A quiet week

I didn't get much done this week, just working on the shading and bases on the Germans and preparing some GZG starship minis for painting. I'll get pictures next week.

Zeppelin Troopen

I've almost finished the Zeppelin Troopen soldiers. I need to do some highlighting, and a wash on the exposed skin, and work up the bases.





Painting was pretty straightforward. Charcoal grey uniforms, black boots, reddish brown for the leather, etc. I pulled out a new trick for the goggle rims. The lenses are light grey, with sky blue "reflections". I colored the frames using a Tombow pen with a brush tip. The very fine tip of the brush pen let me get just the edges of the frames without straying (much), and because it's a pen, I don't have to worry about paint consistency or overloading a brush. I bought the pens for edging on paper models like the Hummingbird, but I'm glad I had them around for this. There's a recent thread on TMP about using pens for outlining, and I'll have to see if these will be useful elsewhere.

Walling off the world

I spent much of the week building walls for Saturday's game... which didn't get used, because we rearranged things at the last minute and didn't need them. That's ok, I figured out enough throwing these together to do up a lot of them for later games.

The first set of walls were made from cork. I just cut 2" wide strips from a (almost) 12"x12" piece of cork tile and glued them onto 1" wide bases of hardboard, then worked the bases up with some filler. I painted them sand, then drybrushed with a cream color.
(click for a larger picture)

The second set of walls were more complicated. I wanted to get some relief and structure in them, so I drew up some facings in a cad program (cadstd, a cheap and decent program for simple stuff like this) and printed them out on cardstock. One set of facings had rectangular openings, the other had arched openings. I carefully cut these out, then after a few I quit trying to be careful. :)


I glued the arched facings onto a piece of foamcore, then glued the rectangular facings over them. I glued each 2"x9.5" wall section to a hardboard base, then glued a half-inch balsa pillar at one end to make 10" sections. A quick coat of paint and they were usable. When I do these again, I want to put stonework on the tops of the walls and dress up the end pillars.

For this week, it's the Zeppelin troopen (again) and gladiators you can see in the background.