year this year at a the home of the Painting Sage with some friends, bevvies and boardgames.

Sir, I do challenge theeee!
Disclaimer: I have never watched the TV show for this boardgame. I have no idea what they say when they fight. Aaarg?

While I am not a Spartacus fan, I would actually highly recommend this boardgame – it was a good couple of hours of fun – and I won every arena fight I was dropped into.

Thank you thank you. You may call me the dice master.

Now I realise that in my last post I had only just started painting my green dressed girl buuuut, the ladies are done!!

Soon to be seen* on a Victoria’s Secret runway near you.
*skin grafts not included.

So I ended up not only doing each dress a different colour, but each girls un-dead skin tone a different colour.
Now that I’d done it, I kind of wished I’d just picked 1 skin tone and done them all the same. They don’t really look like a team like this, but ah well; I suppose we live and we learn ey?

I struggle to get ANY photos of Sybelle, because of her darker scheme, and her hunched over pose she has proven to be the worlds more giant pain. I sent a picture of her to a friend that asked how she was going – looked like a dark blob with hooker heels.
Great stuff Sybelle.

I ended up priming up a couple of Reaper Bones minis as well to try to practice painting with.

I am unsure if I have discussed this on my blog before – but it’s time to come clean and tell the truth.

I. Am. The SLOWEST. Painter. You. Will. Ever. Meet.

Legit – in the same amount of time that it takes my friends to paint 2 full miniatures I’m sitting back and like ‘Phew, glad that left arm is done!’. It’s extraordinary…

So I gave my self a time limit of 3 hours per mini. In 1.5 hours, I had skin:

Yaaaaarg! *cough-ehem* No but really, can I have purple chain mail? Pretty please? Can I? Can I? Can I?

I was so incredibly unhappy with this, that I stopped the project and he is now soaking in a tub of paint stripper.
Siiiiigh.
One day, I’ll get there I swear.

Why hello there, madame. Mighty fine to meet you. Have you ever considered, immortality?

I have started my Seamus! I am unsure why I went the extremely self punishing route of STRIPED pants, given that I now have to reproduce these on this Copy-Cat killer. . . but we persevere.

Thanks for tuning again! Catch you all again on the side upon which is revealed whence one rotates a coin mid-air. Otherwise known, as a flip side.

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So, you wanna be the master of…Malifaux?

Do you have the skills to be…..come a bro?

I wanna beeee the veeeery best, that no one ever waaaas.

Sorry folks. It’s been a Pokemon kind of day

So, recently, I have been playing a bit of the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online and actually thoroughly enjoying it. To be fair, I do not versus other players – I just use the stock standard trainer decks it gives you and battle the occasional NPC.

This got me in the mood for buying packs, something I find highly additive, exciting and often soul crushing.

ANYWAY, I get home with my little foil sealed packets of potential devastation and find this:

So on the left is my “bonus foil” and on the right is my “1 x rare”. They were actually the same card. What are the odds, ey??

Apparently pretty damned high. This has now happened to me a good 5-7 times. What is the go? Is it because the set has so few cards in it!? Or do I have magical pack-picker talons on me?

This got me in a nostalgic mood for checking out some of my older collection..

I miss the days where “foil” actually meant, do not expose to direct sunlight as you might burn a hole in the ozone with the reflection bouncing off of that bad-boy.

While I was digging these out of their super-secret-hidey-space I found a bunch of clippings I’d put into a folder with my cards.

Wow, $109.90!? Are you dicking with me? Should probs be nicer to the parents, the struggle to afford to raise a nerdy child was real.

Moving right along…I have been continuing to paint my Seamus Malifaux ladies – although, one of my hookers in tights appears to have gone missing. I cannot tell you, how devastating that is to me, to own a “set” that is not in fact “complete”. Like for MULTIPLE reasons, this is heavily upsetting. But we soldier on.

Wanna see me twerk it to Katy Perry’s – This is how we do?

So, unfortunately, I didn’t know that the angle I was on was casting such an orange hue over my photo – but we work with what we’ve got. The back of her dress is getting some highlighting and her skin is undergoing a little correcting time.

I actually dropped the whole mini in my drive way, skinning the paint off of her face, knees and the front of her dress directly after painting this.

