Paint Table Saturday 99 (on a Sunday, again)

Hi All,

Just finished those Bugbears I've been taking way to long to complete.

I'm mostly happy with how they turned out. A few things here and there I'm not completely jazzed about, but they look pretty good. I'll work on a better photo shoot for the various poses tomorrow, when I have time.

We're getting ready to go to track practice this evening. The boy came in second in his division at the 3K he ran yesterday.

Thanks for looking.

Travel log - Northern Arizona Road Trip

Hi All,

Back to the hobby tomorrow. Today I wanted to share the highlights of the two days we spent taking the kids to see the sites in Northern Arizona. We felt that, since they are native Arizonans, they should experience these things at least once in their lives.

Before I get to the pictures, I just want to let you all know about a new program from the National parks system. It's called Every Kid in a Park and it's for all fourth graders. It's good at any National Park, so we couldn't use it at Meteor Crater, and can get all kids (I think) and up to three adults in for free. We had planned the trip before we remembered this program. It saved us $60 in fees over the two days. I think we spent that on food (or perhaps the used Warhammer books I bought in Flagstaff).

Anyway, here's my report. Comic style.

Thanks for looking. I hope to have those pesky Bugbears completed tomorrow.

More Half Price Books and Ebay Loot

  I wish I had some finished figures to show you, but I've been fooling around with a bunch of other things. I did do a couple colors here and there, but nothing worth it's own post.

  What you may find interesting are these books I found in a central Phoenix Half Price books, after a wild goose chase for lunch and shopping (it was our anniversary).

  This first book is printed by Image comics and has four stories that are in Frank Frazetta settings. My wife gave me crap for the ample buttocks on the cover. Buttocks notwithstanding, I almost bought a copy for Airbornegrove, but I figured he probably already had it.

I then found this tome on the shelves. It seemed serendipitous, as I had just found the Inquisimunda resources here. The intro and fluff are great, and there is really fantastic art and painted scenery and figures.

But, it's a totally different system from Warhammer and the figures are 54mm scale. So even at $12.99 it may not be worth it. I believe the whole game has been discontinued by GW. We'll see if i can get some use out of it.

The Gruntas I won off ebay arrived, and I was surprised to see an extra figure in the blister on the left. It had at some point been cut open and then taped together with masking tape. The state of the tape led me to believe that happened a very long time ago. So not sure if I have a bonus figure or am missing a boar. I think it's the former. The figures are a spearman and a crossbowman. Or rather Orcs.

And at the same time the last of the Marauder Giant Black Orcs arrived. So I now have all four.

Don't know how much I'll be posting. We have the next three days off from school so we're going to take the kids up North to Flagstaff and sight see. So I may have some Grand Canyon etc pictures to share.

Paint Table Saturday (Week 38)

Hi All,

I see some prople put up numbers for PTS somewhere in the 90's, but I have no idea what the "official" numbering system is. So I'm going by numeric week of the year.

This week I'm going to show you what I've done thus far up to today. I'm hoping, in this way, to keep you updated but not delay my post until I forget.

I decided to play with doing a rust effect on their silver metallics. I think the sword is a little much, but the axes and mace look good. I'm hoping a wash will bring it together better. I'm noticing that the focus got a little soft around the edges, I'm not sure if that's a lens limitation or if I need to adjust the positioning of the figures or the aperture. I changed it to 6.3 from 5.6 when I noticed some out of focus areas on a 28mm figure I was photographing. I've also stepped the flash compensation back to 0.0, I'm not sure if it's too dark now. What do you think.

I'll be posting about my plans to use the old board game Kingmaker as a campaign map for a War of the Roses game.

Later.

Warband Generator and planning for a plan.

Hi All,

This week has proven to be a tough one. Kids had the day off from school on Monday, then the boy had two teeth pulled and stayed home yesterday. That coupled with the realization that his grades are crap midway through the first term, saw the painting time take a hit.

The first thing I want to bring your attention to, before I forget, is the Realm of Chaos Warband Generator from Lead Rising here. It's apparently been around for awhile,but I just found out about it this afternoon.

You may recall that the Chaos gods spoke to me when I found a Greater Demon of Tzeentch at half price books. I also recently acquired Azoth Soul Flay from Blue.

We did the transaction through the Facebook Oldhammer Trading Company and it was great. I can whole heartedly recommend both the group and Blue. Everyone that I've dealt with has been trying to deal fairly and honestly.

Even so I have been trawling ebay as well.

