Werewolves part 4

After playing a couple of matches on the computer game with a Norse team I realise I'm going to need throwers. So there will have to be some revamps of the Werewolf team. I decided to use the catchers more aggressively and use my previous Blitzer models for Catchers instead. The Impact Timberline elves will instead become my throwers, which leaves me without any Blitzers! I figured I'd just get another Otherworld Werewolf and use the pair of them as Blitzers, and I think that will work out really well. Both the Great werewolf and the Blitzer are frenzied madmen and the models really portrait this. Next update on the werewolves will come when I get the last model. Then it will be finished fast.

Underworld part 1

This project started many months ago with me wanting to try out the new Skaven models. I just loved what Games Workshop had done to their Clanrats, going from the most horrible miniatures in their range to the coolest. After getting the 20 individual Clanrat models I realised that it would be hard to adapt them to Fantasy Football, since the whole body was one single piece together with one arm. That didn't leave much room for varied poses. To overcome this uniformity and still distinguish between different positionals on a team I studied the 20 different bodies closely to see how I could group them. A few had a lot of armour so they would be blitzers. Others had a lot of clothing and would become throwers. The last ones had practically nothing on and they would be my favourites, the linemen!

The colour scheme you can see below originated from a Troll I was painting for a completely different team. They would be Blue orcs and I wanted to do the troll so he looked "natural". I used a lot of khaki and only had a subtle greyish blue for shadowing. It turned out to look like a khaki troll with natural shadows instead of a blue troll with natural highlights and I really really liked the effect. I have since used it to make these albino Skaven:


Next part I will go through how I recently continued with this project that started many months ago.

Werewolves part 3

Hi again! It's time for more Werewolves! First up is two colour scheme tests. I went for the grey fur, green armour and light brown clothes. My first idea was to paint each wolf a different colour, taken from Twilight's Quileute werewolf pack. In the end I opted for using only three different fur colours. Two would be for the big werewolves and the rest would get dark grey.


Linemen
These shots from the back show the colour scheme better. My main problem with the linemen is that now that they all have the same fur they will be very uniform. I'm considering using stripes on their pants to differentiate between them a bit.
Catcher
This is not a typical werewolf as you can see. Instead, in line with Twilight, this is a spirit warrior able to leave his body in spirit. His wolf fur suit ties him in with the rest of the team.Great Werewolf
This big guy was actually bigger than I thought. My first plan was to use one of these and then the Otherworld werewolf to get two different Great Werewolves, but this one is too big and the other is too small so I'll have to use two of these Heresy Werewolves. This black one is Sam, the Alpha male. Next one will be Jacob, the other Alpha.

The rookie
The new guy got some brown fur mostly for testing it out. I don't think he will be used much in this team, but I am considering getting another one to use somehow, perhaps in an undead team.

Next step
So as you can see on the Great Werewolf, I chose to go with the same bases as the Soldiers of Fortune had. I like the look and it's easy to do. But this team is mostly painting from now on. I have already sculpted a longer nozzle on the catchers hood and fixed some small stuff in joints and so on.

TEAM ROKKIT Orks part 3

OK, work has been done and here are the results!







The team is finished, except for the bases, as you can see. I just couldn't decide what to do with them. I decided to wait with the basing until it's time to use the team. I'm really looking forward to playing them.

Werewolves part 2

More Werewolves! A few more are assembled and I've basecoated half of them.
This Werewolf team will have four different kinds of werewolf. Linemen, Blitzers, Catchers and Blockers. I'm considering adding a Great Werewolf if I can find the funding for the miniature.

Blitzers
These guys are one of the more "human" kinds of werewolf. They specialize on hunting down opposing Quarterbacks and are the masterminds of the defense squad.
Linemen
The Linemen on this Werewolf team are excellent blockers. They are more wolf than man and the more experienced linemen have been known to pull down much bigger opponents.



The Rookie
This werewolf is not only new to the team, but new to civilized sports alltogether. He hasn't learned to wear clothes and football gear yet but is a keen player.Next
Next up is the first layers of paint! I'm going to have to learn how to do good looking fur, so the Rookie will be my testmodel. Hopefully the Blockers will arrive soon so I can start putting them together.

Werewolves part 1

Hi, everyone! This is a project I have been looking forward to a long time now. I realised I wanted to do this when I was browsing some fantasy football miniatures sites simultaneously and happened to be looking at Impacts Timberline Elves at the same time as Roll Jordans Necro wolves. Native americans and werewolves, now where have I heard of that before?

I ordered some models after having checked out all the werewolf miniatures I could find. Here's the first I built!
The middle and right ones are Roll Jordan Necro Wolfs, while the leftmost one is from Otherworld miniatures. They are all really good miniatures, but I found that the Otherworld wolf had a big advantage: It is a one-part miniature, while the middle Roll Jordan wolf consists of 6(!) parts. On the other hand, the RJ wolves are perfect for fantasy football.
Next time I'll go through my thoughts on how the team is going to be put together. Until then I give you the team name: Jake's Wolves!

