Fortress Figures

An Eclectic Assortment of Miniature, Modeling, Art, Reference and Gaming Sites
for your amusement, enlightenment, and resting your weary eyeballs- Now featuring sporadic updates,
haphazard organization, and occasional insightful commentary. If you have any interesting sites you
would like me to post, or notice any dead links or sites that have been taken over by some folks
purveying unrelated naughtiness, drop me an email:

Feel free to scroll your little mouse off, or use the handy navigation links below:
Tools, Supplies and Useful Stuff Remember, Superglue can close cuts!
General Miniature, Modeling and Gaming Sites Some you may have overlooked
Anatomy OOooOooOoo- nekkid ladies, I betcha!
Horses Obsolete in battle, but it's hard to eat a Hummer
Assorted Critters Sorry, no recipes
Dinosaurs No, smartass, my picture is not there
Armor, heraldic, and historical sites and no, I wasn't there at the time
Interesting Miscellaneous Art Sites and Online Galleries From classical to fantasy
Assorted Literary Links Don't worry, there are pictures for you illiterate types
Graphics Editing and Web Stuff And mostly free stuff!

Tools, Supplies and Useful Stuff

Model Railroad & Miniature Figure Life Size Scale Calculator- A handy calculator I swiped from here and adapted for determining scale size in millimeters for figures- if you want to download the html file to your computer, just save the page to whatever folder you want and it should work for you

The Compleat Sculptor -you supply the talent, they supply the rest

Grifhold.com- your complete online source for the best hobby knives, burnishers, blades, tools and more- the 24-E Stencil Blades are especially useful

Widget Supply has a huge inventory of hard to find, but reasonably priced hobby tools and equipment. Mini sculptors and modelers should check out the extensive dental tool section

MisterArt.com is great place place to shop for discount art supplies and craft supplies

Micro-Mark is THE mail-order source for hard-to-find tools and supplies for hobby, professional and educational model building

ProCreation- news and views of Tim Mayer, technical and operations manager of The Kraftmark Company, manufacturer and distributor of materials for the arts and crafts industry

Free graph paper printer program (Windows OS) Need a hex map? Choose the grid size and color and print it out, along with dozens of other graph paper styles

General Miniature, Modeling and Gaming Sites

Tom Meier is an inspiration to everyone in the miniatures world- check out his blog and you'll see why

Chambers of Miniatures Nexus- Nearly every mini site and manufacturer

TMP- The Miniatures Page

The Stuff of Legends- Tom Pope's slow descent into MINI MADNESS!

planetFigure - a large and talent-filled web community with great forums, galleries, and resources covering many aspects of creating and painting a wide variety of miniatures

Tabletop Gaming News is a website devoted to publishing news, review and articles about all facets of the tabletop gaming hobby.

Plastic Soldier Review, for news and information on 1:72 scale plastic soldiers

ScaleModel.net- International List of Scale Model Related Web Sites

FineScale Modeler Magazine Online- Loads of modelling info- requires free registration

The Train Collectors Association, headquartered in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the largest and most prestigious collecting societies in the world.

The Strong Museum of Play, one of the best toy museums in the country

The Gallery of Monster Toys is dedicated to preserving vintage creepy fun- I always loved the old Aurora kits in the 60's wing

GamingReport.com- Daily coverage of news from the industry, reviews, and interviews

OgreCave.com has unplugged gaming news and vews

ICv2  provides news and information for pop culture retailers with daily trade news, in-depth analysis, and product and sales information

RPGNow.com is an electronic delivery system (EDS) for role-playing games: rule books, modules, fiction, paper miniatures, software, and more! What this simply means is that you can purchase products in their store and immediately download them for use on your home computer.

RPG.net has the inside scoop on gaming

Pen & Paper- A collection of resources for pen and paper RPGs

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Anatomy

NEW! Argosy's Visible Body consists of highly detailed, anatomically accurate, 3D models of all human body systems. The models were developed by an extensively trained team with decades of experience in medical illustration and biomedical visualization. Years of modeling and enhancement make it the most sophisticated and complete 3D model of the human body available. And it's FREE!

