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.

Advertisement

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

Blogger Tag: Best Games of 2014

So, in going with the write tag given out by ‘What’s your Tag?‘, I am going to do a quick list of the best games I played in 2014.

Now, I would like to re-state the ‘I PLAYED IN 2014’ part. These are not necessarily 2014 releases, and they are in no particular order other than the one my brain remembered them in!

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (Nintendo 3DS)
– To be absolutely fair to all other games, this made it to my list partially because of my love for the Pokemon series of games. It is highly probable that the reason I thought it was an amazing game, is because of the same reason I loved all of it’s predecessors. BECAUSE, GUYS, I DON’T KNOW IF YOU KNOW BUT YOU CATCH BADARSE PETS WITH SUPER POWERS. What’s not to love?

The Last of Us (Playstation 3)
– This was just one of the most epic games I have ever played. To be absolutely honest, I felt like I had been thrown into the middle of this amazing movie and told to hit the ground running. I plan on buying a PS4 soon – this will be being re-purchased purely to play it on my new console. I’m not even kidding.

Beyond Two Souls (Playstation 3)
– Basically, see above. Epic story. Amazing acting. Love love love. Also, you may not have heard, but there was boob.

7 Days to Die (PC)
– I’m sure most people are familiar with this title, but I have literally not stopped wanting to play this game since I got it. Originally recommended to me by the Painting Sage, I was somewhat hesitant to purchase an alpha game with such a hefty price tag ($30AUD) – but it turned out to be money well spent for all the hours, with all the different friends I have spent killing zombies and building ridiculous looking forts.

Don’t Starve (+ Together BETA, PC)
– This, for the same reason as 7 Days to Die, made it on the list for the sheer amount of time I have enjoyed running around with friends quickly hording supplies for our camp – and adventuring off on my own to discover underground monster caves filled with fresh carrots and glowing bushes, this is a game I am happy to have spent my money on.

Well, I might leave that there, at a shortish list of a couple of games that particularly stood out to me over 2014 “vidja gaming”. I’m sure I’m forgetting a couple of epic things I played, but for right now – this is it.

I wish you all a fantastic 2015 and hopefully by 2016 I’ll be posting “Best holodeck games I played this year” … no? pipe dreaming? drat.

~ Always, Elison

Where did she come from? Where did she go?

Where did she come from, cotton-eyed joe?

Yeaaaa….that just happened, folks.

Any how, I am well aware that my blog unfortunately dwindled to fewer and fewer posts until it eventually just went quiet for a bit there. In all absolute honesty, it was mostly out of priority and time shifting in life – and unfortunately keeping my blog up to date was one of the things that went to the back burner until such a time as I could properly do it again.

So here I am!! I don’t have any miniatures for you today, as painting was also a back-burned item, but I have been doing some gaming as of late!

Lately I have been playing A LOT of 7 Days to Die. I have to admit, I love this game a lot and that has a lot to do with watching LordMinion777‘s YouTube videos of him and his mates/girlfriend bro-ing out on it, but it’s stacks of fun.

The idea is Zombie Survival Crafting. So kind of…. Day Z meets Minecraft. I was recently playing with a friend and we set off on our brave adventure into the land of infected humans and broken down homes.

We head into this old gas station. As I’m scuttling around down in the station looting cars and various left over people’s limbs I suddenly hear ‘HOLY MOTHER OF …. WHAT JUST HAPPENED’.

Turns out my friend had found a ladder leading to the roof, and plummeted to his broken boned doom.

Did I live? …. Nope. Not a chance.

We ended up not making it back to any type of structure before night hit and quickly built ourselves a little hide out in the middle of the rubble.

Sorry you’ve caught us in the middle of renovations. Please excuse the mess. Teehee.

Nah actually this was a pretty tough little fort come sun down. It was mildly terrifying in the flicker of a candle light watching zombie shadows shoot past the gaps and then start ripping into the walls – but we lived.

Looked very cozy on the inside if I do say so myself.

It is important to keep in mind though, that this game is most certainly an Alpha. Even though it’s heaps of fun even WITH alpha style bugs, there is still definitely a lot of bugs. And the game play experience is changing and updating constantly.

Loot this corpse you say? Don’t mind if I do….

There is currently an issue with Zombies spawning mid air. The lucky survivors of that particular glitch end up on rooves occassionally, so in the morning my “first objective” for my survival was to wander the streets and pluck them down with my cross-bow. Without fail, every single one “landed” mid fall in the air.

Ah well, it made looting them all the more amusing I guess.

Well, that’s all for today my friends! I shall leave you with this glorious screen shot of the amazing sun rise.

– Sincerely,
Ellison

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

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.

The Mass Effect of Pneumonia

Hello my lovelies!! *BEWARE OF MASS EFFECT 2 SPOILERS*

As you may have noticed, I dropped off the face off the planet for a week or so.

So, I was in a friends wedding (which was all hectic on it’s own preparing for) but, as luck would have it the next day I was sick. Since then, I have mostly been moping around in bed feeling sorry for myself with Pneumonia and the relative goodness of a chest infection. Uuuuurgh.

Literally, stuck in bed for a number of days with not too much energy. So, how did I keep myself amused? With the Halloween STEAM sale of course.

Ehem. Maybe I should not be left to my own devices sometimes.

As a side note, I have no idea what Painkiller is, nor do I remember selecting it – but hey, there is it.

So I started playing Mass Effect 2. This is a game my cousin has been insisting I try as it is (in her words) “omfgrjuih34r5jkfhri34 epicz”.

Hmmm…it’s not too bad.

It’s not a bad game, and it has a relatively interesting story. You start as this chick (I’m playing as Femshep) that she’s proverbially brought back from the dead to do the bidding of some group that no body apparently likes.

Fast-forward a bit and my mission is to recruit a bunch of people in to my ‘crew’.

This chick. HAH, she’s basically my own personal hooker with a gun.

Dudes name is Archangel. Why though is actually beyond me as once you see his face, it’s not heaven you assumed he dropped from.

And Jack. She’s all hardcore and dangerous and wearing like….ropes to cover her nips.
I suppose living a few months in a stasis tube doesn’t leave for a lot of time to go clothes shopping.

So I head off on these missions in this nightclub, and of course what is the first thing a player should do when presented with digital strippers? Spend all the gold on a lap dance.

If I’d seen this kids face first, I might have kept my money.

And Jacks all…

…You’re doing it wrong.

As much as I am enjoying this game, I must admit the cut-scenes are a bit excessive. Even for me. I feel more like I’m watching a movie that I occasionally participate in, than I am participating in a story with occasional movie.

Other than this, I have been working little bits on WHAT WAS my Rotten Harvest competition entry – but due to getting sick never got her completed in time.

Photos of her next!!

Look forward to catching up on everyones posts! 🙂

~ Sincerely, El