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Craig

Stegadon Base Coat – “Glaze”

Posted on May 18, 2013

Glaze is in quotes because this isn’t glazing…well, maybe it is, but it’s not what people usually mean when they say glaze. I’m feeling like this is really part of the base coat of the model. I’ve painted some bright colours on, and now I’m darkening them a bit.

I took 1:1 Chaos Black and Matte Medium, added a boat-load of water, and wazzed that all over the entire damn model.

Still watching (listening to…) The Voice. Doesn’t make for good painting, even if it’s an easy job.

It actually looks much much worse than the photo makes it seem. The paint has dried in a patchy, horrible way. If you click on the photo and open a bigger version, you can see what I mean on the back leg.

There are a few spots where, while I was painting after working out last time, the paint isn’t adhering to the model. Oils from your fingers slide onto the model, and because our paint is acrylic/water based, it does what oil and water do and doesn’t stick. One spot was so bad I asked my club mates for advice and it was recommended that I sand it down. I did and that fixed the problem, but there’s a few more smaller ones to fix.

Right now, I’m a few posts behind. This is good because I can say that despite how embarrassed I am to post a photo of this model, it’s turning out ok tonight (which will be posted…in the near future. :))

Work-in-progress

Stegadon – Base coat finished?

Posted on May 14, 2013

I’ve finished the base coat for my stegadon. This was a simple matter of repeating the same process as I did for the grey, but for some other colours – blood red, ushapti bone, snakebite leather and dwarf bronze.

At this stage of the process, I start to think that I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve just taken a $70-80 model (I don’t recall) and coated it in a ridiculous colour which is completely different from how I’ve worked for the last 10 years. That other process started with black and worked up. This process starts with white, puts a bright base on, then washes down and then builds up again on the raised areas.

If I keep this up, you’ll see this whole thing, and cringe with me as I do it. My next post in particular is going to be super embarrassing.

Work-in-progress

Major repair

Posted on May 14, 2013

This is really stupid. I had about 10 skinks, 3 temple guard and a cold one rider not make it back successfully from Adepticon. Spent the night pinning things.

I have couple GW drills, and I bought a pack of really small bits from Central Hobbies. For whatever reason, I use the insides of computer network wire for pinning. I guess I just had a lot of it around when I learned how to pin, and it’s reasonably strong and thinner than paper clip. Call me weird… but if you do, tell me what you use to pin with! 🙂

One nice thing – after the repair, I puttied some more bandages on the 2 already built temple guard I bought at Adepticon. I need 4 more for my OFCC list (and 24 is just a good number in general for temple guard) so this is the start of that.

After all of this, I’ve got some painting to do. Probably take the Scorched Brown for the weapons and some Codex Grey for the models and get rid of any unpainted breakage lines. Bah!

Work-in-progress

Some floating rocks

Posted on May 11, 2013

While I was planning my Iron Brush tournament, I started reading the Blood in the Badlands rulebook for scenario inspiration. I was so inspired, I immediately started writing thoughts down for a campaign I wanted to run! I managed to put the idea down long enough to finish the tournament, but picked up the campaign idea again shortly after.

The last scenario in the Blood in the Badlands book is a massive multiplayer game with two tables. It’s a Storm of Magic scenario. The people on the primary table are fighting to win the campaign. The people on the secondary table are…fighting to get onto the primary table so they can win! I think it’s a delicious game mechanic, and I wanted to build some magical terrain to go with it! Floating rocks!

A friend just happened to be trying to get rid of some pink foam at the same time I needed some foam.

I recommend using a hot wire cutter with the pink foam – it makes a really nice cut. But in this case I just wanted some rough stone (and I no longer have a hot wire cutter…), so I cut away with a knife I had sitting around the kitchen. Something with a little more heft than a hobby knife, more like a steak knife…but not the steak knives.

Some rocks gluing, and some flying stands.

I cut successively smaller round sections of the foam, and made 3 layers to each rock. Then I took some of the scrap and cut some good edged pyramids from them.

This part always takes forever.

My usual method of applying gravel to bases. Take white glue and water it down. I use a GW tank brush to spread it around, and apply the gravel. I used 3 different sizes of gravel here in an attempt to make it seem more realistic – nature doesn’t have identical rocks lying around! After that layer dries, I apply another layer of watered down white glue. Wait a long time in between layers. I do more white glue until I’m happy that the gravel isn’t going to fly off when I touch it.

Another James Wappelism.

