So it’s 8 days into NaNoWriMo for this year, and I am regretting my choice of story. The premise really was rather stupid, but at the same time I seem to be able to hammer out the words I need a lot more easily than I have in the past. Luckily, I guess, is the fact that this story happens in the same universe as one of my other more favorite stories, and thus whatever I write in this, even if most of it ends up being trash, can do a lot to flesh out that universe. My ideas do tend to flow the best when I’m actually writing as opposed to just sitting around thinking (not that I don’t have ideas that way too, sometimes) so I’m just going to hit all the important points and see what comes out of it. I have no doubt I’ll get my 50k words, but don’t ever expect to see Jeremy five-five as its own story.
Author: Laura Highcove
Pegasus Knights
When I was still in college, so a million years ago, I had no idea what Warhammmer was. BUT! I saw a set of Britonnian Pegasus Knights. They were horsies with wings, and being the creative type, I bought them. I had no idea what I was doing and thus at the time only managed to paint one white, one black, and one red.
After the timeskip, when my husband and I moved back to Blacksburg, I became interested in minis again. Mostly because our D&D default had shifted to using miniatures, and having a unique mini for ones character was popular.
Enough backstory. I grabbed the unfinished pegasus knights, simple greened most of the paint off of them, and painted them again.
It was only after I ‘finished’ the minis that I found the old box I had bought back in college that had some shields that I never put on. I’m not entirely upset about that. With all the other minis I have to do, I don’t have time to go back right now. Maybe someday.
Notes: These pegasus are colored for three chymera (pegasus with horns) from one of my stories. The white is Prism, the red is her father Fleetfoot, and the purple is Nightwind. Prism and Fleetfoot’s barding is the same color because they come from the same manor. Nightwind is from another.
Loki
I actually don’t know what first sparked my interest in Norse mythology. I remember already knowing a bit when I first played Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (for the PSP, not the PS1) But I didn’t really start researching it until after I saw a mostly obscure anime called Ragnarok many many years ago. I only watched a few episodes of it, but while the characters interested me, the story did not and I walked away from it going: “I can do that better.”
Loki interested me from the beginning, as he is, I feel, the character around which the entire mythology rotates. I have read a lot of different opinions on him, from him just being a harmless jokester to evil incarnate.
When the Thor movie was coming out I knew nothing about it. I really didn’t want to see it because I figured it would effect my own vision of Norse mythology too much, and Thor was not a comic book hero in which I was ever interested. I’m not sure why I changed my mind, (Maybe cause Thor’s actor was cute, no lie) but when I started it up and saw “Thor’s brother” I wasn’t sure at first who it was. Odin has lots of sons after all. (In mythology anyway.) It wasn’t until I heard the character called “Silvertongue” that it actually clicked.
And I remember feeling a sense of dread. It is so easy to make Loki the villain, and I figured that was what was going to happen in this movie as well. I was so happy at the thought and care that went into Loki’s progression from good to evil. The depth and humanity of it, well I can understand why he has such a following (handsome, talented actors aside). I don’t watch that movie for Thor. Thor can shove it. I don’t believe his change in attitude for a moment when compared to the anguish that Loki had to endure and the decisions he had to make.
Though part of me is still upset, because now I feel like I have to share Loki with the rest of the world. Some of them who don’t know anything about the mythology or the character beyond what was in that movie. It worries me mostly because of the story I am trying to write that uses Loki as one of the main characters. It will probably be tainted by those movies, but I guess I won’t let that keep me from nurturing my own version of Loki. And maybe one day, someone else will like my version of Loki as well.
The Dark Knight Rises
Bravo, Christopher Nolan. Bravo.
