Finished - Skyrim Dragon Priest Mask Volsung

 Been a while. Again, am busy despite not blogging about it. Don't play much 40k anymore or paint any. Considering selling off the massive backlog. 

Started brewing and distilling so maybe I'll write about that here too. 

I've also gotten back into making props. Working on my finishing techniques and am getting pretty good. 

I finished this dragon priest mask from Skyrim. It printed in 4 parts and glued up pretty well. After lots of sanding and dremeling, I got rid of most of the layer lines. Learned some cool things too. Noteable is that dremels are speed tools not torque tools. Was running it low and slow but that causes chipping and jumping. Once I turned the speed up, things got smoother. 

I even made a wall mount for it too. Planning
on doing more cool props like this. Up next is a giant Deathclaw skull from Fallout. 

Finished - Roboute Guilliman

 

Finally finished Bobby G. He was be sitting in his box for months now. I admit, I was intimidated by the size and the detail. I got over that After painting Abby and then this didn't seem so bad. 

I accepted that this was going to be a "good enough" situation because I was not going to blind painting the detail. 

The blue was a solid base of Altdorf Guard Blue (or Ultramarine Blue as it is named in my heart), then washed it with Guilliman Blue. I brought it back up wiht another drubrush of Altdorf then a light dry brush of Calgar Blue. I was not going to highlight each armor panel so this was going to have to work. Blue done. 

Thank the Emperor for Retributor Gold. I would have killed for a base/foundation gold paint back in the day when a decent gold took 5 layers. This gold had to cover the blue in one go because I was not going to paint all that filigree twice. There was no wash on it, just a little Runefang Steel highlight. 

Sword was white, yellow, two oranges, red, brown and black in overlapping layers. Not thrilled with how it came out but it looks good from arms length. Fire is just flipping hard. I saw a thing on painting flames with contrast paints. I bought the paints then chickened out at the last second and did it the old way. Maybe later. 

The mini cost me $60 and the paint is worth maybe $50 for a replacement value of $90. 

Finished - Krieg Bust

 

I'm into busts lately and other non-playable minis. 

Had fun with this even though it will never see play on a table but that goes for most of my armies too. 

Tried to learn some new things from this but I did pretty much standard for my colors. 

I will say that at larger scales, it makes you think more about light and shade but also gives a wider margin for errors. 

People really seemed to like it. Maybe I'll do more busts in the future if I can find good ones. 

Finished - Void Dragon

This mini cost $90 from GW or you can print it for a few dollars if you have the files and know how. Imma let you guess which one I did. 

No idea the rules for this bad boy. Never seen a Codex with rules for it and know almost nothing about him. I had to print this mini. It was challenging. I used presupported files and that was a mistake. I don't claim to be an expert at supports but I find if I put them on then the tend to be easier to take off. After printing it was pretty tricky to paint and assemble this beast. The mini is basically supported in a web of delicate lightning bolts. 

I painted the mini in the same theme as my Necrons. I kinda phoned in on the skin. With the other C'tan, I tried to give them colored metallic skin but this guy just got some Agrax over Iron Hands Steel and a dry brush of Runefang Steel. The body really isn't what draws the eye. I could have tried some OSL or at least some glowing effects in places but didn't. 

It has been so long sing I painted and posted about a mini that I've forgotten how to do a TMM CV post. The point of it was to document what I had invested in 40k and minis incase of fire or robbery to that they could be replaced. I am unsure how to value printed minis so let's just use retail which is $90 for this bad boy. The paint job was maybe 10 hours and I'd value it at about $70. 

Finished - Potpourri

Since very much awesomely fixing the hatchet handle I actually HAVE done some painting. I finished a couple of Black Plague heroes, about half of the Black Ops heroes and an experimental mini that has been sitting half-finished for ages. 

Initially, I got to work on Lady Grimm and Glynda Battlestout with the same 10/0 detail that I approach most minis with. Frustrated at my chunky paints and fraying brushes I reached for new ones of each. While doing so, a corrupted version of an old axiom "don't let the great be the enemy of the finished." I knew it wasn't right but with the years of backlog I have, I can't take a week to paint a single mini. Let's get some colors down, a little detail on the faces and let's get them done. 

