A thing a week 2020, week 26

This week we're back to minis, these particular ones done over the span of a few weeks in between liftship builds.  I've talked about James Wappel a lot in the last handful of posts so I figured I'd post a WIP to show what I'm talking about.  On the right is an in-progress of my lousy interpretation of a shaded basecoat.  This is about the one hour mark for the two and only because I started with inks that took forever to dry.  Doing this allows me to block in colors quickly and to start studying the fig to see where light and shadows should be.  It also helps pop out the details which, on Reaper Bones figs, are often hard to spot. 

This is a Gauth, particularly one named Bellax from the Wrath of Ashardalon board game.  Like a lot of these the sculpt is good but the mold is lousy.  I really wanted to mess with this color scheme and this was a good opportunity to practice blending.  My blends aren't good but then again, this is a speed paint.  All told, base coats and finishing this guy took around three hours.  The magenta and purple are Pro Acryl with Vallejo Game Ink Violet. For whatever reason, the basecoat didn't want to stick so the teeth are wonkier than I'd have liked.

Next up we have Gwyddis, Dwarf Valkyrie.   I didn't actually order this fig--it came as an extra with one of my big Reaper orders.  The more I looked at her, the more I liked the fig.  This continued as I got to painting and I ended up painting for longer than I expected.  The mold isn't great and I did a pretty lousy job of dealing with the mold lines.  I have no idea what the thing on her back is supposed to be and I realize that I painted them as if they were metal but then didn't use metallic paints.  I could certainly have pushed the quality up more but I've got other stuff to do and stopped after a fairly enjoyable five hours.

This guy is one of the first miniatures I purchased a really long time ago.  He's an Adventurer with Spear from Grenadier's 312 Fighting Men line apparently re-released in 1992 right around when I bought them.  This guy got quite a lot of use as one of the only figs I had for a while and has the distinction of being the first metal fig I've painted this generation.  The distinction is due to the rediscovery of my old metal Battletech and Mekton figs painted in college with enamels.  I had lofty dreams of finally doing some NMM and freehand with this guy and his blister-mates but after a painful night of failure followed by another three-ish hours of trying to cleanup the mess, I bailed and hit him with normal metallics and gloss wash.  I was more than a little hung over and shaky from doing a lot of heavy lifting during the day and I can't help but think I should have taken more time.

This is the second guy out of the same three pack and painting went a lot better.  It's a surprisingly good sculpt and despite having started painting him in blue I'm super happy I switched to red.  Given my issues with the previous fig and most of a night's rest, I put extra time in.  Total painting time was around four hours with a mix of the crap on my wet palette and Pro Acryl Transparents which I like more every time I use them.  I experimented with mixing my own colors from the transparents and an off white which went really well.  I'm hoping that experimenting more with this will help me see and understand colors better.  I also tried working with a filbert which went poorly and a liner for the first time which went a lot better.

This is the last guy from the three pack and he had the distinction of a few globs of brown paint, probably enamels, on his pants.  I thought the tip of his sword was broken off, but that seems to be the sculpt.  He's not half-swording but seems to have a Conan-like weapon.  I painted the green surcoat and gambeson over the blue base I'd put down the day before in much the same way I did the red.  I probably could have put more time into this guy but he finished off in a couple hours.  I'm pretty sure I primed these guys last century and I did zero prep because I didn't know you could remove mold lines.

2020 finished mini counter:  47/50

A thing a week 2020, week 25

This post represents probably the last of the liftships for a while because a) I don't think I'll Need(TM) more than the ones I've got, and b) because I'm a little tired of building them.  I did cut out some bits that I haven't used yet for a few knarrs and smaller vessels but we'll save those for later--I've got other stuff to do.

First up is a cutter and the first thing to notice is that this ship is big.  Stem to stern it's around 16.5 inches.  The next thing to notice is that it was built in levels which is way more work than I expected.  It was built in cross sections and I put a lot of thought how I'd attach the two with magnets.  If you're wondering how I got the keel to line up, well, it was attached as a single piece tying the top and bottom together then I cut it awfully carefully with my wrong-handed Olfa knife.  And before you ask, yes, I know they make left-handed models...now.

Didn't strictly need it to be balanced
back to front, but it is.

I didn't put nearly enough thought into how to build the bottom deck.  I would have preferred a piece of textured Readi-Board but I didn't have much confidence in being able to accurately predict the dimensions of the lower deck.  I don't fully understand the form, sadly.  Instead, I hand-fit the deck plating and let the ribbing fall where they lay.  While it isn't what I would have liked, I think it looks OK.  If I do these again in the (far) future, I'll probably sculpt it in 3D to be able to figure it out properly. 

