Influence: Ray Harryhausen

Clash of the Titans, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian were all the business to my pre-teen brain. But I want to dedicate this blog post to one man in particular. I just got done watching the 2012 documentary Ray Herryhausen: Special Effects Titan. It was pretty good and worth the 1 hour 37 minute run time. He had a decades long career creating stop motion special effects models.

Three of his movies made a lasting impression on me as a youth. 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Jason and the Agonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).

 7 Voyages is ok, basically it’s a build up for what is to come. For Jason and the Agonauts, the fight scenes are bigger and better: the fight with the harpies to free the blind man from their torment begs for a WFB scenario to be built around it. 

And battle with the three guys taking on the seven skeletons is legendary!

 Lots of good stuff there, I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it. What are you waiting for?
Now Clash of the Titans. This was a movie I grew up on. I was 9 years old when it was made but didn’t see it until it came on to cable. When I did see it, my mind was blown. It is in the group of movies that defined for me what fantasy/sci-fi/adventure was all about. 
Gifts from the Gods, taming a Pegasus, fighting a beastman, out smarting three witches, defeating the Gorgon and saving the princess smack of old school rpg to me.

And Ray Harryhausen brought it all to life on the screen. His genius fired my imagination. And it seems to me that I wasn’t the only one. It’s my belief that the models Mr Harryhausen made for these movies had a big influence on the much loved gaming miniatures from the 80’s. Whether the producers of my favorite miniatures sight Ray Harryhausen as an influence or a contemporary doesn’t really matter that much to me. The work that he did is a huge inspiration for me. I also know that I’m not the first Oldhammerer to blog about Ray Harryhausen and I hope that I am not the last. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I stand on the shoulders of giants. 

May Ray Harryhausen’s contributions never be forgotten.

Ruined Temple

 I made this Ruined Temple to go along with the Minotaurs that I’ve been painting lately. Reading the Realms of Chaos books will tell you that Minotaurs guard temples dedicated to Chaos. This temple can be used many different ways: cultists or sorcerers performing rituals, sacrifices, or  a Minotaur guarding an arcane relic or effigy to a specific deity. It has a very Greek influence and I purposefully made it none specific to any God so it could be inhabited by any type of creature. Even a Gorgon.

Many times when I’m painting a miniature or making a piece of terrain, I think of a story that goes with it. A little background or a scenario. So here’s a scenario idea that goes with this Ruined Temple.

The Temple:

There is a small but ancient temple just off of Old Forest Road. Although the temple is in ruins and generally not in use for rituals to the Old Gods anymore. This temple houses a long forgotten yet powerful magic item. Upon the temple’s small alter is a ... 

(insert magic item here). This temple is guarded by a rather large Minotaur (and possibly some beastmen depending on the experience of the adventures/warband). And being attacked by band of goblins (and/or orcs). The greenskins will try to kill Brarag and burn down the temple. They will also attack anyone that gets in their way of accomplishing this task. To make matters worse, Azogorim the Wizard is there to steal the magic item. (He enters from the opposite side of the table from the warband). Will the adventures be able to get to the magic item before Azogorim has the chance to steal it? Will the adventures take the magic item for themselves? Will they befriend the Minotaur Brarag, leaving the magic item on the alter and help him defend his temple from sacrilege? (There is a one in six chance the magic item is cursed!)

If the adventures search the interior of the temple they may find a passage way to a room beneath the temple. This room contains an undead champion of Chaos, three skeleton warriors and two ghouls. After defending these enemies the adventures find: 4D6 gold, a Ring of Invisibility (May be used once per battle, lasted 1D3 turns), Mithral armour (no movement penalty), winged boots (+1 Initiative).

Leave it to Cleaver

 So the blog quiet for a little while but I assure you that I’ve been busy. 

We’ll start with this C25 Minotaur 

Damn, check out dem buns. He’s one of the later ‘87-‘88 C25 Minotaurs with head that is separate from the body. Around this time Citadel/GW stopped naming their individual miniatures. So I gave this guy his own name. His name is Brarag. 

Here’s another picture of Brarag with his buddy Bhovus:

They have a new sit com this season called Leave it to Cleaver. (They are previewing some Townscape that I’m working on)

Thanks for stopping by!

Nurgle Champion

Painted this guy up a way back in May of 2019. I don’t remember what I used for the base coat. It was probably P3 Traitor Green, that’s my go to color for Nurgle. He’s from  https://knightmareminiatures.com/  excellent Pantheon of Chaos range. I repainted the tentacles, horns and nurgling last night as I wasn’t happy with them the first time around.

