Browsing Tag

display board

Armada Display board – some paint

Posted on January 17, 2020

After having finished building this guy last time, it was time to add paint. I talked with some friends, some of whom recommended maybe masking off the ISD and leaving the stock paint job, considering my last attempt at painting a space ship went very very poorly. I took the bull by the balls and primed it anyway, and prayed for deliverance.

I wanted to use my airbrush again, and wanted to wait for a solid block of time to do that (like a weekend, with less toddler-related interruptions over nap time). So I did brush painting on the ISD. It’s a fairly easy scheme:

Codex Grey base
Fortress Grey edging on all the panels, and a little drybrushing when the panels got to small.
Ulthuan Grey, same as Fortress.
Nuln Oil in the vertical parts and to start building some shadows.

And that’s it! I didn’t want to over do it, as it’s stuck in sand and painting the desert would add some more colours to it.

Next up, airbrushing.

I have a love-hate with my airbrush. I’ve always felt like I could do some cool things with it, but more often than not I’m trying and failing. I needed this to work, and I barely even know why!

I bought an obscene amount of GW airbrush paints, because the GW is half a block from my house, found some time that my wife wouldn’t be annoyed by the sound, and got busy. I started by using a mid-tone colour all over, then highlighted up and shaded down with paint, rather than washes/glazes/etc.

For the first time (maybe) I felt like the airbrush was working with me instead of against me! I’m super happy with how this stage went, and even had a couple moments where I felt like I was building a cool gradient on some of the hills by lightly dusting just a little bit, pulling the trigger back a little less in places and more in other places. You know, like I knew how to use the damn thing!

While doing this, as I mention above, I made sure to add some dust and dirt colouring to the ISD.

I wasn’t super happy with the ending highlight colour, I wish it was more yellow and less white, but it has it’s charm, and I think trying to fix it much at this point would have taken more time and effort and risk really messing it up!

Airbrushing done, I started going in with a brush in places. I did a bunch of washes to deepen some shadows with a Fuegan Orange and Drakenhof Nightshade. I painted the edges of the board to make it classy.

In the middle of all this, I took part in two other hobbies I picked up since Christmas. My in-laws got me a beer making kit, so I bottled some “Canadian Blonde” that had been fermenting since I got back. And my in-laws got my wife a bread maker, which is really a gift for me, and I made a honey nut loaf which is fucking fantastic.

At this point on the board, it’s about letting your eyes glaze over a bit, and “feeling” where paint needs to go. The board is done, but when you go all magic-eye on it, you can see places where it makes less sense, or the shading isn’t good or correct (or you forgot).

This is about when I put some ships and squadrons on it again to take a couple more photos of some space ships flying above a wreck!

Next post will be some close-ups of places, and I’m hoping the one after that will be a Prime tournament report which has me winning a ticket to Armada Worlds!

Featured Images

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…

Work-in-progress

Blood Bowl – Display Board

Posted on September 25, 2016

I got a little drunk — enough to think that starting the next step of this project would be a good idea, but not so much that I couldn’t actually do it. The project has been staring at me, haunting me, since my last post, because the next thing I needed to do was going to be very hard.

I decided, after consulting with my gaming club, to use FixIt Sculpt. I would use a board to press pieces of putty into the Basius, then slide the piece off the board and onto my display board. Because I only had a small section of texture to work with, this would require quite a bit of sculpting to mend the edges of each piece of putty.

I started…

I started just by just placing the putty, then cutting away where I needed bases and terrain pieces to go.

After a while, I realized this wasn’t the best plan and started using the bases to cut into the putty. I’d apply it to the board, then press the base/terrain in where I’d drawn the circle and pull away the cut putty. This gave much nicer circles than cutting by hand!

The above two photos are the process. Use that tool to slide the putty off the board and onto my display board.

It took me 3 sessions to get to this point. I realized at the end of the second session that I’d totally messed up the count. >.< No idea why I thought 12 was the right number!! So I’m going to cut up a second board to nestle in behind the first, and cut only 4 spaces in it.

If you look carefully, you’ll see a new addition to my team on the left…

Painting this thing is going to be relatively easy. The bases are just Dark Flesh, Mephiston Red and then a bunch of Sepia to shade. I had originally planned on putting some simple green flock in places, to mimic the CHOP! boards we have, but never got around to it. With this project, I think I’ll get that flock on the bases as well as on the board, to help bring some other colours to it.