Bowser
A few months ago, the other game store in town went out of business and had a sale. That was when I saw this monster turtle mini from a set called Warmachine. I snatched it up with the idea of painting it as Bowser. Despite my enthusiasm, however, it took me until now to actually paint it. I painted the whole thing in one afternoon. Took me around four or five hours all told (sans the spray paint base which I did a while ago) and it turned out rather well. I know I could have done some modding to add hair and horns, but I decided against that. I don’t really like modeling stuff yet, probably cause I’m kinda bad at it. Anyway, results:
‘Driving’ a Horse
So most people in this country can drive, and the vast majority of those people do it with absolutely no idea how the car works. Of course they know that the car starts when you turn the key, that it goes forward when you hit the gas and stops when you hit the break, and it turns side to side with a twist of the steering wheel. If they didn’t, they would hopefully have not passed their driving test, and would not have been issued a license. A car, after all, is a weapon and should not be driven by someone who can’t control it.
A lot of people in this country ‘ride’ horses. Yes, I put that in quotations, because for the most part, I believe that most people don’t actually ride horses. They drive them. For most people, they know that when you kick a horse’s sides, they go forward, when you pull on the reins they stop, and when you pull the reins to either side they turn.
They do all of this without any (or very little) understanding of a horse’s mentality, or inner workings, just like most of them don’t know how their car works. Why is this? A horse is a huge animal, capable of inflicting serious damage or death in the same way a car can, only added to that is the fact that a horse is a living, breathing creature with a mind of his own.
The reason that so many people can get away with knowing so little about the horse’s mind is because of how gracious the horse is. He is, by his very nature, a submissive creature, and when a person simply gets on his back and drives him around, he is perfectly happy to just go.
At Advantage Ranch in Blacksburg, VA, the riding instructors are intentional about teaching riding as opposed to driving. On the first lesson they may use a car analogy in order to present the basics of how to ask a horse to go forward, stop, and turn, but that very quickly (age appropriately) develops into understanding how a horse moves, and supporting him with legs and reins, helping him to bend and supple his body, and have rhythm when he moves forward.
I still remember the first time I learned what real riding was. I had gone to a few shows to help work out the ‘show nerves’. (It was a rather eye opening experience to see my gorgeous, steady-minded mare quite literally freak out when she sensed my show nerves, but that’s a story for another time.) I was doing a circle. Now I’ve done circles before, but this time I was focused on actually making a circle that was even on all sides of a cone.
The this requires supporting the outside of the horse (the side on the outside of the circle) with both legs and reins to keep him from falling, which makes the circle bigger. As well as supporting the inside of the horse with legs and reins to keep him from falling in and thus making the circle smaller. All while continuing to keep the proper bend in the horse. The trick is basically to feel when the horse is falling one way or the other (which is basically every step) and to help support them. For the longest time I had thought that a horse just went and it was really on that day that I feel I went from a driver to a rider when I finally understood just how much support and thus work it took to actually ride a horse.
Now I’ve learned a lot since the above, and now realize what more there is to making a circle. If finding out how to really ride a horse sounds interesting to you, then look us up at advantageranch.com.
Fairness
The Perfect Storm
So on Friday night, we had some sort of rare type of storm. Around 8 pm or so we lost power. We decided we might as well go to the grocery store since we didn’t have electricity to power much of anything else. We went outside and above the house I could see this huge black thunderhead. By the time we found the car keys in the dark (I’d left them in my jeans and then washed them) the winds had picked up.
The storm caused winds up to 75 mph. But apparently the type of winds and their direction meant we didn’t get any more than a light smattering of rain. And I hear tale of multi-colored lightning that I unfortunately missed.
The next morning I drove to the barn and I saw the destruction everywhere. The roads were coated with leaves and little branches, while in many places larger branches and even trees were down. Many were alongside the road where they had been pulled out of the way of traffic. About halfway down Mt. Tabor, the road I use to get to the barn, a tree (or most of it anyway) had gone down taking a power line with it, and thus the road had to be closed. I had to detour back and around 460 to get to the barn.
The days have been up to 100 degrees, which is part of the reason the conditions for the storm were possible, but it’s also a very unfortunate time to not have power. We were able to charge our devices at the store and there looked up that 50% of our county has no power, that the destruction extends through West Virginia and up past DC into Maryland, and that some sort of damage has been done to the Appalachian Power stations themselves and they estimate it could take up to a week to get power back.
