All Posts By

Craig

Sports

Posted on November 1, 2013

I missed my Friday post last week, and don’t you believe for a second that I wasn’t thinking about it all weekend long. It haunted me that I couldn’t keep a simple schedule for more than a few weeks…

I had a good reason in the end, but no good excuses.

Last weekend at Kipper’s Melee I won two different Best Sportsmanship/Favourite Opponent awards. I played in the Saturday night Malifaux event, which is literally the most fun a man can have with a deck of cards, and somehow managed to convince 3 people that I was an amazing guy. The next day, I was stunned to hear that I won Sports for Fantasy.

I wasn’t stunned because of false modesty, but because I feel like in Warhammer that I haven’t provided the same kind of game that I used to.

When I was young…no, that’s not a good story. But I still remember my first tournament – I remember it very well, because I have a Best Sportsman trophy from that tournament! I was playing Night Goblins (no Orcs), and I laughed my ass off every time something random happened to the little guys. I deserved that trophy, I think, because my opponents had the time of their life. They had so much fun, that 8 years later I randomly ran into a guy at Science World and he remembered me and my army and we laughed at it again.

Now I have a couple Best Sportsman wins years later, but I feel like I don’t give that game anymore. I’m trying to hard, and I’m caring to much about the game and winning and doing my best, to give that balls-to-the-wall kind of game where it just doesn’t matter. I’ve been influenced by tactics and strategies, and a certain disappointment when they all fall through. I can’t be giving The Face, otherwise I wouldn’t win these things. But I feel disappointed, and I find it odd that my opponents can’t feel that coming from me. Stunned, because I thought it was obvious.

I guess it isn’t obvious, and I guess my opponents are having the best god damn game of Warhammer of their lives whenever I play. 🙂

Jamie has the right of it. It doesn’t matter.

Work-in-progress

Old Blood on Cold One – Some Darkening

Posted on October 31, 2013

It’s unfortunate when I get behind on my writing and ahead on my photos, because I don’t quite remember what was going on in this photo anymore. 🙂 There is a very real chance that a lot of this was just black and dark yellow washes over the model. I purposefully didn’t do anything to the blade or the gauntlet, for reasons you’ll see later.

The base worked out much better than it has before, and I think it’s because of the pits I carved into the putty. Last time I had used the Sotek Green and highlighted up by adding Ushapti Bone to it. Then I did exactly as I had done for my Horrors, and used a black wash on it until it wasn’t bright green anymore. After this was done, the base looks like hardened, pitted stone. It has a greenish tinge to it, but overall it’s a dark colour that someone could look at and say “yup, that’s black”. I think I added some Codex Grey as well.

I’m hoping to have some awesome photos of this guy very soon, because he is turning out amazing, I’m really happy with him!

Work-in-progress

Old Blood on Cold One – Basecoat

Posted on October 30, 2013

Miranda is out of town this week, so instead of having a nice breakfast with her in the morning, I’ve been painting.

After I finished building him, this guy looked a little silly. I mean, he’s meant to look like a decent size on top of the new carnosaur. But whatever, just because his tail is the same size as his mounts doesn’t mean anything…I built him as Kroq-gar, because if you can put a giant halberd and alien robotic arm on your dinosaur, you should do so.

It turns out that my last cold one hero, I failed at documenting so I had to figure this paint scheme out from the model. Then it turned out that my case was locked and that the keys were over there. So I grabbed another cav from a nearby case and went to town.

I’m using the same base painting technique as the Horror units, because I believe that when I do it right, it will look black, without actually being black. I’m still going to fill the crevasses with orange and yellow, but the rock starts with Sotek Green.

I bought a bunch of new paints to replace drying ones last week, and picked up Steel Legion Drab, which I used on the plants. They look good and dying already!

The cold one has Shadow Grey skin, Ushapti Bone chest, scales and claws. All of the gold is Dwarf Bronze. The chest on my test model goes to something like Fiery Orange and then back to the Bone, but I think I should pull out my BSB to see what I did there – probably not stark orange and bone. 🙂

The dude on top is Mephiston Red scales (I love that colour), Codex Grey skin, Ushapti Bone spikes and claws and helmet, and Dwarf Bronze doodads.

I painted the tip of the halberd in Ice Blue, and I’m hoping to have some sort of OSL crackling energy thing going on there. The Hand is Codex Grey. I was thinking of trying a NMM, but we’ll see if I have the patience to figure that out this weekend.

Later!