Between my conversions, paint job and this board, I can’t help but to steal best painted for this season!

Work-in-progress

Blood Bowl – Display Tray

Posted on August 17, 2016

My goal is to win best army, away from Clayton, this Blood Bowl season. To that end, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into the models, making fluffy conversions and now building a display tray!

I have MDF lying around my house for just such occasions. I started by picking a piece of an appropriate size and lying out the items I want to put on it in a pleasing manner.

It didn’t start in this configuration. I took a photo at one point, and looking at the different view helped a lot in being able to figure out which pieces were too close to each other, and which pieces weren’t framed right. Part of this process is placing those taller pieces in a way such that they aren’t unbalanced visually.

I drew out the outlines of the pieces so I could keep the layout organized while I worked and then I took my trusty wireless Dremel, cut out the edges and then used two types of sanding bits to sand down the edges.

I have a couple thoughts about what to do from here, some of them easier than others.

I’ve previously used the Vallejo texture paint to paint in the non-model places. This is relatively easy.
My existing bases for these models were pressed with SculptIt and Basius pads. (which, it turns out, I didn’t specifically write about). I could try to do something similar, but I don’t know how I would do it. The pad isn’t entirely that one texture, so I’d have to do it in stages, letting it dry after each stage. Then I’d have to sculpt the edges of each stage, and there is a risk that it might look “copy pasted”. Which it kind of would be. 😛 I’d also have to very carefully prepare the places for the models, cutting then sculpting those edges as well.
I could do something a little easier (maybe) and use the Basius to press larger independent sections, then cutting and placing on the base. SculptIt is very hard to cut once it has dried, so while this would be easier to make the texture pieces, it would be harder to cut up. Then I just now thought maybe I could use Sculpy. It dries softer. But it would be more work keeping the texture in place while I peeled the Sculpy off since you have to bake the Sculpy. Maybe you can bake the Basius? Something to look into.

Featured Images

Blood Bowl – Lizardmen Display Board

Posted on September 19, 2015

Last time I wrote about how I intend to win the best painted award in my Blood Bowl league. This is my clincher, if the terrific paint jobs on the rest of the team don’t work enough.

I had an idea that I’d taken from reading an old post of mine from Adepticon 3 years ago. This guy had made a display board for his team from mouse pad material. But how to get a logo to put on it?

Enter Fiverr, a marketplace where you can buy anything for “$5”. I looked around and found a guy who would do sports mascot design. I paid him $5USD (like $7.50CAD…) to do a line drawing for me. If I liked it, I’d upgrade. I sent him a link to my team photos from years ago as inspiration. He wrote back a couple days later with this.

I liked it, although obviously he could use a tail and a left leg. I contacted him to upgrade my logo – this service cost much more than $5 to do, but given that I knew it was going to be quality work I didn’t mind paying. After some revisions on the line drawing, he came back a few days later with this.

Pretty damn good! But I wanted brighter, poppier and more colourful! It’s something I’ve always worked into my paint schemes from the very beginning of my painting journey with my night goblins — bright colours bring people over to look at them. We had a couple more revisions back and forth, until we got to this drawing.

Not exactly what I’d imagined when I saw his example art. But just because it wasn’t what I would have drawn, doesn’t mean it isn’t great work!

Then the easy part — I paid the gentleman, made a 1900×1600 version of it and sent it off to London Drugs online to be printed on a mousepad. I’m ridiculously happy with the end result!

(I forgot to put the newly finished apothecary into this photo…he was still drying on my desk as I was taking photos!)

I’m going to destroy this painting competition! 😀 😀 😀

P.S. When I had initially contacted rafatha, he was actually the second person I’d asked about doing it. The first person I did an order for $7.50CAD, and then noticed their order queue was ~40 orders and they were going on vacation in September! I’m glad I found rafatha, since his work was much more in line with what I actually wanted done!

At the same time, I should point out the work of this other person, because it’s damn good! This was one actually just $7.50CAD, rather than requiring an upgrade to the base order. This logo may find it’s way into my team literature somewhere, because it’s pretty amazing!

