[Doodles & Minis] September 2024, part 2

[jordangreywolf]

2024 Mom's Birthday Card Design
Once upon a time, back in the olden times when my age was still in the single digits, my major inspiration when it came to drawing was my very own mom. She would occasionally do doodles as parts of artsy-craftsy things, or she would work her artistry into other things: a "caterpillar birthday cake" made out of Hostess "Snowballs" and frosting, cleverly designed cookies, little doodles to go with notes, and so forth. On long trips, when my sister and I were getting antsy, she'd come up with crafty activities to keep us occupied -- if just some paper and colored markers or crayons weren't enough to inspire us, she came up with my first exposure to a method for beating "blank canvas syndrome": take a sheet of paper, scribble around on it with an ink pen, and then go back in and identify shapes in those scribbles. Could it be an animal? A face? A rocket-ship? Fill in spaces, color others in, add details, and transform it into something out of the scribbly mess!

Another thing I remembered was that there was some sort of service where you'd get a paper plate and some "special" colored markers to doodle on it with, then mail in the paper plate, and some company would turn this into an actual piece of dishware with the same design (full color) printed on it. One of my creations was inspired by a trip to the EAA International Fly-In event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (now it's called "Airventure"), wherein I attempted to depict a sky full of wondrous airplanes tracing smoke trails in the sky in a tangled mess that defied physics and would surely be any air traffic controller's worst nightmare. It was ridiculous and scribbly, but my mom made such a big deal about how proud she was of my "masterpiece," and hung it on the wall with a wire hanger in a place of honor. I mean, my art hanging on the wall -- that was even a bigger deal than having it stuck to the fridge door with a magnet!

In any case, while she will downplay any artistic ability she has if it's brought up -- and she doesn't even remember the scribble-activity thing -- I still consider that I have a great deal that I owe to her for encouraging me to continue doodling. It's not professional level, it's not terribly original, and it's also not terribly polished, but sometimes it gets the job done, and sometimes it's just fun for its own sake. :)


In any case, my mom is a major inspiration for me, so I wanted to reflect that in some way with my birthday card design for her.




Channel Wing Soaring / Dad's Birthday Card
My dad's birthday came around ... the first one since he's no longer around to celebrate it. I usually draw some sort of airplane for his birthday "card," and I decided to go ahead and keep at it, at least for now. I saw the clouds while I was out driving, and thought, "Wow, this would be a perfect day for flying." Low, scattered clouds, fun for zipping between in a small mono-wing -- it makes you feel like you're going faster when the clouds are closer, but you don't want to actually go THROUGH the clouds, as that's asking for trouble. Back when I was in high school and my dad still had the Cessna (not this plane, but it was aluminum-shell and shiny like this), and I was looking for a chance to put some more flight time in my student pilot's logbook, days like this would have been perfect. (A perfectly clear day, when all I'm allowed to do is buzz around within the borders of my home county, would be mind-numbingly boring by comparison -- because at that point I'm just flying in a big square for the sole purpose of STAYING IN THE AIR A LONG TIME without anywhere to GO. O_O )

Anyway, that inspired me to try my hand at using one of Gwendel's sky-pictures as a reference to draw some poofy clouds. The airplane is a Custer CCW-5 Channel Wing -- a novelty prototype (it didn't catch on, as it had some severe problems) in a line of attempts to develop a plane that could take off from very short runways. It heavily inspired the design of airplanes found in parts of Fallout: New Vegas ... and it's the sort of bizarre aircraft design that fascinated both me and my dad when we'd see such things at air shows. (For similar reasons, I was a big fan of planes like the VariEze kit-planes that would always be on the flight lines at EAA in Oshkosh, or prototype images of "flying body" planes, etc.)

Of course, given the retro angle on this, I'll probably go back at some point and try to turn it into another Fallout-esque billboard or somesuch. I don't have any plans yet, but I just love this design. I would love to kitbash a model of one if I could figure out a decent way of doing it without it being a big ordeal.




The Arch-Lich / Skeleton King
An undead evil overlord type, painted up for my friend's ongoing sandboxy Pathfinder campaign. (Resin 3D-printed figure: "Skeleton King" by CastNPlay.) Dramatic pose and imposing size or no, in my head-canon his name is "Lord Ainz Own-Goal," and this oversized Overlord loves nothing more than to be flattered by his court of overpowered courtiers and general hangers-on. He also suffers from the curse of sounding like Skeletor when he actually speaks. "Nyeh-heh-heh-heh-hehhh!"

Original "Skeleton King" STL



Vault-Tec Van
Resin 3D-printed terrain piece from MODIPHIUS for the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare miniatures game, painted up by me in assorted acrylics. I suffered an unfortunate "crackle paint" effect because of (I think) a bit of not-entirely-cured resin on one side of the model reacting badly with the base coat, but since this is post-apocalyptic I decided to just roll with it. Cracked windows, or cracked paint? That works here. A big challenge was with the Vault-Tec logo on the sides, which was part of the model in relief, but frustratingly hard to paint. On the same side that had the crackle-paint issues, the embossed design seemed shallower and "softer," thus requiring a lot of manual touch-up work rather than just mostly relying on dry-brushing.

I went with wheels intact, and didn't bother transforming them into "flats," since, hey, players at the table aren't likely to complain about a seemingly intact abandoned/ruined NONFUNCTIONAL vehicle depicted with intact tires. Conversely, if I wanted to treat this as a WORKING vehicle driving around, and yet it appeared to be on hubs, that would probably violate their willful suspension of disbelief. (For similar reasons, it's a lot easier for RPG purposes for me to put an intact building model on the table and say, "It's half-collapsed, and there are various gaps in the walls you can crawl through," than for me to put an obvious ruin on the table and say, "It's perfectly intact, and no you CAN'T go through those gaping holes, because they aren't really there.")

Original STL (Modiphius site)





Lone Highwayman Bikers
A few copies of the "Lone Highwayman" motorcycle STL from Modiphius (from the Commercial Vehicles set) printed off and based, and a couple modified with custom saddlebag storage. I've been converting and repainting some old Clix (Mage Knight, HorrorClix, IndyClix, and HeroClix) minis as some wastelanders, including (with adjustments) some riders. In the background is an old O-scale building kit I picked up at a local antiques mall (for much cheaper than it would cost me to get a new building model), and the street is a Tablescapes "Urban Streets" terrain tile from Secret Weapon Miniatures.

My friend with the 3D printer is letting me keep these for myself and my campaign. Yay! :) (I mean, I'll probably get to borrow all those other Fallout minis, too, but these were printed specifically for me, as I'm a fan of the motorcycle design.)

Link (Modiphius)

Comments

[tuftears]

Lovely cards! I'm sure your mom appreciates hearing from you.