Leicester Hospital Build Progress

Just a quick post to update the progress on my construction of Leicester General Hospital. I still need to make the roofs (obviously) and then its on to covering and preparing the buildings. I will then need to build the two small wings that sit either side of this building (as I said before in reality there are more wings but it would occupy to much table space).

I have made all the sections modular,  this is so that I can use them for other things and also it means that if on the day it turns out the building takes up to much space it can be reconfigured to fit better.

The observant will notice the main front building is taller than the others, it is in reality and has a different roof construction so its not a gross error on my part, although there are probably other gross errors in their somewhere! :)

Flat Pack Hospital

Just a quick little post about what I have been doing for the last few days. Myself and some of the chaps from The Very British Civil Forum are again putting on a VBCW game at Partizan in June 2013. Our game this year follows on from last years game and is the Siege of Leicester.

The focal point of which is going to be Leicester General Hospital (not the Royal Infirmary in the city centre) The above is a frankly rather large pile of bases and foam board I have just finished cutting down to make the majority of the Hospital.

Once this is assembled I will need to make two smaller wings which run parallel to the main building. There are actually more than two wings but unless we wont to have an insanely big table I had to simplify the Hospital a little.

Not Batou

This is the not Batou figure by Hasslefree Miniatures. For those not in the know Batou is one of the main characters in the Japanese Animation Ghost in the Shell which is one of my favourite films.

I had a bit of a cock up when I was preparing this figure for painting, the gun holding hand is not the one which came with the miniatures as the I some how dropped and then lost the gun holding hand whilst preparing it for undercoating. I spent some time looking for it and never found it. The hand I have used is from a Forgeworld figure (I think, I found it in my bits box) and works reasonably well as a replacement. I had to paint the gun hand to match the figures original hand and as you can't actually see both hands at the same time due to the pose it looks okay. Not ideal but I really wanted to paint some camouflage trousers damn it!

I decided to paint the trousers using the Vertical Tiger Strip pattern, which I believe only saw limited service with SOG operators during the 60's and possibly ARVN Rangers. Either way I think its a cool pattern, and I really like how it turned out.

I'm really pleased with how this figure turned out, despite the hand cockup,I am now struggling to base the figure on my customary 2p pieces though due to the pose! Its a fiddle but I think it will work out okay.

I have a couple of 2013 projects to work on, they are (in no particular order)

1. My Scots Covenanter army for VBCW

2. Completion of buildings and other bits and bobs for Junes Partizan game (although its still early planning stage so not sure exactly how that will end up yet)

3. Not figure related but my other geeky hobby is PC gaming and I'm going to have a bash at building some switch control panels for use with flight simulator games (thus proving that if its a geeky hobby I will probably do it)

Royal Marines (Piratical ones)

Firstly Happy New Year to everyone, bit late but it is my first post of the new year. I'm in the midst of planning various 2013 projects at the moment but over the last couple of days painted up these four lovely miniatures.

They are one of the Royal Marines sets from Black Scorpions Pirates range. There resin (but very reasonably priced) and were a real joy to paint. I find white challenging but the extra effort these required was worth it. As most will know Black Scorpions figures are scaled Heroically that's to say they are a little big for 28mm, but these were really nice sculpts and as I have no other pirates or anything of this era they wont be out of scale!

The wife picked these up for me at Christmas and I will most certainly be getting more from Black Scorpion in the future. Just lovely figures all round, and very little flash or cleaning was required. They come for slota bases but I'm not a fan of raised bases and prefer the low profile of a coin.

In other Christmas chap related news I thought I would share a picture of what my family bought me this year.

As some of you may recall I rather like a gin and tonic, well as is evident from the picture my family decided to encourage my mid day drinking by buying me this wonderful globe drinks cabinet. It's full size (not a mini table one or anything like that) and I personally love it. Of course now I will just have to buy more decanters, old glasses and various types of gin to fill it with!

Covenanter Commander (VBCW)

I have been working away on this figure for the last week or so. He started life as two (well three if you count the horse) different figures. The top half holding the cigar is the torso of one of my favorite Artizan Design figures. A painted example of what the original figure usually looks like is below:-

Now I have painted the original figure two or three times now and have a couple of versions of him. I just love the pose and the figure to me its just so very VBCW. But for my new Scottish Covenanter army (to be completed at some point who know's when) I wanted this figure but mounted.

So I cut the original figure in half below the belt line, losing the pistol and a forearm and hand in the process.
The torso was then attached to the legs of a Mutineer miniatures cavalry figure (no idea which one, just a random as it had the right legs). I sanded the sword scabbard off the cavalry legs and attached my torso to it. I was still however missing a right forearm and hand.

Now I'm no master sculptor but I got the putty out and had a bloody good bash (if I don't say so myself) at sculpting the new forearm and hand. Now I know sculpting a hand resting on a leg is hardly the work of the century but for me it was a real step forwards in terms of sculpting skills.

I have to say I am very pleased with the results of this conversion, I am really happy with how my hand and sculpted forearm turned out. This chap is painted in grey fatigues with a blue head band to note his allegiance to the Covenanter cause. At some point in the new year I will paint up a couple of squads of scots infantry for this chap to command, but for the moment other projects are absorbing my time.

This is probably the last thing I will finish this year, and given my poor showing on the painting and modelling front this year I feel, for me I am going into the new year on a positive finish. It has also inspired me to have a crack at sculpting again, something I'm going to try and do a bit more of next year.

My hope now that I am back and working at home again is that next year will be more successful on the painting front!

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone, thanks for reading my blog throughout the year and putting up with me wittering on. The above is one of the wife's lovely Christmas card designs created in illustrator on the computer.

Mrs Clause

Just finished painting these two figures from Hasslefree up for the wife. They were really nice to paint although there was a slight miss cast on right side of face but its not too noticeable. She liked them so that's all that matters.

I really like how these turned out, although due to a measuring fail on my part the base they are currently on will not fit in my display cabinet, so I have to now re-base them for the wife.