We would like wish all of our Arcane Scenery Customers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Thank you for your valued custom over the last year, we look forward to trading with you again in the New Year.
I hope that you all get the chance to spend some time with your families and perhaps like me, when things quieten down, sneak off and do some more painting and modelling. If not, perhaps dream of all the projects that you intend to complete in the coming years whilst snoozing off the effects of a fabulous Christmas dinner!
Just a note to say that all items purchased up until 2.30pm Friday 22nd will be dispatched by first class post or small packet airmail. We will be back into work on Wednesday 27th to post and pack again and will answer all emails and messages then.
Just in case Santa didn’t quite bring you everything that you were hoping for, Arcane scenery has a small present for you. If you spend more than £25.00 in our shop, enter BADSANTA at checkout and get another 10% off! That should help you top up on any modelling essentials that you need for the New Year! Remember, most of our items will be dispatched post free worldwide.
There are some fantastic new releases coming out in the New Year. The first of which will be ‘Gangs of Rome’. We will be taking preorders – keep an eye on the website for details!
Well, actually there is – you are reading it, but…..It’s been a fraught week, one way and another. No doubt all the minor tribulations that have distracted me from my modelling have been magnified by the approach of Christmas. The so called ‘Season of good will to all men’ seems to running a bit short of the ‘good’ part at the moment. The week started well. Saturday found me down in London at the Wembley Stadium watching the mighty Spurs giving Stoke City a 5 -1 pasting. On Sunday I ventured into Nottingham, despite the snow, and finished off my Christmas shopping. It was quite a pleasant experience as the weather appeared have dissuaded some folks from shopping so the queues were quite bearable. With no Mrs Arcane in tow, I could sneak off for a crafty Greggs sausage roll and spend a couple of hours in Waterstones’ bookshop without any guilty feelings. So far so good.
Christmas Shopping in Nottingham – Coffee break
It was on Sunday evening that things began to unravel. Whilst checking through my paperwork and planning the forthcoming week I found that the MOT on my car was about to run out on Monday. Bugger! Fortunately, although the Arcane Rolls Royce (which is cunningly disguised as a 12 year old Vauxhall Astra) was now unavailable, Mrs Arcanes Ferrari, (again, we disguise it as a aged Vauxhall Corsa) would allow me to get to work. As if this wasn’t enough, a crisis was looming in the Arcane household. After 27 years of loyal service, we had disposed of our trusty dinning room table and two months ago, ordered a brand new one all ready for the big Christmas family gathering. I’d even redecorated the dinning room in preparation. Except the table wasn’t ready… Mrs Arcane was not happy and I must admit that I wasn’t looking forward to eating my Christmas dinner from a tray. So as well as sorting the car, I needed to sort a table supplier out. All of this was distracting me from my modelling!
First two figures from the Bandits and Brigands set
I have been working on the Test of Honour Bandits and Brigands set and had completed the first two models using inks, to shade and highlighting in the usual method. The plan was to complete the other five models over the last two weeks but the afore mentioned distractions were making any sort of protracted painting session difficult. I had also intended to document the models as I painted them so that I could complete a painting guide and review on the blog. Alas, something had to give and in this case, as I was grabbing odd bits of painting time when I could, it was the documentation and pictures for the blog that fell by the wayside.
A third bandit joins the gang.
So, all I can say is that I had decided to follow the colour scheme used on the Warlord website and when it came to model number three, shown above I defaulted to using Army Painter quick shade rather than ink to speed things up. To be fair, I did do some highlighting before the quickshade was painted on and once varnished I also used my tried and trusted method of adding in some extra highlights or repainting some of the lighter colours. However, as these are Bandits, I decided that the ‘dirty’ look wasn’t such a bad idea. I was onto my last figure and had decided to do a step by step guide to him when to add to the troubles at home, the web site went down following a routine upgrade to the security certificate! This photo is as far as I got in terms of step by step.
Top Bandit under way.
So by Wednesday, with no car, no Table for Christmas and no website, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. The irony being that in order to take a break from the stress, I took myself off to the garage, despite the cold, and just got on with my hobby! Result being that the Bandits are now complete!
My Bandit Gang for Test of Honour
The good news is that week has finished well. The car is MOT’d and back on the road. We have a loan table for Christmas, so no more worries about where we put the family or the Christmas dinner and the web site upgrade has now been sorted, so we are back in business. I have also had a reminder as to why my hobby is so important to me. When the minor speed bumps of life are threatening, the best remedy is to lose myself in some painting and it will all get sorted out, one way or another. So no Blog as such but I have finished my Bandits!
