Monday, September 28, 2009

Drop pod part 3


I have basecoated the green portions of the model with the regular Knarloc Green. It went pretty fast, because I tried to paint in a cross pattern and the foundation paints seem to love this way of applying paint.
Basically what I did is wet my brush a bit, squeeze almost all the moisture then get some paint on a large drybrush. With this I painted one layer from top to bottom and one layer from left to right. As you can see from the picture, the result is messy on the edges but very uniform where the paint should be. All the green areas took some 30 minutes with some slacking and waiting for paint to dry between layers.
Next up will be finishing the greens, then cleaning up and going for the white portions.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Drop pod part 2 and a celebration

I have finished doing the basic metallic drybrush on the drop pod. It's a great model, the best I've assembled until now as far as how everything fits together. The pod in the picture has many pieces that are not glued together, and is stable enough to handle and test various things.
The assembly instructions are lacking one small detail: the marine harnesses need to be placed on the pod's floor together with the central console, otherwise you would have to cut some of the plastic in order to place them correctly. This is what happened to me while building this drop pod, but it's not noticeable by any means.



Also, if you want to have a good looking painted pod interior you may want to paint the harnesses and the console BEFORE glueing them to the pod's floor, otherwise you won't be able to reach the console with your brush.

The picture above is the 100th picture I am uploading to the blog after about 1 year since I've started painting miniatures. It's not 1 year yet, but we're getting close. It's quite nice to see how much one person can progress from absolute 0 to .. more than that just by practicing and dedicating some (not a lot) of time to a certain field. So I guess the moral would be that anything can be learned up to a point if one practices enough.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Drop pods ahoy!


I got a new transport in the mail today that had 2 Drop Pods and a Land Speeder Storm, so I quickly tried to assemble one part of the drop pod, namely half of the interior. Much to my surprise, I failed to see some of the hints that the assembly guide showed me, such as gluing the panels on the top turbine upside down :) Oh well, now I'll have to live with a little strange drop pod.
One nice thing about the drop pod is the turret mount. That should not be glued to the rest of the turbine, because it can be fit with 2 weapons and it can rotate freely. Combine that with a spiral pattern on the turbine head and it should make for a great showpiece :)

Also, I have a few ideas how to magnetize the weapons to make the pod even more flexible (not that anyone would actually USE a Deathwind launcher , but still)

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Warmachine/Hordes planner update

I've been doing a few small tweaks to the Warmachine planner:
  • Added the official Retribution of Scyrah units for MK1 (the planner is , at the moment, MK1 only). This makes the database 100% complete for MK1 Warmachine and Hordes.
  • Fixed some bugs.
  • Made epic warcasters and warlocks respect the 750 point limit minimum. So, if you don't see them listed in there set the maximum points to over 750 and they'll show up.
Hopefully, if time allows, a new interface for the planner will be up by the end of the week and it will mark the closing of the development of this small piece of software. Following that, the MK2 planner will be in the works. Everything should be much faster and more compact while taking advantage of everything that has been done for MK1 so far.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Devastators squad done

Here are my devastators and the rest of the marines that I needed for my list. Heavy weapons are a bit "harder" to paint than normal bolters and handguns, because of their large surfaces and the need to cover them in more than one color unless you want them boring.

Here's the final result.



and some full frontal shots :)

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Devastator squad in progress



After a week or more of not touching a model, here's a small work in progress shot of my devastator squad. The armor including highlights is pretty much done, however there are still some minor touch-ups to do here and there. Weapons are also WIP, but not much work has been done on them apart from metallic brushing and washing.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Khador Destroyer done


Here's the Khador Destroyer that I've finished. I tried two different paint sets on it. The body is done with Vallejo model colors and the arms with P3 paints. As you can see there is not much difference excepting for the paint fluidity which will improve with practice.

I tried to use as many P3 paints as possible to make the warjack look as close to the reference models as I could. It's not really there, but I'm sure the quality will improve with the next 'Jacks.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Warmachine forays


I've been working a bit on the warjack arms that come with the battlebox. I believe I'm quite ready with the red part over there, but I guess I'll try and to an extra layer of highlights for the Khador Highlight color, because at its current state it will blend perfectly after varnish is going to be sprayed on. I've cleaned up all the non-red parts with Thamar Black , and the next stage will be to paint the metallic pieces and make them look good.

Also, in the image above you can see my first attempt at non metalic metals on the bombard cannon arm.

The Warmachine planner has been updated with some minor fixes regarding field allowance (Fenris, Zerkova, Gun Mage Adept, Yuri the Axe) as well as made the epic versions of characters to exclude the non-epic from the list and the other way around.
Hordes factions and minions are also complete , so you can plan out your Warmachine AND Hordes list on the same page.
I'm considering some interface improvements but they will have to wait a bit because of some unexpected developments in a very important project I'm working on. I have also added a link to the Warmachine planner on the right navigation bar, right below the BOLS mini-banner.
Closing the Warmachine section, if you have any suggestions for the planner or spot any inaccuracies in the unit prices, field allocation values , etc don't hesitate to send me a message here or comment on the blog.


On the 40K front I'm seriously considering getting a couple of Land Speeders Storm to make a strong 1000 point list. Won't use them both at the same time, but still.