The Future Belongs to the Mad

Hi folks, yes, the Fury Road reference in the title means that it is our fourth and final vehicle in the Post Apocalyptic car commission.

This one, with it's girt hench engine, I decided was the personal transport of some important gang member and thus has nicer paint and less damage than the others. It can outrun anything else on the road so sees less combat... or something.

I'll be honest, I think this one is the weakest construction of the four. I was trying to get a Zinge engine designed to replace ork trucks (approximate scale 1/35) into a 1/43 scale vehicle. It was just farcically vast and simply would not fit in any satisfying way. Eventually I broke out my post apocalyptic scrap mechanic head and figured a cut-and-shut job on the front would "work". I added an extra set of wheels mainly to hide gaps and did some welded on plates to stabilise the build. Unfortunately I just don't have the scratch building chops to do what I could see in my head so this had to do. Some Russian submachine guns in the headlamps and a random bit of stowage helped the overall effect.

The only classic car colour I hadn't really used is that lovely red that you see on Morse's car. Finding that shade can be tricky but thankfully there is a paint that fits the bill and is good for this one job. Vallejo Model Colour "Red". Just "Red". Nothing else. It's a horrible paint that dries very different to the colour in the bottle and is very, very shiny. I've found no other use for it (it came in a multipack)... but for this, it was perfect. So as usual I rusted the hell out of the car, put the red on and was feeling good.

I decided that the business end needed some fancification, plus, the steel plates down the side needed to be linked to the rest of the build. Black flames that lap over the plates seemed to fit the bill. The tarpaulin on the top gave me some pause. Initially, I thought to have one of those cheap blue jobs, but the blue would have looked horrible against the rest of the scheme. So a camo tarp like you see on survivalist webpages worked better.

And here they all are. I've enjoyed this project, been a lot of fun to flex my converting muscles and with Fury Road being one of my favourite films of the last ten years it's inspired me a bit. I'll almost certainly return to a post apocalyptic setting at some point. I think I want a gang of road warriors of my very own some day. But for now, that's that. Final few Shadows of Brimstone models up soon. Until then

TTFN.

Die Historic on the Fury Road!

It's that time again! Spray yourself chrome and jam the pedal to the metal. It's more Mad Max-esque stuff:

This time we're going for something a little bit more ponderous in appearance. The "breacher", as I've been calling it, is built for all terrain grunt rather than top speed. I like the idea of it being a blocking vehicle or slamming through an enemy's fortifications while the turret gunner keeps them pinned down.

As with all the rest, this starts with an elderly 1:43 kit, a Peugeot this time I think, and some Zinge tracks. I made a frame of thick plasticard rods to replace the axles and attach the tracks to. I had to cut away some of the lower parts of the bodywork to allow the tracks to fit in, likewise, the bonnet needed a hole in it to make the engine fit. I chopped out the boot space and replaced it with a big ol' oil drum in order to make it seem like a fuel-hungry engine was involved in hauling the tracks along. A sort of turret-ey thing with a soviet machine gun and a bit of bent armour plating for an improvised dozer blade finished it off.

The Mad Max series of models has all started the same way, solid layer of rust to begin with, then layer on other colour where it needs it. Here, I decided that a bottle green would go well with the overall tone of the vehicle. I threw a few splashes of colour with the red of the fuel drum and the yellow dozer blade but for the most part? Rust. The interiors are all decked out in various shades of interior trim that seem to fit the era of vehicle.

Speaking of the dozer blade, I figured some sort of road sign-age would help the post-apoc looking cause. I believe these are going to be doing multi-duty across a range of culty type options, including in 40k. So I couldn't do - for example - a big ol' motorway signs for Leigh Delamere services or anything. A "Diversion" sign in a fairly straightforward yellow and black felt pretty universal. I scratched the hell out of it with sponge chipping and then drabbed it further with the dust and dirt so the yellow could be strong without dominating. Worked ok I think.

As usual, the weathering for these was layers and layers of Kursk Earth enamel weathering paint stippled and feathered out to make it seem realistically grimy. Of course, the camera lights eat most of the lovely subtle effect (these all look bang tidy in the flesh) but there's enough left to see how filthy the whole thing is.

Just one more of these to go and the quartet is complete. More Shadows of Brimstone next week though. Until then

TTFN

Ride Eternal, Shiny and Chrome!

