I decided that i'd start a page specifically for my Photography on facebook as well as a new photography website hosted by squarespace. This will keep this blog just for modelling and painting until i move it all across to a second squarespace site.

My Photography website is: AKIWITOG.com

My facebook link is: https://www.facebook.com/akiwitog/

Check them out and link to them and you will be able to see all the photos i decide to post.

Life

So its been a we while since i last posted on the blog. Over the last month i moved house and had my back give out on me again which has had me laid up for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately no painting has occurred during that time due to an inability to sit for very long.

Ive also just noticed that gremlins seem to have got into this site and many of my pictures from past posts are now gone. the links to the images seem corrupted and most of the photos are long since gone from any of my physical hard drives.

Im starting to think it may be time to kill this blog and consider starting up another website elsewhere  - can anyone recommend a good website provider for a hobby blog?

Some Painting at last

So its been a while since i did any painting - way too much work on my plate.

But this week ive managed to do a couple of things.

First up some Winter Tiger 1's

Next up a test figure for my Kings of war Goblin army - a Fleabag Rider. As i said its a test figure so its not finished and im not 100% sure i like how it has turned out but i think the concept is ok.

That's it for now not a huge amount of hobby but it's better than nothing.

Love to know what you guys think.

Mark
:)

The Studio is moving and i need to get rid of stuff :(

Yep after almost 10 years im moving.

My wife and i have sold the house and we are building a new house on a much bigger property. Unfortunately this means we are renting and are having to move. The house is mega chaotic with half packed boxes everywhere.

The weight of the last 10 years of collecting models has become apparent and i may have to sell many of my armies to make the job of moving easier - seriously i have way too much stuff to try and move.  The wife has now seen all and knows all my dirty hobby secrets. Nothing has remained hidden!!!

So to that end if you have seen anything on my site that you liked and would want to have in your collection send me a email and i can tell you if i still have it. Make me an offer on anything! If it makes living out of boxes easier for the next year then its all good.

I can start painting anew once im in my new home. (where i will have a 13' square sound proofed studio to work in.)

New Photography website

Hi everyone, just a quick not to say that ive been working on a photography website which i now have up and running. Its a little bare bones at the moment but id love you all to check it out and let me know what you think.

http://kiwi-tog.fotomerchant.com/

Its been taking up a little bit of my time and between working on it on the train to and from work each day and work there hasn't been much time for painting.  Hoping to have something new finished by the end of the week.

Back at work full time

So as of Monday ill be back at work full time thanks to finally being cleared by the specialist.

I've made another blog for all my camera photos so i dont have to bore you with stuff that isn't figure related.

If you are interested in seeing what im up to check out:  http://kiwicolourstudiophotography.blogspot.co.nz/

 

A few finished pieces

Hi Guys as promised here's a few finished pieces.

Ill have pics of some finished infantry guns within the next couple of days.

Mark

:)

Camera Practice

(Apologies to anyone not interested in Cameras or Pictures - just skip this post, the next one will have finished miniatures i promise.)  

So with my leg improving i took a trip way out west to visit Rob at his house.  Rob lives near Muriwai beach and a surfing area called Maori Bay where there is a Gannet colony.  Will had suggested this would be a great place for me to get in some practice with my big Tamron 150-600 lens.

1/160 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 213mm.

I had an awesome day getting out and about hanging with the lads and getting in several solid hours of practice were i took almost a thousand photos.

1/320 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 193mm.

1/400 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 483mm.

At 1/800 the Tamron gets smooth shots and ill definitely put in some more practice with that setting. But i think it did ok at the lower speeds as well.

1/800 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 483mm.

Now i know i looked like a total newbie as i was getting the hang of a new strap, new camera and a new heavy lens. I was also dressed in jeans and a long sleeve shirt as id got super burnt the day before - so on a 26+ degree day i was overdressed and super hot. (Will posted a couple of pics of me on his blog - the cheeky bugger!!  (Will's Blog)  

1/800 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 256mm.

1/500 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 158mm.

There were a few surfers out and about as well. i decided to muck around with some black and white effects on these.

1/1000 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 600mm.

1/1000 sec at f /8.0, ISO 200 @ 500mm.

Considering the distance of these im pretty happy with them but some more practice is needed to get some really good surfer shots like the ones Rob got - (Robs Blog).

I was pretty happy with this one:

So there you go a beginners attempt at some photos of some fast moving and not so fast moving stuff.  I've got a long way to go but im enjoying the learning process.

Mark

:)

Something a little different

After the cat destroying some of my latest work i decided my next post should be something of a happier note.

Last week a sold a couple of Field of Glory armies i had painted and this allowed me to purchase something ive been wanting since i got my new camera - a bit shiny zoom lens for shooting pictures of birds and planes etc will the lads.  Most of them have far nicer gear than i can afford but i got the best i could afford (at least for now) A Tamron 150mm-600mm lens.

Now Rob came over today and we had planned to play a game of Battletech but its been over a year since we played so we played out a few turns and got our heads around the rules again and talked about a lot of stuff and since i have been trapped inside the house for 5 months Rob took me down to the local airfield to try out my new toy.  We weren't out too long as the sun was blistering at around 31 degrees! My leg held up pretty good and although a bit sore i managed ok and really enjoyed being in the sun. We started off taking shots of some planes but most of what i took was rubbish as i had no idea what i was doing. 

 

We saw some Blow carts over the far side of the airfield so drove around the other side to see what sort of shots we could get. Here's a few of the ones i was happy with.

These things seriously look like a load of fun and you can rent them for like $20 for a 10-20 minute go. (once my leg is better i know what im going to try!!) :)

Great hour out and about and so good for the soul to clear the head and get some fresh air.

