Corvus' Miniatures

Painted sf & fantasy miniatures by Gerrie Schenck

Best of December 2011

Releases

Steampunk fairy by Guild of Harmony. Way too much fiddly details on there to suit my taste, but the sculpt itself is very impressive.
Jabba the Hutt by Knight Models. Not something I'd buy because of the scale (70mm) but still a breathtaking piece!
Helloween Witch by Kabuki Models. Sexy :)
Flytrap Factory, a new manufacturer from New Zealand, takes a very strong start. Check them out if you are into mouslings :)
CMON Annual 2010, I'll get this

Paintjobs

Impressive Kingdom Death conversion on a truly unique base concept, by SuoU.
Black Templar squad by Flameon.
Khador Army in 300 style.
Sardar Tillius by emuse.

Inspiration

Abandoned Chinese theme park "Wonderland".
Industrial Decay Network: a collection of artistic pictures made inside old factories etc.

Showcase: Nurbald the Sculptor



Nurbald WIP 2

What a joy to paint!

I just noticed almost all non-metallic areas are done, so the most time consuming parts are done :)


Dekstop update: winter cleaning, Nurbald

About a year ago I installed my current painting studio. Time for some cleanup action :)

I'm also going to return to my old habit of working on one project at a time. This is what I call focus :)

That's Nurbald the Sculptor by Rackham. Gorgeous figure, a real joy to paint. I decided to paint the legs separately, you can see them mounted on the left of the picture. I superglued them on toothpicks for easy painting.


Nurbald is going to be a practice in contrast and choice of colors rather than smoothness :)

Here's an overview of the hobby area, on the left you can see a bit of my photo studio and next to it is my display cabinet, which is not shown on the picture.


My Finecast story, part 3

After my last complaint (read all about it in part 2 of my story) I got promised by GW customer service that before sending another replacement to me, it would be inspected by someone from QA (isn't that their job?) and another person from customer services.

This time I got the miniature delivered in an envelope (previously it was a box), with the addresses written on them by hand. Let's take a look at this "supposed-to-be" flawless figure:

My first reaction was probably the same as yours. How can a figure without a head get through QA????

But then I took a closer look at the envelope, and the head was in there. The blister was opened, so there had been an inspection for sure. But the contents of the envelope got severely battered during shipping. There were a lot of indentation marks on the blister plastic, the paper inlay was even ripped where the head was, so this envelope was probably placed at the bottom of a pile. Besides the head one of the "antenna thingies" on top of the figure also broke of. Good idea to ship this in an envelope GW! Time to check out the casting quality.

The areas which were really problematic on the previous two figures looked okay now: the chest area and the worms on the base didn't have a bubble on the tip of every pointy bit. But a further inspection quickly revealed several big bubbles on the arms. The hair also was damaged by bubbles.


Two other major defects included a part of the base being evaporated by a big bubble, and one of the vials on the mechanical hand having a similar problem.


The cloak had two identical problems to the previous figure: the cloak which is very thin in places, and the corner near the bottom suffering from a bubble. The spine area on the back was also severely damaged during shipping.

This figure also had a small bit of mold material on it, which you might have read about elsewhere. It was hard to picture since it was in one of the recesses in which an arm should be glued, but it appeared as a small pink speck.

I have decided not to ask for a replacement this time. I think I've seen enough of this product to get a good image of its quality. And with this last one they made two very severe errors: bad packaging and sending me a figure with obvious flaws while promising to send a perfect one. I'm now going to try to get my money back, but I'm afraid the only thing I will get back is a voucher of some sort. I'll keep you guys up to date!

Showcase: Chaos Sorcerer




Desktop update: chaos sorcerer nearly done

The Chaos sorcerer is almost done. Working on the metallics now. Metallics aren't my strong point, I'm happy about what I did on the shoulder guard, but the metallic symbol on the belly plate lacks contrast.... might get back there and mix in some non-metallic colors, such as light grey.



That's the cool thing about this hobby, after 10 years I'm still struggling to get things right, but at the same time it remains challenging to try out new things :)



With the Chaos Sorcerer I'm not sure what I'll do next. My initial plan was to paint some more GW minis, but my experiences so far with the Finecast rubbish I have received will probably decide different. I also want to keep my schedule free for some upcoming projects, of which I can't say anything right now.


I took a look in my unpainted miniatures drawer, and I'll probably start this figure soon:


by the way if you're a fan of the classic Rackahm line, I discovered the following site: listing every single release:  http://rackhamminiatures.yolasite.com/.

My Finecast story, part 2

As written at the end of part 1, I asked for a replacement. It was sent out right away and I received it in about a week. I still had some hope left to get an error-free model this time, but it turned out otherwise.

In general this model has more problems on it than the previous one. When putting them next to each other I immediately noticed number two had some deformation issues. The face looks different, much more slim than the previous one. The arm is also bent in a strange way, and the two tentacles above his head look completely different.



The first model had a lot of bubbles in the chest area, this one had exactly the same mistakes. There's also a big lump of flash on his chin.

The mechanical arm has bubbles in exactly the same spot as the first model, together with some more bubbles a bit higher up. In general the lower part of the model has less bubbles, but the toe still had the same problem. I also noticed some additional channels between the worms on the base. Speaking of the base: there's a part missing, caused by a bubble.



The cloak is probably the worst part of the miniature. It's so thin it's translucent in places, and on two occasions a hole formed. The spine normally has some spines running along it, but halfway these are simply missing.



This is how it looks when it's held against a light:



What really struck me is the difference between the first and the second sprue. I also noticed some errors on the first sprue, like the weapon which is missing a large part. But in general the channels are laid out completely different. How can you achieve a consistent quality when all of the molds are different?



Anyway I asked customer support if it was relevant to get another replacement, or if there is a consistent problem with this particular model. It took about a week to get a reply, but this is what they sent me:


Hi Gerrie,

Firstly I want to apologise that the replacement model you received was once again faulty. I have requested another Urien Rakarth for you, that both me (and the rest of the customer service team) and the Quality Control Manager will check before we send it out to you.

Again apologies and we will let you know immediately  when we have a model we are satisfied with to send out to you.


I expect them to return a flawless model now, nothing less. If that isn't the case I'll ask for a refund.

To be continued....

Best of November 2011

General:

Entering a commissioned piece in a GD competition, more an "epic fail" than a "best of", but it happened in Australia.

Amazing freehand work explained by Stephan Rath (derwish).

A great tutorial on how to paint metallics, not new, but found it recently and it's really something I wanted to share.

Step by step guide on how to paint the Steam Guardian Rackham classic.

Abyssal Warlord by SCALE75. I'm not into larger scale models, but this one is pretty awesome.

Paintjobs:

Outnumbered by Crackpot.

Chaos Sorcerer by AlexiZ. Be sure to watch in HD.

Arjac Rockfist by razza (Darren Latham), a paintjob bordering on perfection.

Lord Carver by Piranha, not a fan of the sculpt, but the NMM on it is really amazing.
 

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