More Terrain, an Unknown Giant and a Caption Competition

Apologies in advance if this update is rambling and makes little sense but I've only had around 2 hours sleep due to my nose and eye deciding for some reason that they were under attack and the only thing they could do to fight the imaginary invaders was to produce millions of gallons of tears and snot along with blasting said tears and snot around the place with bone shaking sneezes. I was seriously contemplating gouging off my nose at around 4 this morning as I'd probably have slept better with a gaping hole in my face.
Anyway moving on, not a huge amount of mini progress this week as I spent my time making some more ruins which seems to be what I do as a form of procrastinating. Before we get to the terrain I finished the unknown Giant who still needs IDing

I'm not sure if he needs something in the way of tattoos or war paint to break up the big areas of skin.

Here's the terrain that I put together this week, it's more hunks of polystyrene covered in poly filla:

Here's the full thing that for some reason I couldn't get in focus but these two shots are more so you can see the size, it's mounted on an old 12" LP.

Here's some arty close ups:

Here's some pics of all the ruins together, with a roving band of Villagers and Gnomes searching for their lucky sheep. The pictures are a little on the dark side as my spot-lamp is on the way out but it kind of adds a moody feel to the shots:

Here are a few shots of how I hope the new terrain piece will act as a kind of raised arena or centre piece for future skirmishes:

That's it for this update apart from to leave you with a Caption Competition for the pic below, the best entry (judged by me and the missus) by 5pm GMT on Sunday (9th Sept) will get a random couple of mini's from my lead mountain, so get your comedy hats on and make me laugh.

MASS PAINTING ATTEMPT

In anticipation of the metric shitton of Mini's that I bought in for as part of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter I've decided to cease my ebay activities for awhile to try and catch up with the huge backlog that I've been steadily building up. I've found over the last couple of months I've spent most of my hobby time prepping mini's ready to be painted only for another load to turn up in the post as soon as I'm finished. With this in mind I've decided to break my models up into groups based on basic tones and colour pallets for example all the 'greenskins' together, all the pink fleshy things in one group and anything undead in another group and so on.

So to start with here's everything pink and fleshy ready to be 'fleshed' up, the thinking behind this is that if I get all the base shading done on all the mini's in a oner I can add variation in skin tone etc at the last stage with the highlighting:

Here they all are flesh based and washed in Ogryn Flesh wash and some Devlan Mud for the deeper recesses.

Here's a nearly finished example of what I'm going for across all the figures.

Below (on the right of the pic) is the last mini I received before my self imposed ebay ban, if anyone knows what range he's from let me know as he was just listed as a 'wargames giant'. There are no markings on his base and I'm guessing from the crudity of the sculpt that he's from late 70's or early 80's. To add to the mystery he seems to be cast in some very strong heavy duty metal as he weighs a ton despite being hollow and his sword is the least bent piece of lead I've seen. So if you have any idea give me a shout.

The only finished paint job I have for this update is an old Ral Partha Goblin Archer from their Fantasy Collector Series, i've gone for a more yellowy skintone rather than the usual green. This is also probably the last time that I do this as it was so fiddly but I managed to string his bow as it always bugs me seeing un-stringed bows. As I didn't have any wire thin enough to hand I used a stray beard hair which I won't be doing again as I don't think my nerves could take it due to the tendency of me to loose the hair due to me breathing near it. I've taken the photo's of the Goblin against two different colour backgrounds as I'm still not sure which shows off the mini best, please let me know which you think works best in the comments below.  

And on a completely none mini related note here's a picture of Gilbert one of my cats chilling on the couch

CITADEL SOLID BASE C28 GIANT

Unfortunately I've not made any progress with the terrain that I started last week, so instead here's a mostly Giant based update.

Just finished painting one of the Early Citadel C28 Giants, the ones with the separate weapons and heads, the one highlighted below:

There's some more pics of the various parts up on the collecting citadel mini's wiki:
http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Giants_-_C28_(solid_base)

I nabbed him on ebay for a couple of pounds awhile back as I think he was listed as an unknown wargame troll or something along those lines which was lucky as these early figures seem to go for silly money.

Here he is again this time with a flash:

I'm not 100% sure on the colour of his clothing as I don't think it contrasts enough with his skin tone, I should have gone with a similar colour to his belt or a more earthy blue.
And here he is with the small orc warband I've got going,

NEW ADDITIONS THIS WEEK:

This week I've added this lot to the lead pile:

He's one of these guys, sculpted by Nick Biddy and released in 1987:

He's a little on the flat side detail wise with not much in the way of definition but should hopefully look good alongside the other giant once he's painted up.

Along with the fella above I got these two guys:

The first of the two is the Citadel Giant Hill Troll sculpted by Kev Adams. Ever since I saw him on the amazing Somewhere the Tea's getting cold blog (http://teasgettingcold.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/mane-attraction.html) I've wanted to add him to the collection. He has such a dopey looking face and should fit right in with the Orc warband. The second figure is one of the amazing Jes Goodwin Ogres (http://www.solegends.com/citc/c23ogres.htm).

Also managed to nab the old citadel Zombie Dragon along with an early Citadel Creeping Young Dragon for £12.

They turned up as a buy it now for them both and as people seem to be asking for £30-50 buy it now for just the Zombie dragon I went for it. The Zombie Dragon needs a little more cleaning up and sorting out as there a ton of really deep recess's clogged with paint and I seem to be missing the very tip of the tail along with the neck being broken in half. It should hopefully be easy to sort out with a little pinning and some greenstuff.

Also nabbed a couple of the dwarf Lords of legend for a future dwarf warband.

Lastly but by no means least I finally managed to get hold a copy of Slaves To Darkness for a decent price (under £40) which seems crazy as there are still copies being bid on that are over the £50 mark, all I need now is a copy of Warhammer Armies and the Siege book and I'll be completely Oldhammered.