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Blood Bowl – Skaven Gutter Runner…and some photography stuff.

Posted on January 28, 2017

I’ve had it on my todo list for a long while to get back to the kind of photography I was doing before I moved into a tiny apartment and got really lazy about pulling all the equipment out, and setting it all up for a single model, then putting it all away. We moved about 6 months ago and have more space now. Then I back the MacroMat Kickstarter and it arrived yesterday. And I finished a model today, and had some spare time to move some stuff around. The stars were aligning.

Here’s a rat!

The GW Skaven box doesn’t come with enough Gutter Runners to run a proper team, which is a little silly and the cause of much argument in CHOP! chat. I don’t know why GW made this decision, but my policy has generally been to try to overlook such things and fix it myself. It is a hobby, after all!

I had Little Pat sculpt me two more Gutter Runners out of some Clan Rats he had. This guy is my favourite of the two, but you’ll see the other guy really soon I’m sure.

I made a mistake on the photography, I think, and set my aperture to 11 when I really should have done much higher, and didn’t check my focus location carefully enough. Consequently, you can see the line where the model is in focus versus out of focus, and that line is slightly before the middle of the model.

This is my new setup. I put it all together this afternoon, took these photos…then left it up. Madness! I turned the lights off, obviously. That, plus a new computer a few months ago and a new photo editing program, and the process from click to upload is pretty damn fast! Not as fast as the phone, unfortunately, since the phone can just upload immediately.

The MacroMat comes with 3 different backgrounds – the gradient blue, a speckled black and a speckled brown. I think the black one is my favourite for this model, and that’s the super nice thing – I can choose which background depending on the colours on the model and what will contrast best!

I also got a flash for my camera since last I used it for this blog, so I’ve now got 2 side lights and 1 front light and things are well lit. The only thing left is that the lights aren’t portable, because of how I’ve done the difuser for them. My ideal setup would be one I could take to the club on a photography day or something. We’ll see how it goes, maybe my lights are portable enough. 🙂

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Antares – Drop Squad and C3D2 Drones

Posted on January 8, 2017

It’s been a while since I wrote, because Christmas and some other things got in the way unfortunately. But tonight I powered through the last of my drop squad guys and finished assembling the C3D2 drones.

The drop squad guys are the same recipe as the leader, drone about a month ago. I painted one a night for a few days and then life. These are absolutely the coolest models in the Gates of Antares range. They’re so dynamic, and so bad ass looking and every drawing in the rulebook of them I see makes me dream of awesome space war movie scenes. I’m glad I’m done them so I can move onto other projects, and I’m super stoked to play with them all painted!

The last game I played I noted that I was very behind in the arms race. My NuHu was the only way of getting a really solid anti-tank weapon — SV4 on the lances just isn’t enough — and the NuHu is very expensive at 200+ points if you kit her out properly. I wanted some guns that were a little more tough to kill, and a little more dependably anti-tank. The C3 plasma cannon support team hadn’t been released yet, so I ordered the C3D2 Drones which have a plasma cannon on them. They are more glass cannony than the support team version – they have +1 Acc which is great, and +3 Res (roughly) which is awesome, but the support team I think wins out the defense race because it has 2 (or 3) guys to soak hits and the drone has to roll on a weapon drone chart which doesn’t make up for that.

These guys were stock to assemble, except that I took a drill bit to their underside to drop them lower onto the pegs. I learned from watching Clayton and his Freeborn Skyraiders that metal models standing high on little flying stands are going to get knocked over a bunch.

Remember years ago when I would pull out my photography equipment and take some really nice photos with nothing in the background to distract you? I got lazy. Thankfully, TableWar came to the rescue with this kickstarter, and I bought a new home. Once that KS comes in the door I’ll be setting up a small area to take photos, and we’ll make this happen.

I also have a couple Antares related projects coming up, so if you love Antares hold onto your hats, this is going to be a great few months!

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Blood Bowl – Skavens! Stormvermin (I think)

Posted on December 3, 2016

Here’s a start to finish of a single Stormvermin. I just picked him out of the pile to be the first test model. He’s a lot lighter than I had imagined, but I also was imagining a scheme identical to my Veer-myn scheme from years ago. (just went back to look at details on that link – those are poorly done models all over the place. >.>)

The base coat was 3 simple colours – Zamesi Desert skin, Emperor’s Children cloth and Mithril Silver armour and other metal bits.

