Troll Snot Monthly Sneeze #1

    Alright so weekly posts or updates didnt work. This was a secret goal of mine thats actually unnatainable because Im equal parts incredibly lazy but also incredibly busy, which is a hell of a death blow to this want of making a fairly consistent blog.  

  

So to overcome that I made a sweet ass banner logo and renamed the blog to TROLL SNOT!!!!

Wowee isnt this cool, show yer mom she'll recognize my handiwork!        

So with this new proverbial champagne bottle for the rename and relaunch of this blog Ive decided a more realistic goal compared to weekly uploads is more of a once a month verbal diarrhea to shower you in the refuse of my project updates, game ideas and progress on existing games (such as my bile game wow badass dude), and general thoughts or a quick rundown (dump it) of my month. This sometimes illegible hot load of words and pictures will serve more as documentation than anything else.

    ANYWAYS, lets give you a quick rundown of whats been going on. As of late after returning from the PNW mountainhold of 3d Roleplaycon I leave with an urge to return. I met a lot of old friends once again and new ones. The weekend was an amazing microcosm of specialist oldhammer games as well as other lesser known games. I didnt play many games and mainly just played a gorka morka scenario ran by Mike (@100daemons). He ran an amazing game with a scenario built around the Red Gobbo running a destruction derby with ulterior motives. At around turn 3 the red gobbo left and all the orc on orc carnage turned into a (mostly) cooperative fight to take down an unleashed stompa. 

Absolutely amazing board and several gorka morka warbands provided by Mike to anyone who wanted to play gorkamorka.

    Besides this the weekend consisted of watching my friends play games and sculpting faces on whatever someone handed me for $5. A con classsic past time for me the past handful of events that essentially funds my human urge to eat and drink. It was a nice relaxing time and very very small tight knit event. No distractions, no influencers, just gaming and nice people. 

    One thing that stood out to me was the amount of people who played smaller scale large war games such as warmaster and epic. Theres something really satisfying at seeing a tiny 10mm "Large Army" on the table facing off against another sizable mini army. I loved the tiny sculpts and they seemed fun to paint so safe to say I felt inspired when I got home. Ive started to sculpt a goblin warmaster army. Just finished within the last couple of days. You think to yourself "10mm warmaster scale? What are you fucking stupid just 3d print them idiot, you fucking dumbass." Well I dont really enjoy 3d prints and if the existing miniatures arent to my taste (or cheap for that matter) Ill just sculpt my own. Who knows your own taste better than you anyways? 

My bogie goblin boys ready for small scale mass battle. Needs more units though.

    

Ive also snuck in an extra warband to send along with all the orc preorders. (Whoops sorry for the wait,) but they should get here and be ready for sale immediately when I ship the other preorders. No idea what Ill sculpt next but Im thinking maybe some other big helmets or perhaps some meatball monsters as is tradition. I am overdue some new goblin sculpts as well as Ive focused on orcs for a while. Maybe some boar riders? Who knows, the skies the limit when it comes to greenskins. Thats for sure!

LEGIONS OF DEMENTED ORCS READY TO BATTER AND BASH ALL! EVIL EVIL EVIL!

That sums up anything of note Ive done this month. Heres to the next post, Sneeze ya later.

    

Overflow of Vomit #1

     "How would you make your table top game interesting?" 

    I ask myself this often whenever I try my hand at homebrewing some super cool and awesome game everybody will love, Being the well known game designer I am who makes MILLIONS of my work.

    What can I do or include in my game that would make it something different, something GOOB. Generally it seems to just be flavor text considering I dont understand tabletop gaming all that well. Ive played some warhammer fantasy, some mordeheim, random things but nonetheless I havent been playing it well. I've had fun but I feel like I never truly comprehend it for whatever reason. 

