Terminator Genisys and other bits

Defenders of justice

Work was a killer this week so just did stuff on the weekend again.  Trying to get back in the groove I made up the figures for the Terminator Genisys game.  These are designed for younger players and are all (slightly) snap together (although I used glue) and the base/legs/body are one piece.  There are two terminator bodies with two weapons combos.  So not much variety there when you have to make ten figures.  I did a few head moves (cutting off the head and repositioning it) and converted two figures.  One became a command unit (with some aerials on it’s back and one got two guns (it borrowed a gun from the humans).

Crawlers

The five crawlers I glued onto bases and gave one a knife just for variety.  They never stop!

So many pony tails

The human figures have four body types, with seven arm options.  However one figure is restricted to only two weapons.  The arms are only designed to go in one position but if you slice off the tabs on the body that the arms fit into you can reposition the arms.  A few figures lost their ponytails and one head got moved.  Unfortunately the figures are very slim and the heads are tiny.  So I couldn’t use any of the spare heads from other plastic figures I have.

They just need a bit of putty work and then off to be undercoated.  I need to get back into the habit of painting during my lunch breaks at the LGS which is only 5 minutes away.  A great way to churn though figures like these.

Preshaded Dungeon Saga troll

I started Dungeon Saga troll number two, trying the pre highlighting and then AP Strong/Dark tone washes.  Looks much better with pretty minimal effort, so happy with that experiment.

Tamiya AT gun crew

Finally did a bit more on the WW2 German AT crew member.  Forgot how to paint flesh and had to relearn that.  I always end up too brown on the first attempt.  I’ve resigned the AT gun and crew to the experiment list given the time I’ve taken to do them.  It also subconsciously takes the pressure off knowing that they don’t have to perfect, rather I just need to learn new techniques from the project.  Next up is the AT gun itself so more experiments here.

Roman bust, aka terminator god

Finally two second hand busts arrived.  Unknown manufacturer on both.  The Roman is lovely.  The face is just superb.  The Celtic figure is good, but the hand is the wrong one!  The figure needs a right hand, but the one supplied is a left hand.  It will be hidden by the shield so I might get away with using it.

Celtic bust

1/35 Tamiya German and starting the Halo Fleet battles human captain

1/35 German AT gun crew by Tamia

This week I knocked off one of the 1/35 German figures from the Tamiya 37mm AT gun set. This was the figure carrying the 37mm rounds to the AT gun.  I found it really hard to get  his face right.  I was using the Cimmerian King flesh mix I developed instead of the usually ‘orange’ standard flesh colours but found it kept going very purple on me.  Also the face was a bit uneven (it is a 40 year old figure) and I had to redo one eye over 5 times.  Found the Cimmerian king face so much easier to do even though it’s the same size.  The figure just needs the rifle added to the back which will need a bit of putty work to join the gaps.

Hmm, messy face

I redid the eyes on my Amy Johnson bust as I thought there was too much white in the eyes.  That didn’t take long and I’m a bit happier with them now.  I also redid some of the Cimmerian King’s eye work as after a week I was able to spot a few things that looked off.  Pre Cancon jitters I suspect.

Trying out some of the blue range

I have a number of blues but most are too purple (a lot of the VGC range) or too bright.  Maybe I'm just keyed into Ming blue?  To get around this I got some VMC Prussian Blue for my Halo Fleet battles human captain bust.  Traditional I know, but he is a human in the navy so he should be in blue :)  I’m going to be using the following blues on him

VGC Night Blue
VMC Prussian Blue
VMC Flat Blue
VMC Sky Blue

However I need to work out his hair colour first.  The bust is of an older man so I’m thinking black with grey.  But I’m not sure on that and need to have that sorted before I start going full ahead with the various blues.

Think I’ll go watch some more Ben Komets videos and let that bubble away for awhile.  If you haven’t already the Patreon channel Ben Komets (https://www.patreon.com/ben_komets/) has is well worth the investment.  The only downside is realising how fast and good he paints.

No dust on you...

I picked up a nice way to keep dust of figures underway.  A 2L drink bottle bottom upside down is a quick and easy way to get a dust shield.  Think I got that from Mike Blank somewhere along the line.

Microballons at lasts

Lastly The Combat Company now stock the AK range of diorama materials.  Finally found some microballons for the next snow scene!

Christmas, New year, 54mm Cimmerian King (aka Conan) done and some Dungeon Saga

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year.  I had a week off but that was for the kids (and shopping) so not much getting done there compared to the previous week off when I did all the work on Conan.

54mm Cimmerian King (aka Conan)

So first up I finished off my 54mm Cimmerian King figure by Andrea.  The last bit was fiddling on the base.  Everything was glued down with two part epoxy or PVA glue for the lighter items.  I added in a blood spattered dirk and broken spear to the base and made a banner from green stuff.

