Disaster!

I suppose it finally had to happen. I was putting some highlights on Karchev, the last miniature for this weekend's Landmark battle with Red. Unfortunately, the man-machine warkaster had to take a swan dive off the painting table into the cement pond, minus the pond.

Ummm, crack!

Now he lies in pieces.

And so does my spirit.

Sigh.

Asking for some input

I am down to highlighting the runes on Big K's armor, and I am wondering what to use for color. His PIP version is here. The interpretation I am painting has more black in it, similar to this.
The runes are cut into the armor plates mostly where I have red. The color wheel here, since my reds fall on #7, I should contrast with #25. But that's just math. Anyone have any real hints about what would stand out as magical runes on Khador red?

Green Machine (not John Deere)

Notice I completely didn't use the words "green meenie" in the title. Wait... oh crap!
To continue the saga from last post, I didn't want a totally red force for my Karchev Landmark 500 point list. My two 'Zerkers were going to be red and black, and as seen, my Destroyer was blue. This left the Juggernaut. Being a former devotee to the Dark Angel SM's, I thought a nice DA green scheme would be cool. Not so!

Apparently DA green neither blends with nor is highlighted by any other green paint I could lay hands on. My first pass was so hideous, I took it back to base coat and began again. for those of you following along, yes, I had trouble with both the Juggy and the Desty. hmmmm.....

Here again we see my new obsession with stark line highlighting. The lightest shade for my green was a little too bright...I think it stands out too much. As before, I have the shading lines lain out wrong; they radiate from the side- outward instead of a more correct top-downward. All this realization came as I was laying on the sealer, of course.

A detail of the thing I used the Juggy to stand out. Number 516 likes to use looped barbed wire in the open fist! That crazy 'jack! I just drilled a little hole at the join where the fist balls up both top and bottom, and cut short lengths of the GW barbed wire and super glued them in! Ded 'ard!





In the original Warmachine rulebook, in the painting section, was where I found about about Tamiya 'Smoke.' I tried it and have loved the results it produces on metallic ever since. I don't think I have black or armor washed anything since I started using it. It is a thick consistency, and need to be thinned with Tamiya thinner before application. It produced all the shading on the metallic visible here; the shade line on the arm, the smokestacks, the boiler, and the black lining on the leg armatures.

I used more of the GW Dwarf Bronze here as it seemed to stand out so much more than the standard Boltgun metal. Also, I tried my hand at some weathering with GW Tin Bitz on the legs and feet to show rust and wear. Not really happy with the results. It just looks like I was sloppy with paint. : (




This was a quick detail of the Ice Axe. After this, I lay on both a heavy dry brush of P3 Frostbite, and a heavy lining of the hard edges of the axe as well. Since then I have flocked the base and finished sealing the mini! Ready for action!

Which came first?

The jack or the story?

Well, the jack. I have owned this Destroyer for 5 years now. I got a second Khador Battle box the first winter I played Warmachine...that means either Winter 2003 or Spring 2004. I got it when a LGS wasn't sure WM would last and was selling all the stock off at 30% off. Even then I had planned for a second paint scheme of winter white, the reason I got it.

So, the Landmark battle betwixt Red and I is coming up, and I decided to go a little crazy, fielding a Kharchev 'all-jack' list. I decided an all red force would get amazingly boring quickly, so I decided to spice things up. I had decided to paint two berzerkers; one red & one black, (Much more on this later.) This left the a Destroyer and Juggernaut. Avec la Destroyer!

So, once I thought about making the Destroyo blue...well, I lost my way. I tried GW Storm Blue thinned with ink, and the whole thing came out so dark it was almost purple! Ick, not my vision at all. Not that I had a vision then, but if it's wrong, you just know it, n'cest pas?

So, it was at that point I remembered that during the Legends story line, Khador had finally kicked those Cygnaran interlopers out of Northguard. What gets left behind in such matters? Incidentals like, say, paint! Rubbing my hands in child like glee, I drug out my copy of Prime and began reading the Cygnar painting guide. Whaddya think?

Here you can see my new-found obsession with line based shading. I kept the contrast bold, but totally screwed up the lines themselves. It was only after I was mostly done with this one, and the Juggernaut when I realized that the highlight should be sitting on the top of the shoulder instead of sloping to the edge. Well, lesson learned is all I can say. -sigh- Neat how the flash brought out the orange coals in the grate....

The story behind the paint was that this Desty was damaged and in need of repair, and finding the supply lines stretched, mechanics helped themselves to stuff left behind from the protracted struggle. Desty got done up in Cygnar colors first as a mockery, but then as more of a tribute to the brave fallen during the months of battle and siege.

