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!