Best flesh I have ever done

The banner was done by rolling out very thin green stuff and then crumpling it into the desired shape and letting it dry.  Once dry I painted in a light purple to add some colour to the base (otherwise a very dull brown) and to catch the eye.  Finally I touched up the black edging and called him done.

Dungeon Saga Salamander

For a break between big jobs I did another Dungeon Saga hero figure, the fire breathing Salamander.  I tried out some Jo Sonja’s paints for the first time (they were cheap during a boxing day sale).  Very nice colours and they cover quite well.  However when they say matte paint, they really mean it.  I tried a bright orange for the skin and it was very orange, and the flattest finish I have seen.  More so than matt varnish.  So when other people have mentioned that the Vallejo paints are slightly satin in finish, I now see what they mean.  Like many things related to painting, it’s all relative.

Dungeon Saga zombie

Finished off three zombies from Dungeon Saga in the quick and dirty method.  Shouldn’t have gone with a brown for the pants and it blends too much.  Never mind, these guys die off pretty quick :)

1/35 Tamiya German 37mm AT crew

Next up in the “in between figures” will be another 1/35 German from the Tamiya 37mm AT gun set.  Really need to have a go at more 1/35 WW2 figures but just not enough time.  2017 will be the year of the Tamiya tank diorama (which I’m sure I will curse like the Violinist) I think.

500 pages!!

On Christmas Eve I found out that The Combat Company (just down the road from me) had the new FAQ Dioramas from AK in stock.  500 pages of diorama love :)  Always best to buy the Xmas presents you want.

Halo Fleet battles bust

Finally also at The Combat Company they had the “2016 Halo Fleet Battles Tournament” box on sale.  So for under $20 I picked up the set as it had two 1/10 (?) size busts in it (as prizes I assume).  I’ve assembled both and prepared them by undercoating them black and then doing white highlights to suggest shadow placements.  I’ll probably do the human figure first.

Halo Fleet battles bust

Four weeks to Cancon and I’ll probably take the Cimmerian King, the Amy Johnson bust and the Violinist diorama down to enter in the painting competition.  I was going to take the old Ral Partha (mini) Death Dealer but I don’t think he is up to scratch.  I love the figure but the others I’ve done more recently are better.  Maybe I’ll be able to do the 75mm version for next year.

A little side trip to WW2 in 1/35

Base coats and ugly

Much better

Needing to paint a person rather than scenery I painted up another of my 1/35 Tamiya German 37mm AT gun crew member.  I even got to use my helmet decals (which I forgot to do on the first guy) which after some weathering looks quite good.  When applying decals I’ve learnt that it really pays to do a coat of gloss varnish first.  Also using decal softener helps a lot.  Once the decal is dry I applied a coat of matt varnish before continuing on with the painting.  It’s also quite easy to paint a figure when you know what you are doing, rather than spending hours experimenting (and failing).

Pretty helmet decal

My wall section continues to give me grief.  I did another dry fix an found the wall was off just a bit too much.  The short side wasn’t quite square to the back wall so I had to rip it off and sand the side down.  This was of course after undercoating the whole thing of course.  Really over this wall.

I’ve been thinking about the ground cover and the large cobblestones I was going to have under the fountain.  I’ve decided I don’t like the cobblestones as they look too big and rough.  So instead I thinking I’m going to go with the paving styrene sheet I used for the 54mm Samuari wall.  I then had a very frustrating few hours trying to get a paint scheme that worked.  Finally managed to get one based around VMC Golden Brown, VMC Khaki Grey, VMC Charred Brown and glazes with of VMA Burnt Umber and VMA Mahogany.  I found I need the brown/red glazes to tie the colour of the ground back to the red bricks I will have on the wall.  Also a number of glazes adds a bit of volume and depth as the styrene sheet pattern is quite flat.

Paving in action

So the wall is currently drying after another glue up, tomorrow to be puttied and sanded.  I’ve cut out the paving sheet to size and will undercoat that next.  I also need to start some water effects trials for the fountain.  I’m not happy with the slow progress rate but with everything taking 2-3 trials first it is what it is.

A bit of Tamiya, Dungeon saga and 54mm Nocturna violinist

A productive week this time round with a few little side projects all going off together.

Now that Death Dealer is done I took some better shots of him front and rear in the light box.  Glad is he done and I didn’t make a total hash of him.

Death Dealer

Death Dealer

Tamiya 1/35 German AT gun crew

I’ve had the old Tamiya 1/35 German 37mm AT gun with 4 man crew sitting around for a year or so.  I did the base coats of the figures but didn’t really like the colours.  A year later I had another go, changed all the base colours a bit and things started working.  This is the first figure of the four.  I’m using him as a way to get use to painting larger scale figures again after all the 28mm figures I’ve been doing.  In a later post I’ll put up the colour scheme I used.  I have a number of 1/35 figures in the cupboard but always get dragged away by the nicer 54mm figures I have.  I seem to purchase the old Tamiya kits out of a sense of doing pilgrimage of the classic kits (I’ve done the Africa Korps Panzer II already).  However given my interest in figures over vehicles, and the time to do a tank it’s going to be slow going on the 1/35 side.

