FFotW - The Order of the Stick

My FFotW this time  is a comic series called "The Order of the Stick" by Rich Burlew. This series is really hilarious and so funny (at least if you are somewhat in P&P role-playing games like AD&D (on which this one is based).

I am not through the whole story but as far as I could read (somewhere around 300th strip) its pretty good.

Aaaand the best: There also exist some miniatures to the story and even a board game.
The miniatures are from Morland Miniatures a company I never heard before. They fit the look of the characters pretty good :)

I just had a quick look at the other miniatures there. There is some stuff which looks really cool. If anyone knows the company already, please drop a line in the comments.


So long,
Paradox0n

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

MMM: Heaven Shall Burn - Combat

Time for the music wakeup on Monday! This kind of music will either wake you up or make you run away from the noise :)
 I think this is a pretty depressing topic with matching video. Child soldiers are something this world should have never seen. I can't even imagine how the psych of these children is destroyed. I only know from dialogs with my grandpa (who was roughly 16 and more a teenager than a child when he had to fight in WWII) how bad stuff can be.

So why do I post the video? Because I think stuff like this needs some attention from time to time.

Heaven Shall Burn - Combat:

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: The cartoon characters remember me somehow of the Lulus of the Toughest Girls from Raging Heroes without judging that. That is why I though it somehow fitting for a tabletop blog.

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 ;)

Hitting the 40k visits mark

So wow! I just checked my statistics and saw an unbelievable number oft hits there. Over 40.000 visits on my blog! Although I know that most oft the traffic comes from Google and other crawlers I am pretty happy. Even more since I know that most oft the spambots are now blocked out (can see that pagehits did break down after I changed the comments to registered only).

So a big: Thank you! to everyone who is reading this blog.

And I take this oportunity to make the small anouncement that I will post again more (hobby) stuff. Had to take some time off doing other things like working and hiking (especially in Norway and the Black Forrest) until I found the motivation again to interest me for my plastic mountains ;-)

So stay tuned.
Paradox0n

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

Painting Buddha Academy: PBCC released the first video in their series

As you all know by now I am a pretty big fan of Painting Buddha and their DVDs. And they don't stop surprising me! Michael, Ben and Mati did another masterstroke: They opened up their own painting academy and just promote it.

If you want to know more about the Painting Academy, the features, costs and everything, please read their very informative and comprehensive blogpost concerning the Painting Buddha Community College.

 And what better way to promote that with the first tutorial video (out of 42 as usual)!

I put the released videos all together in one playlist for your convenience and hope Michael is OK with that. You can find the original blogpost from Painting Buddha on their new website/shop/blog and all the videos on their Youtube Channel.

I myself only opted to take the blue pill and hope they continue to produce DVDs and stuff (which I will most likely buy then) and not switch completely to this community thing. To not take a membership (for now) is just a personal preference, most paid communities I had a look on didn't just convince me. Have to see how the PBCC will be in the future.

Hope you enjoy it.


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: I think Michael really wants to take over rulership and be "El Presidente" ;)

Hobby Magazines - Ironwatch Issue #25

Ironwatch Magazine Issue 25

Issue #25 of Ironwatch Magazine, the Mantic Games Fanzine has arrived.

This time it contains a nice mixture of Kings of War and Warpath topics like:

• Kings of War scenarios
• Gallery of professional painted Mantic miniatures
• An overview of an undead army
• Second part of a Warpath story
• and many more

And there is also one short notice about the planned hardcover variant for the magazine:

Due to technical difficulties, availability in hardcover has been put on hold for the immediate future. We will attempt to get them to you in hardcover as soon as possible!

If you haven't checked already, take a look, its free and fanmade and totally supported by Mantic (so you'll see lots of images).


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM - Dan Bull 40 years of gaming and back from Norway

The leisure times are over... My vacation in Norway was way too short but with lots and lots of impressions. If you need ideas for your display bases or army displays Norway is the country to travel to. I live in a really nice area (Black Forrest in Germany) which has an incredible landscape, but Norway was even more spectacular since it combines all kind of landscapes.
I have been climbing the heights of waterfalls, wanted to explore caves, did some glacier hiking and some canoeing in a fjord. And took more than 1000 pictures which I will show you some of them as inspiration for your future projects as soon as I have sorted them.