    Does one need to make something completely new and unheard of everytime? Or is it okay to sort of pick up a skeleton and dress it up in some new skin? I feel like the answer to that depends on what you want to do. I started Goremagog as a sort of way to cement anything I make into a world or universe. A way to ground miniature aesthetic or design ethos (maybe the wrong word? Not sure, dont care). Generally I wanted to focus on just goblinoids (Orcs, goblins, trolls, big mouthed monsters non copyright cave dwellers) for goremagog. I found myself wanting to sculpt more humanoid stuff to expand my scope so I came up with a dingy medieval (Never seen that before!) fluid infused skirmish game called Bilebog. I sort of needed to justify the other stuff I was doing that wasnt orcs and goblins to myself with this. Im not sure why but it made me feel better about doing it after creating the skeleton of a game in that aesthetic niche in my mind. 

Attention grabbing image, foreshadowing for the next paragraph possibly.

    

      Bile bog, A bog of bile, I generally want to stay away from the "Eww mucky grim grimey woe is me" Medieval crap but theres something really alluring about it. I dont want to make a sludgy wargame, in fact I want to stray far from that as the niche is a dead horse beaten into the mud. As to say that the niche has been filled by a handful of games and I dont want to add another one to the pile, but I will if fate decides its not unique enough to not be lumped into this genre. Im going to try do add some extra sleazy grodiness and unserious violence. Theres a fine line to tow for this between "Cheesy" and "Cool" so hopefully I can pull this off. 

    The idea to make Bilebog different was the "Bile System". The idea behind this is that each warband would devote itself to one of four bile colors, depending on the unit type chosen for the warband they would recieve a certain amount of "Bile tokens" per round. This in turn would allow the warband access to either their bile colors "Humored Magic" spells or the spells of a different bile type with an increased chance of failure when using the wrong color. Units not inclined to magic may use tokens in "Humored attacks" in order to inflict their bile type onto an enemy warband. The kicker is that each model can only carry a limited number of bile tokens, once tokens have built up past a certain number the afflicted models will recieve negative effects. Currently its just rolling to see if they inflict a wound on themselves but there could be other effects later down the road.

    In theory this should make for a swingy game that focuses on bile token usage and attempting to inflict as many bile tokens on the enemy warband in order to gain an advantage by crippling them with "Unbalanced Humors". It sounds cool to me and I havent heard of another tabletop game using something like this but maybe something similar is out there. Im sure this is essentially some sort of overheating mechanic or something. Another issue I ran into when play testing is that bile tokens as physical chits or little markers doesnt work. The board gets filled FAST and its hard to keep track of who made what. Luckily, my good friend Dylan put some work into some little stat cards for your warbands units in order to keep track of this easily and without congesting the board and gameplay.

Character stat sheet by Dylan, beautiful work. 

@Dylanmelisko on instagram, hes a great artist.

    Apart from this mechanic I think the aesthetic of the book will be somewhat unique. I plan on sculpting most if not all of the art in paper clay myself in order to stand out a bit. Not using the same artist everyone uses, monotony is a curse and Im pretty tired of digital art for the most part and find a severe lack of handmade physical art in things nowadays. Whimsical janky stuff is cool, Ill just do that. Its the best I can do, I like it, maybe you will too.

Paper clay organs for the cover.

Spleen up top, Liver to the right, 

Brain with nose on the bottom, and Heart on the left.

    To close this I want to ask you all a question. Whats something cool in a game that made it interesting for you? Be it an aesthetic, game mechanic, or community what stood out to YOU?

FOLLOW ME ON

     Im probably not gonna make a bluesky or anything. 

    Most likely Ill stay on instagram or become an esoteric mini maker that can only be contacted through his blog around 20 years down the road when someone wants a single out of production mini and I wont respond to that email for at least 2 months. 

    I sort of want to talk about what has recently inspired me and what Im doing. I feel like instagram or any image sharing website (Or twitter-esque sites) dont lend themselves to the long form POWER that is The Amateur Blog. So with that being said, Ive just recently slowly drifted away from sculpting goblins, although I will knock out some sculpts I havent finished Im gonna take a break from that. Goblins are GREAT but sometimes we need some change, some breathing room. I need something different. 

