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

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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

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.

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.

WARNING: This post may contain miniatures and food.

It’s been a few days since my last post – and finally work has slowed down enough for me to do some stealthy typing.

So, now that I have 5/6 Infinity miniatures relatively finished:

I went ahead and got started on the final 6th!! Yipee!

Hello everyone. It’s good to meet you. Despite what you may have heard – I’m not actually naked. I’m wearing a Lycra white body suit.

She is proving a tad more….er…troublesome than the others purely because part way through painting her, I suddenly realised she had a piece of flash stuck to the bridge of her nose. Had to try to get it off without:
1. Giving her a complete nasoectomy
2. Completely destroying the surrounding paint

I’ve actually been finding the Infinity miniatures extremely challenging. Partly because of their size, partly because of their details, and partly because of their colour schemes. Faaar too stressful for my overly anxious, shakes like a guinea-pig in a thunder storm self.

While not working on my Infinity guys, I’ve been trying to speed paint up Madelyn Corbeau for a ‘learn to free hand’ thread happening over on the Wyrd forums in a few days.

So I have her at this point (a lot of touch ups and fixing needed!) and my plan is to do the Cygnar swan on the back of her coat.

But I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, as I’m not too fond of just dumping a big area of gold on her, but I also have no idea how to NMM – like at all. So, we shall see I suppose!!

My only other news, is my father did a family dinner the other night of home-made pizza making and movies.

It’s ok to be jealous of my amazing pizza.

Sincerely,
Ellison

Battle for Sophia Oct 2013

Ok everyone! I would like to begin this post by advising that I am not connected to this event in anyway – merely that I have been reading about it and thought it deserved a spot on my blog.

So, the Battle for Sophia is an Oxfordshire-based wargaming club are set to play the popular tabletop game; Warhammer Fantasy, in an endurance marathon for 48 hours in a bid to raise donations for Sophia – a young Witney resident with Spastic Diplegia, a form of Cerebral Palsy, who is in need of a crucial operation and months of post op physio.

The event, dubbed ‘The Battle for Sophia’ will take place Friday 25 to Sunday 27 October, at the club’s headquarters in Carterton.

Sophia having her photo taken for the local news paper

The tabletop game will play continuously for 48 hours with players taking shifts, and will be broadcast live over the web for supporters to see the action progressing. The game will be played on a massive 12’ by 4’ table, will use more than 50 terrain pieces and over 2000 miniatures, many of which have been beautifully hand-painted.

And here are some links to further information:

http://innsmouthgamingclub.wordpress.com/

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?380215-48-hour-Warhammer-Game-Battle-for-Sophia

http://www.sophiassteppingstones.co.uk/

Painting, Painting, So much painting…

Ok, let me begin this post with many thanks to everyone who has been helping me with painting the horse and sending encouragement/empathetic messages. It has…improved. I wouldn’t say it was great but it has improved.

I think I’m going to shelf horsey as he is for the time being, and take another crack at one down the track when I have more of any idea of what I’m doing.

Big top arrow: Awful ‘blob’ looking effect on the saddle due to my inability to sand back greenstuff correctly.
Small lower arrow: Indicating the weird sawdust like gunk still stuck to the surface that I didn’t managed to clean off all together.

That’ll do, horsey. That’ll do.

I’ve also been working on my Infinity crew!

I beg your pardon. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind ever so much – giving me some type of nice blending and highlights? Much appreciated.

Sorry about the poor photo quality – I realised I had forgotten to upload any images of this girl to my photobucket, so I emailed the picture from my phone – it seems to have compressed it somewhat.

Either way, I completely botched the shading on her legs and skirt. Her arse looks all badonka-donk-donk, but the front…yea, I think I de-evolved while painting her.
Painting Sage attempted to rescue the front of her skirt for me – but by that stage, I think I’d reached a point of diminishing returns.

Oh, nice surprise this morning was my order from Table Top Empires came today!!
I am going through the Australian based online miniatures stores and putting in small orders just to see what they’re like.
These guys weren’t quite as fast at shipping as Defiant Gaming but only slower by a day or so – so I still rate them.

