Archive Page 11

Miniature Painting Warmup

Published January 23, 2010 Miniature Painting 4 Comments
Tags: , ,

So I selected a miniature to paint from my bucket of D&D miniatures. I picked on the Azer Fighter from the War of the Dragon Queen Set, here’s the promo picy, mine didn’t look anywhere near that good out of the box:

I decided to put this guy onto a washer base to add a bit of heft and to make storage in the future easier, it also meant I could try out a different idea for a dungeon tile look base. First up I glued four small pieces of plastic to the top of the washer and filled the hole with some cheap air dry clay. I then removed the fighter from his plastic base:

Next I had to get the little guy ready for painting, the only effective way I’ve found to strip the paint wizards puts on the mini’s is to use acetone. It does damage the plastic the mini’s are made of so I have a soft toothbrush I dip in the acetone and then softly rub the mini and then rinse in water. Normally the paint comes right off although sometimes I can’t get it out of all crevasses without risking damaging the mini. It’s surprising how much detail is normally covered up by this layer of goo paint. After the paint stripping I stuck a pin in the base of each foot and mounted him to an old plastic soft drink bottle top. Then it was of to be primed with a gentle dusting of white primer. Sorry I didn’t get a picy of him undercoated but here he is cleaned up and mounted:

Then I started to paint him. I tend to do metals first followed by plain colours, I’ve found I get less odd glittery bits that way. I’d also decided to paint him up as a standard dwarf rather than as an Azer Fighter. I’m fairly happy with how he turned out although the shield is pretty terrible, I struggled with trying to get any kind of shading/highlighting onto the flame patten on the shield. I also need to go to lighter shades when highlighting as he still appears fairly dark and muted. His dungeon tile base turned out fairly good although it could use some bones or something else. He’s not about to win any mini painting contests but he’s good enough for gaming with, He looks slightly better in person I find the camera is always a harsh critic when you photograph miniatures (probably just me):

I also finished off two others I was painting mid last year before I got sick. First up was my metal practice guy Hammerer from Blood war, heres the promo wizards shot:

I basically wanted to practice metal highlighting and blending, initially I really didn’t like how this guy turned out, but looking at him now I don’t think he turned out to badly. As with all my miniatures I need to work on my blending and paint smoothness. Mine always seem to come out grainy, I did like how his mud base turned out:

Last one I finished up was a ranger originally a Grey Cloak Ranger from Archfiends, here he is in his promo shot (sorry it’s pretty small):

I gave him a forest themed base and mounted him so he’s balanced on a log, This does make his cloak look bunched slightly funny but I’m not really ready for sculpting yet. I’m not convinced using herb’s and spices as leaf litter in a forest really works but I figured it was worth a try. I’m happy with how he turned out although he still suffers from graininess the other two suffer from as well:

I may post these up onto coolmini but I’m not sure I’m ready for that again. Hopefully with enough practice my painting will get better.

WordPress Project Bars

Published January 22, 2010 Wordpress 3 Comments
Tags: , , , ,

So I was hunting around for some project bars to provide a rough graphical representation of the completion stage of my top 4 current projects (progress meters). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a widget that was available on wordpress (did I miss it?).

I spent a fair chunk of time exercising my google-fu and stumbled upon this site:

CSS Global Progress Bar

Thinking all my problems were solved I attempted to upload the solution to a sidebar text widget…no good, seemed the text widget would only accept inline css. I spent an hour or so rewriting the above solution so that it was fully contained inline. I thought for sure it’d work this time but it would appear wordpress filters all styles from dl, dt and dd tags…Frustrating as other tags are allowed styles but apparently not those 3 or the em tag (query sent to technical support). I really wanted a solution now so I spent another hour playing around with the code replacing the above tags but trying not to destroy the look of the bars and got some working css code:

I did a few versions of the final code as I wasn’t sure what I’d use,  I then ended up needing a customized one anyway as my sidebar is a bit of a funny size;  examples below:

Stock Bar

65%

Stock Bar
<p style=”margin:0;padding:0;”>Blue Bar
<div style=”margin:0;padding:0;width:216px;height:41px;background:url(bg_bar_25.gif) no-repeat 0 0;position:relative;”>
<span style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:200px;height:25px;background:url(bar_red_25.gif) no-repeat 0 0;top:8px;left:8px;overflow:hidden;text-indent:-8000px;”>
<div style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:200px;height:25px;background:url(bg_cover_25.gif) repeat-x;top:0;left:130px”>65%</div>
</span></div></p>

