Emperors Boletus, WIP #3

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.

Forgeworld <3 Kromlech A kannon and it's krew

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.

Until then...

Emprahs Enokitake, WIP #3

Click for bigger @ Flickr

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...

I hate indy-links...

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... -.-

Emperors Champion, WIP #2

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?

I guess we have to post some 40K...

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! :)

Quick Impressions: Dwarf Kings Hold: Dead Rising

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.

Jagdluther finished!

Click for flickr...

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...

Continuing the Not-40K-posts JagdLuther & DML Pz.Kpfw IV

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. :)

McVey two brush blending.

I hadn't actually seen these ones before. But they sure do explain the process of two-brush blending (one with paint, one damp for the blending).

Check out the ongoing thread on the Studio McVey forums for further explanations as well as some pretty cool paintjobs.

In the booth: Dust Models 1:48 Jagdluther

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. :)

Quick Review MaxMini Plague Beast

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.

The open letter to Games Workshop.

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... :)