Rocketeers, Day 7

I didn't make it, too much else I had to do today. But all that is left are some washes and highlighting, and cleaning up the rocket packs and painting those. It shouldn't take long to do that tomorrow. Maybe I can claim Thursday didn't count. :p

Rocketeers, day 6

No work done yesterday, I spent the evening playing operation on my computer and then reinstalling everything. What fun.

Today, I painted up the harnesses for the rocket packs in Ceramcoat "Charcoal", ammo pouches for the SMGs in Timberline Green, and pistol holsters in Autumn Brown same as the jackets.





Tomorrow is my last day. Hopefully I can get gloves, weapons, helmets and the occasional bare head, plus some washes and highlighting, done in one day. We'll see.

Rocketeers, day 4

No pictures today, computer problems. You will have to imagine an even coat of paint on the pants and boots. Hopefully I'll have the computersorted out tomorrow.

Rocketeers, day 3

A quick post; I had a late day at work today and not much time to paint.



The pants are FolkArt "Camel". Again, two coats are needed for good coverage. I'll do a second quick layer tomorrow, then get to the boots and etc. And get the rocket packs ready, I hope.

Rocketeers, day 2

Today I started with a heavy drybrush of white over top of yesterday's black primer. This should give them a subtle shading under the blocked in paint, as well as bringing out all the details so I can actually see what I am painting. I didn't worry about the boots, since they will be painted black anyway.





I then painted the jackets in Ceramcoat's 'Autumn Brown'. Coverage isn't great, so it took two coats to even out.





Tomorrow I'll do the pants and boots, then start working on the details if I have the time.

A new one week project: Rocketeers!

I've decided I want to run a pulp adventure game for Bayou Wars 2011, using the "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum" rules from Too Fat Lardies. I've painted up a test Rocket Corps figure to try out the paint scheme, and now we'll all see if I can paint the other 17 in 7 days.

The figures are well cast and well sculpted, with only a few small bits of flash and one or two figures with a slight mold misalignment. A bit of filing cleaned the worst of it to where it isn't noticeable. The metal is soft enough that it files down quite easily, which is good since I am cutting the wings off of the jet packs to get more of a "Rocketeer" look to them. Some quick work with the Dremel should take care of it quickly.

Today all I did was prime the figures with black Liquitex acrylic gesso. Because primer is boring, I've got some pictures of the test paint for you instead. As always, click for a larger image.


Front

Left side

And the right. I am planning to make flag decals for the shoulder patches, which is why it is painted white at the moment. I won't have that done this week, I want to fill up a sheet of decal paper rather than using just one corner of a sheet.


A player's perspective.


Another angle.


Two squads, plus a few extras, in their lovely black primer.

Back to work

Wow, I didn't realize how badly I've failed that "post every month" thing. Lots of work going on, very little of it interesting. To get something out here while I get some projects ready to photograph, here's a peek at some decals I've been working on:

Once I've got my new spray booth in working order, I'll be ready to prep the models, print the decals and see how well it works. I've also got some other things on the workbench, I'll try to post some photos of them soon.

Who let Bill have the airbrush!

Work progresses on my preparations for Bayou Wars.  I'm just about finished "prettying up" the shoreline cloth with my airbrush, adding sandy beach and some broken up patches of color to represent farms and so on.  I'm not entirely happy with it - in hindsight, the field bits should have been much smaller - but it's good enough for government work.



Here you can clearly see where I let the airbrush hose drag across the lake in the corner  :/  I'll touch that up once it's dried.


And, from the seaward side.  Next to (and under) the compressor you can see some of the masks I used while spraying.  In some places I used the masks, in others I didn't bother.  Overall it went pretty well, except for the numerous times I forgot myself and dragged the hose through freshly applied paint.

Once it's all dried (and I fix the lake in the corner) I'll set up with my hex grid template and put the hexes on in white paint.  Once they are in place, I'll lay out the ocean cloth, put this one on top and see how it looks.

Preparing for Bayou Wars

I've slipped a bit (ok, a lot) from my New Year's resolution, due to some unpleasant family events.  Now I find myself with just over two months to get ready for a playtest of my game for Bayou Wars this year.  To keep track of where I'm at and help me stay focused, I put a list of what I need to do in the sidebar.  As I complete tasks, I'll mark things off the list.  When something interesting happens, I'll post about it as well.

Basing the SG teams

For those who are interested, here's a quick walkthrough of how I am basing the SG teams.  The bases themselves are 3/4" fender washers.  I filled the hole with wood putty then glued a figure on it with white glue.  Once that was dry, I built up around the figures' cast on bases with Golden's "Light Modeling Paste".  The paste dries white, so I painted it brown.

To texture the surface, I used white glue and Woodland Scenics railroad ballast and earthblend turf.


I put together a magnetic stand that I used while painting the bases and putting on the ground cover.  It's simply a small wooden spool I got from Michaels, with two holes drilled in it and two magnets glued in the holes.  It holds the figures firmly while I'm working, and I can move the figure around however I need without worrying about getting my fingers into the areas I'm working.


First, I paint the base with undiluted white glue.  I do my best to not get any on the figure (I think I failed in this photo); if I do, I clean it up with a clean wet brush.


Next, using the scoop end of a sculpting tool I pick up some of the ballast and sprinkle it onto the base.


I'm not going for thick coverage, just a scattering of rocks on the base.


Once the rocks are in place, I drag the base through the turf flock.


