Merry Christmas one and all from Pirate Viking Painting!
We'll be back in the new year, reinvigorated for more little plastic man shenanigans. See you then.
Wednesday, 24 December 2014
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
Useful References
Hi folks, I often talk about how useful/important research is to getting the result you want. Well, I've been doing a lot of musing lately about skin painting, I've got Caucasian pretty much down and using Dwartist's excellent mix has led to nice Afro-Caribbean tones (currently secret Inq28 project but I'll share after I inflict them on my players), but there are dozens more and it's often tricky to get a starting point for the midtone. Well, a photographic artist has provided us wargamers with a really interesting resource:
"Humanæ" by Angélica Dass is a work in progress artwork with the midtone colour of each participant (ratio of pink people is a little high at the moment but work in progress) defined by its Pantone colour. Much easier to compare a paint to a swatch than the ever changing shades of skin so I'm hoping it'll be a useful starting point. Thus I figured share it here! [it has a naff interface at the moment, use the tiny red "fore and back" at the bottom to scroll the pages]
Ideally, I'd like to see more companies making - and sculpting - a better range of skin paints and face shapes but until they do, we'll have to keep on finding useful shades in the existing ranges and sharing them. I think I know some of the reasons for the reluctance to move beyond the Caucasian norm in wargaming, race is one of those very, very touchy subjects. Almost better to be thought of as white-centric than to offend by mislabelling people or worse, missing an ethnic group out while featuring others. I'd say, time to grow up wargaming industry, accept the fact that some people will throw toys out of the pram and handle it when they do. Another reason is expense, flesh tones are tricksy, adding dozens more is expensive. But as we're seeing in Humanæ there are probably existing tones in your ranges. Would it be so hard to label them as Burnt Umber / Afro Carribean Skintone? Of heck, just call them the skintones and let us figure out that they can be also used for other things.
Anyway, that's it. Thought I'd share a resource and some thoughts. If you've got a nice solid skin recipe for the hundreds of non-Caucasian skin tones out there then feel free to share it in the comments! If I get enough I'll make a sort of library of them. There's dozens of reference sites for animals (Equusite for horses is one I use a lot), nice to see one for humans.
TTFN
"Humanæ" by Angélica Dass is a work in progress artwork with the midtone colour of each participant (ratio of pink people is a little high at the moment but work in progress) defined by its Pantone colour. Much easier to compare a paint to a swatch than the ever changing shades of skin so I'm hoping it'll be a useful starting point. Thus I figured share it here! [it has a naff interface at the moment, use the tiny red "fore and back" at the bottom to scroll the pages]
Ideally, I'd like to see more companies making - and sculpting - a better range of skin paints and face shapes but until they do, we'll have to keep on finding useful shades in the existing ranges and sharing them. I think I know some of the reasons for the reluctance to move beyond the Caucasian norm in wargaming, race is one of those very, very touchy subjects. Almost better to be thought of as white-centric than to offend by mislabelling people or worse, missing an ethnic group out while featuring others. I'd say, time to grow up wargaming industry, accept the fact that some people will throw toys out of the pram and handle it when they do. Another reason is expense, flesh tones are tricksy, adding dozens more is expensive. But as we're seeing in Humanæ there are probably existing tones in your ranges. Would it be so hard to label them as Burnt Umber / Afro Carribean Skintone? Of heck, just call them the skintones and let us figure out that they can be also used for other things.
Anyway, that's it. Thought I'd share a resource and some thoughts. If you've got a nice solid skin recipe for the hundreds of non-Caucasian skin tones out there then feel free to share it in the comments! If I get enough I'll make a sort of library of them. There's dozens of reference sites for animals (Equusite for horses is one I use a lot), nice to see one for humans.
TTFN
Wednesday, 3 December 2014
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)
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
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
Monday, 24 November 2014
Like a Shaman in a Web
For those who have been following my progress on Project Goblin will know I have been building the various elements as separate tribes. So far the Bitter Moon Night Goblins and the Black Head Forest Goblins. The Bitter Moons are the big one, tons and tons of night gobbos with attendant leaders and shamen. Until now, all the Black Heads had was their chief, Arakkit. But not any more baby!
