Blog Update and News.

Hi all.

So this is the first post since last October. It has been the longest absence from the blog since myself and Zebulon started it. Now this isn't because we have stopped hobbying or anything. I just think we've found we have less time than we maybe used to have. Speaking for myself I know I probably have less time in which to hobby and so the time required to take photo's and write blog posts I've probably felt is better spent actually hobbying.

So this leads me to a conversation I had with Zebulon about a week ago. What to do with this blog. Well firstly we aren't going to shut it down. We've been doing this for almost 10 years! (First post was in August 2009 for anyone interested). Now Zebulon has his own Instagram (link on the side of the page) and suggested that we make that the new regular home of SotA and retire the blog. I didn't want to take that approach in regards to retiring the blog. So we have set up an Instagram for the blog and I've set up my own account separate to the one for the blog. These and Zebulon's own account will effectively function as our means of posting regular updates on projects we're working on. If you want to follow us on there then these are the names to search for:

Zebulon: @zeb_sota or ZebulonXIII
Blackmane: @blackmane91
The Blog: @signoftheaquila

If you have Instagarm then why not follow us. I hope we'll see you over there. As for the blog it won't be going anywhere. Instead myself and Zebulon have agreed that I will primarily look after it going forward. I'm hoping I'll be able to achieve a couple of posts a month (probably posted sometime over a weekend). While it's not a great deal of output these posts will be 'finished' project posts by which I mean finished a unit/scenery piece/etc as opposed to work in progress posts. Those will be the kind of thing I'll be posting to Instagram going forwards.

So I hope we'll see some of you join us on Instagram and I hope we'll still see you here from time to time.

As always thanks for taking the time to have a look.

Blackmane

Zebulon's House Hawkshroud

Hi all,

Its been a very long time since myself or Blackmane have posted, but that doesn't mean to say that we haven't been busy. I've been bitten by the Knight bug... so may I present my current project.... House Hawkshroud

AoS Magic Alter/Objetive Marker

Hi all,

I've been noodling around with some terrain ideas for AoS (if you not seen my previous post) and through a bit of trial and error I came up with an idea for a magic alter.

It's was cast in epoxy resin in a 40mm square jewlery mould. The bottom half had Carroburg Crimson added to it for the colour and the top was painted in screamer pink. The whole thing was dry brushed in Emperors Children. The bottom half was agitated whilst drying to give a bubbling feel. The top half had the middle pulled up whilst it was curing to give a support in the middle to leave a gap.

The skeleton bits were painted in Zandri Dust and the lathered with BFTBG. The base came from an old toy painted in Mech Standard grey, dry brushed with Dawnstone and washed with Agrax Earthshade.

 ET Voila! Took maybe 2 hours to make in total. Looks good on the table top and has more of that fantastical/high fantasy feel I mentioned in my previous post. 

Well that's another one in that bag! As always feel free to leave a comment below whether they be good bad or inbetween and thanks for reading.

Zebulon

AoS Floating Islands Terrain WIP

Hi all,

Im back with another terrain project I'm working on. My gaming group is having a bit of an AoS renaissance as they are doing a Tale of 4 Warlords log. As our club was largely 40k orientated we have lots of terrain for 40k, but not as much variety for AoS. So I've set to work tinkering on some bits and bobs for us. 

My main thought is AoS isn't a classic fantasy setting, I.e medival, but more 'High Fantasy' like Warcraft or Conan. It just seems more fantastical now and I'm working on terrain to try and reflect that. 

After searching for inspiration I saw some part for floating islands and I soon figured out how to do it.

The islands themselves are made from expanding foam and hole filla. Very cheap to pick up and easy to use. I followed the basic Terrain Tutor method for making these (if you dont know about The Terrain Tutor, seriously go give him a look, loads of tips, tricks and ideas!) 

I've made 3 island in total and I'm currently working on the smaller two to get to grips with how it all works before tackling the larger island above.

The chains are of equal length and space to give 3 good legs. They came from some Halloween chain I picked up years ago as it was being sold off and thought I'd find a use for it eventually. Each link is plastic glued to the next to form a decent bond, it's still fairly fragile but is ok for table top use of taken care of. The hardest bit was trying to get the hang of the chains to make them seem they are hanging rather than holding up the island. 

The pick below is the second attempt at the chains. While still not totally perfect they do look a lot better than the first attempt.

So there you have it, the first piece constructed! I'm actually waiting on the second to dry right now and then I can base that one too.

Well that's all for now. As always please feel free to leave comments below, whether they be good, bad or inbetween!

