warfairy.net is online

warfairy.net is finally online and working with the first four 15mm fantasy products now available.

Fairies and their juvenile siblings, the leaflets

Rooted Treefolk, deceased forest spirits living on in the hearts of trees

Gnome Snipers, few descendants of a once great ancient race of gnomes fallen to magic and technology

The Jabberwocor, a fearsome and weird creature, believed to be legendary by most

As a thank-you to everyone who didn't write us off while waiting there will be 10% off off everything until the 30th of april.

We'll constantly establish and buld up various little ranges in all of which fairies will be present, one way or the other. There'll be bigger creatures too, and , at some point, a few historical miniatures.

These ranges will include miniatures for your 15mm fantasy or sci-fi games and projects, be it skirmish games, dungeoncrawl or army battles.

Things have been sorted out, the sun is shining here, it feels like summer, what a great day! I'm excited to see where this leads. Feel free to share this to anyone interested, of course :) !

Cheers, 

                  Nico  :)

Happy New Year everyone !

May you and your families stay healthy, your projects be successful and your happy days last longer than the sad ones !

Some "Advice from a Caterpillar":

Enjoy your first holy days of 2013, in case there's some left :)

Cheers

The 24th of Decembre

Merry Christmas everyone :) !

Happy Halloween, Movember's coming !

Almost every obstacle is passed, now the most rare and valuable factor needs to be managed - spare time to cast and make moulds :) ! Uni bombed me a little in the past weeks. I'll be doomed if this takes yet another month !

P.S.: If you are blessed with the sacred gift of being able to grow facial hair, join the Movember fun !

Cheers.

Ed's Kickstart

Some of you might already know Ed Fortae from TFM, the miniature industry's fairy godmother, recently launched his own crowdfunding project, "Assimilation Alien Host".

Here's the current status:

At first, I didn't get the project is actually about redoing the shown sculpts in a smaller scale and slightly different design, Keep that in mind ! The info on the project page is quite confusing, without the video, I must admit, it wouldn't have gotten to me.

Everyone crazy about weirdish aliens or in a mood to support, grab your bargain :) !

Cheers.

fairy masters and cookie

Just so you're up to date, I managed to get some satisfying masters of some of the sculpts, see for yourself (at least see what you can on those mediocre photos; again, I apologize for not using a better cam, I'll post better pics once I'm less busy). Right now, a few variations are in the making. 

Oh, and here's a 'Jabberwocor', apparently sculpted from Oreo, on a 40mm circular biscuit:

He's going to get the paint-job of a lifetime ... I hope - haven't picked up a brush in a long time

Cheers à tout :) !

P.S.: Go Muppets.

sunday sketching

old school sketching, no image editing or computer tools. It's simply a concept, the artwork will either be crayon on cardboard or acryl.

one last rtv mould

This is the latest and hopefully last rtv mould (no more sculpting with plastic, superglue and polymers !), I remember hearing someone call moulds like these "trash moulds" (lots of stuff that doesn't really make sense together), an appropriate name for something that, in this case, kind of originated from trash.

I'm very satisfied with how it turned out, no air entrapment where it could be harmful, now it's about making the right cuts (wouldn't be much of a deal if I hadn't been that stingy with space again).
You can see only one half, that's right. I managed to get all the interesting detail into one half, which also makes the separation a lot easier.
The rpm might have to be increased a little for the Jabberwocor, we'll see. As long as there's a few decent castings coming from this mould it served it's purpose.

Usually, you should give these moulds a few (4-7) days rest for the silicone oils to temper and the alcohols to dissipate, which means I can't use it before the end of next week. Well then ... :)


Cheers

Alien Hybrids, 28mm bits

Today, I spontaneously decided to pick up a few old masters I cast some months ago, before I somewhat went away from 28mm. Some are quite messy, I experimented with different alloys and mold-cutting, but there's nothing a blade, a file and a bit of green stuff can't fix :) - off for work, lazy me !

