Commission Giveaway Contest, Revisited

 Well, some good news I got today is that the Speculo Killer figure painted for doom_of_the_people (after he won the Commission Giveaway Contest) is now safely in his hands after delivery by USPS.

 One slight downside is that despite creative packaging and a lot of well-wishing, the figure arrived tipped over on its side inside the box - that essentially means it shimmied loose from being bound upright through holes drilled in a piece of hardboard that itself was hot glued to the bottom of the box. So much for marking the box "fragile" and labeling all four sides with which direction was "up" - it could've been worse, though, as I'm to understand all the only problem in transit was a somewhat bent monofilament blade (that was easily bent back to shape.)

 The great news I got today - well, for me and doom_of_the_people, anyway - is that "It looks awesome and definitely lived up to [his] expectations." (I was especially leery of the commission getting there in one piece because the figure itself was pretty fragile in sculpt, had a separate wrist join that was flimsy from the start, and was a decent amount of good faith on both ends. I'm very glad it worked out nicely!)

Fun With Shipping, AKA Getting the Commission Giveaway Contest Piece In The Mail

 This is the transport method I'm thinking about running with - the bottom disk is an old 60mm base I made from MDF hardboard:

 I'm thinking that if I hot glue the underside of the disk to the bottom of a sufficiently roomy box, then it should be golden and not shift around at all. The brass beading wire restricts movement but isn't so tight as to chip paint (I hope) and the foam there is for an added barrier to "insulate" the wire I've got wrapped around it. Something like this, I'm sure, would set off the "bomb squad" at an airport even though being completely harmless, no? Good thing it'll likely go overland, since it's being sent to a neighboring state...

Infinity Speculo Killer Commission, AKA Giveaway Contest Winner [Completed 5/13/2010]

 Well, I got word back from doom_of_the_people on the last set of "inches away from finished" pics I passed along to him regarding his Commission Giveaway Contest figure, and I got the "thumb's up" to go ahead and call her done. She is now sealed in several layers of spray acrylic varnish and fully dry, essentially ready to wing her way towards wherever she'll be winging her way towards - as soon as I can figure out a way to box her for mailing in a manner that won't bend the "flimsy" monofilament blade or cause her wrist to snap off at the glued join (yet again). I think I have an idea, though, involving epoxy glue, a small hex nut and bolt, and a small box-end-sized square of MDF hardboard. It might set off metal detectors at the USPS, but it should have enough airspace inside the box to avoid nasty bumps and jarring impacts.

Here's the final set of pictures (post-varnish):

 In making the sludge/ooze on the base, I snuck in a few bubbles(?) and some extra rust on the outpouring pipe, too. Hopefully they're easily visible in the last few pictures, since I took those especially for the guy running Secret Weapon Miniatures, figgering he might be able to use them for posterity so as to show off his handiwork. The majority of the decorative stuff that the Speculo Killer is posed on is one of Secret Weapon's resin bases that I hacked up and converted in order to offset it on the Infinity slottabase that the figure came with - who knew cast resin bases were so versatile?

Infinity Speculo KIller WIP [Update 5/12/2010]

 I think I'm about close to done with the Speculo Killer, especially after this morning's pleasantly surprising work of tying things together - it seemed like my brush was on fire (not literally, of course, I've plenty of water on hand) and there's the nice fact that I was actually able to see without blurriness, as has been the case for the past several weeks. (Allergies? Need new glasses? Remnants of pink eye/styes? Dunno, but I've got a referral to an opthalmologist I will most certainly be following up on...)

Anyway, enough about the blessings of Nurgle, here's the latest update:

 I'm thinking all that I need now is to sort out with the Commission Giveaway Contest winner, doom_of_the_people, what color he wants the ooze coming out of the rusty pipe (although I'm still entertaining suggestions/comments/critiques, because it's "not quite" finished).

Infinity Speculo Killer WIP

Work continues on doom_of_the_people's Commission Giveaway Contest figure, albeit with another commission I'm prepping in fits and starts in the background and a few other things going on (we adopted a puppy last week, for instance, to "replace" the one that died of parvovirus a few months ago - I never realized how much adjustment it takes bringing a new animal into the house!)

