Trying New Things

So a local painting club has started up, and I went ahead and joined.  I've been putzing about on things to paint, and didn't want to take my latest WIP out due to it being somewhat fragile.  Instead I grabbed some of my Sedition Wars models.  Here's what I accomplished in four hours:



There's a fourth model hiding behind the big guy.  Four models in four hours nearly done.  How'd I do it?  I was following the recommendations from a tutorial I picked up off the Studio McVey forums (Studio McVey produces Sedition Wars). 




The basic change I did was to use much thinner paints. I was really surprised at how quickly things started to come together.  I used to use thicker paints in an attempt to get a more solid coat, but using thinner paints gives the effect of a wash on top of coating.  The downside is that it can take multiple coats, but with how fast I was going it wasn't all that bad.




These are easily some of the best things I've painted, and my total time across two sessions was about six hours.  Six hours, four figures.  That's pretty damn good, and makes me want to grab more minis and try other quick paint jobs.




I've started painting the archers for my commission, and the going is a little slower, but that's more due to the paint style.



The blue is supposed to be dark, and what you see is two attempts I took at it.  Neither sat well with me and I have tried something else that seems to be working more effectively.  My plan is to use my painting club nights to do personal stuff, and then spend at least one day a week working on commissions.  Should prove effective.

Another Commission

Having resumed The Babylon Project once more I find myself idly browsing ebay for more miniatures.  I happened to come across some of the harder to find ones I've been looking for.  A friend of mine made me an offer I couldn't refuse:



What you're looking at (aside from the patches) are 2 Shadow Omega Cruisers and an Earthforce Civilian Transport.  The Shadow Omega Cruisers are ones I see from time to time, and while it would take some digging I know I'd eventually find one.  The real treasure here is the transport.  For the past several years I've been looking at Babylon 5 Wars, and there was a point where they were picked up by Mongoose Publishing.  When I did my original order the Civilian Transport was one I remembered seeing, but when I went looking for it I couldn't find it.  It started to become mythical, and I was feeling kinda down because you see it show up in a lot of episodes.  The point is that my friend came across one, and it is now mine!



There's a LOT of cleaning up that needs to be done.  Flash to be removed, and I've already had one issue with glue.  I'll talk more about that later though.  The other piece I got is the Shadow Omega:



Going to need to do a lot of fiddling with these two cruisers.  At a glance it looks like there's only two points for attaching the fiddly bits that compose the "shadow" portion.  I'll have to do some research into these before I really dig into them, but for now I'm going to put them to the side.

With all good finds there is a price.  My friend is rather fond of doing trades, and this time around is no exception:



27 Bretonian Archers, a Shadow Omega Cruiser of his own, and a handful of WWII German Tanks which will probably find their way onto an OGRE battlefield.  I've been doing some experimenting with my paints and if things go well I may be able to start taking commissions a bit more regularly.  I just have to see if I've improved my painting speed, but I'll talk about that next time.

Nytmares Come Alive

A long time ago I picked up an exclusive model from Wyrd.  The Nightmare Edition: Lord Chompy Bits.  He's an alternate version of one of their standard leaders, and the model is incredible to both look at and hold.



He stands at almost four inches tall, and is all pewter!  Why has it taken me so long to get this masterpiece built and primed?  Well there are some issues I needed to overcome in order to get to this point.  The first one was what to use for his base.  I didn't want to use just any old base, and I had spent a lot of time looking at different bases as well as trying to come up with ideas.  It wasn't until I came across War Gama's booth at Adepticon that I finally found one I was satisfied with.  So I was ready to go right?  Not quite:



What you're looking at is one of my first two attempts to assemble LCB.  There are two main pieces: the lower half, which only has a tail which was easily attached, and the upper half, which consisted of four different arms, the shoulders,  a front torso, back torso, and the head.  The end result is that balancing the top half on the bottom half resulted in him becoming very top heavy and pitching forward.  I ended up calling on the same friend who helped me assemble my Nicodem Avatar.



I had told my friend of my plight, and he rigged it up so that there's a center pole holding the upper half aloft.  However this left a large gaping hold where the torso should join the pelvis.  With so many pieces on a such a large model there was bound to be some gap issues.



I decided to attack it head on, and ended up putting some grey stuff inside along the join before finally filling out the front.  I needed to add lots of filler where the shoulders topped the torso, and around each of the arms.  Also had a hole in the tail to cover up, as well as some extra support I put in where the tail joined the pelvis.  I think the only area I didn't use grey stuff was the jawline as it still looked natural to me.



The touch ups I put on are ok, and a casual glance won't see them, but lets take a closer look at the main gap:



It's a little rough, but not bad.  I think it'll be less noticeable once it's been painted up.

While I had my greystuff out I decided to make a little gift to thank my friend for helping me out:



Just a simple tophat for him to use as a marker.  The process was a bit simple.  I started with a flat and thin oval which I curled up the sides on to use as the brim, and at the same time I did a flat tipped cone where I put in indentation to give the hat some life/depth.



After letting them dry I made sure that the tip of the cone was flat enough, and then I drilled a hole into it so I could use a pin to help hold it to the base.



After some glue and a couple of hours to let it dry I got out a little more grey stuff and did a little ribbon around the join.  Overall I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, and I'm sure my friend will be delighted to see the results.