   Ive wanted to sculpt some humands for a while so Ive sculpted a couple of chaos marauder type guys to flex this "Human Design" muscle, theyre still fairly orcish and expressive. Lots of focus on the face. Protruding brows, cheek bones, and large mouths. Something I cant really escape with my work on all fronts. Be it paper clay sculptures, greenstuff sculptures, or drawing things by hand. I suppose this is my style. Large and cartoony. 

    It doesnt exactly fit in when I compare it to "Oldhammer" or "Middlehammer" stuff. Theres some more fine or detailed sculpting in those models thats often overlooked I think. Between the goof theres a lot of subtle textures that I cant seem to capture. So I find comfort in the large in your face cartoonish nature of expressive faces, giant weapons, and not so realistic ratios of limbs, mid sections, etc etc. I think the biggest driving force of this for me is ever since I was a child I was a huge GWAR fan. The music is pretty good (New gwar booooo) but what really drew me in later in life was the special effects and costume work. Early on it was real chunky and cartoonish, and to a certain degree it still is! A lot of it is a bit more refined since the band has been around the block a couple of times and theyve had time to make more complex design choices and whatnot. 

GWAR circa 1986 lots of repurposed football gear, 
what looks like paper mache and other cheap materials to make a deranged space barbarian

Scumdogs of the Universe era GWAR around the early 90s. A bit more proffessional looking, foam rubber props, masks, and costumes. 

I feel like a lot of this really shaped my taste in aesthetics and design choices when it comes to sculpting. I seem to default to chunkier excessive details. Luckily this seems to translate fairly well to miniatures especially of the type I sculpt. Orcs, goblins, chaos worshippers, thugs, ogres, trolls, all seem to benefit from this. It seems like the finer details I try to chase when sculpting dont matter compared to the bigger in your face pauldrons, spikes, giant fuck off weapons. At least it seems like people dont really care about it. I havent heard any complaints at least. 

Apart from this Ive recently taken a try at game design and worldbuilding. Ive been working on an orcoid rank and flank game called "GOREMAGOG" as well as a skirmish offshoot focusing on bile magic titled "BILEBOG" You can see my naming conventions probably share a clunky cartoonish crudeness with everything else I make. 

Goremagog cover art comissioned
 from @Albucarcass on instagram, worth a follow if you like this. His work is astounding.

    The experience of working on Goremagog has been very fun. Its been quite an experienc thats for sure. After inititally feverishly writing it and attempting to play it Ive realized that its completely broken and nothing works. Currently still working on fixing this but initially, that realization that all I had worked on didnt work sort of sucked. However with rushing it I wouldnt have been able to gain any flavor or flair that would have made this game "mine". Over days of writing and editing I slowly became more comfortable with it but since then I havent touched it and started a new game. Ill return to it and hopefully finish it when I find more inspiration, more drive. Theres no use working on it when I dont want to, it doesnt make sense to do that. I want this to be fun. 

    With this boredom came the creation of "Bilebog" which again, feverish writing and then a broken game. However I got to playtest it last saturday with a friend. I honestly enjoyed this more than writing the game itself. Being able to have a friend work through this proccess with you makes it much easier. An obvious realization for sure but not everything is so blatant upon first trying. 

But besides writing the games Ive neglected world building. You can get a sense with item names, spell descriptions, but apart from that there is ZERO substance. Is it necessary? Plenty of games dont have much world building and they seem to be doing fine. I would like to but I suppose well see how it turns out. I can write rules, items, weapons, magic, unit types, but as soon as I sit down to write what the world consists of, its history, I draw a blank. Annoying, for sure, but sooner or later my brain will crap something out. Ill probably look to gwar for an answer or some other grody media.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my ramblings. 

Where do you tend to find inspiration? What do you look for? 

Road to making a GOOB part 2

     Alright so today well be covering how I get started on making a sculpt. We already went over the process of sketching out or just thinking about an idea, or how I do it anyways. 

