Duncan M. Hamilton's Blog, page 6

Alpha Protocol 2 Cover Reveal!

Hey folks,

I’ve finally got myself organised enough to make the announcements I had promised for last week, so here we go!

I’m very pleased to be able to reveal the cover for my upcoming book, and second part in the Alpha Protocol series. The book’s title is The First Officer, and here is the cover!

The artwork was once again created by Fred Gambino, who I think has the most incredible ability to visualise and execute science fiction artworks on a truly epic scale. The only difficult part of working with Fred is deciding which of his concept paintings to go with for a cover – all of them look so good. As with any good piece of art, each one of them inspires a story of their own and they all certainly get my creative wheels turning.

I chose the image I felt was most fitting for the story, and am very happy with how it turned out. It really conveys the aesthetic and sense of story that I wanted, and gives a bit of a hint of what’s contained within. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I think it’s very eye catching!

I’ll have more details about the book in coming posts over the next few weeks. The First Officer will be released on 1 Dec and is available for pre-order now over on Amazon, and will be coming in Audio a little later. You can pre-order your copy of The First Officer now at these links!

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3UKYl18

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BM4WQYT1

Not updates… (sorry!)

Hi folks,

I know I promised some updates and news this week, but unfortunately I’m not quite ready to make those announcement, so will have to put them on the back burner until next week! All being well I’ll be good to go then!

Instead, I’m going to be talking about another mini paint this week. It’s another Scibor mini, but something a little different than the knights I’ve mainly been painting. This time out it’s a barbarian warrior slash Viking.

Here he is:

I wanted to try some different colours than I usually lean towards, so went for teal/turquoise and purple this time, with some red here and there for contrast.

Again, a chief focus was pushing the highlights, which I think has worked well in areas, but I kinda dropped the ball on the fur, which I think could really do with another one highlight at least, perhaps two. I could also have done a bit more on the hammer handles and tunic trim looking at the photos now.

I also wanted to play around with painting red hair (to get a good pop against the teal) and also work on my face and flesh painting. I’m happy with this for the most part, but I need more work on controlling where I’m putting down the high light layers. I’ve used a glaze on the cheeks, nose, and lips, which I think has given the face more depth and is something I’m going to incorporate into my process from now on.

I’m pleased with the shading on the cloak, but again think it could do with an extra highlight.

I’m a little disappointed with the hammers, as I think they read more like stone than the steel they’re supposed to be. I think less black, using a dark grey instead, and a stronger white highlight would help, but I’m open to suggestions here!

I also spent a bit of time reading up on how to take better photos, and I think a couple of very simple little changes have made a pretty big impact. All I’ve done is turn off one of my lights and change the camera angle. There’s still a bit too much noise in the background black for my liking, so I’ll try a larger aperture next time. I used f14 for these, and I think I’ll still be able to keep the model in focus even with something like f12 or so (can’t remember what the intervals are on my lens) while blurring the background into a smoother texture.

That’s all for this week. I’ll have everything in place for updates next Monday, so check in then to hear the news! Until then, take care!

Mini Painting – The Red Knight

Hey folks,

I hope you’re all keeping well and had a happy Halloween! I’m a day late with my post this week down to the bank holiday here yesterday, but I’ll be back to my regular schedule of Monday posts next week!

I’ve got a mini painting post for you this week, with my ‘red knight’. It’s another Scibor Miniatures sculpt. I really do love painting these minis as they all have an incredible amount of character, and they have just the right amount of fantasy for me, which I tend to prefer to keep at the lighter end of the scale.

Working out how to get the mini well positioned in the camera frame seemed to be my main challenge this week, but I think the photos have mainly ended up all right with a couple being thrown off by my bad light metering. I still need to work out how to better set up my lighting to get that nice smooth black background so many mini painters who photograph their minis seem to get!

So here he is!

I had two focus areas this week. The first was my continuing effort with non metallic metal (NMM) for which I used a new recipe. More on that later. Focus number 2 was painting red, a colour I’ve struggled to get a nice result with in the past.

Along with the blending aspects, working out where to place my highlights remains my biggest challenge in NMM. I’m posting these a couple of weeks behind my painting, and it’s something I’m continuing to work on, and hopefully improving on, even if only incrementally. On this mini, I really didn’t get it right anywhere, except for perhaps the helmet, and even then only in places! Even my application of light to basic shapes is wrong. I really don’t know what I was thinking…

I think my blending is showing signs of improvement on the sword blade, and I’m content with how it turned out. The photo is a bit overexposed hiding the shadows on the top of the blade. Really need to get to grips with my photography!

