Bytor and the Snow Dog

 This is probably the longest time I have gone without posting. Its not like I have not been doing anything hobby wise, it is just that I have not had the time to post. Also, a lot of things have been happening in my life, mainly my mother passing away over the 4th of July weekend. It was not unexpected but it was still unexpected. We came up for our annual summer visit to see my mom and sister and her family. We got there on the 3rd and she passed away on either very late on the 4th or early in the morning on the 5th. It further reinforces one of those morbid cliches that once an elderly person breaks a bone, it is quickly downhill health wise. She had broken her ankle in late November and it all went down hill from there. It has been hard and I am still processing it all. It does not help that I am the executor and have to figure out how to handle the estate.

In terms of the hobby, I have been on a roll to paint up as many 15s as I could. I really wanted to whittle down the pile. I have a new project that I have started so really wanted to clear the deck, so to speak. I still have a pile of lead to be painted but I feel like I can switch project now.

One of the last few figures painted is Bytor and the Snow Dog. If you are a RUSH fan, you will know which RUSH albums they come from. Yes, Bytor is a bad guy who fights and loses to the Snow Dog, but in a later song Bytor is a good guy that defeats the Necromancer. The main reason for these two is that long ago, in the very early 80s, one of the members of the D&D group I played in named his fighter Bytor. As he went up a few levels, the DM gave him an animal companion (familiar) that was a large beast that was part  arctic wolf/part polar bear. This was Snow Dog. They fought many battles together. I've aways wanted to have a model of these two in my 15mm world. This is my interpretation based on what I could find in 15mm scale:

I wanted a more fantasy Viking figure to be Bytor, but this Wiglaf Miniatures warlord did the trick. Nothing really matched my vision of Snow Dog. I thought of using a Reaper Miniature wolf or dire wolf, but they were way too big. I happened to find this wolf from Lone Gunman Miniatures and seemed to be a good size as it was a little larger than some of the other manufacturers' dire wolves. 

For fun, I played around with having them on a snow base, with some iced over puddles on Snow Dog's base. 

Now that I've got my 15mm painting out of my system, I am moving on to my next project. 

Sick of Being Sick Part 2

 Once again I have been hit hard with a respiratory illness. This time, it is pneumonia. My son had a really bad bout of influenza that knocked him out at the end of May and took him a week to recover. A week later, I got it bad and it morphed into pneumonia. Last week, I was feeling a little better but this past Tuesday, I reversed course. My oxygen levels were actually higher last week than they are now! So, after three chest x-rays, using a steroid inhaler, and lots of antibiotics, I am still feeling like crap. Wednesday, I go in for a CT scan. I have no physical energy and little desire to do anything. The depressing thing is that we were going to take this big family vacation to Texas over the 4th of July weekend to see my daughter who is doing an engineering internship and then we would all go visit Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. Well, we decided to cancel the whole thing. Fortunately, we could cancel the hotels with no penalties. I was really looking forward to this trip. We have not had a family vacation in at least a year, maybe more due to COVID. 

Anyway, as I said, I have had no physical or mental energy to do anything, including hobby stuff and academic (I have two manuscripts I had hope to be done by now). So, here are some figures I painted up over a month ago...I think (brain fog). 

I have been looking up friends and colleagues last names to see if they have a coat of arms. If the search hits show the same or very similar coats of arms repeatedly, I use them. Not that I go into too much depth in my research, but I found that the name of one friend, who is of southern Italian descent, was originally Norman. Another friend's last name, which is Greek, goes back to about the early 11th century. Both miniatures below are Essex15mm from their eastern European medieval range. They are mounted singly for more skirmishy games like Lion/Dragon Rampant.

 

The white things are supposed to be birds

COMBAT!

New Life for an Old Mini

 When I first jumped into 15mm medievals and fantasy, there was not a lot out there. One of the companies I discovered was Thistle & Rose Miniatures. I ordered some Norman knights to see what they looked like. This was before the days of online ordering. I painted them up but I don't know what happened to most of them. As I was cleaning my workbench, I found this guy. His horse was a mess. The legs had broken off. The rider was still intact. On a whim, I decided to see if he was compatible with any horses of other manufacturers. Lo and behold he was! He now rides an Essex unarmored horse.

I rarely, if ever, repaint any of my figures; only to touch them up if their paint is chipped. Keeping them the way they were originally painted is my way of keeping a record of my painting styles and progress over the years. So, while he has a more "advanced" painted horse, he is at the level of painting going back to the mid 90s. 

Size Comparisons

 Its been a crazy ten days. First, I drove up from here in eastern Tennessee to Indiana to pick up my daughter from university. Then, this past week, she and I drove about 15 hours from home to Texas for her engineering internship. I flew back and got in very late Saturday night. Yesterday was Mothers Day, but my wife did most of the cooking. I decided to take it easy today and have been preparing for a D&D that will hopefully happen sometime this summer. My co-workers are interested in having a game. 