Yes indeed, the Black Heads now have religious guidance and magical boom all of their own (and not having to rely on Shaman Joodee...) in the form of Shaman Skuttlit. Now, those with Orc & Goblin army books and possessing a law abiding spirit will be saying "but Jeff, there's no option for a spider mount for a goblin shaman..." to which I say "bum to that". Seriously, why the hell can shamen ride wolves but not spiders? Heroes can ride spiders. So I ignored the army list, transferred the cost from the hero and went with it. None of my usual opponents would care and frankly, anyone determined to make an issue out of it is unlikely to be a person with whom I would enjoy playing. Anyhow, enough of that. Painting and modelling! The basis of the model was a regular spider with the champion backrest and the awesome goblin shaman. I'm intending to use him again so I needed to make some modifications to prevent them looking like twins. I extended the staff with bits from the arachnarok (the kit that keeps on giving that one) and switched out the bone and skull for dagger. I'll probably remove the topknot when I paint the common goblin contingent.
In order to make him fit on the spider in his vaguely "arachnid surfing" pose I needed to sculpt a new chunk of carapace to smooth out the flat area the goblin normally sits on. Painting the spider was handled in the same way as each and every damn eight legged crawling thing in the army (just 10 to go...). Skuttlit was painted in the usual way for goblin skin, just adding a couple more intermediate steps to the highlights. I chose black for the robes to help him fit in with the Bitter Moons and then got to the fun bit:
Details! The cloak collar is normally painted as fur, but for a "jungley" shaman type I thought tropical bird feathers would add a splash of colour. So I did a bit of research, chose a bird for each layer and went for it. The fetish staff - genius design by the way, wolf, voodoo-ish fetish and moon, feels like one of each type of gobbo to me - was fun to pick out all the little details. The chicken foot especially worked well. Highlighting yellow with bone is the way to get that naturalistic animal yellow.
So a simple conversion and paint job leading to a nice finish, now to wear the shiny model syndrome off with a game or two... and the inevitable head-exploding miscasts of course...
TTFN
Yes indeed, the Black Heads now have religious guidance and magical boom all of their own (and not having to rely on Shaman Joodee...) in the form of Shaman Skuttlit. Now, those with Orc & Goblin army books and possessing a law abiding spirit will be saying "but Jeff, there's no option for a spider mount for a goblin shaman..." to which I say "bum to that". Seriously, why the hell can shamen ride wolves but not spiders? Heroes can ride spiders. So I ignored the army list, transferred the cost from the hero and went with it. None of my usual opponents would care and frankly, anyone determined to make an issue out of it is unlikely to be a person with whom I would enjoy playing. Anyhow, enough of that. Painting and modelling! The basis of the model was a regular spider with the champion backrest and the awesome goblin shaman. I'm intending to use him again so I needed to make some modifications to prevent them looking like twins. I extended the staff with bits from the arachnarok (the kit that keeps on giving that one) and switched out the bone and skull for dagger. I'll probably remove the topknot when I paint the common goblin contingent.
In order to make him fit on the spider in his vaguely "arachnid surfing" pose I needed to sculpt a new chunk of carapace to smooth out the flat area the goblin normally sits on. Painting the spider was handled in the same way as each and every damn eight legged crawling thing in the army (just 10 to go...). Skuttlit was painted in the usual way for goblin skin, just adding a couple more intermediate steps to the highlights. I chose black for the robes to help him fit in with the Bitter Moons and then got to the fun bit:
Details! The cloak collar is normally painted as fur, but for a "jungley" shaman type I thought tropical bird feathers would add a splash of colour. So I did a bit of research, chose a bird for each layer and went for it. The fetish staff - genius design by the way, wolf, voodoo-ish fetish and moon, feels like one of each type of gobbo to me - was fun to pick out all the little details. The chicken foot especially worked well. Highlighting yellow with bone is the way to get that naturalistic animal yellow.
So a simple conversion and paint job leading to a nice finish, now to wear the shiny model syndrome off with a game or two... and the inevitable head-exploding miscasts of course...
TTFN
Sunday, 16 November 2014
Tree's Company
Wood yew beleaf it? Ash soon as one scenery article a-pears another follows. Sorry, I'll stop, no more puns, completely stumped... sorry. Yes, today's article is all about trees, and because it was a slow process I've taken step-by-step pics too.
For this round of trees I'm using the old GW "bottle brush" trees, they're the shape of chestnut trees by the way, that have been hanging around about as long as the game board awaiting the appointed hour.
First of all you need to separate the trees from whatever root system your trees come with. If they can't be separated then you'll just have to be careful. These were just wire hot glued in to the roots, so a quick twist did it. Put the bottle brushes to one side and concentrate on the roots. Glue the roots on a base roughly the width of your trees. Handily, the 60mm flat round plastic bases citadel made were perfect. I had a bunch of them so that made it easy. In the absence of those I would recommend one of the companies making mdf bases. Sarissa Precision are a good bet. Texture them as normal and then prime - I'd recommend black.
