...and it almost was a year since I last posted. Starting a new job (I'm nowadays graphic designer/art director over at Net Entertainment), learning the new job, travelling to China and just trying to cope with everyday life left no time over for hobby stuff.
Boomo's new fascination with Warmahordes did transfer over to me though. After what felt like a lifetime Wayland actually managed to deliver my order of Trollbloods (Seriously, what's up with the delivery times nowadays?). A healthy bunch of metal.
So today, for the first time in three months, I actually found time to sit down and do some painting. I sure feel rusty, but it was nice to see that I hadn't forgotten everything about how to handle a brush.
For you list-geeks this is what I doodle together. I guess its going to be a Penny Arcade-moment once I bring it to play someone. But... meh... I like the models.
Madrak Ironhide, World Ender 5 Dire Troll Mauler 9 Horthol, Long Rider Champion 5 Krielstone Bearer and Stone Scribes (Leader and 3) 3 Trollkin Champions (Leader and 4) 10 Trollkin Champion Hero 3
25/25
Perhaps a little short on beasts, I guess I could get myself an impaler or something instead of the Long Rider-dude. We'll see about that when I'm done with the painting and can field them. Hopefully that wont be too far away.
First! ...let's get these fucking dust bunnies and spiderwebs out of here, shoo! shoo! *coughcough*
There...
Giving grief to all shooting armies since 2010
Been down with the sickness (oh-wah-ah-ah), another cold and sinusitis as a nice followup to my summer flu, and I prioritized lying on the couch, rubbing my belly, eating candy, and coughing my lungs out.
In other words: Sorry for another break in the flow of posts.
I have played my first few games of Warmahordes with my Gatormen, and so far I really like it, while I'm still learning, I feel that the game has sunk its big claws into me.
The good thing about playing is that it makes me really want to paint them too!
"I swear, this wide!"
Got my 15pts list built and primed, using black with white dusting to create a good contrast (alligators having pale bellies, making a zenithal basecoat kinda tricky to pull off.)
Oh, and my list is:
Bloody Barnabas
Bull Snapper
Gatormen Posse (full)
Blackhide Wrastler
15pts
Now that the party is jumping
With the bass kicked in and the vegas are pumpin'
Quick to the point to the point no faking
I'm cooking MC's like a pound of bacon ~ Warrior Poet V. Ice
Got it kinda done till tomorrow, it's past one and I go to work in 5 hours... I didn't have time for final touches but hopefully it will please the crowd at the contest...
"I'm broke; I know a walking corpse that spit icicle dagger to slit throat quicker than you can prove there's four letters in hope (h...o...p...e) I paint a portrait of myself, bored life inside the tortoise shell tortured, orbiting Hell's orchid, intrigued but not compelled"
The deadline for the contest draws near, and I only have a few hours available to finish it. She won't be pretty but I think it will be alright. It's surprisingly hard to paint with fever shakes though, can't shake this summer cold when I can't afford to stay home from work. [Nooo whining! -ed.]
"With a bisquit on the side like fucking tomb stone"
I think I will have to go heavier on the verdigris, otherwise it's turning out quite as planned, not entirely at home with the chipping technique yet, will try another on the arms.
To do : Raw iron/steel surfaces, details, weathering and basing.
I bought some 1mm balsa wood for plank decking on the base, will do a step by step on that at a later date, 'promise!
The other thing I wanted to bring up was the sad lack of updates lately. We are not going away, nor are we on hiatus. Both me and Pixel have just started new jobs, with all that entails. PX40k will be increasing both quality and output when things have stabilized and all spare time isn't taken up by coma like sleep or teething babies. I can say that there is good stuff going on behind the scenes though, but I don't want to jinx anything yet!
I bought a Warjack for a local painting contest, so I thought I would just drop a pic of how I'm doing.
"Guiseppe no sell-a tha cabbage"
I have not decided weather to do the non-green parts bronze or not. It feels odd to pick up the brush after so many months, but eh, why not. My gators arrived a few days ago, a couple of boxes of gatormen, a wrastler, snapper and Barnabas. I bought some tokens and the book aswell, but I dont feel like I will have much use for them, with the stats and rules being on the card and all :)
I feel kinda dirty, but in a good way! I still don't love the overall aesthetics, the very cartoony stuff is kinda hard to swallow when you're used to the GrimDark. That said, I really love the open attitude Privateer Press shows and they know that the customer and the thusly the community is king, instead of the quite puzzling attitude we have been getting from GW the last... 20 years?
I have only played one game thus far, but I like what I'm seeing. The Warmachine scene in my area exploded recently when the local game store decided to expand their stock with non-GW miniature stuff. Apparently my town had a whole bunch of closet warmahordes people, and now both my club and the FLGS is packed with disney monsters and hydrocephalic robots.
I feel good things coming from this step, If you asked me a year ago if I would start to play this, I would have given you a whole hearted "Fuck No!" I guess I was wrong. Now if PP-Eu's distribution people would come back from vacation so I could get me my gators, I would be grateful...
So, the Slight Breeze of Magic is upon us, well, upon the poor squarebasers at least. I haven't heard much about the rules except "more magic? lol", and frankly I couldn't care less about that. What I do take interest in is the new direction GW is taking with the four new plastic sorcerers. I kinda goes completely against their usual MO of only making this kind of specialized figures in metal (and now in finecast). The models come in the new clamshell blisters, similar to the finecast ones.
