Finished the assembly of the Mantic Games Elves, and I'm really surprised by the dynamic poses of the figures. There's a lot you can do with the posable arm: attach the spear vertically, and you'll end up with a figure which seems to be at guard. A horizontal spear turns the figure into a charging fighter.

Three figures on the sprue have more options: these have optional heads and two posable arms.

For those who don't know Mantic Games: it's a new company, based in the UK. Their plan is to release a number of fantasy armies, compatible with every 28mm wargame. The first army is Elves. You can read more on their blog, or check out this video shot at GenCon 2009. I think Mantic Games introduces some very interesting concepts to the hobby, such as the boxes, the round bases which also fit in square bases and of course their fair price. Painters and gamers should keep an eye on this company, because I'm sure they will have a very bright future.

The Elves are to be released mid-September, but I'm one of the lucky people to have received one of their pre-production moldings. Now first of all I want to stress these are test-moldings, so it's possible the final product will have some minor errors fixed and maybe some other little changes.

Molding is done at Renedra Limited, the company which also produces the figures for Warlord Games. I can say the molding is very good, there are a lot of tiny details on the elves and they are very well defined.

The figures themselves are well-proportioned and look very elvish, yet their slender shape is something you haven't seen before. The shape of the helmets, armor and shields make this army look unique. They come on round bases, but if you choose to base them on square ones then Mantic has come up with a very good idea: they provide with square bases in which the round ones can be fit in. Very clever!

The sprue is full of many options, such as optional heads, shields and weapons. There's even some room left for additional details: a dead elf, a broken shield, a skull. Great stuff for dioramas or objectives for your games.

So why don't you take a look for yourself? I have taken some pictures of the sprue earlier today.

I couldn't resist to start working on those Elves, so I'm currently assembling this batch of 10. Check back in a couple of days for work in progress updates on this project.

Thanks again Mantic Games, and best of luck!

A big project like this is almost impossible to complete in one go. So as some kind of reward I painted the Rackham Drune last month. But now I picked up work on the Imperial Valkyrie again.

I'm currently on holiday, so I have a bit more time to work on this vehicle. The gray is now completely highlighted, as well as the white panels and red details. I just started to work on the metallics.

Michael Holzapfel did a fantastic job taking pictures of the Golden Demon painting competition at last weekend's Games Day Germany. Check out his picture report here: http://www.darklined.com/specials/golden-demon-2009/

The last month I've been quite active on the Jenova Project Message Board. If you want to show your minis to get some decent feedback, it's the place to be. Besides that there's also plenty of other chat going on: discussions about painting techniques, opinions on new releases, reviews, community news, etc.

Ever since Jenova got back at painting people have started using the forum again, but it could benefit from some more users and posts. So I invite you all to the forums.

At last year's Crisis I bought a bunch Infinity miniatures because I wanted to paint a unit of Haqqislam elite soldiers as a unit entry for next year's competition. Well 9 months later these blisters are still in my cupboard... unopened. But a while ago I was browsing the Infinity site and forum and really wanted to paint one up again.

So I decided to open the blister containing the two Naffatûn miniatures. Since I planned to use the male figure in my unit, the female one was available to do some experimenting with.

I'm not going for a smooth, high quality level paintjob on this one. I just want to test out a few things on the figure and see how I can incorporate these into some future work. First up is the colorscheme. I sticked close to the studio paintjob: khaki-grey, brown and green. The details will be in orange, the weapon black or dark grey I think.

The second thing I wanted to test out is a technique known as 'zenithal lighting' or 'directional lighting'. Instead of highlighting the top of all raised surfaces, highlights will be more intense if they are closer to the source of light. To amplify the effect I also used more contrast than I usually do.

I'm quite happy with the results. The blendings aren't that smooth, but that wasn't the goal of this little experiment. I think I spent only 2 or 3 hours to achieve what you see below. On the right upper leg and the helmet the effect turned out the best. There should be some more contrast here and there but in general I think it's not bad for a first attempt at this painting style.