There are some that would say this is enough trees. There are Forty here. Those people are wrong as we shall see later.
Painting begins in exactly the same way as the table, with the same colours (Calthan Brown and Tausept Ochre from the painting kit, Terminatus Stone to finish) so as to help blend the bases to the existing soil.
The colour of the trees never resolved well on the camera. Trees aren't brown y'see? They're a brownish grey. A good analogue for this is a basecoat of Val German Camo Black-Brown. Drybrushed with a mix of Val GCBB and Baneblade Brown and a final light drybrush of Administratum Grey. In real life they look browney-grey. On camera? They look primed. Grump.
Next we need to get some foliage going. This will blend the edge of the base in to the grass of the table (damn near perfectly if you check the first picture again). Just put a rough ring of neat PVA around the edge of the base and then give it a good, pressed-down coat of the same static grass mix you made the table with. It's worth making a load of the grass mix when you do the table so that you can blend all future scenery projects. This will give you a "Mongol Furry Hat" look which will look a little unnatural at this stage but remember two things. One, we ain't done yet, two, grass doesn't grow too densely under trees that are packed together in a wood. In a park? Sure, a wood, no.
What you do get a whole stack of is leaf-mold. Antenoceti's Workshop's Leaf Litter is a great analogue for this. I believe they're some sort of seed pods but they are so cheap and numerous in the pot (I used less than a third of the pot doing the entire 40 trees) that it's worth buying them. Thinned PVA brushed on lightly and then a layer of leaves sticks a thin coating of them. Sadly, they're not terribly durable this way so we break out the secret weapon. Watered down PVA.
Before we coat the whole thing in watered down PVA I'll share a tip with you. It's terribly easy to glue your carefully modelled bases to the table. To avoid this? Just stick a coin under the base. A 2p piece is perfect. Just enough gap (compare the two bases the arrow is connecting in the picture above) to prevent sticking and very stable.
Hoo boy, this next step takes some time when you are batch painting forty of the damn things. A thinned mix of PVA - about 1 part PVA to 3 parts water - is heavily brushed over the grass, leaves, everything. This will weld all the scatter materials down. At this stage I also glued a few weed tufts to about 10 of the bases just to add some more life.
When it's all dry you get quite a nice convincing leaf litter. You can now glue your trees back into the trunks and admire your handiwork!
See? Forty trees, barely covers 2/3 of a 2'x2' Realm of Battle tile. Sheesh. Clearly need more tree... especially some different species to mix up the appearance a bit. I'm also going to make some bases of undergrowth, ferns, bushes etc. to mix up amongst the trees to improve the woodland look.
Well, having either given you ideas or taught you to suck eggs I shall away to play with my wood... ahem.
TTFN
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Fields of Glory
This is a short update, but one that I am very, very excited about.
Yeah baby! Mulder house totally has a gaming table! I've got a whacking great 6'x4' slab of MDF and some saw-horses to stand it on for the living room. For photography though, a nice bright October day was better so please ignore all the 1:1 scale foliage in the background (weeds mostly).
As this was the - I'm guessing - 6th or 7th of these I've painted/helped paint (used to work for GW back in the day) I'd had a bit of experience with these. The Realm of Battle is an expensive but awesomely convenient table system. The bag it comes in keeps it tidy and the hill is a lovely design that allows a bunch of configurations. Even matches perfectly with the old 4-part hill - now sadly and bafflingly out of production. From previous ones I'd painted I knew I'd want to erase the skull pits. They look kinda ridiculous (at least add other bones if you want a charnel pit) and take a long time to paint for not a great final effect. We fixed them by using polyfilla smeared in to the pits and then rough sculpted to match the cracked ground their found in. Looks muuuch nicer. On to the painting!
I had the old painting kit that went with the board (yep, it's been hanging around my house a loooong time) so after a quick primer coat, I say quick, a can and a half of primer, I had a big bottle of Calthan Brown to basecoat it with. I can let you in on a trade secret here. Don't prat about with brushes. Get a small paint roller (about 4") and use it to basecoat the whole thing. You'll have it done with no brush streaks in a matter of minutes. Once this has dried - and I really mean dried - you can drybrush on the texture. For me the colours were first, the slightly smaller tub of Tausept Ochre followed by Tausept mixed with a little Val Deck Tan. This gave me the earth tones. It's worth noting that the Realm of Battle boards work great just painted. You don't need the static grass and they look ace as desert boards.