This was also my first attempt at battle damage. I had read about both opinions, either only paint, or paint enhanced real damage to the mini. Prior to priming, I severely scratched up the surface of the right shoulder and left cuisse. I got no real satisfaction from what I did. I laid in some GW Tin Bitz, then highlighted with lighter and lighter shades of metal. All I got was murk. There seemed to be no way for it to stand out. The flash washed it a little bit too, sorry.

Also, since the photo, I completed the final detailing and flocked the base. final piccys may have to wait until Landmark battle day.

Celebrate good times, c'mon!

Let's celebrate! It's alright!

Only a small post to say that I just finished 4 warjacks! Totally! Put 'em to bed. Sealed, based and flocked, there is NO more I need to do to these babies. And the groovy things is...they are the jacks I will be bringing you over the next few posts as Wip's!.

How awesome is that? Donedonedonedonedoneeeeee!

Picture Day 4 - That darn Camo-diak! (wip)

The more pictures I extort from Red, the more i have to write about. It's weird!

So, this little project started out an article about how to paint a Tau Hammerhead. It detailed the stippling technique, and I thought I could adapt it to the Kodiak. I do not find myself among the fans of the rather drab 5th Border Legion brown-green of the 'standard Kodiak.'

So, I present, the Camo-diak, as a work-in-progress. The more I worked on the stippling technique, the more I realized the 4-5 step technique as detailed in the article was well suited to large armor plates and the like, and less so for War jacks with bendy parts and such. In at least two of the steps, I completely undid the stippling of the previous step. As a new technique, it still requires a little experimentation.

The final step in the article was to tape off huge lightning-bolt shaped sections and paint the still uncovered areas with a sandy-tan. Ummmm...no. I was really in like with the stippled areas. I think it provides a nice transition from deep woods to rolling hills. Since it is still a work in progress, I haven't decided on the final metal accents in the shoulder area. I usually prefer GW Dwarf Bronze for the roller-ball shoulders, but the Kodiak has an armored plate modeled over it, so I may do some more thinking.
The Kodiak is a more advanced design, as detailed by the fluff, and I wanted to highlight that with my paint scheme. I usually do a Bronze and Boltgun split for the stacks. Kodiak has a different cast than the standard design, so I did solid Boltgun with some heavy staining. Also, the advanced boiler design is designated with the Boltgun boiler cap as detailed in a previous post.

Overall, on my first attempt, I wasn't really happy with the final result. In a few places, the increasingly light over-stipple blurred the subtle under colors. There were places I blacked out and started over. I also began thinking about color changes for the next Kodiak I paint in this way. Oddly enough, about the same time I was thinking about the next one, Indiana had "the last big snowfall of the year." Heavy and wet, I was able to see, the snow laden pine evergreens. I have some exciting ideas for Mark 2 and 3!

The end result was fairly murky, privings its worth as a Camo scheme! However, it was a little drab. As shown, I painted a fairly intense and heavy edge line on most plates with a slightly brighter color than the final stipple. The great part about stippling is that you don't have to do all that time-consuming shading and blending. Don't get me wrong, (if I fall to a mode of fashion) I think the end result of my standard paint job is quite good. This has its merits too. The variation in color of stipple adds depth.
This final pose allows me to expound on final colors. The fist plates will be black, with metallic spikeys. The back of the fist plates will be solid black. with a dark paint job like this, the scratches and dings of final weathering will stand out better, as well as some mud and dust and a little rust. all the good things in life!

Picture Day 3 - FemBot Attack 2

Wow, I had real trouble getting the last post to save, so I broke 'er into two parts.

This pose, and there are two in the Sisters Repentia box, posed the most problem. Here, the flat planes of the two pieces were directly acted on by gravity. It was working with this sculpt, that I was lucky enough to have purchased the Core Techniques V.1 from Privateer. Learning all that putty technique really really helped here. I puttied the sword side and the hand side. I placed the pin in the still moist putty, making a hole that was 100% and exact fit, then let it dry. (Wetting the item you want to remove from the putty helps immensely!) When it came time to glue, it was like the parts were manufactured to fit together that way!


This pose was frustrating in that cross guard came to a narrow point, and I tried to retain the shackle chain for reattachment to the new mini. The shackle passed through a narrow opening. It took careful placement and a lot of patience to drill through. I still wonder why/how it worked. The chain didn't work out, it saw too much stress and broke. I don't think I could get the detail back with putty and glue so I left it off.