The first thing that struck me when holding the box, is how cheap it feels. I bought it at MSRP, which is not that much I guess, but it is just a tiny plastic sprue in a flimsy box with a shitty paper insert.I guess that's not really important though, the model is. I just can't shake how stupid I felt for buying a quarter of a troop sprue for that much money.
"HAY GUISE?!"
It is pretty much a snap-fit model, zero options, one pose, and the feet are completed by adding the base, ie, the toes are cast into the base. GW made a very good mould for this, as expected, almost no visible mould lines and the injection points are well placed as to not ruin the model. The model is quite plain though, very little detail, and just from looking at the sprues, the other three sorcerers where pretty much the same. I get the same feeling as with the Wargames Factory Troopers, just too plain to live up to the standard GW usually keeps with their plastics. I must say I really like this take on Tzeentch though, the face, the birdy pose. Very chaosy and evil and not as cartoony as they have been lately.
"Cut my life into pieces, this is my last reso-*shotgun mouthwash*"
If I played Fantasy I would probably pick one of these up, the model as a whole is nice enough, and if I needed only one I could accept it only having the one pose. While it isn't a big issue, the moulded base with the birdman's toes is quite pointless.
It remains to see if these four sorcerers where an anomaly, or if we will see more of these simplified character models in plastic. If they could add more detail, this could be a cool way to release named characters in the future, especially if they keep up adding this many characters to the new codices
I wonder if Spain takes the prize from France this year for "Most awesomely painted stuff". There's a lot of minis from GD11 Spain that's just jawdroppingly stunning. I especially liked the diorama of Sigmar on his throne. Or no... I take that back... I can't decide which one I liked best.
Click for flickr. See if you can spot all the dust on my sensor.
So, here he is. The Emperors Champion! I wouldn't say I've spent enough time on him. But really... there is just a time when all your patience is spent and you just want to do something entirely different. Like getting wasted on alcohol instead of acrylics...
The mushroom thing that's been going on? The word champion is quite close to the swedish word for mushroom, champinjon. So it's been the standing "joke". Not that it was especially funny, apart from finding new words for all the post headlines.
First time I've tried out working with non metallic metallics. I can't say I'm especially fond of it. It looks good from one certain angle. The illusion is really there. And then you move your head and it looks kinda weird. Almost like when you take off your glasses while watching a 3D-movie.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The model in itself is awesome, and there are no dead spaces you need to "hide" or anything like that. It's just "paint". The exercise in painting black was especially fun, if you find frustrating to be fun.
Originally I had a pretty blueish black, so when highlighting that I added more blue. The problem was that the blue I chose was pretty cold, so when the final highlights came on it looked really really off since the cold hue made the illusion that it was further back.
Color theory 101
The warmer highlight kinda pops out more than the blue (cooler) highlight. Even though the cool tone is lighter than the warm one the illusion of it being lighter is kinda diminished. Something I – with I don't know how many hours of color theory classes – really should've thought of. But when the urge to paint grabs you, you just go with the flow!
I'm gonna hit it with some matt varnish later today (especially on the base). So if you spot anything you think I should correct, now is the time to do it. I'll go and submit it tomorrow!
Battlefoam (Makers of the only bags worth having, you can quote me on that) is auctioning out a 432 that's been all over the current warzones. Protecting minis and our freedom! (Now I'm gonna lose half of our readers...) And signed by a bunch of people from all around.
First I must point out that this auction is for the bag listed and all proceeds go to Jared Allen's Homes for Wounded Warriors charity. Jared's charity is a non-profit organization created for the sole purpose of raising money to build or modify the homes of America's injured Military Veterans. H4WW helps to build or modify homes so they are handicap accessible and comfortable for our wounded vets.
The sum the bag goes for will also be added to the donation to the Jared Allen foundation. Double-bonus! Now if you cannot bid on it (I wish I could, but... ) spread the word. It's for a really good cause. And if you can bid. Bid!
I've finally decided to stop painting on it and consider it done. Let's hope the GW-Stockholm crowd likes it as much (I wanna win, whatever it is you win. Perhaps a finecast bubble or something... ). Although I've sneak peeked on some other submissions and well... I'm in for a stiff competition.
During the week I got some of the stuff I ordered from Heresy Miniatures. They're having a sale now, so I couldn't resist getting a Thrud (fond memories of old White Dwarfs when the ran the Thrud comics) and Boris Mk. 2. So I've gone from looking at "Paint it black"-tutorials to "Paint skin"-tutorials on YouTube...
I'm getting to the end of mushrooms to use in the headline. Thankfully I'm at the end of the Emperors Champion as well. Yesterday was a frantic base-painting & -building session. Pigments, oils, weird solvents, and it all ended up with me doing some old school drybrushing and washing. It's just so damn hard to get proper contrast with pigments alone. No matter that it's more "realistic".
The Vallejo washes acted up as well, leaving weird residue when dry. So they're now officially on my shit-list. I've added plain distilled water to them instead of the regular gunk I use (Liquitex Flow Aid + 95% distilled water) when thinning. No difference. I've even gone so far as to add two agitator balls to the bottles just to make sure that they're mixed properly. No luck. Back to home made ones and GW-washes.
So anyhow, the champion... Still some stuff I have to fix. The buckle on the front is on top of the prio-list now. The blending is just not as smooth and it got kinda grainy >_< Tomorrow perhaps, I'm all exhausted after re-painting the sword like a 100 times.
