When air seems like water

Something completely different today! As you may know one of my other hobbies is scuba diving. A very good friend of mine is a pretty good diver and also does some more technical diving (wreck diving and this stuff) and asked me if I'm not interested in doing some ice diving one day. And he delivered the perfect advertisement video with his question :) Pretty sick and I don't want to withhold it from you!

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

So long,
Paradox0n


P.S.: My next Kickstarter package did finally arrive: Sedition Wars is mine! Hope I find the time to do some unpacking shots this weekend.

Painting workshops - The fear of failure?!

Perhaps you have already read the great day by day coverage of Mr. Lee about a painting workshop in Aachen (if not: do it, its worth a read). These articles made me think over some things and I just felt like having to write down my thoughts WHY I always missed the opportunity to go to one of those, even if they are only one or two hours away from me. I always look into the description of the announcements of the workshops in the big tabletop forums (perhaps I should add Brushbrothers in the future too) and especially the ones from Massive Voodoo or GeOrc always get me itchy and I'm always thinking and thinking and don't register myself in the end.

Still alive

Hey dear readers,

I'm still alive... Had to fight some health issues and some stress at work but I hope I can return to post again in a few days. Have already planned on some stuff and only need to shoot some photos.
So stay tuned for some stuff of Hobby Basics and Reviews.

Wish me luck :)

Greets
Paradox0n

Merry Christmas to all

I wish you a "Merry Christmas" and hope the "Christkindl" or "Santa Claus" or "Père Noel" or whoever brings the presents to you had a biiiiiig load of gifts with him/here.

Miniature wise I already got my surprise package from Mantic Games, the "Crazy Christmas Box" as present from my wife. There are really some nice addons for my armies in it, I think I will do a "Whats in the box" after the holidays.
And my mother-in-law bought me plastic glue from Revel and an airbursh care kit! Pretty cool stuff! I think the whole family thinks now I am weird :D

I hope you have some nice and tranquil days with your family and friends and wish you the best for the new year if I'm not coming to write in the next few days.


So long,
Paradox0n

Hobby Magazines - Portal Magazine Issue #28

It is magazine time again. Today I will talk about Issue #28 of Portal Magazine with a reeeeally cute cover which fits nicely to christmas time.

• In The Box sees if zombies are really taking over mid-town America.
• Two great tutorials from Sean Fulton and Marko Paunovic.
• Reviews of miniatures from Dark Sword, Reaper, DGS Games, Guild of Harmony and Stephané Simon.
• News of the New Red Box Games painting contest.
• Great gallery with all the entries in the successful Sodapop Miniatures painting Contest.
• The latest news and best releases from around the hobby.

Autumnal impressions

Not long ago I went to the "Europa-Park" the biggest funpark in germany because every year they have a nice halloween decoration. This time I was really lucky, because we had most of the time excellent weather which allowed me to shoot some nice Light/Shadow pictures (and some funny stuff too). Even the Eurosat, a big dome in which a rollercoaster is settled is decorated fitting to halloween.

This is Halloween, this is Halloween,
pumpkins scream in the dead of night

It was a funny day and after we returned home, the view from our kitchen granted me another (spooky) view:

If I only could paint somethink like that!

Some more picture heavy stuff after the break!

I received a "Liebster"-Award!

Woho great thing for me, I really did receive a "Liebster"-Award. Thanks to Mr. Lee from Mr. Lee's Painting Emporium for passing me this little golden man with his big golden trophy :)

Liebster Award

But what is this all about you may think now?
As far as my quick research revealed, it is a little "reward" given to favoured blogs with fewer than 200 followers. "Liebster" is a german pet name for boyfriend and could also mean beloved , darling and in the blogosphere I think it should be translated dearest or precious or "valuable to read".
This thing is going viral like hell and I really thought of mentioning or even passing it.

Inspirational Stuff (again)

Hey there, as so often in the last time I just have some inspirational stuff to post. My health and my working life (or the balance I still or again have to find between them) just keep me away from painting or the hobby itseld. But as I browsed through the web, I found some great stuff I think you should know about :)

Ever heard of Julio Cabos? Me not until I found an old PDF and a video on Youtube which were a real mind opener to some stuff I was thinking about.

The PDF is called "Painting with Julio Cabos" but it seems it is taken down by Andrea Miniatures (or my browser just refuses to open the link Google spits out). Archive.org is a nice helper there, so perhaps you can try your luck there!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


So long,
Paradox0n

Color Scheme Designer

Hello dear readers,

since I don't have as much time for the hobby as suspected (again), I will try to deliver some useful tips and tricks or tools I have found (again again).