Oooorrr, Rusty and Spiked as the case may be...

The minute I knew I was doing a pseudo Mad Max project (I believe these are actually becoming some sort of cultist mobile in 40k) I had to make the hedgehog. I loved that thing and knew I could make a slightly less bonkers version of it.

Starting from a - I think - Citroen of some flavour, I carved away wheel arches (and even whole sections of the front) in order to make the Zinge wheels fit. To the top I added a tank hatch as a fighting platform. Then I started gluing dozens and dozens of plasticard spikes. To make it really like the movie vehicle would have been possible but it would have taken approximately forever and would have made it very delicate as a wargaming model. This is a compromise on the vision.

As with all these vehicles, I started with a solid coat of rust. I already knew that this one would be almost totally lacking in paint so I went a bit further with the rust texturing. More colours of rust for added depth of colour. Then I moved on to the interior. I've left all the body shells unglued initially in order to make it easier to get a rudimentary interior painted. In this case a pale fabric roof and door covering and tan leather seats. I started off getting everything nice and cleanly painted, then dotted spots of darn near every weathering paint I have in order to work some filth in. Once this was done I stippled and streaked with a brush dampened with odourless turps in order to soften the effect and spread the stains in a more naturalistic way.

The hatch, I decided, was scavenged from an armoured vehicle and so added some chipped green paint to the hatch. The end result actually descends into all the rust in a very complimentary way which pleased me no end. Finally I went to town with the dust again. I went a little further than the last one as I pictured this vehicle going off road to overtake and get into position for close assault more often. In my mind's eye there's a lancer standing in that hatch urging his driver closer to a wheel so he can attack.

That's all for today. More Shadows of Brimstone next week before the last two cars get the treatment.

TTFN

Oh What a Day, What a Lovely Day!

Witness me! We're delving into the somewhat high octane world of Mad Max. If you've no idea what I'm talking about watch this, then get the film*, watch that, then come back. I don't mind. I'll wait...

My client had four venerable Hauler 1:43 car kits and wanted something a bit more grungy... To that end I did some cutting and chopping, fitted various resin wheels and engines and a few more plastic bits lying around to the four vehicles coming up:

Seen here in very much work in progress mode. Final results will vary.

This first one is, I believe, a Citroen Traction Avant of some kidney but do not quote me on that. I am bad at cars. I envisioned it as a recon vehicle of some kind, big ol' searchlight picking out intruders into territory or something. Tanks of something nitro-like plugged in to the engine to get it out of dodge fast.

Painting wise, I knew this one was going to be black. Almost all the cars of this type I've seen are black and I confess, the black plastic of the kit inspired me a bit too. First step was getting a very grey car - yes, I know, it still is grey, but that's grey with dust, not just grey... honest - by using a series of progressively lighter shades with German Grey mixed into the black. Then I used a glaze of black ink mixed with matt varnish and airbrush thinner to knock it back to black. The rest of the metalwork basically went rust coloured.

On top of the general rust and grime there was some battle damage to take care of. Bullet holes were taken care of in my usual way. The crumpled fender was achieved in a similar fashion, heat the plastic with a lighter then mangle it with needle nose pliers. Job done. These got chips, scratches and just bare metal painted on and then rust colours used to weather it down again. Finally, it was time for muck.

I used Ammo's enamel weathering paints for this, they're just the best way to get dust and grime on models. I've not found anything better for the task. It's the way you can muck around with them using odourless turps or white spirit without affecting the acrylic coat beneath. Kursk Earth got liberally splodged on and then feathered out with stipples of odourless turpentine. Jobs a good un.

That's all for today, but obviously there are three more of these Mad Max vehicles to come so watch this space.

TTFN

*Yes, I know, there are other Mad Max films. But hey, Fury Road is my favourite and doesn't give Mel Gibson more money...

Headswaps 101

I realised the other day that it has been an absolute age since I last did any kind of tutorial, fortunately an opportunity has rather presented itself...