TEAM ROKKIT Orks part 2

Painting of Team Rokkit continues! As you can see I'm experimenting with funny logos as well. So first off is some progress on the Blockers. Nothing is really finished but they have their base coats at least. Next is highlighting and shadowing the armour, followed by finishing their skin and then adding details like colourfull wires and player numbers.

The Blitzers are the most finished and has been since the beginning and as such they haven't gotten much attention yet, but below you can see the Linemen. They pretty much only have details left before they are ready for basing.

Basing is a big question for this team. They shouldn't have the clean easy pitch grass of the Soldiers, but they do need something to tie them stronger to Fantasy Football and away from the 40k universe they are taken from. I am strongly considering a kind of Gorkamorka desert pitch but I'm really unsure how that would look. I guess I'm going to have to make some tests!

TEAM ROKKIT Orks part 1

OK, this is going to be a quick project. I'm doing Orcs without Throwers or Goblins. The theme of the team is Rockets, using Warhammer 40,000 Ork Stormboyz for most players. Blitzers are the new plastic Stormboyz, while the Linemen are an older version. And Black Orcs are the ever Awesome Meganobz!These boys are linemen, built simply by cutting off weapons from 3ed Ork Stormboyz. In Blood Bowl I acctually like the Orc Linemen a lot for their AV9 and decent agility. I'll be using these instead of any throwers, just for that extra armour.

Black Orc Blockers are very important on the Orc team. They give the team its signature strength advantage against most teams, so I wanted something impressive for their models. I just happened to have a bunch of Mega Nobz I'd never use otherwise lying around. These don't have rockets per se, but they look technological enough to still fit the theme.

And finally the most important piece on the team, the Blitzers. They bring the reliability and speed to this team, and without sacrificing any of that sweet armour. These are the true Rocketeers, literally taking off from rubble on the pitch. I'm not sure what I should do to their bases, seeing how car tires aren't that common on the field.

Ral Partha Elves part 9

Allright! After some painting madness, here's the rest of the Soldiers of Fortune, all finished! Below are pictures of the team divided into positions. I wanted to show you these before I try and varnish them. The varnish could end up ruining the paintjob completely so here's the "before" pictures.




After this I've an awesome idea for a team that I want to do, but the parts I ordered hasn't arrived yet so I thought I would do a short project in between. So, next time we'll see some Ork Rocketeers!

Ral Partha Elves part 8

My camera is back! And in its absence I've been painting some Soldiers of Fortune. Here's the first batch of players, still without name or numbers. The second from the left is a Blitzer, and the rest are linemen. I'm quite pleased with these, but I'm thinking about getting some variation in hair colours.
Next are a picture of their bases. These are very simple, just flock with some blood and lines. I think the coming batch will have a bit more detail on there.
For the thrower and last blitzer I'm working some putty into hands with balls. I'll show you some pictures. I began by sculpting the parts on a piece of wire, and then when it was hardened I glued it to the model. First up is the Blitzer.I like the Blitzers new pose, but the thrower was much harder. I don't have any experience with american football so I just had to go with what felt like it would look "normal". The left hand is still unmodified and I'm afraid I have to change that one too. But sculpting open hands is super difficult!

Ral Partha Elves part 7

Since my camera is on vacation I can't show you the progress on painting I have made so far. It's not much but at least the linemen are getting some paint. Instead I want to show you the updated logo I've been working on!
I think it is definitely better, but since I used a real logo for reference I'm not sure it's really finished. I'll continue brainstorming on this until I find something that really works.

Ral Partha Elves part 6

Work on the new models has begun. First I cut off their weapons. This was fairly easy for the sword-elves, but the guys with spears were a pain!
Then I rebased them on 20mm round bases. Why 20mm you ask? Well, firstly I think it makes them seem less small. Also it reminds me of old miniatures that had their bases moulded on. Thirdly I'm hoping to making a Blood Bowl pitch with 20mm squares one day.

The main problem right now is their hands! Look at these thowers. What are they doing? I'm afraid I'm going to have to sculpt some hands and arms to fix these poses. Now how do I do that?

The Linemen don't have this problem and are pretty much finished, perhaps except for the standing one.
These Catchers need some work on their left hands.
And these guys were selected to be Blitzers because of their helmets and leg armour. But what should I do with their poses? The one with a cloak looks weird...Next time I hope I have some good ideas of what to do with them!

Ral Partha Elves part 5

Rejoice! The models have arrived!
Oddly enough they seem to be slightly different sizes. I've taken some comparison pictures so you can see. The standing ones with halberds seem to be the biggest ones, and the ladies are smallest. This will perhaps get better when I base them.
But first is the tedious task of removing weapons!

