As a miniature painter, every once in a while, it's fun to gird your loins, drop your standards, and get ready for some CRANKHEAD SPEED PAINTING. Enter the arena of complete shamelessness. If you find your resolve weakening, huff some fumes from your can of Army Painter Strong Tone and turn up the Motorhead. Lemmy doesn't care if your miniatures looks like shit. Just. Pump. Them. Out.
My excuse for speed painting was Fantasy Flight Game's 2nd edition of Mansions of Madness and its expansions. They comprise three large box teeming with cheap, plastic miniatures of Lovecraftian monsters: Shoggoths, Nightgaunts, Byakhees, Deep Ones... even the Dunwich Horror makes an appearance. But given all the other projects I want to get done, I gave myself only 2 weekends to paint about 50 miniatures, including some very large and tentacular monsters. No Sleep Til Hammersmith, indeed!
My technique is tried and true. Slap on a basecoat. Do some quick dry-brushing. Saturate the miniature in a glaze of Army Painter Strong Tone, Citadel washes, or a solution of human spittle and peanut butter. Add a detail or two, like the eyes on the Shoggoth or the mouths on the Dunwich Horror. And then, move on and repeat until you run out of Benzedrine.
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| Deep One Hybrids |
The results vary from dingy to morbidly poor. But that is besides the point. The point is the sheer joy of production: to paint miniatures like a horse shits or R.A. Salvatore writes novels.
And so, without further ado...
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| Byakhee |
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| Child of Dagon |
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| Zombies (polite looking zombies, no?) |
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| Cult Leader |
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| Deep One |
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| Cthonians |
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| Ghost |
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| Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath |
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| Riot |
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| Shoggoth |
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| Star Spawn of Cthulhu |
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| The Dunwich Horror |
And finally, the worst miniature I've ever painted...
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| Priest of Dagon |
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WARNING: People who visit Oldenhammer in Toronto are too nice. Complimentary or even polite comments on these miniatures risk summary deletion. In order to make this easy on you, reader, I have pre-written some appropriate remarks that you can cut-and-paste into your own comment:
Did you paint those miniatures or surgically remove them from the stomach of a sea turtle?
Your miniatures are bland, and your prose is over-written. There's a typo in the first paragraph. Worst of all, your celebration of "edgy" drug culture is both vulgar and laughably disingenuous, given the implacable bourgeois odor of your blog, your hobbies and indeed your life. Well, try, try again. Signed, Mom.
Sux!!1! Lol
Your miniatures are bland, and your prose is over-written. There's a typo in the first paragraph. Worst of all, your celebration of "edgy" drug culture is both vulgar and laughably disingenuous, given the implacable bourgeois odor of your blog, your hobbies and indeed your life. Well, try, try again.
ReplyDeleteSigned, Mom.
I'll get revenge on you someday, Mother.
DeleteThese miniatures look like they were painted by Jackson Pollock during a bumpy car ride!
ReplyDeleteExcept for maybe the Cthonians, which at least turn my stomach for the right reasons!
And there IS a typo in the first paragraph: You forgot the röck döts in Motörhead!
In short, Sux!!1! Lol
(P.S. I love Mansions of Madness and these are actually pretty ok I guess.)
I think I spent slightly more time on the Cthonians than any of the others, because I thought that a giant, tentacled worm popping out of the ground would have uses in all sorts of miniature games.
Deletegreat on these. Shoggoth is my fave
ReplyDeleteeveryone loves a shoggoth
DeleteYou gave the models a level of effort appropriate to their quality - they could not be made to look better. You saved precious hours in your life...
ReplyDeleteYes -- that's just it. These miniatures are mediocre sculpts at best and are made out of the worst material. I really pine for the bad craziness of the old Lovecraft sculpts made by Grenadier.
DeleteDarkness and madness! dark dreams come true! Epic work!
ReplyDeleteEpic bad?
Deletemuaha ha! No. The Old Ones approved :)
DeleteWooooooooooooooooooooooooow! Most impressive Horrors, excellent (but dangerous!) work...