Next came rocks. My method started from Skavenblight Dinge, a decent stone colour in these dreary post-Charadon Granite days. A wash of Dinge, Calthan Brown and a bit of black helped bind it to the soil colour. This is important as soil is made of weathered, broken down rock and organic matter. The rocks need to have some of the soil colour in the mix. I drybrushed them up with a couple of increasingly light mixes of Dinge and Deck Tan (hey, notice the same colour used in the soil highlighting and the rock highlighting? Helps too). Finally I used a bunch of different enamel weathering paints (AK Interactive but because reasons I'd recommend Ammo instead as it's the same exact stuff) to put much, green streaks and pale lichen-ey bits all over the rocks. Using odourless turps you can fade out enamels really nicely and creates lovely natural effects.
[EDIT: oh yeah, totally forgot about the grass! Working one tile at a time: decent PVA is spread everywhere I wanted grass, fading out where I wanted the earth showing. Then into a huge tub containing the sack of Scorched Grass from the kit to which I added the smaller bag of Glade Grass and a tub of Antenoceti's Workshop Steppe Grass. This was applied shaken through a sieve which prevents clumps. Once a decent thickness is achieved I pat it down to weld it into the glue. Turn the tile on its end and give it a few good whacks to dislodge the loose grass. Then, when COMPLETELY dry you gently brush watered down PVA (roughly 1:3 dilution) over the grass to make it all but bombproof.]
Finally I added some very short moss tufts to the rocks, some longer grass tufts and a few little bushes with coarse turf and some drifts of leaves with the leaf litter seed pod things from Antenoceti's Workshop. As I've mentioned before a tip with the coarse turf is to "inject" it with a dropper full of watered down PVA. It'll dry firm and resilient.
And that's it! I've got a gaming table! Huzzah! Expect to see more scenery bits on here as I turn it from blasted moorland, first into woodlands and then (hopefully) a rural idyll.
TTFN
Yeah baby! Mulder house totally has a gaming table! I've got a whacking great 6'x4' slab of MDF and some saw-horses to stand it on for the living room. For photography though, a nice bright October day was better so please ignore all the 1:1 scale foliage in the background (weeds mostly).
As this was the - I'm guessing - 6th or 7th of these I've painted/helped paint (used to work for GW back in the day) I'd had a bit of experience with these. The Realm of Battle is an expensive but awesomely convenient table system. The bag it comes in keeps it tidy and the hill is a lovely design that allows a bunch of configurations. Even matches perfectly with the old 4-part hill - now sadly and bafflingly out of production. From previous ones I'd painted I knew I'd want to erase the skull pits. They look kinda ridiculous (at least add other bones if you want a charnel pit) and take a long time to paint for not a great final effect. We fixed them by using polyfilla smeared in to the pits and then rough sculpted to match the cracked ground their found in. Looks muuuch nicer. On to the painting!
I had the old painting kit that went with the board (yep, it's been hanging around my house a loooong time) so after a quick primer coat, I say quick, a can and a half of primer, I had a big bottle of Calthan Brown to basecoat it with. I can let you in on a trade secret here. Don't prat about with brushes. Get a small paint roller (about 4") and use it to basecoat the whole thing. You'll have it done with no brush streaks in a matter of minutes. Once this has dried - and I really mean dried - you can drybrush on the texture. For me the colours were first, the slightly smaller tub of Tausept Ochre followed by Tausept mixed with a little Val Deck Tan. This gave me the earth tones. It's worth noting that the Realm of Battle boards work great just painted. You don't need the static grass and they look ace as desert boards.
 |
| the tufts on the left are much, much lighter in tone than they appear here |
Next came rocks. My method started from Skavenblight Dinge, a decent stone colour in these dreary post-Charadon Granite days. A wash of Dinge, Calthan Brown and a bit of black helped bind it to the soil colour. This is important as soil is made of weathered, broken down rock and organic matter. The rocks need to have some of the soil colour in the mix. I drybrushed them up with a couple of increasingly light mixes of Dinge and Deck Tan (hey, notice the same colour used in the soil highlighting and the rock highlighting? Helps too). Finally I used a bunch of different enamel weathering paints (AK Interactive but because reasons I'd recommend Ammo instead as it's the same exact stuff) to put much, green streaks and pale lichen-ey bits all over the rocks. Using odourless turps you can fade out enamels really nicely and creates lovely natural effects.