Ral Partha Elves part 4

Hi! I thought I'd show you how I'd like to base the team. I've tried a whole bunch of different bases on my teams, and there are countless ways of doing this. For my Khorne team I used a scorched earth kind of base, with only small patches of grass. That fits well for a feral or daemonic team, but the Soldiers of Fortune are highly civilised. Therefore I went for a classic well groomed grass pitch using green flock. This can look very boring in itself though, so I spice it up with some splattered blood, some white lines and a few broken pieces of armour.

Next time, we'll see if my order has arrived!

Ral Partha Elves part 3

In this part, I'll go through some of my thoughts around team names. There are several ways of choosing a team name.
I personally like naming teams in accordance to game fluff. Games like Blood Bowl has great fluff. I also like using Warhammer 40000 fluff. In addition there are "funny teams", such as my Teenage Mutant Nippon Kappas that combines 40k miniatures, a Warhammer world japanese country and Turtles! Another type of funny name is to parodize real NFL teams. I have my Mordheim Saints, and I've seen Nordland Patriots and the like.

In this case, I don't think Ral Partha had a particular fantasy world in mind when designing their elves, so there's no real fluff to build on from there. Instead I first thought I would pick a name that represents my rediscovery of the models I use.
Phoenixes could be a good name, both since it's a mythical creature that resurrects and it is used commonly with elves in both the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k fluff. On the other hand I won't be using any kind of bird theme, which kind of makes the name mismatching the miniatures.

So how about a more generic elven name, much like the models were generic? I see them more like a collection of elven mercenaries than a real team. Soldier of Fortune is one of my favourite expressions. These elves will be known as the
Soldiers of Fortune.

Another interesting theme to consider is sponsorship. For example, in curling teams are named after their sponsor (e.g. Team Sony Ericsson).
When looking at the test models I published in part 2 I get the feeling they have some kind of clothing company behind them.
Something like Adidas or Nike, providing them with their flashy uniforms.
So without further ado, I present to you the Spikë Soldiers of Fortune!


This logo I whipped up in Pages but it's only a first draft. So far it has only the Spike ([Spike-EE]) logo, but I am considering using some kind of soldier silhouette to go with it.

Next time we will probably see an updated test model! Also in the near future I'll talk some about basing fantasy football miniatures.

Ral Partha Elves part 2

Hi, again!
I've been busy painting up my two test models and would like to share the results with you. You'll quickly see that I am learning to use my camera. Most of these pictures are incredibly yellow before I adjust them digitally. I'm trying to get better light and am exploring the functions of my camera.




These schemes, named The Blue Scheme and The Red Scheme in part 1, are both striking and filled with contrast. The biggest difference is that the Red Scheme lacks metallic colours. That's an advantage when it comes to photographs, but metallic colours can be quite stunning to the eye.

In my mind, the Red elf looks better. Much because the silver lines don't show well on the Blue elf. But there are some elements from both models that could improve the Red Scheme we have here. For example, the boots of Blue elf has a better pattern.

So, we have settled on a rough scheme, with red and white. The next step, except for working on the details in the scheme, would be to name the team.

Ral Partha Elves part 1

Hi.
About 10 years ago I went on a trip to the Big City with my family. While wandering through the shelves of the great hobby store I stumbled upon a sales bin. Among the last products from long dead miniature companies I found a blister of elves with shields and swords. I bought them with the sole purpose of painting them, but I never really came around to it.
After all these years, I only have two of them left. Only one is painted. The shields and bases are lost, and with them the name of the company they came from. You see, these elves didn't have tabs under their feet like Grandma's usually have. They only have pins that fit their original metal bases.
I have many times browsed through entire catalogs in search for these elusive elves, but I found them only today! They are Ral Partha Irregular Elves with swords. And to my great delight Ral Partha still sells them!
I ordered a bunch of them to make a Fantasy Football team, and with this blog I will document the process from beginning to end.Here you can see some of these splendid miniatures. They might be a tad smaller than Grandma's, but then again, most things are.
The different aspects of creating a Fantasy Football team are many, including coming up with a theme, a name, player names, what rules to use and perhaps most important of all what colours to use!
This first post will show you some of my initial ideas around the colour scheme. Some of these I will implement on the two models I already have while waiting for the rest of them to arrive.

The Blue Scheme
This scheme revolves around using metallic blue for the metal parts and a clean bright white for the cloth.

The Red Scheme
In this case, the metals would be laquered white and the cloth dark red with white stripes and details.

The Inverted Red Scheme
Much like the Blue Scheme, this colour scheme has metallic colours (red) with white cloth. Clear white contrasts well with dark red.

Next time we will get to see one or two of these tried out and we'll be discussing what works and what doesn't as well as the team name! Don't miss it!