I had Patrick pick me up some red Oxid Paste from Vallejo. I’d never used this stuff before, but I watched a video on YouTube. The guy took a toothpick and applied it gently to his bases…I took a paintbrush and wazzed it all over instead. It has the consistency of one of the more solid GW paints – thick, but still able to be brushed on quite easily. I think in hindsight, that it should be used more like the varieties of gravel – to provide more “interest”, instead of being a thing that is everywhere. I’ll play with it some more.

I’ve just finished these tonight, and I’m hoping to figure out how to make a gradient backdrop and some decent lighting and maybe get some good photos tomorrow!

Work-in-progress

Minor repair

Posted on May 9, 2013

A minor hobby tonight — making the veer-myn set of “flying” strikers so they have 2 paws on the ground. Just bent their legs a bit and then glued and puttied to fill the gaps that were left. It’s not a great fix. Thinking of putting some gravel rubble on their bases (they are rats, after all) to provide another anchor point for the hands.

Regular Wednesday night CHOP gaming tonight. I wouldn’t call it “practice” for OFCC, since practicing would require something that I’m calling “recall of lessons learned”, but played with my proposed OFCC list tonight and it’s alright. The Engine is new and odd. Actually choosing to put that many points into Heavens magic as a valid and strategic choice, also odd.

I bought another K&R case the other day, along with some new foam which is 2 layers of 10×5 rows. This is fantastic, because combined with a half layer of pick’n’pluck, I can fit my entire 2800 OFCC army into a single regular case with room to spare. Brilliant.

Work-in-progress

Veer-myn Dreadball Team

Posted on May 7, 2013

I’m torn between wanting to paint up another Dreadball team, and working on the Steg which I need to finish for OFCC (in June, thankfully). Last night Miranda and I were watching The Voice when I realized that I didn’t really need to watch most of the show. I probably couldn’t paint and watch TV, but assembling models should be fine.

I’ve enjoyed playing with the humans, but all of the talk on the intarwehbz about how they are OP bugs me. I don’t like OP things, I tend to shy away from them. I like things with obvious weaknesses, and the humans are so jack-of-all-trades that they don’t have many (except when the orx player gets the drop on sending your guards off the pitch). Veer-myn aren’t the worst team in the game, but they have some weakness – a Skill of 5+ means they’ll need some luck to grab or throw the ball, even though they are movement 6 each and Speed 3+.

I was thinking while assembling these guys. Mantic (so far) has no where near the quality of models as GW. GW plastic is crisp, solid and their newer models fit together near perfectly. These veer-myn have soft edges in their fingers, bend quite readily and the detail just isn’t as crisp. Three of the models had sprue-poles up their asses as well – they’d been cut away at the factory, but I had to clean up this 3-4mm sprue point at the meeting point of 2 legs and a tail.

But I will continue to support Mantic, because I believe that this can be fixed and that their attitude is refreshing. I think that anyone who uses Kickstarter as much as they do “gets it”. Their head-honcho was seen around Adepticon. He personally showed up at the Blood Bowl tournament I was at to give Dreadball prizes to the tournament. They are on Facebook constantly with neat videos and one of their primary game designers has a blog where he goes into detail about why he did certain mechanics. I eat that shit up.

After finishing my Blood Bowl team I realized that I needed to work more on modelling. But I really don’t know how to fix this problem…

Their hands are supposed to be touching the base…

A lot of cutting and putty, I suppose.

Musings & Meta

Happy Early Birthday

Posted on May 6, 2013

My interest in this hobby has built up quite a bit over the last few months, such that instead of sitting down to play Warcraft at the end of a day, I’m building something or painting. I like the change.

I’m also watching the success of certain hobby bloggers, and certain podcasts and I’m a little jealous – I’ve been writing for 3 years (…that sneaks up on you…), and I barely know my audience, where my podcasty friends have fans coming to take photos with them at Adepticon!

I think a big difference is marketing. I started this blog because I love writing, and I wanted to get into photography some more, and wanted some motivation to paint more and bingo-bango, here we are. But that’s totally different than if you’re actually trying to build an audience.

