Even more Blood Angels!

A Blood Angels Sanguinary Priest, a couple of Assassins, some Vanguards and a Scout Squad. 

Might this be the last of them? We shall see! 

Sanguinary Priest

Vindicare Assassin

Culexus Assassin

Blood Angels Vanguard Squad

Another Vanguard Squad

Blood Angels Scouts

Marvel Crisis Protocol: A Spider-Foes Commission

Here's the first half of a Marvel's Spider Foes commission I've been working on. It's been a great opportunity to put paint on some minis I don't have in my collection yet! 

From top left: Kingpin, Green Goblin, Bullseye, Mysterio, Kraven, Doctor Octopus, Carnage, Venom, and Lizard! 

Blood Angels Redux

Here are the most recent minis from a Warhammer 40,000 Blood Angels commission I've been working on this year. Quite a lot of gold bits on these dudes! 

Blood Angels Death Company

Blood Angels Death Company Dreadnought

Blood Angels Death Company Chaplain

Blood Angels Terminators

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Best and Worst after Five Years

Inspired by a recent episode of the Strike Better podcast, I have been thinking about what I consider the best and worst models in the vast and growing field of Marvel Crisis Protocol minis. I quickly discovered that a lot of the stuff from the early days suffers by comparison with more recent models, while on the other hand how do you even pick a top five with so many gorgeous sculpts to choose from at the top tier? 

So I thought about different evaluation criteria, and chose the best and worst from each of the categories I came up with. (I am also limiting my opinions to models I've assembled and/or painted myself, which to be fair is nearly all of them at this point). Without further ado, here are my picks for various categories, counting down to Best/Worst Overall Model. 

5. Best Human: Bullseye. The long-delayed CP10 box (Miles and Gwen) is a masterwork in a sea of early participation medal-caliber minis, but Bullseye (ironically the worst human being) sets the standard for a simple, representative and easy to sculpt regular people. There's just enough anatomic detail to guide highlights, and a well-sculpted face that is small but paintable. His pose is simple but evocative of his character: smug, sneering confidence. (God I hate Bullseye so much) 

Baron Zemo, one of the original ten, is also a triumph of simple, evocative design, positively screaming that he is a baron, after all. 

Worst human: Shuri. In the running for worst model in the game, every design decision about her is baffling, from the number of minuscule parts on her sprue to her awkward pose. The finished model is anatomically sketchy and is very hard to paint well, with small surfaces to work on and soft detail especially around her neck and shoulders. 

4. Best FX: Really it's Lizard, both for the water effect and the explosive lunge. The flying sewer cover really sells the kinetic action of the scene. 

But I want to shout out Amazing Spider-Man for great use of an explosion, debris and terrain to nicely fill out a base that would look awfully naked with just a Spider-Man on it. An absolute redemption for Peter Parker as well, since the core box model is unremarkable. 

Worst FX: Green Goblin. The clamshell design of the exhaust leaves unsightly seams when assembled, which are very difficult to correct given the smooth, bubbly 'smoke' surface it's supposed to represent. The model itself looks pretty nice, but it is a design failure in my opinion. 

3. Best box: Yondu/Nova, but this is at least in part due to the fact that I haven't finished the runners-up boxes yet: Klaw is an astonishing realization of an artistic vision that should not be able to work, while M'Baku proves that AMG have nailed the naturalistic asthetic that they struggled with in the early days. Same with Squirrel Girl, who is an amazing model packaged with the very best model in the game (no spoilers!) 

Yondu and Nova might be peak MCP in terms of model designs, though. Just great, evocative, characterful minis, FX on both of them, and a good level of detail that doesn't overwhelm or dictate the painter's brush. 

Worst overall box: I remember being so disappointed with Hawkeye, one of my favorite comic book characters. He's perfunctory, but specifically the bulk of his upper torso concedes too much to the z-axis challenges inherent in creating a mold for 3d models. Meanwhile Black Widow 2 is one of the few models that I stopped painting midway - my brushes just got too sad to touch her inelegant, mis-proportioned sculpt. 

Ebony Maw/Black Dwarf also get a shout-out here; I remember being so disappointed by Black Dwarf in particular, he just looked like someone had scaled him up from a smaller original size. 

2. Most characterful: The Blob. As if we needed more proof that complex isn't necessarily better, The Blob is an absolute slam dunk in terms of visual communication. You get that he is solid not just from his bulk, but from his hunched, forward stance and jeering smile. Meanwhile there is just enough detail on him to catch paint with, while staying out of the way of areas that need painted-on detail. Just a joy to paint and a great achievement. 

