6MMRPC: Week 21 Ion age Adder WIP - Please help

Work Continues on the ion age adder. I'm struggling to try and match it thematically to the khurasan siler also pictured here (not painted by me). The initial airbrushing seemed to match reasonably well, but I appeared to make the mistake of inking with black all over....too dark. Now that I brought it back up with the base colour....and then even more with a brighter green, I'm sorta stuck on what to do.




Obviously I should break up the expanse of green a bit more. The ion age 'stock' paint job here, shows a good use of bands of colour to differentiate the styles of adder (largely turret/armament changes). I don't think I want it as bold as this. I did think some weathering (mud on the skirts, big dust smears by the air vents) and chipping (silver/black, possibly some rust) would help.....but I think it needs something more.

Viewer suggestions would be very much appreciated. 

 So far my suggestion has been: "So pick a few hatches or weapons, whatever, and paint them a different base colour the. Highlight etc separately. Could be as simple as blackening the guns and using. Tan for a few hatches.And you can also use a trick I read about which is to use a progressively lighter base coat as you go up the vehicle." (h/t Bryan).


So please feel free to chime in with some direction here. You can see in the foreground of this pic what I have right now. The middle guy is the test fig. This gives an idea of what I've tried, and what I have to move from.

As background, I purchased a painted set of figures from Richard Chief Lackey (who made the starport slum buildings I think). He appears to recently be no longer active on tmp, which is a shame b/c that's how I caught his frequent auctions on ebay. He has some quite varied and nice stuff up almost continuously as mingjerkyking.

The figs were the khurasan siler tanks (which I love and largely the reason I bought the lot) and a bunch of NAC figs (seen in my gruntz AAR HERE). I have more NAC I bought myself from GZG (ground zero games) which I need to finish, no doubt I'll colour match here. I like the idea of the adders as some fast moving battlefield taxis with support weapons.

Basing 'B': Pumice Gel Medium and Paint

Base on the left. The static grass was over done....

In my continued look at basing methods, I go to my second method, which I switch to a few years ago. I had decided that method 'A' (pva and sand) took a while to paint, and wasn't as robust as I'd like. When damage occurred it was fairly obvious. I suspect I stumbled onto gel mediums on the interwebz but it's possible I spotted it in the art store and started looking into it afterward.






In any event, there are MANY types of gel mediums that artists add to their paints to create cool textured effects. Crackle medium I think is used by some gamers to create shattered ice effects. I choose to use a coarse medium so it looks dirt like.

The required items are simpler: coarse pumice gel medium, paint (of your colour choice), and a spreader (I use some clay carving tools). 

The complete writeup after the jump....

6MMRPC: Week 20 - Necromunda Gangers /Gorkamorka diggas

These two fellas sat on the tray half finished for quite some time. I've been quite ADD about what to work on lately, and the productivity is still pretty desultory. I did however managed to finish these guys off.



I figured they would make good stand additions to forces I can use for necromunda type games. To that end I wanted them dirty, and I figured some tattoos would be fun to break up the skin. I'm still not super happy with my skin tones, but they are a great improvement on my russian artillery men painted near the beginning of the challenge (5 months ago!). I considered using my special rust effects paint on their weapons, but decided that of anything they had, the weapons were the most likely to stay in 'fighting trim'.




I also used the opportunity to base each in a different style. That way I'll be able to finish up my few posts on the different ways I base figs. Maybe I'll choose the one I like best and return to it.

Basing 'A': PVA & silica sand

This was my go to method of basing for a good number of years. I believe I found out how to do it off the website http://www.dropship.org.uk . The author (Carl Woodrow) has since migrated to a blog, although I must say I only discovered this in the last 5 minutes as I couldn't remember what the name of the original site was for years. I did remember his 'sand jackal' marines which allowed me to Google it though. Most interestingly (to myself), I think I first found dropship horizon, in the past the mecca for all matters 15mm, but hunting for Carl's site. And thus my interest in 15mm sci fi began.


Back to the point: Basing. This method is fairly slow (it takes multiple steps), but gives you a lot of control over the final colour of the ground. The layers of dry brushing give a bit more depth than the other methods I use now. One problem is that it isn't as robust, so chipping will occur over time, and the silica sand is white underneath, which makes damage quite noticeable. It is a very cheap approach.



We require:
-white (or carpenters in my case) glue
-silica sand (I procured from an aquarium shoppe)
-paint (black, yellowish, and khaki ish)
-flock/static grass
-1-2 crappy brush (1 for glue, 1 to drybrush)

The directions after the break.....

6MMRPC: Week 19 - GW Mordheim Ogre

I've lately been distracted from painting by a hoard of exciting computer games. I managed to pull myself together to finish off my GW Mordheim Ogre (who is, incidentally, in desperate need of a name).




Last week he was largely complete, but I had just inked him. I took the time to bring up his skin, and leather goods with the base colours as highlights (sometimes going lighter). The stitching on the pants and hat got black (I do like obvious top stitching in my clothing in real life), and thanks to Dai's suggestion from a few weeks ago, did a striped red shirt. Quite dandy if I do say so myself. It tempts me to pull out the pirates and start work on them at some point.

The metals had a fine line of 'honed steel' by reaper. I'm getting to be a big fan of the reaper paints lately. They are in dropper bottles, come in triple sets (of base, shadow and highlight), and are much less watery than I think vallejo tends to be.





While the fig is not totally complete (basing yet to finish), I plan to do up a couple of posts of the different basing schemes I've worked through. It's also more interesting to have multiple posts per week, rather than the just under the wire 11pm sunday post for the week.







