Pulp: Building an Arab market scene

As I've been harping on abor all month, the post-Salute challenge was to build a market scene for some Pulp games. No easy task alongside a stack of other projects!

The start was to see what was out there to buy. The best priced were Black Cat, who sell an amazing variety of thing:, two stalls for £10. Conveniently Black Cat also do loads of different trade goods which came in useful. The stalls themselves were fairly solid pieces of textured resin to give a covered table and canopy. While they arent particularly innovative or detailed designs, they look the part and painted up pretty well. The stalls come with a metal topper piece covered in goods, I left these off and added single loose trade goods instead. The one on the left ended up being a bit bare ad cold do with a couple more pieces when I get chance.



I figured that I could make the outlay go twice as far by building table legs under the weighty metal stall toppers. Dead simple: two sizes of balsa wood and a small piece of foamed PVC underneath to give structure. So we've an antique armaments stall and a few sellers of various foodstuffs on my slightly wonky stalls.



With these purchases giving a good start, I turned to a scratch build for the next. Yup, it's Abdul peddler of rumours and rugs, for all your finest quality floor covering needs.



Simply two bits of dowel, 'rope' wrapped around to make two lines made from leftover scale barbed wire. The rugs themselves are a quite excellent freebie from Adventures in Lead, printed, carefully cut out and with the backs and edges painted in a suitable colour to hide the sharp white of the paper. Folded in half they were just glued overlapping on the lines. There are plenty spare rugs to lay in buildings to add more period flavour. I'm really pleased with how this came out.

And finally, a pot merchant. A selection of metal pots from Black Cat's trade goods, two large and one small pack, very reasonably priced hunks of metal at £2 a set. Based with another rug added, sorted!



One day I might add a couple more stalls: does anyone have any suggestions for me to have a go at? For now, the scene is completed with scatter terrain that I've plenty of already: boxes, sacks of grain, a fountain, civilians, walls and buildings.



On another note, Mike at Trouble at t'Mill is running a series of giveaways, here's the link to day three.

Still around, some aimless progress

You may have noticed a dearth of posts here. This is mostly because I've been pretty busy with real life for the past 6 weeks or so I've not really put a paintbrush to miniature. At least I feels that way, for some reason I've just not been feeling it recently. 

I exaggerate slightly, I have done a few bits in a vaguely aimless way. When I'm daunted or disinterested by bigger projects, I fall back on the old faithful: Pulp. the project of endless possibilities, of great figures for no particular reason. 

First up is a new NPC: 'Mustafa'. An Arab trader with goods for sale at the right price - some haggling required! Perhaps he also trades information, rumours and gossip. But will he help or hinder our heroes?

The miniature is from Black Cat. I don't think his tunic came out too well but as a minor character he'll do. 

Next up, the party leader for an antagonistic adventuring association: 'Monsieur Leclerc' of the Societe Archaeologique. 

I'm really pleased with the paint job on him. I started looking up French Foreign Legion uniforms, realised they seemed pretty varied in the early 20th century so went with a nonspecific military uniform. He was a pleasure to paint too, as always with Artizan Designs 'Thrilling Tales' range. The only thing I'm not sure about is his glasses lenses - what do you think?

Mustafa tempts Leclerc with an offer of information

Both of these still need varnishing, after much browsing of forums I settled on a new regime using brush-on Windsor and Newton matt varnish then Testors Dullcote. Despite the 'matt' being more satin, meaning it sometimes needing two coats of Dullcote, I was sick of touching up chipped minis. I may even go back and varnish/dullcote some older minis for the extra protection. 

I also finished these:

Yup, that's two bases, which one day will have Harpies on for Aegeus. The harpies themselves are half assembled. As I say, I've been a bit aimless!