At his request, I've done a fair amount of weathering and sun-bleaching effects on an "autumn"-style color scheme. The underlying armor panels are brownish-yellow and orange-yellow, alternating in parts, and the whole figure has been lightly airbrushed with an off-white - I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's a fun thing to play with. It was a lot paler until tonight, when I had the inspiration to add some additional cool coloration that ought to tie the warmer (if muted) browns and autumn colors in with the soon-to-be-glowing monofilament weapon and a few other (surprise!) Object Source Lighting effects. I used an initial glaze of GW Shadow Grey brushed towards the crevices across the figure, followed by a Shadow Grey/VGC Sepia Ink mixture to delineate the panel lines and such a bit more - I'm aiming for a look of grime deep-set in the crevices of the armor, or possibly dust mixed with oil.

Anyhow, here's the figure as of this evening:

I've already started with basecoating the Secret Weapon Miniatures base on which she stands, which ideally will end up looking like broken concrete - I plan for the pipe to be oozing something vile (with continued approval, of course).

Decisions, decisions...

Do I prefer an airbrush or a paintbrush now? Do I paint the segmented protrusion coming out of the Plaguebearer's mouth so as to make it resemble a giant, pasty-looking maggot, or paint it up as a dripping, putrefactingly rotten tongue? Anyone have any suggestions?

I've been trying out some new stuff here over the past few days - one of these figures was airbrushed with some additional shading touch-ups via a brush which were then gone over with an empty airbrush to drive the thinned paint into the depressions, and the other used the same colors but was strictly hand-painted via paintbrushes.

I must say I am certainly loving this airbrush, now that I've finally put it to use - it works especially well with washes. Even using windshield wiper fluid to cut my paints, the extra bluish tone from the wiper fluid adds a little extra something outside of the beige paints themselves. I applied a basecoat, two shading colors, and a highlight in about an hour! Whee! (I do have clear airbrush thinner, but I think I might stick with this wiper fluid for a while...)

I'm also pleased that my prep work on the Commission Giveaway Contest winner's Speculo Killer turned out so smooth. The figure is so delicate in appearance and what angles she has are so awkward - I wasn't sure I got everything or that things were smooth enough. After giving the figure a guide wash tonight on the "unpainted" parts, it looks like I covered both aspects well. Yay, me!

Infinity Speculo Killer, AKA Commission Giveaway Contest WIP

 Like the title says, this is a work-in-progress update on the Infinity Speculo Killer that the winner of the Commission Giveaway Contest I ran a little while back had shipped to me to paint up.

 Before I get to that, though, a little summary of what I've been up to: our one-year-old son is now over his bout with pneumonia, none the worse for wear, and has added four more molars to his collection of baby teeth in the past few weeks. He's also managed to gain some weight with all this going on, so in short, he's healthy and our family's doing better. I finally got a chance to do something(s) I've been meaning to do ever since my birthday last August - clean up my painting area and build a new, narrower spray booth (cheap and easy and made out of cardboard and a shop vac, but still). I got a chance to do both of those these past few days, and actually took a first stab at painting via airbrush - no, not on the Speculo Killer, but on another figure for a competition over at the RelicNews Tabletop Painting & Modeling Forum. It's a GW Plaguebearer, and it now has a flesh basecoat - I figgered I'd take a stab with airbrushing with a Plaguebearer because even if I completely maul the painting, it'll still look good! (I'm breaking in the airbrush for a secondary commission I'm working on, and it ought to make basecoating the massive skin areas much, much easier and quicker.) Oh, and I don't have to serve jury duty as I was thinking I might - I got called off, so my weekdays are now my own again.