This guy came yesterday, and the last one of the Marauder Giant Black Orcs will be here soon. I also managed to win an auction for two more Orc Boar riders. I think I have enough now for a unit of 5 or 6.

So now for the planning part. This is where I always get distracted. The plan is to keep going through the lead and plastic pile to prep figures for the Analogue hobbies challenge. I need to get myself together for Orctober, and possibly Zombtober, next month and try to focus on finishing the tons of stalled figures that I have. I really want to set up some campaigns to use as a platform for playing the various rule sets I've amassed, and my thought is to get you all involved. Sort of like a random generator, but just with input from readers/ commentors.  The main thing is to keep it fun and moving along and have any bookkeeping minimal and mostly behind the scenes.

Gotta go pick up my son.

Later.

Bugbear painting and photo progress

Hi All,

  I'll apologize in advance for the minutiae I'm about to present to you. One of the things I'm trying to do is get back to keeping a painting log so that I can jump back and forth between projects and not have to totally relearn/ wing it in order to match the previous figures.

  What I'm trying this time is to dab paint on a note pad and jot down the color and what it's for, taking pictures at every step. Well almost every step.

Above we have the mid layer for the flesh, Reaper Intense Brown. This is over the shade of Ruddy Leather.

Comparison against the previously finished figure. The Highlights have been added. Reaper Oiled Leather. It looks a tad lighter but doesn't have the grunge wash on it yet.

In this last picture I've added some green cloth, earth and leather straps. Home made Vallejo 896, Anita's Earth Brown and Folk Art Nutmeg.

And now a word about the photographs. I have spent a lot of time trying to learn how to use my camera better and can get some pretty good shots when I take a lot of time and control most of the variables. What was frustrating to me was that I was finding it more and more difficult to get decent pictures when I used the presets and just did point and shoot, as most workbench pictures are of necessity. Anyway I was getting more and more frustrated by what seemed to me to be too dark or just not representative colors with the presets and couldn't seem to get the various manual settings I was familiar with to compensate. That is until I tried this:

Several things got me thinking as I tried to photograph these black primed figures that were coming out too dark. Blue had asked me if I was using my flash with diffuser and I told him I wasn't. But I got to thinking, was there a way to adjust things so that I could use the flash and get the images I wanted. With Auto I was getting no flash due to the direct lighting I was using. In portrait I was getting flash but it looked too harsh. In the various manual modes you can adjust the flash, exposure and white balance but I had the aperture and shutter speed set up for remote activation and smaller aperture. It dawned on me that I should try to copy the shutter speed and aperture of the Auto setting with my lighting and exposure tweaks in full on manual mode. In M mode the little thumb dial changes shutter speed, I dialed it to 1/100 sec. Then over to A(perture priority) to thumb the dial to F5.6. The Flash was bumped up to +1.0 from something else I had tried, I forgot about it, and the exposure value was bumped up to +1.0. If that hadn't given me what I wanted I would have played around with that more. I figured that since I was using the Flash I should white balance for it. Again, if it hadn't worked out I would have noodled around more.

So thanks Blue.

Paint Table Saturday (on Sunday)

Hi All,

Lazy weekend thus far. I did manage to swing by a local hobby shop to pick up some supplies and found a model railroad backdrop for $6 or so that might prove useful. I won't show you that this time, but go on to what's being painted.

I seem to be having real trouble covering all the little nooks and crannies in these Bugbears I bought from Splintered Light. Someone else has bought the range and I'm trying to get them painted up so they can use them as product examples.

I really had to tweak this photo, the dark brown shade layer on the flesh is hard to make out against the black primer. You may recall, when I painted the first two, that I had originally mixed up a custom skin color. You may also remember that I thought all that work ended up looking a lot like the Reaper leather colors. So this time I'm using stock Reaper Browns.

In other news, I'm back on the eBay adding a few models here and there to the Orc army. I've also been quite a bit more active, for me, on the Oldhammer Trading Company. So far all purchases, not trades, but I'll put up my trade stuff as I get more organized (believe it when you see it.)

Gotta go finish up dinner. Cheers.

Workbench, Welcome and reviving old projects

Hi All,

  I've been puttering around a bit the last week or so, but I just haven't had the blogging mojo. I meant to post to the Paint Table Staurday G+ group but decided that by Monday it was just too late. I'll try to post there this upcoming Saturday.

