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

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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

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

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

To Infinity and Beyond!

Sooooo…I couldn’t come up with a better title. That’s all I’ve got.

After some more painting sessions with le Painting Sage , I have nearly finished my Infinity Aleph crew!
My plan is that when I have all 6 of them done, to go back through them one by one and do a line of final touch ups – as I’ve noticed through posting photos there are some glaring errors that need correcting.

What’s that? SORRY CAN YOU SPEAK UP? Wait! Let me cup my ear to hear you.

Why she’s holding her head like that constantly baffles me. I look at her arm and think, ‘are you struggling to hear?’ ‘are you itching something?’ ‘DO YOU EVEN HAVE EARS!?’.

I also just realised how bad the above picture is. Better one coming soon…..

I stuffed up the white ‘shading’ technique that Painting Sage was showing me – you can see a better rendition of it on his own work, and ended up having to try to hide it by re-painting a lot her white. *siiiiiiiiiiigh*

We also had a ‘test run’ game. This was less of a game than it was more ‘scenarios’ of ‘Ok, so if he was here, and I was here – I could shoot this weapon and roll 3 dice to try to roll below 14’ etc etc. So far I quite like how this game plays.
It seems….closer to the feel of what a real fight might play like than say, Warmachine. But in that being said – I don’t really understand how to play either of them to be making any judgments hahaha.

My little bat-bots ready for their fight.

Painting Sage has added some other items to his print and play Infinity terrain. It looked so cool with the little figures on it! Kind of made my imagination go into over-drive imagining large mechanical foot steps shaking the surrounding shipping containers as my bots slowly moved towards the enemy.

Other than Infinity, as you know I have been painting up Madelyn from Warmachine. I have been picking her up and doing little bits here and there to touch her up.
I wasn’t happy with how the paint ‘water stained’ under her bum, so I tried to blend it back a bit to hide it and re-highlighted the grey. Now it looks very 2 dimensional – ugh, more stuff to fix.

Sorry for the bad photo quality, I’m half asleep – it’s 1am – and I spent all of no time trying to focus/light this picture.

In addition to touch ups, I thought ‘Hey, I see people paint eyes on this mini all the time cause they’re pretty easy to access, why not give it a try?’

Worst. Idea. Ever.
Never painting eyes again. I ended up painting back over the pupils and left them white, but even then she looks….creepy.

Good night everyone!

Sincerely, El.

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/

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!!

Todays Adventures: Painting Sage gets a Blog!

Well, as it appears all of my waffling on about the awesome WordPress miniatures community has rubbed off on my Painting Sage and he’s made himself a blog!!

http://thewurmwood.wordpress.com <—click here for good times.

As much as I wanted him to entitle it ‘The Ramblings of a Painting Sage’ it appears he instead went with The Wurmwood. Haha.

In my most recent escapades….I continued painting Lylyth from Warmachine. Got a lot of practice painting shading on cloaks.

Look at the beautiful sway of my cloak. It flaps! Like a candle in the wiiiiinddd…ehem

Still need to learn a lot about blending. *sigh*
I keep huffing and becoming frustrated that they don’t come out as nice as they look in the pictures on the website. I wish patience was less of a virtue and more of ‘buy it now’ on ebay.

Painting Sage and I also purchased army’s for the miniatures table top game Infinity!

(Mine are the ALEPH on the left)

I absolutely COULD NOT believe how little these were when I opened the box.

Hello my dear. I hear you’re going to be painting me? Take care with my stilletos, they’re small enough to clip the wings of a fairy dancing on the head of a pin.

AAAAARG.
Putting these together was not only an exercise in patience, but also a grand learning experience in the art of ‘pinning’. Painting Sage had to step in a few times to assist me as I was flailing all over the place losing pieces of robots that could only be found with a metal detector.

But, eventually, I had a set of robots and little Aleph people.

Well, I might leave it there for today!
Oh one other piece of news, was my painting friend found these awesome free printable terrain maps and cargo containers! I don’t have a ‘great’ photo of it yet – but how cool does this look??