Arnold Classic- Everybody loves barbarians

Lots of good muscle reference photos with more mustache wax than steroids:
History of Bodybuilding and a tribute to Eugen Sandow and the first modern bodybuilders.
Eugen Sandow and the Golden Age of Iron Men

Basic Anatomy for The Artist

Da Vinci Anatomical Drawings

Rey Bustos- A very imaginative and informative site by an excellent art educator

Freedom of Teach- A creative resource where artists teach artists

Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body

Human Anatomy Pictures for Artists

Muscles Tutorial

Drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present

Anatomy Atlases is an anatomy digital health sciences library

Posing is an Art 3-Many free poses

e-Skeletons Project View the bones of a human and other primates

Real photographs of the human skeletal system

Skulls Unlimited- The World's Leading Supplier of Osteological Specimens

Bone Clones Human and critter osteological reproductions

The Sedlec Ossuary- Where human bones become art

Society of Figurative Arts- Dedicated to providing high level instruction for the beginner, amateur or professional striving to expand their individual creative skills-excellent tutorials, links, and forums

For assorted anatomical photographs of female pulchritude and little else, try
W!cked Weasel B!K!N!s- not even remotely safe for viewing at work, and certainly not around the significant other

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Horses
Race Horse in Motion


Model Horse Central has tons of model horse links, and is run by the talented  Carrie Sapp, whose work you can view at Cedar Creek Designs

Realistic Equine Sculpture Society

Horse Breeds- Oklahoma State's comprehensive horse database

Anatomy in Motion: The Visible Horse is a unique demonstration by Susan Harris, in which she paints the muscles and skeletal system on a living horse to show how the anatomy of the horse works in motion at all gaits.

Veryl Goodnight- Sculpting the American West

The Model Horse Gallery has over 14,000 photos, 200 galleries and 1700 pages

Horses On The Web has a lot of good info about Arabians

Heather Jansch Bronze and Driftwood Equine Sculpture

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Assorted Critters

National Geographic- More great critter pictures than you would have time to look at, let alone sculpt

Will's Skull Page-The head bone's connected to the....

SKULLS- Lots of different species from the nice folks at the California Academy of Sciences

Wing Photos- If you're sculpting feathers, check out this great photo archive from the Slater Natural History Museum at the University of Puget Sound

Beautiful Bugs- a place where you can see some amazing extreme close-up insect photos

Insect photography by Alex Wild, with an emphasis on ant species. Includes galleries of images and wallpapers.

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Dinosaurs

CM Studio produces realistic dinosaur models and sculptures in both life-size and scale models.

Micheal Trcic -the sculptor of the T-Rex used in the "Jurassic Park" movies and the IMAX feature "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous", offers dinosaur sculptures in bronze and model kits

Paleoartist Mark Hallett illustrates prehistoric life and environments, and has created dinosaur art for National Geographic, Disney, Universal Studios and many others

Dinobase is a database/directory of dinosaurs discovered. An excellent tool for amateurs as well as palaeontologists.hosted by the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Bristol in the U.K. It combines news and pictures with an extensive database of dinosaur facts and information.

William Monteleone - Natural History Sculptor

Prehistoric Planet- Critters even older than I

Luis V. Rey's Art Gallery- Dinosaurs and Paleontology

John Sibbick Illustration- Prehistoric, natural history, and fantasy art

The Dinosauricon- a website devoted to dinosaur information and illustration

DinoData.net- A huge dinosaur portal with loads of great info and pics

Search4dinosaurs.com will help you locate great illustrations of dinosaurs

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Armor, heraldic, and historical sites

NEW! Welcome to HistoryOfWar.org They aim to make their site your first call for information on any aspect of military history. Your probably won't live long enough to read it all- be prepared to lose a few days just getting to the B section

Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts. BOHWS contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more throughout its pages

