RPG Rogue

Eyup folks! After a morning of fiddling around with Eldar infantry assembly I needed a therapeutic paint job for the afternoon, cue:

Another RPG character commission. I have to say, while I adore army building - it's my favourite part of the hobby - it is these single character commissions, especially for RPGs, that are my favoured commissions. I just love 'em. You can lavish attention and bring someone to life. This one has a slightly "Resident Evil" vibe for some reason. Maybe Ms. Jovovich wore something similar one time. Who knows.

The brief was a hired hand, leathers and black leather boots. I used an array of different leather tones - Doombull brown being the dress - and shaded everything with Agrax Earthshade to help the colours hang together. The client had asked that she be wearing leather leggings so as to avoid the usual fantasy female 6 inch heels 3 inches of fabric look that so many fall in to. The black is highlighted with Val Leather Brown in order to give the appearance of black leather. Because the pale leather colour of the undersuit is technically a skin tone I needed to clearly emphasise which areas on her were skin. For that I went very pale on the flesh. Paler than it appears on the camera. This helps her hands stand out from the sleeves and also gives a lovely contrast with the dark hood.

I did feel the need to talk about the sculpting a little. I think this is a Rackham piece and has a couple of common crimes nicely illustrated. The first is Continuity of Sculpting. This is when, because of the nature of the beast, you have to sculpt in many many small stages to avoid messing up what has gone before. Trouble is you really, really have to watch that new details follow logically from the old. It's like a watch switching wrists in a movie, continuity fail. In this case it is the bag. From the back it is clear that the strap goes over the shoulder and is pulled taut by the weight of her arm pressing on it. From the front, suddenly that weight has gone, she is actually pulling it up, while gravity ignores the strap as otherwise the strap would move between the breasts or would partially flatten the one it is pulled over. It is a small thing but it makes it seem like two different moments in time on the same figure.

The second is Single Aspect Sculpting. All models have their best angle. It is inevitable as the molds are in two parts so there will be a front-back plane on which the sculpting looks it's best and from side to side there are compromises made. Lots of sculptors work to a 3/4 turn casting angle rather than head on to allow some movement and animation in the sculpt (very complicated, I'll either talk about it later or find links to more professional knowledge!). HOWEVER. You cannot sculpt with only this front-back aspect in mind otherwise weird stuff happens at the sides. Go back and look at the shots above - taken from flattering angles. Looks fine right? Now look at the one above of the profile. She just isn't there. The girl could hide behind a sapling. The sculptor has clearly spent a lot of time worrying about the front and the back and forgotten to add any depth.

Both of these don't detract totally from the fact that she is a nice figure. I like the overall effect. But it did have the best examples of those two minor sculpting crimes I'd seen in a while so I thought I'd share. Until next time folks.

TTFN

RPG Elf Adventurer

Greetings one and all! Slight change of pace today:

This lovely lady is the Privateer Press Lady Aiyana model. I painted her as a commission for an RPG character. The brief was white and light blues, black hair and gold accents. I quite like the sculpt, nice to have a character in a pose other than mid combat sometimes. Couple of things to note though, there is a weird sculpt of the right leg, seems to be sculpted as fabric under the stockings. No reason I can think of of this so went with painting it skin coloured. The texture of the model is also surprisingly rough. I was using very thin layers of paint and the camera has picked up the strange, almost gritty cast texture. I'd recommend sanding the larger areas of privateer press stuff if this is a consistant problem.

The banded layers of the dress suggested a graduated scheme to me. Starting with the edge paint Blue Horror, I added increasing amounts of Caledor Sky to the mix moving down the skirt. Pale leather and gold provide a nice contrast to the blue as does the black hair with the white cloak. You can hardly see them, but I decided to paint the tiny, tiny gemstones as amber to further contrast the blue.

There's another of these RPG adventurers in the queue but the focus is definately shifting to pointy ears of another time. The Eldar Corsairs are next on my table...

