Sunday 14 April 2013

Otherworld Adventurers and Dragons

Unboxing the crowd-funded Adventurers box set...

Here is a box...


inside is a... carrier bag! I recognise that picture...


There's another one in here...
What's this at the bottom..
Ooh, extras, wardogs, familiars, henchmen, treasure...
Dwarven mercenary (by Des Hanley) in a very naturalistic style. The familiars are tiny, very naturally sized for the miniatures and the birds are particularly nicely done. Treasure chests come with a single 60mm base, the large one is a huge solid lump of metal. The Henchmen, characterful, overburdened red-shirts, unfortunately there are no coconut shells in the conversion pack (something to do with the speed of a migrationary European Swallow methinks), but there are weapons. Generic men-at-arms and pack carriers these are not.... there's some nice photos of the raw metal on Erny's blog, go have a look.

Out of the bag, the back of the Adventurers Box 1 sleeve back

Front of the Adventurers Sleeve Front
Carry case - the "glow" on the comet looks better than this photo suggests.
Inside the carry case - miniatures!
The sleeve fronts all feature a digital painting by Victor Perez Corbella and other graphic adornments by me.

Not going to say much abut these right now, they're all sculpted by Kevin Adams, and they are all very, very good. At some point I'll do some scale shots with some RBG and some 80s Citadel (more than likely Talisman and 80's LoTR and maybe some solid based ones too) they come with separate backpacks and most with separate weapons and solid flagstone bases. Nice photos of finished painted miniatures on the OW site.

DAB2 - Demi-humans front


DAB2 - Demi-humans back
Again, similar thing going on with DAB2 - and photos of the painted miniatures.


The other big new release of the quarter is the start of the Dragons range (a planned series of 12 chromatic, metallic and ...) Again the sleeve design is my work, I'm really happy with how the "Dragon" logo turned out, and hopefully it will turn out a useful and flexible device for the whole series.

DGN1 Sleeve front and DGN2 Sleeve front

DGN1 Sleeve back


DGN2 Sleeve back


Again, as with the DAB boxes the front features a digital painting by Victor Perez Corbella  and graphic embellishments by me, and the back has a photo of the contents by Richard and a border by me (this has more direct reference to a classic piece of D&D art - guess what?!?).

DGN1 - White Dragon Human Fighter

DGN1 - White Dragon Human Fighter

The White Dragon is a beast, there's a really nice feel of large lizard - and recalls the late 70's Airfix dinosaur kits I had as a kid. To me that's a good thing, there's a kind of naturalism to the monster that comes through the textures and sculpting. This dragon is less of a mystical beast, more of a force of nature, a semi-intelligent animal, it's 'realistic' while obviously reflecting some classic RPG artwork. The cast is clean, and the pieces fit together reasonably well, there will be some filling, but as the cuts occur mostly in natural place (like in between scales) this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The Black Dragon is lovely also, but he is a real hefty beast who wouldn't hold together no matter how much Blue-Tack I used. There is a difference in price between these two, and I reckon it's all going into the bulk of this guys belly. With that in mind both of the dragons will need drilling and pinning, so serious models,  not like the plastic kits I had when I was a nipper at all...

4 comments:

  1. I can't wait...it probably be a few weeks before I see mine over here in the States. Though, I can see its worth the wait I have both dragons coming also and just ordered the drow captain and priestess. Otherword is my miniature dreams come true. Until I discovered Richard's line, Ebay and a occational Perry lotr kit were becoming my only mini fix. When I returned to miniatures in the early 2000's after a ten year absence Reaper and GW were my only source's ...how they both have fallen in different ways, but thats a subject for another day;) Thanks for sharing

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  2. Lovely work Zhu.

    I didn't realise the Dragons were being packed with sleeves and cases, do the Dragons fit back inside the cases once assembled?

    Chris

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  3. Cheers guys. Stormbringer - the wait is definitely worth it. Ha, I can say that because I'm not waiting any more :-) and yes the new Drow personalities are fandabidozi. Both GW and Reaper have some nice figures, but they don't seem to be able to manage the consistency that Otherworld (and Perrys and RBG and Thunderbolt Mountain) put out.

    Chris, I haven't tried putting the dragons back in the box - my blue-tack quick build really didn't last more than a couple of minutes before the weight and stress of gravity took over and the parts fell off, but I'm going to hazard a guess and say probably not.

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  4. Looking forward to getting mine!

    Zhu - your email has been bouncing the last couple of days..."cannot reach server" was the most recent message.

    Howard

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