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Necromunda – Orlocks

Posted on July 4, 2018

As I wrote last time, I haven’t been painting for the last few months at all due to baby and also a general lack of things I might paint for. I find deadlines very motivating, and “next game day” is a deadline of sorts, but since I haven’t been going to any game days, I have no deadlines!

I started a Necromunda gang because I have fond memories of the game and there are enough people in my club interested in playing. I assembled the models, played a game and then put them on the shelf, not expecting to get another game in any time soon. Then two weeks later I had another game, and once again explained that the models with no arms had shotguns…so I’ve reprioritized finishing these guys off!

Here’s the first colour scheme test model!

This is my champion with a Combat Shotgun. He’s a beast! He’s painted:

Ushapti Bone on his shirt and pants.
Tallarn Sand on his boots, loin cloth, gloves and headband.
Runefang Steel on his weapons and armour and the base.
Snakebite Leather on the base dirt. I think I’ll change this to something more dark on the next iteration.

The highlight layer is:

Mix the Ushapti with some White.
Mix the Tallarn with Dheneb Stone
Mix the Ushapti+White with some Dheneb Stone for his flesh.

Funny story — I hadn’t realized that Dheneb Stone wasn’t a colour anymore until I was talking with a friend who wondered why I wasn’t using Rakarth Flesh for everything like he was. We were 3 minutes into the conversation when I did a quick search and found out they were the same colour. 😛 Dheneb Stone is the best!

Next up is:

Reikland Fleshshade over the flesh, to take him from an albino guy to a slightly more tanned guy.
Seraphim Sepia over…everything else.
Lamentor Yellow on his arm and head band.

When that all dried I did:

Nuln oil in the recesses of his body and clothing, and all over his gun.
Drakenhof Nightshade over the steel and in the recesses of the base, and in the deepest cracks of his armpits and groin.
Highlight the steel back up a bit with a light touch of Runefang Steel on the edges.

The photo above is where I got to with that. Then a little bit of:

Eyes, I hate eyes. Dheneb Stone in the pupils, Nuln oil in the eye recesses, then I tried to do Ice Blue which didn’t look good, then mixed with Kantor Blue which didn’t look good, then just a touch of black which finally did look good.
A bit of Ushapti in places to clean up a couple water marks that had been left behind by the shades.

I think he looks pretty much exactly how I wanted!

Featured Images

40k – Orks – Gorkamorkanaut, just the arm

Posted on October 14, 2017

I finished the arm, because I wanted to be inspired enough to finish the whole model, and the whole model is rather intimidating in it’s largeness, given that I’ve barely been able to find time to paint single models for a bit. The arm turned out amazing!

The airbrush is magic, because everything else on this thing is super simple once I got it right.

The cables are GW Blazing Orange. Then they are GW Troll-slayer Orange, which is very similar, but has the property of being available where the latter does not (I ran out). A little sepia, a little highlighting up and I have nice neon cables.
The metal is just GW Mithril Silver (and again, GW Runefang Steel because I ran out…), Sepia’d all over, then Nuln’d in the recesses and then Nuln’d again where I wanted more contrast.
The blue is, obviously, airbrushed, and then a little Nuln in the recesses to deepen those, and I sponged on Runefang along a few edges and then…

WABAM, all done. Awesome looking arm. So easy!

Featured Images

Blood Bowl – Skaven – Fezglitch

Posted on October 8, 2017

When I was last playing Skaven, I decided I wanted to make the Star Player Fezglitch in case I got enough inducements. He’s a Plaguemonk with Ball and Chain and Festering Prescence and just seems awesome. With Foodbowl coming up next month, and the Commissioner dropping the restriction of only allowing 2 Star Players, Fezglitch is one of 3 who will be joining my Skaven team this year!

He was pretty simple —

Zamesi Desert skin, mixed up with Dheneb Stone. Sepia a couple times to bring it down, then Zamesi up again
The cloak was P3 Cygnus Yellow, mixed with GW White Scar up and then Sepia’d done and wiped away in places. I used GW Waywatcher Green in the folds and along certain lines to make it look a little more gross.
Warpstone Green and the Waywatcher Green in the crystal and fire for a plaguey fire thing. Not my finest work.

I wanted yellow rats to look different from my regular pink team, but I think the yellow doesn’t look great. The skin is yellow enough, so it’s not a big contrast from the skin, despite me trying to make it more contrasty. And my fire regularly sucks, so my plague fire sucks more.