Zebulon

For Sigmar!: Vandus Hammerhand

Hi all,

Today I've got a post on the leader of my Stormcast Eternals and as is befitting it's actually fallen that this is the 400th post here on Sign of the Aquila (It's only taken 8 years 10 months haha).

So Vandus is the nominal leader of my Stormcast force as I've chosen to do the Hammers of Sigmar with the core of my force being from the Hammerhands specifically. Finishing Vandus has been a long time coming. I started him Feb/March time. However myself and my partner were starting the process of buying a house so I started to scale my hobby activity back and pack stuff up. I finished a couple of other small hobby projects but as he wasn't close to finished I decided to leave him until I could dedicate the appropriate time required rather than rush to finish him.

Since we moved he has been sat in a box, I started work on a couple of LotR projects (see the posts from Friday 8th and Saturday 9th if you're interested and haven't seen them already), and I just generally found myself occupied with house related things (the list of small things to fix, do, etc, seems to keep growing). However with the announcement of new Stormcast reinforcements and a new edition, I thought I should probably work to get him finished. Not only that it also marks the last Stomcast to be finished from the original starter set I bought around winter time 2016 haha. He has however played in one game and I'm sure Zebulon could attest to how effective he was given he delt most of the wounds taken by his Oldblood on Carnosaur, swung the tide in favour of my stormcast in the fight against his cold one cavalry, before finishing the game landing the the killing blow on his Slann Mage Priest.

Lets take a look.

 

Sons of Durin!

Hi all.

Today I'm back with another post about some Lord of the Rings models I have recently finished. This time round it's a set of Dwarves. GW put these out to primarily represent Dwarves of the Third Age but really they would be fine to represent any Dwarves I think. I had one of the old boxes of 24 sat around and after finishing my Morannon Orcs (see yesterday's post), I fancided doing some more LotR stuff and these fit the bill nicely. I've only done half of them so far as I find 12 at once is really about my comfortable limit for batch painting (I did a long time ago paint 24 Warriors of Minas Tirith in one go and found it such a drag).

Picture time!
(Realised I forgot the traditional group shot, oops!)

Servants of the Eye!

Hi all,

Today I bring some pictures of my recently completed Morannon Orcs for the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit game. I don't know why I decided to paint these up, I just got the urge to do so. However I am glad I did as I actually really enjoyed doing so and, at the end of the day, that's part of what this hobby is all about.

So on with some pictures.

Laketown House Prototype WIP (Picture Heavy)

Hi all.

Happy 1st of the month. So it has been a long time since a post went up on here. For myself that's as a result of going through the whole process of buying a house with my partner and all the stuff that goes along with that. So I didn't have much chance to get much painting done for a while. 

(This could be a long post so if you require refreshments or anything now would be the time)

However on and off I have managed to work on another project. As you may have guessed from the title I have been working on my own Laketown House for my Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit models. So this project that I have started on is a culmination of a few things. Firstly, myself and my girlfriend spent a lot of time watching through all the extra features on the extended editions of the LotR and Hobbit films. I had seen the LotR ones before but had never found time to watch the Hobbit ones. As I watched I kept getting little bits of inspiration and seeing so many people working with such dedication to something they really cared about must also have rubbed off. And secondly, thanks to Zebulon, I came across the Youtube channel of The Terrain Tutor (some of you will no doubt be aware of his work. If not I highly reccomend checking him out, link here) where I started to pick up all kinds of useful terrain techniques. Thirdly I was inspired by the scenery work Zebulon himself has done recently for his 40k collection. 

(more after the jump)

A Very Late Challenge Results Post

Hi all.

So this is a quick, and very late, results post for the painting challenge between myself and Zebulon. Unfortuantely a busy few weeks prevented me from doing this post sooner.

So the challenge this time was to pick a mini that we knew the other had and get them to paint that. So it could be somehting we'd had for ages and not got round to painting or something fairly new that we wanted to see done. I picked for Zebulon to do his take on Shadowsun which he got many moons ago and he challenged me to paint the Branchwych I had recently bought as part of the Sylvaneth start collecting box.

After a week of voting the results stood at 4 votes to my Branchwych and 1 vote to Zebulon's Shadowsun. So that makes my Branchwych the winner.

Thanks to everyone who looked at the post and to those who voted as well. We really appreciate it.

Blackmane

Painting Challenge Finished

Hi all,

So today marks the end of the first challenge of the year between here on Sign of the Aquila. This time round it was a pick something you know the other has and would like to see them paint. So for me, Blackmane picked Shadowsun, a model he picked up for me years ago and I picked for Blackmane to paint up his recently acquired Branchwych.

So below you can find the completed models for you to have a look at and decide which you think deserves to win this painting challenge. 

First up my Commander Shadowsun.