I highlighted that base coat by taking the Zamesi and mixing it with Dheneb Stone, and the Emperor’s with White Scar and doing 3 quick layers.

Then it gets really chaotic. Seraphim Sepia over the skin, wiped away the tops. SW Amethyst similarly on the cloth, but this got a little messy, I might do the Drakenhof first next time. Drakenhof in the silver parts, some Nuln Oil in places that needed more contrast.

I applied the decals at the wrong moment, after I’d finished all of this and it didn’t look great so I had to go back again and re-metal and re-shade over the decal. Next one I’ll do the decal after the base coat.

The base is simple as you can likely see – black edges are classy, Vallejo Goblin Green over. I won a pack of Rain City Hobbies flowers at the Blood Bowl Foodbowl so I glued some flowers to my rats base for fun. 😀

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Blood Bowl – Foodhammer MegaBowl Sunday

Posted on November 28, 2016

MegaBowl was a lot of fun yesterday! There were some definite hi-jinks in play, including Greg leaping a Slann into a boxed off ball, picking up the ball on a 6, throwing it on a 6 and catching it…on a 6. But for me, the highlight of the day was seeing my boards being played on!

I played an Undead roster of:

Count Luthor Von Whatever
Hack Enslash (no ref means Chainsaws were everywhere!)
1 Wight with Guard
4 Ghouls — 2 with Block, 2 with Wrestle
4 Zombies – 1 with Tackle, which I never used.

Here’s a photo of the middle of the board on turn 2 of my first game:

That’s a lot going on in a few squares.

Here’s the setup:

The dugout come out looking great, even though I enlarged the images by a bit, this was my biggest fear!

Every $5 you donated gave you $100,000 in Blood Bowl cards, and you had to give $50,000 to 2 different opponents (out of 3 people). This was a clever scheme to keep the game balanced while encouraging a little bit of screwing over your friends, but in the end it felt a little petty and arbitrary to exclude one person.

My team! I was planning to put a photo of my Luthor proxy/conversion up, but forgot to take a clear photo of him. It’s a Guild Ball Ghast model from the Morticians faction. I think the Guild Ball models are some of the best looking modern models I’ve ever seen, and I’m a little sad that I bought them and never truly got into it. This is the first GB model I’ve ever painted, and it’s not even for the faction I play!

I don’t plan on doing a version 2 of the board right now, but here are a few notes I took from playing on it:

The little “+”s that demarcate the squares, should be white with black drop shadows. This is what FF-Fields does, and it’s specifically so that the squares can be found no matter what the background is. The black “+”s looked fine on the snow background sections, but in the middle with the dirt they were very hard to see properly.
The rules hadn’t been finalized before I finished the board, so I didn’t know that the Line of Scrimmage on this board is straight across the lines of the dugouts, not at the center where I’ve depicted it. I would add another 4 lines to note this.
The rules have an oddity to them whereby you can’t cross the two squares at the very corner of each of the dugouts. I didn’t realize it until I played the game, but this is to prevent people from having an easy out around the corner – it’s much harder to block this passage without this rule. However, the rule is an “exception” to normal movement, and so could be forgotten. I thought to add a little spiked-thing or something, jutting out from the corner of the dugouts into that square, to help remind people they can’t travel that way.

A few rules issues that bugged me, but overall a great day of Blood Bowl!

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Blood Bowl – “Hack Enslash”

Posted on November 24, 2016

I made 3 skeletons before this season started, assuming that I’d realize part-way through that the common internet wisdom that zombies were way way better than skeletons would turn out to be a little exaggerated.

It is not exaggerated, zombies are just plain better.

One of them is in my roster, because I paid for him and then that was that. One of them has been ripped off his base so I could use the base for a special project. And one of them has been converted into Hack Enslash, an Undead Star Player.

Clayton was good enough to give me an ork nob choppa which I split into two pieces, both of which were only about the size of my model. This was the best option — every other chainsaw was easily twice the size of him!