Yooooou dropped me!? ME? Have you seen me? I’m amazing. I don’t know if we can hang out anymore, Ellie.

I tried my best to fix her back up, but she undeniably now had some uneven textures and variations in colour. Ah well, if anyone asks I’ll say she’s growing lumps.

Well, as per always, great chats! We should do this again soon.

~ El

Painting, Paining and Clock Work Gaming!

Hello lovely people!

Recently, I traveled to Geelong (Australia) for the Clock Work Dragon event.
This was a Warmachine Tournament charity event for raising food for the homeless.

Wait! One of these guys is a slow walker.

Although I wasn’t competing in this event – I was volunteering and running around being an all general pest with my phone camera.

The event was 3 rounds (35pt) of 6 competing teams of 5.

During the lunch intermission, everyone signed their name in front of their army (or specific model) and left for lunch allowing for painting judging to proceed.

It was AMAZING to see some of the things people had painted.
The names of the painters have been cropped out as I don’t want to be posting people’s names – but how awesome are these!? I love seeing other peoples beautiful work.

In the end, the event raised over 4000 cans of food for the homeless!!

Awesome effort from everyone! And now my upper arms know the meaning of paint when it came time to moving that from the room to the various charity cars.

AAAANY how, in Ellie land, I have been getting back into painting! I finally have some free time after settling into my new office and my new role at work.

Hello, I will be your waitress for this evening. Do you prefer to be roasted? Or fried?

Her skin did NOT come out at all how I intended. My idea was to give her a kind of purple hue to make her look a bit pasty and dead. Instead, I just ended up making her look actually skin toned.
Ugh – ah well.

Oh oh oh, my other news! Everyone, gird your loins.
PAX 2015 is upon us.

Well – love you all! See you again next time for another ‘Things I have been doing, without any coherent style of commentary’.

~Ellison

My Sky has a Rim on it

When The Elder Scrolls Skyrim came out, I was wholly obsessed with it.  To the point, that I got tired of missing out on all the pretty texture packs of the PC users (as I was playing on PS3 at the time) and literally went out and built a computer JUST for Skyrim.

After all this time – it would appear I am obsessed again. Hahaha.

Onto the adventures!!

I started myself a new Warhammer wielding bringer of death, collected my Lydia (aka. Chlamydia) and took on the world.

Hey Chlamydia, go easy on the contouring ey? You look like you have a 5 o’clock shadow… I mean heeeey gurl, looking on fleak today!

So Lydia and I start stomping around the country side. First priority, is to visit every city so that I have a fast travel point for near by questing.

Stopped by Markath to solve some murders and buy some goods.

I reaaaallly have to question  what that meat he’s holding is. Because when you’re just a torso trying to sell me large chunks of mystery flesh – I start to ponder being a vegetarian.

Now, one of the other things I’ve been doing is trying to get the 15 Daedric Artifacts. These tend to be fairly high in stats and look a bit fancy, so I picked myself up the Savior’s Hide. Now, this was the most powerful piece of Armour I had at the time so I was of course wearing it.

While this armour looks a bit skankeriffic in general, I wasn’t fully aware of HOW skanky it was until I got a kill cam on a Dragon.

I can imagine what the towns people are saying while I defend their city from the flying lizards.

Look friends! It’s the great Dovakin here to save us from the…oh my! Kids, cover your eyes.

The second Daedric Artifact I got was ALSO a piece of armor. While it may not be as revealing as the first, I’m pretty sure my epic mustache mask has it’s own level of seduction.

New from Victoria’s Secret – the Mustache Night-Mask. Now only $499.00.

While Chlamyd’s and I were dungeoneering, I found this odd shaped ball. Figured that it would look nice at home on the mantle to shoot sparks at and pretend we’re having he worlds most ancient disco when suddenly a voice emanates from it asking me to return it to it’s rightful place.

As I am not in the business of robbing others of their party goods, I promptly followed the instructions and went to find the shindig to ask if we were invited and could my trusty follower come as a +1?

When I arrived, it turned out that the voice was coming from some sort of statue in the middle of who-knows-where.