ReplyDeleteImpressively bad?
DeleteI'm impressed that you cracked that many out!
ReplyDeleteBut am I the only one who thinks the priest of Dagon looks an awful lot like the water people from that episode of Futurama?
Good call. I guess the FFG design team calls on all sorts of literary references when sculpting their miniatures.
DeleteMy own miniatures are so much better than yours, u suk xxx
ReplyDeleteNow that's how you write an internet comment, my friends.
DeleteHahaha, cool! Anyway, I find it unsettling that last week I decided to put my own 1st ed minis on the painting queue. H P Lovecraft would have something to say, for sure, these things never happen randomly...
ReplyDeleteThe Stars are Aligning, Suber!
Delete(I am looking forward to seeing what you do with these. It would be nice to see some well painted versions).
Lemme don't care 'cause Lemme's dead 😥. As others have said here a quick and effective job like this suits the quality of these figures. I bought the first edition with all the expansions that had figures (on the cheap when they were being cleared out thankfully) and haven't painted any of them as the quality of some of the figs disappointed me. Mind you some are very good too.
ReplyDeleteI'm very disappointed in how "normal" these FFG Cthulhu monsters are. For example, according to Lovecraft, a Byakhee should be a terrible hybrid between a mole, bat, ant and "rotting human corpse". But in FFG's hands, it turns into a pretty standard fare dragon-man.
DeleteThe only truly outre sculpture is the Dunwich Horror, for which I applaud them.
Your dark young and dunwich horror are passable.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your attempt to be harsh, Barks.
DeleteNo self-respecting sea turtle would have eaten these in the first place. Simply dreadful.
ReplyDeleteSux!!1! Lol
Now that made me laugh.
DeleteSux!!1! Lol 😂😂😂😉😎 Luv the humor. 😘
ReplyDeleteIt's a tragicomedy.
Deletelove them!! :D
ReplyDeleteYou are kind.
Delete@POTUS says: These miniatures are the worst, really terrible. But on a serious note I like the idea of quickly turning out fun, playable miniatures. I'm almost tempted to look for loose figures on the internet (I think my wife will start divorce proceeding if I buy another big box game that we never play.) Oh, and your mom is harsh.
ReplyDeleteThat is just it -- it's fun to just pump out some "good enough" miniatures once in a while. I've played many amazing wargames with miniatures that wouldn't win any painting awards.
DeleteIt looks like you left them in a cup of tea with fermented yaks milk, and the vomit of the poor drinker of said concoction. Did you miss telling us about the part of the challenge where you randomly grabbed pots of paint and slathered them on with your off hand?
ReplyDeleteYES YES YES
DeleteI must try the solution of human spittle and peanut butter. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteUse in moderation.
DeleteLove the way you painted Shoggoth. Cheers, Karl
ReplyDeleteDanke Karl!
DeleteGood enough means that you can at least play with the bloody things instead of dull and boring bare minis.
ReplyDelete"The point is the sheer joy of production: to paint miniatures like a horse shits or R.A. Salvatore writes novels." - I got berated for my overly loud guffaw upon reading this at work. Thanks loads...
That Shoggoth is flippin cute and needs a hug.
So does your Mom.
I am so happy that you liked that long. I thought for a long time about which author was a proper target for that metaphor, and once I thought of RAS, I wondered why it took any time at all.
DeleteNice miniatures! I've linked your work in my article about the Shoggoth model - https://alkony.enerla.net/english/the-nexus/miniatures-nexus/miniature/miniature-creature/blob-with-tentacles-in-1-56-scale-shoggoth-for-mansions-of-madness-from-fantasy-flight-games-2011-miniature-creature-review
ReplyDeleteExcellent page and painting! I have just finished the Dark Young of Shub Niggurath and used your colour scheme as an inspiration. The finished model is on my Instagram page Tunnels_and_Trolls. Cheers from the UK!
ReplyDelete