Plastic Daemon Prince WIP, Slight Conversion work

So, I finally realised that I would never finish that other DP project I started, and got myself one of the "new" plastic Daemon Prince Kits. I like that Games Workshop try to do as much plastic models as possible, but this kit did not get it right in my opinion. The arm options are stupid, why three almost exactly the same weapon arms? why only two very odd left ones? The kit fits quite good together, but it is a shame that they can't eliminate gaps even with fancy CADing.
I pretty much swore to never buy this, but the pain in using the metal alternatives made me give in and pay up, you have to support the company when they try to improve themselves afterall.

I can't say I am fond of this "Cartoon-evil" style Chaos are going towards. Yes, taste is very subjective, so I can't put the kit down for that, I just wish Chaos would be more grimdark than Orks...

"Would you look at this fucking love connection"

I did a quite simple head swap with the Balrog kit from the LoTR series, which changed the tone of the model quite a lot. Quick and dirty, but at least I won't feel ashamed when I deploy him.

"Purple raaaain, purple rain"


"DVDA"

I will try to finish the base tomorrow and then I will wait for access to the airbrush again.
I really should get to finishing something soon...

Oh, by the way. Say hello to Lifter.

With that rather unfortunate story, Lifter has joined the ranks of posters here at PX40K. I guess we'll have to switch the name of the blog some day now that it's not only me. :)

Lifter called me one day, about a year ago and we talked the normal bullshit we talk about. Cameras, lenses, zombies and then he said "Oh, I've started to play this '40K'! It's actually pretty cool, it's what the stole the setting from and used in Gears of War!" and I was all like "OMG!". Ever since I stopped playing, slightly after 2nd ed., I've had this urge of just collecting figures and painting again. But while growing up to become an "adult" you suddenly get other priorities and if none of your friends play 40K it's kinda hard to motivate yourself to go buy €500 of plastic stuff.

Summer 2009. About a week after I talked to Lifter on the phone.
The first half of the shipment.

So... I bought €500 of plastic stuff. Lifter bought a ton of plastic stuff as well. And here we are, one year later and it's "all 40K, all the time". (We do shoot the shit about cameras, zombies, BBC documentaries and stuff as well. Don't worry.)  Lifter paints extremely well (just not RoB-boards). I hope he'll put up some pictures of his marines later on. And I think he'll be the perfect co-host of the blog since he's more of a beginner and I'm more of a "Remember when there was mad boyz?".

So. With that said. Say hello to Mr. Lifter! :)

Dark Art Miniatures: Alien Section

I've always wanted to make a proper board (or in this case a couple of RoB-tiles) with a tyranid theme.

The only option for non-DIY stuff used to be the expensive Forge World terrain – no, Armorcasts "fluffy cute alien"-stuff doesn't count –until now.

I just stumbled upon this little gem from Dark Art Miniatures. It would be awesome for the generic alien stuff, some of it you still have to do yourself (such as draping resin "slime" on Imperial Sector buildings and such), but these pieces is a great theme-setter for the rest of the terrain.

And for only £41 it's kind of a steal. Now if only I hadn't promised myself not to buy more stuff to be painted until I've painted all my orks... >_<

Model Expo Online portable spray booth review.

The spray booth. Unfolded with a Deff Dread on it. To the left is an Evolution 2in1 airbrush and a bunch of Vallejo Model Air.

So I've been doing a lot of airbrushing lately and a week ago I kinda got fed up with inhaling paint dust and solvents from the window cleaning fluid I use to dilute paints. (And I felt kinda bad for the cats). Now I work in a pretty well ventilated area. There's an A/C unit right above the painting area, but I guess it just moves the particles around. Not trapping them. Which lead me to look for a spray booth of some sort.

In Sweden, most of the paint booths are made for ad-agencies using spray glue (anyone still use that stuff? Post-It makes excellent glue sticks) and are priced accordingly. The best price I found for an Artograph booth was at around €500. Which is way too expensive. In the USA though, Model Expo Online introduced a "portable" spray booth that folds into itself to make a pretty compact unit. Perfect for my needs.

After shopping around a little, I found a german retailer (important since I want a 240VAC unit) that sold it for slightly less than €100. The shopping process was nice and smooth and 3 days later the big brown van was here with the booth.

I'll skip boring you trusty reader(s) with the tech specs. The only important thing to note is that it only moves 3 m3 of air, which translates to about 100 cubic feet per minute. This is said – on the internetz – to be enough for most hobby related airbrushing. And is the absolute minimum the OSHA recommends for a spray booth. So if you're spraying enamels or solvent based stuff. Please don't go cheap. Buy proper stuff.

And... there's no duct for venting fumes out a window. Which isn't a problem with the Vallejo stuff since it really doesn't smell much at all. Some users have apparently attached a duct to it without any problems. There are four mounting screws on the back (for the fan grille) and I guess it conforms to some sort of standard.

So far I've primed a bunch of models in it, and used it for some general basecoating and it seems to work well. I can clearly see the bigger particles blowing into the booth, and I hope the smaller ones does as well.

All in all, a pretty good booth for your money. Especially if you – like me – have limited space.

You can watch a pretty cheesy video here, with handling instructions and stuff. Enjoy.

The other hobby related thing I've recieved the last week was this seam scraper from Micro Mark. This thing is amazing!

I've usually used a scalpel blade to scrape mold seams on my minis. Quickly dulling the blade and sometimes creating really ugly scrape marks on the figure.

This thing is made of hardened tool steel (whatever that means) and is shaped like a triangle. I can use it to scrape mold lines and remove bits of sprue that's still attached. Without any ugly marks. It actually is hard to make scrape marks with this tool. Well worth the $10 and the $10 in shipping.