Narrow Bar

50%

Narrow Bar
<p style=”margin:0;padding:0;”>Small Blue Bar
<div style=”margin:0;padding:0;width:216px;height:23px;background:url(http://somewhere/bg_bar_15_196.gif) no-repeat 0 0;position:relative;”>
<span style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:200px;height:15px;background:url(http://somewhere/bar_blue_15.gif) no-repeat 0 0;top:4px;left:8px;overflow:hidden;text-indent:-8000px;”>
<div style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:200px;height:15px;background:url(http://somewhere/bg_cover_15.gif) repeat-x;top:0;left:130px”>65%</div>
</span></div></p>

Short Stock Bar

65%

Short Stock Bar
<p style=”margin:0;padding:0;”>Blue Bar
<div style=”margin:0;padding:0;width:108px;height:41px;background:url(bg_sbar_25.gif) no-repeat 0 0;position:relative;”>
<span style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:100px;height:25px;background:url(bar_blue_25.gif) no-repeat 0 0;top:8px;left:4px;overflow:hidden;text-indent:-8000px;”>
<div style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:100px;height:25px;background:url(bg_cover_25.gif) repeat-x;top:0;left:65px”>65%</div>
</span></div></p>

Short Small Bar

35%

Short Small Bar
<p style=”margin:0;padding:0;”>Blue Bar
<div style=”margin:0;padding:0;width:108px;height:23px;background:url(bg_sbar_15.gif) no-repeat 0 0;position:relative;”>
<span style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:100px;height:15px;background:url(bar_blue_15.gif) no-repeat 0 0;top:4px;left:4px;overflow:hidden;text-indent:-8000px;”>
<div style=”position:absolute;display:block;width:100px;height:15px;background:url(bg_cover_15.gif) repeat-x;top:0;left:65px”>65%</div>
</span></div></p>


You can grab an example zip from here. I suspect I’ve butchered good css and html practice but it works so that’s all I really wanted but feel free to take what i’ve done and correct the code. As you can see it’s working on the side bar of my blog so I’m counting this one as a win :).

Initial Mapping Finished for D&D Group

Published January 16, 2010 Roleplaying , World Building Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , ,

Well I’m finding the new projects page very useful, it lets me see what I could be working on and provides motivation to get a project finished so I can cross an item off. Seems the old Psychology of crossing items of lists still works on me. If it helps me finish more things I’m more than happy to use what helps.

These are the initial maps for the world my D&D group will frequent, half the fun for me as a DM is building a world and being able to throw whatever I need into a setting without me feeling like I’m breaking one of the predefined settings.

The World is called Etana and the main continent/island the group/s will start on is Mytivia. For the moment we are running 2 seperate sets of characters a primary set with full storyline and RP elements and a secondary set who are pretty much used for trawling around dungeons and receive double the experience award you normally receive as per 4ed. The Primary set will affect the geopolitical landscape were as the secondary set will be used for off the cuff adventures were I literally just sit with a laptop a pen and a piece of grid paper and make up some dodgy monster bash on the fly :).

A little info on the maps, the world map has been done in Winkel Tripel Projection, well as close as I could get doing it by eye in Gimp. Very few details are on the world map at this stage as I want to be able to use player input to add features details and names, it’s their world as well. The smaller continental map of Mytivia itself shows the major cities and main roads.

The Continental map was made using a combination of inkscape and gimp. I had to move the map to gimp as inkscape began to have serious performance issues with the 200-300 mb file. When the map is open in Gimp it is 50cmx30cm @ 300dpi with a rather large number of layers and can take along time to refresh, but I gave the map a lot of space so that I can zoom in and add more details later on. I suspect I may just end up copying segments of the map out however and making more zoomed in local maps in a new Gimp file to help with performance.

All of the icons etc I drew up in inkscape with the exception of the Compass rose which I downloaded from wikimedia commons. Again names of some places etc have been left off so that my players can suggest names and help build the world up and they feel more attached involved with the game world.

I’m fairly happy with the resulting maps, although there no were near as good as what some of the people churn out across at the Cartographers guild. If you want to learn anything about mapping check out their forums.

I’ll post up more detailed/geopolitical information about the world later on as time permits, I have far chunk of info written down and some still in the old brainbox. In the long term I’ll put all the info into a wiki so I can sort the information in a more logical fashion rather than just a pile of loose Blog posts and make it easier on me to reference when DM’ing.