I’m playing Foodbowl this Sunday, and if you’re at all interested in Blood Bowl you should sign up and come to the Fraternal of Order of Eagles. It’s a special 4-player game that’s going to be some crazy mayhem!

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Antares – Drop Command Leader (and Targetter Probes)

Posted on October 31, 2016

Is it “Targeter” or “Targetter”? Both are spelled incorrectly according to Chrome.

I speedily finished off the Targeter Probes, lamenting my singular lack of painting talent while I did so. I’ve been playing World of Warships and painting in between deaths, so I’m actually painting more than when I play Hearthstone. 😛

After I finished the Probes (just avoid the “T” word entirely), I made a decision — I was going to paint the Drop Command Leader, and only the Leader. To see if I could paint and make myself believe that I was ok at it.

I’m pretty happy with the results, although my OSL against white needs work.

Recipe

The Probes are the same as the last Strike Squad I painted.
The bases are how I wish to do my Antares bases from now on — Snakebite Leather, 1-2 layers of Seraphim Sepia, Drakenhof blue shade as a shadow and the drybrush up with Tallarn Sand and then Ushapti Bone. Much nicer looking, in particular with the extra base effort I took last time!
The Leader guy I finally slowed down. Ulthuan Grey all over. Watered down Drakenhof in the recesses, then watered down Nuln in the recesses. The watering meant I could easily paint over with the Grey again where I needed to. White Scar at the top. He looks good as is!
His gun is the same as for him, but then just a lazy wash of Nuln over top, with a little bit wiped away with my finger. I want it to look the same, but slightly different.

The lights are Ice Blue. I read this tutorial on OSL and it says:

The easiest and most effective way to create a believable glow effect is to start with an otherwise dark model. This doesn’t mean you have to paint your model black—you still want good contrast—but it does make your life easier if you choose a darker than average palette. Remember the cardinal rule. It’s not impossible to pull off a lighting effect on a white model, but it is extremely difficult. (Retribution players, you have been warned.)

(Emphasis is mine) Ah hell. I tried to start darked by going over with the watered Nuln a few times around the areas that I knew I was going to try to Ice up, so I had a darker surface to lighten. Drybrushed up the Ice and put it in the center of the lights. Then mixed the White with the Ice and went inside the lights. I really like how it looks on his shoulder lights! But the backpack (which you can’t see in this photo) bugs me in the same way that my unphotographed T7 bugs me — painting into engine vents is tricky work.

When I added the “Recipe” header, I had more I wanted to write that wasn’t about the painting. I guess it’s just nice to know that when I take the time, I can make a model that looks pretty sweet.

And with this scheme, it should be pretty easy to do the rest of the squad (9 more models, over 2 squads) the same. It was pretty quick, so I should be able to get at least 1 guy done every time I sit down.

Now I just need to find the time to play…>.<

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Blood Bowl – Display Board, Final

Posted on October 16, 2016

I finished my display board!

It’s not as cool as I had hoped in my heart of hearts, but it’s something. I wanted small and portable, and this thing will fit into my GW case pretty easily because of the modularity of the pieces.

The red dirt looks really nice on the model bases, but done large like this I think it’s a little gaudy, and the highlights/contrasts are a little difficult looking to my eyes.

And even though I made good use of the Basius, it’s too flat and needed maybe a cliff or something to set some elements apart.

Maybe I’ll re-do the back bit with a little rise in the future. Or maybe I’ll leave it as is…

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Antares – Nuhu Mandarin

Posted on August 31, 2016

I messed up a little bit with the blue cloth here. It had been shaded the same as the rest of the model and I wanted to make it look a little different so I took the Guilliman Blue glaze and just went over the top part. When I was done, it looked kind of cool with a muted blue at the bottom and a strong blue at the top.

Unfortunately, the more I looked at it, the more it was backwards because the stronger blue looked darker than the muted part, even though the muted part had a lot more black over it.

I added Drakenhof blue wash to the recesses, mainly near the lower part of the base because I wanted it to be brighter at the top. Something about dark bases and eye being drawn upwards? I dunno. My eye is drawn towards that badly done cloth. >.<

I cleaned it up a little bit by doing some lighter blue along the edges of the hexagon pattern of the cloth. Oddly, the second photo looks a lot darker, but it’s actually much lighter since it’s been highlighted with white!