The pipes are gonna get some green gunk flowing out of them. I'm slowly slowly building up the "flow" with water effects. It wont cure faster with the use of a hair dryer... bummer.
Once upon a time I bought the Kromlech Feldkanone 48 from the Kromlech Ork War II range. Yesterday I got some really weird itch and felt like painting the kannon. Only God knows how many months later... (you do the math)
The rust stains was made by first spraying the entire kannon in some rust-ish colours and then applying some Vallejo Liquid Mask. After that I did a pretty regular paintjob. The kannon itself got some sort of russian-green and details were painted by hand.
The good thing with this, compared to hairspray, is that you can actually hand-brush stuff without activating the hair spray layer. The bad thing is that the liquid mask (it's more or less liquid latex, same stuff you use for make up) is pretty hard to remove without damaging the layer underneath. Use caution.
Tried out some different techniques on the grots as well. I wanted them to look more like Paul Bonners grots. So they got rosy cheeks and noses. I kinda like it, they look cute with that pink on them! Next up is grots with lipstick!!!
Hopefully I'm in Orkebro playing Dvaergakungens Fæeste by the time you're reading this. Expect a full on, two-way, DV/DA, review during the week.
I made like 40 track links yesterday. Then I realized it actually was holiday and spent the reminder of the evening drinking beer, high on glue (seriously, what is in that Testors Model Master?) and browsing Dakka Dakka.
Today I awoke, fresh and with a mission to finalize the paintjob on my Emperors Champion. At least to the degree that I can attach him to the still drying base. Before adding weathering and touchups. It doesn't come out too well in the photos but there is a dark / light side to him. The left is visibly much brighter. But I guess I will have to add to it even further in order to really make it stand out. All that when basing is done. For now I'm pretty much done with this one.
Tomorrow will be fun. Back in Orkebro for some test playing of the Dwarf Kings Hold. Boomos baby-son is gonna be the "Counts As" Dwarf King! I'll be myself... counts as undead that is...
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to glue two tiny little teeth to the track links. You will need sixty-six tracklinks. For one side of the tank!
I hate indy-links!!! :)
Actually I was supposed to paint the Emperors Psilocybin, but the not-so-friendly modelling shop had just gotten a VK1602-kit when I happened to pass by. So now I'm stuck with modelling-/painting-ADD. I guess it will be in the cupboard soon. With the Pz IV, and the Warhound and the droppods and the orks and the renegade guard and the everything else...
Oh, and do not forget to clean the teeth before gluing them on the track links. Of course you will need to clean the track links as well. And fill with putty since they have punch marks on them... -.-
Blurry photos, but meh... Tried out NMM but I'm not totally sold on it. On some parts it looks pretty good, but figuring out where all the indirect / specular highlights would appear is kinda giving me a headache.
Redid, or refined, the blending on the tabard thingie today as well. The line on the bottom looks kinda "alone". So it'll probably get some sort of decoration like the crusade crosses or something.
Oh, and the new 40K Radio episode is out, and they really make fun of all the hilariousness in this thread over on Dakka. I LOL'd...
EDIT
Redid the "buckle" to look more polished. I kinda want to put a cross on there... or some sort of symbol. The aquila perhaps?
And I guess it's time to change the name of the blog... With Boomo posting a lot (way more than Lifter does... do you hear me Lifter?) it's not PX & 40K anymore. And to be honest, it's not "all 40K all the time" anymore either... Perhaps I should do some naming-contest thingie since I'm not at all good with coming up with names?
Anyhow... the iPad (no worries, this will be kinda 40K-connected soon) is awesome for watching movies while painting. I had to re-arrange my workspace a little with all the Reaper paints I got. So now I cannot see the telly while painting. iPad to the rescue!
It's not like I watch it a lot though. I mean... I'm actually trying to paint stuff! But it's nice. And I can stream stuff from the computer. Which means that I don't have to watch the home shopping channel.
Emperors champion, WIP.
And now for the 40K stuff... It's the Emperors Mushroom! The GW-store in Stockholm has this Finecast painting comp and I thought I could paint it up for that one. Dunno how well it's going to turn out though. I'm trying to use directional lightning coming from the sword / left. Which means that the sword in itself later on will be -really-bright-. Hopefully it all will come together later on. If not, it's been a mini full with new experiences.
In closing, I'd like to point you to this article on Dakka about photographing stuff, and getting good results from using a crappy camera like the iPhone 3GS. Now I use a Nikon D700 with specialized macro lense and gak. Spent $6000 and I still take photos like I was blind or something. It's not the equipment, it's what you do with it! :)
I got me my first Mantic product from Wayland today (yay free shipping week!). I liked the thought of something casual and very different from my usual stuff. I usually loathe the classic fantasy setting, but eh, for £31 I might as well give it a try.
The rather flimsy box comes with Dwarves in regular grey plastic, and skeletons appropriately comes in white plastic. The figures seem to be from the regular Kings of War kit, just white instead. I must say that the sprues look very nice, lots of small extra bitz (yes, the dog is awesome), though I would hesitate to get an entire army of these, they are "quick fit" and thusly quite monopose.
The tiles and markers is made of quite thin cardboard, though the backside is slightly reinforced with a plastic coating. Nice color print, but I already see a tendency for the cardboard to fray. I had hoped for the cardboard parts to be embossed, but again, for the price, very high value.