[EDIT: oh yeah, totally forgot about the grass! Working one tile at a time: decent PVA is spread everywhere I wanted grass, fading out where I wanted the earth showing. Then into a huge tub containing the sack of Scorched Grass from the kit to which I added the smaller bag of Glade Grass and a tub of Antenoceti's Workshop Steppe Grass. This was applied shaken through a sieve which prevents clumps. Once a decent thickness is achieved I pat it down to weld it into the glue. Turn the tile on its end and give it a few good whacks to dislodge the loose grass. Then, when COMPLETELY dry you gently brush watered down PVA (roughly 1:3 dilution) over the grass to make it all but bombproof.]
Finally I added some very short moss tufts to the rocks, some longer grass tufts and a few little bushes with coarse turf and some drifts of leaves with the leaf litter seed pod things from Antenoceti's Workshop. As I've mentioned before a tip with the coarse turf is to "inject" it with a dropper full of watered down PVA. It'll dry firm and resilient.
And that's it! I've got a gaming table! Huzzah! Expect to see more scenery bits on here as I turn it from blasted moorland, first into woodlands and then (hopefully) a rural idyll.
TTFN
Friday, 31 October 2014
Windmills on my Mind Part 1 - Review and Construction
Today we're looking at something a little different to our normal fare of tiny plastic men. I'm starting to turn my attention to the ground they stand on too. Now, it would be sensible to start with the gaming table, and I am, but something arrived at the weekend that has me waaay to excited to wait.
The something is the excellent Tabletop World windmill and will be the start of a whole wee model model village. Charlie over at the Beard Bunker is already building a nifty town out of their larger dwellings so I'm working on a more rural aesthetic. Fields, farms, a windmill, the whole nine yards. Given that Tabletop World are based in Croatia, their exposure here in Blighty isn't all that great so I thought I'd do this project as a review/build log/tutorial doodad. Starting with review:
Caution, potential hyperbole ahead. I simply cannot praise Tabletop World's output highly enough. Lets go through the reasons why. First, the material: Yes, resin isn't my favourite (I think plastic is the natural material for wargaming) but this resin is superb. It's solid, strong, sturdy, a nice clean cream colour that helps to show off the detail even before you paint it and best of all the total lack of bubbles. They must be pressure casting as the quality is better than anything I've seen. Next; the casting method: I'll straight up admit, I have no idea, none, how on earth they keep their moulds intact. Almost everything they make is full of gorgeous deep undercuts to give that rich detail and cast in as few pieces as possible. Whole buildings are in two and three chunks. It surely has to eat the mould silicone. Finally we come to the real deal. The sculpting. These guys literally build their pieces stone by modelled stone. They don't carve mortar lines in, they build whole houses. Their wood shingles have proper wood-grain and chunks missing. There's even full interior detailing on most of their buildings (not the windmill unfortunately) including neat provisions in sacks and boxes.
Granted, their prices are justifiably a little higher than some similar things out there but the quality is a serious bump. If you see scenery simply as a means of blocking lines of sight then frankly, I'd look at MDF stuff, it's cheaper and it'll do the same job. But. If you are like us (by which I include the Beard Bunker crew) and think that lovingly painted and realistic miniatures deserve a lovingly painted and realistic landscape to fight over then they can't be beaten in my opinion. Good terrain tells stories just as effectively as well posed miniatures. Battlefields can be re-positionable dioramas that really enhance the game. It makes me so sad to see some of the tournament spaces in the world pitting fantastically painted forces over plain green mdf grass and cardboard box houses. I know there's a cost/effect criteria in effect there and the situations aren't comparable but there surely should be a middle ground. Anyway, enough of that. On with some assembly:
There really is only one job to do on this model, reinforcing the joins of the arms of the windmill. Normally when pinning there is the awkward task of lining up the pin holes. On something like this you can automatically line up the holes by simply pushing straight up through the pilot holes you've drilled already. Press the arm into position and then drill up through the holes you've drilled in the shaft and continue up into the arms. Hard to describe, hence, photos. Eventually the various bits will be pinned together with wire but for now I left it in sub-assemblies for ease of painting. I marked which arms match to which sockets as each will be in a slightly different place and you might as well get it right. Now, on to painting:
Having watched Charlie all but weep tears of blood trying to get these to prime properly with spray cans I figured another path needed to be found. See, those lovely deep cuts that make painting a joy make proper priming something of a nightmare. Owning an airbrush already I figured that the vallejo surface primer would be a good choice. I was right. Using the airbrush means that you can change the angles on the hop so you can cover all the cracks evenly. I still had to do two coats, one from above, one from beneath but the whole process took only about 12 minutes or so. Even better, from that 200ml tub of paint I used maybe 8ml of it doing the whole building. I'd have expected to use about a quarter of a can of spray paint. This way can save a bunch of propellant expense. Granted, you need a airbrush first but if you can keep it rolling through an equivalent ten cans of spray you'll pay most of it back. Plus it does other stuff. Probably not enough to recommend owning an airbrush on this alone but another reason I'm happy to have one.
