THE WICKEN KING - SMC'16 loot review #3

Hello fellow painters, builders, and collectors!

Today's article will be my third SMC loot review. I will take a look at The Wicken King bust from Broken Toad. It is sculpted by Christian Hardy before he started working for Games Workshop.

This bust has been on my radar since its release. The lack of a face gives a creepy vibe to figure. It also features tons of different materials which should be a lot of fun to paint!

I bought the model at Scale Model Challenge, where I met Kris in the flesh for the first time after having known him a couple of years through Facebook. We had a great chat about models, brushes, and the event itself.

Back on topic!

The model ships in a cardboard box with the Broken Toad logo and a sticker with the name and details of the figure. The old boxes used to have box art, but I can understand it is easier to have a more general box to ship your products in.

Broken Toad box of the Wicked King bust.

Inside the box, you will find the Wicken King sandwiched between two layers of foam to keep all the parts safe. The model consists of three parts - the main body and two shoulder pads.

All the parts for this bust

The shoulders on the bust have little holes on them where the shoulder pads sit on. You cannot make a mistake where to place the shoulders pads because of this. Dry fitting them showed me that they fit really nice and do not require much filling.

Dry-fitted the shoulders on the model

The model will cost you 25 pound (excl. shipping) which comes down to about €28 or about $30. I think this is a more than reasonable price considering the model you are getting! If you are interested in buying it, you can buy it here from the Broken Toad web store, or check here for a regional reseller!

I am still pondering how to paint the bust. All the textures on the model (metals, chainmail, wood etc) deserve some individual love but the idea crossed my mind to paint it up as a ghostly, ethereal being. Kind of like the King of the Dead from lord of the rings. Luckily I still have some time to decide as I promised myself to finish my orcs first, before starting a new project.

If you happen to have some idea's on how to paint it like a ghost, please leave a comment down in the comment section. I am interested to see what idea's you have come up with...

That's it for this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you liked it, feel free to share it with your friends via any media you desire.

Until the next time!

Noctu the Bounty Hunter - SMC'16 loot review #2

Hello hobby friends,

If you are reading this that means you clicked on the link for my second SMC'16 loot review. This time I will review the bust of Noctu the Bounty Hunter made by Dennis Zarnowski from Savage Forged Minis.

The cardboard box Noctu comes in

I bought the booth at his stand at Scale Model Challenge. Noctu is a Sci-Fi bust that has been on my wishlist for some time now. The bust depicts an alien in some sort of space suit or armor with nuts, bolts, and some vents. He is also smoking a cigar. (kids, please don't smoke)

If you remove the lid from the cardboard box you will reveal the bust, safely surrounded by foam. It is tightly packed to prevent the bust from moving too much inside the box, possibly damaging the bust or any of its details.

Noctu inside the cardboard box

The figure is a one piece bust. this does mean that if you want to paint some pieces separately with, let's say, an airbrush, you need to mask off parts of the model. I'm still trying to figure out what would be easier, to paint the armor first and mask that in order to paint the head or visa versa. If you have suggestions please feel free to post those down below in the comment section.

The model itself requires very little modeling or clean up. I had a small mold line on the sides of the armor near the edge. Nothing a little putty and some sanding couldn't fix. The back of the model (the part you would paint black) is a bit rough. If this bothers you, you can sand it down, or you can use a diagonal cut plinth to mount the model on. It is essentially a non-issue, but I do want to mention it.

Noctu right side

Noctu left side

As you can see this bust offers you a lot! You can do some cool stuff on the skin, giving him some reptilian look or play with different colors, even paint tattoos or tribal paint. For the armor, you can give him prestige armor or give it a cool weathered and worn look.

Verdict: I think this is an amazing bust! Lots of detail and you can apply different techniques. Normally I would maybe suggest having a painted box art but in this case, because of the variety of possibilities you're able to paint this figure, I'm gonna let that one go. There is no reason not to recommend this bust! If you want to get one yourself, you can go to this link. The price is €35 which I think is more than fair!

That's it for today. If you made it this far I want to thank you for reading. If you have painted this model, please share your work in the comment section so I can take a look and maybe get some inspiration.

See you next time and happy painting!

Scale Model Challenge 2016

Hi, guys and girls!

A little over a week ago I visited the Scale Model Challenge! It was a great experience!

To me, it is a social event where I can meet tons of people I know from my time in Chilling Wargamers or from Facebook. This year, their 10th anniversary. set new records in terms of visitors, traders, clubs, and contest entries.

My SMC'16 haul

The first person I met was Manuel from crazywenky.de. He brought me one of his famous Crazy Grip miniature holders! Before I had this I was always using a champagne cork or a pin vice to hold my miniatures but that isn't the most comfortable way to hold it. The Crazy Grip is a wooden handle for your miniatures. It works like a charm and feels really comfortable for long painting sessions!

The Crazy Grip!

Next, I walked over to the HUGE stand of sceneryworkshop.nl where I met up with Patrick. I've been a long time customer of his company and it was nice to finally meet him in person! He had one of the largest and most prominent stands on the event and it was obvious he put a lot of work in!

Alongside the SceneryWorkshop stand was a small stand where Maartje from magie-miniatures.blogspot.com was painting. She was trying out the Scale75 unnatural flesh colors.

For a little while, I was wandering the expo area and I walked into a table where the guys from chestnutink.blogspot.com were painting and giving demonstrations. After a demo from Francois about painting NMM steel, I was interviewed by the local newspaper about the demonstration.

I also had a very nice one-on-one talk with Kyle from http://Mr Lee's Painting Emporium. He was nice enough to give me advice on how to paint contrast in the skin of my orc bust! We spend a good 30 to 45 minutes talking about shading and highlights. It has been a huge help and it really improved how I look at the model now!

Most of my team was spend at the booth of Broken Toad and Savage Forged Minis with Kris and Dennis. Dennis is an artist who sculpts busts and miniature figures, something which in my humble opinion he is very talented at! We used to hang out in Google hangouts back when I was still a member of Chilling Wargamers, so we go back a while. Kris is known from the excellent products from Broken Toad. From pigment powders to brushes to busts, Kris has it all! And it's all beautiful!

My personal highlight was when I got to shake the hand of my source of inspiration and information. Roman from Massive Voodoo! I was kind of starstruck when I approached him because to me he is some sort of painting hero. He turned out to be a super nice guy as well!

Me and Roman! Good times!

The only "bad" thing about events like this is that they are a real-life money sink... I already started saving up for next year!

Thank you for reading my rambling... I want to write a couple of short product reviews of the goods I bought at SMC so keep a look out for those! (I promise I'll post them soon, really!)