TTFN

Death Korps armour crew

Hi folks! We've mostly got half measures today:

Yup, "top half only" to misquote Brassed Off. The models above are for the turrets of tanks sticking out of the cupola so there's no need for legs. This half of the commission was for tanks with a "Third Reich"-esque camo scheme so the client wanted a Panzer-feel tank uniform. Instead of pure black I went with grey with gloss black armour plates. Pure black is very much the colour of commissars in the Imperial Guard. The pinkish red piping on the cuffs and epaulettes is actually authentic colour for german tank crews back in the '40's. Pink being a girls colour is a fairly recent development - heck napoleonic Russia had whole regiments with pink and green banners - we'd initially dismissed the pink as it might have seemed silly. But during painting the crews needed a little something else and so the pink was lurking in the back of my mind. Tried it, and who knew? It works.

Then as an example of how much a different paint job changes a model we have the DKK infantry scheme on the same figures. These guys are destined for chimeras. I used the grenadier scheme to add the green ballistic plates to the steel helmets. Figured if your job includes sticking your head out of armoured vehicles you'd want the extra protection.

Just add a girder and a New York skyline right?

Finally today we have the centaur crews. These chaps are actually destined for Salamander troop compartments. As a result the "driver" models needed some converting:

I had a spare DKK lasgun and grenade launcher and was able to get reasonably convincing "at ease" poses with their weapons across their laps. But what to do with the third. I tried having him sitting there just weaponless but the fist in the air just looked weird. I sat there looking at it and trying to figure out what to do with him. Then the idea struck me. A brew. A section of plastic tube closed off at one end and smoothed off with a thin strip of plasticard for a handle and the classic squaddy enamel mug is formed. Add some chips and dings and he's all there. There is one important question about the model though and I wonder if anyone will ask it in the comments? ;) That's all for models today but I thought I would finish with a wargamer fitness report:

Nope, hadn't forgotten about this! Weight loss progress has slowed a little, but I've still lost another 6 pounds or so putting me down to 19st 7lb. More importantly, my fitness is increasing exponentially. I've been doing the NHS's couch to 5k program of running podcasts. They're designed to take you from sedentary to running 5k without rest. Over the past two months or so I've gone from being barely capable of jogging for a minute at a time to running 8 minutes - over a kilometer - at a time. (The program is interval training so the current run is two eight minute runs seperated by a recovery walk). I honestly feel better than I have in years and haven't been this weight since university 13 years ago. I'll keep you posted on progress and there'll be a before and after pic in the fullness of time (probably at the end of the year).

TTFN

Death Korps again and nifty banners!

Greetings shipmates! I have more shinys for you, this time Death Korps flavour:

Long time readers will know this as an expansion of the previous Death Korps army I painted for the same client. This time around it is a mish mash of tank commanders, orphaned sergeants and other random "fill in" bits. Including the rather nifty command squad pictured above. One feature does rather leap out though right?

The client wanted the Empire army standard part used as it was so perfect for this rather grim army. I thought we could go a bit further though and made some modifications. The sigmar symbol on the shield was ground and sanded off, the hammer head removed and replaced with a Zombie scythe. I then removed the back of the scythe head, cut an aquilla in half, glued the halves together and attached them to theme the scythe. A flagellent's chain and a tank skull-quilla finished the effect. These small changes made the icon much, much more Imperial in tone rather than Empire. The "Death is Our Gift" legend is totally a Buffy the Vampire Slayer paraphrased quote btw.

The host of add-ons finish off this post, I've discussed the painting before on this blog but it is worth noting something about this batch. Despite the best efforts of the camera - khaki shades are evil to photograph - this batch is much more vibrant than the last. This is due to the change in paint shades. Citadel have done me a favour here. The militaristic colours from the Foundation range that I loved are still here, but a bit more saturated. Creates a much nicer effect. The models are much nicer in the "flesh" too, stupid camera ;)

TTFN

Triari Sinister Walks!

Another Legio Astorum Warhound Titan marches out of the forge fires of the Pirate Viking Painting mechanicus workshops:

This one is Triari Sinister, the third Legio Astorum commission I've completed. Kinda feel like I'm building the whole Titan Legion one by one ;) . Lets check out some glamour shots:

Unlike the previous titans, this was mostly blocked in with an airbrush, made getting a nice solid, smooth blue a breeze. The yellow is Minitaire "Craven" over white with shading provided by Casadora Yellow.