75mm man

I purchased a number of cheap ($2 each) 75mm figures for my kids awhile back.  This one figure caught my eye much like blue man did.  I had to sculpt in some hair for him (using milliput) but he is still just a bit too rough.  I really like the pose, but the figure isn’t up to a standard that I could enter him into competition so he goes into the “for the fun of it” pile in the cupboard.

Dungeon Saga Valandor

Between working on my German I started the Valandor figure from Dungeon Saga.  My son loves him so I’m doing a quick job on him.  He is a multi part figure that has been already glued together so you can’t get at a number of areas of the figure other than just mushing the brush around.  Lots of blue and armour there.  I had to replace his spear as the original was a bendy wendy.  I used a 1.5mm wire rod for the shaft and glued the original end and tip back on with super glue.

Rough set up, figure in the blank area

Finally I started on a diorama I hope will be ready for Cancon.  The scene is a violinist (figure from Nocturna) playing next to a fountain with an audience of a couple of dogs.  There will be a cat on the fountain and behind the fence a small garden.  The violinist I will be going for will be very run down/drab and in a little bit a tragic sort of figure, who is only able to play at an out of the way corner of the city with only old dogs as company.  Even the cat will have it’s back turned to him.  Going to be a hard slog to do all the elements involved.  So far I’ve prepped the figure and under coated the animals and the violinist.  Not sure if I’ll use the paving for the ground or go for a dirty/grass area instead.

Nocturna Violinist

Next week will be a lot of experiments on elements for the diorama.  I need to trial painting the pots, the brick wall that will be behind the fountain and the fence.  Need to get some reference shots of dogs/cats and look at the pseudo Venetian costumes for the violinist.

Desert diorama base for a 1/35 Tamiya Panzer II

Taking the advice of better painters than me, I have started trying different scales and topics from my normal ones (ie 28mm historical/fantasy) in an effort to improve my painting skills.  I never got into 1/35 scale military models as a kid.  The kits were too expensive so I stuck to cheap 1/72 scale aircraft.  But I always wanted to try 1/35 scale kits and doing so got another item off the bucket list.  I wanted to go all in and make a diorama base, try weathering pigments, etc.  It's never too late for a happy childhood...

Wanting a small vehicle and some figures I purchased the Panzer II (f/g) tank with 5 figures from Tamiya (part no. 35009).  A very old kit but this makes it cheap and I didn't want to spend too much money on a fancy.  The figures are Afrika Korps so for the diorama base I wanted a north Africa look.  Google images and an hour later I decided upon a very standard rocky desert ground scape.  Most of the desert is sharp rock not sand so I needed lots of little rocks.  Luckily I had a whole pile from my previous attempts of making building rubble.

Raw board with corner rock

The base was formed from 12mm ply with a border made from 16mm pine strips.  In one corner I made a rock hillock from one of the plaster rock moulds I have.  I chopped the plaster rock down to be square sided so it fitted.  Plaster is quite easy to cut with a wood saw and can be sanded easily to smooth finish.  It's just really messy when doing so.

Before I did anything more on the base I experimented with some small scale attempts to first get a look of the rocky ground right and secondly to get the paint job correct.  I had all the rocks I needed but wasn't sure on how to attach them to the base.  I needed something covering the wood and didn't want to use fine sand as it would look out of scale and too uniform.

Plaster rocks, texture paste and PVA glue

My first experiment was to try just using PVA glue to stick a pile of rocks down.  That didn't work too well as the larger rocks fell off and the spaces in between the rocks weren't covered.  The second attempt was to put down a layer of texture paste and then push the rocks into this.  That way there were no uncovered spaces.  However the adhesive qualities of texture paste weren’t great.  So of course I took the fool's logic and combined the two.  I first lay down a thick coat of texture paste.  Then I pushed in a selection of rocks and finally coated everything with a layer of watered down PVA glue.

It does get better

The whole thing looked a mess.  The next day it was still not fully dry and the rocks moved slightly.  I considered it a failure but left it for a few more days.  The good news was that after approx. 3 days the texture paste and PVA had dried and all the rocks (big and small) were very solid in the base.  So I had a technique for making rocky ground.  When I did it large scale on the base I left it for four days to dry fully.  Now for the paint job.

The bare patch is were the tank goes

Using my sample I painted it VGC Earth and dry brushed the rocks with Pale Brown/Iraqi Sand/White.  This left the rocks looking pasty and the spaces between the rocks were darker than the rocks which was not correct.  I then toned everything down with some Vallejo pigments.  This also coloured the spaces between the rocks (ie the sand in real life).  I used Dark Yellow Ochre, Light Yellow Ochre and Light Slate grey.  The end result was pretty close to what I wanted.  I also later used the Light Yellow Ochre to blend in the boots of the figures to the ground.

Near final result - just needs a tank and border cleanup