Great News!

I managed to get a group of 5 thugs painted up to accompany Senator Pigskin on the miniaturised streets of Spinespur, and I was really pleased with them.  So pleased, in fact, I entered them into the painting competition at Albanich this past weekend.  Here's a group shot, with Pigskin for scale.  As you can see, he's a bit of a monster!  Even larger than I had intended, really.  But no matter: I wanted imposing, and I certainly got imposing!  Sadly, I seem to have lost my photo mojo, and there seem to be a few focus/shinyness issues.  I'll have to get some tips from my good friend Junior about how to deal with that.  Hopefully, I've managed to get a decent image out of this using photoshop.

The Molotov thugs are conversions, as is the chainsaw thug.  The molotov thug on the left is a Rebel Minis street punk, who was originally holding a shotgun.  I carefully removed the left hand, and trimmed away the handle of the gun in the other, so it looked like he was flicking a lighter.  The bottle and new left hand were scratch-built/sculpted respectively.  The chainsaw thug is a survivor from The Scene's 15mm range.  He received a head transplant with a Xyston model, over which a hockey mask was sculpted, and (as with most of the Scene's survivor models used for Spinespur) the shotgun slung in a holster on his back was trimmed off and replaced with a bag.  The final molotov thug received two new arms, courtesy of the same Xyston model that gave chainsaw his head, a scratch-built molotov bottle, a bag instead of his shotgun, and a gas mask head from Ground Zero Games' separate head sprue.  I'm least happy with how this guy turned out, but he's okay overall, I reckon.

So, when it came to entering the painting competition, I decided that without context, Pigskin would probably seem a bit random.  Consequently, I just went with the five thugs:

And how did they do in the competition?

 

Second place (rather sportingly referred to as runner up on the day)!  Not bad, considering they were really dwarfed by the tank section that took first place.  I'm really pleased that as 15mm models going up against 28mm and other scales they did so well.  As good as second place is, I'd rather win, though.  So I'll be back next year to see if I can do better.  Still really chuffed with my achievement nonetheless.