Bandits and Brigands Boxed set done!
If you would like a set of Test of Honour Bandits and Brigands. they are available from our shop, post free at the time of writing, here:
Arcane Scenery have been associated with Lucid Eye since the very first sculpts were released. I have always been a great fan of the style and standard of Steve Saleh’s sculpting and thought that the Neanderthals and Cromagnon were the best interpretation of ‘Cavemen’ figures that I had seen. The fact that they were a natural fit for our DeeZee range helped!
As with many sculptors in the trade, Steve was often frustrated by the necessity to follow a brief to complete a range rather than follow his own imagination and sculpt figures that excited him. The Lucid Eye brand was an opportunity for Steve to do just exactly that. There was no commercial pressure to model figures in a particular way or follow a style or the latest trend. That said, there was always a plan for the range and a new partnership has launched the Lucid Eye brand with renewed vigour. The partnership is with Steve’s son, Joe. It was initially launched when Steve and Joe worked together on the creation of the Savage Core rules. Joes’ background, fresh from University and an avid Art/Comic book fan enabled them to produce a set of rules from the Savage Core range that is a different take on the standard skirmish game. As is often the case, the partnership is greater than the sum of it’s parts and the energy and enthusiasm generated has resulted in an explosion of the range.
So with Steve focusing on the sculpting and Joe ‘doing everything else’ (his words not his Dad’s!), Lucid Eye is growing into an exciting range of figures that will have both Gaming and Collectors appeal. Joe’s keen eye for design, together with his understanding of how new technology and media allows them to reach out to customers, has allowed Steve to give free reign to his imagination and talent to produce a unique range of figures. Steve and Joe have deliberately adopted a policy of releasing the miniatures as soon as they are ready. They are just as keen to see how gamers will use their figures as provide a structure for them. But make no mistake, there is a structure to what is coming.
So what is in the pipeline? Well, The Savage core range will continue to expand, albeit in slightly new formats. The new Age of Ice range has allowed the reinterpretation of some of the figures as well as adding a new twist to the range. There are plans for an ‘Age of Darkness’ that will further extend this foray into the ‘Pulp world’ of the Savage core. Of course, these new figures will be supported by rules extensions to Savage core, available through PDF’s. In addition to this range, there are a further four completely separate ranges in progress. As Joe says (with a smile), they are doing a bit of a ‘Kubrik’ and taking on each gaming genre, but giving it their own twist.
The ‘Plot Device’ is the first of those genres. Described as ‘Extra Dimensional Sci Fi, Future history or just Weird’, the range is already populated with Nazi’s , Goth Cowboys, Teen gangs and Psychedelic Investigators. A rule set will follow, perhaps in the style of Savage Core but for now, the priority is to populate the range.
‘Treasures from the Cosmic Vault’ is Steve’s project with a rules set that is a game set in a gladiatorial conflict on Titan. There will be a limited range of figures for this game, allowing Steve to really express himself in producing some high quality sculpts and the plan will be to eventually produce a boxed set which will allow players to collect all the figures together along with a rules set – essentially a game in a box format.
‘The Beast of Birchwood’ is Joe’s project. Described as a ‘Victorian Horror Dreamscape’, the figures will act as playing pieces that will allow players to act out a game in a mapped environment. A slightly different take on a miniatures game with RPG elements to immerse the players into this strange world.
I’ve saved perhaps the most exciting news for last. The final project (for now) is the ‘Red Book of the Elf King’. A fantasy skirmish game (Players will need 25 to 30 figures) based on the fall of the Elves and the Elves Civil war, with the figures being ‘Heroic 28mm size’ that’s at least 32mm. The rules are being written by none other than the rules Meister himself, Mr Rick Priestly. With Rick writing the rules and Steve sculpting the figures, I am confident that we will see a game that is both exceptionally playable and easy on the eye! I will bring you more news as I have it. In the meantime, I’ve included the links to the various Facebook groups and web sites below.
Steve Saleh at work
I hope that you are excited about Lucid Eye as I am and I am sure that Steve and Joe will continue to produce some of the most innovative rules and collectable figures on the market. As you can see, there is plenty more on the work bench!
The Links!
To see the Lucid Eye Range at the Arcane Scenery shop, click here:
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