Featured Images Work-in-progress

New Ventures – Printable, foldable terrain

Posted on August 3, 2017

My daughter was born! For this, I took 3.5 weeks off work to feed and otherwise support my wife while she fed and otherwise supported the baby. (also, feeding the baby :)) I had a thought a few weeks ago to look into designing printable, foldable paper terrain. My goal was to be able to populate a table of science fiction wargaming from a flat folder. I set about drawing and printing! I’ve attached a ton of photos at the bottom of this post. 🙂

Today I’m writing because my first, boring, but awesome, piece is available for purchase! I’ve called myself Geeksong Paper, and my store is available here: http://paper.geeksong.com. For the low-low price of $1USD ($1.30CAD), you can own (license? digital shit is weird) 2 PDFs I’ve designed for shipping containers. One of the PDFs is designed to be folded and unfolded super easily. The other is designed to be really strong and sturdy. You have them both. Maybe you want stronger terrain? Maybe, like me, you want to take up less space in your expensive city-bound apartment? The choice is yours!

Here’s that link again:

http://paper.geeksong.com

And the shipping container in action, with some sweet Concord models and an awesome F.A.T. mat! (both used with permission, the mat is exclusive property of TABLEWAR)

I’ve got a ton of other ideas in my mind I want to draw and build. I’ll be going back to work next week, which sucks. But in about 4-5 months I’m getting laid off, which also sucks, but also means I’ll have more time to draw!

And last, here’s a bunch of photos and talking about the process of building:

I started with simple pop-up building techniques, like childrens pop-up books type things. I had a base and a folding cube. The base allowed me to build with something heavy on the bottom of the model, so that it would pull it apart when opened. The downside is that every model had to have a base, which meant I couldn’t stack. Above is a photo of one design that tried to have the base smaller than was necessary to protect the model while transporting it. I removed the base pretty shortly after this.

Next was a few weeks of math and frustration. I was trying to build a internal cross-brace that would pull the short side edges inward more so they would be flat when opened.

My desk at one point. It got much much worse before it got better. So much paper! We just yesterday came back from Ikea with a float shelf that is now mounted above my desk. With an impending walking-child (right now she’s just a lying-down-child) I needed to get fun and playful things off my desk.

The last cross-brace design. There are 4 different braces inside here, and every single one of them is useless. Because, what I realized much to late, they are necessarily designed to be exactly the same length at all times. Which means there is no pull mechanism, the sides just move in the same way as they would without it. This mechanism could be used to support (hence “brace”…), but it can’t be used to pull. I moved on.

I tried a design that had the roof as a separate piece. I liked this one because it was very flat and smooth. The short sides were smooth, the roof was smooth and the building folded along its natural folds. The downside of this one was that you wouldn’t be able to put heavier models on top, because the roof was just pressure-fit inside. I briefly toyed with creating a groove system for the roof to fit into, but this is about when I decided I’d rather get something finished, than play with designs forever.

Which is when I set up the store and put my designs into a selling-ready mode! Which took a long while as well. Not only did I need to print each design many times at home to make sure it was perfect, I also had to get it printed at a Staples to work out any bugs in that process as well. I wrote and photographed and even video’d instructions on how to to assemble it. And that’s not even including the time to set up the shop, get it looking the way I wanted, and working out all the bugs in the payment process.

My next project is to make a simple building in a similar design as the shipping container. I’ll make another post for that. 🙂

Featured Images

Antares – Concord Interceptor Bikes All Done

Posted on May 8, 2017

I finished some bikes! I bought these guys a while ago, and decided to prioritize them over the rest of the assembled things I have for Antares. These are going to be in a lot of lists, I think, in particular for Wet Coast GT in July.

I did them similarly to the last drop squad. I used Nuln Oil in a very light layer after the middle layers, around the exhaust ports. I was trying to darken the area, so that when I drybrushed up it would look brighter because it was darker to start with. I did a couple layers of drybrushing here, trying to make it a little more …OSL? The bases make me happy. White does not make me happy. >.> but it’s to late to change that up.

Featured Images

Antares Bases

Posted on April 29, 2017

It turns out I don’t have a post for Antares bases. I noticed this because I went to paint a bunch of bases and clicked the tag “bases” and couldn’t find anything for Antares. Usually I pick one of the post where I paint bases and tack the tag onto that so I can refer back to it.

This post is just about bases!!

So exciting.

