The Toffs of Colony 87

Hiya folks, guess what... we got shinys to look at!

Yup, not only are the last three Colony 87 residents finished but I am finally, finally wrangling the new camera into shape. Thus... content for the blog for the first time in too long. Lets get straight to it: These chaps are - like all the other colony 87 residents - nice, slightly cartoony resins with bags of character. While the cartoonishness has never been quite to my liking I really love that this range exists. More roleplay-esque characters need to exist for sci-fi in particular but heck, just more in general please! Speaking of these characters, let's meet these:

First up we have the corpulent governor. Over-fed and indulged this peacock struts about the Colony armed discretely with a tiny digital weapon (seriously, the ring on his left hand is a digi-weapon). I actually ended up painting both this chap and his missus below twice as I started off reaching for the purple. Heck, purple is rich and I wanted these two oozing money, trouble was, it looked terrible. For some reason the purple just did not work. So I ditched it and went instead for a dark but vibrant red (that the camera completely failed to capture due to the layers of ink that went in to it) and a bottle green tunic. The combination seemed to work fine and the greying blonde - ridiculous - hair carried the yellow accents up into the head.

His missus shares hubbies colour scheme but with more brass armour plating. While painting her I was trying to figure her story (helps with the colour selection and effects), eventually I got to the point where some seriously dodgy science had been brought to bear in order to allow the tiny be-ruffed heir to the dynasty to be born. I painted her skin as pale and drawn, made the tubes that enter her nose (if they were supposed to be jewellery - nose chains - then they are waaaay to thick) be supplying cleaned blood and nutrients and assumed that the armour was actually an augmetic suit to help her walk. Yup, happy stories provided free folks, sheesh.

Finally we have their hapless bearer toting their purchases from colony stores. I think he's actually a general labourer in the original intent but I had three figures to showcase and it made sense to link them. While painting him I got the impression of "employee", he didn't seem to be acting for himself as the scavengers were or have a lot of agency. Thus when choosing his colours I went with recollections of some of the downright weird corporate uniforms I or friends have had to wear in our early years. Petrol blue was from my old Woolworths uniform as a young 'un and it paired rather nicely (in some colony exec's eyes) with a salmon pink shirt. The Amphibon style jackets they all seem to wear got the usual XV-88.

And that's all folks. Obviously there will be more shinys in coming weeks, hopefully with increasing quality of photographs as I figure out what tricks I need to get the best fidelity and reproduction of my work. Until then

TTFN

Merry Christmas Everyone (yes, I'm still here)

Hi folks, after a solid month of silence I thought it wise to let people know that I had not been eaten by a tinsel-shark (they lurk in Christmas decorations, be warned) and was in fact, well, still here.

old but topical photo

In fact the blog situation got first worse... then considerably better... if incompetent. Let me explain, no, there is too much, let me sum up: Old camera dead. Something to do with the sensor being bent/warped/something complicated and expensive. Thus worse; camera not repairable, new ones pricey. Then managed to find a nice dSLR second hand. So considerably better! Only trouble is, it is much, much more manual than my old "bridge" camera so am having to learn how to get the best out of it. This will happen soon, just not yet, because of the incompetence I mentioned earlier.

So the long and short of it is: We'll be back as soon as I can take competent photos again, should be soon. I will be going in to my normal Christmas/new year hibernation anyway but realised that if I did that without posting then nearly two months would go by with nothing. Unacceptable. Rest assured that there will be shiny new things in the new year for us all. But for now, from me, Mrs PVP and Mulder (the bony one) we wish you a very, very happy yuletide and only the finest and most marvellous 2016.

TTFN

Please Stand By

Hi folks, just a quickee to say that I am having photographic troubles (somehow I've knocked either the lens or sensor off centre which means it's shooting and focusing verrrry wrong). Suffice to say, there are shiny toys to share... and no means to do so. Lame.

Hope to fix fast, but yeah, lame.

Fire Broadsides!

Greetings one and all! Well, they've been a little while coming but they're here and ready to follow the order: FIRE BROADSIDES!

