Fimm's BOYL Fimir-o-quest diary

Fimm McCool

Member
Day 1
Dear diary...

After Mr Chico asked a few days ago how everyone was doing with their BOYL 2016 preparations I did a count of figures I needed to paint. Came out at 146. If I start now and do 6 a day I'll be sorted... best begin then!
Fortunately most of these are heroquest minis which are nice and quick to paint. I'd forgotten how great they are actually, lots of charm and well-designed for beginner painters as a simple undercoat, base coat and wash and they look the part. Remind me I said how much I liked them in a week's time when there are still Orcs to do!

Some of these I bought from ebay already undercoated. Rather than add another thickness of primer I decided to leave them with a white base. The others I did my usual black/grey undercoat with white mist (they call it 'zenithal' apparently) and lined up ready to begin. After doing the skin on 8 goblins I still had paint left over so started on 8 orcs as well...



Clothing in a combination of four different browns, with Sepia ink washed over the top. Also managed to paint the weapons black on all my remaining Heroquest figures so already pulling ahead of my 6-a-day goal. Hopefully that should give me a nice long time to spend on the more important miniatures- I'm biting the bullet and painting up my Wizards of Morcar miniatures for the event.



That just leaves me with teeth, eyes and metal to do tonight. With any luck I'll get started on another batch. :)
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 2
Dear diary...

Well I didn't manage to get the weapons, eyes and teeth painted last night. Instead I got the flesh and clothing on another 8 Orcs and 8 Goblins, I figured I can do all the metals and details in one batch.
This morning I have made further progress, with the base coats done on another 7 Orcs and the flesh on 9 Fimir.



Once these guys are washed that will be all the Goblins and all the Orcs (until another 8 Orcs and 6 Goblins arrive through the post to complete the units!) done... well, minus the details. This is also all the Fimir I need to complete my block of 38 Shearls. Then I need to organise how the Fimm and Fianna will be ranked up, paint the chariots and Dirach coven... a way to go yet, but that's 48 of 146 underway and 39 of 146 almost finished 2 days in. Plenty of room for the schedule to slip there!
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 3
Dear diary...

Last night I managed to paint all the eyes, teeth, belt buckles, bases and weapons on 39 orcs and goblins. A couple of the golbins are original ball and chain fanatics so I want to come back to them for a bit more detail if I have time, but they're done for now. Another 4 orcs and 2 goblins arrived in the post, but I'll wait until the others join them before starting on that batch.



Today I've been at the Fimir. I only need 9 of these to add to the block of HQ Fimir my army already has so they aren't an awful chore. Flesh was already base coated, so bronze weapons and dark leather straps....



...and a sepia wash over everything. I love these models, always my favourite playing HQ as a kid, but they don't take a wash as well as the orcs and goblins do. Not to mention I had to pop them in the oven at the weekend to repose them so they'd rank up! Never mind, a quick touch up of the bronze and they're good to go. Just need to pop the eyes and teeth in tonight. That will make 48 models out of 146 done, only 98 to go!
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 4
Dear diary...

Today I have been with the chaos warriors. These chaps take a lot longer than the greenskins to paint. My 'normal' chaos warriors in my HQ set are plain, dark iron-looking armour and leather gloves and boots, but these guys are the Doomguard, the elite fighting force of Morcar's armies, so they had to have the classic McVey colour scheme.



I especially wanted to take a bit of time over them as they are being lead by Slambo, the epitome of the chaos warrior as far as I'm concerned. I've never painted one before and it's been interesting as I always thought he was basically a conversion of the original prototype HQ warrior. A closer look, however, reveals that if he is it's a very complex conversion, so I don't think he can be. Nevertheless he is just right to lead this unit of warriors into battle. The lightning on the prototype warrior's armour has fascinated me for years. I have no idea how MMV did it. My most recent thought is that maybe he painted it in reverse, blocking in the sections between the lightning bolts? Anyway, it's awesome and I wasn't able to come even close with my finest brush, but still quite happy with how they turned out.



Still need a wash over the weapon hafts and the metals doing. That's 53 of 146...
 

