General WIP Update-Actual Painting!

Inspiration and motivation have been slow to come to me lately and 2020 was a disaster.  2021 hasn't been much better but I did finally manage to get a project finished with a Stargrave crew from Reaper's Chronoscope line.  In an effort to speed things up and try to keep some inspiration flowing I've taken a cue from Jean-Baptiste Garidel over at Leadplague and tried a different direction with my painting.  JBG uses a muted palette with a couple of key pieces of vibrant color over an apex spray of dark then light.  I thought I would give his style a try and to be honest I'm pleased with the results.  This is my first attempt and I don't feel like I'm even close to mastering the technique, especially selecting the color and spotting of that color.

With that said I really like the first attempt and the better news is that it seems to be a bit quicker for me!  I have a few more started and will post when done.  Thank you JBG for the inspiration!

I also managed to wrap up the truck for Car Wars/Dark Future/Gaslands.  Started looking like this:

and now looks like this.

These are magnetized turrets that go on top, I embedded the magnets on the inside of the trailer in two spots.  They can also be used on a small box van.  They are made from round bases and a variety of Iron Wind mech weapons.  They always have a booth at the Origins convention with boxes of loose lead at ridiculous prices.  I had always intended to do Car Wars 3up someday and Gaslands just pushed that work to the front of the queue. 

 

Here are some WIP on a wasteland/apocalyptic truck.  Still figuring out the wheels and how they attach.  Not sure I have it worked out yet but getting closer.

As well as getting some work done on the "Off with the old/On with the new" troll project. A quick before reminder, here it is stripped down.  I'll do a proper before and after once I have it wrapped up.

And now a few updated pictures.

These pictures don't quite do it justice since I'm not much of a photographer.  These are older pics, here are a couple of more recent ones with a new phone.

 

I will need to wrap up the base and maybe a bit more detail to work out then I'll call it done.  Next up for the Off with The Old project, FTS!

Attention Pt 2

 A follow up to the last post.  I'm calling these finished.  I might clean up some of the details but I'm happy with them.  Not my best paint job but not the worst either.  As for the Reaper Bones product, these are the original white product that they first debuted and the detail is ok.  Clearly not as sharp as metal in some cases but not horrible either.  That is partially the reason that I'm calling them done, I don't know that I have the skill to improve on the areas where the detail isn't good.  With that said, for the price I can live with the minor detail issues.  I was looking at a new blister of the Black Bones product and it looks to hold detail better.  I'll have to give them a try soon.

A few individual shots

 

 

 

 

I originally gave the Illyrian's a purple color but wasn't happy with the results.  I then found that an old pot of Warlock Purple (more on the fuchsia spectrum) that was actually still good.  Used the new jig saw mixer and some of the Army Painter stainless steel mixing balls to reinvigorate it.  Put a little on one of them and was much happier with the look and converted both over to that color.  I need to work on the pluggers eye above.  On Keith's website he shows them painted similar to a human eye, I might go something alien looking for the iris.  I'll post a pic once I decide.

 Yes that's an old one.

But not as old as this one!

This is the first group/project that I have wrapped up in awhile.  I will shift focus to the Diehard bounty hunters and try to get them wrapped up over the next few weeks.

Attention! Officer on the Deck!

Well not really, just a painter actually.  With this post I continue the current theme of my AADD focus on Stargrave.  Here are some shots of another project I'm working simultaneously, Reaper Bones IMEF figures from their Chronoscope line.  I liked them in their metal form and had to pick them up in the Bones form, just too darn cheap to pass up!  One advantage to the Bones material is the reduction in cost for figures, especially the large ones like the Cthulhu figure.  The IMEF marines are $6.79 for the metal version and $2.99 for the Bones version.  By my math that is about 56% savings.  And I didn't pay the $2.99 I think I got a 10% discount on top of that so $2.79 each.  Well worth giving them a try.  To date I have only painted one Bones miniature, the werewolf in a previous post.  I didn't have any issues with it so I decided to give the Marines a go.

 

Mins still in blisters, along with a couple of metal Chronoscope metal figures thrown in as well.  I really like the variety of this line by Reaper.  You can get cowboys, Victorian era figures, steampunk, Sci-Fi, aliens, scenery, etc... 

I really like the Illyian Scout figure and that alien look, they remind me of the Dralasites from Star Frontiers.  I did a little web searching and found that Patrick Keith the sculptor for the Reaper min has also done 5 of them for Bombshell Miniatures which happens to be his personal miniature line.  I picked up a crew pack on sale that included the plugger figure below.  I plan to get a few more, especially the ranger and sentry models in full space suits with clear helmets!  I foresee an all Illyian Stargrave crew taking shape.

To go along with the Marines and the Illyians I also picked up the Blackstar Privateer with chaingun to act as heavy support for the team.  Given the size of the min and my dislike of the 3 heads provided I decided to do a simple conversion and make it an alien recruit.

My first thought was a plastic Kroot head that I have from some previous conversions.  As you can see the hair/spines on the back of the Kroot were an issue with the high collar of the body.  I decided to remove them and give it a try.  Not too bad a fit.  I thought about reworking some green stuff and recreating the spines but my green stuff was old and hard as a rock.  Besides it actually looks pretty good without them.  Now for the painting. 

Here is a crew picture pre- paint.

