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.

Some progress on the British

I'm painting up some of the British now; the martians need some file work before I can start painting them.  Below are some in-progress shots, up to what I completed today.

I'm using a method I read on TMP (I think), painting from the bottom up rather than the inside out.  It works well for me when I do it right, because I'm less worried about staying "between the lines" as I paint.  I just have to worry about one line, the other side will be cleaned up when I move up the figure.

The earlier martian test was painted top-down.  I didn't like that as much, because it turns out often will rest the figure on its head so I can get to the bottom of weapons and equipment.  This scuffed the paint off the already painted helmet.  Bottom up works much better.

Also, I really hate painting white.  

Test Figures for Colonial Mars

I've finally finished the Martian native test figure for my Colonial Mars project, and have the pictures to prove it.  Here are shots of him and the earlier British soldier I finished.  

(Click the images for larger copies.)

Both figurse are from RAFM's Space: 1889 line; one from the Soldiers of the Queen set and the other from Legions of Mars.  The British soldier is on a Litko plywood base, with wood filler bringing the surface up to the level of the figure's cast-on base.  The base hasn't been painted yet.  Paints are all acrylics, with a gloss coat of Future followed by washes and sealed with Krylon's Matte Finish spray.

Both were fun, quick paint jobs.  It should be easy for me to paint up both units of figures quickly.

Lightbox

Lightboxes are all the rage nowadays, and now that I have one I can see why. Photos taken in the lightbox are much clearer and brighter than the usual rigs I set up on my desk.



Construction was simple. I got two sheets of 20" x 30" foamcore, and cut them down to four 20" x 15" pieces. On three of them, I cut out a rectangle in the center, leaving a 2" border along each edge. I taped the four pieces together (with duct tape, of course) into a long box, and cut pieces from the cutout sections to fill the back. If the foamcore is colored on one side, make sure the white side is on the inside of the box. The open sides were covered with tissue paper cut to size, held in place with double-sided tape.



The box is held onto a cheap wooden tv tray with a pair of binder clips. Two cheap clip-on lamps provide the light; each has a 100W broad-spectrum bulb in it. Position the lamps so they are right against the tissue paper to ensure all the light goes into the lightbox instead of reflecting off the outside.



The backdrop is some light blue construction paper taped to a long piece of posterboard. You can use pretty much anything, as long as it's fairly long and can curve. That curved backdrop hides the corner at the back of the lightbox.



And, last, a cropped image of the figure. Right now I'm lacking a lamp for the top of the box. Placing another light there should take care of the shadows on each side of the figure.

Kishi House

I did a few experiments with cork in the style of Matakishi's generic desert buildings, just to see how well it would work with the cheapo cork tiles you can get in Wal-Mart and Michaels. The first thing I found out is that the tiles you can buy at Michaels for US$10 per pack of four appear identical to the ones you can buy at Wal-Mart for $5 a pack. The tiles shown here I bought at a drugstore for about $5 a pack; they're the same brand as the ones at Wal-Mart, and appear to be identical, but the packaging is slightly different. Once I'm done with these four tiles I'll open up the one from Wal-Mart and see if there's a difference in how they cut.



The cork cut very easily, easier than foamcore. For the windows and doors I cut all the way through the cork, going from a corner to the center of that edge. 8 cuts per window, but it went quickly because I made all the "down" cuts on the sheet at once, then turned the sheet 90 degrees and made all the "left" cuts. And so on, until I'd turned the sheet full circle and could pop out the scrap from the windows. To make the long exterior cuts, I made three passes much like I would with foamcore. If I tried to cut all the way through in one pass it would tear out pieces of the cork, but using several light cuts resulted in smooth, clean edges. There was some mess, tiny (0.1mm or so) bits of cork that came free when I popped the windows out, but there's no visible effect on the edges.



I glued most of it together with superglue. A lot of superglue. Surprisingly, I only glued myself to the superglue tube once. Some parts were glued together with wood glue instead; they both work, but the superglue dries much faster, letting me assemble the pieces in much less time.



Matchsticks (from Michaels) provided the windowsills and ledges for the drop-in ceiling. The cork is 5mm thick; I glued lugs to the bottom of the second floor about 6mm in from the edges to help center it on the bottom floor. It goes on and off easily, while the roof takes some fiddling to set into place properly.

The base is a piece of compressed paper board that I got at Michaels. It's basically the same material as the back of a clipboard, and if I can find a supply of cheap clipboards I'll use them instead. I guess it's time to visit the dollar store again.