Tuesday 25 March 2008

Pressmoulding Tutorial

Here's how I replicate the Red Shadow's heads. I think the pics speak for themselves.

Saturday 22 March 2008


I've been working a bit on the Red Shadows. The putty conversions are done with Procreate. Really recommended, very easy to sculpt with. I'll make latex-rubber pressmoulds of one or two of the heads, because three of the figs in the packs had caps instead of helmets (hence the decapitated figure in the picture).

You can see better pics also in my gallery with other related and unrelated miniatures.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Neo-Pulp

Having the attention span of a fish, I recently got obsessed with a new army: the Red Shadows.
The Bad Guys from the 1980's Action Force toy-line.
As a kid I never realised there was supposed to be an entire army of the Red Shadow action figure (I had never seen the Battle Action Force comic until a month ago), and never noticed it was basically a nazi-uniform in read with a weird face mask. How evil is that! A red menace of fanatical terrorists in nazi dress.
So I painted a Warhamster fig and Em4 skeleton robots in Red Shadow colours and ordered some BTD (ex-Icon) Wehrmacht figs to convert.
I'll probably use a WW1 German miniature as a base for Baron Ironblood, the Evil Mastermind and Leader.

Some other people are working on similar projects, most notably Soapy (Gripping Beast sculptor) and you should see his brilliant conversions here.

There's a cool site called Blood for the Baron that has all the comics and pictures of the toys and their background. The most insanely brilliant comic story is were Action Force are fighting the Cobra organisation in the jungle and get attacked by dissident Red Shadows who have allied with Nazi's led by Adolf Hitler himself. No he isn't dead, it was a double who comitted suicide. The real Hitler is still alive in 1986 in a bunker in the south american jungle. Crazy!

This all leads to my new concept of Modern Pulp, that combines near-future and post-apoclyptic science fiction with 1980's trash and pop-culture. And zombies. Zombies, zombies. Lots of nazi-zombie figs were released the last few years that can all be painted up as Red Shadow zombies of the late 20th century.

Monday 7 January 2008

Bigger pictures would be nice.

I updated my gallery over at Displaced Miniatures. The pics are somewhat bigger than shown here. I still urgently need a better camera!

Tuesday 1 January 2008

To the barricades!

Finally an update! I managed to convert and paint the first batch of Spartakists. The painting standard isn't the best, as I lost patience and wanted to finish something. What I've got now is a twelve strong unit of sailors, soldiers and armed citizens. All are Brigade Games WW1 figures.

First here the Volksmarine Division. A notorious revolutionary force that went around Germany to support other revolutionaries.

Either red armbands or red ribbon on their caps identified them as spartakists. They've taken off the Imperial cockades on the caps.

The guy on the left has a red collar instead of the blue sailor one. Whether people actually did so I don't know, but it looks good!


Second, armed civilians. The angry mob. Possibly World War 1 veterans, now workers taking up arms in an attempt to change for the better.

These are based on German Askaris. A terrible work to convert the soft hats in what should be fedoras and bowler hats. I lost patience again and painted them while I could've sculpted them better. I removed some water bottles and filled up the belts on their backs to make them less militarylooking. Same with the trousers that originally all had puttees.
Painted in boring civilian colours. Some have red armbands, one a little red scarf.

At last the red army. Reichswehr mutineers, council soldiers joining the rebellion.
Based on an officer, a trenchraider, african Askari and a regular stormtrooper with a (sailors-) headswap. Many Spartakist soldiers refused to wear the steelhelmet which was seen as a symbol of militarism and imperialism that had caused so much death, pain and grief. The flagbearer has is shoulderboards removed and wears his trousers without puttees or boots. The guy next to him only has his old army jacket to identify him as a soldier.