More Progress More Minis

The clock is ticking down to Gen Con, and I'm painting full steam to get everything done.  Up this week - Purifiers and Isabeau:


Purifiers



The Purifiers weren't that difficult to paint up overall, but were still a little on the smallish size.  What this means for me is that it requires a little more precision, and usually ends up with a few muttered curses when I have issues maneuvering my brush to hit the hard to reach areas.

The other piece I painted up is the Purifier Officer, Isabeau:




Not too shabby if I do say so myself.  I've got a thread on the SPM forums for my finished pieces to share with my fellow RK fans, and one of them mentioned that her eyes were not up to my usual level.  I wanted to brush this off, but he was right.  I went back and started the face over again fresh.



The end result here is much more passable.  I'm not completely satisfied with it, and I don't know if I need to go back again or if it's just my difficulties with having the sculpt fully assembled.  If I do go for the repaint I may just pick up the metal version and avoid the difficulties of the sword.  The reason why is that the eyes in that pic are starting to go 3D because all the layers are starting to create a bulge.

I've already started work on my next piece, and it's really coming along.  The way it's turning out is make me consider going back and doing more work on all my Shattered Swords so far.  Here's a small teaser that I shows a little bit of the work I had started on, though not the part that's making me want to go back and add more (that comes later):

Waiting For Paints

Having an airbrush is pretty awesome.  I can do basecoats in a fraction of the time it would normally take, which leaves more time for details.  The hard part I'm coming across, however, is getting airbrush specific paints.  While I can thin down my own paints I can see the potential for inconsistency, which doesn't make me happy.  Airbrush specific paints use a finer pigment, and are really really thin.  I could use them as a wash on my miniatures without the airbrush, to give you an idea of how thin they are. 

So why is it difficult to get my hands on airbrush paints?  Paint comes in different mediums, like acryllic or enamel, and there are multiple styles of paint for airbrushes.  These styles include paints for body paint, car paint, clothes, tans, and models.  There aren't too many lines out there, and the two I've heard of so far are Minitaire and Vallejo Air.  I mentioned both of these in my previous post, and that getting ahold of Minitaire paints has been rather difficult.  I have gotten my hands on some minitaire paints, and I'm trying to find an order for the bulk of paints I wanted to try.  It was delivered to my doorstep, but either disappeared or wasn't actually delivered.

The results from my last airbrush session can be found on my friend's site.  I've been a bit busy trying to read up on coding, exercising, and work.  I've actually taken a video that I need to upload to my PC and check out and see if I can upload it to the blog.  With any luck I'll find a free moment this weekend to take care of this.

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.

All the Livelong Day

Things are starting to settle into place, and I've just about finished up my Arcanists for Adepticon.  Lets dig in with Kang




Kang came out pretty nice.  The one thing I'm not happy with is his eyes.  I've made several attempts to fix them, and this is the best I could get it....for now.  Not sure if I'll change them in the future or not, but I might.  I'm starting to notice some interesting discrepancies with the plastic molds.  In the case of Kang his right arm is a bit over-proportioned.  Look at the shoulder area, that's one beefy arm, and quite a bit larger than his other arm.

Up next I have two out of three Railworkers ready.






One thing that has bugged me about these guys is that they don't look very interesting.  They're just kinda standing there.  Not very interesting.  Very few models can just be posed to stand there doing nothing and actually look decent.  Need a little action in the sculpts.  Sculpts like this can be a bit difficult to paint.  I do like how the red and the brownish-green work together though.

One thing I will draw your attention to is their eyes, or lack thereof.  The Railworkers, Kang, and Mei Fang have all had eyes that look like these guys before they're painted.  As you can see there's not a lot of area for the actual eyes, and the result is that when they get painted in you end up with eyes Like Kang's and Mei Fang's.  You can get them to look sort of ok, but with both Kang and Mei I was really tempted to just leave them as is.  The Clint Eastwood look isn't that bad on them, but I also want my guys to have eyes to see from as well.

I have a couple more Arcanist models to get painted, but I'm holding off on those so I can make sure I get my Guild stuff painted for the Team Tourney.  Here's a couple of sneak peaks at what I'm working on (and will hopefully finish later this week).



Taking a look at Perdita's (the one on the left) eyes they look a little funny.  Eyes do not seem to be my strong suite this season.  I'll go back and try to fix em up again, but really the way the model is it's actually quite difficult to see her eyes.



That's pretty much the view you have from the table, and head on as well.  The brim of the hat pulled low over the eyes looks REALLY cool, but as with Mei Fang, Kang, and the Railworkers there's not a lot of real estate for eyes.  There is a bit more than the others though, so I hope to have those fixed in short order.

Anger Management

I'm a guy who pretty much has to do his own stuff.  There's a sense that if I let others get involved that it lowers the model's effectiveness.  Well my Nicodem Avatar has presented me with an interesting situation.  I love that the model is being born aloft by a host of zombies, but when I was done painting the pieces my attempts at assembling them proved wanting.

 

This was a model that if I continued to try and assemble it that one of two things would happen.  Either I would do a half ass job and be frustrated with it and not want to look at it, or I would throw it across the room in a fit of rage.  I admit that the prospect of either was unappealing, but what options did I have?  Recently I commissioned a friend to do some scenery pieces that had been lying around and collecting dust.  I wasn't going to get to them anytime this decade, and it helped my buddy get more models.  A win-win situation all around.  What I got really blew me away.



So obviously a fellow painter of no small skill.  I'm sitting at my desk with my frustration ready to have me re-enact scenes from The Incredible Hulk when I decide to give him a call.  I only needed to say a few sentences before he understood the entire situation.  With many sincere assurances that he would take care of things I began to feel calm again.  There have not been many times where I've felt comfortable with letting another work on my models, but this would be one of them.  While I will gladly hand over the pieces for him to work his magic, I'll be hard at work getting the crowning piece ready to cap it all off.