My client has two of these rather handsome totally-not-Hugo Weaving figures and we were debating which head would go nicely on the spare. We had a few options and none of them were really going right. Fortunately, I solved that problem the other day:

Yup, we suddenly realised that the head that I sawed off the Cadian officer would make a somewhat compelling option on there and I figured I'd take some photos on the way. These days, you see, we have lovely cleverly designed head swap systems both in plastic and metal. But back in the day, this is the only way we had:

First off, poor ol' Hugo gets decapitated. You could use clippers for this, or a fret saw, but the razor saw is quite simply the best choice for this job. It's farcically thin but stiffened by the ridge down the back. If you don't have one I urge you to buy one. Sadly, most are designed for woodworking and have rather large teeth, you need one with tiny teeth like mine.

So we've now got a decapitated Hugo and a head orphaned from it's body. I cleaned up the head, removing anything that was connecting to the torso, collar or neck of the original. Make sure to trim the jawline as it'll look very fat compared to it's original sculpt.

Sadly though, the angle is horribly wrong for the simple option of "just glue it on". That's not going to help at all. Instead, you need to fabricate a new neck. Best option is a long pin.

Just like the normal pinning process, you drill into both halves and use a bit of paperclip wire to bridge the gap. However in this case you want to do the exact opposite of the normal process and cut it to length in order to hover the head above the shoulders. Position is important here, best option is to treat it as the spine and drill in to both the skull and the torso roughly where the spine would be. Aim the hole toward the crown of the head and you won't go far wrong. It's then just the normal posing conundrum of "where exactly should this head's eyeline go?"

Yeah, ok, slightly disingenuous. It isn't just posing. There's rather a lot of neck to fill in there. At this point it's time to break out the sculpting putty of your choice. I tend to use ProCreate as the final grey colour doesn't jar with the plastic/metal so it's easier to see that you've got it right. Green often retreats visually and can leave you thinking that you've done something wrong. Often only when you prime the model can you be sure you've got it right. For people who do it all the time, they learn to compensate for this... I hardly ever sculpt, I use grey.

And there we have it! Original flavour Hugo on the left, new Captain Snooty McMonacle on the right. Sadly, his head is slightly overscale for his body but only slightly. Not the worst we've seen by a long way. Painting will come soon, but for now, that's all folks, more shinies to come soon.

TTFN

Stiff backs and shiny sabres

Greetings shipmates, back again with another quick visit to my "out" tray. This time a rather lovely Death Korps/Cadian kitbash that just oozes "officer":

The donor model was the sadly long-OOP Cadian officer with the monocle and the sneer. Wonderful figure, but the client already had one and he's waaaay too distinctive to have twins of. So with a shiny-hatted Death Korps head in hand I went about decapitating the original and replacing it with the new resin head. Razor saws are the absolute win for that job. I've managed to save the head entirely so that's going back to the client for future projects.

dayum that one in the right caught the light!

As for painting? Well, I've painted so many of these brown DKK over the years that there really isn't much to natter about. Except that the brass was a bit of an experiment. I painted it as I normally do, brassy brass, highlighted with silver. For some reason the tone was just all wrong. Just way too brown this time. No idea why. I knew I needed to get that warm brass tone back so broke out the Casadora Yellow. One clean pass of the wash - acting more as a glaze as all GW washes do - was enough to warm that up nicely and give the shiny brass hat I was after. Very nice.

That's all for today folks, more shinies inbound soon

TTFN

Pointy Ballistic Death!

"Bat Tree! On moi command.... TWANG! Wait fer it you orrible little Gobbo!"

Yes folks the little hand is once again pointing to goblin o'clock here at PVP! For too long I've been internally grumbling about how Rhagat's horde is all the huge but isn't quite killy enough. There wasn't enough specials. To that end I am putting aside my other projects for the moment and trying to finish off Da Bitter Moons before the GoblinKeen wears off again. Today's project? Three bolt throwers forming Da Pointy Stick Bat-Tree.

Those of you familiar with the old goblin bolt thrower might be scratching your heads a bit at what these models are. I shan't leave you in suspense. They're Warlord Games' Roman Scorpion battery with some modifications to make them more goblin-ified. This consisted of roughing up the woodwork to make it more rough-hewn than precision sawn; adding some roughed up black plasticard gork teef shields; and through a piece of bizarre scale creep, an old skeleton arrow from the tomb kings skeleton archer box which made a perfect ballista bolt. All 28mm scale allegedly. Go figure.

sorry for the filthy cutting mat backdrop but if your wargaming workhorse mat isn't filthy you aren't trying hard enough!