While I had the airbrush out I thought I'd steal a march on the woodwork. A coat of Model Air Camo Black-Brown started the process nicely. When I've figured out what I'm going to use on the stones then I'll do the same. More in part two, where we'll take it from basecoat to finished and if there's time add the weathering, if not, heck, there'll be a part three :)
TTFN
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| This post was nearly titled "Round like a Circle in a Spiral" but that was waaaay to oblique. |
Caution, potential hyperbole ahead. I simply cannot praise Tabletop World's output highly enough. Lets go through the reasons why. First, the material: Yes, resin isn't my favourite (I think plastic is the natural material for wargaming) but this resin is superb. It's solid, strong, sturdy, a nice clean cream colour that helps to show off the detail even before you paint it and best of all the total lack of bubbles. They must be pressure casting as the quality is better than anything I've seen. Next; the casting method: I'll straight up admit, I have no idea, none, how on earth they keep their moulds intact. Almost everything they make is full of gorgeous deep undercuts to give that rich detail and cast in as few pieces as possible. Whole buildings are in two and three chunks. It surely has to eat the mould silicone. Finally we come to the real deal. The sculpting. These guys literally build their pieces stone by modelled stone. They don't carve mortar lines in, they build whole houses. Their wood shingles have proper wood-grain and chunks missing. There's even full interior detailing on most of their buildings (not the windmill unfortunately) including neat provisions in sacks and boxes.
Granted, their prices are justifiably a little higher than some similar things out there but the quality is a serious bump. If you see scenery simply as a means of blocking lines of sight then frankly, I'd look at MDF stuff, it's cheaper and it'll do the same job. But. If you are like us (by which I include the Beard Bunker crew) and think that lovingly painted and realistic miniatures deserve a lovingly painted and realistic landscape to fight over then they can't be beaten in my opinion. Good terrain tells stories just as effectively as well posed miniatures. Battlefields can be re-positionable dioramas that really enhance the game. It makes me so sad to see some of the tournament spaces in the world pitting fantastically painted forces over plain green mdf grass and cardboard box houses. I know there's a cost/effect criteria in effect there and the situations aren't comparable but there surely should be a middle ground. Anyway, enough of that. On with some assembly:
There really is only one job to do on this model, reinforcing the joins of the arms of the windmill. Normally when pinning there is the awkward task of lining up the pin holes. On something like this you can automatically line up the holes by simply pushing straight up through the pilot holes you've drilled already. Press the arm into position and then drill up through the holes you've drilled in the shaft and continue up into the arms. Hard to describe, hence, photos. Eventually the various bits will be pinned together with wire but for now I left it in sub-assemblies for ease of painting. I marked which arms match to which sockets as each will be in a slightly different place and you might as well get it right. Now, on to painting:
Having watched Charlie all but weep tears of blood trying to get these to prime properly with spray cans I figured another path needed to be found. See, those lovely deep cuts that make painting a joy make proper priming something of a nightmare. Owning an airbrush already I figured that the vallejo surface primer would be a good choice. I was right. Using the airbrush means that you can change the angles on the hop so you can cover all the cracks evenly. I still had to do two coats, one from above, one from beneath but the whole process took only about 12 minutes or so. Even better, from that 200ml tub of paint I used maybe 8ml of it doing the whole building. I'd have expected to use about a quarter of a can of spray paint. This way can save a bunch of propellant expense. Granted, you need a airbrush first but if you can keep it rolling through an equivalent ten cans of spray you'll pay most of it back. Plus it does other stuff. Probably not enough to recommend owning an airbrush on this alone but another reason I'm happy to have one.
While I had the airbrush out I thought I'd steal a march on the woodwork. A coat of Model Air Camo Black-Brown started the process nicely. When I've figured out what I'm going to use on the stones then I'll do the same. More in part two, where we'll take it from basecoat to finished and if there's time add the weathering, if not, heck, there'll be a part three :)
TTFN
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