Have you considered Tindr? Your love can reach a radius pre-determined in the settings.

I stepped up, as I’m not one to judge the race of others, far be it for me to tell a statue they can’t hook up and party, and placed the disco ball into the nook at the bottom when suddenly I get launched into the air.

Ok lady, calm your various light beams, and put me back on the ground. I’m not into your weird sky events.

Meridia, who turned out to be the god of infinite energy asked me to go turn on the lights for the party in her old temple.
Lydia was a fan of the idea despite telling me 18 bloody times “I don’t like the look of this”, but then again, she might of been catching her reflection in the pool of blood on the floor.

I flick all these reflective balls on, and the temple starts to light up – which is far more the party I was hoping for.

You’ll be coming home with me tooooniiiiiight, and we’ll be burning up like neeeeon liiiiiights

So cool, the lights are on. I go to leave the temple and let Meridia know she’s ok to start letting the guest know that they can start arriving when this AWFUL, and I mean AWFUL dude leaps out and starts shooting me with ice shards.

Normally, I’m ok with someone gettin’ all mad that there is a party happening in their house and they weren’t invited – because that’s just rude, but this guy just kept at it.

Wouldn’t listen to reason so had to give him a beat down and let him know that it was not ok to just start shooting at people when suddenly, he changes into his party gear.

On second thoughts Meridia, I don’t think I like your friends. We might give the party a miss.

After putting down the scary bro at the end of the temple, Lyds and I head back to let Meridia know what happened, and show her this cool sword we picked up when suddenly she get’s all cult on me and asks if I want to preach her religion of Tindr fans and party goers.

Sorry but, there is no other word appropriate here except a really loud NOPE.

Well, that is the end of the adventures for the time being.

Tune in next week for another episode of Skanks with Swords.

Pixel Life and Video Games

Ok, well first things first – what have I been playing? As it turns out, I have never heard of RimWorld and Prison Architect. How did I completely miss these amazing resource management/architect/survival games I will never know – but yes.

RimWorld. All I can say is GET ON IT.
I discovered the game by watching through a bunch of quill18 let’s play videos, and stumbled across this little gem.

So the concept is that you are 3 little guys that have crash landed on the surface of a planet, and you need to try to build a functional colony to survive, collect resources and build an escape ship WHILE defending your colony and people from rogue animals, waring neighboring colony’s and natural disasters.

So, I began my little colony with no concept that you were able to “re-choose” you starting people. I thought that what you got was what you got. I started my little base with limited success but soon found out that “Valentina” was a useless bitch.

Olivia was stuck being the sole hunter/bread winner and defender, while Zeppy rolled about casually constructing walls.

I finally had a little battery and power supplying my tiny compound when tragedy struck and a fire started pouring in over the walls. I am pretty confident that Olivia and Zeppy had a pretty good handle on things, when a pirate decided to take advantage of the situation, walked in the door and shot everyone dead.

You had 1 job, Valentina. Watch the flippin’ door. But no, you decided to nap didn’t you? Boo, you whore.

Attempt 2 went somewhat better. Now that I could start again, and try to select some potentially decent friends, I started my base.

Now, I constructed an extra room in case we got a new friend willing to join us, or a pirate we captured and swayed to our side.

Sadly, the pirate I captured, was Porcene. Porcene had suffered a gun shot wound to the head at some point and as a result permanently moves at 50% speed, and tends to spend her days moving my “stuff” from one pile to another. Great.

Maybe I could sell her to the exotic goods traders for parts? Turns out, they deal in body parts.

Don’t worry, Porcene. We still love you. Even if you did just move all my steel to the other side of the fence.

Prison Architect is also very good, although – I’m not finding it as fun as I find RimWorld. The concept of this game is to build a prison that can successfully house “x” number of prisoners.
That number of prisoners is influenced by what kind of prisoners you are willing to take in (if any), such as low security prisoners come in larger numbers than high etc etc.

One of the things I love about alpha indie games, is their “incentives” to purchase their games. PA offered people the opportunity to “write” a prisoner profile. So you often encounter some award winning dudes.

“The Fatness”. Sounds terrifying.

I did notice, that a number of my friends that had been playing for a while were totally unawares of the new intro offered to learning how to play the game.

