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Work-in-progress

Everything before it’s done.

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).

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!

Work-in-progress

Malifaux Rail Crew – PAINT!!

Posted on October 6, 2013

Tonight marks the first time I’ve applied paint to a model since September 11th. >.> Didn’t realize it had been that long, but the move definitely killed my ability to do this. Add to that the heavy conversion I’ve been working on, and it’s been weird to finally get a chance to put colour on models again!

I was worried about the Malifaux models because they are so much smaller than any of the Warhammer models that I usually work with. Base coat is going pretty well so far though. I asked Miranda what colour I should do their pants, and I really could have predicted that she’d have said red.

So Mephiston Red to start the pants off. Mithril Steel for all of the metal – the Metal Gamin are nice and simple in that regard. Some Rhinox Brown for the dirt.

I want to figure out how to make the railroad ties be a light brown, but burnt and tar-like. The rails might go to silver as well…could be to much silver though.

Work-in-progress

Preview – Plaguebearer Conversion

Posted on September 27, 2013

A small preview of the conversion I’m planning for my plaguebearers. I had hoped to find a ton of the ymargl heads from the Genestealer box, but they are very difficult to come by – only two heads per box and I don’t know enough Tyranid players! Instead I went to ChapterHouse Studios and bought a ton of their metal knock-off heads. I don’t think they are as nice as the GW ones, but…they exist, and didn’t cost $5+ per head, so…I’m in.

The guy in the back is lying down because he’s to top-heavy to stand. Something I’ll have to correct for when I put them on square bases.

Musings & Meta Work-in-progress

Malifaux – Rail Crew – Assembly

Posted on September 25, 2013

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote. I knew this, but since I’ve been busy I didn’t know that others knew this as well until I was having a beer last night with a friend who asked why his Warhammer feed section hadn’t been updated recently. Instead of asking why he didn’t have more exciting people in his feed, I said that I had a post lined up very shortly.

I’ll try to keep this hobby related :). I moved 2 weeks ago to a smaller apartment, and it’s been a real struggle trying to fit all of my stuff (most of it hobby) into this place. My girlfriend has been a sweetheart about listening and understanding why I need an entire large IKEA shelf filled with bits of unassembled and occasionally broken plastic, dice, airbrush, tape measures. (“That would make awesome terrain!”). But there’s still just the regular stuff of life to put places, and that’s been difficult as well. Having your life uprooted that makes it hard to get back to a regular, easy schedule. My desk is a mess from moving, and I haven’t even brought my Escalation League stuff out of their case to work on them! I’m going to be so behind next month…

The new Malifaux rulebook came in the mail last Tuesday and I quickly devoured the knowledge contained within. After gorging myself and slowly rising, I found the moving box containing “bitz”, found the sprue containing Rail Crew, found the glue and the cutters and hobby knife and oxid paste and went to work. 2 days later I have a Malifaux crew assembled and ready to go.

Someone still needs to teach me how to play Malifaux, because although the rules have been forced into my brain, they have no context, they are free floating rules, with no basis in reality. I require grounding. I hope to receive grounding this weekend at the CHOP! September event on the 29th. You should come and play models and dice with me.

Work-in-progress

Beasts of Nurgle – Basecoat

Posted on September 11, 2013

Tall Paul made fun of my Escalation League army at CHOP Sunday August, questioning whether I owed everyone in the league a beer since I hadn’t finished my models. I replied that each of my models had 3 colours, to which he said “what, blue, blue, and blue?” I was irritated, but he was right. My horrors and flamers only barely got more than blue on them recently (I was counting the base as a colour!)

My 1000pt models now have 5 colours on them (and the daemon prince could almost count as “finished”, if I could find his blasted arm!).

Work-in-progress

Horrors – Base coat

Posted on September 6, 2013

It looks like I posted the words for this photo already…

This is the horrors after I was “happy” about how they looked. Next up is to get in there with some glazes and such to bring it all down a bit. Then to add some colours to the details – there aren’t a lot, mostly some fire and some teeth and tongues – but on an all-blue model, any additional colour helps!

Work-in-progress

Assembling a Hell Dorada Jaws of the Deep

Posted on September 5, 2013

While preparing this model for assembly, I had lots of great things to say about it, but my glowing praise was dampened during assembly.

Before GW kicked my gaming group out of the store, I hadn’t realized that there were other miniature companies who made models that looked great. I knew that Privateer Press existed, but that was another game with models that I never really liked the look of. And I knew that Reaper was a thing, but that in general their models were kind of lackluster.

Fast forward a few years, and now there are dozens of companies doing lots of good things, and now I have a Hell Dorado Jaws of the Deep model on my desk that I’m assembling to be a Beast of Nurgle, because I really don’t like how the GW model looks.

There was very minimal flash on this all-metal model (a rarity in this brave new world of resin and plastic). There was still mold lines, but for the most part the pieces had been parted and cast in such a way as to reduce their effect. As I happily cleaned the model, I was amazed at how well the whole thing was going.

As I started to assemble it though, I found a flaw – there was excess metal in the tongue/groove joint where you glue the parts together! I had to cut into the groove as best I could, then cut down the tongue as best I could, and then hope that the joint would still hold!