The aft-castle also didn't get enough planning.  I had the top deck shape but none of the other dimensions.  As usual, I sort of placed it where it looked good and let things fall as they may.  It's a little tilted on one side as a result and the magnets that I stuck in the top part don't actually attach to anything because they're suspended.  I built it around the main deck's aft...whatever that thing is that sticks up which is now doubling as the connection point for the two.  This will break at some point but to put that point as far in the future as I could manage, I drove a couple long pins into it.

Painting was pretty much like the previous liftships.  We start with a "priming" coat of Mod Podge + black craft paint.  Then we get an undercoat of something in the brown family with the airbrush.  This was followed by a couple coats of home-made black wash and a golden brown drybrush and a ligher highlight drybrush. 

It's a big structure and quite complex with three playable levels.  As an added bonus, the top two decks can double as a sailing ship.  The planking is more regular and more tightly fitted than previous outings.  The bow isn't super tight but the errors don't show super prominently either.   I'll eventually put some extra detail work on.  Specifically, a cargo deck gridwork and the windowing on the side and back.  To this point, though, construction was around fifteen hours with another three-ish hours of painting.


So...what happens if we crank it up a notch?  This is the Golden Sun, the PCs' liftship.  It's notably larger than the cutter stretching the tape at around 20 inches.  That's about 64 Lego studs, if anyone's wondering, and to scale about 1/2 larger than Columbus's Santa Maria.  While I could have done something smarter, the construction is largely the same as the cutter with all of the same kinds of difficulties plus a few extras since I was tired! 

The cross sections are variable thickness because that's the stuff I had available in the right size and I cleverly forgot to bevel it before I started gluing siding on.  This has resulted in some unwanted bulges in the hull but they thankfully don't show too prominently.  I also forgot to texture the bottom deck's planking.  Luckily, I'm probably the only one that'll notice.

I've been burning through some of the stock and scrap I've had laying around for the last, I dunno, year, since I last seriously built with XPS.  I've ended up with piles of blocks of weird dimensions that I used for building sides and bases before I realized it was 1,000 times easier to use Readi-Board.  I also had bins of bricks and off cuts which are great for shoring up planking after the fact.

The painting followed the same scheme...which I've decided I don't like.  The airbrush coat over the black "primer" was a nice, rich mahogany.  The damp-brush golden brown followed by the highlight looks...bad.  All of the ships suffer from the same issue which makes them consistent but chalky.  Before I do the final details, I think I'll pull it all back down with a light wash or a coat of, I dunno, a Badger Ghost Tint followed by a dullcoat which they probably need anyway. 

I think the end result is good despite the painting issues.  This exercise has pushed my ability with the material and I feel like I know it at least a bit better.  I'll also add that the previous "best" building I'd built, the three floor tavern last march, feels awfully simple and inelegant in comparison.  This will complete the buildingstructure portion of my 2020 thing a week challenge. 

2020 finished structure counter:  6/5

A thing a week 2020, week 24

This week we're back to liftships.  For my third foray into these structures I wanted to go bigger, so I did.  This is loosely modeled after a Viking Knarr, a relatively simple utility ship.  As with the other two, I started with a Readi-Board deck textured with a pen.  To build the negative space in the middle, I cut the deck in half and glued a chunk of textured foam on the bottom.  A pair of wooden stirring sticks strengthened the outer walls.  And then it all went wrong.

Unlike the previous two, I didn't build the keel first.  Starting from the top I built one side down then built the other side down and glued the keel on the bottom.  Once the keel was on, I closed the front and realized my mistake.  The two sides aren't symmetrical.  I did what I could after the fact to minimize the issue but it's pretty clear if you look closely.  Granted, most of the attention in play will be on the deck but I know it's wrong and that matters.  It's also probably a couple inches too tall on its base which I may fix at some point and I really feel like I need like one more of similar size and dignity.

Like the last two, the hull was airbrushed first, two coats of homemade wash was applied, and a final drybrush brought the planking back out.  Also note that I figured out a clever way to not only have masts on the ship but also not prevent placement of minis.  These are affixed by tiny magnets (and unpainted in this shot).  A tiny piece of string is glued to the mast to make it maybe a little fancier.  I'll probably put magnets in the top of these too and experiment with a crow's nest attachment.  They'll be painted eventually.


Next up is a rebuilt of the two mast, single deck ship from last time.  I've attempted to resolve the issue with building the hull at a weird angle by printing out and carving out hull cross-sections.  I wanted to start with something more complicated and i'm glad I didn't.  I did have to work a lot less hard to build the hull which is sweet but the shaping isn't as good and freehanding with the Proxxon does not come naturally to me.  Hint:  lower temperature and slower cutting helped a lot.  I expect most future builds will be constructed this way. 

