From Steven - Sengoku figures

 Latest set of photos from Steven. I'm basically putting them in with his text:

Hello, I haven’t sent any photos of figures for some months now. I’ve been steadily painting the 15mm Sengoku figures from Alternative Armies you got for my birthday. I just finished. I tried to paint them quite well so it has taken ages. Whilst not a strict rule, the heroes tend to be painted in brighter blues and yellows, whilst the monsters tended to have more red or various muted browns and greens.

I still have the ones you got me for Christmas but I will take a break before tackling them. Besides, my WW2 collection is feeling neglected and the panzer grenadiers are calling for attention.

Photos are below. As ever, my photography skills let me down, but I have used the battle map Sarah got me as a background (which is more green and less grey in reality), which is something of an improvement.

Figure 1 All the figures. Heroes vs monsters

 

Figure 2 The monsters.

 

Figure 3 The heroes

Figure 4 A small phalanx of goblins with polearms, supported by some archers

Figure 5 Close-up of some of the goblins. I was quite pleased with the detail on conical hats. There is no detail sculpted on the figures' hats - it was painted on freehand

Figure 6 Kappa with a selection of strange weapons. My favourite is the one on the left with the detail on his weapon (again, done freehand as I started the descent into madness) and his armour.

Figure 7 Oni (Japanese ogres)

Figure 8 Tengu. Some real-life birds with black plumage have a blue tint to them, so I used that as inspiration instead of doing a typical grey highlight. If any of your readers are aware of 15mm Tengu by other manufacturers, I would love to know. The Sengoku rules include hero Tengu too, which I’d prefer to be a different figure.

Figure 9 Weird Japanese ghosts. I find these pretty funny. Left to right - a demonic umbrella, a ghost Geisha with extendable neck, and a paper lantern ghost. Actually, the Geisha is one of my favourite models

Figure 10 Snake demons. I drew inspiration from real-life poisonous snakes for the middle figure with the black, red and white bands. The flat snake on the right was awful to paint and I'm still not really happy with it.

Figure 11 Spider and centipede demons. The middle figure creeps me out. My skin was crawling the whole time I was painting it. The paint schem was inspired by red-kneed tarantulas, whereas the purple guy on the left is rather more fanciful

Figure 12 The Guild Hunters pack (plus a random follower). Top-left is one of my favourite figures - the kimono pattern worked well. Also pleased with the top-right figure - the shiny effect on the helmet is a further development of my non-metallic metal technique

Figure 13 Japanese school girls because why not? Unfortunately, some of the less impressive sculpts in the range. The middle one looks like a wizened crone, not a teenager

Figure 14 Miko maidens and monks. From some google research, I think they are painted fairly accurately. Miko maidens seem to have red and white uniforms and most pictures of monks show them with dark brown robes

Figure 16 Another view of the dragon. The scales took so long to paint. The face is clearer here too. I think the eyes came out well