'Home' from JohnSe: Homer Jungle Statue

With all of the responsibilities that come with being an adult, I haven't had a ton of time to paint over the last few weeks, but I did manage to steal a glance at this weeks theme challenge. I was pretty surprised to see it had something to do with "Homer Terrain". That was sure to be a unique set of entries, and I wracked my brain trying to figure out something that would stand out from the crowd.

Naturally, most entries will likely depict a terrain feature from one of Homer's epic poems. There were sure to be plenty of Trojan Horses, Gates of Troy, and Greek Beach Camps. I thought we might even see something pulled from the Odyssey (maybe a Cyclops cave or two?), but I decided to go a bit farther afield. I thought I could get a more liberal interpretation of the "Homer" theme for my terrain piece, and I considered doing Fenway Park, with a 28mm outfielder unable to snatch a "homer" as it sailed the Green Monster. That seemed beyond my skills though (and wouldn't really lend itself to a wargame), but I spotted a cheap plastic knick knack depicting Homer Simpson as a snack food Buddha. Inspired by his zen-like countenance, I decided to base my terrain on the toy. A perfect start for a conversion into a mysterious jungle idol, carved by some long dead civilization of peculiar lemon colored tribesmen!

I built a small dais from wood and foamcore, and gave the whole thing a stippled coat of spackle/dry wall compound to mimic the weathered stone of the idol.

A dark gray primer gave the whole piece a uniform, stone-like base to begin painting.

I used a variety of grays and browns, with the faintest hints of yellow, green and pink (no doubt remnants of the festive paintjob the idol once must have sported).

I used numerous brown and gray washes to weather it, and added quite a bit of flock and tufts to represent the encroaching jungle foliage that will one day engulf the statue.

I don't like to take all of my wargaming so seriously, and plan on using this idol for some tongue-in-cheek Rogue Trader or Fantasy gaming. A unique subject for a unique category! Altogether, I was pretty pleased at how it turned out.

Wait....

"Home" Terrain????

Doh!

'Armour' from JohnSe: Space Ghost Space Marines

Right! For the Armour Theme I knew I wanted to tackle a painting challenge that I'd been putting off for nearly 20 years. I'd always dabbled with Warhammer 40K, but the increasingly grim and humorless turn the game took after Rogue Trader always rubbed me the wrong way. Even in the mid 90's I had an idea to put together a custom chapter to fit in with Games Workshop's Space Wolves and Space Sharks (since renamed to Chapter Charcaradon). A brotherhood of space marines fashioned in the image of the greatest late night talk show host of the mid nineties: Space Ghost.

I'll admit, it's not a great idea. My college roommates and I used to watch Space Ghost religiously, but the show's been off the air for over a decade. And yet, this dumb idea won't leave me alone. Whenever I read a blog post about Oldhammer games, or flip through the latest edition of Warhammer 40K in the game shop, a tiny voice whispers to me, "You should paint some Space Ghosts." Therefore my fellow painters, to exorcise myself of this nagging idea please humor me while I get this out of my system.

I based the paint scheme on the classic Space Ghost uniform, but since I'll likely be putting these on the table against my 8 year old son and he has no idea who or what Space Ghost is, I've tweaked the color scheme a bit closer to something he'll recognizes: Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

I'm retaining the overall white scheme and black mask/helmet, but only veterans get the red wrist bands. Space Ghost's flashy yellow cape will be reserved for the chapter master himself.

The Space Ghost emblem wasn't really doing it for me as a chapter symbol, so I cooked up one of my own and printed them on decal paper.

I tested the color scheme on three modern figures, but for the most part these are classic Rogue Trader beakie marines I've cobbled together from eBay collections, stripped, repaired and upgraded with current special weapons when they've been missing.

That's a total of 13 space marines for 65 points I believe. And hopefully just under the deadline... the paint is still wet on a few of these!

'Nostalgia' from JohnSe - Old School Space Orks

I was all lined up to crank out some medieval foot when I noticed that the first theme for the Challenge was "nostalgia". I'm a late arrival to historical miniatures, and got my start with Rogue Trader era figures from Games Workshop. I picked up a few of the classic 40K figures to replace those I either lost or never acquired 25 years ago, but until now they've been nestled away in storage drawers. These old sculpts flip all of my nostalgia switches, so I broke out the "Snotling Green" paint and painted them up.

I was initially a bit put off by the sculpts. Most of the rank and file are all hunched up, but after getting some color on them I really dug how full of character these guys are.

I loved all of the little packs, bags, ammo and webbing and the retro, 2000A.D. style sci fi armor their sporting (especially those pineapple shoulder pads). I was really happy to finally give these miniatures some love, attention I'm sure they would have lacked had it not been for the "nostalgia" theme of the Painting Challenge.