That Forge World Touch

Hey everyone time for an update on that idea of mine. So I had a go at trying to add a bit of realism to my models this week and the results were better than I had expected, I chose to use a picture of one of the first Blood Angel models I painted for the blog (the Sanguinary Priest). The reason for this is because I had used a clear background that I could filter out using the photoshop software I was using.
For this experiment I used free photo editing software called GIMP (yes I laughed too). The programme took a little getting used to but considering I have never done anything like this before I got the very basics in a couple of evenings. A lot of this project was down to trial and error and I lost count of the amount of times I started again. However, I persevered and I am very pleased with the result. The most difficult part of this was layering the images but once I'd learnt how to crop and cut the blending and airbrushing gave a little extra finish to the picture.

So here's the original...

 and here's the Priest ready to fly off into the sunset.

I had a lot of fun with this and as the software is free I recommend that you have a go too. Well I'm off to go create so more photo magic. See you soon.

In the (half a) Company of Angels

Welcome back fellow travellers to The Folly of War. The time has come to take stock of how my Blood Angel 3rd Company is coming along. So far I have added a few units here and there and I am now almost on my way to having a fully painted half a company of marines.
My model list totals thus:

• 3 tactical marine squads
• 2 five man devestators
• 1 assault squad
• 1 company command
• Captain Tycho
• Librarian

It has been great fun painting and researching the deeds of this oh so famous company of marines and finally I got to use them in a game. At the H and L Friday night club I played a 1500 point game against the new chaos codex. My opponant was Mr. Pidwell a fellow enthusiast of the fluff and an avid RPG(er). His army consisted of over 14 spawn, a lord on bike, 2 havoc squads, 2 plague marine squads and the infamous Daemonic Rapper E Didy (epidemeus). Now, I can hear you calling from the rafters "that doesn't sound too hard". Well, my eager readers unfortunately for me every model in the army had the mark of nurgle, including, the Havocs. For those of you who have put 2 and 4 together, you will have realised that for each kill a model does in the army E diddy gets to up the tally making the army better. I'm not saying 14 spawn are any good, but when these spawn have hatred, wound on twos with a re-roll and ignore armour, you do feel slightly (oh so slightly) inadiquate. On the plus side it was a highly entertaining game with a delightfully funny opponant (shame about the army). I left the game feeling better about 40k as looking at the 57 marines in the 1500 which, made me think with pride, what a good job I have done with the army. Even though I was slaughtered (to a man) I loved the imagery that both armies had inspired. The thought of a brave last stand against the diseased, rotting, monstroserties rampaging towards combined bolter, las and plasma fire was fantastic to watch and inspired me to keep plodding away at the rest of the company.

In other news I was trawling the BOLS site and came across an article about home made photoshopped backgrounds for miniatures. The cogs began to turn in my head and I thought I could do that. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to experiment to see what I can produce and I hope to show you something very soon...wish me luck. Finally before I would just like to wish everyone going to PAW this year the very best of luck as unfortunately I cannot make it this year. Until next time travellers farewell.... 

Nurgle's Rot




Assault Marines as promised.

 

A very short post this week, due to an unfortunate case of Nurgle's Rot (stomach virus probably picked up from work). This has given me another opportunity to think about new projects and  existing projects. The Blood Angels are coming on and I have now moved on to painting a unit of devastators and the army is filling out nicely. Why the sudden interest in 40K? Well a certain 6th edition of a certain round based game is (rumour has it) only two weeks away. There is a lot of murmurs all over the Internet and all I can say I just can't wait. It got me thinking how my armies are going to be effected by rules changes. In the last edition my Templars changed radically and I feel this is going to happen again. Whether this is for better or worse only time will tell? Illness leaves you with a lot of thinking time. Is starting a new army now a good idea? Should I have waited...Nah even with drastic sweeping changes armies can be built, modified, tested and modified again. An army is a living thing and it should be allowed to grow and change.  If you have opinions about this please feel free to leave a comment.




My painting table in all its glory.

 

Finally before I go to pass another nurgling here is something that has keep me sane during the low points of my illness. So in the light of all this euro 2012...