He’s a bit bigger than the old RoC Citadel champions from the late ‘80s and has a wider stance. I pinned him to a 32mm base but that left a bunch of unused real-estate. I stuck a nurgling on to fill the gap. Now the champion has a little buddy to hangout with! I used a lot of brown ink on the armor, I used a fine tipped brush to streak it down and let it pool in some places. I wanted to make it look like he was oozing...something.

Check out them chain mail buns! 

After a couple coats of varnish, he’ll get a name and a back story. Then he’ll be ready to hit the table top and reek some havoc for Papa Nurg. 

Painting Challenge: Beastman of Khorne

So my best friend calls be his “bestie”, my girlfriend thinks it’s soooo cute. We’ve been hanging around each other for, I don’t know, something like 25 years. When we met, I found out that he used to play Warhammer. I can say that I’m proud of the fact that I rekindled his interest in the hobby. That was way back in probably something like 1995. We both got disgusted and burned out with GW after 5ed WH and 3ed 40k. We played a little bit of both those editions but we saw the writing on the walls and popped smoke. GW’s corporate greed got too much for us and by the turn of the century, the Silver Age was coming to a close. Fast forward to about 4 years ago and we started talking about dusting off the old rulebooks and unboxing the old miniatures to play some of the old games. We had no idea that there was even anything called Oldhammer. Finding out there was a whole community/movement dedicated to the old games was like culture shock.
He has tons of painted miniatures from back in the day. I don’t. I have a giant lead pile that seems to keep growing! The only painted army from then is my 40k Dark Angels. I’ve always hated painting armies. The Silver Age was chock full of mono pose boredom. And it got worse...plastic is lame.
But, I digress, me any my buddy have always competed. May the best man win and shit, but we’ve always helped each other out. I turned him on to the wet pallet, he turned me on to airbrushing. There’s always that ebb and flow, the back and forth, mixing and merging that comes from a good relationship.
That brings us, I guess to the contest: when I first saw this miniature I thought of my friend. He’s got a thing for Khorne so I ebayed this beastman for him. I liked it so much, I got one for myself. Instantly the competitive spirit kicked into overdrive: who could paint the same miniature better?
So here’s pictures

 Which one do you like better? And why?

GaslandsCarsAromallama

Alrighty now, those of you that are tuned in to my blog-orama here know that I’ve been all about Gaslands for a little while. And if y’all know me, you know I have attention disorder. I have what’s called Hyper Focus. That means when something peaks my interest, I can’t concentrate on anything else. So I’ve been working on some cars. For Gaslands. Check‘Em out. I hope you like them. This team is 51 cans. Oh shit, I’m over by 1 can...if you’re reading this blog then you’re probably an Oldhammer player and don’t give a damn about being over or under.
Here’s a buggy: with a Machine Gun and Extra Armour = 12 cans

 Plus a car: twin Mini Guns = 22 cans

Then add a truck with a Wrecking Ball = 17 cans

Me and my GF cussed and discussed the name for this crew and we came up with: The Purple Nurples.

Gaslands Gates

I made a couple cars and some scatter terrain to get started. (See previous posts) I figured I should get prepared for the Death Race scenario that eventually will get played so I needed some Gates. Sure, they can be bought or 3D printed but to be honest, that’s not nearly as fun as make them from scratch.
So let’s get to it!
Gates need to be 182mm wide per the rule book. So the best thing to do is to make a 182mm template. This ensures that all of your Gates are the correct width.

I made my bases for the gates quite a lot bigger than this to leave room for the structure. I made the bases 2 1/4 x 10 1/4. Looking back on it, I probably should have made them 2 1/2” or 3”. Hind sight is 20/20. The construction materials are cheap and they are basically made for next to nothing if you don’t count labor. I sourced most of what was used from the cheapest that I could get away with. The sand was given to me by my father in law, the foam is the cheapo foam core from the Dollar Tree, the card stock is from “drink” boxes and the corrugated cardboard is from whatever boxes I had laying around. I did go nutso and glue some car bodies onto some gates (they were three for $1).

 
I put a line on each end of my 182mm template so I would know were to build the structure.

I cut two pieces 1x6” and one piece 1x9.5” corrugated cardboard for the skeleton. The two short pieces are the sides, the long piece is the top. Also made some gussets to hold it all stable and up right. Here’s a view from the back.

I made some rectangle pieces of card stock and punched holes in them. These were used to cover the front and some 2mm strips to go along the edges to hide the corrugation. I made a sign and traffic lights for the front also.

Hot glue some smashed up cars to the front and almost done!

‘Til next time, stay safe peeps.