Tournaments

AdeptiCon 2014 – Team Strawberry Flavoured Awesome

Posted on April 13, 2014

Just some photos of the display board we’ve been working on, and the armies that sit on it. I’m playing Daemons of Chaos, and Patrick is playing Warriors of Chaos (after flipping 2-3 times :P)

CHOP!

The whole damn thing. The paper is our fluff, which Patrick wrote. We moved it in later setups so it wasn’t blocking the castle.

Much better. I designed and printed a bunch of business cards. I wanted to promote my blog, and thought Patrick might want to promote Chumphammer at the same time. Everyone wins!

CHOP!

Marauder horsemen. Creepy, creepy Marauder horsemen.

My handsome Plaguebearer unit.

An awesome conversion Patrick was working on for his Dark Elves, but she got ported to this army as a Sorcerer Lord. So cool looking!

Work-in-progress

AdeptiCon display board – Packaging!

Posted on April 2, 2014

This is just as much hobby as the rest of this stuff…Patrick came over Monday and we worked to fit our board into a board that would meet the Alaska Airlines Checked Baggage Requirements (less than 62 linear inches…).

He brought over a bicycle box and cut the shit out of it!

Wrapped the board itself in bubble wrap. We decided that the crystal labyrinth and castle (which is now finished!!) belonged in a separate piece of luggage, since they were still to tall and breakable.

After Patrick hobbied the crap out of the box.

Here’s hoping it makes it!

Work-in-progress

AdeptiCon Display Board – Backdrop

Posted on April 2, 2014

Two posts today, and one tomorrow, and the AdeptiCon coverage will continue in an incredibly rapid pace once I get back. (I have 3-4 posts backlogged already for AdeptiCon).

We cut a backdrop for the display board. The theory still being that taller is better and that a solid piece of something in the back would draw more attention. (And damn, does it look good!) I don’t have any photos of the completed piece, but I will definitely do so once our armies are set up on Friday!

I pulled the airbrush out again, figuring that it would have gotten over our dispute from the other day. I started with an Ice Blue, and mixed up a bunch of layers with Kantor Blue and Altdorf Guard Blue.

The airbrush worked out perfectly! gaaaaaah! It painted a nice, solid blue line where I wanted it to.

More blue, and I added some Mephiston Red at some point to head into purple.

I took a photo of my PSI at one point. I spent most of the time painting at this pressure, and it gave a nice solid line. I put it down to 30 at one point, and put a less solid line of the red around.

The final piece! It looks great on the display board! You’ll also notice some spots at the “top”, these are magnets which attach to the back of the board. We did this so that we didn’t have to transport a 15″ tall thing, and could instead pull everything off and transport the tall pieces separately.

Featured Images

AdeptiCon Display Board – Final?

Posted on April 1, 2014

I finished off the display board tonight. Patrick has been working on his castle thing, and is taking on a few other things for the team, so I volunteered to drybrush the hell out of this thing. I’m super happy with the results!

I couldn’t even tell you what I did here. It’s a bunch of different mixes of Stegadon Scale, Charadon Granite, Rhinox Hide, Zamesi Desert, Ushapti Bone, Dheneb Stone, Seraphim Sepia. Literally, I put the paint on my palette and then mixed the next colour in with whatever I had there already.

Something I made sure to do – if I used a colour as a primary on one side, I used it as a light layer on the other side. In this way, I’m hoping to tie the two sides together even though they are wildly different.

I also cut out some black plasticard in the shape of the sides of the board and glued them to the edges, to give each edge a more smooth look and feel. I used the Oxid Paste to fill the gap between the card and the board, but if I was going to do it again I’d have made sure to fill all of the gaps with hot glue and then textured over the glue.

The only reason there is a question mark in the title, is because we’re talking about adding some colour to the black backdrop. We’ll see if I manage to find time for that – it requires bringing the airbrush out again. >.<

Work-in-progress

AdeptiCon Display Board – Paint!

Posted on March 26, 2014

I put some newspaper down, put on the Game of Thrones commentary and started painting.

Just some broad strokes to start.

And when that dried, I did a ton of drybrushing.

And then even more drybrushing.

There’s still sections that need another highlight, and we’re going to wash down the cobblestone to give it more contrast, (and the pencils need just plain painting), but it’s definitely coming along!

Older Posts