Yep, finally joining their little autonomous buddies the Drones are their big manned (Tau'ed?) cousins the Broadside Battlesuits. I've talked a bit about the details of their construction and battle damage here so I'll leave that there. I will though mention a few thoughts about the models as they are the first Tau I've painted from the second wave of designs that came through, obviously there is now a third wave too but the point is valid. These are a huge improvement on the old "pin a pair of metal cannons on the back of a top heavy plastic model and call it good" school of Broadside. I will confess I was initially a bit "awww" that the client wanted the missile versions as I really like the "rifleman" railgun configuration. But these really grew on me and I can certainly see the tactical reason you would want them in this arrangement.

Painting wise, I was using the same mixes as the Drones and for the same reasons. I wanted the suits to look like they contained soldiers and bright saturated colours like Tau Light Ochre do not do that. Instead I kept the scheme down at the XV-88 end of the spectrum to have that military drab feel without losing the "Tau desert" scheme. I will say to anyone making one or more of these: Sub Assemblies are your friend as they are a beast to paint in one piece.

What do I mean by sub assemblies? Well, I'm talking leaving the arms, smart missile system and possibly the seeker missile off while painting and doing them separately with a view to adding them at the end. I very, very rarely do this as I think it causes problems with composition, shading, highlighting, all sorts. But once you've tried to basecoat the armour plates of one of these the with the three coats of XV-88 it takes to get a clean basecoat (assuming you want thinned nice flat paint with no brushstrokes) and doing so with all the fiddliness of getting around the obstructions? You'll wish you had left it in pieces. I certainly did. Lets just say XV-88 is no Tausept Ochre and draw a respectful veil over the loss of foundation paints once more.

Thankfully, once the basecoats were on the rest of the painting really was not that bad at all, even fun in places. The scheme complements nicely and I think using the green lenses as I went for makes for a more pleasing contrast than the red on the studio ones. The bullet holes (which I'm quite chuffed with) were built up in layers, first a pale version of the basecoat to look like chipped edges, then some dark brown/black/dab of plate mail metal to be the exposed and oxidised metal, then some shinier bits for the edges and finally a bright metal centre where the round impacted. I then got some Ammo enamel "Streaking Grime" and dirtied up the area around each impact to tie them into the armour rather than looking like shiny fried eggs on the surface. Some dusty weathering on the lower legs - careful washes of the basing colours - helped tie the model to it's environment and as usual helped with the "soldier not toy" vibe.

All in all, a challenging but not unenjoyable task. They are in their cardboard dropship now making their way to their new home and I wish them the best of luck getting past their shiny model syndrome as quickly as possible. As an aside, I've been reading Iain M Banks "Culture" series over the last few months and my view of the Tau is shifting in light of it. I love the idea of the drones having individual sentience rather than being slaved. It would make the Tau a really different race with machine intellect being granted equal status to organic. Ah well, in the Jeffiverse of the year 40,000 that is totally what is happening. Never mind what canon says eh?

TTFN

From the Wastes of Colony 87

Hiya folks, today we are returning to the inhabitants of Colony87 and adding a couple of new faces to the lineup.

As is usual for my painting I had come up with vague identities and narratives for these chaps. So on the left we have an old successful tech prospector and dealer and on the right we have a down on his luck chap scavenging the worst areas around the Colony. These are my two favourite sculpts of the Colony87 range and were a blast to paint. Let's start with the prospector:

I wanted to keep quite a drab palette for both of these. They felt like "salt-of-the-earth" chaps and thus less likely to be toting bright colours and finery. Vallejo paints covered most of my bases, in this case the dominant colour being the coat and that being German Fieldgrey. Interestingly, both this model and the scavenger have the same colour on them but you wouldn't guess it. This has been shaded with a wash of Athonian Camoshade while the scavenger got the brown Earthshade wash. Otherwise this fella is a mix of leathers and XV-88 on the body warmer/armour. All the colours in the scheme were highlighted with Deck Tan which made for a pleasing almost mono-chromatic feeling palette. The skin got my usual trick of adding a little light grey in place of the normal bone as the final highlight tones to make the prospector feel older.

Like the prospector, the scavenger needed a muted scheme but with one battered splash of colour, the re-purposed space helmet keeping him alive in the nastier bits of the world. His robes are again German Fieldgrey (the top bit) and US Olive Drab which I think might just be my new Charadon Granite, it is awfully close. Might try the "Andy-green" with it and see...