Here are the first few painting steps.  I decided to go with a grey paint scheme with bits of color here and there.  I used a couple Vallejo colors, Field Grey and Prussian Blue, and mixed some darker colors in to give me a base to highlight from.  I haven't tried the new citadel color contrast paints but from what I have seen these white bones figures seem to be a perfect match.  They are already white which seems to be a requirement for the paints so no priming just straight to painting.  I'll have to get some and give it a try.

Color Blocking

 First Wash, went with brown instead of black. (Sorry poor quality pictures on my part)

Some Highlights 

I decided to leave the marines on their integrated bases most were circular and fit perfectly on the round bases.  a few were more oval, I decided the heck with it and left the as is.  For the metal figures  I covered the bases with a variety of materials to get them to blend in with the marine bases.

 

The Greatest Miniature Hack Ever!

Well the intro says it all.  I stumbled upon what I consider probably the greatest hack for the miniature painting hobby of all time.  It is truly pure genius!  for quite awhile I have been racking my brain to come up with a way to mix hobby paints.  I tend to paint in mad fury for a couple of days to a couple of weeks and then suddenly lose interest or get tangled up with real life responsibilities.  That means my paints sometimes sit for weeks on end between uses.  As you can guess I tend to have some serious settling issues when they sit idle that long.  I have tried a variety of avenues.  I played around with my kids Erector Set and an electric motor.  I tried to craft something out of their Lego's.  I tried a few other approaches with absolutely no success.  Being the frugal miniature painter and gamer I just couldn't bring myself to buy one from Micromark at $65, I mean how many miniatures could you buy for that!  So I just resorted to shaking them manually until my elbow hurt.  That was until this weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what site I was on but as I'm browsing through photos of other peoples miniature projects I stumbled onto a photo that just floored me.  What was it you ask?  Well lets answer that with a riddle.  What do you get when you cross a bar clamp with a jigsaw?  This!

Shake Well?  Damn right I will!

I saw a photo of a similar contraption and was floored by its simplicity, versatility and effectiveness.  So much so that I had to run out the next day and get the necessary supplies.  I already had a jigsaw, in fact I have two so there wasn't any cost to me for that part.  It does look like you can get one for as little as $25.99 on Amazon and possibly less at places like Harbor Freight, at a home improvement store.  Our Menard's had one for $18, looks like Walmart has one for that price as well.  You might also be able to pick one up at a garage sale for less. All those options are way less than $65 and you get a dual purpose tool out of it.

Next up is a bar clamp.  I picked up this set at Menard's for a whopping $4.99, $4.55 if I send in the rebate!  A very nice set with 2 bar clamps and a variety of clips.  I went with a 4"-5" bar clamp.  I was concerned that anything larger might no fit into the chuck of the jigsaw and why spend more than you need to.  This one fit in nicely with the chuck and I was done.  That was it, nothing more.  I did go ahead and remove the base/foot off the bottom of the saw just to give me more room to open the clamp jaws up.  

 Citadel Old-Check (Yes i know its a P3 paint but same type of pot!)

 Citadel New-Check

 Army Painter/Vallejo-Check

Craft Paint-Check

Does it work?

Older Citadel Metallic (white liquid is the separated acrylic medium)  

Post 30 sec in the mixer.

I'd have to say yes it is a resounding success!
 

To be honest this saw is the lower quality of the two I own so I don't imagine it will every get used as a saw again.  I can fit any of the hobby paints in it with no problem.  I was worried about the dropper bottles having very little surface on their tops, if it becomes an issue I can always rig up something to help hold it in place.  I had to share this, it was just too good to keep to myself.  Good luck and enjoy.

Incredible Deal!

 

Look out, two posts in 2021 which is two more than 2020!  During holiday shopping I stumbled upon an incredible deal that I thought I should share.  I was looking for some board games at Walmart, as I strolled down one of the toy isles I noticed some Aliens toys hanging on the rack.  I’ve always been a fan of the movie franchise and was intrigued by them.  The xeno figures were actually pretty good, very true to the Geiger design for what appears to be a cheap 3-1/2” action figure.  The human figures, well they just appear to be some space or military figure and not specific to the colonial marines.  That was enough to dissuade me from impulse buying anything.  Then I looked down and was shocked to see this!

It is listed as Alien-Xenomorph Attack-Advanced-APC Vehicle!  Holy crap, it’s the APC from Aliens.  Now action figures aren’t really my thing but I picked it up and gave it the once over and realized it was way out of scale for the 3-1/2” action figure but it was probably perfect for 28-32” miniatures.  Better yet it was on clearance for $7.  I couldn’t pass it up so I secret Santa gifted myself.  Here are some out of the box pictures for details and size reference.  I wasn't impressed by the stickers so I peeled them off with ease.

 

My Wallyworld only had one but I’ll check some local towns if I’m out and about and see if they have any.  Looks like it is still available online for $10.50 as of today.  I’d like a second to modify and make a bit more realistic like removing the top door hinge as you can see in these pics.   

 

Possibly opening up the side slide door.  

But I won’t do that until I have a 2nd given my propensity to start a project and not complete it.  I wouldn’t want to be without a functioning copy for game play.  I might have to break down and order one online!  Not sure how or if it will take paint since it appears to be a softer plastic, again it would be nice to have a 2nd one to experiment on.  Looking forward to more posts on this in the future.