Orcs and Goblins: 30 mm Drawings

If I am going to be honest, which I am, these were drawn some time ago. Definitely in the last two months but had forgotten to post them.

These are very much inspired by the LOTR figures created by GW and apart from using them in D&D games I'm not that sure if they will come in handy anywhere else. 

I could definitely print them at 33% and use them to make 10 mm miniatures, however I'm not that keen to do that. 

Most of my 10 mm stuff has been focussed on historical miniatures.

Saxons, Vikings, Romans and the newest sheet I've been drawing, Ancient Greeks, which still need colouring so will be a while yet.

I enjoyed making these Goblinoid troops, but as soon as I had I realised I had nothing much to use them for.

Still they were fun to do and kept my eye in. Perhaps a use for them will present itself for them in the future.

Presently I'm very much in the process of reorganising my miniature collection. I have sold all my GW dark elves to Mirfield Miniatures along with my epic collection and various board games. Its been difficult to let them go, but I can't justify keeping boxes of models I haven't looked at for over 10 years.

I have been revisiting all my 3 mm fantasy armies to compensate for the loss of the larger stuff.

I intend selling off more later in the year.

Anyway hope you find this post vaguely interesting, thanks for visiting the Blog. 

 

Preparing to play Frostgrave Solo

Today I am going to run through some of the background thinking and organising I have been doing in preparation to play an extended version of Frostgrave. 

Where I travel across wilderness terrain in a sort of Hex crawl manner, using terrain cards and dice rolls to decide if the players have managed to navigate successfully to where they need or want to be.

Visit some locations which have NPCs and thriving communities and others that are more typically Frostgrave by nature, ruined cities and dungeons. To this end I have created a few maps and systems to create the world they will explore. I have also used many supplements that I will list at the end of this post to help in that endeavour.

A close up of the local area the gang will be travelling through and investigating as they do. Starting in the village of Sagan and travelling North  between the two blue glass beads. 

The Gang record sheet that I have put together for this adventure.

The first Hex to be travelled through on the first day. The terrain created by using some cards that I copied from a guy called Avian about 15 or 20 years ago now, and which I recently redrew for clarity. They originally designed to create a random battlefield for Warhammer or Kings of War, so many thanks to Avian.

I like to make colour maps for D&D and have used the same method here, but when it comes to the practicalities of running a game, D&D or otherwise, I prefer to use black and white version to make notes on and for clarity.

This particular Island is one I have used before to play D&D in. Its called Calandara and is part of the Shattered Archipelago consisting of many different sized islands. This particular area has not seen any action in any of the last 5 years of play, so I decided it needed some attention.

A couple of views of how the whole set might look, prior to any tabletop play.

Each Hex on the larger map is represented by another Hex shown below for more detailed exploration.

As you can see, if you squint, it takes 4 days to cross a hex in a straight line. Of course there is always the chance of getting lost or having a random encounter slowing the procedure down.

Thanks to the following for helping in various ways:

Frostgrave, Shadowdark, D30 Sandbox Companion, Une, The Perilous Wilds, Sandbox Generator.

5 Parsecs from Home

Hope that's them all, if not will add some more in subsequent posts.

Cheers.

Roman Miniatures: 30 mm and 10 mm

These are the hand drawn miniatures I showed last post, now completed and initially in 30 mm.

Both backs and fronts and each miniature is slightly bent to enable affixing to the base and to suggest a little more of a 3D feel.

I'll use these in my D&D games.

However these can be used in another scale, here they are copied to 10 mm and based on 20 by 40 mm bases.

These represent twice as many miniatures as the 30 mm copies, but its these I really drew the figures for. It makes them far more detailed than I could ever have made them draw straight in 10 mm.

I did once draw some in 15mm, but even then the details got lost, so I reverted to 30 mm. Also it allowed me  to create D&D miniatures at the same time.

Here you can see the comparison between the two.

Presently I have a sheet of LOTR style Orcs and goblins on the go, just need cutting and gluing.

 

Creating Flat Miniatures

I start making my flat miniatures by making sketches in a book. These are a combination of ideas from my own head, or ideas from other miniature manufacturers, see the list later. These are all ideas  for my DnD campaign set in Ghastminster which I may be revisiting next year.

Some of my drawings never get past this stage because I lose interest or because I don't like them, but others get to be developed into physical miniatures eventually. 

This is not a quick process and takes me ages to complete. I often get stuck at a point and have to revisit at a later date.

At this stage I  am  not always drawing to scale, although most medium size creatures /monsters are, as I have  a 30 mm template I use to get the proportions right.

Some ideas are huge.

I mostly try to create pages of flats that have many of useful figures, as opposed to just one or two, although that is unavoidable at times. I started trying to draw them at 15 mm scale but I found that I got far more detail at 30 mm and I could use them in a variety of different games.

So after the initial sketches are done, I progress onto organising my drawings onto an A4 sheet of paper.

Here is a sheet I worked on recently to create Roman troops, with their allies that I could use for two separate uses. Primarily these are going to be printed up at 33% and used as 10 mm flats.

However I also use  them as random models at 30 mm for use in roleplay, they'll make some lovely guards or barbarian adversaries. 

After drawing them in pencil, at the right size, I fold the page in two and use a light board to trace the outer image, which I can later fill in with pencil. Then I work over the lot in ink, using Pilot or Uni-ball pens or something similar. Finally I thicken all the outer lines and emphasize some others as I see fit. 

Finally I photocopy the black and white version and colour it. I never colour the original just in case I cock it up or I don't like the colours I chose. Sometimes I use acrylics and paint them, but recently I bought some reasonably nice pens and used them instead, as with these below.

Here we have Legionaries, Spanish infantry, Numidian light infantry and Gallic infantry.

I tend to colour the reverse side at the same time so as not to get myself in a mess.

These can then be colour photocopied, cut, glued to black card and based, ready for use in a game.

Next post I will show some of these in 10 mm based up for Warmaster type games.

Influences include: Games Workshop, Foundry Miniatures, North Star Military Models, D&D Dungeon Masters Book, there will be many more ideas that have seeped into my head but can't recall them all.