I almost got the bikes in the photo, which are almost done, but due to some fancy angling managed to ensure that this post was entirely devoid of anything interesting.

Here’s the bases recipe:

Snakebite Leather
1-2 layers of Seraphim Sepia
Drakenhof blue shade as a shadow
drybrush up with Tallarn Sand and then Ushapti Bone.

Featured Images

Skaven – All done!

Posted on April 18, 2017

Because of the vague mysteries of scheduled posting, I appear to have done a lot of progress on this team in a short span of days. Truthfully, I did that work a week ago and then spent a week on the campaign app, and then a day ago got upstairs to take some photos. 😛

Super happy with how this rat ogre turned out. Particularly as I’m painting some more Concord right now, and the more I paint them the more I wish I hadn’t decided to try a white colour scheme, why not, it couldn’t be that hard. baaaaaaaaah. Give me nice clean colours, well rounded muscles and a clear set of focal points any day!

And lastly, here’s the whole team!

Those of you with advanced counting and memory skills will note that there are only 15 models in this photo, but Blood Bowl teams go up to 16. The box set doesn’t have enough linerats in it to fill out as many as you need for a full team. And I didn’t want to buy a second box just for 3 models, particularly since I got these sculpts done. And then, there’s the “issue” with skaven, which is that you’re very unlikely to not lose a model every single game.

My team has been on life-support this entire season. I was down to 10 actual members on the team at one point mid-season, and have slowly built my way back up to a mostly full roster. Then I lost two more linerats. >.>

They look so good with the pink and green and blue-ish silver! And I’m stoked they’re finally done!

Featured Images Photography

Blood Bowl – Skavens!

Posted on March 18, 2017

I committed to myself and my club that I would paint at least one model before I played again.

I scheduled a game for Wednesday. Then ran out of time to paint a model.

Mid-Wednesday, my game got cancelled because of various reasons, and I was unable to find a new one. Some might say it was a sign. So I painted two models today to stave off the wrath of Nuffle!

The nice thing about these models is that they are mostly done before I get to them right now. The first steps are super simple, but care needs to be taken with the shading which is where I’ve been stuck for a few weeks (months). With these, I’ve finished my Gutter Runners and got the first of my linerats done.

Photography

I’m still playing with this stuff. With the Orlocks I used my 25mm lense, but it has a much longer focus range than some other lenses I have. The macro lens I used in the previous Gutter Runner post is a little to close to keep my ego intact – plenty of people adhere to the “2 foot rule” when it comes to models, and the more I paint and photograph, the happier I am with keeping people (and the lens) a little further away to minimize the effect of brush strokes and tide marks, etc.

With the photos here, I used a 20mm lens which gets a lot closer physically, but is notably further away focally. I cropped the photos down a lot to bring them as close as they look above, which works due to the quality of the sensor in my camera.

Featured Images Musings & Meta

Necromunda – Orlocks

Posted on February 25, 2017

Some folks in the club started talking about Necromunda again, and I love that game so I got involved. Once again though, I have the choice between my Orlocks (who have been my first love) and my Cawdor (who I never loved, but who look way better). I sent out a link to my last old models post, to give people an idea of what my Orlocks actually looked like. Someone was disappointed that there were actually no photos of Orlocks in that link, so in order to procrastinate painting some more I thought I’d take some photos! I don’t remember exactly when I painted these. It was after the Dark Elves for sure, but before I worked at GW and learned a lot about thinning paints. 🙂

After I finished painting them, these 4 juves were in every gang list I made. They were cheap, and as long as you didn’t get into close combat they were almost as effective as a ganger. I tended to run them in pairs so they could support each other if they got into combat. I also really love the models!

Gangers have always felt kind of interchangeable to me. Sure, these guys all have different weapons, but in the end you just put them on the table and hope that the weapon you’re holding is good enough to hurt the person standing across from you.

I love this leader model too, although I’m disappointed that the new Community Edition rules don’t allow his meltagun in the initial gang. If I run Orlocks, I’m going to convert something I think. Boltgun/sword is a good combo for a leader. I’m surprised to find the stubber merely primed, since the rest of the gang is actually painted and I ran him in every list I made until I picked up a plasma gun (see further down).