Color Scheme Designer 3

This time I will talk about the Color Scheme Designer, a small online tool which allows you to pick colors by tone, hue, opposites, tetrads, triads and so on and so on. It can even give you a hint how colorblind or people with a vision impairment would see the colors (which is not important for miniature painting I think). I came across this wonderful tool in my working life but it is damn useful in our hobby too. Especially if you follow the tips of some of the profi painters with color triads and warm / cold color contrasts.

I will not do a full review of this tool because it is really straight forward, easy to use and free(!) so everyone can make his/her own decision about the tool. I used it (as stated) in my working life and think it is one of the best free tools you can get your fingers on.


So long,
Paradox0n

Hobby Magazines - Portal Magazine Issue #27

Hello everyone,

some time ago, I wrote an article about free hobby magazines and online portals. Since then I thought about posting when one of these publish a new issue. And I came to the conclusion that I will give it a try and do a short sum up if I detect a new issue being published.

I will start with the new issue #27 of Portal Magazine:

• In The Box checks out the new Warhammer board game Chaos in the old world.
• View from the Hill has the second part to the Brett Reavis interview.
• Reviews from Studio 38, Mierce Miniatures, Reaper Miniatures, MDP & Dark Sword Miniatures.
• Our terrain building series kicks off in earnest.
• Event reports from Euro Militaire and GW's Games Day.
• Massive gallery included all the entries from the Hasslefree painting contest.
• Lots of new releases plus all the news from around the hobby and much more...

Whole bunch of stuff this time. As always many pictures of painted miniatures (mostly in a standard I can only dream of doing it myself) and some miniature reviews and common articles, e.g. about the GW Games Day. I won't go too much into detail but two articles stood out for me:

• The "In The Box" article gives a good overview of the mentioned board game
• The terrain buildng article is pretty good and gives some nice tips and tricks for making small dioramas

Feel free and give it a try!

Cheers,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Let's see if automatic publication works...

Package from Mantic Games - Abyssal Dwarves

As I told you at my review of the Kings of War Rulebook, the package from Mantic Games contained not only the rulebook but also a whole bunch of sprues and sachets with the Abyssal Dwarves. This is only the first delivery, the bonus sprues and the new Immortal Guard still wait for production and the other new bonus miniatures will be shipped next spring I hope. Can't wait to get them :)

My first "backer" package from Mantic Games

Rather chaotic and many many things I have to build in the future. And my Dark Elves and Skaven aren't even completly build together. Damn hobby addiction. If I want to paint them all, I'll have to quit my job and lock me up in my painting room for a year or two :)
So yes, I have many things to do and hopefully I won't fill my "Desk of Shame" even more. But motivation returned, I hope I can finish my tower soon and convince Labschi to do some more hobby sessions in the near future (the coming winter* will help to do so I think).


So long,
Paradox0n

*"Winter is coming!" was the first thing I wanted to write. Damn I'm also too addicted to good fantasy novels/movies/series :)

Blog Babble - Pingbots

Anger Kitty is dangerous

Again a more personal ramble about something what pi**es me off at the moment: Ping/Spambots.
I think every blogger has this problem: You have an eye on your statistics and are happy that your views are going up. But then you are looking closer and realise that some views are not real viewers but ping- or spambots which are not filtered out by Google. If you have millions of views this is a mere trifle but if you have only a handful of views a day, it messes everything up.

For me this is pretty annoying because in working life I have to deal with these *** bots (but can beat the crap out of 'em) and now they are messing up my blogger statistics without being able to do something against them because only Google can filter them out. Feeling like a hamster in his wheel is what angers me the most. You have to wait until somebody else fixes this problem. Or am I unaware of a solution to this problem?

How do you deal with the problem of pingbots? Is there a good solution without hosting everything yourself? Perhaps another statistics tool for blogger?

Questions above questions... Perhaps some of you know the answer.

An angry but helpless,
Paradox0n

Free magazines about tabletop & miniatures

Ok now, since I'm in a big motivation hole, I thought of collecting some of the free magazines and fanzines that I read and share them with you.
For me these free magazines are a great contribution to our wargaming community and they deserve every support possible.

