Talisman Plastics, As You've Never Seen Them Before...

 Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

So, last week I updated the Middlehammer Memory Lane page to include the second half of 1994, which covered the release of Talisman 3rd edition. In that post, I bemoaned the fact that precious little was made of the set of miniatures I painted for it, in that only the minotaur was featured in the article and all the rest of the models remained unseen. I mentioned that there was a reason that the miniatures didn't get featured on the Talisman box and cards, and that was because the miniatures simply weren't ready in time. It wasn't uncommon for plastic miniatures to not be available when final production artwork had to go off to the printers and it was thus with Talisman, so there wasn't any pictures of the models themselves in the finished product and probably why they didn't end up in the launch article in White Dwarf (although White Dwarf would have been prepared long after the product was finished so I'm not sure if that's actually the case in this instance.) Whatever the reason they weren't featured*, it's a real shame, as they were superb sculpts, certainly the best plastic sculpts of the time, and I was very proud of the work I'd done on them. 

However, as luck would have it, I am able to show some of those models here. You see, once they had served their purpose (or lack of it, as it turned out) I was allowed to keep some of the models I painted. These days they are in the hands of Jon New (who runs the thoroughly excellent Talisman Island website- the ultimate resource for all things Talisman) but I took some decent photos of them before giving them to him. So, here they are, some of the heroes I painted for 3rd edition Talisman, including never-before-seen back views. 

There we go. I hope you liked these. Hard to believe these were painted nearly 30 years ago! The halfling is my favourite, without a doubt, but I think they're all great sculpts (even the minotaur, which really could have benefitted from being in more than one piece and not been wearing gloves.) One day, I'll get around to painting a whole new set (including another dragon) so that the whole lot can be shown off all in the same place. One day...

Thanks for reading!

Stu

p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁 

*This wouldn't be the only time Talisman would be let down in the pages of White Dwarf. The plastic dragon I painted for Dragon's Tower, a gorgeous sculpt by Trish Carden that would go on to be the basis of many other Citadel dragons, was never featured anywhere and disappeared without a trace. 

I'm Just A 20th Century Boy...

 Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

Back in 2016 I was approached by Dave Taylor, admin of the Eavier Metal Facebook group, and asked if I would be interested in judging a competition he was organising as an offshoot of his "Throwback Thursday" slot in the group. The competition would be to paint miniatures that were at least 20 years old. I said I'd be honoured to do so and thus my fate was sealed. the 20 Year Challenge would go on to be an annual thing from then on. It's even made it into the illustrious pages of Fantasy Figures Internatonal!

This year, we've decided to change things up a bit, as it seemed a bit odd to have a throwback-based competition that covered up to 2003...* and so the 20 Year Challenge has become the 20th Century Challenge! So, seeing as the 20 Year Challenge has now (sort of) come to an end I thought it would be a good time to look back on all the winners from previous years...

2016

The first year we really didn't know what to expect, and the turnout was much better than we'd thought it would be. We hadn't really bothered laying down any "proper" rules so the field was wide open, leading to some major headaches when it came to judging. 

1st Martin Grandbarbe

2nd Adrian Walters

3rd Marco Bariselli

2017

This time, we decided to place a restriction on the maximum base size, to make it more of a level playing field, and to make it easier to do the judging. While it helped with the former, it really didn't help with the latter!

1st Johan Philipsen

2nd Dana Low

3rd Martin Waller

2018

This year, as we'd been getting such a large variety of models and, again, in an attempt to make the judging process a little easier, we decided to split into two categories. I mean, in one regard it made it a little easier to sort through things, but it also meant I had doubled my workload when it came to making decisions! Also, apparently, this would turn out to be the year of the troll. I have no idea how that happened.

1st Euan Bingham	2nd Patric Sand	3rd Steven Rath
1st Scott Orr	2nd Richard Davis	3rd Steven Walk

2019

People were getting used to the idea of this being an annual event by now, and were better prepared  when the time of the competition came around again. This meant a large jump in the amount of entries. 

1st Martin Grandbarbe	2nd Juan Fransisco Hidalgo	3rd Piers Brand
1st Martin Besomes	2nd Mariano Sanchez	3rd Donald Johanssen

2020

We were really getting into our stride with the competition now. The categories and limitations had been nailed down for a couple of years, and we kept them the same to ensure as little confusion as possible. 

1st Chris Webb	2nd Dan Tibbals	3rd Walter Nunziati
1st Carl Bostrom	2nd Frederick Lybek	3rd Steven Rowlinson

2021

1st Florian Tuffskull	2nd Lee Sandilands	3rd Frederick Lybek
1st Barnado Mtnz Grdo	2nd Dan Tibbals	3rd Alan Harper

2022

1st Tim Marsh	2nd Alexandre Gill	3rd Keith Burden
1st Walter Nunziati	2nd Paulus Zubera	3rd Andy Cook

So there we have it, all the winners from the last seven years (and apologies if I've spelt anybody's names wrong!) Farewell to the 20 Year challenge, and welcome to the 20th Century Challenge! And, if you want to have a go at this year's competition, head on over to the Eavier Metal Facebook page and look for Dave Taylor's post with the rules. A couple of words of advice if you do feel like giving it a go: as this is an online competition, I don't have the luxury of having the models in-hand when it comes to judging them so good photos are essential. There's plenty of guides to photographing models online (Garfy's one over on Tale Of Painters is very good) and good results can be had with a good light and a decent mobile phone. Don't forget that you can upload more than one photo of your entry so, if there's a particularly great bit of it you want to show off, take an extra photo focusing on that bit. Also make sure you are following the rules. I try not to be too militant when it comes to applying them but lines eventually have to be drawn and it's heartbreaking to see a beautiful piece of work get pushed aside because the painter didn't follow the rules. There's not many rules in this competition, so following them shouldn't be hard. And that's it. I very much look forward to seeing what you all come up with and having a couple of stressful evenings going through what's entered. And good luck!

Thanks for reading!

Stu

p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁 

* because, as we all know, 2003 was only a couple of years ago...

Rock and Roll Out!

 Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

Here we are again with some more miniatures I painted for Botwar by Traders Galaxy. This time, the spotlight shines on the Deceiver's Cult of the Destroyer and their monstrous combined form. 

Painting these was more fun than the usual Bots, as these guys have the addition of bits of rock merged in with their robot bodies. Painting-wise I used my usual method of painting Bots, which is to lay down Contrast base colours over a zenithal grey/white primer and highlight from there. Unfortunately I couldn't find my notes for which colours I used, so you'll just have to work out those for yourselves 😂 The stony areas were simple drybrush from dark to light, with washes of brown and black over the top.

The combined form was a really fun piece to paint. for starters, the model is huge- much bigger than the individuals that make him up, and stands nearly 15cm tall. that meant I could put more work into it, making the blends smoother, and putting more colours into the rock areas. The energy glow was particularly satisfying to do. I started off by painting white ink into the recesses, letting it flow into all the cracks and channels. I then drybrushed the surrounding areas with white. I then repeated the process with Tesseract Glow, but drybrushed this out further than the white, giving the nice glow effect. I then ran more white ink into the deepest recesses to finish off the effect. I was rather pleased how it all turned out. 

The Cult of the Destroyer set is available HERE and the Destroyer Combiner is available HERE. And there we are, short and sweet this week, after the ramblings of the last couple of weeks! 

Thanks for reading!

Stu

p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