War... War Never Changes

Greetings one and all, so there I was, grumbling about how photography hasn't been able to capture my work of late when I had a mini revalation. Instead of grumbling, I could spend a few laborious hours fiddling with settings with a book on photography on one knee and the camera manual on the other. After much trial and error - I still don't fully understand the interactions of the various values - I hit on the combination of aperture priority, the lowest f-stop I can crank it down to and the lowest ISO setting. You need good lighting and a tripod to do that but it really captures colours a whole lot better! The two posts after Sister of Biggles were both done with this setting and the colours are great. Suddenly, I realised: I'd painted a bunch of grungy fallout stuff (waaay back in May 2013) that had utterly failed to photograph satisfactorily! I could share it! So... here it is!

Fallout (3 especially) is one of those computer games that grabbed me from the moment you emerge blinking into the post apocalyptic dawn. At the earliest stages of Fallout 3 you are stumbling around a wilderness, disorientated and with minimal weaponry and then you hear strident martial music playing. It gets louder and then is revealed as belonging to what is essentially the mutant offspring of a boombox and a hoverboard. It's the Eyebot. These models are all the creation of Brother Vinni miniatures who seems to specialise in scantily clad people and well-executed copyright breaches. Seriously, though, his fallout inspired stuff is gorgeous and seems to be evading Bethesda's wrath.

The Eyebot is almost insultingly easy to paint. Steel colour. Wash black. Apply layers of AK Interactive Rust Streaks. Done. It'd make for a brilliant alternative to a servo skull for a less mystically involved Imperial character I reckon. In any Fallout themed game, it's a ball of steel with a boombox and a freakin' laser gun!

Next up are a couple of Brotherhood of Steel types. He's got three varients of which this one with the gattling laser is by far the best. I've loved the BoS power armour for a while. The helmet shape (so much like my beloved terminators) the hanging loops allowing the wearer to have the heavy torso winched off them.

Painting both of them was remarkably similar to the eyebot. I got a decent steel coat by the usual sequential drybrushes of the three AP steel colours. Then I drabbed it down and shaded it with Nuln Oil and once dry attacked it with AK Rust Streaks, Engine Oil and Winter Streaking Grime. The great thing about those enamel weathering paints is that you can faff about with them, adding and removing with turps to your heart's content. The Odorless Turpentine that is used does nothing to acrylic paint. So you can fiddle until done knowing that you aren't going to harm the base colours.

Another style of armour from the game, this Enclave Tesla Armour wound up getting identical treatment, but afterwards I went in and did a bunch of object source lighting around the glowing plasma elements to really bring the gun out. Don't ask me what I used, it was almost a year ago, I'm afraid I've forgotten. But the principles that I talked about in the Librarian (another candidate for new photos to be taken) article hold true. Establish how far you want the light to radiate and keep it consistant. Don't go for too much illumination or it will look like the model is in the dark, then the basing will look weird (it should be greys and blues at night see).

And finally, the faithful Protectron that started it all, I talked about it here. Brother Vinni has just released a decent Mr Gutsy so I might need to get my hands on that on that. Seeing and reshooting these folks again has rather reawakened my interest in Fallout gaming. I can see me fiddling a bit more with it on a very small scale basis. Anyhow, until next time folks.

TTFN