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Erny

Member
Just for fun I may have to bring in my version of this colour scheme painted when I was 12 or so with just the citadel basic paint set. I was really proud of him at the time and if he could join these superior doom Guard, perhaps at the back where no one can see him 12 year old me or perhaps he would be most pleased.

Anyway I must thank you for adding the Hero Quest into this Hero quest game.
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Erny":16ebhjb1 said:
I was really proud of him at the time and if he could join these superior doom Guard, perhaps at the back where no one can see him 12 year old me or perhaps he would be most pleased.

Do it. I have a unit of 35 warriors, only 10-15 of which will have this colour scheme, the rest are quicker paint jobs. Is it just the one figure or should I make room on the movement tray for a rank?
 

Erny

Member
Just the one, assuming I can find him. All the others had already received thick silver enamel paint jobs.
 

Snickit

Member
Erny":hu5iq4q8 said:
Just the one, assuming I can find him. All the others had already received thick silver enamel paint jobs.

Not entirely true, I did a purple and blue scheme one.
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Day 5
Dear diary...

Spent most of today at Attack! Devizes, running demo games of The Woods. Much fun was had, but not much painting was done!
Nevertheless, upon my return (Attack! closes at 4 and we were back by 5:30) I did manage to collate the Fimir units I will be bringing to BOYL so I could see exactly what's left to do. I did quite a bit of work putting together two special chariots which I'm not unveiling yet and painted the flesh (a substantial amount of each model!) on the female cultist unit which will be fighting alongside the Fimir. They're my big task for the coming week.
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Day 6
Dear Diary...

It's so nice to be painting again, I feel like I've not done 'proper painting' for ages. Too much sculpting to do. Anyway, managed to grab a few hours this afternoon to shade and highlight the skin on the outstanding 19 Bansidheia (female cultists for the Fimir) and 4 Ramshackle Games captives to accompany the slave cart. A couple of surprises in this lot. No surprise at all that the Darksword miniatures are glorious to paint, beautiful poses and such subtle musculature, I really do have spend some proper time working on my anatomy sculpting. The Cettos minis I know I like painting, the unexpected joy was the Foundry nymph with her shamanic totem. As bare metal she looked awkward and a bit rough, but the ink revealed a really nice sculpt with a great face and very fine detailing. The Rackham Confrontation Fiannas (I know they're big, half-frost-giants maybe?) have waited for paint for ages because they're such pretty sculpts I didn't want to mess them up. I've not been as impressed with their faces though. The bodies are great and the armour detail is wonderful but there's something ungainly about the features, one of them almost looks like a man. The piper's features are good though, and I'm sure the rest will pick up once I've finished with them.
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 7
Dear diary...

Not much time for painting today. I've got a commission on a much larger scale to finish by Thursday which has taken most of today and will probably consume most of tomorrow as well. Did manage to grab an hour to get all the leather brown on the ladies. I've also planned out exactly what I need to paint and schedule it in the diary. If all goes according to plan I should just make it!
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Day 8
Dear diary...

Managed to grab another couple of hours painting this evening. No time for photos but base colours done on all the girls' clothing now... admittedly not that much of it in some cases! Hopefully the big project is pretty much done now so come Thursday I can get more productive again.
 

Fimm McCool

Member
Day 9
Dear diary...

Today I have been focussed on the champion of the Bansidhe unit. Having got the rest pretty much base coated last night and ready for inking I thought I'd spend a bit more time on their leader, especially since she's my sculpt. I've given myself tomorrow night and Friday to finish the unit, so pretty confident things are on track.
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 10
Dear diary...

Not managed to pick up a paintbrush yet today, but am hoping for a clear evening to do so. Instead today I have been doing some work on the Reaper Bones minis that arrived on Tuesday. Inspired by Zero Twentythree's Fomorians (http://www.zerotwentythree.com/search/label/Fomorians) I picked up some of the cheap plastic orcs to bulk out my armoured Fimm unit. Curiously half these orcs have the right number of fingers (3) the other half have 4... the guy with the sword behind his back I left with full complement of digits but the spear carrying orc I was removing the spear from anyway so carved off some fingers too (his not mine, fortunately!). The spear was too wibbly even after heating and didn't match the largely axe-wielding unit. His new weapon is from a Bob Olley ogre. Still got the tails to do on these guys. The biggest guy (a Bugbear originally) is going to be riding in one of the special chariots I have pencilled in for this weekend.