Speaking of figure... see what I did there? I needed some crew models. I'm doing my normal Bitter Moons thing and swapping common for night goblin crew. To this end I bought a box of night goblin troops and set about converting them. Most are simple enough swaps to be holding a big arrow or to be pulling a lever. But I wanted the bosses to be a bit different. So having made one with a flappy flag (just paper soaked in PVA) and one with a telescope (a shaved down space marine gun sight) I wanted something just a bit more... goblin for the last one. I thought, right, we've got the boss that identifies the targets... the boss who waves the flag to say "shoot"... we need a weather-gobbo watching the wind speed and direction. We need a goblin with a sock on a stick. So some ProCreate and an odd sculpting job later, one wind sock.

There really isn't much to talk about painting-wise, the gobbos are all painted the way the tutorial says. The bolt thrower is just lightly wood grained brown and some rusty metal and the basing is my usual goblin parched stony ground with little bushes as the bases are bigger than normal. So I'll leave it there. Oh, just one more thing, this is just the start of the goblin reinforcements. I've got a nice big unit of squigs (the deep road toads) and another couple of things I'm scratch building. What could I need a massive troll holding a rough hewn length of wood for I wonder?

This time, you're getting left in suspense. 

TTFN

Krieg Kit-bash Konversions

Hi folks, fairly quick one today as we have but two candidates on the workbench:

These two gents fall in to a nebulous "Krieg but not Krieg" category. On our left is a kasrkin whose head has been rather violently removed with various saws and replaced with a Krieg one. The right is more of a kitbash, Elysian legs and arms with Krieg grenadier torso. Both look rather lovely I think. The aesthetics blend nicely. Well, except that the old metal kasrkin is massive compared to the forgeworld models. Seriously, look at the base sizes in the picture, I had to tweak the scale to make the picture look anything like sane. But anyway, enough with the scale grumbles, lets talk about painting man mountain fink:

 It's hard to see but the kasrkin is the same paint job as these chaps, I think he's supposed to be an officer or something leading them. As a result most of my colour choices were already made. In the end almost none of the Flecktarn camo can be seen but from the back he is very stealthy.

This chap I needed to do more thinking for. He's to join a group that has black; green and yellow as a colour palette but he needs to still be a soldier. So while I knew I needed some nice saturated green in to the model... I figured I still needed some more soldierly green to form the main body of the fatigues. The armour is much brighter in person than it seems in the photos by the way. The yellow was always going to be more tricky to pull off. Too much would give it a cartoon vibe but there needed to be some in order to bind him to the group theme. Inspiration struck by realising I could just put some quick arm-of-service-esque stripes on the gun and helmet. It's small, but it's enough.

There we go, like I say, a quickee today. More shinies soon!

TTFN

Imperial Guard! Flags! People Holding Them!

Yes, I'm running short of titles for DKK posts.

Today we've got some shiny, shiny banners and some very normal DKK dudes holding them. These are all part of the mopping up project finishing off the client's DKK collection. The dudes are pretty much normal as per previous posts:

Perfectly normal dudes for reference

I've done some minor modifications as per client instructions, mostly small posing changes, goggles on helmet etc.

The banners are mishmashes of Imperial Guard flags, Empire finials and "dangley bits", one of them is a straight up Empire banner. The one above is just the army colours and my faux NMM gold.Getting happier with it as I go. Still not a fan of NMM in general but on cloth, it works really well.

The next two have more work involved in them. The flag on the left had a Cadian Gate on it. Client asked for it to be removed and replaced with an Armageddon style fist. Twenty minutes with a Dremel and a couple of hours with ProCreate and a new flag is born. The one on the right is totally freehand. The horses tail is less stubby than it looks in the picture. The black shows through the yellow with the lighting.

