Christian Weiss' Simian Legion Report

christian  writes:

Welcome the new rulers of the world, Hail Simian Empire!

Hmm, I think I am working on these guys for too long (damn, where are my bananas???). So, this is my first report of the Simian side of life, eh, I mean painting these cute little fellows.

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Christian Weiss. I am from Berlin, Germany, and have to finish these miniatures first, as the postal service will need 4 weeks to deliver them. I think they would be faster, if a Giant Gor would be standng right behind them!

Here are some shots of my working desk and some stuff I am working on at the moment.

I have several different brands of paints: Citadel, I-Kore, Lukas, Coat D'Arms, Vallejo. I mostly use Citadel paints, as I like them most.

I have several brushes - a 3, 2, 1 and 000. Then a large brush for priming and an old brush for mixing colours (and putting glue onto the bases).

I have been into this time-consuming hobby for about 15 years now, playing with little miniatures and even painting them. I enjoy both playing and painting - I think that's why I am mostly painting armies.

My favorite game is Warhammer Fantasy. I have a fully painted Lizardmen and Vampire Counts army. Other games I play are Celtos, Void, Warmachine, Full Thrust, WH Ancients..... and the typical GW stuff.

But this article is all about painting, isn't it (still searching for my bananas...)? Ok, I started painting seriously 6 years ago. I have been doing commissioned work for about 4 years now, and did much stuff for I-Kore (Celtos and Void painting guides), army painting (Fir Bolg and Sidhe). I am very into trying out different painting schemes (I did some alternative schemes for the Void VASA and Syntha forcebooks from I-Kore), each unit of my Warhammer Lizardmen Army is painted in different colours.

I like to use very bright colours (green and orange seem to be my favorite...). If there wouldn't have been a clear painting scheme for the Simians, I would have painted them... green and orange. No, I think I would have used the white/red scheme for the clothes (as in the official Simian pictures of 100 Kingdoms) and black fur.

Beside painting and playing with miniatures, I have several webpages:

1. Stronghold Online, my main page. No, it has nothing to do with the computer game (nevertheless, I get emails with questions like how to get to level 3 and what to do if disk 1 doesn`t work...). The page is in german with a massive amount of pictures. There are event reports, workbench articles and painting guides too.
2. Celtos. I started this page to promote Celtos and I-Kore in Germany. This page is in English and German.
3. Spieleninberlin is the page of our local gaming club. I maintain this page with a friend of mine. We have excellent gaming terrain and are doing regular events like tournaments etc.
4. Battlefield Berlin is a new project. Me and a friend are starting an online shop with miniatures and stuff. We are still working on the shop system, but will start very soon.

So why am I participating in this contest?

I don't know, a Giant Gor forced me to do this. I always liked the 100 Kingdom miniatures, but have never seen any in reality (I think right now I am the first German ever with a 100 Kingdom miniature in my hands...).

So, thats it for the first article (found the banana and started eating it...). Tomorrow I will show you how I prepared the models and how I started painting!