Then I turn it sideways and firmly tap on the bottom of the base a few times to knock all the loose flock off, and I'm done.


The process goes pretty quickly, maybe a minute or two per base.

SG team closeups

I've been working on the bases on my SG teams, and took some closeup pictures of the nearly finished figures.  I need to clean up the base edges, but that will depend on how I want to identify teams.

One Week project, day seven

Yesterday's work looked just like day 5, except shinier, so there wasn't anything interesting to look at.  Thus, no post.  Today I used Minwax Antique Walnut polyurethane stain to wash the figures.  Not much to say about it, I just brushed the stuff on and let it do its thing. All that is left is a matte coat to take off the shine and basing them.

 

 

I'm not very happy with how the black uniforms turned out.  They would have worked better with a bit of contrast; maybe using different shades of grey on parts of the figure.  A lesson for next time.

One Week project, day five

This really should be day four, since I couldn't paint yesterday, but I'll be a good boy.  :)

As I said before, today I painted unit badges (I know that's not the right word, but my brain isn't cooperating at the moment) and other bits I'd missed before.  The Javelin launcher tubes (back row) were painted with Ceramcoat's Green Sea to get a subtle difference form the uniforms.  The sniper teams' hats got the same color as their uniforms.  Badges are a black circle with a Rain Grey dot in the center; at this size, any more detail than that wouldn't be visible.  Pictures are below.

Tomorrow, after all the paint dries completely, I'll give everyone a coat of Future.  And then Friday they'll get the dip, and I'll be done with them.  Once I have a stack of figures ready I'll hit them all with a matte coat, and then I'll worry about basing.


EDIT:  Rather than spamming RSS feeds with little of interest, I'll just say here that day six looks just like day 5, except shinier.  Tomorrow should be more interesting.

One Week project, day three

Day three is done, and I've painted the flesh on all but one stick of figures.  Since I expected to only get about half of them done, I'm doing better than planned.

I put several colors (Dark brown, bambi brown, medium flesh and fleshtone, all Ceramcoat; while on the topic, the uniforms are wedgewood green) on my palette and switched between them from figure to figure for variety.  I slopped it a little bit, but I can clean that up once I finish the skin.

Tomorrow evening I'll be busy, and don't plan to do more than get the last of the skin painted and clean up my sloppy brushwork.  Next post on Wednesday, after I get the shoulder badges painted and take care of the details I missed (like the Javelins).

One Week project, day two

For day two I painted pants and sleeves green on most of the figures getting green uniforms, though I didn't manage to get the last five done.  The green appears too light now, but I plan to finish these off with a dip and that should get it to about the right shade.

 

(click to view larger) 

I'm pleased with my progress so far.  Tomorrow's plan is to finish the last guys getting green uniforms and start on the flesh.

One Week project, day one

Over on MacPhee's Miniature Men, Scott posted daily updates on his project to paint 250 figures in one week.  I decided to try to push myself into painting more (or at least stay on a project until its finished), and try the same with some 15mm US Army figures from Rebel Minis.  I bought their Force on Force US Army platoon box (about 60 figures) to use as Stargate Command teams and mid-tech troops for scifi games.  I like the figures;  they were molded cleanly and have good detail, with little flash to remove.  They should be fun to paint.

I plan to have about 2/3 of them in the early series green uniforms, and the other 1/3 in the black uniforms that showed up later.  I cleaned them up for painting a few weeks ago; today I glued them to craft sticks, primed them with black gesso and followed that with a drybrush of Ceramcoat charcoal grey.

 

Figures hot-glued to their craft sticks. Click the image for a closer (but not particularly interesting at this point) view.

  

Primed and drybrushed.

After some problems with the hot glue not holding the figures very well, I grabbed some more sticks and glued the figures down with Elmers' glue instead.   I'll go back in the morning and touch up the spots where I scuffed paint off raised surfaces while switching them.  Hopefully they'll come off the craft sticks easily when I'm done.

Resolutions

I've realized that I haven't been keeping this updated, or getting much work done on much of anything for a while. No real reason for it, I'm just easily distracted. Thus, in addition to the usual New Years' resolution failures (lose weight, keep up with the housekeeping, etc.) I've also resolved to put paint on figures every day I'm at home and to update the blog at least monthly. So, to further that, photos of the month's work.

First, some German Aeronef from Brigade Models, ordered from Wizard's Workshop.

(As usual, click on the pictures for larger versions.)

This is the German Fleet Pack #3, mostly completed.  I still need to detail the windows and finish up the bases with nametags.  I misplaced the labels I use for the nametags, and need to find them or get new ones. 

All were primed with Liquitex grey gesso and painted (Ceramcoat color names unless stated otherwise) with Hippo Grey hulls, Bambi Brown covered with Golden Brown decks, and Folk Arts' Parchment for the windows.  Tail markings are Black, Parchment and Vallejo's Flat Red. 

A Moltke class Battlecruiser

Prince Heinrich heavy cruiser

Karlsruhe destroyer leader. 

The pack should have had two of the Karlsruhe and a VA7 patrol nef, but mine had three Karlsruhe instead.

These are fun and pretty quick to paint up.  The tail marking suffer from my inability to paint a straight line, so I'm going to try to make decals (with the Testors decal kit) to replace them.  We'll see how well it works out.

We'll also see how well the resolutions work out.  Maybe I'll manage to finish up some of these other projects on my workbench.