Rome Exposed- the site geared toward the spreading of iinformation on Roman Life throughout the Internet. In the other sections of Classics Unveiled, you can find information on Greek Mythology, Roman History and Latin Vocabulary and Derivatives

The Society for Medieval Military History

The BBC's History Homepage has loads of information and links, as well as supplemental features for their many excellent programs such as Battlefield Britain

ARMA - the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts, is an educational non-profit organization dedicated to the study and practice of historical fencing and the exploration and promotion of our Western martial heritage

Arador Armour Library- Arms and armour education

HistoricalWeapons.com- Historically accurate representations of weapons and armor

myArmory.com helps educate the collector and enthusiast regarding the various aspects and particulars of the modern replica

Knighthood, Chivalry & Tournaments Resource Library- Information on armour, weapons, clothing, accoutrements, including both "how tos" and historical material

MEDIEVAL ARMOUR- articles and links on armour as it applies to the Middle Ages, the SCA and to SCA combat.

Knights in Central Park armor collection from the Metropolitan Museum of Art has more than fourteen thousand objects from many countries and covers fourteen centuries of history

Medieval Reproductions-Loads of Armor

MuseumReplicas.com- Historical and fantasy arms and armor from the nice folks at Atlanta Cutlery

Pictorial Glossary of Armor Terms-based heavily on the glossary in Arms and Armor of the Medieval Knight

Global Effects Inc. manufactures, sells and rents all types of props, costumes, armor, miniatures, sets, creatures and makeup effects for TV, movies and museums.

Amethyst's Prop Closet has lots of nice armor reproductions, with an emphasis on fantasy and sci-fi

Toledo Swords- Another dealer in fantasy and historical toadstickers

Castles.org- Castles, palaces and monasteries including: castle tours, medieval architecture, hotels, travel, plans, weddings, castles for sale, souvenirs, books, directory, site of the week, and history of castles.

Grey Company Trebuchet page- Medieval WMDs

Modar's Heraldry Page

A Heraldic Primer, from the nice folks at the Society for Creative Anachronism

Heraldry Links

How to draw Celtic knots (or sculpt them)

Odin's Castle of Dreams & Legends- A massive archive of historical resources

NetSERF- The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources

Gode Cookery is an extensive and enlightening guide to life, food, and the arts of the Middle Ages

NEW! Welcome to Exploring the Middle Ages, where you will find information on heraldry, myths and legends, religion, medicine, and other aspects of life in Britain during the Middle Ages

Images of Medieval Art and Architecture- Watch your apse!

Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences contains a lot of good historical information and occasional illustrations on the varied arts and styles of opening up a can o' whoop ass. Check out the Journal of Western Martial Art and the Journal of Manly Arts: European and Colonial Combatives, 1776 - 1914

The Defence of DUFFER'S DRIFT- The classic in small unit tactics, this Boer War scenario still has sound lessons for today's infantryman, as well as being a great wargame adventure. I reformatted the book and cleaned up the graphics to make it easier to navigate

Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration- Nearly 20,000 prints, drawings, watercolors, and printed book and magazines illustrations of military costume

NEW! Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection- The artwork vividly documents all aspects of military and naval history, with emphasis on the history and illustration of world military and naval uniforms from the 17th century to the present

The Selected Civil War Photographs Collection contains 1,118 photographs. Most of the images were made under the supervision of Mathew B. Brady, and include scenes of military personnel, preparations for battle, and battle after-effects. The collection also includes portraits of both Confederate and Union officers, and a selection of enlisted men.

The North American Indian by Edward S. Curtis- Library of Congress online image collection

Native American History was created by the University of Washington Libraries' Reference and Research Services Division and provides users with an "Annotated list of links to Native American history sites."

Images of Native Americans: The Bancroft Library

Costumer's Manifesto- A huge costume reference portal

New York Public Library Digital Gallery- over 275,000 images digitized from primary sources

NEW! World War I Color Photos -"World War I.... who would have thought there were original color photos of WWI? This site contains hundreds of photos taken by the French in the last two years of World War One."

