I just got home a couple of hours ago from a quick trip with the family to NC looking for our future place to live. It was a good time and we saw a bunch of nice potential residences. Last weekend before leaving town I did, however, begin the review of my current projects and realized quickly what had to be my top hobby priority. The revised deadline for The Knights of Bal Timorea is Jan. 1st, at which time my entry must be in the hands of the folks at Santa Cruz Warhammer in order to participate in the project's finale. Since my knight will be competing with all the other late holiday season mailings, that means I need to send him out ASAP.I have had more than three months to paint just this one miniature so of course I only get around to it now a week or so before it needs to be finished. Fortunately I have a pretty clear idea of what I want my contribution to this open group project to be so I'm not worried about completing the model in time. I had a couple hours to work on it Sunday night and made some decent progress. In all honesty though I'm really not happy with how it looks at this point and I considered scrapping my initial plan and going in a different direction. The thing is I'm working from a rather specific source of inspiration and so far am not satisfied with the way that idea is translating to my Bretonnian nobleman. I wasn't sure if I even wanted to post a picture because of my reservations over this but since I feel like pressing on with it, I might as well present my potential BIP (Blunder In Progress). Why not, right? Here he is pictured as I left him after that first painting session:
The color scheme is primarily green and black as seen above but I am yet to begin on the black which is the part that has been bothering me the most. I therefore hope once I work on the areas of black cloth I'll start to like it more and that's why I've decided to just continue as planned. If the scheme looks wrong in the end, oh well. This miniature is likely destined for someone else's figure case so I therefore probably won't mind nearly as much sending him off to his new home. And besides, it does seem like it would be a fittingly bizarre, ill-conceived representation of my efforts here at diceRolla. I say this because the whole idea is based on both a cartoon and a tired, horribly lame joke. Let me explain.
The color scheme is primarily green and black as seen above but I am yet to begin on the black which is the part that has been bothering me the most. I therefore hope once I work on the areas of black cloth I'll start to like it more and that's why I've decided to just continue as planned. If the scheme looks wrong in the end, oh well. This miniature is likely destined for someone else's figure case so I therefore probably won't mind nearly as much sending him off to his new home. And besides, it does seem like it would be a fittingly bizarre, ill-conceived representation of my efforts here at diceRolla. I say this because the whole idea is based on both a cartoon and a tired, horribly lame joke. Let me explain.
A couple of months back I saw a really old Disney cartoon called A Knight for a Day that I remember watching as a kid probably 25 or more years ago. It's a weird cartoon with a very weak hero, "Cedric," whom I never liked so that even as a little one I cheered for the bad guy to win. The black clad, cigar smoking villain in this tale is a true brute and spends most of the story bashing on the hapless good guy, driving him through castle walls and such. But for no apparent reason the writers chose to insert a completely inappropriate joke by naming this badass black knight, "Sir Cumference," a name which from that point on is not worked at all into either the story or any other more interesting jokes. It's used as just a dumb, throwaway math pun of all things. Why? I don't know... like I said, it's a weird cartoon.
And that was it for me. I realized then for SC John's project I wanted to make a tribute to this pitiful moment in animation humor. All the better that I would get to sneak in an admittedly awful joke into an otherwise very cool community effort. Now that's the diceRolla way! Having said that I might now be justifiably disqualified from participating in which case I will find my own suitably shameful way in which to display Sir Cumference, the Black Knight of Bal Timorea. At this time I don't know what that might be but I'll come up with something if I must.
Okay, that's it for now. My plan is to finish this mini off in a couple of days and then get back to those Raptors marines. Happy gaming, everyone!
Oh I remember that cartoon! It was strange! Good choice with the Bretonian Knights. It's amazing having 20 of them ready to charge.
ReplyDeleteAll the best with the move. Is it cold where you are? It's supposed to snow here next week.
Take care!
'My Kingdom for a glue bottle on which to ride!'
ReplyDeleteI used to have a Bretonnian named 'Sir Loin of Porterhouse'
Sir Cumference is such a great name!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck with this project ;D
@ Bartender - Haha! I'm glad someone else remembers that cartoon, I thought I may have chosen too old of a cartoon to reference to be of any use. :)
ReplyDeleteI do love these knights, the possibility of having an army full of them really appeals to me. You're right, there are few things that look as good on the tabletop as a full unit of knights. That's mainly why I was disappointed my flirtation with collecting them this past summer did not go any further. I just couldn't figure out how to put together a force that I liked out of their current army book. When they get updated I will definitely take another look at fielding a Bretonnian army.
Thank for the good wishes, we had a promising start for our house hunting. Now that we're back on the coast it's chilly but I don't know if we'll get any snow this year. We had some last winter but that seemed rather exceptional at the time. It was however very cold and snowy the last few days when we were visiting Asheville. I enjoyed it but it made driving a somewhat frightening experience. It will probably take a while for me to adjust to that after living in such a flat, warm area for close to a decade.
Now that I'm back I'm excited to see I have lots of adventures to catch up on at http://double0sven.blogspot.com. (If anyone is looking for awesome miniatures-based spy stories, I highly recommend you check out Bartender's blog.) I hope you have fun in the snow, take care as well!
@ Da Masta Cheef - Oh man, that's great! If you know of any spare knights laying around perhaps you could paint up a new version of Sir Loin and send him in for the project too. It would be nice for Sir Cumference to have some company though the SC Warhammer guys might wonder what has happened to their project. Thanks, Cheef!
@ Nesbet - Lol, I'm glad you liked it. It was either going to be that or Sir Mix-A-Lot so I feel pretty good that I made the right decision here. I'm really looking forward to painting his heraldry but unfortunately I don't think I've got the skills to make a really good circle as I had originally planned. Hopefully my revised concept for it will still be alright though out of necessity I think I'll have to leave it fairly simple. I'll get more on that posted once I make some progress on it. I appreciate hearing from you, thanks Nesbet!
Don't feel too bad about the Knight, I just started mine today. I may just be stuck paying the extra postage to get it in on time!
ReplyDeleteOh good! It's nice to know I'm not the only one racing to come in under the wire with this project. I'm trying to avoid having to send it in as priority mail but it still might come to that. We'll see... I'll keep my fingers crossed for the both of us. Thanks so much, Meatball!
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with that as a beginning!
ReplyDeleteThat's a cumbersome mounting device by the way - but developments in exotic alloys should put paid to it in no time.
You might have started a last minute renaming trend too. For any desparate last-minute entrants, there's still Sir Leigh, the Rough Knight, and Sir Tain, the It'll Be Alright on the Knight.
Nice additions, Porky! Put 'em all together and we would have a Terror-causing unit for sure. :) Thank you for the encouragement and the good cheer, I and Sir Cumference appreciate them both.
ReplyDeleteI think he's very fine and will do well all around.... (boo, hiss)
ReplyDeleteOuch, that one hurt... lol. :) Thanks, Loquacious!
ReplyDeleteWhoo-hooo! I love math puns, particularly bad ones. Major props to you for using Sir Cumference. Hehe, that still makes me giggle like Homer Simpson.
ReplyDeleteOf course if you could model some pies in his hands, that would be epic. Apple, not cherry!
Oh man, that would be great! Why do you always hold back these suggestions until just before I've finished a project? You know I might actually be able to sculpt a slice of pie, though distinguishing between apple and cherry at this scale could be challenging. Maybe I should make his heraldry a big piece of apple pie... you know, to class things up a bit. Lots to considering.... thanks for the feedback, DrGabe!
ReplyDelete