Here and on the next pic, you can see my effort with the red. Overall I’m happy with the result, as I can see where it needs improvement, and I now know how to do it. I think I could better this by pushing the shadows a touch more, and pushing the highlight by quite a bit. I really haven’t brought the highlights up enough.

I free-handed the fleur de lys, and again I think I’m seeing signs of improvement here also, although I did manage to get it a bit crooked. I blame the funny angle the shield is hanging at! The red blending needs a bit more time spent on it, but overall I think this is heading in the right direction.

I think the highlights on this side are a bit better in terms of placement and look like their coming from a more consistent light source, unlike the front!

My main guidance here – for colour recipe and blending approach only, the botched highlight placements are all my fault! – was this video from the entertaining Zumikito. If you’ve been following my mini painting journey, you might find it useful too! I certainly did! You can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOGlHTRySlU

Overall, I feel like I learned quite a lot from painting this mini. Over the course of this one and the next one to come, I really felt like some concepts were starting to make sense to me, so hopefully that will continue!

Next week I’ve some exciting news and updates, so be sure to check in for that. Until then, take care!

Behind the Scenes IV: Blood of Kings

Hey folks,

Today’s post is a behind the scenes look at my current Blood of Kings trilogy, which is still a work in progress.

The inspiration for this series comes from a plot elements mentioned in the Dragonslayer and Wolf of the North trilogies, and follows the broader arc of magical resurgence in the Middle Sea World that I’ve been building across all of my books.

I also wanted to use this story to revisit some of the locations we’ve already seen in my other books for the simple reason that I really wanted to spend some more time in them! Considering the way the magic arc impacts all the different parts of the world, I thought this was the ideal opportunity. It gives me the chance to explore how magic has impacted society against the comparison of my earlier books where it was still highly illegal!

After Dragonslayer, I felt the urge to return to a coming of age style story. However, I enjoyed writing Guillot so much, that I didn’t want to leave out the older world weary type, so I created the band of mercenaries that Conrad, the developing young man finds himself with. It’s a fun balance to play with—the world weary cynicism of mercenaries who’ve been around the block a few times, and the youthful optimism bordering on arrogance of a young man who hasn’t experienced much of the world yet.

That’s about all I can say about this one, as it’s still a work in progress, and I don’t want to say anything I later decide to change!

If you haven’t read it already, you can check the books out here:

Mini Painting – The Blue Knight!

A painting post this week. I’ve got another Scibor miniature in the photo booth for this instalment. I really love the sculpts by this maker, and have bought quite a few from their range. The models are a real pleasure to paint, with great detail and a lot of character in the poses and expressions.

I’m continuing on my path of trying to improve all aspects of my painting, but with a focus on non-metallic metallics (NMM), which I think looks amazing on fantasy and sci-fi miniatures (I prefer true metallics on historical models, for whatever reason…).

To the photos!

For this model I tried a different NMM recipe, sticking to more grey tones than the bluish ones my previous paint job had. I think I prefer this scheme as it provides a more neutral base for more advanced techniques like object source lighting (light given off by a lantern the model is holding, for example), and sky-earth non-metallic metals (where the blue of the sky and the brown/green tones of the ground are reflected by the metal). I also just prefer the appearance of this recipe.

While my blending has a long road of improvement ahead of it, I feel I’m getting a better feel of how to make the paint go where I want it to, and behave how I want it to. The key thing I’m finding here is diluting the paint well when glazing, and wicking a lot of the moisture off the brush before applying, to give greater control. I’ve been playing around with a few different techniques here, and I’m gradually coming to understand them, and when to use which, but lots more practice is needed!

I need make faces more of a focus in my efforts. They’re the focal point of any model, and I’m really not giving them the attention they need. It’s neat enough in the details, but there’s not enough contrast, and the face is a bit flat as a result. I’m also not that happy with the sword, which ended up a bit too stripey for my liking. I’ll approach this differently next time.

I’m underwhelmed by the heraldry I chose for this guy. I think the sculpt deserves something better, but it looked great in my head! Perhaps three narrower zig-zags would have been better.

Blue was my colour of choice to focus on for the cloth. I’m again taking the ‘push the contrast’ approach here, but my blends leave a lot to be desired, and this is something I’ll need to pay attention to going forward.

