54mm Samurai arms and display base work

Serious air guitar

Well despite the Xmas silly season being well underway and a late night party that became a early morning party good progress was made.  This is my last weekend as the next two are out with holiday activities so definitely into the business end of getting this figure done.

Putty work

Repaint done

Both arms were glued on (using two part epoxy glue) and the gaps puttied up.  It’s a bit odd after a few months of seeing the figure without any arms.  He suddenly looks a lot squatter.  After 24 hours the putty was undercoated and again left overnight to dry.  I was a bit worried about trying to blend the new sections back in with the rest of the figure but it worked out to be easier than expected.  I think this was because both sides of the arms where the putty was were in the lighter sections and the highlighting up was easier than the shading.  I found that the first two coats of paint over the undercoat had to be thicker than normal but after than the blends were as normal.  Also I made sure when I was blending in the new section that I blended over some of the existing painted section as well.  This overlap would help hide the new paint work, as you will never get a paint mixture exactly the same as the first time you did it.

New wall

On the base I painted up the wall section much like my test piece from earlier.  On the test piece I also started trying out some oil paint blends and washes to see if that improved things much.  It did a bit, but I also want to do a little bit of pigment work too while I have the chance as the test piece and the real piece are very close.  I’m pretty much sold on always doing test piece for terrain bases going forward.

Many trials, lots of error

On the cobblestones still no luck.  Many attempts but all don’t really seem to work with the rest of the piece.  I’m currently trialling a very light dirt/mortar colour with the rocks being the same range of greys that make up the wall.  Hopefully next week I’ll get this sorted out.  Also I need to complete the naginata.

54mm Samurai arms and Dungeon Saga homemade case

This week was arms, a wall and a whole lot of styrene card and glue fumes.

Arms

First up I worked on the arms of my 54mm Samurai.  Using my new green colour scheme of using VMC German Uniform Green as the shade colour (with some VGC Night blue for the final shades) for the Jade Green base coat worked a lot better.  The figure does have some limitations.  The arms have a pitted surface (deliberate, not bad casting) to represent a cloth texture.  However it just looks like someone stuck a pin in the putty while the figure was being made.  I know, I’ve done the same and this is exactly what it looks like.  Never a good look, just comes off as poor sculpting.  Odd as the gauntlets are really well done.  So it just detracts from the figure somewhat.

Glove love

The gauntlets I base coated in VMC Beasty Brown and shaded down with VMC Smoke.  The highlights were done in VGC Khaki and VGC Dead white.  I was really happy with the gloves.  I never get brown highlighting right but this time things came together and in a very small area (3mm x 3mm) I got some great blending and real contrast.  Pretty chuffed to be honest.

Next will be the naginata and then glue time and tidy up.  I might just make Cancon.

Base colours on the wall

At night I blocked out the base colours of the wall section using 4-5 different greys and some high impact (i.e. different from grey) colours.  After all the stones were done I did the pointing in VMC Tan Yellow.  My only problem is with so many greys when I was doing the second coat I’m pretty sure I mismatched the second coat compared to the original.  I’m going to call that deliberate as it add more variation.  Next step is to start the shading work and there are a lot of stones to do.  Gone are the easy days of 28mm terrain and the quick two stage dry brush.

Flat card + glue = box

Now that I have my Dungeon Saga kickstarter I need something to put all the figures in.  The game comes with a cardboard slip case and the wife mentioned I should make a box to go into the the slip case to hold the figures.  I needed something light so I got some 1mm styrene card and some styrene square tubing and made up a box to fit the slip case.  The square tubing is used in the corners and on the bottom as reinforcing.  I cut a hole in the front so you can put your finger in and pull out the tray.  Since these pictures I’ve undercoated the whole thing black ready for some final colour (undecided as yet).  Now I need to find room on the shelf to put it.

Like it was made for it