Work-in-progress

Passion

Posted on October 29, 2013

It turns out that despite having at least 3 projects on my desk, and 2 more projects that I brought home from Kipper’s Melee, that all I really want to do is build a new dinosaur riding another dinosaur.

Nick Klose was kind enough to give me the saurus rider from his Troglodon/Chocodile box and I wanted him to be a Cold One Lord. I had originally thought to use the Cavalry legs and his body, but for two problems – he’s a massive, massive lizard though, compared to the rest of the army, and his tail and torso are a single piece.

So I carved out the rocks he was standing on, puttied the hip joint to pull the legs apart a bit and I think he’ll look pretty bad ass!

Trying to re-create the same type of base as on the stegadon. I used the same strange milliput, but I mottled the ground a bit. I didn’t want to carve out the plants on the Cold One base, as they are structural, so I sculpted around them and will paint them brown and dying or similar.

Puttying reminds me that I want to take a class at Adepticon next year. On puttying. So I can stop sucking, because it’s really embarassing that I have this pro-active painting and modelling learning new techniques thing, but my sculpting is limited to “can I green stuff such that the original model is the only thing that is showing”. One day I plan to win the Little Pat Award at a local tournament, so I had better start learning how to cut Forge World models in half and do as good a job at sculpting them back together as he does. >.> (also, more penis’…need to stop playing an asexual army with no gentials on them).

Featured Images

Rail Crew – Final!

Posted on October 20, 2013

Finished my Rail Crew this weekend! Also, found some time to take some photos and do some editing, a good weekend! Next weekend I’ll be in Nanaimo for Kippers’ Melee, a multi-system event in it’s second year. I’ll be playing 5 games of Fantasy for the first time with the “brand new” Lizardman book, and Malifaux with…

Musings & Meta

Last adhesive post, I promise.

Posted on October 18, 2013

I hope this will be my last post in my surprising three part series on sticking two things together.

I wrote last time about how to fill joints, mainly because that’s what I was trying to do at the time. The next day I sat down to put together the rest of my Malifaux crew and thought about another point that could be useful.

You can get away with the prayer method in some situations – I’m thinking terrain, or bases, or if you have the chance to build something around the joint.

In my situation, I had some railroad tracks that would only touch the base at certain points, and not enough to actually stick if the model was dropped. I could have puttied around underneath, but I was lazy. The lazy (efficient!) solution was to add another adhesive on top of and around the weak joint. I’m using the Vallejo Oxid Paste as a basing material, so I made sure to have that come up the railroad tracks at many points (really, I just enveloped the tracks in it) so that it would add more strength and stability. I’ve also seen a few people sculpt around the joint, creating more fur or feathers or a cloak, etc.

I don’t know if I would recommend this for an arm, leg or tail, but for things that are being glued to bases, it feels ok. Arms will get pulled this way and that in your case, whereas basing materials tend to just lay flat.

Featured Images

Rail Crew – Markers

Posted on October 13, 2013

Malifaux uses a ton of markers. Your models drop Corpse or Scrap Markers when they die, and other models interact with those markers. You can use a (1) action at any point to drop a Scheme Marker. Sometimes these markers are used to score victory points. Sometimes they are just used to make your opponent think you’re trying to score victory points.

I wanted to make some specific to my crew since I had a ton of 30mm bases kicking around and it wasn’t that much extra effort.

These are done with the same basing technique as the models. Instead of drybrushing Fenris Gray over the Rhinox Hide (as I did for the Emberling), I drybrushed Bestial Brown and then Zhamri Desert. I like it a lot more! It left the dirt red, but brought a lot more yellow into it which I feel is a lot more realistic and good looking.

I’m a little concerned about the railway ties right now. I know that I just did Vomit Brown followed by a Devlan Mud wash, and I know that I feel like that isn’t enough paint. But they look ok with just that…

In some places it also just looks like a dirty mess. I’m not a huge fan of that, but it probably looks ok/great to other people. Urge to clean…

Musings & Meta

Minimalism

Posted on October 11, 2013

This man is brilliant.

Minimalist Howard Langston

He had some architectural models that he wanted to play wargames on. Putting a Space Marine onto a board with a hotel (or in his case, a school) looked a little silly. So he made new models to fit!

Minimalism as an artistic style is said to have started in the 1920s in the Netherlands. It progressed to becoming popular in the 1950s and 60s in the US and inspired a lot of artwork. It’s pretty old! And yet, it continues to be relevant because it is more of a design principle than an artistic style. You may be familiar with it from the discussion as to why the iPhone became popular, since that is one of the most mass market uses of the principle. The design of the iPhone brought minimalism to the front of peoples minds, and everyone wanted to know how to do that to make more money. If you compare the squalor was that web design in the 90s to that which we’ve come up with today, you can clearly see that minimalism has influenced computer design a lot in the last decade. But the idea is less is more has pushed, and continues to push, design in many industries.