So for those not savvy to what you generally use for sculpting miniature sculpting seems to have a few bits and bobs that are fairly universal for this hobby.

 

From left to right (and numbered) we have 

1. Silicone tipped sculpting tools

2. Hobby Snips

3. Cork Plug

4. Copper or brass wire (cant remember)

5. Sane Glue

6. Kneadatite (green stuff) and milliput (bought)

So the beginning to this is making an armature. I usually (for goblins) I make a little U shape and dig it into the cork. Ill usually add arms later but for this shaman guy I attached some wire for the arm immediately with some super glue and baking soda to hold it in place. The reason for this is I applied far too much super glue and didnt want to hold it til it dried completely. I am INCREDIBLY lazy, I will repeat this as needed.

You can almost see the complete goblin.... 

its really ugly but itll all be covered up my delicious epoxy clays.

After this is done its time to block out a HUMONGOUS CHUNK of it in milliput. Greenstuff is cool for this but I like using milliput since I can smear that garbage on like peanut butter, Shape it vaguely into the shape needed, then when you hit it with a hairdryer on high on and off for a minute or two and it will completely cure. Doing this on and off is KEY because if it gets too hot it will bubble and give you a disgusting pockmarked puffy texture. Nurgle players that ones for you, or if youre sculpting like burn victims or something. Theres a tip. 

Milliput bros, it cured in minutes. We cant stop winning.

Once the milliput is speed cured and cooled completely its ready for greenstuff. Im gonna get on my soapbox and say to look up "Kneadatite" and buy that instead of the ribbons if you sculpt and use a lot of greenstuff. They come separately in a tube as kneadatite so theres no wasted half cured crap like the ribbon! I mix both parts and generally do basic forms like the skirt/robe ruffles, hand lumps, biceps, and most of the face. Once that completely cures Ill add the finishing details and blending all those parts into their respective textures and whatnot. But to see that youll have to wait til next blog post where I show the (Mostly) finished gooblin shaman. For now have this guy. 

Unfinished but that terrible toothless visage will never leave your mind! 

If you were sculpting an evil granny this is pretty much it. 

Thats all for this post, I encourage everyone to leave comments or something if you have specific questions or concerns and I can try to help. I am an amateur through and through so please keep this in mind. Thanks for reading!

Road to making a GOOB part 1

 So this will be part one of a long road of making a miniature or set of miniatures. My creative process is my own and this is in no way an endorsement of the way I do things nor a step by step guide how to do things exactly like I would, but merely an explanation and a way to sort of explain what I go through for each warband or sculpt really. 

So generally I tend to sculpt blind. I always have a and never have really done it any other way until just recently. What I mean by this is that I would sculpt without a sketch or roughing out the ideas on paper or anything beforehand. I enjoy doing this because it usually ends up with a product that is completely made in the moment. 

With that being said my past couple of warband sculpts were all drawn beforehand. for whatever reason I had the mindset that if I put the idea down in paper I would have to limit myself to what that drawing had. It makes no sense but thats just what it felt like. Once I realized that i could change anything I wanted after the fact drawing out ideas became a better way to sort of cement ideas in the moment. A shitty sketch can do wonders for bringing a fleeting idea to life and I tend to doodle randomly. This was the case for my set of "BIG HELMET" goblins.  

Terrible picture of big helmet goblins and some other random incredibly over stippled doodles. 

Big helmet goblins complete sculpt, mostly true to the drawings but more or less different. The moonheaded guy was also a quick doodle but made at the last second as an interesting "Musician" or "herder" for the warband. 

These guys were created as I was doodling because I kept saying stupid things to myself such pertaining to big helmets. "What do you think of my BIG HELMET" "Dont mind my BIG HELMET' "Oh, have you seen my BIG HELMET" This concept was really funny to me and it ended up being a fun idea. Whats more gobliny than a heavily armored goblin encased in a large helmet with some sort of grotesque visage on said helmet. I imagine they run at people or whatever and ram them down then continue to ram them down repeatedly sort of stun locking whatever theyre up against. The concept is very silly but I think thats the charm to something like this stemming from a doodle or something I said outloud and kept repeating because itd make me chuckle. 

