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

Old-School: My Atari had a broken Wang

So, I have been rather nostalgic lately, and spending a lot of time scrolling through my Steam library thinking “It never used to be this hard to pick a game!”.
I used to open the cabinet, choose from one of my 10 Atari games (90% likely that River Raid was coming out) and then spend the next happy hours of my life shooting planes and collecting fuel.

What does any normal person do when feeling nostalgic? Look at a photo album? Google some info?

… you’d be wrong.
They immediately hit up their local ‘Buy Swap and Sell’ facebook group asking who is selling an Atari 2600.  Am I right!?

And I got this!!

A very tidy haul if I do say so myself!!

Now, out of the above, only 1 of the Atari (Atari? Atari’s? How does one exactly plural this console’s name?) actually worked, the second one he threw in because ‘it’s a fancy paperweight’.
And I’m sure you noticed, as I, that nice little box that reads ‘River Raid’ on the cover!!

Out of all the games I got with this…

…only 1 of them doesn’t work.
Guess which one?
GO ON. TAKE A STAB?
I BET YOU’LL NEVER GUESS THAT IT WAS  BLOODY WELL RIVER RAID.

After a few moments of weeping in my soul, I moved onto inspecting my new collection of 20th century adventures.

This bad boy, looks like he has legitimately NEVER BEEN USED.

But then again, who in their right mind plays Golf games anyways?

Now, Atari number 1 was all plugged in and happily beeping away as I died repeatedly in GORF, but Atari number 2 was sitting there looking at me like as if it had been neglected and wanted some attention.

So I popped open the case to see if there was anything obviously wrong with it.

The answer would partially be – because it is HELLA filthy. Ew.
Like, I don’t judge smokers guys, I don’t.
But if you DO smoke around electrical equipment, it’s going to end up with a nice gooey grime layer like this.

Please don’t smoke around pets, children and retro gaming systems. This public service announcement was approved for use by the Ellie Foundation of Gaming.

Anyways, after about an hours worth of cleaning, I noticed that the contact points on the capacitor were not correctly touching, so I wriggled it around until it had a good connection.

I love that this is called a ‘Wang Scap’….because I’m a child.
My Atari’s ‘wang’ was broken guys. It was broken. But I fixed it.

Now! I am the proud owner of 2 baller level Atari 2600’s.
Hahaha, why I need 2 is beyond me, but I’m stoked none the less.

Bring on the 8-bit adventure!

~ Love you all,
Ellie.

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

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.

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

Finally an update!

Uuugh, sorry for the delayed replies, comments and posts folks. Life has kind of exploded with family, school and work and I haven’t had a chance to do much of anything!

Hello everyone. This is me in Pokemon land – just casually posing for my trainer license like a pro model.

1 thing I have been filling in my short breaks between commitments is the new Pokemon X game! I have bought and played through every Pokemon game since my original obsession with Blue way back when – and I must say, I’m between feelings on the new one.

If you don’t follow the games as I do, you may not know this already, but this is the game Nintendo announced was their start to changing the experience of the Pokemon gaming franchise. It has a big story, cut scenes, 3D animation and all that jazz (in addition to a bunch of additional internet connectivity and bonuses related).

So, here are some snaps I took of my screen while playing:

For starters, this game is a lot more customisable in regards to what you look like. So I took the general route of making my character “somewhat” like myself.
This is the wholly arrogant and obnoxious fist pump my character does when beating a trainer for plot required purposes.

I honestly don’t know if the change view makes exploring dungeons better or worse to be honest.

At least it’s pretty, I suppose?

As tradition dictates, I chose the fire starter. Now this is the second stage evolution (Braixen).

This thing actually pulls a ‘branch’ out of it’s tail and uses it like a wand. I actually hate it.

The main evil ‘TEAM’ in this game is a group named ‘Flare’. Now, don’t get me wrong, Team s always have a tendency to look rather comical.
These guys are absolutely no exception in that regard.

One of the things I do very much enjoy about this game is the customisation through hair cuts and various accessories.
For once I have a character I’m playing in Pokemon that I identify with.

At least it’s not the mushroom headed girl from Black, anyways.

And finally, another feature they have added is on occasion you encounter a sign with a camera on it. This summons a photographer to take a commemorative ‘snap shot’ of you on your adventures.
The DS responds in your hands the same way a camera would (ie. tilting the device, tilts the camera angle).

—

Other than Pokemon, all the painting I have been doing has been for my Rotten Harvest entry for the Wyrd painting competition and due to rules I can’t post anything about it. 😦

The only other thing I have managed to find the time to do, is to keep up with the ‘Paint-along’ thread for free handing. As of week 3 highlighting has been completed:

I found the highlighting on this really tricky, as there was no obvious ‘light source’ for where I had done the highlighting on the coat initially!
I ended up doing a few shades of the gold/yellow colour to highlight – but it appears only one shows in this photo.

I shall have to get a better picture when I do the next round of touch ups!!

Well, Love you all!!
Sincerely,
Ellie.

Slow to Update, Slow to Paint

So haven’t made an update for a little while because life has been waaaaay too hectic!
As a result of the above, I have also made very little progress doing much of anything else.

But! My Rotten Harvest competition entry is coming along. Just hope I have it finished in time! I wish I could take photos of it to post up and ask for advice and help, but unfortunately one of the rules is that it cannot have been published/shown off anywhere *sigh*.

I have however been keeping up to date with Mako’s ‘free-hand-along’ thread on the Wyrd forums. So far, not good.
My outlining skills are BOLLOCKS. Just seriously all types of fail was going on here.

What have you painted on the back of me? Yellow splodge I think!

And then in week 2 we filled the outline in.

Oooooh, it’s meant to be a bird. Who’da thunk it?

The filled in version looks a little better, but I’m struggling to keep it non-chalky and defined.
I also noticed that the wings are horribly uneven. And now that I’ve seen it – I can’t un-see it 😦
And I was a little careless where I put her and have ended up with a few sizable chips out of her paint. At least they’re areas I probably should re-do anyways!

Tried to get a nice photo of all of my little Infinity guys – but alas, as the Painting Sage has warned me before “Direct sunlight is not your friend”. It’s very true.

Well, I might leave it there for the moment. Going to start painting up one of my Malifaux Gunsmiths – but it will probably be slow going while I get my Rotten Harvest done!!

Love you all,
Sincerely El.