Firestorm Armada WIP part 2
Yes, this is a record for me I think with two posts in two days... I got all excited about finishing off the Sorylian Fleet so quickly that I decided to spend the morning doing up the Terran Fleet as well. Here are the results
Firestorm Armada Terran Fleet
Firestorm Armada Terran Fleet
Pretty much the same theory as last time, but with a few twists. I tried some pre-shading on these that both worked and didn't work. The idea is to put down a shading layer by airbrushing thin lines around all of the areas that should be in shade. Because the airbrush puts paint down so thinly (we're talking nanometers thick) it ends up slightly transparent so the pre-shading layer shows through the basecoats. At least that's the idea. It worked ok, but my abilities with the airbrush aren't up to par with the level of detail and accuracy needed to pre-shade well. More practice is needed 
The thin lines are done with masking tape and a lot of patience. You have to be really careful that the masking tape is flat to the surface, or the paint is just going to run under it (as happened with the yellow, which is notoriously bad for that effect). Fixing that is just a matter of going back over it with the base gray and trying again (touching up works to an extent, depends on how perfect you want the models really)
Overall i'm happy with the way both fleets have turned out, given the lack of time and effort I put into them. They were very quick and easy to paint up, and the sculpts are fantastic to work with but could do with a slight sanding on the flat surfaces due to a roughness left by the casting process.
Firestorm Armada WIP
Yes, I know. I'm finally putting another post on here at last To be fair, i've been taken up with painting my entry for the 4tk painting competition in the summer and i've wanted to keep that a secret till the day...
Anyway, on with the goodness. I've started painting up my Firestorm Armada fleets at last and, being spaceships, I decided that it'd be an ideal time to muck around with the airbrush on something other than German vehicles. So, here we are. The preliminary airbrushing is done now, and it's just detailing, pin washing and maybe some go faster stripes if i'm in the mood
Firestorm Armada Sorylian Fleet
Firestorm Armada Sorylian Fleet
Firestorm Armada Sorylian Fleet
The colours used are all Tamiya (and i'd like to take this opportunity to say that there is no better paint to put through your airbrush. There was a lot of low-pressure, fine details to be done on these and the tamiya didn't block the brush once) and they are XF-8 (Flat Blue) along with XF-2 (Flat White) for the highlighting along the top and on the sharp edges and a bit of XF-1 (Flat Black) on the guns in preparation for some metallics.
There are ten ships all in all, and the whole job took about an hour. Most of the time was taken with putting the base coats of blue on in the first place and getting them to cover the undercoat i'd used.
Anyway, pleased with the results so far. Next step I think is the pin wash and we'll see how it looks from there.
Hobby updates
Been a while so I thought i'd update you all on what i've been up to hobby-wise recently. For the past few weeks i've been concentrating on getting the Mantic Undead army done and dusted and I can say with some confidence that the end is now in sight as the final batch of units is awaiting final basing and matt spraying and i've built all the special characters I have so they're ready for painting.
Ar-Fienel is giving me fits every time I look at her because, in the space between now and my last posts on her i've managed to accidentally snap her arm off twice and i'm frankly scared to touch her again I fully intend to pick her up again very soon though.
Today I decided to have a crack at the wire tree project i'd given myself at the 4tk summer open day. They started stocking a tree-building kit which involves a stack of wire and lots of twisting. The picture below is the result so far about about 30-45 minutes of bending and twisting. There's still a very long way to go before i'm happy with the initial branch layout. I've started on the masking tape to pad out and wrap the wires ready for the "bark" application. For reference, it's currently about 10" high and a 28mm model will happily fit under the lowest branch.
Wire tree initial stages
The main reason i've stopped for the moment is that my thumb and forefinger have some impressive blisters on them now. I recommend getting a pair of pliers to do the twisting with, especially on branches with more than 5 wires.
Not sure what season to do the tree in. I'm thinking autumn at the moment, but that's probably just because of the way i'm painting Ar-fienel... I'm also thinking of making it a bit spooky-looking so it'll fit in well with Malifaux and the like.
Mantic Undead Army
Well, here it is in all it's glory. My (nearly) complete Undead Army. I say nearly because there's still a few other bits and pieces left to do.
Mantic Undead Army (click to supersize)
So that's 45 Zombies, 40 Ghouls, 60 Skeletons, 40 Revenants and 3 catapults. All that lot was painted in about two weeks, could've been shorter but I did have other things to do
Anyway, that's it for the moment. Still to paint are the death king's cabal, the vampire on pegasus, 10 revenant cavalry, 10 ghouls, 20 skeletons, 45 zombies, 1 catapult and 20 revenants. Probably another two weeks again but i'm not rushing
Let me know what you think. For a speed-painted army, i'm very pleased with the result and i'll definitely be using the technique again on other tasks.
Mantic Skeletons finished
Ok, so it took slightly longer than I originally planned to get this together, but better late than never
So, since the last post, i've dipped the minis, based them and matt varnished them.
Finished Skeletons
I'm very pleased with the way these have come out. The dip has worked a treat, I didn't actually dip them though. I tried that on one of the miniatures and spent more time brushing off the excess than I did just brushing the stuff on to begin with, so I just brushed it on which also gave me a lot more precision about where and how the dip was placed.
The reason this post took so long was that I got a bit carried away and i've now painted, dipped and based up probably around 80 skeletons and 45 zombies so far. Just got the 40 ghouls and a few bits and pieces left to do. Oh, and all the new minis that I won/swapped at the 4TK winter open day yesterday... Time to spend the day building, spraying, painting and dipping!
Mantic Skeletons Super-fast paintjob
Normally I like to take my time over a mini and get the best from it. Upon seeing my entire Mantic Undead army arrayed in front of me, I quickly decided that I needed to scrap that idea and try something a bit radical. Enter Army Painter with their range of primer sprays and dips.
One trip to the store later and I had two spray cans, one Skeleton Bone and one Necrotic Flesh and a can of strong coloured dip. Never used this stuff before so I decided to try it out on five skeletons first to see how it worked.
Mantic Skeletons pre-spray
So here are the skeletons pre-spray in their naked plastic glory. Next stage was to spray them Skeleton Bone. It's pretty cold outside right now so this was going to be a real test of the spray. I've had one of the Army Painter sprays before, a red one (can't remember the name) and I didn't think much of it as the finish was too smooth to take paint well and I ended up re-undercoating them with Citadel black spray. Anyway, here are the post-spray skeletons
Skeletons post-spray
So now they're looking all lovely and bone-coloured. Next step is to put the remaining basecoats on. Having absolutely no imagination I decided to stick with the generic colour scheme of red and blue. I also decided to break out the Citadel Foundation paints as I didn't want to have to go over the basecoats more than once. I used Mechrite Red and Mordian Blue for the main colours with Calthan Brown for the wooden bits. The metallic is Chainmail Silver from the Vallejo Game Colour range with a black to finish off the raven and feather.
Skeletons with basecoat on
As you can see I haven't been too careful with the paint but the point of this isn't to have competition-worthy figures, but simply a good-looking painted army. Next step is going to be to leave them to dry for about an hour just to make absolutely sure they're nice and dry, then use the dip. Given what i've read about the stuff, I think i'm going to go down the painting it on route rather than actually dipping them.
Check back tomorrow to see the final result
Ar-Fienel WIP Part 2
Done some more work on Ar-Fienel over the past few days. I've got the preliminary basecoats on the skin and dress with shading and highlighting and i'm happy with the way they look together. I've managed to use only 5 colours so far, mixing the shading and highlighting colours between the two which is good.
There's still a way to go with the blending and suchlike, but I want to get the preliminary coats down first before I dive into tidying the blends up. It's very patchy at the moment and i'm hoping that I can tidy that up once i've settled on the colours. Still umming and aaahing about using metallics on the filigree on her dress and quiver or whether to go for some NMM on it. They're fine enough that I reckon I can get away with NMM and still make it look good.
Also not sure how to approach the hair. Do I make it look like they're actually vines in her hair, or do I treat them as a "metal" headdress?
Ar-Fienel work in progress
I purchased this beautiful mini from the amazingly talented people at Studio McVey quite some time ago and i've only just got around to starting to paint it. I want to do justice to this miniature so i'm going to be putting a lot of effort into painting this one.
Ar-Fienel undercoated and zenithal highlighted
So far, i've undercoated and done a zenithal highlighting job on her. I've concentrated the highlighting around the face and upper body because I want to try and emphasize that area by making it brighter than the rest of the figure.
The highlighting itself was done by first coating the mini with black and then building up several shades of gray until finally a gentle white layer was applied. All these layers were applied with the airbrush to provide a very thin and finely gradated layer.
I haven't decided on a colour scheme for her yet, but I suspect it'll be something very close to the studio paintjob. I'll be posting again later when i've finalised the colour scheme and started laying down the base colours.
Current projects
Been a very long time since I updated this. What with one thing and another my hobby time has been somewhat limited over the last few months and i've been dedicating it to actually painting and gaming!
So, what have I been up to recently? My Flames of War German army is coming along very nicely with the addition of some extra units to bolster what is already a formidable force. I reckon with the new additions that the points cost to take everything would be well over 3,000 now.
Recently got into some new games as well, including Alkemy from Kraken Editions in France. This is another skirmish game based in their own world with some very nice 28mm figures available. One excellent feature is that, when you buy a starter set it includes everything you need to play the game including a tape measure! This is a nice touch and means that it's very accessible and easy to get into.
My paintjob on epic Butcher also won me the coveted Single Mini award in the painting competition at my local games club, 4TK. I am very pleased with this result and have the trophy proudly displayed in my painting room.
I've also been wanting to get more into terrain building after my successes with the ruined tower from Hirst Arts and a few other smaller bits, I feel that it is time to tackle something bigger. I've been wanting a fully scenic Flames of War board for a while and now that I managed to rope the missus into helping me to clear out the garage, I now have a work space that I can leave things set up in for months at a time. Let's face it, this is me we're talking about. This latest project isn't going to be done much before this time next year!
Some things I have in the pipeline are doing a few tips and tutorial posts for painting and terrain making for this site. Nothing earth-shattering, but just some bits and pieces that i've picked up, tried and learned from over the last few months. I think the first one will be on duplicating rust effects in different ways to get different effects.
Cryx work in progress shots
Thanks to the four day weekend, i've spent a bit of time working on my Cryx scheme and trying to decide whether I like it or not. Although I like the purple, I decided that the armour didn't look good purple so i'm going to go with plain metal for most of the armour, but make it very rusty.
A favourite Cryx tactic is to jump off ship, sink to the ocean floor and walk to shore to attack and, since they're all technically dead, I decided that they wouldn't really take much care of their armour so i'm going to make it very damaged and rusty.
I'm happy with the way the eyes have come out (they look a lot brighter and more obvious in real life), and I think they actually look like they're glowing green and since this was technically my first attempt at source lighting on a model, i'm quite pleased with it. You can also see the rusting effect on some of the armour plates. This was done with the rust colours from the Tensocrom Lifecolor sets which are acrylic paints designed for model railway enthusiasts, but work just as well on models like this. The range includes other colours like Kerosene and Petrol which aren't as useful, but the Smoke makes for a very realistic smoky effect for warjacks and the like.
You can see the original armour plate in the sort-of metallic purple which I really don't think works very well. I'm much happier with the rusted armour plates now.
A close-up of the armour plate showing the rust effect in more detail. I think a bit of thinning on some of the colours to use them more as a tint, some more stippling with them and some other techniques (as well as more damage on the armour with a knife or the dremel may be in order) could serve to make the effect even more realistic. As a test of the scheme though, i'm happy with it and don't feel the need to give him a green bath just yet
Next up is going to be shading on the "skirts". I think the colour I have on there at the moment is going to be as light as I want to go with the base colour. I want these models to be quite dark and moody so bright, sharp highlights aren't really going to work with that idea. We'll see though.
I'm also going to find another colour to use on the armour as an accent on the edging and patterning. Maybe another metallic, like the tin or copper vallejo paints or maybe try them in purple, but really beaten up. It's all a bit up in the air at the moment, but that's the point of a work in progress