For today I will just show you a nice music video from Dan Bull: 40 years of gaming. I am curious how much of the stuff you know, my first video game wath Ataris PONG in the living room of our neighbours and since then hasn't stopped :)

Hope you enjoy it!

So long,
Paradox0n

Vacation! Finally!

Trolltunga in Norway

Finally I am off to Norway! Should have been there already for more than a week but due to some health issues of my wife we had to let my sister-in-law and partner travel without us.

But now we will catch up and meet them in Bergen and enjoy the second half of the trip together. Too bad that we missed the good weather and jump right into rain and storm (nice since we want to sleep in our tent). So cross your fingers that the weather will get better soon and I don't have to fear that my tent is blown away in the night ;)

Plan is to visit Bergen, Finse, Trondheim, Trollheimen, maybe Jotunheimen, Oslo and some stuff in between, Then back to the ferry which brings us to Denmark and finally a 14 hours drive back to Germany.

Outdoor adventure here I come!

See you in about two weeks!
Paradox0n

MMM: Bülent Ceylan - Nichts besondres

Todays MMM has a special reason: Last weekend I enjoyed the new program of Bülent Ceylan, a german comedian, which was a gift from my wife for my birthday a week ago. I knew him until now only from TV or DVD but Live on Stage he is even better!  And this song really surprised me the most.
Since the audio is in german, I think it could be a bit disappointing for my english audience but maybe you can grasp the feeling of the song:

Its a song about being nothing special and taking life as it is, be it good or be it bad. The chorus struck me (roughly translated):

"Many laugh only because they don't want to weep,

what did the life do to you?

Do you want a better the world,

start with the one you see in the mirror!

Every tear contains a rainbow,

only in the darkness you can't see it.

I know the stars are above,

and a small shine is enough for me"

So long,
Paradox0n

[Update] Man the trenches! Fighting the spam wave

Most of you will not have seen the change but nonetheless I will give you a short update and explanation why I changed my blog comments and added the captcha although I am not a friend of this.

In the last weeks where I have been absent from the blogosphere some spambots seem to have taken over my blog and bombard me with one spam mail after the other. At the moment the number it is somewhere around 30-40 a day. Luckily blogger filters 99% of them out so that they don't get published on the blog itself. But nonetheless a notification mail is send to me about that.

So please let me get away with this breaking of rules until I have found a better solution.

[Update] Since so many of you commented here, and gave me the tip to switch to disallow unregistered comments, I thought about that and decided to give it a try. So please my fellow anonymous users who really want to comment use some kind of OpenID or just drop me an email.
Captchas are therefore off again.

So long,
Paradox0n

Painting Buddha Season 1.2 and Season 1.3 arrived

What a nice surprise today, when the DHL guy came this afternoon with a small white package for me. I already new what it was so I couldn't resist and tear it open immediately. And as expected it contained the Painting Buddha Season 1.2 Freehand and Season 1.3 Basing: Earth. The package was really packed with the bonus stuff for the early beard and it seems Michael stood up to his promise and adjusted the postage for the package. Included was a short letter, personally signed by all the three guys behind Painting Buddha, the putty, the miniature (early beard stuff) and some small buttons (no clue what they are for).

I am really curious how the DVDs are, especially in comparison to Season 1.1 the first one of the series. So I will have a nice weekend watching those and will definitely do a review for those. And don't they look nice together? All Season 1 DVDs so far:

So long,
Paradox0n

Painting Tutorial from Biohazard Painting: Dust Axis Light Walker "Hans"

If you are interested in Dust maybe I have found an interesting painting tutorial for you:
Biohazard Painting posted a nice tutorial for the Axis Light Walker "Hans" on his blog. The picture on the left shows the finished model and is directly taken from the article.

He also has some other tutorials on his page (at the moment mainly for Sedition Wars) so maybe you can have a look there too.


So long,
Paradox0n

FotW - The expert

Another Finding of the Week. This time completely unrelated to our beloved hobby but related to my daily work. Oh how I can feel with the poor guy in here.

Have a nice weekend!