I began my adventure, being told the story of a prisoner on deaths row – for which I was tasked to build an electric chair to execute.

What was his crime? You may ask. WELL, let me tell you – the game does not leave you hanging and gives you his entire confession by way of pixel acting and some weird-o polaroids.

Turns out, dudes wife was cheating on him so he shot her and her lover in his home.

What I would like to know, is what happened to the existence of his wife’s right leg…or was she an amputee?
Also, dude, that guy is obviously a unich. You got nothing to worry about.

I last left the game at this point. I have some happy little prisoners in cells, one peeved because he’s still stuck in the holding area napping on a bench and a shower that insists on over-flowing every. damned. time.

Well, hope to talk to you all soon! I have been recording some amateur Let’s Play videos and posting those on YouTube, but due to the fact that my microphone is now permanently busted I can’t do anymore of them at the moment until a replacement is sourced.
Will post a link here if I happen to record anything particularly interesting though.

Love you all! And a miniatures update is coming shortly! I got some new loots. Woo woo.

~ Sincerely, Ellie

P.S Have a fantastic New Years everyone!

Long Time, No Post!

Hello my lovely friends!

I realise that I have been extraordinarily absent for the last few weeks!

In a nut-shell, work roster changes and medical problems coming out of the wazoo changed my routines somewhat and haven’t had a lot of change for posting.

Onto Updates in the land of Gaming!! (But just to warn you, this is mostly PC gaming to follow!)

So I got accepted into the Hearthstone BETA and this game is RIGHT UP MY ALLY.
A deck building card came with fancy digital effects? YES THANKS, I’LL TAKE TWO.

I have actually entered an Australia store-chain run tournament for this, and am currently sitting 18th out of 60 players in the tourney. This is going to win me NOTHING, but it’s good fun none-the-less.

So far, my focus has been on Druid. But I’m starting to branch out a little to the other classes and am thoroughly enjoying Hunter.

Why don’t you love me anymore? You’re leaving me for HIM!? A HUNTER?
DOES HE EVEN LIFT?

In addition, I also got accepted into the Dawngate BETA.

Needless to say, it’s a lot like playing a less enjoyable version of LoL. Like, don’t get me wrong, I know it’s BETA and I know it’s a MOBA but – naaaah.

At least their character art is pretty?

OH! OH OH OH! I finally got around to playing a bit of the new Tomb Raider game! The reviews were absolutely correct.
I must say, best handling Tomb Raider I’ve ever played (and I’ve loved nearly all of them).
The UI is smart, the controls are organic, the cut scenes are amazing and the game play is involving and challenging without bordering on “Repeat this as many times are required to luck out actually getting it” as the Tomb Raider games sometimes had a tendency to do.

Welcome to my home. Hope you enjoy the lovely decor.

I have to admit, thoroughly impressed with the graphics.
As much as I think Lara Croft’s “face” is not quite the Lara Croft I have come to know at love (and let’s face it, unless she looks like a young Angelinda Jolie, I’m probably not sold), the faces are damned impressive.

The above snip, is GAME PLAY. Like….WHAT? That’s awesome.

Welp, I might leave it there for the moment – and blog a little bit more later in today if I have a chance.

Love you all my friends!!

~ as always,
A Highly Caffeinated Ellie

The Random Life of Make-up and Miniatures

Well, I have no had a lot of time to paint, update or anything else for that matter.
Makes me sad.

Tears have been shed.

Well, on with the show!

So I finally have my “failed Rotten Harvest: Trick or Treat” entry mostly completed. There’s some basing detail still to finish, but here she is!!

Er, El….I know you put a lot of time into this and all but doesn’t this look kind of…broken?

Now I ended up with an unintended side effect of, as all of the elements were created and painted SEPERATELTY, I ended up with this odd miss-matched looking base and mini.
Aaah well, I guess you live and you learn yea?

Now, I still have some grass tufts to add to the base and some more shading to do but for the moment – she’s put to the side because I’m afraid if I keep working on her I’m going to try to choke her in her sleep *ehem*.

Grass tufts soon to appear here and here.