These guys have a variety of stories. The pit slave on the left is likely a model that doesn’t belong to me, I think it’s actually Gavin’s. The dude next from the left is a conversion I made from a tank commander body and some plastic legs and a bolt pistol and flamer and I used him either as a scum or mercenary (I forget which). Gavin had the exact same conversion and I thought it was so cool I made my own. The next model in is a pyromancer, whenever I ran him he didn’t do to much. And lastly the guy on the far right I think ran as a telekinetic because I thought they seemed cool. He’s just an Empire wizard model from that era, I think.

After a large number of games, I got tired of running the same weapons over and over again and bought some Catachans to get some more weapons. I don’t really like them as Orlock replacements, as the Orlock models are a lot less “beefy”. Still, they aren’t bad.

Lastly, and this is also disappointing, two special edition models I grabbed at some point. It’s Scabs from the Kal Jericho comics and a PDF trooper, I think. The disappointing part is that I can’t find Kal!! Likely he was at Gavin’s at some point and now he has my Kal and I have his pit slave. Poor trade. 😛

As for the photography, there’s something missing from these photos. They don’t have the “luminescent” quality that I think they should have. Possibly my lights were poorly angled or not strong enough. I like the last photo, but not the other five.

Featured Images Musings & Meta

Antares – Pin Markers and Excuses

Posted on February 18, 2017

I think this was the last time I had a painting slump that felt like this. I haven’t done any painting or modelling since my last post, which is disappointing to both of us. (Or, at least just me). I have in mind, the following hobby projects queue’d up:

Skaven Blood Bowl team has 5/16 models fully finished. Another 9/16 are about 70% done. Another 2/16 are just primed white.
2 C3 Medium Drones that are just primed, a light drone with subverter matrix that got to a single layer of paint before being shoved in the case.
5 Algoryn troops and spotter drone that I wanted to paint as part of my Strike on Kar’a Nine review.
- Don’t get me started on the plans I had to go through each part of that box piece by piece. I haven’t had time to game.
Most of a Freeborn force that I picked up for a steal.
Use that photo setup I’m very pleased with. 🙂
Play every scenario in the Antares Xilos expansion.

I think those all of are the hobby “commitments” I’ve given myself, that I haven’t done anything with. It is nice to see the list.

Here’s what I did tonight:

You need pin markers for Antares. I’ve been using just a bunch of tokens to mark pins, but as part of that Freeborn force I got some of the Warlord games pin markers and I wanted to use them. On their own, they are exceedingly difficult to read and the Antares Facebook group has a lot of people doing something similar to this so you can actually read the numbers.

Wash of Abaddon Black. I don’t think this worked out well.
Wash of Drakenhof Nightshade. I like this colour more than most blacks, because it’s deeeeep.
Quasi-careful highlights of white over the numbers.
Went back in with the Drakenhof to touch up the edges where I’d messed up.
Purity Seal for safety?

I’m a little worried I should have primed something or something, but priming something you aren’t painting all of is a pain.

Now onto the excuses? Yeah, I don’t feel like going to bed yet. These are all the things that are filling my brain, instead of painting:

My wife is pregnant!!! woooot! We have a lot of things that need doing around the house…including keeping her fed and watered, which isn’t always easy. She’s suffering a lot from pregnancy sickness. 🙁
I’ve had some sort of intestinal issue for about 4 months now. Constant light cramps and gas, and often feeling like I gotta go, even when I don’t. Sucks a lot, particularly since the solution is 30 days of a very stringent diet (plus antibiotics) that I’ve somehow failed to follow perfectly.
Trying to plan a diving trip.
Trying to plan to teach some friends toddler to ski.
Planning meals for the above intestinal issue. Can’t just walk out the door and eat, this thing needs careful management.
Two circus shows – one in March and one in June.
A secret hobby project that I’m going to talk about but not tell you any details for a few months.

Before I got a career job, programming was a big hobby of mine. I’ve written tons of little programs that have barely had any use, just because I thought it would be neat to have a program that did that thing. Over the last few years, because of globalization and Google Play the world has been able to benefit more from this hobby. I’ve written 4 apps for Android that help with various gaming related tasks. My new project, which is literally sucking up and devouring every moment of time I have that isn’t scheduled otherwise, is a new web app that I hope might be of use to some of you when I’m done. There’s also a possibility that I might try to monetize parts of it (although the basic functionality will be free), like a DLC for your web app.

It’s time for sleeping, thanks for reading and I hope the photo of pins markers will keep you satisfied until I return. Tomorrow at least I’ll be playing some Antares and maybe I’ll have some photos of that. I’m on Xilos #4 and it looks really good!

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