So long,
Paradox0n

Painting a Fire elemental with Ben Komets from Painting Buddha

I am still alive and digging through videos and sometimes even blogposts. But my private projects (planing a hiking tour in Norway and the needed training) or my aquarium (which made some troubles lately) keep me away from painting and even blogging.
But today I stumbled upon a very nice (and free) painting video from our brudahs at Painting Buddha where Ben Komets paints a tabletop quality version of a Drakerys Fire Elemental. So sit back, watch and enjoy:

And as much as I hate advertisement mails, the one from Michael got me rolling and I will surely save me an Early Beard (so funny!) for the season 1.2/1.3 DVD bundle. I loved the first DVD set they did and want to support the work the guys at Painting Buddha do.


So long,
Paradox0n

Live is Life

Sorry guys for having quite a break on blogging. But at the moment real life has a tight grip and painting or terrain crafting is far far away from stuff I plan to do at the moment. The project I worked for the last half year is short before going live (in roughly two weeks). Additionaly the sister of my wife made a very nice suggestion: Why not make a trekking vacation in norway in august. So we are also planning this very exotic kind of vacation for us. Starting with shoes, clothes continuing with tent and cooking gear and everything. Quite interesting what has changed in the years since my last hiking experience :)

But: Live is Life :) Veeeery old music video from Opus:

Hope you all do well.

See ya soon,
Paradox0n

Real life incoming!

Maybe you wondered if I am still into blogging after this really quite time now. Yes I am but my Work-Life-Balanc eis totally out of control. The last weeks we are preparing a bigger relaunch of the companies web page I am working at and are now in the hot phase for it. Last week I even was on a working trip in rumania which brought lots of nice impressions (although I didn't see much other than the office I was working at). Since I was "announced" as technical frontent responsive this is quite a change for me, I have much more responsibility now and want to stand up to the expectations my colleagues put into me..

Therefore I don't find the passion and quiet for painting or even working on my blog. Which is a shame since I finally got an answer from BoLS concerning the addition to their blogroll. I even don't find the time to follow my dearest blogs so please bear with me and be sure that I will have a look into all your blogs and will comment again when I find the time.

Hope you all have a good time until then.


So long,
Paradox0n

FFotW - The Battle of Finuval Plain

Battle of Finuval Plain from Hoodling

Today again something more hoby related. Perhaps some of you remember the last massive battlereport from Hoodling (The Battle of Hel Fenn) I posted a while ago. And he and his mad crew did it again: An unbelievable battle(report) of 25.000 points forces clashing into each other! Stand wide-eyed (or drooling) and read the madness of The Battle of Finuval Plain.

The Battle of Finuval Plain was a turning point in The Great War against Chaos in 2301 IC. The Dark Elves and their Chaos allies conquered the Blighted Isle and Nagarythe and started their raiding camapign on Ulthuan. After long fights favoring the Dark Elves and pushing the High Elves into some kind of geruilla war Teclis and Tyrion gathered a huge force and gathered on the Finuval Plain for a last stand fight to turn the tide of the war.

Take some time and read those many posts on his blog and enjoy the awesome (and pictured!) documentation how this battle went. Did the history books really tell the truth? At least you can read one version of this story today.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Welcome abroad to The Lord of Excess. Hope you found some interesting stuff here.

MMM - Elder Scrolls Online Music

Wow long time since I wrote my last Monday Morning Music post. So time for a new one! You could suppose I would post something concerning our 5th season of the year, the "Fasnet" or "Fastnacht" as its called in my region. But since I am not into this festivity anymore I chose something different.

I had the luck to get a Beta Key for the stresstest weekend of The Elder Scrolls Online which I really enjoyed. Something which flashed me (besides the awesome graphics, the free character development and the cool stories) was the music in the game. Everytime I came near a tavern or a campfire and a npc bard was present they really performed songs! Not just some other music, real songs. That immensely pays in the general atmosphere of the game and therefore I will give you two examples from Malukah:

Hope you enjoy it.


So long,
Paradox0n

Color theory - 3 Colors Up

Long time no see... But today I will present you at least something hobby related. I put together a playlist from a very good video tutorial series related to color theory. Romain from Beasts of War explains all important parts, be it contrast, complementary colors, color triads and so on.

Complementing this I showed you the Color Scheme Designer some time ago.
So grab your color wheel and start experimenting ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Where's the rum gone...

...I would ask if I would be Jack Sparrow. But since I am definitely not I ask: Where is my motivation gone. It seems the two weeks fighting of the cold sucked out my complete energy. At the moment it is pretty hard for me to hop on my bike let alone painting miniatures. I am glad that I can fulfill the stuff at the office. Which is pretty stressful at the moment.