So, all done! There'll be more DKK before we're done (again) but for now

TTFN

Tank (Spanner) Girl

Hi folks, today we have some of the wo(men) behind the armoured might of the Imperial Guard. A mechanic to keep them running and a commander to aim the gunning (I'll stop that now). First off, the mechanic, or Tank Spanner Girl as I'd named her:

I wound up painting this model twice. The first time I was just not happy with the result, so I thought "what the heck, I'll have another crack at her". Stripped, repainted. Still not happy. I figured I couldn't possibly have cocked up such a simple figure twice in a row. The commission brief was simple enough (to fit the brown Krieg I've painted before) and the colour scheme was sound. So what was wrong? Then it hit me. She didn't look like a mechanic. She looked like a pin up from a car mag "'Ere luv, 'old that big spanner and we'll take some shots...". Clearly she needed more mechanic cred. Nothing I could do about the sculpt (she must have been warm in the workshop or something) so I gave it more thought. Grime! Was the result of that thought. Proper mechanics are dirty. Initially I tried just using the Ammo Oil Stains paint. This was way too shiny (model is much, much more matt than the photo indicates) and too brown. It's designed to indicate spilled fresh oil. So I mixed some black dry pigments (forgeworld ones) into the oil stains and tried again. This time it was entirely made of win. The right consistency, the right colour everything. I softened each stippled layer with odourless turps and overall applied 3-4 layers. I now realise that the reflectiveness in the pictures is the microscopically thin layer of the turps that still hadn't cooked off reflecting light. Doh!

Anyway, this fixed her. Win! On to a friend, a dismounted tank commander (possibly destined for the leviathan, possibly just a disembarked chap for when tanks become sad and explode mid game:

The model is a cut and shunt conversion of a tank commander body and a cadian set of legs. The sword he came with had such a bad miscast (hollow) that it just disintegrated on assembly. Fortunately I had a perfect alternative in the form of a cutlass from the Free Company box. I figured that like sailors, tank crewmen would appreciate the easy-to-draw-in-confined-spaces curved blade over the normal straight guard sword. Maybe he's friends with a navy armsmen. Who knows. Painting wise he's nothing special. Dark grey and gloss black to fit with the previous tank crew I painted for the Krieg. The pink flashes on the cuffs and epaulettes are to finish the WW2 German tank crew vibe (yep, pink, it actually works quite well).

And that is all! Short one but at least there were shinies!

TTFN

On the Workbench - Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Goblin's Life For Me

Really bad eggs! Hi folks, given that it had been a little while since I posted anything (my creativity has been channelled elsewhere recently) I thought I'd share the some conversion work. In this case, Goblin Pirates!

Now, before I start, I should offer some caveats. This is probably going to be the last you see of these guys for quite some time. I plan my hobby some time in advance and these are for after I do some Empire. I do though get bored so have models available for a bit of converting glee when painting becomes samey. So while I've got a converting article here, don't expect to see them painted for some while. Sorry! On with the show: These fine chaps are the command groups and one of the characters of the last of my Goblin tribes. Joining the Bitter Moon Night Goblins and the Black-Head Forest Goblins will be a tribe of common goblins. Sadly, I don't really get on with the "Genghis" common goblin models. Nothing too wrong with them, just not my cup of tea. Following on with the Hochland Campaign at the Beard Bunker I had the notion of a bunch of goblins living as river pirates on a small flotilla of stolen boats. This festered away until I saw the Black Scorpion Goblin Pirates models. "That was the vibe for me" thought I. Some musing later I also realised that Ogre Kingdoms gnoblar models would work great with a little conversion (mostly weapons) as gobbos. The River Pikey tribe were born! (Pikey is a pejorative term for gypsies where I grew up and goblins really fit the stereotype)

left to right: chariot champ; 3 unit champions; big boss

The thousand points of River Pikeys has three block units in it so needed three command groups. I had a good look through the Black Scorpion models I had available and figured which of the poses would work best for standard bearer and musician conversions. The remainder became unaltered champions. In the photo above, the Nelson looking one on the left is going to be standing in the bow of one of the chariots (boats with wheels added!) as a champion. The captain model on the right is going to be the leader. Still need to find an appropriate shaman but the hunt is on. So with everything divided out I needed to get to work converting.

The three standard bearers were simply made by carving away the weapons they held (and turning the cutlass on the middle one to a more ranking-up-friendly direction) and pinning zombie polearms into place as the standard poles. I added an empire gunpowder scoop to one to indicate that they were just using anything vaguely the right length as a flagpole, thieves see? Not a lot of work really. I still need to resculpt the little finger on the middle model to fit the pole but that'll be a job for the future. With the easy stuff done, time for the musicians.