I like this configuration of Warhound, Vulcan Mega-Bolter to strip shields and a Turbo-laser Destructor to provide the killing blow to enemy engines. Works just as well on smaller things too! I'm getting the hang of the "energised plasma" look on the TLD's too. Essentially you mist on white over a black undercoat with an airbrush. Add lightning in white and then once nice and dry, glaze with a couple of heavy coats of green ink through the airbrush. Finish with varnish or water effects to create the armoured glass containment vessels.

The heraldry was once again drawn from the pages of Imperial Armour. Freehand flames for the forward carapace and airbrushed white discs as the foundation for the legio "black star" markings. You then add the radial lines of the starburst freehand in white - make sure you go for anything other than 8 points or it looks like secret chaos affiliation, mine are 12 - and then paint the black disc in to finish it off. If you look, I've added the mechanicus discs that come in the kit to the shoulder mounts. This is going to sound crazy, but... despite the fact that the three titan's I've painted are for two different clients, I wanted minor structural differences between the three.

I love the effect of the engine deck beneath the grill. Gives a nice realistic air to the model. Looks ace.

So now to crate this bad boy up and deliver him unto the waiting hold of the good starship Royal Mail. The lower incidence of content on the blog lately has been mostly because of the time huge figures take to complete so hopefully there should be a resurgance of nifty models on the blog soon!

TTFN

Modernising Leman Russ Tanks

Greetings all, been a while since the last post hasn't it? Oops. This was for two reasons, the first: I'm painting a whacking great titan that takes ages to finish and be photographed. The second: I had a mojo crash and took a few days off last week (you have to remember that you are allowed these things when you're self employed). Of course, this being me I couldn't do nothing miniature related so I spent some time with tanks making this happen:

(c) Games Workshop, used for illustrative purposes

What is the difference between the two pictures? About twenty years. Seriously, the photo on the left? 1994. The right, the modern russ from a few years ago. There is an astonishing lack of difference between the two. It is a kit that has really stood the test of time. Why do I care? Well, with re-release of Apocalypse reminded me that I still had an Emperor's Fist tank company sitting in a box unused from the last time Apocalypse was released. I'd gotten very excited, bought it and then, through a combination of hobby butterfly syndrome and having all my stuff in storage for a couple of years, had done nothing with it. Trouble is, the last Emperor's Fist box was the 1994 pattern sprues and as such had one glaring problem that dated the kits horribly. The secondary weapons.

The top image is of the circa 1994 lascannon, the bottom one is the modern heavy weapons sprue lascannon. If you do Imperial Guard then you will have a stack of spare heavy weapons. Given that Guardsmen can just about hit the broad side of a barn, lascannons are not my favourites to arm the lads with and so I had a whole bunch. I realised that with a few hours of obsessive effort I could modernise the only substandard elements of the old '94 pattern Russ's and decided to document the process for you all.

First things first, remove the old lascannon from the housing. You want everything behind those coils. Clippers are the best tool for this and you'll quickly whip the lascannon halves off their respective halves of the cylinder in no time. Do this before you glue them together. It's easier.

Glue the halves of the cylinder together (those cheapy black and orange clamps you can get by the half dozen in any pound shop are the absolute bomb for this kind of work) and turn your attention to the donor weapon. Here we want everything in front of the second coil (there's a sort of sight box on top).

This time it is a razor saw for the win. The thin, stiff blade will make swift work of the cut and leave you with a perfectly flat surface. Unless you have a bright idea for what to do with the rear half then dispose of it.

Finally, tidy up the housing and glue the new weapon in place, lining up the brace with the bottom edge of the mount. You'll notice a small gap behind the weapon. You can fill this if you like but frankly, no one will ever see it.

The finished Russ's (and thank goodness they came with the old tank accessory frames) look ace. But I couldn't stop there. Just because I'm not using sponsons doesn't mean you won't be. So just for you dear readers. I made an updated heavy bolter as well:

Truth be told, there isn't a lot of difference here. Just slightly nicer furniture on the modern bolter. Once again, start this process with the halves unglued.

