Old Bob Codger

And some thoughts about Victorian roads.

Old Bob Codger has a history of taking almost any job as long as it pays.

Another character from Highlander's adventurers pack. He's been sitting half finished for over a month now but I finally got the few minutes needed to finish him off. I wanted Bob to look like a down on his luck street person but still armed and dangerous. So I aimed for an old faded suit with more than it's share of dirt stains on it.

Perhaps he shouldn't of stolen from the local "charitable" organization!

I also sculpted my typical cobblestone pattern for his base. But I've been looking at some period pictures like the ones below and I've begun to wonder how accurate it is. All pictures are from Writers in London in the 1890's Blog, which is a really nice reference and an enjoyable read as well. I've used a few to illustrate but she has plenty more. Some of these are Paul Martin street scenes, which you can also find with a search and I've found invaluable for reference.



Cheapside in 1892 the road surface looks almost like packed dirt.

Probably less traveled roadway with clear cobblestones but the gap between the stones seems to be filled flush.
Also being a porter back then required excellent posture it seems.

While the streets have well defined raised curbs and the pavers are clean,  the actual roadway is suspiciously flat and rather rutted. At first I wondered if they had been resurfaced with macadam. But further examination leads me to believe it's cobblestone covered with a layer of dirt, refuse, animal droppings, etc that's obscuring the stone and giving a flat appearance. I wish I could find a good resource on when roads made the transition to newer materials as it would hopefully be definitive one way or the other, but so far no luck.

A painting which shows the roads a dirt brown but it also looks like cobblestone at the edges.

Here we can see the same effect at the edge of the street. Dirt seemingly covering cobblestone.
Those kids are so full of character that they practically are begging to be sculpted up.

I think for the time being I'm going to keep going with the way I've been doing my roads, if only cause I like the way they look. However it would probably be more accurate to just cover them with sand and paint them brown. I'm not going to be afraid to be more generous with my wood putty filler over the cobblestones and add more brown to the streets. It'll have the added benefit of breaking up the gray and keeping it from being monotonous. I'll also have to try to replicate the gutter on the edge of the roadway and the pavers as well. Looks like some experimenting is in order.

Blog Reconstruction

One of my year's resolutions was to rework the look of my blog. Now over halfway through the year I finally got around to doing something. I'll still keep playing with it till I get a look that I like, so there will probably be more interim stages till I get there.

Aside from cosmetics the big change is adding a second page where I'm going to start putting the stat cards and game mechanics for my SteamWorks stuff. The main page will stay with just modelling related posts. I had to fight with Blogger for over an hour to get it to work and just when I was about to give up, Presto! magically it was fine. As much as I like the free platform of Blogger (and I know you get what you pay for) I wish it was a little more user friendly. Anyways you can get to the other page through the tab just below the title picture.

Unit card done up for Gruntz. Find out more on the SteamWorks page!

Cause I feel bad not putting some kind of miniature picture: A shot of my painting queue, in no particular order.

Back to the Terrain Boards

Quick update on the terrain boards that I started some time ago. I'm doing the roughing in on the four sections. These are 1.5' square, an odd size I ended up using mostly for storage considerations.

I glued up the hill sections using Gorilla glue based on information from David Neat's excellent website. Highly recommend and thanks to Tony at Dampf's Modeling Page for including the link in a previous post. Also highly recommend if you aren't checking out his blog.

Gorilla Glue is a foaming polyurethane that reacts with water and bonds the pink foam really well. I've previously used both PVA and Liquid nails and this stuff while pricey beats them hands down.

Where the Pink Panther is peeking over is about where one rock face will go with a second above it. The rest will be smoothed down.

I also cut down the road sections and then had to smooth the resulting hacking back down. I just roughly packed in some DAS to level it. Seeing how well the Glue worked I'll probably cut sections out completely, cut them down and reglue them in the future.

I'm thinking I'm going to work on the road in sections in order to avoid paving induced insanity.

Next steps are sanding everything, pressing in the road pattern, and carving out some rock faces. I also need to look up some examples of cobblestone road intersection and how the stones ended up being laid.

Timewarp Thursday! Orks!

With the talk on various blogs of the new arrival of the Ork Codex for 40k it got me thinking about my own long mothballed Ork army. Many years ago I was a pretty dedicated player of 40k although even then it was mostly about the background and modelling. My clan of choice for the Orks was always the Blood Axes as their bizzaro interpretation of the Imperial Guard always struck a chord with me.

Da Kaptan and his pet Squig

This is actually the second time I built a Blood Axe army and I still regret selling off the first one especially since I never took any pictures of it. In particular I wish I had some pictures of my Rambo-styled Kommandos and the fearless leader Kommisar Klang. This time I at least want some pictures to be able to remember my work if I ever have to part with them again.

'ard Boyz made with Black Orc parts

All of the work for these guys was done way back in 2008 and they were put together pretty quickly hence the simple, rust and red paint scheme. I wanted to get a force on the table and then add the character to it later. I originally planned to go with more of a Orkish Afrika Korps look for later models, especially the tank hunters and kommandos. I still have some partially converted but by then I had moved onto other projects. Maybe one day I'll get back to them.

My lone Mega Armour Ork and the back half of a Trukk

This looted Leman Russ was one of my favorites but routinely performed horribly in games. 

Most of the boyz were built from the Assault on Black Reach box. 

Shoota Boyz - I had a bunch more ready to paint with the forage caps sculpted on but that was when I ran out of steam for the army.