Sorry to give you no new pictures of my miniatures or anything. Meanwhile you can watch other people who are awesome :)

So long,
Paradox0n

Strange Blogger/Google+ behaviour

Just a short notice for you out there: At the moment I am not able to comment on all your nice posts and stuff because I have some strange problems with the Google comments. They show me that I am logged in, I type my comments and send them and BAMM they are lost somewhere in the blogosphere.
I recall that Mr. Lee had this problem too some time ago, so if anyone of you reads this and has solved it, please hit me either by a comment or (if known) by an email.

Thanks in advance,
Paradox0n

Praise Papa Nurgle

Life is a roller-coaster it seems. Since nearly two weeks I am now struggling with fighting of the flu I got at the beginning of last week and still I have the last remaining symptoms of it. Thinking of painting while you cough or sneeze is not possible. Stress at work and some stuff to recondition because of my sickness don't improve the situation either.
At least I am fit enough to do some short bicycle circles around my flat. Christmas and New Year didn't perform well on my hips ;)

Hopefully I can return painting a bit (and finishing my working place, it has changed again a bit and is nearly complete now) and finally sorting some pictures for my second Majorca post (better late than never).

I am happy that some you are returning to blogging again and even if I am not able to catch up all your posting I hope I can comment once in a time.

Happy Blogging!

Paradox0n

Hobby Magazines - Ironwatch Issue #17

Issue #17 of Ironwatch Magazine, the Mantic Games Fanzine has arrived yesterday.

This time it is pretty Kings of War heavy and includes topics like:

• Kings of War Tactica
• Tutorial on how to make an orc hut
• Painting step-by-step of the Goblin shaman
• The first part of a new short story
• and many more

I personally like the articles about the painting and terrain best, because I can't use all the Tactica and new model rule stuff since we don't play Kings of War. And I like that there are again many pictures of Mantic miniatures, on some you can see what you can make out of them.

If you haven't checked already, take a look, its free and fanmade and totally supported by Mantic (so you'll see lots of images).

So long,
Paradox0n

MMM - Vacation's over

New year has just begun and it is Monday morning, so I think its time for a new Monday Morning Music post.

Today is my last day of the christmas vacation (in Germany the 6th January is a day off (a day for the "Kings of the East" I think they are called in english) and we even had some carol singers at our door yesterday (for the first time since we live in our flat here).

I found a song which I think fits pretty good to this Monday: Vacation's over from Faron Young out of the late 50ties.

Have a good start into your week.


So long,
Paradox0n

Happy new year 2014

To all my readers, supporters and all others I wish a happy new year 2014. I hope all your wishes come true and you had a good start into the new year without accidents, trouble with drunk people or worse.

So long,
Paradox0n

Pimp my working space - Part I

As previously stated, christmas brought some very nice presents for me, one of the a daylight lamp with a magnifying lens (yes we are not getting younger). But to bring the lamp into place and good use, I had to rethink my working place a bit. So after a bit of shopping and a bit of screwing (and testing my new cordless screwdriver) I had much more place for my stuff without making a big mess and having to rebuild our complete "office":

New working place - Step 1

The new rack has a slot with two drawers, one slot with just a door and two slots with glass doors and inlays like a cabinet. This leaves me with enough space to store my paints, tools and crafting stuff and started projects and clearing enough space on my desktop that it doesn't always look like a big mess (and being a happy playground for our cats).

WIP - Chaos Dwarf

Hope you all had a nice Christmas and didn't explode from all the delicious food you got :) Since here the weather is really bad (rain instead of snow and most of the time pretty windy) I couldn't prime my harpies (I have black as spray can primer) so I loaded up my airbrush and searched for a victim for my painting madness :)
But before starting to paint I had to pimp my working space since I got some really nice presents from the "Christkind" and additionally did some shopping in a big swedish furniture store. But more of that later.

Perhaps some of you remember that I had won a Scibor Chaos Dwarf some time ago. Since I have some days off at the moment I started painting this one. While basecoating two of my brushes died a miraculous death (the points just bended and the hairs feathered out) although I had always treated them well (even cleaned them with brush soap). But these where old ones so I don't have to mourn about them, I just switched to the more expensive ones

Nonetheless here are the first WIP shots from the chaos dwarf (I really have to adjust to my new painting setup especially for WIP pictures).
Everything seems a bit blotchy at the moment but the idea behind this massive brown basecoat is to give my bronze a nice base. And on black/white or pure grey the color just doesn't "shine" enough.
The fur I want do shade down a bit and give it some drybrushing and the coat should be a dark red. The washing didn't tune it down enough, so I think I will start shading it manually.

