Saturday, September 26, 2009

Space Hulk - an exercise in washes

So,
after many games of 1: Suicide Mission, a few brothers were selected to be painted.

Finished Projects:
Now the LazyPaintbrush was also the LazyPhotographer, and forgot to take pictures of the completed battle brothers. This will be rectified sometime soon.

Brother Zael
Burn the unclean. Suffer not the alien to live. Brother Zael carries around the Heavy Flamer, a most useful toy, even if it has ammunition issues.

These 2 flanking pictures have Zael at the end of stage 1, with 1 yellow wash, 1 red wash, base colors for the other bits, and another red wash.

Nice and bright the red is.

After more touching up errors, and the 1 1/2 to 2 layers of Ogryn Flesh, you can see the difference.
Ctrl-click on the picture to see it in seperate tab, or Shift-Click to see it in another window.

The dark lines i-nbetween the power fist fingers are due to 2 to 3 layers of ogryn Flesh.

Wonderful thing, this washing method is. On the right, you can see the wash's effects on the armoured hood.





Brother Noctis



Here we have battle-brother Noctis.

The model was primed with GW's white primer undercoat. Due to the fact that the plastic was red, the primer layer was thicker than normal. Odd that we would want to cover all the red, and then re-wash the model with red. But, that's just the way modelers like to do things.

At this stage, Noctis has been washed in the following steps:
1. Vallejo Yellow Wash
2. Vallejo Red Wash
3. Base colors for the other parts.
  • Black for the trim on the storm bolter.
  • Adeptus Battlegrey for the flexible bendy parts, vents, chains, and main body of the gun.
  • Iyanden Darksun for the chest eagle, crux terminatus on the left shin, at the end of the chain.
  • Vallejo Model Color Dark Sand for the purity seals.
4. Vallejo Red Wash.
As you can still see, there are splashes of wash on the purity seals, vents, etc. Sometimes, the Lazypaintbrush is truly lazy.
That just means more touch-up work later.

After more touching up, and the wash of Ogryn Flesh (2x Red wash gave the necessary depth of red, but it was soooo bright! Ogryn flesh solved the brightness... about 1 1/2 layers, 2 layers for the areas where Lazypaintbrush really wanted to show depth (between the fingers of the power fist, darker corners of the armoured hood).

Either way, the result flanks this paragraph.

So the completed pictures to come. But, how exactly does this washing method work?




Projects-in-Progress

Lazypaintbrush will try to explain with this all in one graphic.



Here we have 4 other Battle Brothers.
Leon, Scipio, Valencio, Deino

Leon has only 1 layer of yellow wash.
Sciopio has 1 yellow and 1 OgrynFlesh.
Valencio has 1 yellow and 1 red wash.
Deino has 1 yellow and 2 red washes.

You can see the effects layering the washes one after another has had on the battle brothers. Lazypaintbrush enjoys using yellow as the base color, as it helps bring out the white.


Anyway, more of the 4 battle brothers next time.


E.o.M.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Washes on White - an experiment on Striking Scorpions

Striking Scorpions w/wash.
More interesting experiments with washes on white using the latest version of the Striking Scorpions.

Out of two boxes come 12 scorpions. Gee. Thanks. A maximum squad is 10, not 12. Perhaps that might be amended in the next codex since the Wave Serpents can carry 12 models?? ;-) one can dream.

Anyway, after the filing, cleaning (literally! scrub with soap after assembly), and basing, is the priming. Using GW's white undercoat, the LazyPaintbrush achieved an even coat with multiple light sprayings. Remember, you can top up thin layers, you can't thin down thick layers!

The basing material used was from Vallejo's range of pumices. This one in question was "black Lava". No pinning of the arms because I was very lazy. The Scorpion Exarch carries a modified Biting Blade (from the Chainsabre), and oversized shuriken pistol (from extra Dire Avenger bits!). The other Scorpions were standard poses.


So, next went on the wash. The wash used was Vallejo's Green Wash from their Game Color range. Originally, LazyPaintbrush contemplated using GW's Thrakka Green wash, but found it too dark. So, on to the test greens and yellows. The yellow wash also came from Vallejo's Game Color range.

After one coat of Green wash.


After one coat of yellow Wash.


After combining the 2 layers of wash, the level of green-ness was insufficient. A second layer of green wash was added.

We get the following Scorpion. Nice bright green he was. And still shiny from puddles of wash that had not yet dried.


And another bright Green scorpion.


On to the whole squad. Yellows all round!


Another washed Scorpion.