The helmet I was quite chuffed with, starting with my Averlander yellow and then adding little chips and dings with Ammo Chipping paint. Then I started in with streaks of lots of different enamel weathering paints, streaking and stumping them with odourless turps to make a nice rich collection of stains, muck and rust which of course the camera captures about 30% of. Sheesh. Anyway, I decided that a rusty poking stick/metal detecting wand would finish him off nicely. 

I've enjoyed these. The colony87 project is proving a fun little diversion amongst the larger projects (the Tau Battlesuits I'm working on for instance) and the client giving me complete carte blanche for colour scheme has rather set my imagination loose to just have fun with it. Nice.

That's all for today folks

TTFN.

Droning On...

Hi folks, bit of a change of direction this week. I've got a commission for three Tau Broadside suits that I've made a start on. As a means of testing the colour scheme I started with the drones that will accompany them. Then thought... why should they not have a feature all of their own?

I've always been rather fond of the Tau drones. They speak to the high technology and more "modern" tactics of the Tau compared to the rather 40's and 50's approach beloved of the Imperium. For me, more than the suits, more than the tanks it is the drones that define the Tau as an army. So I was happy to be giving these some love.

The client has chosen a very missile heavy Broadside squad with seeker missiles attached so has wisely opted for a markerlight drone to accompany each one. The scheme for these are the classic sandy-Tau. This starts, oddly enough with a lot of black. Most of the machines and suits are actually painted black with just the armour panels in the distinct Sept schemes. Black, drybrushed grey with a black wash covers this nicely.  Then we move on to the sand, I'm not fond of the very, very bright sand colour that the studio use, shocking news to regular readers I am sure. Instead I kept it more to the XV-88 Base-paint end of the spectrum. My Tau Sand therefore is XV-88, a highlight mix of XV-88 and Tau Light Ochre and then Pure Tau Light Ochre.

A word on panel lines, they are very important to the look of the tau army. They are also a swine to paint neatly. There are a bunch of different ways ranging from the simple (just leave the base colour in the cracks, tricky to keep neat), through the complex (use an enamel paint to darken the panel lines and then use odourless turps to remove the excess) but my preferred method is to use very, very carefully applied washes. Agrax Earthshade, thinned a little is painted into the lines cleaning up any overspill with a clean damp brush as you go. Best way in my opinion.

I'll talk in more detail about painting when we get into broadsides but I felt that the little dudes needed some love too. Until next time folks

TTFN

Men of Praetoria, Stand Ye Steady...

Yep, fire this up, because it's Praetorian Imperial Guard O'Clock baby yeah!

This is part one of the commission with a platoon command squad and a bevy of heavy weapon squads still to come. Common sense though dictated I start with the biggest "block" of the troops and get the solid 20 man core of the platoon completed.

These were actually a lot more work than I was anticipating and a lot of that was due to nostalgia-tinted glasses. It's really hard to get crisp, clean lines on the old guard models because the sculpting and casting wasn't that clean. There are big filled in undercuts and wobbly chinstraps and the like. Of course, being post-hoc conversions of the Mordian models that proved so popular at a Games Day that they got released didn't help either. So, in other words, these are models that you have to either paint like a character for each one or get to a point and say, yep, that is good enough.

But enough grumbling about archaic sculpting. Painting! Fortunately for my client I've been restarting my Napoleonics in recent months (sloooowly) and thus had found a rather lovely red just perfect for Colonial era Brits (appropriate and very punk song here). Essentially the whole thing revolves around doing a normal highlighted red up to an orange highlight. This will look ridiculous, waaay to orange. Then mix up my normal blood mixture of 2 parts red ink to 1 part chestnut. Thin this with water and glaze medium and glaze the whole thing, ta daaaa! Colonial red. Vallejo Off White then provides the piping and webbing details and my fake not-really-NMM gold took care of the braid. Interestingly, I was looking to see what colour to do the heavy weapons, red seemed too gauche, black looked too "sleek", and found that Victorian artillery was essentially Codex Grey. So mid tone grey it went and shiny it looks! I washed some of the basing colours into the wheels to make them seem a bit dusty and that was about that.

I'll leave it there, as there are more of these to come and don't want to be saying "well, I talked about the painting extensively in the first post..." again. So for today,

TTFN

p.s. these are getting a break now, Tau next!