Ooooooh, cannot wait to play on this with my ultra tiny part people.

Love you all! Sincerely,
Ellie

Miniatures and puppets

Hello my friends!!

So, I received my parcel in the mail, filled with lovely miniatures things and cost more money than I really have to spend – but WHAAAAT ever.

1. Some new paints and a light grey ‘white’ wash
2. Puppet Wars Unstiched!!
3. Zombie Chihuahua
4. Wendigo
5. Rasputina (normal version)

Soooo many pieces! Aaaarg!

So, I’ve never bought a ‘kit’ like this before where you have more than 1 miniature in a set to put together like this. But according to my ‘Teaching me all things miniature’ sage, this is one of the nicest kits he’s seen and thinks it’s a great way to get me introduced to taking them all apart, cleaning and gluing together.

So far – so good. I have 12 out of 44 done.
….that seems far more painful when I say it out loud.

Well, I finally got some time to work on le tigre (as I have now named him). Now, I realise a lot of people actually main this model to look like a wolf instead, and I thought of doing that to keep things simple, but my friend assured me they could teach me to wet blend.

Oooh lookie lookie, I have a brand spanking new coat!

Wet blending was seriously the most stressful technique I have ever tried. Moving at that speed to try to get everything together while it’s still liquid on the figure was REDICULOUS.
I kept making ‘Eeep’, ‘Oh no!’ and ‘AAAAAAARG’ sounds across the table with a raised eyebrow staring back at me going ‘What ARE you doing???’. Ehem.

Stripes stripes stripes…wait, is this a prison jacket, yo? Oh no, it’s just me.

Then I did little stripes. Yeaaaaa…all those panicked sounds I was making during the wet blending were worse during this. So tiny.
Everything was finished off with a wash and that’s where I left it for the day!

I am really excited about how it’s coming along but I have to be completely honest, more than a few times it was handed to my friend to try to correct a stripe I’d just stuffed up or show me how to blend on a certain type of fur. Whenever I attempt things like this at home on my own, they never go well.

Only other news is that I’m now watching my way through Kyle XY. Anyone remember that show?

Aaah yes, your pithy maths problem is no challenge for me.

I do remember this show, although didn’t watch it when it was coming out on TV. But the show is only like 5 something years old, why does it look like it was shot in the early 90s?Well, love you all!
~ Sincerely, Ellie

Gordon Ramsay Won’t Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

No miniatures this post, as well, I’m a bit ashamed of my new ones so, I’ll keep practicing a bit before posting another. q-q

An odd title for this post? Yes.
But, I’m sitting here watching the US edition of Master Chef (with Gordon Ramsay as a judge) and playing Dead Island realising, that he would never survive the Zombie apocalypse. He’d be too busy running around after zombies judging how they were filleting people and telling them they’re doing it wrong.

I love Human Flesh Sashimi, and I feel you seasoned this just right.

Aaaaanny who.
So I’ve been playing Dead Island, as I got it during a Steam sale for a few dollars. I do have to admit, this game is nothing like I assumed it would be.
Is there like…no story?

Of course I’ll come with you, I need someone to run faster than when shit starts hitting proverbial fans.

It’s basically, talk to someone at base camp -> get quest to survive sneaking past/killing zombies to get something -> return.
I was expecting something a little more Meet character -> have objective involving that character being with you -> Objectives switch between story, stealth, fighting etc -> proceed along beach line … buuut apparently not.

So basically, I’ve just been roaming about exploring and snapping images.

WTF IS THAT? AND WHY IS IT MID AIR?

Buddy, if you wrote this in your own blood ‘we’ aren’t anything, ‘you’ are a lunatic.

Now, this next image, looks good. Like Bow-chika-wa-wow good, but then when I look at the girls individual parts (legs, hips etc) I can’t help but think that this is also wildly out of proportion…or is it my imagination after staring at it for some time?

Buy ‘Coke’. That is all.

I love touches like advertising, books on the floor with proper covers and extra little scenic bits really exciting in games. I love studying and reading everything.

Well, that is all my friends!

Love you all!
~ Ellie