Oh and finally! I know it doesn’t really make sense as they’re different tones and all but – her colour scheme was supposed to look like Candy Corns!!
I made her some small ones out of Sculpey III (which were baked) and glued to the base.

If I try anything like this again, they’re going to have to be way smaller.

Well, other than her I have also been working on my Argus for my Circle group in Warmachine.

Can you ask the other head to close his mouth? I can smell his breath way over here.

I was debating on the colour for the “fur” of the Argus but I think it ended up being Grey as after he was primed in a grey colour, it actually appeared to match the armour colour scheme I had chosen so decided to go with that.

In addition to these, I have been spending a little time learning about Makeup.
I have never been someone to wear makeup really (I am pertinently rolling about in Black Eyeliner from the supermarket but that is literally ALL).

I’m finding this interesting as the shading with blush and bronzer etc etc all appear to match the same rules as I use when painting a face on a miniature. I’m definitely going to see if I can pull off ‘eye glowing’ or ‘zombie tone’ effect or something on my skin.

Yup, those would be the smallest damned lipsticks in the WORLD. I put a 5c piece next to them for good measure.

While on a recent trip to Melbourne, I also managed to pick up a few goodies!

That would be an expansion for Puppet Wars, Some miscellaneous Reaper Bones minis, Reaper metal Jackalopes to act as Malifaux Proxies if needed, some paints and a copy of WoW – as believe it or not, is a game I only recently started playing and I don’t have a “paid for account” as of yet.

Well, I might leave it there for today!! Don’t want to use up all my photos all at once hahaha.

~ Sincerely,
Ellie

Boardgames and Baseing

Hello friends!!!

Ok, I have a lot of pictures today, so bare with me.

My progress on putting together the base etc for my Halloween girl got slighting put on hold due to a miss-hap with some matte varnish. Now, I was very unhappy with the colours coming through on her umbrella and fan so Painting Sage suggested we seal her off before I continue to work away.

I have to say, I LOVED the sprays effect on my minis colours!! She actually looked better blended and even a little brighter maybe? Either way, she has these big crevasses in her hair (as mentioned before when I was talking about painting said hair) which undoubtedly trapped some of the spray.

This is something I have most definitely dealt with before with my own ‘paint on’ matte varnish and so I got to glossing her to pull it back.

She has now lost the effect of ‘grey’ that you see above, I just don’t have a snap of it yet!! But she has recovered well, and is sitting in the ICU waiting for completion!

Moving onto her base!

So, my plan was to have her standing at her “front door” waiting for ‘Trick or Treaters” to give them candy.

My biggest problem with this door, is that is has a far more…um…clean and simple paint job compared to her, so they might end up clashing when it’s all put together….we shall see.

For her and her door, Painting Sage had this awesome base he had made in a box and goes ‘Is this maybe what you were thinking??’. EEEEeeee, Perfect!!

So I got to priming and painting it up!

The stones have been drybrushed to give effect. I point that out, because this is one technique I don’t ever seem to understand. So this time, I had Sage show me step by step how it’s done.
I can’t believe……this entire time…..I’ve been trying to do it COMPLETELY WRONG. Ahhh well. Hahaha.

The rest of her base is slowly coming together, in the form of SCULPEY!

Oh how I love Sculpey III. You brilliant little bake putty you.
More photos soon when it’s assembled!

In other news, Sage and I had a bit of a boardgame run through after some touching up of minis was completed and we did a test run of a game he had been given as a gift/favor.

It was actually pretty fun! Albeit, I don’t think I fully understand some of the rules.

These little guys look like they are a calling out for amaaaazing paint jobs, yes yes?

So I played the green team.

Sage part way through goes ‘Oh hey, why did you choose those guys?’ and I was caught a little off guard.
When I thought about it, I realised I tend to do that, without thinking, in a lot of ‘first time play’ or ‘starter set choosing’. If I see either “beasts” or “green” as part of one of the factions or options – I will always choose those.
So at the end of the day, I chose green because of the colour, not because of what those characters could do, nor the characters themselves. Hahaha.

As you can see, it’s bascially a map of ‘Thieves roam the city breaking into chests and stabbing each other’. You have these big ‘Story’ cards that you use to adjust the objectives of different games (i.e. Obtain a scroll and keys to break into the treasury).