To create more depth, because LazyPaintbrush is really, well, lazy, additional layers of green wash was slopped liberally into the recesses. However, on certain Scorpions, this was overdone, resulting in a dark green depth-like effect. LazyPaintbrush isn't complaining, but observed that one has to be careful just how much wash-pooling he wants next time.

As of the end of July, the weapons received their first coat; Unfortunately, pictures have yet to be taken, being distracted by - planetary empires!


To be continued....

22 September 2009
These Scorpions have now been sitting on the desk for about a month. Does the Lazypaintbrush dare to paint the Scorpion Symbol on their helms, or will it be left off?




E.o.M.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

40k - Planetary Empires

So,
whilst the Scorpions are pending, new distractions come along.
And having access to new stuff is nice. However, it also means
that its hard to separate hobby from work.

Anyway, here is this month's sneak preview.

Planetary Empires
By Rick Priestley and Jervis Johnson

After the success of mighty empires
last year, GW's finally completed
their campaign rule set
for the 41st millennium.

Packed tightly into a typical vehicle-sized
box, are 6 sprues that contain
a lot of plastic, and 1 rulebook.



6x One standard Sprue



Back of the plastic sprue.


Inside the box are 6 sprues of the same design. The box contains the following:
  • 48 hexagonal tiles







  • 12 Power Station pieces


  • 12 Command Bastion pieces


  • 12 Shield Generator Pieces


  • 12 Manufactorum pieces

  • and 96 banners to be painted in your army's colours!
  • One multi-lingual rulebook.
    The rules are simple - only 5 pages long. It includes how to set up a campaign and a random map generator, special advantages for each type of tile (with building) that you control (the points generated vary for different races)
Interesting notes include - battle bonus points - you can either spend them on your own army, or on mercenaries, or on allies, taking up the force-organization slot. Might allow a few broken combinations, but hey, what's another excuse to use more models or come up with a wicked story of why that Chaos Lord of Slannesh was consorting with the local Imperial Guard Lord-Commissar????

Playing the campaign

Its an open-battle system - the more battles you play against players in the campaign, the more chances you have to conquer tiles - its easier to conquer tiles adjacent to tiles already under your control, but you can conquer tiles from anywhere across the table - its just a harder roll on 2D6. Some modifiers apply to the roll, to reflect things like moral victories, presence of spaceports - to reduce the ability of a winning player to conquer multiple tiles - there is a -1 modifier to the roll for every additional tile you attempt to conquer.

As for campaign drop outs - any player that wins can try to conquer the dropped-player's tiles, using the result from one of their battles (the two players fighting over a piece of dropped pie?).

New players can be added by adding more tiles - in effect, allowing an expanding campaign. I haven't looked at the rules for the Warhammer Fantasy version, so I cannot compare them.

oh, and to make people go to their direct web store, there is an unshameless plug - the Hive city tile is only available from their direct store. (this tile combines multiple tile types, including power stations, shield generators and more!)

So happy campaigning once you get your fingers on it.



E.o.M.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Flying high - the IG Valkryie in progress

Darth Vader Reborn?

Steps taken so far... roughcoating certain armour plates (too much effort for too little impact? we'll know at the drybrush stage).

Black undercoating.

Step in progress - basecoat colors.

Difficulty - determining what color uniforms should be. Are they of the same IG regiment, of of the Imperial Navy. Decision was taken to be part of the regiment. But slightly different, since flyboys always want to well.. be different. (or not, since the regiment does NOT yet exist... the pilots' flightsuit color scheme might end up being used for the whole regiment!)

But it appears that as present, the infantry armor colors are Orkhide shade.
(so why is the Valkryie's basecoat in Battlegrey? uh oh... not enough thought here!)





Pilot from the front.












Pilot from the front. different picture. Must figure out how to focus camera onto the pilot... perhaps take canopy off first, then put it back on before hitting the take picture button? need to find tripod.











Side view of the front.




"Guns guns guns! hit the target." Rumours are that 3x twin-lascannon version is a forgeworld upgrade. Dang. Perhaps its not too late to rip off the front sensor array to magnetize the lot?


1 week to go. Can it be finished?




Body Update 10 April 2009

The Pilots cockpit/fuselage were completed. Full details on their progress to follow.


Here's the body.




this Picture link is big.







The Door Gunner. Now one would question just how much of a field of fire the gunner would have, with the gull-wing design limiting his vision.









The full Model. Pretty big. The hull is as long as a Land Raider, and the wings... well, 1 1/2 times as wide as a Land Raider. If one somehow manages to field 9 as 3x3 Fast Attack Choices, they will fill up the deployment zone. (or just put everything in reserve!)






