Let me be clear that the painted mini pic I am showing is NOT MY WORK! It belongs to a very adept, patient, detailed, and talented painter whom I personally know; this is a custom mini that was completed for a Blood Bowl Tournament "Bash'N'Dash Classic" in Raleigh North Carolina about a year ago. You can 'clic the painted pic' below which will take you to his site (which I highly encourage), and be prepared to be inspired by some of his work you will find over there, as it is very well done! I can honestly say that he certainly is an inspiration to me!
(click the pic to enlarge)
Here is the mini 'static' or unpainted:
Here is Chris's vision of what Kilmora the Deft should look like... Awesome!
Here are her character stats in case any of you want to add her to your dwarf team, just keep in mind that you will have to work her into your house-rules as she is not LRB CR 6.0 approved:
I might add that Chris is not the only painter in my league that inspires me! Our "Commissioner Rick" is an amazing painter as well, and he just recently returned home from a tournament with a "best painted" trophy (no surprise), and I would love to see him blog his work up as well as he has a lot to offer! It would be something if these two were it! Jay is another who does nice work... and there are yet others still who are very adept!
I am quite sure that many of you know someone who is very talented in this vein of mini painting, and love seeing their latest piece. Next time you get together with them, ask if they won't share a little technique they use, and then try it out to see if it will improve your own work... you might be surprised what they have to share! :D
I know for myself it has been very rewarding growing with the hobby of mini-painting, and am glad that I can now do it professionally (on top of everything else I do!) It is always fun when I am learning new techniques and connecting with other people through it... I hope you don't mind me showcasing you Chris!
What a surprise this morning to find this article mentioning my Kilmora paint job. I don't mind you sharing it at all, but all of your superlatives made me blush. I don't usually paint up a lot of buxom models since I think it's too often that female miniature are oversexualized but I thought that she might fit nicely as a troll-slayer type player on a team or as a star player based off of a troll-slayer based stat line. In the end, painting Kilmora turned out to be a good painting exercise for me.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of stats, I'm glad that you mentioned she is not a LRB6/CRP approved star player. I would like to mention that I feel the stat card that was handed out with Kilmora at the Bash-N-Dash is probably significantly undercosted. Anyone trying to use her as presented might want to be aware of that before making her inducement option. I don't believe any playtesting was done with those stats and they look like they were almost just picked out of a hat. Following the BashNDash, I feared that she might have been allowed as an (unbalanced) inducement in the CABBA league so I did a little analysis on her. There are actually some baseline formulas that underlie Blood Bowl rosters and star players, that the Blood Bowl Rules Committee used to at least generate a starting cost that might then be adjusted based on how they play or interact with other players on their roster or certain skills. There was an episode on the Three Die Block http://threedieblock.libsyn.com/three-die-block-01-14-2013-team-creation-w-tom-anders-house-of-cards where Tom Anders, a member of the BBRC, talked about the formulas. Applying that formula to Kilmora puts her cost around 310K, which is a pretty big gap. Also, it's also worth noting that 3 of the 4 skills on her are doubles skills which gives a low chance of anyone beiing able to devleop a dwarf blitzer in this way naturally. Plus, blodge is a powerful skill combo for star players. I think Zara is the only official star with blodge but is fitting since she's an Amazon. Anyway, just a lot of number crunching to consider for anyone wishing to playtest her.
Well Chris, in an inadvertent effort to add to the rouse in your cheeks, I can honestly say that none of those words were "superlatives" but rather candid, accurate carefully selective 'descriptives' that describe how you paint. Your post only confirms another couple of character traits innate to your person; those would be gracious and humble.
ReplyDeleteOn a broader note, I think (generally speaking) that as a culture we are too quick to point out what others do wrong, and don't say enough about what others do right. I suppose that in my more mature years, I have found sharing thoughts of the latter to be it's own reward.
Regarding Kilmora, I couldn't agree more: she is deftly underpriced, and I am quite familiar with the formulas that Tom, Jarvis, Gav and other early game developers at GW have used, and honed down over the years. I suppose it is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Blood Bowl with so many games out there (many of which are wonderful and fun!), but I can't seem to find anything as finely tuned and balanced in all aspects of play like Blood Bowl. The subtlies of fans, staff, fame, and the like, and how they impact game play in such a finely tuned way is brilliant. It can only be achieved after several revisions, to achieve the depth and balance the game has. This takes a lot of fan support, longevitiy, stick-to-itivenss, patience, brains, and number crunching. No surprise that it is on ranker.com under the top "100 games of all time!"