Click the images to load the large version

Etena

Mytivia

I think I might do some miniature painting next 🙂

Vanilla and Fruit Cheesecake

Published January 14, 2010 Recipe Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Wanted to work out a chilled Cheesecake recipe. Played around with the ingredient quantities so as to make 12 smaller muffin sized/single serve cheesecake portions rather than a  large single serve cheesecake.  Swapped in different biscuits for the base and adjusted the butter quantity to match. Added my favorite ingredient to the mix; vanilla,  everything tastes better with vanilla. Very happy with the outcome and it tastes nice as well. The below pictures are from my 2nd run through, I used raspberries on the first go through and strawberries with this one. I’m also working on a gluten friendly version.

Ingredients (makes 12-16 muffin sized cheesecakes)
Base
2 pkts Scotch Finger biscuits (500grams)
200 grams of butter melted

Cheesecake filling
250 grams Cream Cheese (Room Temp)
50 grams Caster Sugar
150 ml Cream
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
30 ml boiling water
1.5 teaspoon Gelatin
80g fruit of your choice

Topping
80g Fruit (same as above)
30g Caster Sugar
1 Teaspoon Gelatin

Directions

1. Crush the biscuits up in a Food processor or by hand

2. Melt the butter and mix into the Crushed biscuit mix

3. Place a 1-2 tablespoons of the above mix into each muffin segment of the muffin pan (I used a silicon pan for easy removal). And squash the mix into the base of the pan and up around the sides, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to set.

Chessecake casings in pan

4.  Put the Cream Cheese in a mixing bowl and using a mixer or a wooden spoon mix the cheese and sugar together well

5. In a small bowl mix the boiling water and Gelatin and allow to sit

6. Add the cream and vanilla essence to the  Cream Cheese and Sugar, mix well

7. Add the gelatin and water to the above Cheese/Cream/Sugar and mix in

8. Gently fold in the fruit of your choice into the above mix , make sure fruit chunks are no bigger than 2cm square (about blueberry size)

9. Spoon the mix into the base cups and place in the fridge to set:

10. Place some pieces of fruit to the  side to decorate

11. Blend remaining Fruit, Sugar and Gelatin until smooth

12. Place blended mix in microwave safe bowl and cook on high (mines a low powered microwave; 800watt) for 2mins and stir, 2mins and stir, 2mins and stir, 2mins and stir. Mix should be fairly thick, leave to cool.

13. While the above is cooling cut the fruit up if needed

14. Either decorate the top of the cheesecakes with the fruit and then spoon on the topping mix or spoon on the topping mix and put the fruit on last whichever you prefer. Place into fridge to finish setting (1-2 hours). Serve and enjoy. Don’t freeze the cheesecake, eat within about 3 days and keep in the fridge.

Hopefully I didn’t forget any steps 🙂

Bookcase One

Published January 10, 2010 Woodworking Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

We needed another new bookcase in the house (quickly) as we had gained another pile of books. If Kindles ever catch on I may have an over supply of bookcases. I decided to try out some new ideas on this bookcase as well as designing around the fact my router had burnt out.

After viewing a few ideas and bookcase around the net, decided on a double thickness side design. Basically you double the thickness of the side uprights but cut the inner piece into 5 segments and space and glue them the width of the shelf apart. The uprights appear routed but are double the thickness, the edges are then trimmed with a thin piece of timber to cover the lamination.  I added a lip to the front of the shelves and back brace at the back of each shelf to help absorb some wobble/shelf bend and stop books falling of the back.

The bookcase stands about 85 cm high and is around 140 cm long. I trialed using only screws to hold the bookcase together so it can be pulled into it’s component pieces for easy transport. This seems to have worked okay but in future I’ll use tusk joints rather than screws more work but much more stable and no chance of screws ripping out. I have a 2nd Bookcase to build for some friends and this will utilize tusk joints.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, I should have spent more time sanding and used tusk joints but the side upright doubling worked very well and the bookcase looks and is very solid if the screws ever present a problem I’ll drill the holes out and glue and dowel the whole thing together. Time to move on to the next project.

Few pictures

First up One of the bookcase assembled but un-finished

Second One of the bookcase stained and varnished un-assembled

Third one of the bookcase assembled and Ready for books

Few additional details
Timber: Pine
Stain: Walnut Brown
Finish: Estapol Gloss (Not Water based)
Cost: $80-$90 AUD
Time : 1 weekend and a few evenings

Project Status


WWII Project First Release

80%


B-tech Buildings Five

20%


Design Victorian era City

15%


Something Different

5%


Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 110 other subscribers

Content Released Under

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Attribute to Sirrob01 with a link back to my blog