 That update of sorts out of the way, here's the Speculo Killer prepped, assembled, and pinned on her permanent display base! (Just ignore the bottle cap - it's not the base you're looking for...) I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a pin vise drill bit actually small enough to fit within the socket of her monofilament sword arm wrist and even better, that I had something of a narrow enough gauge to glue in for a pin to keep her sword hand from loosening. The display base she's on is going to have a puddle of thick oil dripping out of the exposed piping that will look like it's pooling around the flat top of the slottabase that the concrete round sits on. Adding the liquid can wait until after the rest of the painting is done - I feel that sort of thing looks much better if everything else is painted and highlighted and then any semi-transparent liquids are applied over the top.

 By way of the current paintjob, just her bodysuit is fully basecoated and in an "alternating" pattern of sorts - looking at the figure after priming, I decided that the exposed scalp behind her face mask and her arm with jutting armor spikes might look best in some sort of flesh tone since there's enough open area to have a "triangle" of similar color to balance things out. I'm to understand the Speculo Killer in game background terms is a shape-shifting assassin, and so I think playing this up by way of contrasting "shifting" skin areas and a bodysuit covering the rest will look better than an even color of some sort all round (it also helps that the texture of the areas in question seems slightly different, which I didn't really see clearly until after I primed the figure.)

Here she is, in her current work-in-progress glory:

 I'm also working on a lava-themed display base to cover the large plastic sheet stock oval blank I posted a picture of not too long ago. I'm trying to evenly juggle two commissions simultaneously for the sake of fairness, on top of everything else, even though one is technically "free" via the Giveaway Contest. Pictures of the lava base should be going up soonish, time and luck willing - I need to finish detailing it first, as well as sculpting over gaps I've been filling on the massively diabolical figure that goes with the base.

Reporting In, Sir!

 If anyone's noticed the relative scarcity of updates lately, there's been a few reasons for it. One is family stuff - trips out of town, wife starting a new job, our 1-year-old with pneumonia; the other(s) are that I've been trying to focus on the commission work I'm doing. I'm ready to start painting the Speculo Killer from the Infinity range, and was hoping to do so after getting back from a trip with two days that the kids would both be at day care - well, our son's pneumonia's scratched that "free time" idea for the most part, but at least now's the easy part in that I much prefer putting brush to figure. I generally dislike prepping figures since it takes me a long time being somewhat obsessive about mold lines and flush fittings and all that fun stuff.

 I also received another commission shortly after running the Commission Giveaway Contest, and while assembling and tidying up and gluing that is still underway, I will say this - it's not a GW Trygon or Mawloc, and it's not a Valkyrie, although it's up there in scale and will be mounted on a similar blank. It's something big and evil, and it's going to be going on this base:

 I cut it out of sheet plastic stock with an electric bandsaw, trimmed to shape with a heavy rasp, and then smoothed things out with a progression of sandpaper from 60 grit up to 800. It's fun to break out the big toys once in awhile, and thankfully our son's a relatively sound sleeper!

Commission Giveaway Contest WIP

 I received the figure last week from the Commission Giveaway Contest winner, doom_of_the_people, after a little bit of discussion on what I was actually going to be painting for him. What arrived in the mail was a Speculo Killer from the Infinity figure line by Corvus Belli ("War Crow" in Latin, I do believe - cool!). In doing prep work on the figure over this weekend, although very delicate-looking and more slight in size than the Games Workshop figures I've generally focused on, she has a solid amount of detail and looks like she should be fun to paint up. The Infinity range is a "true" 28mm scale versus GW's "heroic" 28mm scale - more or less comparable to the Ral Partha and Grenadier 25mm figures I used to paint back in my high school days. She is, in other words, small but not "too small" and with a lot more detail to play around with!

The figure in question:

 We've pretty much settled on the color scheme with a little wiggle room here and there, and the basing should hopefully complement things nicely - I'll leave things up to the imagination at this point, since I will be posting work-in-progress updates on the figure as I go along and I don't want to spoil anything. The interesting part (well, one of them) will likely be the Monofilament blade she holds, as the plan is to paint it up with an Object Source Lighting effect on the rest of the figure.

And We Have a Winner!

 If there's any problem with the random drawing of a name, the dice above can be blamed, but I think it's safe to say that there seems to be a trend in the picking of a giveaway winner.