The original ships had some inelegant stuff at the back of the ship which I've hidden this time around with some fancy bending.  It almost sells as wood.   This one's painted in a rich mahogany and drybrushed with a leather brow. The coloring really doesn't come through, sadly.  Yes, I still need to paint my standin masts, too. 

2020 finished structure counter:  4/5

A thing a week 2020, week 23

This week we're back to minis.  These were done over a couple weeks around other larger projects like last week's liftships.  These are continuing the theme of "stuff I've had on my workbench for too long."

First up we have Immeril from the Temple of Elemental Evil Boardgame.  This is a fig that got a lot of play as a player character a few years ago and it's a surprisingly good sculpt so it's been good to finally paint him.  This, like many of my other more recent works was a speed paint over zenithaled primer.  I was apprehensive about OSL but I'd just watched one of James Wappel's patreon videos on the topic.  Also, he's holding a freakin' fireball.  I think it worked out for what I put in which isn't super much.  Overall it was about four hours over a couple days.  I will almost certainly do more OSL work in the future and I'm happy with this first attempt.

These guys are a bunch of random bits that I'd purchased recently that needed paint.  The two on the left are (obviously) mimics, one of my favorite bads.  The next one is a badly-molded chest that I paid too much money for and the last one is a stump.  I generally don't like buying stuff I can build and both the stump and the chest are treading into that territory but I was already buying stuff and close to the $100 free shipping at Miniature Market.  The chest's casting is absolutely abysmal and no amount of paint was going to fix that.  I could have used Green Stuff to fix it but I didn't.  These were speed painted in about four hours all told.  The yellows are probably too bold and the lighting isn't great on these but they're painted and that counts for something.

Next up we have a Seething Knight and Royal Pikeman from Mage Knight.  These guys had been stripped badly and primed badly for a couple years so I was happy to finally get paint on them.  Like many Mage Knight figures, these guys have bent weapons.  I replaced the top part of the Pikeman's weapon with a piece from another fig.  It's super glued on--nothing fancy gong on here.  They photographed poorly despite changing up the background and lighting which is an indication that I should both fix my lighting and use a better camera.

The third shot is a group paint.  These folks are also from Mage Knight.  From left to right:  a pair of Amazon Blademistresses, a Nightblade, a Woodland Scout, and a Liege Knight.  These figs were in pretty poor shape.  The crap they painted them with really did not want to come off so some of the fine features got melted in addition to leaving crap in the details that I wasn't able to fully remove.  I replaced the sword of the Blademistress on the left again supergluing a weapon from a different figure.  The Nightblade is in teal and purple as an experiment that I don't think worked out super well.  I like the scout best of all of these sculpts but unfortunately, it suffered the worst of all of the figs during stripping.  Her sword has also been replaced.  The Liege Knight shows one of the super-bent weapons that are so common for MK figs.  He was partially painted for a good long time.  These five were maybe eight hours over two-ish days from where they were to this level.

The last one is another Nightblade and one that I spent entirely too long with.  I shouldn't like these figs given their dumb fantasy getups, bad proportions, and lousy stances, but I do.  This one's been altered quite a lot.  The stance is held by the blocks glued to the base and is under considerable pressure.  Her left arm has also been removed, shortened, and pinned though I left the lousy sword as is.  Her paint scheme is pretty much the same one the fig came with and I used it as practice in painting black leather.  This, like the others, was also a speed paint though some of it was done quite a while ago.

These should round out the Mage Knight figures that I'm likely to paint this year.  I've got a few that are almost stripped unmounted but I think I've run out of interest in working on these.  I suppose if I stumbled upon a better way to strip them I might revisit but at this point I don't think that's likely.  These re-taught me a valuable lesson:  I tend to get bogged down with stuff that I'm not excited about or that seems tedious which means I spend less time painting, a lot more time procrastinating, and thus I get a lot less done.  I'm reminded of last year's Regault Battlepods which is the last time I re-learned this lesson.  I think my strategy moving forward is working in smaller batches and only on stuff I think will be fun.

Painting-wise, I've done a lot of experimenting with these so 2018 me should be pretty pleased with that.  I'm starting to grok Wappel's shaded basecoat thing which is definitely speeding up my work and, I feel, boosting the quality ever so slightly.  I'm also doing a lot more mixing and planning of colors.  I super like getting rough blocked colors on the fig early in the process.  It's way easier seeing if a thing is working out especially when thinking about contrast across texture, color, and warmth.  I think if I end the year hitting my thing a week goals and have developed a solid foundation, I think I'll be going in a good direction.

2020 finished mini counter:  42/50