Aliens never had a really great impact on me - alien hybrid types, however, always held a certain fascination.

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Also today, it's German Unity Day, which made me think a little. Not about the reunification in particular, but about history in general. I happened to come across a little pond a few posts ago and forget to mention it's actually the remains of a crater from the various WWII air strikes in Kiel, 14.05.1943 - 04.04.1945. 

Several thousands (6000-6.500) of bombs have been dropped on the 14th of mai alone, a wonder 'only' 354 people died this day.

War is nuts.

Cheers :) !

Dryads or clay on a stick ?

viewer's decision

Using  twigs as armatures for these three (not yet) arboreal beauties was alluringly logical - what else would be more appropriate ?
I'm still figuring out if I have to cut of parts to reduce undercuts without making them look to flat.

The idea was leaving the branches leafless, so you can modify them to fit surrounding terrain.

-

... and for the gourmets amongst you, here's some culinary findings:

Armillaria and a single Red Cracking Bolete, which has a simple but particularly interesting sour taste.

Cheers :)

mould recycling

Whoever made his own rtv moulds yet knows even the more affordable rtv silicone isn't that cheap - and you probably don't want to save money in the wrong place by using cheap silicone. Apart from that, some silcones aren't appropriate for spin casting, if that's what you're searching for.

I'm always keen experimenting and had a few minor accidents using an alternative curing agent.

The resulting moulds aren't satisying at all and there's no use for them, so I figured I could recycle them.

The first thing to do was apply a layer of silicone to the greens and plasticine.
Next, I sprinkled the mould with an equal amount of cured mould-pellets, it's kind of baking a cake.
After a day of curing the last layer is applied, silicone:sand - 1:1 (not any sand, fine quartz sand. I've tried other sand (even with additional curing agent), the results were fine but the curing still took a few days, it's not worth the risk).
This last layer provides an even surface and additional weight.


Cheers fellow cheapskates, let's see how this turns out :)

Warfairy

No pics, I'm sorry.
The first masters aren't satisfying so the pixies will have to face another mould-making process.

If all goes as planned and I'm certain, our little online store "Warfairy" will be up and running on Samhain/Halloween, octobre 31, 2012, with a few minis in stock.

The blog won't be renamed or abandoned, whoever is interested can still follow the sculpting and tinkering. The 15mm fantasy minis will still be the "Mushroom Minis". Whenever the fairies decide to pick some up, they'll carry them to the store :).

Cheers !

moss people

I like to range the woods for inspiration, mushrooms or running from time to time. If you take your time and keep your eyes open, you can see and hear a lot you usually wouldn't.

camouflage - find the frog !

 a little pond

 moss covering dead branches. There's legends about moss people. Looking at the various ways moss can grow, you'll grasp what inspired folks to make up these stories. it feels like the forest grows strange and lively green hair.

 fungus always has it's place. Fungi are the secret rulers of this planet. There's fungus in our bodies, walls, food, beds, ... everywhere around us. The largest living creatures of this planet are fungi; there's even fungi that can feed on plastic and other synthetic materials.

 more hair ?

 roots

 and dead roots on a deracinated tree, let's have a closer look

 I was instantly intrigued by these beautiful roots

 and the moss that grows on them. I'll have to find a way to preserve these for deepwood tabletop terrain, for if I don't

 they'll rot anyway. Fungi, bacteria, beetles doing their job.

 yet more water

 and another tree that fell. here's the top

 and here's the bottom, you can still see the treetop in the background of this picture. It is impressively large and managed to stay alive although almost completely deracinated for years. You can see branches and twigs growing out of it's trunk. It's a bit hard to see this tree is a natural bridge across water and swampy ground, the plants you see are growing from mud and water. Not a single spot around you could step on without sinking into the ground up to your knees at least, but  you can walk on the tree, which also provides a weirdly soft ground, since it's completely covered in nature's carpet, thick moss.

Time to sculpt some dryads while not forgetting about the manticore and fairies !

Cheers :)

Fairies, Pixies, Tree Spirits

A truly little something that came out while tinkering around.