Another difference is that of reliability. Certain bloggers are writing daily, even several times a day! The podcast folks put something out every 2-3 weeks. I write when I feel like it, and sometimes not even then! Taking photos, editing, writing, proofreading, etc, takes a lot of time when I could be sleeping or painting or watching Game of Thrones. 😛

It turns out that the blogs birthday is on May 27th, it’s third year of existence, and I’d like to celebrate by changing up my format a bit. Whenever I do something hobby, I’m going to post a photo, maybe two and some quick words about what I did. This will have a few effects:

Smaller chunks of “what I did” are easier to follow. The first stegadon painting post is 1 step, out of a hundred and now you know how I did it exactly. (well…except for the water bit, which I never count exactly >.<)
If I stop editing my photos and start just taking a few quick ones with my phone, the photo aspect won’t be as onerous.
More regular writing, and potentially easier to follow writing, means that someone could toss my blog into their RSS and feel like it added some value to their daily reading.

I’ll continue to do “milestone” posts with the tripod and the good camera and lighting and maybe a gradient backdrop and some white balancing and fun stuff like that.

Thanks for reading!

Work-in-progress

Stegadon – Body 1

Posted on May 6, 2013

I wrote a big thing here, but I’m deleting it to post in a moment.

I’m painting the body first, as I’d like to glue it to the base and it will have the most visual impact – right now I’m playing with an empty lava base as an Engine of the Gods! I took Fortress Grey and mixed it 1:1 with my Golden Fluid Matte Medium and enough water to make it flow. I slathered that all over the skin, and I’m done for the night.

Was on vacation last week – work tomorrow will be a rude awakening! 🙂

Work-in-progress

Stegadon – Done building

Posted on May 5, 2013

I had mostly finished building my converted Stegadon a few months ago, just before the Adepticon/Dreadball/Blood Bowl frenzy overtook me. Now I’m starting to get planning about OFCC in June, and really want to play with the Engine+Carny dino list in their 2800 team tournament!

Since these are draft photos, they won’t be using any of the photography techniques I want to apply to the final images. 😛

The completely assembled Engine.

I’ve built the steg so that it disassembles really nice, for a few reasons. Partially because I’ve built a giant howdah and will need to fit it into a case somehow! And partially so that if I want to play with a regular Ancient Steg (or regular Steg, if they get ok in the next book) that I have that option.

The howdah is built from pieces of baked sculpey shaped into carved stone blocks, as well as the top piece of the Empire Hurricanum. I tried to use more from the Hurricanum, but it’s just such a ridiculous model and so huge compared to the smaller steg that I had to break it down to just the middle bit.

Each of the skinks has pin-wires glued to their feet so they can be removed easily.

The priest is the skink chief model that is holding a heart in one hand, and I gave him a staff to make him more priestly. I love most of the chief models, and it’s sad that they aren’t viable in the army! He’s had a bit of the same mummified wrappings that the Temple Guard have – as the favoured priest, he was buried with the Pahaux slann and his bodyguard upon the slann’s death.

All the bits laid out. Left to right: Howdah back, 4 skinks, priest, howdah front, steg ceremonial plate and the steg itself.

A closer look at the howdah back bit.

Also have 4 more temple guard to paint, and 2 Dreadball teams lined up. I bought Dreadball Veermyn at Adepticon and I’m stoked to try to play with them!

Tournaments

Adepticon 2013 – Day 6 – Finale

Posted on April 27, 2013

Patrick and I slept in until 10ish and it was glorious. Dale had gotten up much earlier for a flight around 8am, but ours was at 12:40pm. A few things to take care of, back at the Westin for a bit we got to say goodbye to the Bad Dice guys and head on our way.

Our entire way home Patrick and I spent brainstorming about what we would do for the Fantasy Team tournament next year. When we first left, I hadn’t been convinced that I would come back. It was a lot of effort to get there, and if I added every convention I attended to my yearly schedule, I’d have to vacation time left, so I have to choose carefully. Since our frenzied idea planning, I think that if we can pull it off, it will be amazing. No spoilers here, but there’s a good chance that the modeling and painting of said army will be shown here.

I always leave these events feeling super jazzed about doing more with my hobby. I love building and converting things, I love that I’ve been pushing my painting for the last few years, I love traveling with my buddies and I love meeting and playing games against new and interesting people, I love that I have a gaming club that affords me the ability to organize bigger events and help support others enjoyment in the hobby.

I’m writing this on a plane to Hawai’i, and don’t get me wrong, but I wish I was painting my Dreadball rats, or finishing up the amazing Stegadon conversion I started earlier this year.

Big thanks to the CHOP boys, and in particular Patrick for traveling with me and paying for the hotel when my credit card was defrauded and canceled, walking with a huge heavy box full of booze, and convincing me to go back upstairs and play my damn game.

Thanks for reading everyone!

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