As model builders, we cut and glue and scrape and assemble all of sorts of complicated things because we want our army to be the coolest damn thing in the room. I think what I love most about these photos, is that they make me philosophical about conversions. Why do we add more, thinking it better? These models are art and they show us that you don’t need the wet palette and mega paint sets and $120 models and $120 conversions to make something that looks amazing. You can start with a few pieces of metal, or fewer colours or just black and white or…

(IANAArtHistoryMajor. I tried to do enough research to not embarrass myself here, but I’m a web/UI/UX designer and programmer, so I only really know about the modern parts of minimalism :))

Featured Images

Rail Crew – Emberling

Posted on October 10, 2013

The promised Emberling post.

Before starting painting the crew, I wanted to see what others were doing with them. It’s like…if others are painting their orks in green, you don’t want to paint them pink. Unless you’re deliberately doing that. Have to know the rules before you can break them.

I found this guy who had painted two Mei Feng crews and a ton of other Malifaux stuff as well – that thread is an excellent resource! I liked his Emberling and wanted to copy it. I

I’ve been trying to do the lava-look on my stegadon base, but I was never really happy with it. Mr. Wappel has an example of a fantastic looking lava model, as well as a ton of lava bases that he’s painted and I’ve always wanted to get that look right. Here’s what I did on this guy:

Primed white. This is critical!
Sunburst Yellow base. I should have done a second or third coat of this, but at the time I thought it was good enough. The yellow really should be pristine when you start.
Used a foam bit to stiple Blazing Orange around. I was trying to keep it on the raised areas like a drybrush, but to make a random pattern like weathering. I was not entirely successful, mainly because the models arms got in the way of my foam so I had to “get in there”.
Watered mephiston red lines on the top of the raised edges of the model. This is not nearly as stark as the photo looks.
Cleaned up some of the edges with watered Sunburst Yellow, the goal was to make it yellow yellow under it all.
Straight Black on the raised flat parts of the model and the face.
Mixed Black and Fenris Grey to highlight the black edges.
Mixed some Rucksack Tan into that to further highlight the face and only the top-most flat parts. The face should be highlighted more than the rest to provide focus.

I’ll try to get a better photo of this guy when I finish the rest of the crew, since this one was rushed.

Work-in-progress

Rail Crew – MOAR PAINT!

Posted on October 9, 2013

I made some fantastic progress on the Rail Crew last night.

This is awesome, because this project was looming. LOOMING!!

Bases:

Black edges, because it’s classy.
Rhinox Hide for the dirt. This is waaaay to red. I didn’t realize. It’s really really red.
- Drybrushed a Graveyard Earth over it. Still pretty red.
- Drybrushed a Fenris Grey/P3 Rucksack Tan combo over it, less red, but now to grey. >.<
Rail lines are Mithril Silver and Badab Black. Based on feedback from my last post, I might try to weather the tracks with some of the Secret Weapon powders, we’ll see how I feel.
Vomit Brown to start the railway ties.
- This is a pretty bright colour! I wanted a different brown, but this may have been to light.
- I think it worked out ok in the end because of a heavy application of ~~liquid skill~~–Devlan Mud.

Skin:

I suck so hard at skin, but this was ok…for now. P3 Rucksack Tan to start out, then a wash of Dark Flesh which looked really nice, but really red (there’s a theme today). A very careful wash of the Rucksack again left the skin dirty and red, but not red red. More work is required on the skin, but I think in general I’m happy with where it ended.

Other stuff:

Mithril Silver and Badab Black on all of the metal pieces. I wanted a bright metal. The Gamin are going to require some thought on how to make them not be just silver on silver.
Fenris Gray for clothing that wasn’t the primary piece of cloth.
Black for Mei’s hair.
I think Vomit Brown for other hair bits. Mei didn’t look good as a blonde. 🙂
Vomit Brown for tool handles, because it was on the palette and I needed a few more brown items. I get away with this because I’ll end up with different highlights/washes/etc on each of the brown bits. For example, I won’t be Devlan Mudding the tool handles so it’s already different from the railway ties.

Emberling:

And then I started work on finishing a model – the Emberling was calling to me. I’m going to have a full post devoted to him in the next day or two, so even though he’s looking pretty snazzy in that photo, you’ll have to wait!

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