I haven't tried to play yet, but I can say that the rulebook is black and white print on stapled shiny paper, nothing fancy, but it does the job. I wish they would release the rules as a PDF like they did for Kings of War, having it on a smartphone or similar is nice, and if they are somehow destroyed you could just print a new copy.
Rawr
No fancy unboxing pictures to show, there's quite a few of them around the web if you are interested. I will do a Part 2 of this when Pixel and I have played a few games, our upcoming Board Game series will feature this and other games from the more casual side of things.
So I finally finished it! Didn't really think I would. I kinda started to build the kit because I didn't want to paint some orks. In the middle of painting the basecoats I kinda realized I had no plan at all of how I wanted it painted. Usually when painting 40K stuff you've already seen a bunch of different paintjobs, or at least the 'Eavy Metal paintjob of it. With this one... I've just seen the box art and the premium edition figure.
So when the real painting started I was kinda without a plan or set goal. Which is fun in a way, but also kinda frustrating. What colour should I use for the lenses? (I went for a very 40K-ish style) Should the viewing slit be more like a prism or is it a viewing slit? Etc etc... A day ago I was ready to give up and put it in the cupboard together with the warhound and some other projects I've never really finished.
After a cup of coffee I pulled through though. I let the model rest for a while and went crazy with oil colours on the base instead. Oil colours is one of those weird kind of colours, so forgiving and yet so unforgiving. And you can do some pretty crazy blends with it. Nothing that shows in the pictures, and I really didn't do anything really amazing. The metal I-beams go from "steel black" to rusty in a very pleasing way.
Click the picture to go to flickr and see it in higher resolution. See if you can spot all the "meh I just dont want to blend that oil-wash" mistakes I did. :) Oil washes are nice, but they sure ain't wash-and-forget...
I've started to add the chipping to the Dust Tactics JagdLuther. At first I was going to do the plain old sponging technique, but in a stroke of genious I decided to skip that and do it the Mig Jemenez way!
For those who haven't seen his DVDs. It's basically painting lighter dots of the base coat in a stokastic/random pattern and then adding the primer colour inside them. German WWII primer was some reddish-brown. And unfortunately for me I just gave away all my Vallejo paints to Boomo, so I had to concoct a mix from Reapers Bloodstain Red and Brown Liner.
Not nearly half done with the left side, or the cannons. But I really have to do some chores, like cleaning my studio...
JagdLuther chipping. Or at least 15% of the planned chipping.
And here's a blast from the past I haven't posted.
Achtung! Panzer! Lazer!
I've always wanted to get into the military scale modelling. Or at least understand it. Can't say I really do. Colours are so limited, and the debates on what shade of Feldgrau is the correct one makes my head hurt.
The 1:72 scale models are pretty nice starters though. This kit took about 2hrs to build, and 2-3 hours to paint. (Not counting the time to wait for oil washes to dry). And the best thing, it's cheap. It's not like you don't dare mess it up with inexpensive kits like these.
Ah well, now I'm off to the bathroom to make sure the tiles on the wall are shiny enough for me to invite my parents here... wish me luck! Hopefully you have something more intersting to do. :)
Das Schwer Panzer KampfLaüfer IV-A "Jagd Luther". Ja! Alles gut!
Quick WIP-post. I was (of course) supposed to paint up even more ork boyz now that I managed to have all my Ultramarines tactical squads painted. But I also had this box from Hong Kong with a Jagd-Luther and a Günther waiting to be opened… So paint the same old same old or build a new kit? Kinda obvious what I choose?!
The 1:48 kit is a mixed media kit with some plastic parts (on a sprue) and a bunch of resin parts (in a ziploc). Something I didn't notice until I started wondering why some parts never fused. Use superglue! :D
Apart from some of the resin parts not completely being flush everything fit well together. No Finecast-bubbles anywhere to be seen. Definitely no Forgeworld-ish mould parts either. Barrels were a bit crooked, but since they're resin a quick session under hot tap water solved that.
The legs are fully articulated with the pistons able to move up and down. Which is nice since even though I wont have it posed as it is in the picture I can move the legs and knees to get paint everywhere I want. The downside is that until you've fixed the legs with glue, it has a tendency to fall over due to the resin making it a bit front heavy.
The idea is to keep the paintjob very much like it is. Fresh out of the factory WWII German Gray. No fancy camouflage or anything. Just a ton of mud and stuff the further down you get on the model. Mostly I just use this to get a feeling for how to model/paint the much larger 1:35 Gunther. Which came with a really cheesy comic book, more on that in a later post.
Right now I've just finished the first layer of oil-wash together with some chipping you hardly can see. The barrels will be painted in a more steel like gray once the oil washes have dried properly. Perhaps I'll paint one of the knee pads in primer-red to show some hasty field repair.
I'll try to keep the rust stains to a minimum this time. Even though it's so easy (and satisfying) to go craaazy when you use pigments. :)
I recently visited the excellent gaming store Fantasia while on a family trip to Umeå. They had a wide selection of games and miniatures, mostly GW products as would be expected but also quite a few of the independent makers of resin and white metal figures, Maxmini, MAS and the like. thumbs up for that! I bought a MAS resin tracked servitor thingy which I gave away and a MaxMini Plague Beast for myself.
"Taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in hell!"
I am kinda dissappointed with it actually. It is quite odd to see such quality of sculpting combined with such terrible posing, something that is quite difficult to see when just looking at the blister. The legs are posed in a way that makes it look like it's floating or balancing on it's tippy toes. The built in bases under the feet are not parallel to the ground, but bent inwards, forcing you to either convert the miniature, "hot bend" the feet or make som kind of custom base to fit the crooked miniature. This is not really obvious while looking at their websites pictures, but it is evident in the preview pictures that was released. I don't know if their master looks like this or if their mold is warped, but I see people around the forums having the same problem.
"WHAT'S IN THE BOOOX?"
On the upside, the parts fit together really well, with almost invisible seams, and the only miscasting was on the strap on the beast's chest, which I could ignore or easily fix with 401 or greenstuff. The details on the skin and face are very crisp, and if you are the converting sort you could easily just buy it for the torso, making your own Varghulf, Chaos Spawn or Daemon, Karanak or similar if you will.
Bubble on the center strap, wouldn't really show when assembled
I will try to bend the legs somewhat to repose and make the feet even before I assemble it, if not, I will probably cut it up for some future project.
Hopefully there will be more frequent updates from now on, me, and Pixel as well to some degree, have had some hobby burnout lately, with this whole GW Leadership fuckup-deal adding to that. Part of me want to boycott them, but I love the IP too much to really quit. I will not be doing the Nid-army that I had planned though, instead I'll save that money for when CSM get their new release in a few years. Fuck it, I have enough unpainted and unbuilt stuff for my army to tide me over.
I guess I've tried to write about ten different posts regarding the recent news from Games Workshop. Miniwargaming kinda nailed it, much better than I could ever do.
Trying to get together some sort of Finecast-review though. I got myself a Emperors Champion and Ghazkull on the day of release. (I was even queuing at the store... ) Everything was OK apart from one of the Ghazzie-sprues. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to go by the GW-store to replace it, and that's why it's taking some time. I want to test their replacement policy.
Tomorrow it's time for some 40K in Orkebro with Boomo, a battle report will be made. Hopefully... :)
Being a nerd nowadays is surely the new mainstream. Is there anyone that's a "regular jock" nowadays? If it's not that they play pretend-LOTR during weekends they obsess over fixed gear bikes or analyze the football scores. In a real nerdy way.
So I saw this over at Total Fan Girl and kinda fell in love. Mostly because it was -ages- since I played a proper hack-n-slash dungeon crawl. Or any roleplaying game at all tbh.
Vampire kinda stole the crown of my gaming group when I was into RPGs. With it's more theatrical way of roleplaying (some might say it was finally roleplaying and not rolling dice and looking at tables). After that came the (european style) LARP-ing and one thing led to another and suddenly re-enacting was what I did. And all I wanted to be was in that forgotten land, hacking stuff in the head with my broadsword (1D8+1) and getting the loot and a bunch of XP in the end.
Will it go full circle? Just after I stopped playing RPGs for real I went into table top games. Will I, in a few years be a neckbearded dungeonmaster again? (Not that I had any sort of resemblance to bear when I was fifteen-ish)
So, to recap to the "everyone's a nerd" thing I started with.
I studied advertising school during 2008-2010. Some might say "The leading advertising school in Sweden". Hard to get in, hard to finish. There was a ton of A-type personalities there. And sometimes pretty hostile in a very intellectual way. Pretty high percentage of hipster/jocks there.
So one day, I walked into the school studio (where we did all our projects) with a newly bought AOBR-set, a battleboard and god knows what else I bought that day. The GW store was then just a couple of blocks from school.
And not -one- -single- -person- said something disparaging about the "toy soldiers" I bought. Some asked, and I told them the basic premises and they lightened up and said "My brother did that when he was young. How cool that it's still alive." or "Yeah, I had a Tau-army back in the days!".
Some dudes, with a little less points on their geek-card, asked if it was kinda like World of Warcraft, but in space, and with plastic dudes. And I told them the differences, the history et al. While realizing that these people are ALSO nerds since they immediately jumped to the WoW-connection. Some of them were level 80 wizards already. With robes.
So tell me, do you know anyone, in your age span. Say from 20-40 who has not played some sort of "adventure game" (I clump every dungeoncrawl -> D&D game into that phrase). Do not play "computer games" and talk about it not-hushed tones? Or hasn't gotten any form of nerd-cred? It might be just a simple thing as knowing/nurturing an interest that's work related. One girl I know, she collects viruses. (She's a virologist, so she's excused from the label "Weirdo!")
I think you will find it hard to find anyone around you that's not a nerd in some way. Hell, even a fashionista-girl I knew collected hard to find Chanel-handbags. She knew everything about those goddang bags. Just like a military modeller would know everything about the colors DAK used during the desert wars...
Food for thought...?
In other news. Those of you over the pond that's interested in the paint storage racks I got, can now order them from Warpath. The offial post over at TTG is:
We are happy to write that we have an exclusive distributor for the U.S.A. and Canada. Now all resellers can contact WarPath Games. They have a large stock (become in next time a restock) and will be attending several shows. We think this is the perfect solution, and will provide better communications for all resellers.