I finally have two of the very many Zombicide boxes finished in their entirety and that has me jazzed to finish some other boxes like special guests and Heroes boxes completely. To do that, we gotta get paint on minis. I am far from batch painting but I've stopped doing three stare highlighting and going blind with fine detail brushes. Part of me regrets this because I know I can do better but... but let's get things finished while we have spare time. 

OTT - Close Combat Weapon

Doing a little woodworking on an old busted hatchet. Mostly I am working off of this video. My hatchet handle has an archaic teardrop shaped opening and my hardware store only has round short handles. So I am going to shoehorn a longer ax handle into the opening then cut it shorter. Or maybe I'll leave it long and have an ax that looks like zippy the pinhead. Who knows.

I used a saw blade on the dremel to rough shape the larger teardrop into a smaller teardrop hopefully without ruining the taper. I already need some sanding discs to do the more gentle shaping of the handle so I am at a stop. 

This is an ancient craft of joining wood to metal and it is an honor to learn it. I really hope that I don't mess it up. 

EDIT: And here is the finished product. I intentionally left the extra material at the top to give it that ancient look and also because I don't have a saw that can cut it flush (yet). I ended up having to scrap my plans to use a cut down ax handle because it took too much work to sand down. This was much easier and I agree with the tikki torch-owner in the video, it looks better. 

It was really a sinch with a pre-shaped handle. A little sanding and it slid down pretty easily. I put some nice dents in the deck pounding it in but that is my bad. I should have known better. After that, it was wedge and glue, bang bang. Two metal spikes, bang bang. And my baby shot me down. 

I sharpened the edge too with a sharpening disc so now this thing is lethal to fauna as well as flora. I really want to throw it at something but the partner forbids it. 

It was fun and grubby turning my hobby skills to something like this. I also had to replace a shovel handle but after seeing how much work it was and that the price difference was almost nothing, I just bought a nice shovel. 

Finished - Invader Core Survivors

These finely detailed miniatures combined with the last post means I have the whole core box done. I learned a lot and now have a killer recipe for bone white armor.

This is historic in that this is the first Zombicide box I have ever finished. Black Plague will be the next once the commission zombies are finished. Currently sourcing a painter for Green Horde and that will be done. 

Then it is all the flipping stretch goals and guest boxes. At the speed I paint, I have years worth of painting to do. The speed painting and contrast paints helped me finish all the aliens from Invader but that won't work on the heroic Survivors. Gotta do detail painting.

Finished - Zombicide: Invader Swarm

So I am an elitist snob when it comes to painting. I know this. I think that people that use airbrushes as a final step are cheating themselves. Army Painter is for people that seem intent on ruining models.  Agrax Earthshade is a tool in your toolbox and not a Swiss Army knife. And Contrast paints are for people that don’t want to learn how to paint properly and are ok with meeting the basics of table top painting.

Then I had 100 aliens to paint and I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the last two Zombicide games and have to conscript out the bulk of the painting. I ran across so one that was painting the Workers with Contrast paints and got good and fast results. I picked up some contrast paints and was done with my first 5 before I knew it. A few weeks later they were all done. I haven’t completed a base set of Zombicide yet and this one was done in a blink. 

Here are the lessons I learned at my old age for batch painting:

1. No fancy basing. Be basic. Even the 5 step process for the Mars bases is better than the 3 colors with 3 stages each on top of the clay bits for wood and stone. 

2. Three colors is too many. Think big swaths of color. Don’t paint more than 2 materials different colors. Who cares if he is wearing a brown suit and hat. 

3. Learn to love dry brushing. If I ever start edge highlighting a horde again, shoot me.

4. Use washes to make different tones of color. A corollary to point 2 above, I used washes to make shading and add more color to these models rather than painting a different color.