Putty in the joints and then liquid green stuff to fill some gaps. The tails are a little worrisome, but here we are.

These are fantastic looking models, and I’m really excited to add them to my army!

Work-in-progress

Horrors – Actually Painting The Damn Models

Posted on August 24, 2013

Because I tend to keep a backlog, sometimes the timing gets a little weird. I want to post about painting the horror models, but I’ll be playing with them on Sunday well before you read about it. 🙂 So I’m adjusting my schedule a bit.

Just put a first highlight layer on the models. Mixed some Sotek Green with some Acrylic Medium, Ushapti Bone and some water and went to town. The idea is that I’ll highlight up, and then shade down, so I’m not worried about the recesses right now.

I’ve got 2 of the new models mixed in with 20 of the older ones, and it strikes me how much I like the older ones better. They are twisted and contorted, mouths stretched painfully wide to let another horror out of their gaping maw. They have 2 limbs or 4 or 6, some flailing and some kept close. These are fun models, and it’s more fun than I remember to put this layer of paint on them. I painted these models once a few years ago – well before I started giving a shit about improving my painting techniques.

(Oh, I’m also painting the Flamers at the same time with the same paint scheme. Might give them something to change it up, or might not. In the meantime, it’s “the horrors” painting series. :))

Work-in-progress

Horrors – A Ton of Bases

Posted on August 24, 2013

I’ve join a builder/escalation league. Now I have a ton of models to paint. But it’s ok, because the plan is to use this army at Adepticon next year, for the team tournament and possibly more, depending on how I feel about it when I’m done.

However, the 500 points/month scale doesn’t work for either my schedule, or the quality of the paint scheme I’d like to put out. My plan has been to put 3 colours on each 500 point chunk each month so that I’m tournament legal, and then create buffers for myself along the way.

For the first 500, I’ve got 20 horrors, 3 flamers and a Herald of Tzeentch. My next 500 points has a Daemon Prince that just needs to be glued back together, put on a new base and then raised in quality (he doesn’t go in the final army) and 2 Beasts of Nurgle. Which means that I can spend the next month focusing on getting this bigger chunk of the army up to the standard I like.

Which means I spent the last month painting bases. (and all the other hobby shit I get up to.)

A bunch of bases get a basecoat.

I didn’t like the final yellow of the test model, so I changed the rocks to red. I really like how this turned out – it’s a really strong contrast to the (currently) barely visible difference between the green and blue on the model itself. I tried to keep to the slate look for the top, but it was harder this time to get it to look slate, and not just like green rocks.

Here are some of the worst photos I’ve ever taken, of the current final product. The top photo is a little browner than the bases actually are, but the bottom photo is pretty representative. (I figured out how to make my phone-camera do white balance better…these were wicked orange at one point).

Unit of 10 horrors.

Herald of Tzeentch on the left and 3 flamers on the right.

Another unit of 10 horrors.

When I say something like “glazing watered” or “watered” for any of this, I mean that I took a small brush of that colour, mixed in 2 brushes of Acrylic Medium and then doused it with enough water that it ran around on my palette if I wasn’t careful. The idea is that when you put it on the model, there are spots of black, but that it’s mostly a darker transparent.

Red Rocks

The red rocks went something like this…

Scab Red all over the place, make those rocks red.
Watered Chaos Black, applied all over the place.
Watered Rhinox Brown, applied all over the place but in particular into the recesses.
Watered Charadon Granite. This was a good idea here, but a bad idea on the slate.
Watered Stegadon Scale, mixed with some Chaos Black along the bottom half of the rocks. This isn’t enough to make them green, but gives the bottom rocks a colour similarity to the top.

At this point, the rocks are pretty dark.

Less watered Scab Red to bring the highlights back in.
Watered Blazing Orange on top of the red.
Lamenters Yellow. I pulled this around a bit, trying to create lines of highlight.

The Lamenters dried shiny, I hate that. After I finished that, I did a really light and dusty drybrush of Codex Grey over it. Again, this is to try to create some similarity between the top slate and the bottom rocks. It also hid some of the shininess and lightened the red up a bit.

Slate

The slate started with Sotek Green and followed the same procedure as the test model. I think I may have just highlighted with Ushapti Bone though, which may be why these guys were more green and less grey…

You have to go over this with a lot of watered Black. A lot. Put the paint on the top and then pull it towards the middle. Because most of the liquid you just applied is transparent, you can see the black bits and pull them where you want them to go.
At one point I did a watered Charadon Granite, this was a really bad idea. Instead of the nice seafoam green, it became more Dark Angels Green, which was not at all the colour I wanted. Had to re-highlight with the Sotek+Ushapti. Don’t add anything resembling brown to this part of the model.
Just keep painting black.
I added some watered Codex Grey, but I just blacked over it again.

When I ran out of patience, I did a light dusting drybrush of the Codex Grey. I think this made a really awesome difference, but I’m slightly worried that all of my previous work has been hidden by it (really light dusting!)

Next Steps

Now I have some models to figure out. Also, Patrick will probably have some comments on the bases about something I should change. This Sunday is go time! We’re playing a ton of 500 point games, and we’ll be taking photos for the paint voting!

After that…we begin the next 500 points. 🙂

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