Yeah; not kidding. And I bought ice cream Friday night thinking the power couldn’t be off for that long.
While it is unfortunate that we don’t have power, or air conditioning at home (it’s currently 3am and I am sitting on my porch without pants on, typing this because it’s too hot to sleep) I am grateful that no one I know was hurt. That houses are intact. None of the horses were hurt out in the fields. That we have a place we can go to get power. That our car still has air conditioning. That I have things to entertain me that don’t involve being on the computer. And that because I got up in the middle of the night and went outside I was able to see a beautiful sight of lightning bugs sparkling in a dazzling display against the blackness of the trees behind our house.
How I Paint – Part 1
Okay, so I showed some people at the store the gryffin from the previous post, and I got quite a lot of amazed reactions, much to my surprise. We are our own toughest critics after all. I know I am good at painting, but I don’t think I’m that amazing. Other people tend to disagree, so I would like to share all of the very simple, but extremely effective techniques I use in order to get the results I do.
Step One: Have your materials. Obviously, you can’t paint a miniature without a few key elements. The paint, a (set of) paint brushes, and the mini…
I use games workshop paints because those are the most easily available. I haven’t used any of the new ones yet, but I hear good things. The consistency of the paint is rather important for a good look. If it’s too thick it clumps and leaves paint lines. Some of my paints are rather poor right now. I do what I can, thinning them with clear Windex (tip credited to Blake).
I get a set of 3 detail brushes from a local hobby shop. Costs $3 and when the tip goes, I use that paintbrush for less important things like washes. If you don’t have a good tip on your paintbrush, then you might as well just flick the paint on there at random.
The mini I’m using for this “tutorial” of sorts is my set of Lotheran Sea Guard from the High Elf Army of Warhammer Fantasy fame.
Step Two: Get the “How to Paint Citadel Miniatures” book from Games Workshop (or have Blake order it) and read it. No seriously. If you really want nicely painted miniatures, looking at well painted miniatures (and the tutorials of those painting techniques) is essential. I mean you’re here reading this right? I’m not even that good. In addition I have White Dwarf Magazines (with High Elf and Empire articles) along with their Warhammer rules books. I look at them constantly.
Step Three: Cleaning and priming. Ah, so now we’re finally to the actual mini. Never underestimate the value of cleaning and green stuffing your mini. What use is a beautiful paint job if there are mold lines? In addition, what’s the use of a beautiful paint job if the paint chips off. I prime with black. I just like it better than white, yes, even with all those white high elf robes.
Step Four: The crappy paint step. I call it this because I tend to think my mini looks like crap during this phase. This is when I take the colors I have chosen and put on the foundation colors.
The gray is my most used because of all the white high elf robes. Basically I get all the colors down, then clean up the edges. It looks flat and horribly boring. However, it lets you make sure you have the colors in the places you want before you do anything fancy. This is especially important when painting a whole squad as opposed to a single mini. The little details are different on each mini, and you may find yourself changing things.
When in doubt, don’t feel guilty at all about looking up that particular mini and getting ideas. I had the hardest time with the gloves and shoes on these guys, wanting to paint them a metallic and not liking how much metal that was until I saw the ones in the book had brown gloves and shoes. It hadn’t even occurred to me before that. Developing an eye for colors is not really something that can be taught, per say. It’s the whole reason for Step Two. You just have to have the experience, and that comes with seeing what other people, who have put far more time into it than you, do.
Also, note that you want these first layers to be the darkest version of whatever color you want when it comes out at the end. I build up my color from darkest to lightest. You don’t even want to know how long it took me to figure out that technique…
Gryffin Detail
So I continue to be needlessly intimiatated by the tedious detail required for the feathers on my gryffin model. So two weeks ago I just sat down and did the outline for all of the remaining feathers on one wing. I didn’t like it at the time, but now after coming back to it, I feel a lot better about how it looks. So at some point I’m sure I will convince myself to do the other wing…