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll be taking another behind the scenes look at my work, with my current trilogy, Blood of Kings being the topic! See you then!

Behind the Scenes III: Dragonslayer

Hey folks,

These week we’re taking another behind the scenes peek at my work, with Dragonslayer being the work in question.

My third trilogy marked a big departure for me, as it was the first that I did not self-publish. Tor, the Fantasy imprint of McMillan, reached out and expressed interest in working with me while I was in the middle of Wolf of the North. We decided that the best way to do that would be with a new series.

I’d been rereading Dumas while I was finishing up Wolf of the North so was feeling strongly that vibe at the time. I’ve always been captivated by that atmosphere and setting. I’d also travelled to both Paris and Bordeaux during that period, and fell in love with all things French, from the food to the architecture and the history (and the wine!).

The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo are two of my all-time favourite books, along with Sabatini’s Scaramouche. With these books fresh in my mind, a French style fantasy setting proved too tempting to ignore.

While my previous books had been coming-of-age style tales, I wanted to try writing about an older character. Someone who’s seen his best days, and is struggling to find purpose in life.

A theme I’d been slowly teasing out in my previous books was the gradual resurgence of magic in the world, along with magical beasts. I try to base all my story elements in things that have examples in real human culture, rather than the completely fantastical. Dragons and the way they appear in so many different cultures have always fascinated me. I’d been hoping for an opportunity to introduce them for a while at this point!

Thus was born Guillot dal Villerauvais, the country of Mirabay, and the Dragonslayer trilogy. It follows a down and out swordsman, once considered the finest of his generation as he’s tasked to tackle the scourge of dragons on the land. He quickly learns that not all monsters fly around breathing fire, though!

If you haven’t read it already, you can check the books out here:

The Continuing Adventures of the Wee Beasties

This week we return to the mayhem and mischief spreading duo, Willow and Poppy. To fully capture their escapades, I’d need a camera with superfast autofocus and one of those rapid burst modes. When they’re at full throttle and up to their hi-jinks, it’s almost impossible to catch them on camera. I have lots of photos of white and brown blurs, but that’s about it!

I had a think to how I could get some better shots of them while they’re awake, and the answer came once again as I was sorting out recycling:

What is it with cats and boxes? This one was only on the floor a few seconds before they were into it. They like it so much I didn’t have the heart to throw it out, so it’s now a permanent household fixture. When I came down this morning, the box had been moved to the other side of the family room—clearly the cats weren’t happy with where we’d left it…

Far easier is to grab a shot of them snuggled up together when they run out of gas!

That’s all for this week! I hope you’re all keeping well, and I’ll be back next week with another behind the scenes look at my work, this time with the Dragonslayer trilogy!

Mini Painting a Knight

Hey folks,

I hope you’re all keeping well. It’s another installment of my mini painting adventures this week, and I’ve got a fantasy model from Scibor miniatures on the painting table. They’re made from resin rather than the plastic and metal I’m used to, so need slightly different handling and a little more care(I managed to break the sword in cleanup!). They’re really beautiful sculpts, with lots of detail and character. I’ve a few more from this maker in my drawer, and am really looking forward to painting them too.

I’m still chasing my goals of getting the hang of non-metallic metal (NMM) painting, and improving my blending, along with a little bit of (albeit simple) freehand work.

Let’s get to the photos, and I’ll talk a bit about what I think worked and what didn’t as we go along!

I used a new NMM recipe here, with a lot more blue hues in it. One thing I wanted to focus on here was pushing the contrasts, which this recipe definitely allowed for. I’m quite happy with the result in that regard, and it certainly photograph’s a lot better than my previous efforts.

I got a bit of a Peter O’Toole vibe from the model’s face, so went with blond hair. It looks decent in the photo, I think, but I’m not happy with that brown to straw colour range, and need to play around with my colour choices for blond(e) hair in the future. After my paint job, he admittedly looks far less like Peter O’Toole…

I freehanded the heraldry, a mix of a couple of designs I pulled out of a heraldry book, and quite like the end result. I always like to keep my fantasy as close to reality as I can, so chose something pretty conventional.