Some comments on the feedback, first:
Jonathan - I haven't actually used eBay to sell any of my painted figures yet, but I figger I should probably just bite the bullet. There's space for a link to an "Auctions" section on the Painting by Tinweasel site proper, and that should be seeing some use fairly soonish. The suggestion to self-promote via signature on Forums I visit is a good one, too, and while I've had my painting website in all my Forum signatures for some time, I guess it never occurred to me to specifically mention my availability for commission painting.

Warhammer39999 - Thanks for the appreciation and ongoing readership! As to my commission prices, I've tried to be pretty fair and did some "price shopping" of other sites to establish ballpark commissioned figure painting rates. Thanks for the compliment on the quality of my work, but I'm really just a small fish in a very big pond. I also think I'm in somewhat of a niche market because while my painting has gotten recognition for competition-quality figures I've done, I don't think I am by any stretch a "big name" in the business and I much prefer doing "higher end" painting as it's mostly the painting aspect of the hobby I enjoy. I also kept that in mind when figuring out rates, so as to try and take time and materials into account, outside of anything special needed for individual contracts.

Faith and Fury - Funny you should mention posting more painting tutorials - I've got a few I've been putting together and they'll be getting added to the site. Keep checking back! (Thanks for the compliments, as well, and I'd definitely like to see someone else's take on Word Bearers. Color scheme-wise, their rich color is one of my favorites out of the old Chaos Legions.)

Mike - Excellent article link, thanks! At this point I really don't have to worry about a backlog and I'd ideally like to make enough to cover the cost of the stuff I buy ("reinvesting," as it were). If I were to actually turn an actual "profit" at this painting thing cost/hour-wise, I'd be amazingly surprised and my wife would be exceedingly pleased. Here's hoping...

woroxon - An odd thing about my competition pieces, is that whenever I've posted pictures of them places, the net response seems to be "meh." I don't know if it's a case of them being much more visually impressive (to judges, anyways) in person, or if it's something I need to fine-tune in my photography. That being said, I've done a bit of random sampling recently and there are some tweaks I can make to my miniature photography and there's quite a few for which I don't have images posted. Now that I've theoretically got a bit more time on my hands, though, expect to see more and better!

Faolain - Excellent suggestions on focusing on new releases. It just so happens I've always been a fan of Tyranids, moreso since I've recently gotten the newest Codex, and the first mini I painted up coming back to the hobby was a Blood Angel. Coincidentally enough, I have two untouched Space Hulk boxed sets (one still in the shrink-wrapping) and an airbrush I'm trying to come to grips with - hrm...

 As to the painting to an "army" standard, I'm open to that and the way I worded the Commission advertisement page of my painting site hopefully is clear enough that I'd do that sort of thing if someone wanted me to (and obviously at a lesser rate than a "Golden Demon"-standard figure) - I just enjoy challenging myself in painting moreso than what I think a "basecoat, shade, and highlight" standard would offer. Open to anything, though, and trying to get my own 40K army together, so I'm definitely going to have to cut a few corners if I want to have it finished before the decade's out.

doom_of_the_people - Excellent suggestion to use my site as a self-motivating tool. I tried that with my "Army Challenge" posts last month, and while I didn't get anything in the way of feedback and it wasn't my ideal output, I did end up with a playable force at the end of a day's assembly, albeit a smallish one and with a few proxies. People apparently were following the topic and I found myself a lot more focused with a deadline, so I'll probably be repeating things in future. You'll note I tend to enjoy work-in-progress updates - I'll just have to up the ante a bit in future! I do enjoy painting for competitions, too, especially over at the RelicNews Tabletop Painting & Modeling Forum - (maybe one day I'll finish in the top 3!) Maybe I work better under pressure? I guess we'll find out soon enough, eh?


 Now that that's out of the way, I think I can cut to the chase with a clear conscience. The winner of the first-ever Painting by Tinweasel Giveaway Contest is doom_of_the_people! Congratulations! Now we just have to sort out the particulars, and then I can get down to business painting up the single figure of doom_of_the_people's choice. Stay tuned!

Only one more day for the Giveaway Contest!

The giveaway contest I'm offering here ends tomorrow at midnight US EST, and so far it's a fairly small number of people entered. I've dug out my old roleplaying dice collection (multi-faceted portable random chance generators?) from 20-odd years ago and am just itching to try out a d8, d10, or better yet - a d20! Just putting out a friendly reminder, for anyone who might be interested in winning!

You can reference the original post here with all the particulars in order to qualify for the giveaway: A Giveaway! But there's a catch...

A Giveaway! But there's a catch...

 I'm not exactly sure how this will pan out, but it's an effort I'm willing to try for the sake of staving off inactivity and boredom, and hopefully breaking the run of bad luck myself and my family have had that's been going on for some time now. (I could go into details, as this past week has been especially trying and emotional, but that's only if anyone is really interested.)

 The long and the short of it is that I'm unemployed again following the end of a contract position of several months and for the sake of staying busy, have been trying to paint figures and drum up business for commission work. The down side is that nobody's been inquiring and there's been a lot of stuff going on life-wise that's making me lose focus of things I ought to be taking care of - I thrive best with a routine, and right now I don't have one. Driving home in the car this morning, I figgered I could kill several birds with one stone: I'll try to hold a little random drawing giveaway thingy for Followers of my site with a prize of a figure painted by me, get some feedback from readers and casual passers-by, draw attention to the fact that I do actually offer my painting services for hire, and keep me busy during the long days while my wife is at work and the kids are at school and daycare.

The Rules:

1. The time period for entering starts when you read this update and ends at midnight, US Eastern Standard Time, on Friday, March 5th, 2010.
2. You must be a Follower of my blog, either existing or new - hey, the more the merrier!
3. You must leave some sort of useful comment. By "useful," I mean either a suggestion as to improving my painting as viewable through older posts here or by way of figures that have made their way into my painting site's Gallery; some advice or tip I could use to improve my painting blog/website overall; some idea to try and help me speed up the seemingly laborious process of trying to assemble and convert figures for my Chaos Space Marine army; suggestions as to topics for future Hobby Tips; or even a cheerful comment to help brighten my day.
4. After the entry period ends at midnight on March 5th, I will randomly pick a Follower who has made a "useful" comment and that lucky soul will get essentially what amounts to a free painting commission out of me on a Single Figure of their choice per the Commission guidelines on my painting website. I don't care what brand, I don't care what style, I don't care if it's a new technique, I don't even really care what color - my "painting toolbox" is very deep, as it were.
5. (Out of consideration for me being unemployed, just trying to liven up things, and trying to turn my luck around, the winner will need to pay shipping and/or purchase costs of the figure in question for me to both A) get my hands on something to paint, and B) get that painted something in the hands of the winner of this thing. Again, the Commission guidelines on my painting website should clarify most details - except the painting of the winner's figure is FREE!!1!)
6. Um, the specifications for the figure, intended paint scheme, and "periodic progress updates" will be posted publicly, so all the non-winners get to share in the fun. (I'm also inclined to take suggestions on the theoretical work-in-progress, too, as I'm always trying to improve my skills BUT the final say as to the figure's appearance is between me and the random winner - Sorry!)
7. I'm thinking I'll have to leave conversions out of this giveaway as well, as that that would open a whole other can of worms and increase the working time on the figure. That being said: gap-filling, pinning, posing of original parts, and everything else is still on the table.

 I'm really intending this as a good faith offer to occupy my mind and cheer myself up and I hope that Followers, regular Feed readers, and the hypothetical winner will view it as such and not try to "pull one over on me." I don't even care if someone wants something painted to a basic standard, it's more the spirit of the thing - I've won several trophies at GW Golden Demon competitions and can "probably paint to a higher than basic standard," but other than holding a paintbrush and doing the work for free, the figure and particulars of the painting won't be up to me! I'm also not averse to trying new techniques or effects, and with this (again) being a good faith offer, I will try and render the finished figure to the winner's specifications as much as I can.

Have at it, folks! Thanks!