So I've tried the Paintier carousel-thingie. After the rave-reviews it's gotten on some places on the internetz. I guess people do more drugs than I thought they do, because that thing sucks a bag of weiners (Not Safe For Work). Spin it around and paint bottles fly everywhere. The 80-paints (holds about 120-ish dropper bottles) is also so high that it wobbles a fair amount. So if the bottles don't fall off by spinning, they will fall off if you happen to nudge the table it stands on.
So I sent mine to the garbage can and stored my paints in the Vallejo suitcases you get when you buy complete sets. Still not an optimal solution. It's hard to see the colour of your paints. Since Vallejo also tends to separate fairly quick that sand brown looks like lime green if you look at it from the top.
While looking around for terrain, don't ask me why, I seldom play at home. I stumbled upon Eslo Terrain and their accessories section. And lo and behold, they have a tiered paint storage thingie! Much like the ones you can buy from that laz0r-cutting company I've forgotten the name of. But actually (and to me, this is a good thing) made for dropper bottles and dropper-bottles only!
Now, they clearly state on the site that the kit version (you can buy them pre-assembled too) is not the easiest thing to build. I kinda scoffed at that. I mean... I build 500-part german tanks. I should be able to put together a shelf-system?
It was most likely the most frustrating build -ever-! If you work with wood-working or have tools made for stuff like this. Sure, it might be super easy. For me, not so much.
The shelves slot in to the sides, and in order to get the next level of shelves in their slots, you have to move the sides a little. Making the ones you just put in fall down. So you have to align them to their slots, caaaaarefully put the next level in their slots. And then you have two more sections to do... rinse & repeat.
I ended up using two boxes of cat litter to make sure the sides would't fall off / away and took my time. And still there was a couple of moments when everything fell like a house made of cards and I wanted to burn it all in a fire while laughing like a mad man.
Anyhow, as you can see from the above picture. I got them assembled finally. And my workspace is suddenly less cluttered and I can see the colours of my paints! (Assembly-line painting some Ultrasmurfs as well...)
Now, I would advice against buying them in kit form, if it wasn't for the fact that you can actually buy sections for Citadel style bottles and mix-n-match as much as you like. There is of course pre-assembled ones to buy too... but if you're like me with just a handful of Citadel bottles you might want to go with the kit.
Overall, I'm really pleased. Once the glue had set they're really sturdy, and I can move them away from the table without having stuff fall off (forget doing that with the carousel) if I would need to.
The verdict is... Five angry squigs out of five! Do buy! Great stuff!
I bought this lil' dude a couple of months ago from Trollforged. And today when I had some time over to paint I really really didn't want to paint more orks. Especially not with 40 more boyz in the queue. 20 more than anticipated since I had to buy yet another AOBR-box due to cats, glasses of water and mini rulebook nearby. So I remembered that I had this guy in the cupboard, and inspiration came along.
I've just finished the carapace thingie (the body is just out of the picture) and put on the basecoat for the fleshy parts so I can glue the head on.
Originally I thought to make it more tyranid-ish. Red carapace and stuff. But the inspiration for this model (I guess) is more of a cross breed between the Alien made by Giger and Cthulhu. Much like the modern day tyranids by Games Workshop. So a black-green and then some hopefully really fleshy / mushy parts for the rest. I'm gonna go to town with glazes and washes once I'm done with the basecoat. :)
Talking about tyranids. Remember these guys?
They were state of the art when they came along. 2nd edition or something? I remember vaguely the first time I saw them on the table when I arranged a one-day tournament at, the then ruling FLGS in Stockholm, Spel & Sånt. The were the hotness! And they completely crushed all opponents at that tourney. :)
In other news... not much. Both me and Boomo are completely hooked on World of Tanks now that it's released. Even though I think they should've stayed in beta a bit longer due to some really annoying bugs it's one hell of a fun game. Especially if you're not as twitchy anymore and want a more slow paced shooter with (although sometimes crude) heavy involvement of tactics.
So, I caved in and bought the codex. Really tempted to buy the miniatures as well. I really really like the Dreadknight, although it's limited poseability is a downer. Perhaps some day... when all the other stuff is painted.
I was going to write a pretty long review about the Grey Knights codex, at first, but decided to make it really really short instead. Because, really, this sentence kinda sums it up.
So it was that Kaldor Draigo, Lord of the Grey Knights, came once again to Acralem. Few words spake he, yet his grim purpose was plain to behold as he trod the old battlefields reawakened to fresh slaughter.
Matthew Ward. You are not to write another word in a publication until you leave the fan-fic prose behind you. Ok? I don't expect to pay 230SEK (That's 30USD for you overseas dudes & dudettes) just to read what can only be described as -really-bad- slash fiction. Without any of the hot dude on dude action!
That's all. I will not go into the rules, they give me a psy-headache and I'm psy-tired of reading about psilencers and psyswords. And I bet Long Fang-spamming still will eat the Psy-Knights for breakfast, so vote with your wallet and don't buy this piece of crap. Hell, I'd even wager that you get more value for your money buying a random C.S. Goto book.
Put that one on play, then read the rest. Don't put it on play if you really really dislike jazz. If you really dislike jazz, please go here and reconsider your taste in music. After that's done, please report to inquisitor Franz Carl over at the counter. Thank you.
So, let's get it on then...
Earlier I bought the Mig Jemenez DVD in which he paints a tank with just acrylics. In it, he finished off the weathering by adding some small laser-cut leaves on the tank. Something that really added life to the tank, and another little piece of detail to put your eyes on. So I started looking on the net for some leaves. Ultimately I decided on some of the Plus Model leaves in fall colours.
