And lastly, a few closer photos of the board and the ships I brought to Armada Prime in Vancouver.
I showed some photos to a friend, and he suggested I add some vegetation to “break it up a little”, but the only plants I had kicking around the house were dust coloured…soo….no so much breaking it up.
I don’t know if it was clear, but the photographed fleet is the one I brought to the Prime (I wrote this before the event, but am scheduling it for after. This is weird.) It’s a bit of an off-meta fleet, but I think it has some parts that will catch people off-guard, and also has the ability to score a lot of points, and maybe not lose a lot of points. I saw yesterday. Or…will see yesterday.
I think if I end up bringing a variant of this fleet to another event, I’ll have to paint the Assault Frigate. Someone on the FFG forums claimed that it is the worst stock painted ship, and looking at it more, I might agree. (haven’t stared at a lot of Empire ships though).
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!
I don’t recall what possessed me to start this project. Maybe it was buying tickets to Adepticon this March, in Chicago. Maybe it was when Armada local James suggested a “fleets on parade” event at the Vancouver Prime Armada event on January 18th. Who can say what madness came over me, but it did and now I must fulfill the desires of my muse to the end.
Design
I started with a piece of paper. Actually, I started with an idea, but since that part was a flash out of no where, the paper is the first actual action I took. Having done this kind of thing before, I knew you had to plan out where things would sit on the board, otherwise you end up with squished models, rather than an aesthetic layout.
It’s also important to know how many models should go on the board. I cheated a bit, because really I should be planning this for The One Fleet to Beat Them All, but since I have more hobby skills than flying skills, I’m still testing fleet ideas. So I drew out spaces for 5 ships and 8 squadrons, which is enough for most fleets I’ll fly. The only time I’ve done more than 5 ships, I hated the fleet — the ships were entirely to squishy for my style of play.
I secured an ISD from Facebook (thanks Alex!), pulled a piece of hardboard from my hobby area, took some ships from my case and put them down roughly where I had planned out on the paper. This gave me an idea of how big the board should be, and by luck it was almost right, just needed a little trim off one side.
Unfortunately, I recently had a purge of hobby materials and wasn’t sure I would have enough foam. I took out every piece I had and laid it out – it wasn’t enough. I started cutting things in half and creating angles and put it all out on the board and felt like I could make it work combined with some other materials.
At the end of this, I had some foam and an ISD placed (no glue!) on a piece of wood.
Gluing
Seen here – a bunch of heavy objects sitting on foam and white glue. I left for Christmas holidays shortly after this, so didn’t get to work on it for a bit.
Filler and Rocks and Sand and Attachment Points
I made a display board a while back for my Blood Bowl Undead team that had specific places for models, but usually my boards have just been open spaces. Because Armada uses many stands to hold floating space ships, I needed a solution to put them on the board. (also, in one of the previous Adepticon board posts, I claim I bought the Model Lite from Magic Box, great to know!)
For the squadrons, I drilled holes into coloured wooden sticks probably used for kids crafts and glued them into the board. For the ships, I got plasticard thick enough for the ship bases that FFG uses and dug out space for the stand to attach onto them. It all works pretty good, which you’ll see in a bit!
I used a wonderful product called Model Lite. I don’t recall where I got it from, because it was in my hobby stuff. It’s so light that when you pick up the little jar, it actually feels lighter than a jar of air should feel. You know, like you picked up a helium tank? (no? haven’t done any kids parties recently?) I filled gaps that seemed wrong and gave some texture to some flat places.
On top of that, using the idea that you go from “biggest to smallest” with your features, I glued some small pebbles, then some larger pieces of corkboard to it.
The little holes on the edge of the board were not my idea, they were a serendipitous thought from my 2.5 year old. I’ve been building this upstairs, rather than in my usual hobby area because it’s out of the usual path of traffic. My kid went up there without me knowing, and took the bottle of super glue and punched a lot of holes into the foam. I was mostly stunned because I didn’t think she came up there, and also because super glue+toddler == probable hospital trip that I narrowly avoided, but, ultimately, I like the holes.