The big thing you’ll be able to see on this model is that I had a bit of a varnish disaster. I used a rattle can of matte varnish, and it did every single one of the things that can go wrong with it. I’ve got orange peel, clouding, and a non-matte finish. I’ve had pretty good luck with rattle cans in the past, so I’m not sure if it was too humid out, inadequately shaken, too old, too cold, sprayed too thick, or something else entirely, but it went so wrong it inspired me to shell out for an airbrush, something I’ve been circling for a very long time, but more on that in a later post!

Perhaps not the best choice of colour for his trousers. It’s meant to be canvas…

I tried a new approach to blending with this model—laying down the highlight and shadow, some transition layers, then glazing between to smooth them out—and quite like it, but will need a lot more practice before I get this one down.

In addition to the NMM, I tried a bit of secondary reflection with the yellow on his surcoat and the armour on his legs. Not sure if it’s worked, but that’s probably through too heavy handed an application, so I might try it again in the future with a more subtle approach.

Lessons learned on this one, and thoughts for the next one:

Yellow is one of those colours that needs careful handling. I need to spend some time working on it to come up with a good approach to using it effectively.I’d like to try a less blue hued NMM recipe next time, although I think the tonal range here is pretty good, particularly for photographing.I need to keep working on my blending. I like this method, but it’s time consuming to get smooth transitions, and occasionally just glazing either the darkest shade or highest highlight over those two colours worked as well at blending the two together as areas I spent hours on with intermediate shades. I’ve seen some other approaches I want to try, but will likely come back to his one eventually as it contains a lot of techniques that are useful elsewhere.I need to spend more time considering where highlights fall on the model, and how light interacts with shapes (is it a cylinder, is it a sphere??) and reflective surfaces.Lastly, I’m happy that I’ve got my camera settings fairly well dialled in now!

As always, any tips or constructive critiques are most welcome! See you all next week!

Behind the Scenes II: Wolf of the North

Hey folks,

This week’s post is back to my ‘Behind the Scenes’ series, where I have a look back to the things that inspired the story. This week I’m taking a look back to my Wolf of the North series, which was first published way back in 2016. It really doesn’t seem that long ago!

I had the original idea for this story not long after I finished The Tattered Banner. I thought of using some of the ideas into the Society of the Sword trilogy, but decided pretty early on that it had enough to it to warrant an entire trilogy of its own.

Because of this, the first half of the first draft was set in Auracia, the country to the south of the Ostia setting for Society of the Sword. That would have placed it in a pretty familiar Renaissance Italy style setting, and I decided about half way in that it would be more interesting for the reader, and more fun for me to set it somewhere different within the story world I’d created, so I went back to the start and reworked the story to a new setting related to the area of history I was interested in at the time.

The ending was the part that came to me first, and creating the story was all about building the events that led to that moment. It’s because of that, more than anything I think, that I chose to end this after three books. I usually don’t like endings to a series I’m writing, but that was the scene I wrote first, and the part I really wanted to get to. In retrospect, I think I’d like to have written five or six books in the series, as I really loved the dynamic between the characters I had created. It’s something I’d perhaps like to revisit at some point, but I’m not really sure how I could make that work, considering that the ending to that particular tale has already been written!

Although this trilogy has a very Norse/Viking vibe, the inspiration for much of the setting came from the Great Migration era of Northern Germany and Scandinavia, rather than specifically the Vikings. I’ve always been interested in the power vacuum that was left behind by the Roman empire, and how the cultures and nations of Europe came to be, so I was reading a lot of books on this period.

The story follows Wulfric, an unlikely young lad, as he develops into the most famed warrior of his age, along with all the tragedies and triumphs he encounters along the way (along with the three supporting characters who are my absolute favourite to have written so far!).

If you haven’t read it already, you can check the books out here:

Adventures of the Wee Beasties, Part I

Since coming into the house, Poppy and Willow, our new ragdoll kittens, have well and truly made our house their home. Their toys are scattered liberally around the place, and little tufts of cat hair drift gently in the breeze.

Timid exploration has become more confident, and if something is in the way, or blocking their desired route, it gets moved. They’ve also taken a keen interest in television. I watched the Book of Boba Fett over the past few evenings, and Willow wanted to get in on the action.

This is definitely behaviour we’re trying to discourage, as I don’t really want my TV covered with little scratch marks!

Their curiosity extends to anything that gets left on the floor, even for only a few seconds. This covers shopping bags, and of course, boxes! I was breaking up some boxes for recycling and turned around to find this:

Of course, all of this activity doesn’t come without a cost, and eventually everyone has to pay the piper. Even little kittens brimming with energy: