Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Keeping the ball rolling..

Please excuse the long post, it has been awhile so I have quite a few projects to show progress on. I have not yet completed my terrain goal, but I'm slowly getting there. I've been concentrating on my Tau lately, and I'm finally putting some time into my Farsight piece which will hopefully be my first Golden Demon entry.

Terrain:

The river tiles were a nice learning experience with clear resin. I managed to mess up the edges by not really blocking them up properly during the resin setting. I've gotten a bit better about it in the second half (though still not perfect), and after some touchups the first batch are looking ok.



Objectives The objectives came out as well as I expected. They were a quick project for something that I had been dragging my feet on making.



My buildings have both seen some progress, though I'm nowhere near completion. I need a lot more casting to complete the bastion, and some detail work and sanding on the compound before the painting phase.




The Ethereal statue came out ok, and can be placed by itself, on top of the bastion, or on the Space Marine column. The rubble scene was formed from miscast and junk plaster. The guardsman scene was not planned, I just kinda shot from the hip.








TAU


I finished my last 6 Firewarriors, and then went back and added some squad markings to the others. I can now break them down into 6 man teams, or combine two groups for 12 man teams. I also put some more detail into squad leader markings, so they're a bit more obvious. After the firewarriors, I made a decision to change my brown earth color up to a tau ochre to match my board a bit better. It took the rest of the afternoon and a handfull of Xfiles episodes, but I powered through all my other Tau models to unify the army bases. I will take pictures of these all when I have the chance, as some of my earlier pictures are poor in quality.


As I began to work on my last devilfish, I came to the conclusion that I had to put some time into the others to make them a bit more coherent. In the end I airbrushed my original hammerhead into a gradient pattern and darker red, while trying to bring my pimped out hammerhead a bit more vibrant. I practiced using masking to spray on white panels, which was infinitely better than handpainting large areas of white (even despite a few errors in masking which left white overspray in a few places).

-Skyray/Devilfish-






-Veteran Hammerhead-






-LED Hammerhead/Devilfish-









With these pieces finished, my assembled pieces in my Tau army are complete. Granted, I have about the same amount of tau figures given to me which are sitting half assembled in a box. I haven't quite decided what to do with them yet, but maybe the Cadre will grow again in a few months..

My Farsight model will likely consume most of my hobby time for August. After that I have a rising queue of new projects to work on. Top of the list is my Raven Guard in the works for the PBL escalation league. After that, I may be painting Joe's orks for fun! Lastly I'm really looking forward to the Warhammer Fantasy box set, so I will have Skaven and High Elves to paint (as well as maybe a Fantasy themed table?)

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

May Painting Challenge Week 5 - Done!*

*I didn't quite finish the Lilith and Viktoria crews. Theyre definitely up to a tabletop quality, but I've neglected a bit of detailing to finish them off. Viktoria's crew in particular is rather unfinished in highlights and facial details. That being said, I'd rather just leave them at this point and return to finish them up at a later date.



I started this challenge on May 3rd, with the intent to finish on June 3rd. 31 models in 31 days turned into 33 models in 37 days. Not too far off from my mark, this was due more to missed days and subsequent sluggishness to restart painting when I could.

 


So whats next? 

I've had a steadily mounting pile of unfinished terrain, newest of which are some great Terranscapes resin river tiles which I can't wait to start working on. My objective markers are another set of things which should be fun, and probably pretty quick to boot.

Other pieces will be a bit more time consuming, such as the large Tau center which still needs puttywork, sanding, and some extra doodads before its even ready to paint. The bastion is also still getting its required blocks cast from Hirst Arts molds, and I'm kinda making up the pattern as I go along.. The two Tau towers have been primed for ages, but I still think they need a bit more work before they can be painted.

Terrain usually goes pretty quick, so I am going to try to have this stuff done by the beginning of July. Have some terrain just begging to be drybrushed? Still using beer cans as objectives? Join in and get some terrain finished this month!

Monday, May 24, 2010

May Painting Challenge - Week 3

Ok, so to make up for no pics last time, here's extra pictutres with this update! First up, the completed 40k projects Eldar and Orks. Finished for the most part, except for a little bit of detail work.



 I've also completed the Perdita Ortega crew for Malifaux, and started on Lilith's bunch. I am really liking these models, the sculpts speak for themselves and don't need a whole lot of paint finesse to shine.

I'm happy with my progress so far, so happy that I added 2 more models to Lilith's crew! I felt that she could really use these additions game-wise. I plan to try out some NMM and light source techniques to keep these guys interesting. I still hope to finish them before leaving for vacation this thursday, leaving only Viktoria's crew.

I am starting to get annoyed dealing with all this metal however. The resin bases have no hollow bottoms, so I cant stick them to paint pot handles like I normally do. This means I'm handling the minis too much, which leads to wear and tear. Also, the amount of chips I've caused from dropping and transporting these guys is staggering. My last part of this challenge will definitely be clearcoating all of them.

I was distracted a bit from my painting this Sunday due to my Hirst Arts molds. I managed to finally make use of my new machinery molds to pump out a few neat looking objective counters. The medium base is still a little cramped for most of my ideas, but I managed to fit them down to size. This was a good primer to other things that I can make, so expect some larger pieces of terrain in the future: Zzap guns, power generators, interior computer terminals and the like.

So there you have it, results from the first three weeks. Almost there!