Author: notavi

A Useful Little Workstation

Back in November of 2022, I was just recently migrated off Twitter to Mastodon and was starting to learn about the rest of the Fediverse. Someone called Ari was just starting up a Pixelfed instance for mini-painting called, appropriately, miniature.photography.

My first post on the site was sharing my new portable hobby station. Just a simple MDF kit, but also spray painted to give it extra protection.

An mdf hobby station, fully assembled and painted gray. It looks shiny and new.

I put this together to make it easier to make good use of the rather small amount of hobby time I got (having a young family sure does kill most of your free time). It has its dedicated spot on the shelf which makes setup and pack-up relatively quick and easy.

That station is still with me today, though it now looks a little less immaculate. But it’s served me well so far. One of the minis is even the same in both pictures (for fun, see if you can spot which). I do tend to take a meandering approach to getting figures painted.

The same mdf hobby station, but showing clear evidence of paint spillage and other wear and tear.

Since then, Ari eventually decided that running an instance wasn’t for him. He’s given us all plenty of notice, so I figured it’d be a good idea to migrate some of the stuff I’d posted over there to this blog before the instance goes. You’ll probably see a few more posts where I go back and discuss old projects so I can ensure some of those photos remain available somewhere.

And thank you to Ari. Miniature.photography was my place to share my projects with others for quite a few years, and led to me discovering many other talented painters to follow within the wider hobby corner of Mastodon (frequently simply shortened to Hobbyodon). I could talk more about how wonderful it’s been, for now I’ll share a blog post from someone else whose captured it wonderfully.

Having a go at Non-Metallic Metals (NMM)

Whilst the simplest and easiest way to paint the metal bits on your mini is just to use metallic paints, there’s a whole other effect you can go for using nonmetallic paints to simulate the highlights and reflections. I’ve been interested in giving it a try for awhile.

My first attempt was a couple of ninjas, painted up to look like their blades are catching the moonlight. These were good to start with as the thin katanas made it a lot easier to get a good effect.

Two 28mm Ninja figurines, each painted to look like they’re sneaking through the night with the moon glinting off of their blades.

After these, my next NMM attempt kept the same theme but had a slightly larger surface to work on. For this attempt I focussed mainly on getting the right “shapes” and ensuring there was plenty of contrast. The final result is a bit rough – it looks good at a distance but is a bit messy when inspected more closely.

For attempt #3, I went with a more of a bronze/copper hue, painting both the weapon and the shoulder pads of a lich. My colour plan for this (based on Vince Venturella’s Copper NMM guide) involved using the following four colours:

  • Vallejo Game Colour Charred Brown (#72.045)
  • Reaper Master Series Gory Red (#09278)
  • Reaper Master Series New Copper (#09306)
  • Reaper Master Series Maggot Green (#09282)

This kind of worked out ok, but the very pinkish hue of the New Copper looked a bit wrong, so I wound up using a thin glaze of RMS Explosion Orange (#09219) to bring back more of a red and yellow hue. My first attempt looked alright, if a bit muddy, but I wasn’t completely happy with it. I then went back in and worked on bumping the contrast up a notch, which delivered a much better result.

The Halberd, first attempt on the left, with the right showing the result after bumping up the contrast

This is definitely just the start of my NMM journey, but so far there’s a few key lessons I can share.

  • It will look terrible right up to near the end, when it will start to look good (even then, it looks its best from a distance).
  • After you’ve placed your highlights expect to go back and forth repainting bits until it looks right.
The finished Lich, holding his awesome NMM halberd.

Australian FLGS

Ive been keeping a list of friendly local game stores (FLGS) that I use to find products I’m looking for because I prefer to order things locally if I can. I haven’t ordered from all of the retailers listed (I generally favour Combat Company and Milsims, for convenience and range respectively).

It may be convenient to just order everything off of Amazon these days, that comes at the expense of local game stores that provide not just our games, but frequently spaces for the gaming community to play and meet.

While you probably won’t get a better price (Amazon has a few anticompetitive tricks to prevent goods being offered elsewhere at a better price). You can at least be sure that the profit goes to a local business rather than a multinational residing offshore.

After all, when’s the last time Amazon organised or supported a local gaming event?

NSW

The Combat Company

Website https://thecombatcompany.com/
Location: Mortlake, NSW

Located within Sydney’s Inner West, these guys are a good source for Games Workshop, Infinity, Bolt Action and Wyrd Miniatures stuff

The Hall of Heroes

Website: https://thehallofheroes.com.au/
Location: Campbelltown, NSW

Victoria

Milsims

Website: https://milsims.com.au
Location: Mont Albert, Vic

Milsims carries a much wider range than most, so is well worth including in your search for harder to find items.

Western Australia

Alpha Strike Games and Hobbies

Website: https://alphastrike.com.au/
Location: Seville Grove, WA

Is one of the few game stores to carry a decent range of Ironwind Metals (Battletech) figures.

Tactics

Website: https://www.tactics.net.au/
Location: Perth, WA

Australian Capital Territory

Jolt Games

Website: https://www.joltgames.com.au/
Location: Canberra, ACT

Seems to mostly focus on VR these days, but does carry some tabletop gaming stock.

A Blog is born

I’m still setting this site up, and I’ll have to come up with a better name, but it exists. It is here.

I’ll be using it to share the miniatures and tabletop stuff I find myself working on. I’ll probably continue to post WIP shots to Pixelfed, and to do more long-form write-ups here.

If you’re interested in hearing more, go ahead and add me to your RSS reader of choice. If you don’t have an RSS reader of choice, consider adopting one for the sake of the indieweb.