Painting the Wreck Age Church of Fun Set

Greetings once more hobbyists and miniature adventurers! Sorry for the bout of blog inactivity; we need to more frequently churn out the ramblings and woo the masses with photos of our wonderful geeky explorations!

One thing I truly love about this hobby, is that it lets me make progress way in to the late night hours whilst the world rests it's weary eyes. While gaming has been slow for me personally due to scheduling, I can still kick back and create these little scenes we like to cause all kinds of dice chucking chaos in.

Often, without direction, I find myself impulsively grabbing a random project. This time: the Wreck Age Church of Fun starter! Hanging with the Hyacinth guys at Midwest Miniatures Expo probably left a subconscious demand that I should paint up some of my accumulated post-apoc masses.

Right out of the box, this is a decent set of metal minis. Not a lot of cleanup was required, the casts, while not the most crisp, still hold a lot of detail. I do find Wreck Age minis have a lot of 'character' in their sculpts. They've got that right kind of quirkiness that I'm drawn to when I see minis. I'm the type who would rather paint a frog knight than a space marine. The idea that the Church of Fun are these drugged up hedonists roaming the wastelands wearing gas masks is kind of appealing in that old-school, campy, chaos sense.

Unique to this set, compared to the 2 player start box minis is that they went with a more modular route in terms of weapon options. Wreck Age is very much a create-your-own-warband game system, so the modularity makes sense.

The joint system of flat connections between the wrist and hand could be improved slightly however, with a ball-socket joint like many modular plastic sprues have.

Experience with metal minis, like Infinity stuff, warns me to pin. Pin all the things!

My next usual step, after I'm happy with poses, is to create a scenic base. I use a lot of green stuff, some basing molds, hobby tools, and talus to create a quick little cracked earth look.

And then...we kick back with a podcast and go to the happy painting mode...

I veer towards brighter color palettes for most of my work, even with wasteland weirdos for the most part. It just appeals to me that these little dudes should do all they can to attract the eye, so experiment and up that contrast!

I wanted to experiment with different backdrops as well. Your choice of backdrop when photoing a mini can affect a lot of things. Most importantly, is the highlight contrast. I don't tend towards black backgrounds because I feel like the lighting becomes harsh. I preferred white for the most part, as I want the mini to stand out...but with darker/creepier minis like these, I found I lost some atmosphere with a white background. So I printed up some free ambient backgrounds from the net and did a bit of a trial. Can you see how each backdrop has an effect on the mini's presentation? What colors stand out more/less? Which one gives the vibe I want to convey?

Well, all in all, these minis were a blast to paint up. Simple enough to not take forever, but with enough unique detail to stand out on my shelf. Can't wait to see more of the new set!