Another view of the Valkyrie. The blueness is due to the fact that the camera's light setting was still on incandescent, and the flash triggered. Still, it is in focus.







Quick conclusions
Its been a fun model to put together, with just some complaints about the engines being a little excessive in detail (see th engine hoses right.)

The model can easily take some magnetization (the door gunner is magnetized to make it easier to fit.

The wings can be left unglued, as their mount is deep enough such that one can remove the wings for transport. The front fuselage in this model has just been attached by blu-tack rather than glued on. (It is a pretty lengthy model.)

The flying base is nice. With a cross for the horizontal strength, and a variable plate one attaches to the Valkyrie so that one can find the correct center of gravity so as not to have it fall over. I have only blu-tacked the flying base mount onto the Valkyrie and it has not yet fallen off after 2 days. This is one flying base that will not snap off at the slightest accident.

I'll look into following up how the front fuselage was painted in a following article. Time for a break.


E.o.M.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Lazy Sentinel of Cadia


The Lazy Sentinel

A painting tutorial in 4 (5) steps
(or 8 hours)

With the new IG:Codex arriving in May, and given the difficulty for many generals in getting large swathes of IG models onto a gaming table near you, this quickie-guide to painting a Sentinel seems like a good place to start for the LazyPaintbrush.

Since this is the first attempt at a tutorial, well, steps were not carefully documented in camera. Nor was a tripod used to stabilize the images. Perhaps we need the LazyPhotographer?

The Sentinel was first released a while back (2000?). This particular kit is the soon-to-be out-of-production Armaggeddon Steel Legion Sentinel. It comes withe the basic Sentinel plastic kit, as well as pewter parts for the following:
  • Autocannon
  • Camo Cloth
  • Front Armour Plate
  • Armored Top in 2 parts (but not enclosed!)
Step 1: Hour 1
Assembly &
application of GW: Roughcoat Spray

Unfortunately, I can be rather obsessived about getting rid of every last mould line. They can really spoil the look of the final product when missed. So this part took me about 3 hours. For lazier generals, this can take you anywhere from
10 minutes to x.

Why should one remove mould lines? They can get in the way of drybrushing. Very badly. Plus, the models can just look plain odd with a crest running through over the top of a helmet. Or...

To ease painting difficult corners, the model was assembled into the following components:

  • Autocannon
  • Driver with head and arms attached
  • Feet attached to base. (see left)
  • Leg x2
  • Lower torso or hips (where the legs meet the main body)
  • Main Hull outer shell.
  • Main body inner shell and exhaust(cockpit)
To save time on the base itself, Vallejo pumice was used to create the rough sandy looking texture on the base. Its basically a glue/sand mix that one can shape and apply quickly. Note that it takes a few hours to dry out, so this is best done as the last step before stopping for the night.

ROUGH Armour
What I decided to try out was to roughen the armour to create a more gritty look. After assembling the outer shell, GW's roughcoat was applied. Before spraying the main hull, care was taken using scotch tape and blue tack to cover up the parts that would look funny if they were roughened. These included the vision slits, imperial eagles, front-mounted searchlight, door handles, this also included taping over the big 'mouths' of the top and bottom of the Main hull so that the roughcoat would not get onto the interior cockpit parts. (another 30 minutes gone!)

This process was repeated with the autocannon. I felt that since the legs had no additional armour, fuzzing the legs would make it look odd, so the legs were not roughened.

Neither was the pilot nor the interior cockpit. The back exhaust armour plates were also roughened, with the exhaust covered up in tape.
(this technique's also being tried out with an Ork Stompa!)

Post Roughcoat, the assembled model looked greyish.

Total time taken to date: 4 hours. (like I said, I hate mould lines, and there were lots of experimenting with what to cover and using what to cover with pre-roughcoat.)
Step 2: Undercoat and Basecoating
Time taken: 2 hours

Colors used:

GW Foundation
Tausept Ochre
Knarloc Green
Adeptus Battlegrey

Right. You see that gap there? right above the pilot's bedroll? Terrible. I just couldn't figure out how the armoured top would fit right on. Oh well. It didn't look too obvious on the final product. ;-)

Anyway, after a solid round of undercoating with GW's spray chaos black. (solid as in, 360 degree all round, multiple trips out into the open air (do NOT spray in an enclosed room, unless you want to be labelled "druggie") ), the basecoat was applied on.

Neat painting. The messier one paints, the more one has to go back and do clean up work. Get it neat the first time, and the need to do re-work is reduced greatly.

Pilot:
Additional color:
GW Foundation: Tallarn Flesh

Now, a good brush that doesn't look like a toilet scrubber works wonders. Neatly apply the different colors to create a contrast, like on the chin-strap. Green. The uniform was based Tausept Ochre.