This time, the tool of choice is the mighty Chopper II. You can't beat it for clean, precise, vertical cuts. We remove the bolter componant and leave that little rib at the bottom.

The donor bolter gets razor sawed just behind the mount and then the mount is removed to allow it to fit the new location.

You'd honestly believe that it had been made for the location. With the barrel drilled out it is as good as anything from the baneblade. But I didn't stop there either.

I needed a vanquisher to lead the company (well, you do don't you?). So I scavved the modern vanquisher barrel from an online parts shop (can't remember which of the four I regularly use it was). Cut off the hexagonal mounting point, sawed off the original barrel at the brace and attached the longer vanquisher barrel to the cut. Easy.

I decided the Commissar's tank (an eleventh Russ) was going to be an exterminator, all the better to scythe down fleeing tank crews while leaving His Divine Imperator's equipment relatively unharmed. He'll also act as an anti-air vehicle fluff-wise. This was slightly more involved. Two donor autocannons - again from the heavy weapons sprues) were cut down and smoothed so that they glued together at the housing just behind the recoil bar. The battle cannon barrel was cut off with only a millimeter left sticking out to allow the cover plate to be fitted. Then I closed off the barrel end with a sort of "plus sign" of plasticard strip before glueing the autocannons into place.

Invading the planet Backyard as the only place big enough for the picture!

And there you have it. The Emperor's Fist company complete with a bonus Baneblade, Commissars transport and a medical Trojan. I'll add an Atlas recovery vehicle at some point but I'm delighted with what I have so far. Tremble enemies of the Emperor! Soon we'll have paint on us and the boom can begin!

Hopefully this has shown you that these sorts of modernisations and small conversions are not difficult. Just time consuming and allow you to get the best out of your models no matter how old. Until next time folks.

TTFN.

Tooltime: Airbrushes, my thoughts

Airbrushes seem to be an increasing part of our hobby, especially amongst the so-called "elite" painter fraternity with a whole pile of tutorials online for them. I've owned my airbrush for about a year now, so I felt it was time to share my thoughts on this shiny toy and maybe help people who are making their minds up on owning one.

First things first, mine is the cheapest model (Neo for Iwata, sort of a legal knock-off really!) that can still be called a "proper" airbrush. That is with a double action trigger that controls both the flow of air and the flow of paint rather than a single action spraygun. A few immediate considerations:

Not cheap. My one with it's starter compressor (this deal) was £129. That is cheap for airbrushes. If you want a high end one? £300 or more just for the brush. Plus the compressor included is not good, you really want one with a tank as there is a slight pulse to the air flow without one. Expect to add about another ton to the cost to upgrade to a decent compressor. Then consider that it doesn't end there, you need thinners, isopropyl alcohol (isoprop) for cleaning... the list goes on.

Practice. Lots of the tutorials online make it seem like you can just pick the thing up and immediately get spectacular results. This is nonsense. You need to practice with one of these for a time equivalent to using a manual brush to get the same results if you are trying to paint a whole model with one. I just use it for what I call "airbrush specific" techniques. Mostly batch basecoating, weathering techniques and masked camouflage or vehicle heraldry. I wouldn't consider painting whole models with mine because...

Style. There is a particular style that the airbrush creates (if you use it to paint a whole model that is). It is a very smooth, cartoony look. Very popular, just not with me. If - like me - you appreciate the grimy, dark, realistic look (and as you read Pirate Viking Painting I kinda assume you do) then you'll only be using it for airbrush specific jobs only. Consider if you want to spend the money, especially as you can replicate most of the effects with a brush, it's just a little easier with the airbrush.