Looking forward to giving it another go soon.

I can see that im going to have to do another blog for my Photography stuff so it doesn't clog up this blog. Once ive put together a new blog ill put up a ling for anyone who wants to watch my trials at a new hobby.

  

Catastrophe

Hi guys, its been a little while since my last update.  We are in the process of selling our house and ive been trying to get the house ready whilst painting and managing my damaged back...  fixing up the house has stressed out the animals a bit and i guess it was only a matter of time before one of them acted out.

This morning i went into my office to get my finished models to take photos for the Painting challenge (its been 2 weeks since i submitted anything!) and discovered my cat sitting on said models!!!



Needless to say - said models are in no fit state for photos.... sigh.

Some days it really doesn't pay to get up.

VT-49 Decimator repaint for X-wing miniatures game

Hi Everyone,

So last week i repainted my Decimator miniature for the X-wing miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games.

Here is a picture of the original off the FFG website - the one i got out of my box was even more simple than this (basically grey with a black ink wash):

Boring!!!!! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Now as you can see from the pic above, straight out of the box its a very basic paint job and not very inspiring. Now ive owned this model since it first came out but only just used it for the first time a week ago and think i want to use it more so it definitely needed some brush love!

I sprayed it black and then went to town with a series of different grey's on random panels to break up the monotone nature of the basic model and then added a couple of stripes of red to add a little colour as well as adding a few coloured lights. i finished it off with a basic blue glow out the engine (not my best effort but it will do for now).  As a last minute thing i decided to damage up some of the paint job to make it look like it had seen a little action - in the miniature game this thing is a flying brick and cant avoid anything (Agility 0!!!!!) so i think a little damage is appropriate.

What do you think? Better? Worse? What would you have done to make it look better? Keen to hear all your thoughts as i may end up doing another one up in a different scheme. (Two of these in a 100 point game would be nasty!).

That's it for today, catch ya next time,

Mark
:)

January - South Auckland Club Day

So today is the club day for the South Auckland Wargames Club (one of the oldest clubs in Auckland).

Every year we do a big Napoleonic game using the WRG rules (Printed in 1979!) in honor of the club founder John Berry who passed away almost 8 years ago. The WRG rules were the first rules used at the club and John taught a very young pair of brothers Bryan and Glenn Osbourne war gaming. Many, Many years on the club is still going

As proof here's a picture of Brian holding his original copy of the rules with hand written corrections and highlighting. 

The Armies on the table for the day were a combined Bavarian and Russian Force vs a French, Wittemburg and Spanish.

The team for the day: From the top left - Yours truly, Glenn, Cavin, Kevin, Rob. Bottom row from the left - Steven, Jason, Bryan and Leo.

Bryan was in overall command of the Bavarian and Russian commanders consisting of Jason, Leo and Steven and Glenn was in overall command of the French, Spanish and Wittemburger commanders consisting of Rob, Kevin and Cavin.  I was in the back up roll of taking pics and videos.

Below is a quick battle plan: The Bavarian's were split into two forces the first under Leo's command, had to head to the Bridge and face off against the Spanish. The second lead by Steven had to hold off the french until the Russian allies could take over allowing him to turn his forces around and join the fight for the bridge.  Byran and Jason commanding the large Russian force were to take and hold the Center of the table against the large French army that was heading towards the bridge to help hold of the Bavarian's from crossing.

The Table you will see was rather bare. Due to a breakdown in communications the terrain didn't seem to make it to the club today :(. Still we made the best of what we had. There were so many figures terrain would have just got in the way.

  There was so much going on that keeping track to do a blow by blow account was impossible. I tried to keep track of the action around the bridge as it was what would result in a victory or defeat.

 All the figures (I believe) are very old Minifigs and were for the most part painted quite a while back by the lads. Suitably impressive in large numbers but individually very basic figs.

Here's a shot of the center of the table on turn 2 i believe - This is where the fighting was the heaviest. 

Around lunchtime Leo had to pop out for a while so i took over the Bavarian's for a couple of turns. I moved ever closer to the bridge with the infantry and forced a Spanish unit to flee off its position on the bridge with some super accurate artillery fire.

Heavy Discussions of the rules were frequent as the rules are only rolled out once a year.

A shot showing just how the fight was concentrated on the center and right sides of the table.

Some dice were lost in the making of this blog post - Kevin searches for some dice that made a break for freedom. 

Near the end of the day the Bavarian's finally got to the bridge and tried to cross the river at several fording points. Kevin's Spanish fought like demons and surprisingly forced the Bavarian's back. Stevens' Bavarian force which was looking like it would be wiped out held against overwhelming numbers of French that Rob sent his way. The center was a mass of fire fights and combats with the Byran's Russians forcing Glenn's French back.  On the far right flank Jason was unable to hold off Cavin's Whittemburger's which totally cut off the flank and forced Jason's remaining troops back into the center.  

Hoards of Russians in the table center!!

In the end the bridge was held by the Spanish and we called the game as it was rather late in the afternoon..

There's always one in every group!!!!

Another great annual gaming event and one that im sure John would of been proud of.

The day gave me a great opportunity to try out my camera in less than ideal conditions and get a few lessons from Rob on settings (much appreciated mate). Still a lot to learn and i would have benefited having a better flash and i definitely need to get some form of boom microphone if im going to record video out and about as the ones i did record with an intention of doing a quick YouTube video had too much background noise to be useful.

Till next time happy gaming.

Mark
:-)

KCS On The Painting Table 31/12/15

Somehow i forgot to post a link of this on New years eve.  Different pictures all the way through this video of some Flames of war commission work im currently working on.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!!!