Birch! I got some linden too... they're different. :)
Now I had no idea on how small they were until I got them. And if the pictures don't tell you enough, let me just emphasise... they're REALLY REALLY small. But the're also very well detailed.
As you can see from the close-up below they actually have a "middle part" on them. Some are even a bit chewed on, due to design or just a mishap I don't know. But it sure adds to the feeling of them.
So I put 'em on a speed-painted nob (awesome tut here) and took some photos, just for you (And you, and you. Not that guy over there though).
I'd say they're kinda worth it. The price might seem steep at first. €5 + shipping for some lasercut leaves? But I really can't see a good way to DIY these and still get the small (and important) detail.
To affix the leaves to the base I just added a drop of matte varnish and put a leaf on it with the help of a tweezer.
Now listen to the end of that song before you close the browser, thank you! :)
This, together with the Micro-Mark seam scraper, is one of my most valuable assets. Plastic putty can be used for almost everything. It really shines when you have to fill those nasty joins in warped kits. Of course, you could use Kneadite (green stuff) or Milliput. But that means 5 minutes of kneading and 10 minutes of wrestling with it to go where you want it and not where you don't want it.
Tamiya makes a putty as well. It has more "tooth", but it also requires solvents to thin and remove. Which is a downside. The Vallejo putty is water soluble, and in order to remove the still wet putty you just dab a Q-tip in water and wipe it off. A definite win.
One of the other uses for plastic putty is to quickly add volume to something. In this case I've demonstrated on a dozer blade for a Hellhound.
You can of course use plaster of paris together with the pigments in order to bulk it up. But the benefit of using the putty is that you can remove it without damaging your paintjob. Since you put it on BEFORE the paint! ^_^.
In just three-hundred easy steps you can go from grey to rust and mud coloured!
To achieve the effect in the picture I just dabbed the putty on the dozer blade and where appropriate distressed it further with a scalpel blade and toothpick. Make sure you don't go wild (it's easy to do) with it and add it everywhere. For a mud/rust effect add it on edges and where mud would usually collect.
Using pigments over the putty creates some sort of "micro structure" on top of the rough structure created by the putty – that is if you've worked it enough – creating a pretty convincing 3D-effect without much effort.
You can order Vallejo putty almost everywhere. I prefer the one that comes in a tube instead of a bottle. But it's still the same stuff, the tube based putty is just easier to apply. YMMV of course.
Something that always irked me when painting is that it's kinda hard to hold your mini while painting it, and at the same time avoiding to touch the still curing paint. No matter how you do it's inevitable that you put your greasy paws on it. Unless you utilize some sort of "holder" for it.
The immediate solution is usually a paint jar and some bluetac. It kinda works, but a standard GW-pot (that's usually the best) is still a little too small. And a pot, still filled with paint is pretty light.
I used a bunch of the, now old style black fliptop, filled up with coins and some bluetac. It kinda works OK but it's not ideal. I especially hated to try and remove the bluetac from under the base after the mini has been sitting there for a couple of weeks.
Enter the wooden dowels!
The hate-o-raider, snikrot and some mini-holders.
I got myself a one meter long 30mm diameter wooden dowel that I cut in 10 centimeter pieces. I drilled a shallow hole in both ends and epoxied some left over magnets in the holes. The bottom magnet will hold the dowel in place on a steel ruler (handy if you're painting a squad) and the top magnet holds a mini. That is after you've added some cut up paperclips or similar to the bottom. For squads I guess it's just easier to buy a bunch of metal discs – like these – and glue them to the bases. Easily done when you're basing, and it adds some much needed weight for top heavy minis. (And you don't have to waste coins)
Paperclip secured with some Milliput
Heavier models, like Snikrot, will benefit from having some bluetac on the bottom of the wooden dowel. Lighter ones stay pretty much upright, even when you have two cats running around on the table.
Pinz
Another benefit is that since the dowel is pretty thick, you can use two pins in the feet of heavy minis and secure them. I had a bunch of pin vices for stuff like this. But heavy models start to spin after a while and you have to reglue. Or you find yourself out of pin vices and have to remove a figure from one of them in order to be able to drill holes in something.
So, there it is! Now stop reading and finish painting that army! :)
I guess it's inevitable. You get a new kit, you paint your orks... but you just can't stop thinking about the new kit. Eventually you break down, get the airbrush and in a haze of ideas you start painting it up. Leaving the orks on the side of the table, looking at them every now and then with guilt in your eyes.
Then you look at the new kit, and it speaks to you. All is forgotten, it says. "Paint me and then kill them. PAINT ME AND THEN KILL THEM!" And you paint... tears of joy in your eyes.
Still a WIP. The hull needs a ton more weathering and detailing. It's a little too non-muddy at the moment. The goal is to depict a vehicle that's been out in the acid rains for months fending of the worshippers of the false emperor. Paint starting to peel and rust, with the crew turning as derelict as their vehicle. Some of them even fusing to the seats like a World of Warcraft player on an achievement grind.
Thinking of leaving the promethium tank either as it is – with some few rust stains – or go all out on it like the tank in this picture. It's kinda nice to have something clean-ish when you do a ton of weathering. It serves as a focal point on an otherwise very busy model.
