The Star Spangled Man With A Plan

It's Superhero Saturday once again here at Casa PVP, today's offering is the First Avenger, the Star Spangled Man, it's Knight Model's Captain America:

Before we go any further, a minor grr, none of the photos I took of dear Ol' Cap. were terribly sharp, the focus just seemed to wander off of the details. Mentally sharpen them up would you folks? For those not terribly familiar with the character you may dismiss this chap - as I did until I got to know the character - as a jingoistic propaganda tool, a (literally) wrapped in the flag stereotype. For the longest time I did too, but that was because I had only seen the rubbish story-lines. At his worst handled Captain America is essentially Team America World Police: The Super Hero Years. With clumsy authoring he is almost unbearably "America! F*** Yeah!". But get him in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing and he becomes something very interesting indeed. He's a tragic character, trapped out of time without the cushion of years to soften the transition between the 1940's and today. He is, also, genuinely a hero, he embodies most of the Ideal of the classic hero which America like to freight those they consider heroes and then are furious when they don't live up to them. The Cap is the other way around, he genuinely is all those things and it is the world around him that constantly lets him down.

Even his powers are just juiced up regular human, peak of physical ability with just a slight push into the super-human. He regularly is a leader, not the lone gun so many super heroes are. Heck in the war years he had a whole commando unit he led plucked from the various allied nations. He also has a very rare thing within superheroes, he's fine with killing. He is a soldier, was made as such. Where Batman will go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to save the lives of those he hunts, Captain America will pick up a gun and shoot if the person he is firing at presents a danger or is a threat too dangerous to live. With all this he occupies an interesting place in the super hero canon. Humble, self-sacrificing, disciplined, a leader and a soldier first, he is the soul of Shield and keeps them on the straight and narrow as much as he can. He's a genuine hero.

And I really, really didn't get him until recently.

Enough of that though, painting! That's why we're here! Knight's first Captain America model (I'm not-so-secretly hoping for a war years one with the Howling Commandos and - please, pretty, please Knight - a Red Skull and Hydra lackeys) is modelled on the original comic book version rather than the movies. This means the Puerto Rico flag outfit (seriously, check it out, it's not the American flag at all). I knew I wanted the colours to be a little muted and naturalistic rather than the rather strident scheme you normally see (except the shield, more later). So starting with the blue I went with a grey blue worked up from The Fang, through Russ and Fenrisian Grey. This was then glazed in two layers of thinned blue ink with the usual Lahmian Medium thrown in. This made for a denim blue that pleased me so on with the show. The red I handled in two different ways, the cloth was just painted straight red with the usual highlighting, the gloves and boots I wanted as red leather so they got Rhinox Hide added at each stage of the highlighting process. The white was just the usual half dozen tedious thin layers of ever lighter grey. Yawn.

The Shield though, that needed to be all kinds of bright and shiny. Again, it hasn't photographed terribly well but I hope you can get the idea. I used the same trick as I did with Iron Man. Just buffed the white metal part up with finer and finer sanding sticks until it was a mirror, used inks to colour the bits that needed colouring, scratched a few dings and nicks into the paintwork and then glossed the whole thing to prevent the metal oxidising back to a matt grey finish. Easy, but effective, the shield really stands out from the whole.

Fun thought, the pose of the Cap works really, really well paired off against the Hulk. I can see my Avengers being deployed in the cabinet in one of their all-too-regular missions: Stop the rampaging Hulk.

yes those are three of The Watchmen behind the paints

And finally, something that made me smile. A model with a colour scheme that simple, needed that many paints... So any new painters out there, when your folks ask you "Do you really need all those paints?" the answer is... "yup!"

Happy painting.

TTFN

It's what I do that defines me...

Music maestro! Yep, it's the cowled crusader, the dark knight, the world's greatest detective (never been too sure of that one), he is, in fact:

The God-damned Batman

Greetings folks. It's been a while hasn't it? A combination of an injury from a long LRP-ing weekend (sword hit on the very point of the radius where it joins the wrist. Caused a massive egg that turned near enough my forearm into one giant bruise) that slowed me down and some unexpectedly fiddly models meant that nothing had been finished in almost ten days. Frustrated at the slow progress I cast my eyes across the waiting-for-paint shelf of assembled models for something quick and easy, what can be quicker than batman thought I?

I was right. Iron Man is no longer my fastest character model. Batman is. This was, wait for it, 90 minutes of painting. Because there really is nothing to paint! Once the cloak is German Grey and highlighted a couple of times and the bodysuit is the (brilliant new paint for PVP) Ammo's "Rubber and Tires" and that's highlighted then there is only a couple of washes and 95% of the model is done! The belt is an odd colour in the film (I'm using The Dark Knight model so used the film as reference) so a 1:1:1 mix of Runelord Brass, Sycorax Bronze and AP Shining Silver was shaded/glazed with Seraphim Sepia. Paint the face and you are done!

I've mentioned before that Knight Models are scaled a smidge larger than 28mm (they say 30-odd) and here is Batman with a protest goblin to prove it. Knight now have a generous five Batmen to choose from, but for my money the Dark Knight variant wins on both sculpting and overall badassness (totally a word). The only thing I didn't like was the random floating corner of building they had Bats standing on. If it had covered the whole base that would have been fine, but it doesn't, so you've either got to sculpt some more or be left with random masonry. I ditched the included scenic part and replaced it with a pile of Secret Weapon bricks and rubble. Much better.