The legs were covered with 2 colors - Knarloc Green and Adeptus Battlegrey. All the moving parts (or look like moving parts - hydralics and all that, wires or piping) and the ankle ball joint were covered in grey. Again, one cannot overstress the necessity of neatness. Steady the hand on the table, or wear heavy clothing or something. Just steady that paintbrush.


Foot:

Well, All Knarloc green here. Try to avoid painting all the deepest recessess. The black undercoat here left unpainted immediately creates a sense of depth. The less effort, the faster it takes right?

The base itself was ultimately covered with Chardon Granite.


Done with the basecoats. It could go onto the table now, but that's not going to win one enough points for painting effort in any tournament. So, the next step. Drybrushing. (or wetbrushing, or... well, brushing.)

Step 3: Brushing (Drybrushing/wetbrushing)
Time taken: 1 hour.
Drybrushing101:
1. Dip paintbrush in paint. (up to half the hair, not the whole brush!)
2. Find a rag/tissue/absorbent material. Dab brush onto material. Brush back and forth. Remove most of the paint. The idea is to leave a faint trace as the brush moves across the surface.
3. apply onto model's hard edges.

Wetbrushing101:
1. See step 1 in drybrushing101
2. Find another rag or use the same tissue. Remove most of the paint, but not all of it.
3. Apply onto model's hard/sharp edges. be very gentle. You don't want to end up changing the basecoat color into drybrushed grey.

Colour used: GW Foundation Astronomican Grey



Lower Torso/hip

dab dab dab dab dab dab. Remember. you can always brush 2x, 3x 4x, but undoing is harder than just pressing that back arrow.



The Imperial Eagle

This part was masked by bluetack during the roughcoat spray. You can see how the eagle and door hinges are defined, while the
armored parts are rough, and caught bits of the drybrush. Nothing like one brush creating many outcomes.



The main Hull
As you can see, the eagle again was masked, and when drybrushed, has a different look to the rest of the armoured parts. The searchlight was also lazily painted with tausept ochre as a base. (yellow is yellow!)

dab dab dab. over all the sharp edges in the army, and randomly across the flat parts. the Roughcoat picked up random effects.

At this point, one might think the drybrushed effect is too severe. There's another step!

The interior cockpit/back exhaust.

The dark undefined adeptus battlegrey has been highlighted with the lighter astronomican grey. Immediate weathering.

Same outcomes with the legs, feet and autocannon. Instant depth, highlighting. Truly, an easy technique to use when looking to do masses of models.













Step 4: Magic Ink (or that new GW wash!)
Time taken: 45minutes and overnight to dry.

Wash: GW Badab Black
Wash: GW Ogryn Flesh (only for the pilot)
Wash: GW Asurmen Blue (only for the pilot's goggles)
Wash: GW Devlan Mud (for the bedroll and other brown bits and the base)

Quick. Very quick. Remember worrying about the drybrushing being a little too extreme? Well, magic ink is here. Just run Badab Black liberally over the whole model where it was green or grey. Woosh. Instant extra depth and balancing. Ogryn flesh all over the brown bits.
























The pilot's face was washed with Ogryn Flesh.

At this stage, the model is more than ready to add to the army painting score in any tournament. Sure, you're not in the running for best painted model, but best painted army? why not if its all done well?

Step 5: Fine bits

Other random colors:
Vallejo Model Color blue, pale yellow, green something.
GW Foundation Mechrite Red, Necron Abyss, Solar Orange

Extreme highlighting. You may have noticed the bright yellow-streak running across the autocannon ammunition. one dab of pale yellow there, and on the edges of the pilot's bedroll.

That orange power cable on the side of the autoccannon. The varying color sensors. The searchlight's random brighter yellow dots.

Oh, and very very steady hand to dot the pilot's eyes. If you don't want to do that, well, then think about positioning the pilot looking down. Nobody can see his eyes then without a dentist's mirror!

Other bits. cockpit interior switches in different color. Command stick's LCD radar screen. Whatever one finds fun in painting on.


Conclusions:
That was fun. It could have been done in less hours, but hey, I'm slow and OCD when it comes to models and getting it righter.

The above picture of the foot, shows, (badly), just how the different steps look. You can stop anytime, or do all of it. The more steps taken, the better the model should look.

Then again, beauty's in the eye of the beholder.

E.o.M.

Postscript: I added freehand the ghostly image of the Cadia regiment on the door, as well as unit markings for the 609th Regiment. Perhaps the start of an army?