Wednesday 28 January 2009

I have Highlighted the Skin with Ice Blue again and the hair with Bonewhite.

I am going to try and get both the hair and the skin to be way whiter. I am toying with the idea of just going straight to Skull White on my next pass. That might even be enough. Jeez I'm lazy.

Winter Troll 4

The background for this shot I quite like. I think I am going to use it for all my shots from now on.
I tried a wash with thinned down paint at this stage. I'm not sure I am happy with the results.

Just to mention the colours I am using. My paints are all Vallejo 'Game Color', although I do have some of the 'Model Color' range as well.

Over a white spray primer
for the skin: Ice Blue* as the base, with a wash of Electric Blue
The skin nodules are Magic Blue and I plan to highlight with Electric Blue
For the hair: Bonewhite with a very weak wash of Skin Wash**
For the loin cloth: Inner sections were done in Cobra Leather and the fur edging was done in
Charred Brown.

*The website lists this as Glacier Blue
** This is 'Game Ink'

Winter Troll 3

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Here is the base coloured Winter Troll. I was home sick from work today and all I could do was sit around, so I got a lot done.

Winter Troll2
I have in the past tried to do a painting blog, but I lost interest very quickly. I will try again here to post updates of work in progress. So here are my assembled and green stuffed:

Winter Troll
Winter Troll1

Gudrun the Wanderer
Gudrun1

I think the next pic will be of the one I have decided to concentrate on. Likely I will not put up a shot of a miniature that has been spray undercoated because that seems a waste of time. I will concentrate on proper painting stages, so the next one will be fully base coloured.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

In the driver's seat

One of the tenth graders in the school gaming club has designed a role playing game for his personal project. I mentored him during the process and I must say that despite my initial concerns, he has done a great job. As the final part of the game design and before he writes his final paper on the process, we are testing the game for him.

Today was Flo's first day as Game Master and he did a pretty good job. I completely let go of the controls and played a character along side the other students. The game itself was fairly standard, but its simplicity allowed us to engage with it quickly and get fully involved with the plot. My character is a crazy old man, based on my favourite card from 'magic the gathering' and I quite enjoyed playing silly buggers with the kids, instead of sitting at the helm and trying to direct them.

Friday 2 January 2009

Same old same old

I played a fantasy rpg with my old Sydney group on Saturday night and despite looking forward to it, it was far from a success; in fact I spent the last hour looking for an excuse to end it.

Here are the problems as I saw them:
1. There were too many (eight) players.
2. Players didn't listen to each other and character cooperation was low.
3. Both in and out of character, people found ways to annoy each other and they also found in and out of character ways to become upset.
4. People spent periods of time disconnected from the game.

The first one is easy to fix: Five players max.
The next two have been problematic to different degrees for a long time.
The last one is not disruptive, so it has never been addressed, but when three people at the table are not involved in the game, it makes it difficult to maintain (GM) enthusiasm.

How do I choose who to include in the future?
How do I fix problems 2-4?

Thursday 1 January 2009

Changed some settings

Changed a few settings in the hope that pople can post here. There have been a couple of people saying they were having trouble. Hopefully now this will be smoother. I'm not sure how it will look when new posts come in, but if you want to be more than annonymous, you may need to sign the end of the post.

Let me know if this works or not.