Before starting to basecoat the armor in brown, I did a short test with the shield of this chaos dwarf. And I really really liked the result. It was just a basecoat in brown, one layer of Vallejo Glorious Gold, a heavy wash of Gryphone Sepia, some highlights with a  mixture of the gold and Vallejo Gunmetal Metal, a final highlight with nearly pure Gunmetal and a final wash with sepia.

For me this gave exactly the look of a used but well-kept shield I wanted.

Stay tuned for more WIP of him. I really like the details of this miniature and are happy that I got it from Mr. Lee (even if I had some nightmares while preparing it for painting).


So long,
Paradox0n

Merry Christmas to you

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Craciun fericit, Wesolych Swiat, I'D Miilad Said [...] !

Traditionally (at least in my family) we give best wishes to all especially we wish for health and luck. So I wish that to all of you too.

I hope you have some pleasant and calm days with your closest ones.And get lots of presents ;) 

And if you have your Christmas on the 7th January I hope all those wishes last until then and come to fulfillment then.

So long,

Paradox0n

How to Play/BatRep - Flames of War on BoW

Normally I am not into historical wargaming. My time when I played with tanks and build those fantastic Revell kits is looong ago. I even had some trenches and bunkers then.

But yesterday the second part of a introduction of Flames of War was uploaded from Beasts of War and I really enjoyed this one. Therefore I put the parts together in a playlist and want to share them with you. As soon as they put up part III I will add it to the playlist.

So watch Warren & Dave play a game of Flames of War:

Important note: These videos completely belong to Beasts of War. I just share them for easy access and enjoyment.


So long,
Paradox0n

Hitting the next milestone: 20.000 views and over 300 comments

Wow! Slowly and quietly my blog reached another milestone: The 20k views and 300 comments mark (even if about one third of the comments are from me I think). That's totally insane especially since it was only in July when I hit the 10k views (which took me nearly a year).  So twice the fun in half of the time :)

Thanks to all who regularly return to this place and read the (sometimes weird) stuff I write. And since this makes the blog a bit more to a happy place, I am in the writing of just the next few articles. Not necessarily hobby related, but in line with some of the other posts I did recently.

So stay tuned.
Paradox0n

MMM - Woodkid

Wonderful Black and White art in his videos and very cool music in a way I haven't heard before: That is Woodkid.
Maybe you know Run by Run from an advert campaign of a big mobile provider (which itself is also very nice especially the start with the animated cat/robot).
I came across his music a while ago and my wife really liked the song on the advertisement and immedeately bought the album :)

The videos are really great and take you into a very unique black and white world.

Woodkid "Iron" from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Woodkid "Run Boy Run" from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoy them as I do and have a good start into your week!


So long,
Paradox0n

Still alive :)

First things first: Sorry for not posting this long. At he moment I am pretty much fully stretched at work and since I had a colleague to train (and everything had to be done in English) I am pretty exhausted when I come home. Most of the time its preparing food, spending some time with my wife and relaxing on the couch (or having some "leasure" time with my colleagues at Adventsmarkt or Christmas Party which is also most of the time in English).
Nonetheless I will return on blogging around christmas (maybe Father Christmas will bring me some nice hobby stuff). I also found some interesting stuff (not only hobby related) on the AEther and tried to make some pictures of stuff I am working on. Sadly the pictures aren't presentable, my Photobucket definitely comes to its limits with bigger miniatures/models.

Adobe Elements suite arrived!

After testing some stuff out and being forced to use IrfanView or even Picasa as picture editing tools I had enough and couldn't resist and buy me Photoshop Elements as it was in Amazons Cybermonday Week.
Additionally my trial for Sony Vegas has expired and I bought me the Adobe Premiere Elements. Since the two came in a bundle, more the win than ever :) I think I have spent 40€ worse this year (especially if you look at retail price!).

So at the moment the programs are installing and I am really curious if they do what I want them to do (always worked with the CS/Pro variants until now since I have them in my office at my disposal). But for easy stuff like color correction and easy editing they should be more than enough.


So long,
Paradox0n