In the spirit of 6MMRPC, I also managed to cut from sprue and clean from flash a bunch of pieces from Pegasus refinery. There are an amazing number of pieces to this set, and it's a LOT of work to cut and clean them. I was doing it as I was watching you tube videos, and waiting for things to happen in a multiplayer computer game I tried on the weekend.



I have high hopes for what will come, as I often see set ups of pipes and wheels and pressure vessel in the background of various sets. It will, however, take some time to realize.

6MMRPC: Week 18 Ogres, Diggas, Musselmen WIP

I managed to miss a week of posting for the challenge, and I'm a day late for this one. Not the best start to the New Year.

I managed to get the legio heroica muslims assembled at last. I ended up getting some advance from Cameron (we piggy backed our order) and bought some CA glue accelerator. Pretty marvelous stuff actually....now your instant drying glue truly does glue instantly. I'm not sure if the glue gets a bit 'tired' over time and glues more slowly, or simply that some materials don't want to stick together. Regardless, a little accelerator on one part, the glue on the other and *presto* they stick together much MUCH easier.

I'm hoping to get these guys primed up sometime in the week when the wife is not working on her clothing project in the craftroom. I can put off figuring out a air scubber/ventilation system for a bit longer yet.

My other work was largely with inking. The ion age Adders get a coat of black ink. I will be able to bring them back up towards their base colour via highlighting now. The camera doesn't quite catch the difference to be honest. The pic below being the 'before' image.

The GW gorkamorka diggas that I am adding to the necromunda/post apoc gang members get an inking of sepia ink.

I think it's probably a bit overboard, but it does work for these guys looking 'grubby'. I'll probably rust up the guns and metal a bit, and start the highlights soon.

These are nice figs for inking as they have deep creases in their faces/muscles/clothing.

Finally we have the mordheim ogre. Also inked with sepia, I can see spots of residue on various flat parts (his hat for instance on the upper left). Not terribly happy about the outcome. I'm sure with highlighting I'll be able to save most of the problem areas though.






I have to say this is a fantastic figure. His wicker backpack has ears of corn in it, a sausage hanging from the side (not shown) and a victim/stowaway as well (seen in the rear shot).

I'm looking forward to yellowing up his teeth as well. I decided to start with a brown and work up to a healthy yellow/khaki.

2014/2015 Mandatory Resolution Post

I realize it will be nonsensical to post this if I wait much longer. I usually have a bit more reflective time around the holidays, but there was much family in town this year, and more shifts than normal.
I'll look at my simple nerd list of resolutions, rather than investigating the longer one I keep in evernote.

1/. Run a traveller game
2/. GM a (minimum) 6 game story arc
3/. Paint a French 15mm Naps Corp
4/. Play 12 games

1/. Total Fail. The beginning of the year was dominated by (Savage Worlds) Space 1889 (till April). I managed to run an (4 week) intro to Torchbearer, which is actually quite fun, although I think it probably needs a special group (which our regular group doesn't quite hit). Another one of the players has been stoked and wanting to run lowlife (also in savage worlds) for a long time, so he started that in May and it's still going.

I've decided I prefer, and been advocating for, shorter story arcs (2 or 3 months) and then switch games. If it's popular we will return, if not, then move on. Our current game should end and then I hope to run something. I doubt there will be an appetite for traveller, but possible stars without number (I think people like leveling up too much to play traveller).

2/.  Success! The torchbearer game was only 3 or 4 weeks. I did however run a pretty sweet Red Tides game with a pair of out of town friends via skype/hangouts. It died off in the fall when we all got busy with new jobs. It's possible it might pick up again....but perhaps not.

3/. Fail. I actually have a huge lot of mostly painted 15mm french old gaurd, AND great coat guys. There's also a whack of horse artillerists. The plethora of partially painted projects around here is prompting a new resolution (below). I think I may finish this resolution this year. I really only need to paint up some cavalry (which was a mental and spiritual block) and some higher level command figs (usually mounted and thus problematic at the moment).

Arguably I finished a russian corp (in 28mm) but the number of figs is so low that it's a bit false to try and wedge that into this one.

4/. Success. A pleasant surprise actually. Looking at my totals I played 19 wargames this year. Including, for the first time, some heavy gear and volley and bayonet. Other notable games were gruntz, pulp alley and alpha strike. Hopefully I can bump this number up in 2015.

In addition, I managed 8 board games, and near weekly (averaged) role playing games.

Summary: 2 of 4. An unmentioned goal was getting married this year, which was successful as well. The planning, wedding, honeymoon, moving, etc put a crimp on hobbying in the early summer, and I didn't really recover for quite a while. I forsee a dark period in the hobby time when I have kids which I imagine will happen in the next few years. I'm really hoping to bang out some high productivity over the next year or two so I've got sufficient toys finished to play more games, even if I lose time to paint.

The plan for 2015
1/. Play 12 wargames (playing it safe with this one)
2/.Focus on partially painted painted items (a bit vague, but I hope it will tend to prevent me from starting new things, when I could be finishing off old)
3/. Paint log I can present at the end of the year. Create as I go. (I'd like to have a numerical value of what I've done. I could MAYBE do it now.....but there are so many 1/2 finished projects that I don't know how to count them. It will feeling cheating to fully count them as I finish this year, but oh well. I saw a few blogs with pics of glory of everything done in a year.....and I'd like to be able to do that as well.)
4/. Fully paint a project I can host solo. (The ambitious one. I really dig when I can show up and simply play a game with someone with their models. I'd like to finish up enough figs and terrain to be able to do the same. I HAVE multiple projects that should be able to meet this requirement, it's just a matter of getting them done/together)