Least characterful: Ms. Marvel - another rare disappointment once we get past the teething stage of MCP design. Little Marvel is just one piece! I will say that the plate that Big Marvel is crushing underfoot gives a good sense of the character's mass, but they both feel lazy and uninspired. I feel like there was an attempt here to play to Kamela Khan's youth and naivete, but while she is the same age as Miles, she is portrayed as a child while Miles ia shown as a young man. Borderline misogyny, and a really cool character done dirty. 

1. Most gratifying to paint: Cable. Not a fan, I consider him a parody character, thought he would look stupid with big dumb muscles, but he turned out great! Everything about this model works. His big dumb chin works. His stupid muscles work (compare to Hawkeye's huge pipes, on a guy who is meant to be lithe). His FX are really cool, and he gets the rare smoke AND laser combo. 

Most disappointing to paint: Doctor Voodoo. Voodoo HATED my brush. Disappearing detail, hard to reach places, FX that don't sell, too many colors, and a mediocre pose just resulted in a meh, uninspired paint job. He was just a big chore; normally I will paint a miniature in a single sitting, but this guy took me an entire weekend of sighing and teeth gritting. 

 

And finally: 

Best model: Gwenpool. Just exquisite in every respect, masterfully characterful with comic-book debris, a pet and explosion on the base, well-represented details that are a joy to paint, a well-proportioned anatomy, etc. Just a tour de force. 

Worst model: Venom. A standout from the soft-soap era and not in a good way, he is very difficult to paint with any dynamism. He looks like a balloon filled with potatoes. His costume logo is at once too soft to paint nicely and too prominent to correct with freehand. Even his eyes are crooked. Moreover nothing about his pose feels at all threatening or deadly. He looks like the family friend you call 'uncle' leaning in for a hug. His one redeeming feature is that this model is caked up, rivalling even Rhino's bubble butt. 

Honorable Mentions: 

The Original Human Torch. This model should not exist. How the sculptor managed to capture something as ephemeral as a body made out of licking flames is beyond my comprehension. Here again, though, you've got a model with plenty of sculpted detail that still gets out of the way in a few places to let the painter get to work instead of just doing a 360 edge highlight. 

Blade. An easy contender for 'best FX', he is wonderfully dynamic and balanced, and there's a lot you can do with the clawing hands at his feet - my interpretation here is only one example of many. 

Nebula. If you needed proof that you don't need FX to make a model feel dynamic, Nebula is Exhibit A. The model looks like it is defying the likes of physics, but somehow it is perfectly balanced on the base. Just gorgeous and one of my favorite all-timers. Guardians as a whole release were a bit of a redemption for MCP, and really presented a new standard of quality that subsequent releases would be compared against. 

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Something Wierd

 A new client contacted recently. He wanted me to paint a small collection of goblin pets he had acquired in a crowdfunding campaign. 

It wasn't till I started painting them that I realized that this was in fact an alt Squig Herd unit! 

But yeah, 10 monsters and two "herders", it checks out! 

I painted 'em up just like the box art. There's no way I could come up with anything better on my own! 

Rom the Space Knight

 Story time. 

When I was a kid my favorite superhero wasn't Superman, or Spider-Man, or Thor, like a normal person. No, my favorite superhero was Rom, the Space Knight! 

A tie-in to a Japanese robot toy, Rom was a way better comic than it needed to be, written by the tragic Bill Mantlo (who also wrote my other favorite comic, Micronauts, which as it happens was the other big Japanese toy/Marvel collab - but that's another story). Rom was a story of genuine heroism and sacrifice, and of stalwart determination against all odds. 

Because it was a toy tie-in, Marvel didn't own the rights to Rom, and so the chances I'd ever see him in a movie or game are slim. But ever since Marvel Crisis Protocol first came out in 2020, I've been bugging all of the Marvel fan-sculptor studios to do a sculpt for him, and after years of begging one of them took pity on me. So here he is! 

That thing in his hand is a Neutralizer, an energy weapon that he uses to banish the evil, shapeshifting Dire Wraiths to their home dimension. Unfortunately, to humans, when a Wraith is human form, it looks a lot like a big robot shooting a regular human with a human-disintegrating ray gun. Oops. Let's just say that ol' Rom had some 'splainin' to do, but if you wanna find out what happens, you're gonna have to read his book yourselves. 

Anyway, I used a helpful MCP website to do a card for him, so I can use him as a Beta Ray Bill proxy. It's not a perfect replication of his powers, but it'll do for now. 

I can't wait to get him on the tabletop to zap some aliens! 

Papa Weiner's: a Hive City Delicacy

Got this cool building from Print Minis last month. 

It's a one-stop sausage factory, with a grinder, smoker, and point-of-sale all in one place. Turf to Table, just don't ask what's in it. 

Apparently it's Zone Mortalis compatible, but I'm leaving it as a free-standing structure for now. 

It was a real project, let me tell you! All the roofs come off so you can put guys inside.