Tangent aside, for this blogpost Ill show a crappy shitty doodle of a crappy shitty goblin whom will be sculpted based on the sketch. Pictured below is a goblin shaman and his little younglin helper who just carries a cauldron around. Theyre evil, mischievous, green, and happy to deliver misfortune to all. 

Goblin shaman and cauldron guy (wink wink nudge nudge to a game by Hillgiant Games)

The sketch is crude, very quick, and doesnt have much thought put into it. A lot of ideas not fully flushed out and a lot of concepts very similar to some creatures who are incredibly fond of the night. Once the armature is made Ill probably post some progress pics and how I make an armature (Spoiler: lazily) but it works for small things like robed goblins. This is essentially the base of the idea, I know the things I want but the details are not there. Generally Ill add them as I sculpt or come up with concepts and try them then and there and Im happy with the outcome. Sort of freestyle or improvised in the moment, it brings a lot pressure to an otherwise enjoyable hobby which I enjoy. Doesnt sound very pleasant though does it? Ill go more in depth on sculpting tools and whatnot when i actually get to sculpting this guy and his friend. 

Some things will probably be useful for you if youre new to sculpting or if youre an established sculptor maybe something new you havent tried? I doubt the latter however it should be interesting for whoever is looking for this Im sure.

The Goobening

 Got bored and decided to start a blog. Im not sure what Ill use this for, more than enough blogs explaining how minis are made and whatnot but maybe Ill do that in step by step posts from armature to epoxy to molding and casting. Maybe I can gather my thoughts here and post updates for warbands and ideas?

We'll see. The current matter right now is GOBLINS. I make a lot of goblins and only goblins really. Im planning on taking some sets to adepticon but well see how that goes I may have shot myself in the foot and ordered too late. 

The next set are some dusk goobs with a banner pole. I really think these are the best ones Ive sculpted yet but they are a lot smaller than my usual goblin sculpts. A lot truer to the classic Kev Adam goblin sculpts without being complete copies (I guess?) Just a different experiment in aesthetics and overall form in the way I sculpt. I hope to have these for adepticon but probably not, maybe Ill open a preorder for after. 

I made these guys specifically to antagonize Gabe and have him make a banner since thats all I've been doing these past few weeks. Lots of banner painting and for not much reason other than the joy of painting itself as Ive never really painted with acrylics until starting this hobby. Its real fun stuff and trying to figure out iconography or weird heraldry type stuff while using classic goblin iconography is interesting to me, a nice exercise in creativity. 

Dusk Goblin Malicious moon, Started out as 60s Psyche moon but came out more heavily influenced by a weird Oingo Boingo Brothers art style thing. Probably one of the quicker ones but also the most different one.

This was the original Dusk Goblin Malicious moon, I wanted to go for a more evil look so this sorta stayed as a rough go at the idea of what I wanted for this banner.

Banner for the Smoldering Eye tribe. Classic night goblin iconography, all of em. Thunderbolts, flames, eye the whole nine yards on a cream background. This is my favorite of the few flags Ive done since it was so clean and came out so nice on paper when I started painting and drawing it.

Banner for my main night goblin guys, not sure what Ill call the tribe but lets just say its an oderus inspired crooked moon flag. Nice flame gradient but the pencil marks show horribly. I still enjoy this one though as it was my first attempt at a freehand banner. 

Last but not least heres a mock up for the guys who will be using that gnarly flag. Little bastard boys ready to prod, bludgeon, bash, and stab whatever comes their way. 

Ill update this whenever I feel like it I suppose. I may give a heads up to shirt preorders or something here. Keep an eye out for a new goob shirt soon maybe? We'll see.