They had noses at first but since they already look like tiny muppets I cut them off again. The mini minis are attached to each other and supported by a 'fairytail' of fairy dust, sparkles or whatever you like to think fairies have around them.

total height of the group is 18mm.

While going back to former projects and for the sake of today's subject, I'd like to share the presumably most beautiful of all sloppy scenes in children's and youth literature:

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"Who is that?"

Cheers :)

more work on the headless lion

Recent progress on the Manticore; he grew claws and more muscles. Also, I cut both arms and one leg off and re-attached them.

He still needs some more muscles before knuckles, scars and some fur can be added. But first, I'll be working on his head and tail as I finally have a concept in mind.

Cheers :)

Puttycore

Hi, again

Since yesterday, I was able to create a basis for the main skeletal musculature and the tail. I attached an image of an older attempt at a manticore's tail but I decided to try something different this time. The armature is still missing a head, for a reason.

What about the head ... ? Well I'm not perfectly sure how to make it. The classic Manticore is depicted having a human face and countless teeth, I'd like to stay with that impression but probably less literate.

Let's be honest here: a 4-legged creature and a human head, that's cartoon. There's nothing wrong with cartoons but I'd like to go a bit more horror. Modern, realistic horror, not vintage cinema horror.

It seems the media constantly tries to be more serious and scientific since the internet made such a huge impact on humanity. People can google now, being sceptic and curious is a lot easier today, people hold a lot more "useless knowledge" and thus are less likely to be horrified.

Horror needs to look more realistic now, so let's try and work with a modern and more probable concept (by the way, this is going to be a Manticore, of course ;) ) and let people feel "Hell, this thing could be out there somewhere !".

Back to the concept: Countless teeth ? I've heard that before !

Sharks ! And sharks are horrifying too ! Endless hunger, lifeless eyes, known to be tougher than a tank. How's that not scary ? Perfect, let's consider working with this :)

But a shark's not really human, is it ? What makes us look human anyway ?

If you ask me, it's what makes us different from all other animals: hands and a very peculiar nose. 

With all this, a Manticore still needs to be a majestic lion. So the mission is clear now: Combine a shark's head with a lion's and point out is has some kind of weird nose without making it look too ridiculous.

Cheers, Nico :)

Wirecore

Following the Jabberwock, this is going to be number 2 of my collection of legendary and mythical creatures. You can probably already tell what it's going to be :)

It's 20mm ground to upper back, aluminum and copper wire. You can get pretty useful copper wire out of scrap cables, by the way - and it's cheap too.

Cheers :)

In the mood for ogres

I recently started sculpting again and my first impulse was "I want ogres !", and I thought why not start a whole unit of ogres ?

Starting on the left, going down: let's call them "Bulldog", "Gremlin", "Scarface", "Grandma", "Basic" and "Orc". Made from pre-made 15mm ogre-type dollies, toe to top of the head 25mm, no hair yet.

The plan is sculpting 6 minis with swappable weapon arms (right arms) and heads, different armor and stances. Not the very fat type, not to beastly but not too human either. They'll probably end up looking more like a bunch of brawlers then like a real unit.

Cheers, Nico :)

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

"Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.



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One of my favourite fantastic creatures. Rather than a phantasm of nonsense I tried to create a (somewhat) realistic Jabberwock. Imagine an amphibian, dragon-like beast lurking in a swamp's deep pond and jumping out like a frog when hunting for prey, supporting the leap with it's wings instead of actually flying - or hanging down a giant tree with it's tail like an opossum.


I might stick some warts and wrinkles to his neck and lengthen the antennae.


Cheers,

the Magic Mushroom :)

Walking Rocks

Hello again :)

2 more sculpts finished: 

Earth elementals, vivid ground, with simple heads but without further, noticeable anatomy. Brown stuff, green stuff, wood, no wire. Standing about 22mm's tall. The eyes look shallow, they are actually quite deep.

Cheers,
              Steinpilz