Shorpy.com is a photo blog about life a hundred years ago- a great source for period character study, with tough people in tough times

The Old Picture internet site features an extensive collection of original, historical photographs, including over 80,000 images spanning the years 1850 to 1940. "These photographs span the globe, and capture the defining moments of our collective history"

NEW! Smithsonian Photography Initiative - "Welcome to the Smithsonian Photography Initiative. With this website and other innovative programs to come, we hope to open new doors for you — both to the Smithsonian's extraordinary collections of photographs and to an understanding of the integral roles photographs play in our lives

They Drew Fire- the combat artists of World War II

Military Posters of 20th Century has a huge collection Russo-Japanese war, WW1, WW2, Civil Wars in Russia and Spain, Cold War. About 1800 posters at all

NEW! Historic Aircraft Drawings by Josef Hueber - fascinating aircraft design drawings and photos of some unusual experimental, military, and commercial aircraft

Modern Firearms & Ammunition- Online encyclopedia of firearms and ammunition of the 20th and 21st centuries

The Gun Zone will be the primary resource of authoritative firearms-related information for the Internet-enabled gunperson

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Interesting Miscellaneous Art Sites and Online Galleries

The Artcyclopedia is an index of online museums and image archives:find out where the works of over 8,000 different fine artists can be viewed online

ArtLinks allows users to browse or search for links within a group of topical headers: Animation, Architecture, Comics, Dance and Literature, just to name a few

The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection

At the Coudal Partners Museum of Online Museums, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) is a personal, non-profit project of its author, art historian and visual resources curator Allan T. Kohl

Intute has a free guide to the best of the Web for the Arts and Creative Industries. It allows users to search or browse for information on a variety of art disciplines: Architecture, Advertising, Crafts, Design. and many others

The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 12th to mid-19th centuries

African tribal art-Wooden and bronze statues, masks, totems & symbols

Here is a fine selection of Oni demon masks and sculpture

A Love of Monsters- Gargoyles and Architectural Sculpture in NYC

Walter S. Arnold, Sculptor-Stone Carver. Get your gargoyles here!

Ian Miller has done some amazing work in fantasy illustration

Beej's Pirate Image Archive- ARRRGGH!!!!!!

Fantasy art of Elfwood

The Official Frazetta Art Gallery

NEW! FrankFrazetta.org- The UNOFFICIAL Frank Frazetta Fantasy Art Gallery has a lot of quality scans that the official site does not provide

The Official Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell Website

The Official Hajime Sorayama Website

Illustrator Biographies

The work of illustrator Alphonse Mucha is a valuable source for figurative study- here is another nice selection of Mucha's Art Nouveau posters, lithographs, and illustrations

ImageNETion- Huge galleries of pin-ups, fantasy art, comic and digital art

Ladies of Darkness- lots of misc. fantasy illustrations

The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists

Draconika.com I think they like dragons

An assortment of Fantasy Art

NEW! Despite the goofed up navigation and IE only web design ArtHistory.cc has a massive selection of quality scans of the work of many popular fantasy artists, as well as the more classic masterpieces

NEW! The Pin-up Files- contains over 1500 pin-up art images from "classic" and "contemporary" artists. Galleries are devoted to each featured artist. Each gallery contains artwork, a biography, notes on each image and important links

I was always a big fan of movie poster artist and illustrator Reynold Brown, who's artwork was often far better than the movies it was advertising.
Here's Brown's section at Learn About Movie Posters.