Goodbye Space Cowboy

I did something for the first time in my almost two decades of painting and playing 40k. I sold a whole army. Tau were my first in 2004. The guy I played with most played Blood Angels and wanted to get out. So I bought his army and started BA in 2005. Somewhere around 2007 I started Grey Knights as a small auxiliary force that grew into an army. After that I started Chaos, Necrons, Space Wolves, Orks, Genestealers, and Knights. Never sold an army.

Until now.

Finished - Zcide Invader Workers

Been painting quite a bit of Zombicide stuff all over the place. Black Plague, Green Horde, Invader. I even outsourced painting of some of the Black Plague zombies to a commissioned painter for money and some printing. I used clay, rollers glue and a lot of time to make textured based for all the flipping zombies. Learning my lesson from that, I just wanted some simple Martian soil for the aliens and save the complex stuff for the survivors.

I found a pretty good tutorial for using the red crackle paint and painting red ground and it worked pretty well. I was skeptical about needing to base things brown, but the crackle pulls up the layer of paint below it and lots of the white primer shows through.

Aside from the bases, I decided to dip into contrast paints in the interest of getting all the Invader enemies painted unlike all the other Zombicides that sit waiting. I based the Workers Grey Seer though I would have liked to use something with a little more color. After that, the whole model gets a wash of Apothecary White. When that dries, the head and hands get a splooshing of Voluptuous Pink. I do a halfhearted blending of the areas by wiping my brush off and stippling around the edge while it is still wet. It is an amature technique with limited results but it is better than hard drying lines. With the base colors done, the bottom nails get painted with the Voluptuous Pink and no fading. The whole model gets a dry brush of Grey Seer to make it pop.

It is not my best work, but I have finished 5 of them in half the time it took me to paint any other mini. Sometimes I have to put quality on the back burner in the interest of getting stuff done.

Finished - Ossunilur Broadpike (D&D mini)

My regular D&D group of years is on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic but I finished the mini for it. Blogging should be up but it is not. It is hard to stay motivated on lockdown. Despite that, lots has been finished since the last entry. Just have to write about it.

For modeling, I swapped the dagger in the left hand for a hammer from WFB and shaved off some of the Chaos icons. The belt scabbard was empty, presumably with the dagger that was in the left hand, so I replaced it with a cut down hilt from a plastic weapon. I built the base up with some shale flakes and sand.

Painting was pretty standard. Black, gold and silver were painted in my standard "base, wash, touch-up, highlight" style. I did an extra blue wash on the hammer to make it look magical. I washed some of the gold with Agrax Earthshade rather than Gryphonne Sepia to make it look older.

Buckle up for some "let me tell you about my character" below.

I started with the idea of a character whose actions were at odds with his stereotypical racial background. I dismissed the idea of a demi-human passing for human (especially the very trite surface-Drow that is done to death) as that would require lots of racial intolerance to be built into the GM's world. Most D&D games function in a race-blind world where gnomes, half-orcs, elves and humans all get along for the most part and are subject to much prejudice. The "go along to get along" mentality is high.

Finished - 3D Printed Dice Case

 Well, hello there.

Long time, old friend. It is not that I have not been busy but I have not been blogging in over a year. Lots of things have happened.

I have fallen out of that 40k scene starting in the Summer of 2008. Since moving from Seattle to the boonies, I have met some awesome gamers but for the most part the quality of opponents was pretty poor. I don't think this is a function of my location but rather a comment on 40k in general. Back in 2008 in North Carolina, the few people that played were... frustrating to play against to say the least. I found the amount and quality of players in Seattle better but still really only played against a few people. Even before we left, I found that I played less and less and continued to enjoy the hobby aspects.

Star Wars - Xen Zorra

Editorial - Why Do I Try So Hard

Just spent about 20 hours painting this Vulkan mini and really stressing over the green armor. I need to try weathering powders so I banged out a set of legs to try them on. Rather than stress over painting the armor in a detailed fashion, I just did a quick dry brush and it turned out really well.