Batman is one of those heroes for me. Not a real super-powered chap like the Hulk or Superman but instead just a man whose implacable will, resources and training make him a super-hero. Much in the same mould as Iron Man. I much prefer these heroes and I think it is why they resonate so strongly (just think how many screen adaptations of Batman there have been). Everyone can imagine being strong and trained and having that drive not to quit. Harder to imagine being granted magic powers by a yellow sun...

That's all for me for today. Unexpectedly fiddly figures finished soon! Pics to come.

TTFN (I'm Batman)

Knight fever, knight fev-er...

Avast Shipmates, its time for the second of the Dreamforge Leviathans, completely plausibly masquerading as an Imperial Knight:

The partner of this large chap is found here. The two of them are the vanguards of the Legio Astorum force that I am painting for a client. "Vanguards for what?" I hear you ask... Well, a pair of warhound scout titans for openers. They are the next big thing on my painting table and I am simultaneously excited and a little, tiny bit intimidated!

As I went through most of the practical painting last time I thought I would offer some general thoughts on painting really big models like these. The first thought is... keep it subtle. The cartoony edge highlighting that may work so well on a space marine rhino or something will look ridiculous on something this size. When we edge highlight we are imitating light bouncing off a large object. This already is a large object, so keep your highlights subtle.

Second tip: paint in sub-assemblies. By which I mean stick the model together into logical "lumps" that you can work on and then glue together later, like this:

This allows you to easily get at all the model with the paintbrush but also prevents the weight of the model from tiring your wrist and leading to dropped-model accidents. A goblin will bounce, this thing could shatter.

All in all I am happy with this fella, I learned a few lessons from the first one. I am unhappy that I couldn't do more with the posing as the legs are mostly single piece entities. This having been said, Dreamforge's ridiculously successful kickstarter campaign is guarenteeing a plastic version of this model and hence more posable. I am very tempted to get one of these for my very own when they are out in plastic.

Finally I re-present the datasheet I developed for the Imperial Knights after the last posting. Well, must dash, I have about fifty componants to clean up to make each warhound foot. You can be sure that a build log will be here eventually but until then why not check out PVP's "Today I have mostly been..." feed for a look at what we get up to day-by-day. Until next time folks, toodlepip and

TTFN

Legio Astorum Knight

Greetings to you all! First, sorry for the long absence but circumstances have not been favourable as I have mentioned before. The up side however is that the one model I have gotten (totally a word) finished is huge.

This guy is one of Dreamforge miniature's 15mm scale Leviathan Crusaders. Now considering this thing is meant to be in scale to blokes only a centimetre and a half tall it is enormous! Allow me to bring in all 28mm of Miss Funnymoney to demonstrate:

Dayum that's large. In our case he is standing in for a 28mm scale Imperial Knight. The poor old knights have been rather forgotten in the modern Imperium. They are smaller, one man titans attached to the Legio Titanicus maniples as scouts and trailblazers working with the Warhound scout titans. I've always thought they were nifty and so was delighted when one of my clients wanted a pair of them painting! There are also a brace of Warhounds to go with these two, god alone knows how I'll photograph those, this bad boy barely fit in my light box!

All the Legio forces that I am painting are from the same Titan Legion, the Legio Astorum or Warp Runners to use their vernacular title. As a result a nice deep blue was the order of the day. I first started by drybrushing the whole darned thing steel. Frankly there was so much metal on display it would have made sense to almost undercoat in metallics! Next a couple of coats of Kantor Blue were applied over all of the knight's armour plates. Kantor Blue is a bit of a disapointment - base paint wise - as it's coverage is really not all it could be. Ho hum. Alaitoc Blue and Hoeth Blue drybrushes followed to give the overall shade and highlight tones on the model. Now the detailing could begin.

First up was heraldry, the Legio Astorum use a black hole/star motief. Now I do possess an airbrush that is ideal for this sort of fading out work but quite frankly I am still very much a beginner with it and wouldn't dare go near client models with something that I am comparatively unskilled with! As a result I figured out a means of getting that fading glow by drybrushing white in ever increasing circles and ever decreasing pressure. Adding the starburst lines - making damn sure to make it a 12 point star so as not to wind up unwittingly converting the poor thing to chaos - in white and a black disc finished it off. The white is cleaner in reality, the strong blue tones showed through under the harsh light. Really must get some diffusers made. A bunch of transfers were cribbed from various sheets and added across the model to give some character.

Next came adding brass and oil to the pistons, my usual oil mix of brown ink and gloss varnish coming through like a good un. The yellow and white heraldry was marked out with masking tape and painted and the flames were just freehand.

I thought some kill markings on the main gun would help the tough look, figure these are notable machine kills rather than the run-of-the-mill infantry support. Finally I broke out the weathering powders and sponge and chipped, dinged and dirtied up the knight. I'm finally getting the measure of powders, might have to do a tutorial in the near future.

Anyhow, that's it for this post. Around me the chaos of packing up Chez Mulder continues. PVP will be one of the last things that I box up so there should be some more updates before October's move. Until then folks.

TTFN