Edges and Corners
I was pretty sure I’d never finished the edges of a display board before, opting instead to paint the edges, but the photos above from Adepticon 2014 appear to say otherwise.
I took some thinner plasticard and cut it up into rough sections for my edges, then cut it out to fit better. In hindsight, I should have left it really rough and then glued, because it was much easier to cut to fit once it was fully attached to the board.
I didn’t have a plan for the corners when I did this, and I kind of wish I had. As I was doing it, I started thinking about photo frames or I dunno, like something in the hardware store. When I asked in CHOP! chat, Patrick suggested that diorama builders he’d seen used filler on the edges and sanded it down after. You can see my attempt at that above – I’m reasonably happy with it, but I think that if I’d planned to do this from the beginning it would have been much nicer. You can see that one edge was a little to short, and another I didn’t cut entirely straight. I’m certain it won’t be noticeable later.
Then I used the Model Lite and filled in the corners on top. The white glue holding the edges didn’t survive this, so I super glued the corners down!
So Much Sand
Coming down to it. I bought some “fine ballast” from Central Hobbies, and mixed it with white glue and water. I haven’t done this in ages, preferring the oxide paste from ages ago. This was cheaper and more accessible, so here we are.
It’s kind of a “slurry” texture, applied with a very large and very old brush. One day this brush is going to kick the bucket, and I’m going to have to write an old friend I haven’t spoken to for years that our old brush finally died. This project was not the end of it.
I initially was going for 100% sand coverage, but the more I did it the more I felt like the natural texture of some of the cut foam edges were worth saving. I went for 100%+ coverage on top, creating mounds, but went light on the slopes. I’m torn between thinking I’ve ruined it, and thinking it doesn’t look good in the slightest. >.<
As I’ve probably mentioned in previous posts, you want 100% glue coverage here. The foam melts when you try to prime it with aerosol primer (which I will), and a good white glue layer protects it all. Heavily watered down, of course.
Ships!
Lastly, I put some ships on it to make sure it all still worked! I’m glad I did, because the centerpiece slot was (1) no longer sized to fit the base and (2) had to much sand around it to allow entry. I had to clear some stuff away and re-glue.
I also lost one of my squadron holes in all the sand. 😛 I found it again!
Tomorrow night I start priming, and then I have to find my airbrush paint and sort out my airbrush and and then dry brushing sand textures! I’m not sure about the ISD either, honestly. It’s a very expensive model glued to a lot of garbage, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to do as good as the stock paint job. >.< Painting ships is hard!
I’m not 100% convinced this is a good idea. I mean…the default paint job is probably better than whatever garbage I’ll put on it? There it is, compared to the Braha’tok which is a really bad paint job.
But then…is the Braha’tok bad because I’m bad, or because I used to large a paint brush, or because I’m not used to painting space ships, or because the Braha’tok model doesn’t have a lot of crisp detail?
It has been well over a year since I last painted. It’s weird to have a thing that I spent so much time and effort trying to improve become a thing I never do. I’m thinking about trying to get out to Adepticon in 2020, and I remember being crazy excited about all the painting and modelling workshops and now I just…why?
Adepticon. Armada Worlds is there next year. I don’t have a ticket yet, and it’s invite only, but I’ve got 1-2 Primes I’m planning to attend to try to win a ticket, and the Last Chance Qualifier at Adepticon would be fun to play in even if I didn’t make it to the next day.
From there, I start thinking about what makes Adepticon amazing (there’s a lot), and one of the things is all of the crazy cool paint jobs and dioramas and models and such. That leads me to — maybe I should paint my ships?
My thought is that at least one Hammerhead Frigate will appear in almost any fleet I make, so why not try to paint that? I find this photo, which does not help because it’s the wrong scale ship. I find this thread, which does help because, wow.
AND THEN I decide to finally paint a Braha’tok Gunship I bought from Mel’s Miniatures last year, around this time of year, so I can do a test paint.