I received 2 dummy Reaper miniatures just to use as painting practice. So at some point, I will be working on these two little ladies:

Other than this, not much to report for this evening.

Say hi to your mothers for me.

Sincerely, Ellie.

Paintball, Painting and WTF did I just play?

Let’s begin this story with the fact that I participated in Paintball this weekend.
Now, as much as I can hear you doing a fist pump and a ‘Hells yeaaa’ this was more of a revolutionary awakening for myself to absolutely know – I will not survive the Zombie apocalypse.
Honestly speaking when the virus ridden cannibals start roaming the streets – I’ll already be one of them, don’t worry about coming to save me.

Now for a small update on painting!!

So I’ve been experimenting with paper to see if there’s anything comparable to the P3 parchment paper to use to put my paints on. Here’s how I went:

• Standard Paper = No. It dissolves easily.
• Baking Paper = No. The wax being placed either up OR down creates a water repellent barrier that doesn’t allow the paint to remain wet.
• Tracing Paper = Maybe. I’ve had a limited amount of success with tracing paper keeping paint wet for about 24 hours. But not much longer.
• Tradesman Paper = Maybe. This is actually paper made of a type of stone. It’s oil and water proof, but this actually made it PAINT proof, meaning that if the paint was thick enough, it just sat around on the top with the water keeping liquid for about 48 hours. Not bad but not great.

TRADEY PAPER. FOR THE TOUGH MAN… Or for the 5 foot nothing woman trying to paint tiny people.

The tracing paper on the left, and the Tradesman paper on the right after 24 hours.

So, using my ‘temporary’ wet palette, I got to trying to fix horsey.
I did this by adding an orange/brown type colour to the original brown and re-going over the highlights and then toning them back again with flesh wash. I think it’s a bit of an improvement but not great.

You still haven’t fixed my saddle woman. I mean seriously, who rides a saddle without stirrups?

I also used black wash to give him a slightly darker tone on his hocks. I was going to do him full bay colour and black them out, but I figured – he’s obviously no REAL breed of horse anyways, so we shall cheat! MWAHAHAHA.

—-

In PC gaming news, I have gotten addicted to the Mighty Quest for Epic Loots.

So the point of this game is to build a castle, and other people can attack it. If they beat you castle they get a % of your loots (gold and gems) – if you attack them back you get a % of theirs.

How anyone travels from castle to castle is currently a mystery. Pegasus ponies maybe??

My castle in all it’s glory. AAAAANNND can be beaten in about a half a minute. Sorry gems, it was nice while it lasted.

The idea is that people get more and more creative with how they set up traps and monsters and try to catch you out. So far mines a pretty straight forward Walk in > Beat obvious frog guys > Take my shit.

There’s just a heart warming feeling knowing the loots you scored were actually another players. MWAHAHA.

Other than this – I also got Anna some time back if anyone remembers? But I hadn’t actually played it.

Regret.
So much regret.

Welcome to Anna. Where the best part of the game is the font the title shows in.

So it’s a horror puzzle game. Where the puzzles are actually ridiculous. After 10 minutes of kicking around in this pretty outdoors area I had to google what I was supposed to be doing.
Would you believe I was meant to go find a branch, use to to move rocks in the river, fill up my canteen and catch a glass shard – and then just HAPPEN to work out that I need to set this glass shard on fire using a pinecone while sitting in the groove of a stone eye.
Like…what the actual fuck?

We’re trying to look dark and ominous. Instead we’re just giving you a headache with the overdone music and shitty lighting.

You fumble around in the water mill for a while finding random objects, like this prize winning message on a handkerchief.

I’m pretty sure I follow the 14 year old girl that wrote this on Tumblr.

I ended up giving up the game after I illuminated some magical bridge over a puddle and got to enjoy the ‘horrific’ image of a stick figure hugging kids in the water.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal was the art work for the kids. Really? REALLY? We allowed someone to publish that nightmare?

Neeeeedless to say, I won’t be finishing this game. I have plenty of better ways to spend an hour. Like you know, sniffing paint.

Well, that’s all for this evening folks.
I have a tendency to waffle – my apologies.

Night all!!