Fanzines:

Skavenblight Gazette: A Fanzine about the Skaven Hordes of the Underempire
The Bellower: Fanzine from Ogre Stronghold about... Ogres. Hope it will be continued...
Word of Hashut: Fanzin about Chaos Dwarves. he current issue could be found in the forum

There are some more, e.g. the Druchii Herald, but most of them I know have been discontinued.

Free Magazines:

Portal Magazine: Magazine mainly commited to painting and converting stuff
Irregular: Community driven magazine about our beloved hobby
The Ancible: Magazine specialized to scifi and fantasy wargaming

Others:

Tabletop Insider: A german print magazine about wargaming. But(!) the first issue is available for free download.


That's it for the moment. If you know some other magazine, please share them via comment. I will update the list if there are more magazines you should know of.


So long,
Paradox0n

Blog Babble - Motivation?!

Its (blogging) weekend and I just started to write at my two new HowTo series when I realised that sometimes while writing I think: Why I am doing this sh**?! I'm running the blog now for about two months, wrote about twenty real articles and will try a short resume of the last weeks. If you now think: "Oh noes, no babble about personal stuff!" I'm completely fine with it, skip the post, but it's something I have to do :-)

Review: Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop

So I got my new (and first) airbrush system and with the set also arrived a dvd called "Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop". I ordered this dvd because I thought some advice on how to work with an airbrush could not be bad. Therefore I thought of doing a small review on my first thoughts about this dvd from the view of an absolute beginner in airbrushing who only watched Youtube tutorials.

Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush Workshop

Airbrush finally arrived

Finally my airbrush set arrived yesterday so I set up my workspace (which you can see here) with my new equipment and started some basic experiments. But after the first minutes I noticed that the trigger and the needle are sluggish. So I disassembled the whole pistol and cleaned and checked everything. After that everything seems to be working fine.

Thanks to the great bunch of tutorials for airbrushing! One of the series I relally like is the beginner seriers from Chung:



My first victims will be some of the miniatures of the very old game Starquest (in english its Space Crusade). I hope I can show you some of the achievements in the near future.


Perhaps I will make a post about my setup when I know what I'm doing ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Basing experiments

Today is the "Tag der Arbeit" (roughly translated as "Labor Day") and while I am still waiting for my airbrush and my wife has to write for university, I tried some different basing stuff:

1. Using cork as basing material
2.  Using pigments for the first time

Both materials I never used before and since everyone is talking about how neat this pigment stuff is, I asked my wife if I can use some of her pastels to rub of powder for pigmenting my new corkbases. I will not do a tutorial for this, because I am myself just a beginner and trying out different things, but the first results are very promising. Sadly to say, the lighting swallowed most of the brown and green pigments I used:

Corkbases with pigments

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome but need to experiment a little more. At the moment I can only say that pigments seem to give a more natural look than just washing the base.

Youtube-Channels you should know

Since I am waiting and waiting for my airbrush and am not motivated to paint at the moment I thought of listing some of the great Youtube-Channels I found and watch on a regular base.

Airbrush Miniature Painting

AwesomePaintJob - Les has a great way of doing things with his airbrush
Buypainted - Also one great airbrush artist, if not one of the best at the moment

General Miniature Painting

Girlpainting - Alexandra has some great tutorials of her style to paint miniatures
MrWatchingpaintdry - Great step by step tutorials including choice for colors

Terrainmaking

Terranscapes - Really great stuff for terrain makers

 The list is far from complete and I think I will add some more in the future.

Hope you enjoy it
Paradox0n

Peeking on my working table

Alright, spring is in full progress. The weather is typical for april: 5 minutes sun, 10 minutes rain and in the morning there was a snow and ice warning in the radio... Really, I'm not joking.

What could be more obvious than taking time to dust off my workbench and make place for my new projects. Since I also want to buy an airbrush and compressor I really needed to shift some things on my table and boards around me. Et voilà: 

This is were the magic happens...

Welcome aboard!

Paradox0ns Wargamin Blog opens its doors!

After some time of thinking and fighting with myself if I should really open up my own blog, I couldn't resist to do so. Many great painters and crafters inspire me every day and even if i'm far from beeing as good as them, I still want to try to give some of this enthusiasm and joy back to the community. And if I can give some helpful hints and tips I am more than happy to do so.

So I welcome you on my blog and hope I can fill it with live in the future. I also hope that my english is not too bad since I am not a native speaker ;)

Enjoy painting and crafting wherever you are and "Happy Painting" as the guys from Massive Voodoo always say.