Lastly, I found this photo I’d uploaded some time ago and apparently didn’t post, so here it is. Drones!

Featured Images Musings & Meta

Drone – FPV

Posted on August 24, 2016

I haven’t written about the drone recently, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been flying. I’ve been learning how to fly “line of sight” all summer, and it’s fun but it’s very difficult. You have to get it in your head that if your front lights are facing you, that your controls are entirely reversed. That could be possible, but what hasn’t been possible is all of the combinations in between!

Russ picked up some FPV goggles and I gave them a whirl and was instantly sold that this was the thing to do.

First, a cat in a box.

As with all drone things, we had to pull it all apart again. Added to the list of gubbins that had been in there before was a PWM->PPM converter (I don’t truly understand why), a camera and a video transmitter. The last two allow the drone to transmit video signals, to be picked up by my goggles.

A photo of the whole mess put together. We didn’t get to fly that day because it took too long to assemble. Thankfully, assembly is fun too!

The goggles.

A photo of the goggle screen displaying something from the camera.

A couple days later we went to a nearby Burnaby park and flew around a bit. Here’s a side photo of my drone. The yellow thing on the left (at the bottom) is a camera mount that Russ 3D printed for me. It allows me to change the angle of my camera (and also holds the camera in the frame).

The yellow thing at the top is my GoPro mount, which is likely not going to see too much use. My new FPV camera can take SD cards to record to, so I’ll likely do that. Not to mention I busted the GoPro and the GoPro mount. >.>

On the far left in blue is my video transmitter antenna. I now know more about antennas than I ever thought I would. 5.8ghz, circularly polarized cloverleaf antenna with a simple plastic cover to prevent it from getting mangled from the (repeated) falls.

This is a photo of Russ’ drone in a tree. 😀

This hobby just got so much more amazing. It has all of the fun of playing a cool little video game/flight simulator, but with the immediacy of real life. To nerd out a little, it’s like the difference between Diablo and Diablo on Hardcore mode. The latter makes you really sit up and pay attention, and flying this thing is very much the same!

I’ll try to get some video recording, but unfortunately I left all my SD cards at home for the flying this time. But there will be more!

Featured Images Musings & Meta

CAKE!!!

Posted on August 21, 2016

Not a new hobby of mine, but a relatively new hobby of my wife’s that I helped her out with. The daughter of a couple of friends of ours turned 2 this weekend, and my wife has been amping up her cake making skills for a few years. (Note: my birthday cakes are amazing!)

She was making a Minion cake, and I got drafted into a very small part of it – making the goggles.

We started with fondant. I’ve never experienced fondant before my wife, but it seems like everyone else who hears the word has experienced it before. It’s vaguely reminiscent of our green stuff, but edible. I’m told “barely edible”, but I actually don’t mind the taste of it. I mashed together some black and white until we got a grey colour, then rolled it out about 3/4″ thickness and then used a cookie cutter to make a circle. A smaller cookie cutter went into the center of that and I carefully pulled the remainder away. I rolled up a cylinder and made 8 rivets, and 2 more smaller cylinders to make hinges.

This next photo should look familiar to us all — just replace the fondant lumps with 6 paint pots each, and it’s pretty much the same desk. 😛

While I did this, my wife continued with her hobby. It took her 3 nights to make this cake, and these photos are from night 2! She’d made 5 small cakes and layered them with butter cream icing between each layer. Then she smoothed a yellow sheet of fondant down, and started adding pieces to make it look like a Minion! There’s a lot of detail in this, from little “stitching” in the coveralls, to spaces left open to make it look more layered, to the incredible specular reflection in the eye!

The final result!

And a couple photos from the reveal!

(funny story: the reveal for the young one was actually about a half hour earlier when she opened the fridge door. Apparently her parents have repeatedly asked her not to open the fridge door, but this time my friend walked into the kitchen to see his daughter standing shocked and gaping into the fridge, staring at this Minion that was staring back at her. She was sad to have it all ripped away so quickly, but my friend distracted her with presents :D)

My friend is a good teacher, the young one learns well. 😀

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