Here’s an awesome Twitter thread on the Braha’tok, which is a ship I’m sure you’ve never given any thought to it’s existence. It is a neat little ship, and one of the photos in that Twitter thread is the original ILM modellers assembling it very quickly out of a bunch of other model kits they had lying around. Go read the thread if you love modelling and love Star Wars!
I start by building a little table. I’ve really only ever painted Warhammer stuff, so not having a base that I can prime against is weird. It’s made of some wood I found in my bitz box, and has some corners inside it to keep the legs square.
I primed it white, and immediately panicked because it got all primer frosted. >.< Or maybe, it started frosted because the “Mmch” version of this model is pretty frosty already. (a photo of the same model, linked to from the store page) I wish I had bought the non-Mmch version, because photos of Mel’s other stuff look great. Or maybe the 3d printing needs some smoothing done by me? I don’t even know. Here’s a photo of the non-Mmch (I don’t even know what Mmch means) version, also linked to from the store page comments.
Then I started with Codex Grey + Ulthuan Grey (the first bottle of Codex I opened had completely dried up, luckily I had two [or more]). Then just Ulthuan, then White. I want a semi-Clone Wars Republic scheme because I love the orange and white, so painted Troll Slayer Orange and highlighted it up with white.
Then I found my bottle of Nuln Oil had been entirely used/dried up, so I bought a new one and also a Fuegan Orange because I figured the orange shade would be useful. Went in and did Nuln in the recesses and around the bottoms of the rounded shapes, and a bit of the Fuegan in the recesses of the orange pieces.
Crazy frosty, and the detail is really light. I’m not really happy with how it turned out, because of those things and because I don’t really have a lot of freehand skills I could have used to spruce up such a tiny model.
I’m not sure where to go from here, as this experiment is feeling likey a failure and I’m not sure I want to prime and mess up a pricey Hammerhead model. Any thoughts?
I feel like I’ve been feasting for days…I went away for a few days around Christmas and just got back, and am looking forward to putting some time into models and gaming!
I started this afternoon with my Deadzone Rebs starting crew. I’m going to need to assemble a lot more models, but this is a good place to start.
There’s been some comment made about the type of plastic/resin mix that Mantic uses. Even the game designer Jake Thornton commented on it at one point. I found my Dreadball models to be not bad to clean up. These Deadzone models…have been slightly bad.
Some of these models Mantic didn’t make it any easier, with some mold lines running over top of facial detail and some models with multiple axis’ of mold lines. I took a …knife…to the lines a few weeks ago to start working on them. When I was done, I was pretty sure that I’d left half of the material still on the model in the form of “pills” and it sucked.
I spent a chunk of time wandering around Walmart looking for wire brushes – recommended in that first link – to polish the models and remove these pilled up bits of material. I’ve had no luck, but today I was going to head to an actual hardware store to find what I was looking for. While looking over their online store I found…
Well, what I actually found was a picture of a Dremel bit that would do the job. Then I remembered that I owned a Dremel, and a small kit of bits, some of which I’d never figured out what they were for.
An hour later I had used that wild brush looking thing, and a round plastic disc brush on my models and I ended up pretty happy with them! Not really happy, since I’d rather have not had to worry about it at all, but happy enough. 🙂
Dreadball has a team of teleporting turtles. But the entire team is male, and they keep their females secret…until now.
I should have put a reference model next to Bertha, but she’s a head taller than a ymargletter, and twice as wide. (Only don’t talk about her size). It’s late, and I need to be asleep right now, but I had to assemble something from my giant box of Deadzone models before I was satisfied.
I spent this evening desperately trying to clip 50 sprues of Deadzone terrain so that it would all pack nicer and not give my girlfriend a little freakout when she gets home from her event this week. I watched Voyager, for gods sake, and they made peace with the main horrible enemy of the show! I think I’ll succeed…it all packs down into the original game box.
Question for my diligent readers: How should I do my rebels bases? I still have a bunch of that metal sheeting I was using for my Dark Eldar, but I haven’t settled on anything yet. What do you think I should do?