The most dynamic for last. Of all the minis, I thought long and hard about this one the most. With the double cross guard and the out of scale blade, I thought this one looked the most out of place/over the top. The good news was that the extra detail gave me more meat for the drill to bite through, leading to a longer pin, and greater strength. The hardest thing was getting the flat edges of both the blade and hand guard to butt up square. In the end, it turned out OK and I now use this one as my leader. (As a side note, she has also been the first to die in the two games I have used her.)

So there you have it. I hope one and all get some inspiration and joy from my little project. Sadly, unless I get a very forgiving T.O., I'll never get them into a tourney or anything of the like. Like most things, its a vision, and a labor of love.

Now if I can just get some female Winter guard!

Picture Day 3 - FemBot Attack 1

More fun from the camera of Red and teh fertile imagination of your truly~

So I always liked the idea of the Doomreavers. See my original post on the subject here.

To recap; the Doomreavers were criminals chained to ancient Orgoth fell blades as punishment for various crimes. The Sisters Repentia are disgraced Adeptas Sororitas who serve in the unit as penance for wrongdoing and thus die in service of the Emperor, while wielding two-handed Eviscerator chain swords. Similar, no?

So I decided, why couldn't Doomreavers be female?
Bwa-hah-ha-ha-haaaaa! -ahem- Sorry. Sweet, no? It was only after I had fully deconstructed both the Doomreavers and the Sisters that I noticed the scale was a weeeeee bit off. 40k and WM are not fully compatible in size. Luckily I found that out before I started to modify any of my Uhlan cavalry! Then again, I was already into the project, and if a muscular guy in a zero visibility helm could carve a bloody swath, how much more terrifying would half a naked woman doing the same be?


There were problems, of course. So many problems that I am glad I did this project, and equally glad I don't have to do another. The real key was having both hobby wire and a drill narrow enough to be able to drill out both the blade, the cross guard/hand area, and then to be able to drill deeply enough to secure the pin without destroying the miniature.

As you see from the close-ups, I had to cut, modify and pin in a variety of different areas. The Doomreavers gave up their swords rather easily. In nearly every cast, there was a place to part the sword easily. Also, two or three of the models come with the sword cast separately. Easy peasy!

Not so forgiving were the Sisters. In this example, the Eviscerator came away clean above the fancy cross guard leaving two clean, flat joints to work with. In other examples, the Eviscerator on the Sister was modelled differently, and there fore the join had to be modified.

More to follow.

Picture Day 2 - Revenge of the Behemoth

The pics just keep on coming! (man, I suck at blogging!)

As many of you have humorously note in my blog, I have sung the underwhelming fell call of "Pretty ballerina Behemoth" in the past. If not, get your giggles here .

As envisioned by Privateer .

"A pound of tin, balanced on one foot." Yeah. Long ago, I decided to experiment with rectifying this egregious, nay, tragic mistake. Most of my beginning efforts started with what to jam under the foot to absorb the weight. I cut and test-fitted a number braces, and I am still in that phase with the original legs and lower torso. I started thinking about other robots from other game systems as a replacement, also. In the end, I found I had extra bits of a Mark 2 40K Dreadnought. The lower legs and torso plate were s-o-l-i-d. I jazzed my conversion up with the inclusion of some Imperial Titan feet from the Epic line.

This is the finished result. I mounted it to one of the Privateer 50mm metal bases to offset the 'top-heaviness.' The brass rod was seated on the 40k pin to help index the hole n the 'Beho' torso. Small gaps, including the rod were filled in with putty. In the large picture, you can see a guide pin for extra support.

Taa-dahh, here we have the sections joined! I think it looks suitably beefy and believable. (Forgive the blu-tack, one arm not affixed yet.) Surprisingly, this solution comes in much shorter than the regular 'Beho.' So much so, I had to include the middle plate, when I had originally planned not to. There is something sad about dragging one's knuckles.

Hopefully before too long, I can complete the other set of legs to give another reference.

Picture Day 1 - Alt. Nomad

Yay! Thanks to Red for making his time and digi-cam available for me to show what I have been up to.

This is also to test to see if the piccys are too huge.

I thought I would display a little conversion magic of my own. The Nomad mercenary heavy warjack is posed fairly dynamically. Original Nomad

I noticed two things during assembly. One, I really liked the 'perforated metal' detail of the inner arms. Two, the arms were completely interchangeable. So after a quick test fit, drill and glue, we get Nomad 1.2!

In this pose we can see the perforated metal detail in the arms can clearly be seen and matched with that of the smokestack. Cool no?

The pose now looks like what the fencers call a "punch-block." It is where the shield punches out to block the incoming attack. Fitting, as I plan to use the Nomad with my fencer/duelist, Ashlynn d'Elyse.








That's all for now, but be sure to check back soon for more! May league is coming up, and you never know if a renegade steam dwarf is hiding around the corner!