And that is the frustrating part. I spend a lot of time putting paint precisely where I want it and to have a very easy technique so closely approximate all my hard work. It is frustrating to know that there is an easy button out there.

Regardless, this mini is pretty much done except for some details and the weathering powders. 

Finished - Jedi Sparring Droid

Even at the role-playing table, I am a miniature person. I painted the Halfling Sheep-Cavalry mini just for fun despite my GM using vertical maps. Spent more on those minis than I have on single minis in a long time.

Star Wars minis fortunately come for a song. Worst part was the shipping. Bought this Juggernaut War Droid after searching through 7 pages of Star Wars minis of droids with lightsabers or those electrostaffs. Eventually, I made myself a lightsaber out of a 40k weapon handle and a Necron replacement acrylic rod. The only other conversion was ripping off the jetpack of this droid.

Backing up a little, the back story for this character is he was discovered by a researched-focused archaeologist/Jedi near the end of the Clone Wars but before Order 66. The droid dates back over 4,000 years to the Old Republic era and the Mandalorian wars. I had CQ-38 discovered in a state of shut down and repair when his Jedi discovered him. Part of his programming was to follow orders from Jedi and kill all Mandos he sees. He obeys the Jedi but has not yet had a chance to kill an Mandalorian.

The Jedi he adopted was not focused on the martial arts, so used this droid following him as a sparing partner. Finding out that this Droid was built to kick butt, the Jedi used the droid as a bodyguard of sorts. 

Finished - Dragonborn Warlock

Got involved with a second D&D group and no one uses minis there. The DM draws maps on a vertical whiteboard, and white they are good maps, it is a little difficult to place minis on a vertical surface. I painted my Halfling Sheep Cavalry mostly for myself and that got other players interested in minis.

The Fae fighter/theif/druid wanted an "adult Tinkerbell" figure so I painted her one. Never took pics but it turned out ok. Then the Dragonborn Warlock with a Str of 18 and a Great Old One as a patron wanted a mini too.

The Dragonborn minis are, frankly, kind of stupid. There are a limited few especially when compared to humans and there was no good wizard minis. There was a good Tiefling Warlock though but the head and face were wrong. Fortunately my buddy had a WFB Skink that he let me rip apart.

Finished - Ice Hounds

I started work on the Frostgrave warband of Greg from Cranky Old Gamer. MY directives were to make them look icy and blue, fitting the Frostgrave setting. I started with the hounds and used a ghostly white technique that I have been refining for years and using a lot more lately.

I spray the model white and base it Celestra Grey. It then gets a pretty conservative wash of Gulliman Blue. If that was is too think there are these artificial blue looking areas. Then a touch up of Fenrisian Grey, a highlight of Celestra Grey and a final highlight of Ulthuan Grey. Had great depth and still nice a crisp. 

Finished - Alpha Legion Terminators

Deleted the in-progress post about these minis. This is another in the series of of Alpha Legionaries for a Vyndica client. I talked him into the smoother lines of the Tartaros Terminators with the intent of "Chaosing them up" later. Initially, I thought this would be pretty easy, but when it came down to it I was flummoxed on how to make them look more like Chaos Marines.

I had a bunch of spiky bits left over from a CSM Terminator project and in a moment of inspiration, I just glued them to the sides of torso. I could have tried to dremel out channels on the sides to make them fit flush, but that would have been a lot of work with high risk for wrecking the minis.

Finished - DE Wytches

Blowing through these commissions and trying to clear the table. Getting pretty good at this style. I tried to get some more depth out of the skin tones by going heavier on the purple wash but I don't know how effective it was.

Hopefully the client gives me some vehicles next time. I could go for painting a small skimmer.

Finished - Char’s Zaku

At long last this massive project is finished. I started with the head and things went quickly. I initially approached the project like I would with a mini that was much smaller, but that became quickly untenable as there was just too much surface area to paint and not enough time.

By the time I got to the body, I was thinking of painting in a much larger scope and larger areas.

The weapons and decals went a lot faster than I thought and the mini should arrive to the client today.

Flatteringly, the client wants me to do another Gundam model.