Tonight's task is to ink in the Bansidheia, finish the details and get them based as hopefully I'll be out gaming tomorrow night. Then there'll be a short fantasy break on Saturday as I get to dedicate the whole day (deep joy!) to my AdMech warband for the Inquisitor Cynole game. Looking forward to this as I've pulled out a few nifty conversions that have been badly needing paint for some time!
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 11
Dear diary...

Off gaming this evening so probably won't have a chance to do any painting. Instead I thought I'd fill you in on last night and the plan for the weekend.



I did manage to get the Bansidhe unit finished, although I didn't base them because I wanted to varnish them before attaching them to their final bases. These ones are just for the painting. This morning I sprayed with army painter matt and will base them over the weekend. For some reason I've noticed that when I sprayed these models and the orcs/goblins/chaos with the matt varnish the metallics tarnish. I've not seen that before when I've used it on other models, maybe because I usually apply a gloss varnish first and use the matt to dull it down afterwards. I'm out of gloss so went straight to matt this time but it's done something a bit odd to the metals.



That makes 72 of 146 done, so about halfway and pretty much halfway through my time. I'm on track with my painting schedule, these were always going to take longer than the uniform HQ minis, and I have the first week in August off to get some hefty progress made. I don't want to leave everything to the last minute though, especially as I'm hoping to add an Oakbound Studio Myeri Clan Box to my Fimm units and the miniatures won't be back from the caster for another week. The plan for the weekend is to get my AdMech warband done tomorrow and the chariots and warbeast for the Fimir completed on Sunday. If I get to the warband tomorrow and realise I haven't finished sculpting it the chariots might move forward a bit! I'll have to finish the howdah for the warbeast today as well...



Painting up this unit has been really nice. There are some great sculpts which have made me realise I need to work a lot more on my 'subtle' human anatomy- it's fine doing muscle-bound minis, but a lot harder to make the musculature true-scale and more graceful without losing the definition. My idea of a good sculpt is one which pretty much paints itself, and there are some fine examples here. There's so much fine detail on the Dark Sword miniatures that you could spend months wet blending everything and picking out super-fine highlights, but a simple base coat and a wash still looks great because it brings out the intricacy of the sculpt. The Celtos and Foundry minis are the same, slightly chunkier detail but really nice figures which lend themselves to simple paint jobs. I'd like to do some pattern work on the large areas of cloth, but I'll save that for a later date... yeah right! The Rackham Fianna are very nice sculpts, but they weren't as satisfying to paint as I thought they would be. I think maybe because the style requires a bit more of an involved paint job than I was able to give them. I might go back and work in to them at a later date. They look fine but not as pretty as I'd hoped.
 

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Fimm McCool

Member
Day 12
Dear diary...

Off to a shaky start with the painting this morning, the wife decided since it was sunny she would air out the wardrobe, which meant me lugging the drawers into the garden and going out to buy a dehumidifier so we can make our room a bit drier. Did manage to get pretty much everything still in the painting queue undercoated though, and my last two packages arrived through the post so I at least have everything ready to go.

This afternoon however I cracked on, as planned, with the AdMech warband for Inquisitor Cynole and Temple of Doom...



Yes, I managed to get the whole warband painted and the bases halfway there. I even managed to get metallics on the warbots... wait, what? Don't mention the warbots! Ahem...
There's a real mix of minis in here: Warfactory cultists, Oakbound Studio Steampunks, Warmachine Trollbloods and a Ramshackle Games base for the lab-bot which I'm especially pleased with. I've gone with a Victorian twist, lots of green and brass. Now I have a bit of a predicament because I don't want to use the Army Painter matt varnish if it's going to corrode all this lovely, shiny metal. I'll have to do some digging and see if I can find a solution. On track to start the chariots and warbeasts tomorrow, here's hoping for a fuller day to get them in!
 

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