Weathering is so much fun though... :)
As you can see from the post with the Vallejo-wash-debacle I've stripped it and had it repainted. Together with that some sort of revelation came.
I've always wondered why people talk about airbrush paints being translucent. I could not figure out why. My Vallejo Air paints sure wasn't translucent at all after the second or third layer. Usually a third layer is necessary to get even coverage.
Then I thinned my paints for the brown/rust on the Hellhound, like ten to one... and suddenly it felt more like "it should be". The green was shining through even after the third layer. Making it much easier to build up the brown to the level of coverage I wanted, and to make the transitions much much smoother.
It's almost like the UPS-van is permanently parked at my place. I ordered some meltagunners from the Cadian extreme-weather line and a Hellhound.
The Hellhound is apparently not updated since they re-made the Chimera kits. The instructions are as abysmal as on the Warhound titan, but fortunately it's not such a komplex kit. You get an inner hull, the big-ass tank, some sort of front plate, the turret and a separate two-part hatch and the huge flamer thingie. All in bags marked "Non sale".
And of course, the hull sprues for the Chimera. No spare multi-laz0r turret, which is a shame. No Chimera instructions either. Not that it's needed since you only need to assemble the sides, but it would've been nice to have some sort of explanation of what the other stuff is, and how it goes together.
We heard you like tanks, so we put a tank on your tank so it can burn while you burn.
My resin-parts were not chipped or bent or anything, your mileage may vary. Not that I understand what the hub-bub is all about. If it's bent, use a hairdryer or some warm water to soften the resin and bend it back. It's like a minute of extra work.
If you're like me, addicted to the resin, it's a pretty nice kit. Everything fits together pretty quick, without the need for much filling or sanding gaps (unlike that neglected Warhound that's in my cupboard, still). And it is a pretty mean looking thing you get. Much less cartoony than the regular Hellhound, and that huge "shoot me here please!" tank on the back is hilarious!
Hellhound "assembly instructions"
The rating for the Forgeworld Hellhound kit is: Four burning devotees of the false emperor out of five! If it wasn't for the poor connection between the hose for the promethium tank and the hull together with the really poor instruction sheet I'd give it a five. Easy to assemble and pretty menacing once you're done. Looking like it'll be a blast to paint as well...
Look at the areas around the flamer. Notice the lighter areas.
Totally unacceptable. And yes, I shaked it for about 3 minutes, only water added for dilution. This doesn't happen with Games Workshop washes, or any other washes I have around...
So... test your newly bought washes on something other than your brand spanking new FW-kit before using them. They're supposed to darken, not lighten the areas. Luckily this was the first of many layers and it can be rescued.
I scrapped my Cyborg-daemon-ish project and found myself plus one Sentinel-kit all of a sudden. My painting muse has shriveled up and died, but I still needed to do something warhammerish. With Pixel returning (probably) on sunday for another bash, I decided to build the sentinel up as a gift for his fancy new Renegade IG. I don't know what he will arm it with so I magnetised everything up for him.
I just want to make ED209 sounds when I hold it
Tomorrow it will get airbrushed (Flaming Hot Pink sounds good eh Pixel?) and if time permits it will be done by sunday.
Fuck it, I need a good play session this weekend, I have felt quite burnt out with the whole hobby thing lately and I have no desire to paint any of my thousand things that NEED to be finished. I had a good game last time, winning against a BA and GK Team, but I walked away feeling empty and quite melancholic. Perhaps I should try with another game system or start my Xbox for the first time in months [/rambling]
Primer on and pre-shaded. I think I'll go for a pretty heavily modulated paintjob on the hateraider. Mostly because there are so many flat surfaces. But also in order to make it look really cartoony. Fit's the "Hey, we're kinda retarded-looking, but killy!"-look of the Khorne Berserkers that's gonna ride in it.
Srsly, what's up with those legs on the zerkers? It's not "dynamic". It's "ballet dancer-retarded". Not that ballet dancers are retarded, not at all. Unless they strap on power armour and scream about thrones for the throne god and false emperors. I think almost anyone can safely be called retarded by that point.
One of the upsides with an old and resurrected kit like this is that there's already a ton of blemishes, making it way easier to decide on where to put battle damage and rust and stuff.
Check out part I here and stay tuned for part III.
Started to paint up the Forgeworld Kommando nob today. Not much to it. He's getting a straight forward, formula A ork, paintjob. I did some freestyling and added facepaint to him though, but I'm sooooo tired of painting orks that I really cannot come up with something that feels "Yeah wow!" anymore.
Luckily I've still got the joy of painting in me. I hope it lasts for the next 20 orks. 'Cause then I get to paint something else! \o/ Haven't really decided on what. It would be cool to speedpaint all the Ultramarines, but that's also pretty monotone work. Meh... let's worry about that when the time comes.
I put on a regular nob head on the figure. He'll be moonlighting as a regular nob in a shoota mob, so the gas-mask really felt out of place. And if I really really want to run a bunch of kommandoz without Snikrot or a nob with powerklaw (would I, ever?) I always have another one.
In the background is a bunch of 'zerks I promised Boomo I'd paint up for him in exchange for him painting up ten boyz for me. Even further back (cropped away) is the land raider featured over here. It's gonna get some airbrush and stenciling-love once I get around to cut out all the stencils I've planned for it.
And once I've cleared the workbench of all the stuff currently crowding it... Hoarding minis for the win! -.-