I painted up these two right before my daughter and I left on our Texas road trip. I took some pictures now to show the difference in sizer between Essex 15mm and Khurasan Miniatures 18mm. I should have added an old Table Top, now Alternative Armies mounted knight for even more comparisons.

Khurasan from their late 14th Century range

Essex from their Feudal & Early Medieval range

Granted, the Essex knight is riding
a small horse, but what a difference!

As I've probably said in previous posts, the Khurasan infantry are not too out of place when side by side with other makes. I even took one of their mounted knights and stuck him on an Essex horse, and he didn't look too bad. It is their horses that seem gigantic. 

I am winding down this painting spree. My next task is the clean up the work bench. It needs it. I'm just going to close my eyes, hold my breath and throw out a lot of junk that is on there. I suffer from collecting do-dads and brick n' brac thinking I'm going to use this stuff for something. 

I'm Sick of Being Sick

Like many people out there, I have had a running battle with respiratory illnesses since back in December. Currently, its been on and off sinus infections. I had planned on taking and posting pictures of all the medieval and fantasy figures I have been frantically painting, but instead I am laid up in bed, or too miserable to function.

I have to say, the one advantage to waking up at 4 am and feeling like you are going to choke to death on all this junk you've built up is that I just go into my work home and paint until the sun comes up. I'm being sarcastic here. Yesterday, I probably got about 2 hours of sleep. As a result I barely made it through the day.

Here are three pictures of stuff.

It might be a stretch, but what is that on his shield? Hint:
it was used to kill the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

Cool LEGO minifigs series this year. My kids are big fans. You can't get any Orc-ier than this guy.

Chocobos Finished

I finally finished them. They were a somewhat rushed job, but I'm pretty happy with the way they came out. I painted the base colors and then gave them a wash of black diluted with Future acrylic floor wax. Then sprayed with a clear, flat paint. My biggest decision was how to base them. Ideally, I wanted them mounted two to a base, but it didn't look practical. So, I just left them on the washers that I used to paint them.

This more-or-less ends my work on fantasy figures for awhile. As I mention in several previous posts, I'm getting burned out on them. I hadn't planned to be painting as many figures as I did for my planned War Between the Barbarians. This is the first time you're hearing of this? I've sort of mentioned it in previous posts. Basically, I have a big box of ancient Britons/Celts that were painted up as proxies for fantasy barbarians. Since then, I've been building up fantasy barbarian units with Demonworld and Copplestone figures.  I've been thinking about selling the Celts, but before I do, I wanted to have a battle using them. 

In my old D&D world, which is the background setting for all fantasy battles I have, there are these barbarians called the Bruins that live in the northern wastes. The southern tribes have become more "civilized" by settling down, and some tribes have even set up kingdoms. The northern tribes have maintained their barbaric identities and still pride themselves for raiding soft. civilized peoples. A brutal but charismatic chieftain named Wojhan has united the northern tribes and wants to "liberate" the southern tribes from their civilized ways. He has recruited allies including Gnolls and Beastmen. The campaign is a sort of a prequel to the current setting of my D&D world. During this time, the southern Brunnic kingdoms are not yet completely independent and still maintain some loyalty to a high king. Eventually I will have at least one battle, but I'm not sure when.

Chocobos Work in Progress

I have been occupied with battling my health insurance company to pay for a least some of my hospital visit of three weeks ago. They seem to think dehydration, jaundice, and a heart arrhythmia are no big deal. Probably because of this, I've not been sleeping well lately. If I can't sleep, I might as well do something. That something is chocobo.

I was never a Final Fantasy fan, but it the idea of warriors riding large birds was sort of cool.

Source: www.creativeuncut.com

Then, there is Taarna the warrior riding on her bird-pterosaur-creature from the movie Heavy Metal:

So, I decided to make my own chocobos, but it took me a long time to start this project. I'm not breaking any new ground here. A gamer has his own avian army, which gave me some inspiration.

This is what I've done so far:

I used Splintered Light Miniatures' terror birds for the steeds. The riders are Essex Miniatures Tartar light bowmen. I had to pull apart the legs as much as I could, carve away some of the bird's body, and then use polymer clay for a saddle to get the bowmen to sit somewhat naturally on the bird. The bird's tack was made with glue-soaked paper. I should have made the reins thinner and they look pretty stiff, but I am not sure how else to make them. Knowing some about bird anatomy, I decided against having a bit in the mouth. Having a metal bit would probably break or damage the beak.

The next step is to paint them and then decide how I want to base them. I normally base my fantasy armies using the old WRG Ancients basing scheme, but the birds are pretty big and they don't really fit the 40mm x 30mm bases that are used for cavalry.