Art's Not Dead Dot Com has the largest selection on the net of vintage pinup and pulp posters, hard to find movie posters, fine art and WWII, WWI, Spanish Civil War, and Great Patriotic War posters and prints

Martian Factory- is a collective of top industry artists with an emphasis on larger kits- lots of links, products and info

Shiflett Brothers- These boys do some interesting work

The CS Moore Studio and sculptor Clayburn Moore proudly present premier licensed and original statues, busts and more

Epilogue.net Art Galleries

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Assorted Literary Links

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction- from the nice folks at the Cornell University Library

Nonsenselit.org is a portal devoted to Nonsense literature, with a lot of great illustrations and art links as well as the fun prose and poetry

Encyclopedia Mythica- An expansive and comprehensive database and portal

Welcome to the Theoi Project, a comprehensive guide to the Gods (Theoi), Spirits (Daimones) and Monsters (Theres) of ancient Greek mythology and religion

Browse through folktales and legends from around the world!

The Medieval Beastiary: Here begins the book of the nature of beasts. Of lions and panthers and tigers, wolves and foxes, dogs and apes

Dave's Mythical Creatures and Places

The Serene Dragon, a comprehensive site of dragon, draconic, and dragon-related myths, legends, and tales from around the world

Glorious Nonsense- All things Jabberwocky

Edgar Governo - Historian of Things That Never Were. 365 Fantasy and Science Fiction timelines from television, movies, books, games and comics

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts

Fables and Fairy Tales A massive online archive of classic tales and childrens stories, with artwork scanned from the original 1909 book illustrations

Tarzan of the Internet- A jungle full of great images and links!

Barbarian Nation- "This site serves as a tribute to the most powerful and mighty barbarian of them all.. Conan of Cimmeria!" - complete with annoying repeating sound file

Barbarian Keep-The Conan and Robert E. Howard Website

Fantastic Fiction - Fantasy & Sci Fi Literature Database- Information and links for over 6000 authors

Check out Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions

PULPS et MAGAZINES AMERICAINS- Outstanding French site with a huge archive of cover art from the great American pulp golden age, featuring fantasy and sci-fi from Amazing Stories to Weird Tales, from the 1920's into the 1960's.

Welcome to the Lambiek Comiclopedia, an illustrated compendium of over 7,000 comic artists, listed under last name (or pseudonym)

For those of us who remember when comic books cost 10¢, Superdickery features the unintentional hilarity and the thinly veiled lurid innuendo of old comic book covers, mostly old DC, but with lots of good references

Cover Browser - displays galleries of comic book covers for comic book fans & enjoy (there's also links to find out more about individual comics or to buy them). Some of the artists you'll find : John Byrne, Barry Windsor-Smith, Frank Miller, Ivan Brunetti, Alex Ross, Todd McFarlane, Mark Bagley, Steve Ditko, Jim Lee, Daniel Clowes, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Jack Kirby, Rob Liefeld, Andy Kubert, John Romita Sr. and Jr., Sam Keith, Dave Gibbons, Erik Larsen and many more.

Crime Boss-Crime Comic Book Art- Dangerous dames with gats and gams galore!

The cover art of 1960s-80s Warren comics CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA,
as created by a literal Who's Who of fantasy artists. Flash-enhanced site; English-language, hosted in Japan.

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Graphics Editing and Web Stuff

Welcome to TinyURL!™ Are you sick of posting URLs in emails and forums only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. For godsakes, will you morons use this?!?!?! Nobody wants to paste 9 lines of crap into the address bar just to look at your damn picture!

Google has released Picasa 2, a digital image tool that has more features than the previous version. And, it's still FREE! You can edit, fix digital photos and even post them to a blog. Might be worth a look

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP.

Here are three more free graphics editors with more advanced features:

GIMP

Pixia

PhotoPlus

HTML Code Tutorial "Our goal is to provide the most helpful and complete guide to creating web pages anywhere"

The Webpage Color Selection Tool is pretty handy for setting up safe and easy on the eyes colors on your page

Blambot- Comic Fonts and Design- Nate Piekos is a great comic artist and designer with lots of cool free and pay fonts on his site, along with good entertaining info and links about comics, illustration, typography, and design.

Bill Blinn has been making computers understandable for many years- check out his site, Techbyter.com for his weekly column and podcast


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If you have any interesting sites you would like me to post, or notice any dead links or sites that have been taken over by some folks purveying unrelated naughtiness, drop me an email: