More impressions from Norway: Models in Flam museum

So I will continue to show some of my pictures from Norway. This time I only have four pictures which I have shot in the Fram museum in Oslo. When my wife first told me that she wanted to visit the museum I thought "Nah not interesting" but oh how I was wrong...
The Fram is a pretty famous ship, which was used in Arctic AND Antarctic expeditions and has quite a history to tell. The museum contains the Fram herself (yes the whole ship!) and the Gjøa.
The main hall which contains the Fram is four floors high and you can wind up your way up to the deck hop on it and discover the complete ship. On the different floors you can see lots of items from the expeditions and at some places also some small dioramas which I will now present to you.

If you are interested in more information about the museum or the ships, just visit the linked sites :)

Hope you enjoyed it.


So long,
Paradox0n

FFotW - Seans Photoguide

First camera

My finding of the week is this time a series oft posts of Sean a fellow blogger. In his blog he shares some of his experiences with photographing miniatures. So if you are interested in stuff like this, please have a look at his series and maybe you find his blog to your liking.

Since I found it rather difficult to find all the parts, I just put the current five posts into this list:

1. Photographing miniatures - Part 1
2. Photographing miniatures - Part 2
3. Photographing miniatures - Part 3
4. Photographing miniatures - Part 4
5. Photographing miniatures - Part 5

Hope he continues with the series (he suggested stuff like processing pictures etc. pp.). Although I know lots of processing pictures in Photoshop due to my work, hearing what others experienced and use as tools is always nice.

And as always: Sharing is caring!


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Something went wrong with the publishing therefore you get my Friday Finding of the Week on Saturday morning ;)

Impressions from Norway

As promised I will post some of my Norway pictures. Today I want to start with some more hobby related pictures which gave me some nice ideas for bases/weathering and an idea how stuff "grows" in reality.
So without anymore babble I let the pictures speak. "A picture tells more than 1000 words", right?

Earth, Stones and Trees

Some impressions from our first hiking trip. Liked how the area looked, a bit "highland" feeling.

Ice | Nigardsbreen

Some impressions from Nigardsbreen. After we did a small hiking trip to one of the arms in the neighborhood, we decided to go to the big one which is one of the biggest attractions in Jostedal. We booked a short guided tour and therefore I could take some nice pictures from the glaciertongue itself. We didn't climb up too far, but it was very impressive. Next time a bigger blue ice tour ;)

Weathered truck in swampland

One nice thing I stumbled upon when we did our last hiking trip was this rusted truck. It was nearly reoccupied by nature and was really cool.

That's it for today. If you liked it please say so in the comments, I can post some more pictures of Norway if you like. For example on our canoe trip one part looked a bit like the place where the hobbits paddled through ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Impressions from Majorca - Part I: Attractions

As promised I will start with some impressions of our Majorca trip a week ago. It is not easy to sort and select all those pictures (we did ~370 pictures in one week) so I decided to separate the pictures into two categories: sight seeing and landscape. With the sight seeing I will start today and dive directly into the pictures of the cathedral of Majorca, the town's landmark. So watch out: Picture heavy and wall of text ahead!

The "Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma" or just "La Seu"is a gothic roman catholic cathedral build on the site of an earlier existing mosque (Majorca has a pretty turbulent history with lots of captures and stuff). The construction began ~1230 but was finished in 1601 when the main portal was sanctified. Around 1850 the main facade was reconstructed and was only finished in the early 20th century.

The cathedral now is on of the main attractions in Palma and you have to pay to visit it (~6€ pP). We did that and spend some time there. As I know many Gothic churches/cathedrals here in Germany (especially the Freiburger Münster) I wasn't that impressed by La Seu. It is beautiful and especially the altar is quite impressive.

Papercut - Small house

Since my Photobucket is too small I just had to shoot this one on my cutting mat. Therefore the green background. As the posted Shack a while ago, this is the papercut house from the 5th edition starterbox from Warhammer Fantasy.

As the shack this was just glued on a cardboard base, flocked with static grass and the folding lines where painted in the corresponding colors. Again nothing fancy but it does its job pretty good (and this since the late 90ies). This is why the base is slightly warped, I think this thingy was based in the late 90ies and saw lots of games in this time :)

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Again a new passenger on board! Welcome Peter, your blog already is in my blogroll and thanks for commenting :)

Some late summer pictures from Europa Park

Before I am posting some of my pictures from my trip to Mallorca (which I still have to sort and select first) I post some late summer pictures I took on our last day in Europa Park (when our annual pass ran out).
These are from late August and it was a beautiful day there and we once again had lots of fun there. The park has some really cool places which are most of the time ignored or you just run by because you have to get to the next attraction.

The first two are from the children wonderland the first is the giant from the Grimm's story "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" (The Valiant Tailor) the second is a Gnome with snail pets from a children rollercoaster. There are many such things for kids when you have a keen eye and really look out for it (or you have kids and therefore have to look for them).

Papercut - Shack

Just a short update on my papercut section. Perhaps you have seen this terrain piece already in my battle reports. But I just wanted to upload some close ups. This is the small shack which was included in the 5th edition starterbox for Warhammer Fantasy. So yes, pretty old this thing and pretty much documents my hobby career. This was the second starterbox our playing group bought and I think I have the box somehwere flying around :)
This is really nothing fancy, I just glued it onto a base and painted the edges in the appropriate color to mask the white cardboard. Back then we only worked with thick cardboard for bases but as you can see they warp over time. I won't re-base it because I fear that I will destroy the shack itself while doing it.

Enlightenment of the day: I need a bigger photobox, my photobucket is too small for bigger pieces. Otherwise I would have completed the post with the corresponding house. So that will be something for another post.


So long,
Paradox0n

WIP - Base for the Cauldron of Blood

And another WIP for my Cauldron of Blood today. At the moment I am trying to build me a base for the Cauldron. Since it should be a bit more scenic I thought of a small "hill" where the cauldron stands, two witches behind it and the standard bearer in front of it.
Since I have lots of bark in my box I used some of it to get a rough layout (which will be painted like rock). Too bad my Fimo dried out, so I couldn't finish the other parts of the hill. Any suggestions how I could do it without Greenstuff or Fimo? aybe just sanding the whole thing could work too...
For a better understanding how this should look like in the end, I placed some models on the base (sneaky skaven-ratlings are everywhere!).

What do you think of it?

So long,
Paradox0n

Sunday Afternoon WIP - Dark Elves: Witch Elves

2K primed Witch Elves

A day off, a delicious asparagus menu and a painting afternoon with a friend, what a wonderful and quite ending of a long weekend. And since I really managed to paint something I can show you some WIP shots of my Witch Elves for my Cauldron of Blood.

First I did a two component priming for a better definition of the lighting of the miniatures. You don't believe how tricky this is when it is a stormy weather like today. But after seeing of some pictures from Mr. Lee I know now that I can achieve this with my airbrush too. Therefore as soon as my aerosol cans are empty I will buy me a black primer from Vallejo since I am really pleased with their primers.

Saturday Night WIP - Dark Elves: Cauldron of Blood

After a rather restless night, I can show you some WIP shots for my version of the Cauldron of Blood for the Dark Elves.
The Cauldron is not the one from Games Workshop it is the Spawning Vessel from the Legion of Everblight. The acolythes will be used later as beastmasters for my hydra :)
Since I am a rather classical RPG player the thought of a statue carried by three wicked witches was not really appealing to me. It is too heavy, too clumsy and doesn't fit to my imagination of the Cauldron. And I was not willing to pay ~40€ for a modell I don't like and where I had to cut off half of it... The old model (more a chariot than anything else) is also not the best one (but fitted to the old rules) and only buyable via the Bay or similar places. So I bought myself a witch commando, the spawn vessel and a battle standard (more of her in a future article) and started thinking.

Monsters!!!

Felt monsters are conquering my table.. .HELP ME! Nah just kidding. They are tooooo cute to be really dangerous or even a thread :)

Felt monsters attack!

If you wonder why the hell I am showing these... My wife got a crush on those and started making them herself. Two of them are permanently lingering on my working table and the cats are mischievously eyeing the other two... All of them are made out of felt, darning wool, yarn and some decorating stuff like buttons.

Descent - Journeys in the Dark | Miniatures

As promised I made today some pictures of the miniatures of the boardgame Descent - Journeys in the Dark which I reviewed not long ago. Since there are so many miniatures I didn't set up my photobucket I just arranged them on my cutting mat and did some short photo shooting. If you want any of the miniatures in close up, please state so in the comments, I will then do a in deep coverage of them.

I'll be starting with the different sets of heroes. I tried to make some closeups but my camera played me some tricks, therefore only a group photo:

All of the heroes for Descent

Rebasing some of my old models

Perhaps you have seen some of my old models in my review of the Feldherr XL and wondered: What the *** are those ugly based miniatures. And you are propably right. But before you judge them I will tell you something about those poor Skaven :-)

Old Clanrats

WIP - Plague Furnace

After some terrain making and a big motivation leak while painting my Verminlord, I switched to painting my Plague Furnace. Only bad thing about this modell: I bought it used and everything is glued together which makes it not as easy to paint as it should be.
Nonetheless I will give it a try since I want to use it in one of my next battles :)

Primed and ready to paint

Damn this thing is so big, its even too big for my photo bucket! I will try some things and will look how it will turn out in the end.

So long,
Paradox0n

[Updated] Another warped tree

I couldn't resist to buy another aquarium decoration tree. After I had some nice results with my first one, I found another one in my hardware store. And with a price of ~3 euros it was again difficult to do something wrong by buing it.
They really fit into my warped, beaten up ad dark concept for my gaming table. And I play Skaven so warpstone trees are even better!

No long chit chat, just a short shot from my photo bucket:

Tree from the front

Tree from the back

Out of the bucket

Again I did some shooting.
The first victim is a skaven clanrat I did shortly before my last warhammer game. I followed the paint scheme most of the army I bought had.

Skaven clanrat from the front

Skaven clanrat from the back

The second victim is a Cawdor Heavy from Necromunda. Yes this is a very old modell, I think I painted it somewhere in the 90's when Necromunda was a big issue here in Germany.

Cawdor Heavy from the front

Cawdor Heavy from the back

And yes I'm still experimenting with the photobucket. I'm not completely satisfied with the results. But luckily they are WAY better then the old pictures.


So long,
Paradox0n

Stuff from my working table

With my new photobucket I tried to make some new photos of the stuff lying around. Yes I do really paint! So I didn't want to keep back and show some finished miniatures even if they are somewhat older or just experiments for things to come :)

The first ones are my old reptile riders. They are unitfillers for my darkelf army since they don't really fit into my cold one regiment. I don't know from which manufacturer they are, they are made out of resin and are from the late 80's or early 90's. Some weeks ago I painted the eyes od the reptiles and finished the riders for my first match in 8th edition.

Reptile riders from the front

Reptile riders from the back

HowTo: Photobucket

Everytime I made some photos I cursed because without the right equipment the pictures often get somewhat blurry, oversatureated or shiny. Therefore I searched for an easy way to build me place where I can make my pictures. Prices for professional equipment ranges from 40€ to open end and I didn't want to spent my money on something like this (the money saved could be invested in paints/miniatures or a nice evening with my wife). The best solution for low budget I found (in different places) seems to be the photobucket:

Photo bucket at no cost