The other thing we did was a small came of X-Wing!

I was super hesitant about this game, a game comprised of totally ‘vehicle’ type characters didn’t really appeal to me. And just space battles? Yea whatever.

I actually quite liked it!! Although, my X-Wing ship had the turning circle of my Toyota Camry and ended up spending half it’s time trying to even keep someone in RANGE of it’s phasers let alone be on the offensive.

Well, that is all for today happy people! We shall see each other again soon.

~ El.

Holding Miniatures up to a Torchlight

Alright, so when approaching this miniature I assumed a few things.
1. The skirt would be the hardest to paint/shade etc.
2. The fan and umbrella would be fairly simple.

So, even though it would appear I was correct on point 1, I was GROSSLY underestimating that whole umbrella/fan deal. I have literally spent my last 3 painting sessions with Painting Sage, just on these two items.

He seems to think it’s because now I’m stressing about them and over thinking the whole thing that caused this but still. They have turned out, pretty sub-par.

I’m not even sure this is a fan I’m holding anymore, El. What on earth is this colour scheme??

I think I’m going to step away, and leave them both and work on the bows/details before I come back to them. They’re honestly doing my head in!!

This is a little bit of a back track, but here is a nice shot Painting Sage took of my mini for me!! As promised.

Paint me like one of your french girls.

Onto slightly different news, so if anyone remembers a very generous lovely friend of mine gave me his collection of Warhammer 40K miniatures to paint?

After all of my chattering on about minis, and paints, and games and awesomeness – he sends me this photo with the captions of “LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO”

Hello little Dragon. Very pleased to meet you!
*Disclaimer note: Not painted by me.

Yaaaay! More friends to talk miniatures to, and paint with! Yayayayay.

Now, the title of my blog was because between painting, work, life etc I have also been busy playing Torchlight II.
I got this in the recent steam sale for about $6 and have to admit – WELL WORTH THAT MONEY.

What’choo doin just floating mid air grinning at me, ey?

I would almost describe this game as Diabloesque. But it’s quite a bit faster paced in regards to Action/Quests and levels.

Dun dun DUUUUUUN.

I would honestly recommend this game to anyone that enjoyed either D2 or D3, or Path of Exile. All great games in my opinion.

Check out my SAHWEET face gear and pet spider. Because I’m a baller.

Well lovies! Talk again soon! Hopefully I will have some Halloween themed basing to you show you next time!

Sincerely, El

A colour scheme from hell…

As promised! A new mini!

Now, please keep in mind that this miniature is:
1. Only half done
and
2. Was intended to be ‘themed’ for Wyrd’s Halloween painting contest Rotten Harvest.

The colour scheme currently looks a bit tragic, but I’m really hoping that with her equally themed BASE attached, it will all make sense in the end.

The beginning…

She was originally primed (air gun sprayed) with an all dark yellow and then a light yellow to have a go at the whole pre-shading concept. So far I’m liking how this works.

The glowing eyes were step by step explained to me by beloved Painting Sage. I think I might con him into doing a tutorial. Not only for my future reference, but a few people have asked me how it was done, and I’d like to be able to link to the source of the wisdom.

From there, she progressed to getting her colours in. Can anyone guess what I’m trying to accomplish with those horrid colours? hahaha.
Well, even if not, all will be revealed eventually!

Highlighting the orange actually blew my mind, because it started as red, and from there ALL I could see was red – I was convinced it was not looking like orange. Painting Sage had to tell me it was time to put the brush down before I had an aneurysm.

Last session I worked on her, she got her hair. This is the first time I’ve attempted a proper ‘brunette’, and her hair has a lot of ‘layers’ making it easier to highlight than most so I’m really hoping it comes out in the photos.

Painting Sage was actually out snapping some nice shots of his own miniatures and took her with him to get me a good photo – and I forgot to upload it to be available while blogging away at work – so I shall add that in the next post!!

Hahaha, I’m hoping she’s going to look a bit more…um…acceptable when she’s shown with her full fancy themed base. That or she’s forever going to be staring at me with her creeper eyes from the back of my shame shelf.

Talk soon!
~ The Ellinator.