  On the workbench right now is this:

Terrible lighting, sorry. The Burnt Umber primed are 20mm Ratmen. The Black primed are (foreground) 20mm Bugbears, (next back) 20mm Ogres, (smack in the middle all the way back) 28mm Reaper Barbarian dude, (with skin painted) 28mm Gunthor from Black Scorpion (I think).

In the bucket for cleaning we have all my current Sci-Fi figures. These are the Colony 87 figures plus the Oldhammer 2015 special figure and a Judge Dredd Psi Judge. I'm waiting on those Foundry RT figures. I also supposedly have the Space Raiders Kickstarter coming at some point, but I forget what the hold up is.

Welcome to Suber of the very nice blog Oldschool Workshop. He's got some nicely painted figures and a great comic book project he's thinking about rebooting. Go check him out.

Speaking of reviving old projects, I dug out my old Mighty Empires campaign and retyped the journal so that I can sex it up into comic book or other presentable format.

  The thought is to try and recall what was going on and fast forward 20 some odd years in game time to be a source of scenarios for me and possibly others to play out in this alternate Warhammer world. I brought in a lot of AD&D Deities & Demigods fluff for the Orcs and had them be the main threat to humankind instead of Chaos. One thing I've noticed is that my 24 year old self seemed to like run on sentences, a lot.

Cheers everyone. Off to the gym tonight.

Basing, storage and transport.

Hi All

I've been doing a lot of prepping of figures over the last week, but don't fear, I still have a mountain of lead and plastic.

This stuff is mostly 20mm stuff that I purchased from Splintered Light Miniatures awhile back. I'm including a few 28mm figures that I wanted to get done as well. I still need to have a sort through and prioritize my painting.

Anyway, after seeing other peoples stuff and getting a lot of tips, I wasted time did the necessary internet research on the various topics.

Basing: I think my general fantasy basing scheme is going okay. I'm using all the old and new square plastic bases that I have. One thing I've hit upon to tackle scale creep/ integral base is to use either the thin plastic rendera bases or 1.5mm plywood from Litko. For my 1/72 (20mm) projects I'mm still using the fender washers 3/4" (~20mm) and larger for monsters etc. Where I'm not sure what to do next is my planned foray into 40K or Sci-Fi/ Post Apocalyptic / Space Trash games. My 28mm basing for non Warhammer Fantasy Battle has been a little all over the place. Thus far I've primarily used 3mm thick 1" (25mm) wood discs that you can buy at the craft store. I've also used one of the lipped bases, I think it ends up being slightly larger than 25mm at the edge but the top area seems the same as 25mm. I was looking at info on 40K and there seems to have been a switch from 25mm to 32mm for most troops, with larger bases like 40mm and 60mm for monsters/ robots. Putting a Space goblin on 25mm seems like overkill, but I can see the appeal of not having to have so many different base sizes. I have some 20mm plastic slotta bases that I'm not going to use for 20mm metal zombies. I guess the open question is, what do you do for your sci-fi? I feel like I should try a different basing scheme as well.

Storage: I feel like the Sterlite plastic containers have done their job adequately. One innovation that I saw at Oldhammer USA was the addition of sheet metal to the bottom of the bin and rare earth magnets on all the bases. I have been using the metal roof shingles from Home Depot for basing 20mm cavalry and engines, but I was having trouble finding what they call "craft steel" in 12" x 12" squares. I finally found it in aisle 20 of my local Home Depot, near the specialty fasteners. Coincidentally it is the same aisle as the rare earth magnets. Now I did purchase some magnets there, but they were 3mm thick and don't fit completely underneath a standard slotta base. Some more research showed that many use 2mm thick magnets because they a strong enough to stick to metal even with a 0.5mm gap. Of course in America we don't use metric measurments so I may try 1/8" (3mm) x 1/10" (2.5mm) disc magnet from K&J Magnetics here. Again any thoughts you may have to share are appreciated.

Transport: While I did use the Sterlite containers and seat cushion foam to transport my figures in my check on luggage, a few people were using jewelers cases to transport their figures. The recommendation I got was for Nile Corp. Jewelry Supply and I think what I saw was one of the aluminum cases from here. I'd need to review carry on sizing restrictions but I think 861-7 might be the way to go. I'm not sure if the 26" dimension on the 862-7 puts it out of carry on size. Any how you could use magnets and sheet metal in the trays and add foam to reduce impact. I'm gong to seriously investigate this.

I want to close with calling your attention to Belched from the Depths, particularly their tutorials which cover many of these topics. If you have any links or suggestions for things that work for you feel free to let me know.