I wanted a nautical feel to as many of the instruments as I could manage. A bell and a fiddle fit the bill. The last one's pose rather limited my options so while a squeeze-box accordion would have been more appropriate a "liberated" Empire horn was a better fit. Making the bell was just by repositioning a zombie bell to look like a swing mounted ship's bell that he's nicked off with. Likewise, the horn was just giving him a new hand (night goblin) to replace the hand-covering basket hilt cutlass then cutting and gluing the horn. Again, a little green stuff work will be needed to smooth the transitions. Finally, the hard one, the pose of the musket armed goblin left me with only one instrument that would fit. A fiddle (violin) was the only option. This... was a challenge. I wanted to use the model so sucked up the difficulty and plunged on. Carving away the musket left me with the arm positions free of interference. Next, I cut a rectangle of plasticard roughly to size and carved it by eye to be the vague shape of a violin body. All other details will be with painting. The neck was made in three parts, the curly middle bit and the two tuning pegs. These are tiny, I lost three carved pegs before I had them in place. The bow was just a length of paper clip wire, I added a strip of paper thin plasticard to the underneath and a little plasticard shim to shape the end of the bow. I'll do a little more shaping once the superglue is thoroughly cured with a very sharp blade but for now? Job done. I think it turned out ok.

So that's that! The first of the River Pikeys are ready to be painted and set sail. If anyone is curious, the army list for the Pikeys is above, I think it's going to be a fun project. I'll share it as it goes.

TTFN

Corsair Armour

Greetings one and all, today I can finally, finally, say: I've finished the Corsair commission. It's done. Finito. Phew. It is a fair wager to lay that these will be the last Eldar vehicles crossing my painting table for a looooong time, if ever. But enough of that. Lets look at shineys!

First, the real meaty punch of the armour. This Fire Prism was made from the excess bits left over from the Warp Hunters and a Falcon kit. Sadly, Forgeworld don't include the crystal sprue (fair enough) and of course, you cannot get one from GW for love nor money. Seriously, I tried. A lot. Mystifies me, "Here, I have money, give me stuff! Oh, you won't? Oh.". But there still needed to be a Prism cannon so ingenuity, enter stage left. I used the plastic parts of the cannon to make templates of the quite complicated irregular pentagonal sections. I cut them out of plasticard and then glued them into place to fill in the lasing crystal. For the firing crystal I nicked a High Elf wizard's staff top. I tried a few different colours for the crystal - at one point sort of cloudy green - but none worked with the rest of the scheme. Finally I just used an old school trick I saw on the last edition Fire Prisms. Cross hatching with ever brightening shades of the gem highlights. A longitudinal catchlight cutting through them helps.

Next up is a basic Falcon. Transport for the hordes of Corsairs, well, six of them anyway. As with previous ones the grey is a mix of airbrushing and edge highlighting. The red the metallic mix I made with varying mixes of red and Hashut Copper. The red bits are frustrating though. One of the reasons that these three took so long to do is the same reason that the hexagons are a smidge more irregular than last time. Ages ago now I really, really did my wrist in with an RSI. Now, it has recovered, I'm pain free. This is good. But... in order to stop a recurrence of the condition I have to paint with my wrist straight. For 25 years I've painted with my hand cocked back at about a 20° angle. To say that fighting two and a half decades of muscle memory kills your very finest control is an understatement. It is coming back, but I am having to relearn-ish the freehand skills I had. Irksome to say the least.

Finally though, we have one where through concentration and choice of subject, nifty freehand got painted. The Corsair Lord's Falcon needed something nifty. The sigil of the Corsairs is the stylised winged serpent. What could be cooler than a pair of dragons as your wingman? Not much thought I. So, I looked up a few tribal-ey/stylised dragons online (what did we do before Google?). Once I'd found a nifty one I traced the outline of the Falcon onto scrap paper and worked out where the lines of the dragons would fit. I can heartily recommend this. Saves a lot of pain. Then, with a nice sharp pencil I sketched the dragon outlines onto the Falcon itself and simply coloured them in. Shaded lower edges and highlighted upper finished them off. Simple but quite effective.

That's all folks! I'm off for a week of getting bludgeoning with latex weapons (I help run a LRP game) but I've got a couple of posts queued with Mulder to stop you feeling abandoned. To my strange, giggling glee I realised that this was my 365th post on the site. That's one per day for an entire year. Seemed like a milestone but I've no idea on the way to what :) See you in a week or so.

TTFN