Cleaning. Urg, this is a real consideration. You have to be fastidious about cleaning these things. They suit a neat mindset, I don't have a naturally neat mind, its why I have a disciplined mind instead. It does mean that the airbrush can be a chore at times. Let me introduce you to post painting procedure:

the back end has been unscrewed to expose the workings

While you are working, paint goes in part 1, you use the trigger (2) to control the air by pressing down and the paint by pulling back the trigger. This pulls the long needle (3) back and opens the tip (4) - by the way, remove this protective cap before painting, all it does is fill with paint and drip. Just put it back on when finished to protect the needle. The air hose screws in at (5) and the whole thing is held together with a screwthreaded part containing a spring (6). Between colours you need to squirt some isoprop into the cup, rub around the innards with an old brush and empty into a spare container, do this twice and then run clean isoprop through the brush until the stream is clean. Seriously, this is what you do between every colour change. Then at the end of the session (and sometimes in the middle if you do a high volume or change to a light colour) you have to strip it down and clean thoroughly or the damn thing gums shut.

note that the protective nozzle cap is gone now

First you unscrew the knurled knob at the end of the brush and extract the needle. Pull it back smoothly and straight, because if you bend it? You are done and it's about £7 to replace. Clean the needle using a kitchen towel and some isoprop. Don't remove the knob (1) entirely, I'll explain why later. Now you unscrew the mechanism from the barrel of the brush (2), if you have removed part (1) then the spring within will try to ping the mechanism apart and scatter expensive componants around the room to the sound of copious swearing. The trigger will just fall out now.

Clean out all the bits you can see with a few cotton buds (Q-tips if you are from over the pond) and more isoprop. Now we remove the nozzle, this is the part that I sheared off when retightening. That spanner is ONLY there to allow you to grip the thing, don't go any further than finger tight, it cannae take it Captain.

Now you can use a thin pipe cleaner (or in this case a rather overpriced set of "airbrush cleaning" bottle brushes of which only the thinnest of the set went through, hmm) to clean the tubes, run it a few times and rinse as it comes out of the nozzle.

Finally, reassemble the whole thing and give it a polish with a last bit of isoprop, after all that effort it is a shame if it doesn't look clean on the outside as well as the inside. This is a messy process, have copious kitchen towels and a beaker or something for excess alcohol. The whole process takes about a quarter hour. If this sounds like an unbearable drag then for the love of all that is holy do not buy an airbrush.

Mess & health: They are messy things, they create an aerosol of paint that falls as dust, also, you have to be intensely careful to mask everything as you won't believe how far this mist of paint can travel. If you don't have an extraction hood - and I don't - then you need to be masked too. A dust mask is a minimum but given some of the chemicals you will be spraying a filtering respirator is better. I forgot myself one time, used the thing for about an hour unmasked with liberal isoprop as thinner and cleaner and then got very lightheaded. I had been inhaling clouds of alcohol, see? Be ready for it and look after yourselves.

Paint: this is a choice thing. You can buy ready mixed paint perfectly suited to the airbrush but results are rather mixed.

The first pre-mixed I tried was Minitaire from Badger. Sadly, this has very, very mixed results, some are great, some - like the metallics - are bloody awful. Seriously, steer clear of anything shiny in this range. The other problem is the price, there is only one real retailer at the moment in the uk and they just convert the dollar price straight into pounds. Very overpriced. Vallejo Model Air is very good (the metallics are superb), cheaper too. But designed for military modellers, you won't easily find chapter colours for instance, that is more Minitaire's bag. You also tear through them. Airbrushes rip through paint and the thin, premixed stuff doesn't go far. My most recent attempt is using citadel acrylics thinned at a 4:5 ratio with Vallejo Airbrush thinner. The mixing bottle in the picture holds an entire thinned pot of citadel acrylics (in this case kantor blue) and thus guarantees a colour match when touching up. I think this will be my preferred method in future except metallics which Model Air will supply.

Conclusions

With all that I have said you might think that I don't think that you should own one. This isn't the case, for what it does well - those airbrush specific jobs - it is worth having. Not worth paying over the odds for (my cheapy one and teeny compressor is doing just fine) though. If you intend to get good with the thing and paint everything with one then shell out for the best you can afford at the very start. Seriously. Other people can recomend better than I if you want to become expert with this. I'll be sticking with the jobs I do with it. I've got 23:1 ratio of years experience with a manual brush vs airbrush. I'm too impatient to get the airbrush up to the same level! What I hope I have done is shown what is involved in owning and operating one of these tools. There are plenty of inspirational tutorials showing how cool they are. I just felt that you should be aware of the chores as well. Forewarned is forearmed as they say!

TTFN