A thing a week 2020, week 43

I've now had my 3D printer for a couple weeks, this one, if you're curious.  As a result I've been spending quite a lot of time trying to make it work which I'm sure I'll talkwrite more about sometime later.  What better time for some lazy painting?

These two are a pair of Pike & Shotte Landsnecht Command Frames.  They were painted mostly with an airbrush as they are mostly covered in plate armor.  I'm pretty sure I bought these on sale at the end of last year.  I bought two of them and I suspect that if I'd realized they were a single character per frame I wouldn't have bought them as they're over my typical $4 per fig limit.  They got primed, shot from below with a mix of dark blue and dark metal, Vallejo Metal Color Steel from 90 degrees, and a brighter color from the top.  Details were picked out with a bronze-y highlights from back in Week 40 painting hoplites and everything covered with a gloss wash.  Overall, less than an hour for both and I like the results despite my less-than-even spraying.  

These two are from the Perry Miniatures War of the Roses:  Infantry (1455-1487) (since then, rebranded).  This is a set of 40 figures only four of which are fully-armored men at arms--when I bought them I thought they were all full plate figures.  At an extremely affordable less-than-one-dollar per fig, they make up for my Landsnecht Command Frames above.  They were painted pretty much in the same scheme above at the same time, even.  The bases are rolled-out Extra Firm Sculpey rolled out with a Green Stuff World texture roller (this one, I think). They're glued to a normal 25mm base with some coarse sand and painted with washes to dirty them up.  I was going for a busted up temple floor thing which worked OK.  Ironically, I spent more time on the bases than painting the figs.  

In keeping with the lazy painting scheme, these are two are Reaper Bones Caryatid Columns and a single Reaper Bones Gravestone of Protection.  I use golems like these quite a lot in my games so I was pretty excited to paint these.  I use a fairly predictable recipe for stone.  Prime + dark wash + drybrush + lighter drybrush--lazy painting at its finest.  I didn't even get the opportunity to base them reasonably because I quite like their built-in bases.  Total expenditure:  less than an hour for all three including prep. 

I sometimes don't count terrain toward my figure goals but this one is for sure going to be counted.  When I got my 3D printer I tried to print the test model that came with the device...which failed.  I also made a giant mess trying to clean stuff up.  So it wasn't a particularly auspicious beginning to my 3D printing.  I was pretty sure I'd messed something up until I started reading stuff online and it turns out that there's something wrong with the test model.  The next print I tried was this guy which printed perfectly.  In fact, every subsequent print has been good minus stuff I screwed up.  So this is officially my first successful 3D print which is now painted.

2020 finished mini counter:  140/50

A thing a week 2020, week 42

I've been trying to justify buying a 3d printer.  This is a fairly useless effort because I know that I'm going to buy one anyway, but it didn't stop me from cataloging my minis in near totality.  I've excluded my Star Fleet Battles figs for...reasons.  For fun, I also added counts for all of the unfulfilled kikckstarters I've backed.  What I'd hoped is that I'd come out with a "mostly done" kind of number.  I don't know why I thought that.  What I got was a big number completely dwarfed by an even bigger number.  Turns out I'm just over 20% though a pile of shamepotential of close to 1600 figs.  So I got that goin' for me.  

Because my backlog is so large and the pile of boxes is becoming difficult to step over, I decided to work through some of the partially-done boxes that are taking up space.  These are the final 12 Viking Bondi that we saw earlier this year completing the set of 32.  With the other 16 guys of the exact same molds named Saxon Fyrd Warriors, I have a veritable army of these guys. 

Instead of building what seemed fun, I took stock of the existing guys to see where more representation was warranted.  That ended up being some bowmen, some dual wielders, and a few dudes with warhorns that I don't have rules for (yet).  One of the archers ended up with a bow kitbashed from elsewhere because I was short one.  He shouldn't be hard to spot.  The weird poses were because there was a distinct shortage of left arms that could take a weapon.  The color scheme was basically "what would look OK that isn't already represented" which translated to "teal, purple, and golden brown delicious" so if they look a little garish, that's why.  I also used a couple new Pro Acryl metallics to see if they're any good and the nicest thing I can say is that they're not as good as Vallejo Metal Colors--accept no substitutes.  

These were based in place prior to painting and done as a batch over several days.  I recorded the building time for these guys and I was surprised to find it was around 4 for the dozen of them.  I wouldn't have guessed I spent this long building and scraping mold lines, especially given how lousy a job I did of both.  While the last batch of 20 seemed very tedious indeed, these seemed a lot less so and didn't take nearly as long per fig despite being done to a higher quality.  No fancy tricks here, really, just another batch paint on the heels of last weeks' Stark Sworn Swords running around 21 hours from clipping the first parts off the sprue to the end of painting.  I think these are fine overall for a speed paint and I'm happy to complete the box.

2020 finished mini counter:  132/50

A thing a week 2020, week 41

Minis again this week.  These guys have been done for a while but I'm pushing a bow wave like I like because I'm still expecting some leaner hobbying times in the medium term.  

These 13 doods are from CMON's A Song of Ice And Fire Tabletop Miniature Wargame.  More specifically, they're Stark Sworn Swords which would mean a lot more to me if I knew anything about Game of Thrones.  ASOAIF is a rank and flank wargame, notably one I don't play, but these guys and another few dozen of their closest pals were on super discount last year so I own quite a lot of them.  

These particular guy are in five poses, with the common soldiers in batches of 3 and 4.  They come attached to a 35mm (or so) base and while James Wappel recommended using a razor saw to cut them off at the feet, I clipped the little nubbies on the bottom of the base and then brute forced them off which to me seemed a little easier if less civilized.  They were pinned through one foot and laboriously cleaned of most of their mold lines.  

Like #1:  they're fairly simple and easy to paint except for the many, many straps.  I went a little overboard with my color counts and they were still pretty straightforward.  Like #2:  they're well-sculpted and made of fairly stiff plastic.  I guess I'm too used to bendy Bones figs.  Dislike #1:  they're clearly not designed for painting--way too many of their features are hidden.  I don't like having to do brush calisthenics to paint stuff but at least when it's due to my assembly ineptitude, I can only be mad at myself.  Dislike #2:  They're way too tall, about 35mm which makes them tower over my other figs, some of which are true 25mm.  This probably won't prevent me from using them in play, but dang it makes them look out of place.

Overall the lot of them were done in a speed paint batch in around seventeen hours including prep, paint, and basing.  I feel like they're at an acceptably quality and hope that they'll find use despite their scale issues whenever we get to play in person again.

2020 finished mini counter:  120/50

A thing a week 2020, week 40

More minis this week as one might expect since that's most of what I've done this year.  These guys were done about a week and a half ago.  Given that it's October with a lot of 2020 left and another big batch already completed, I suspect I'll crest 125 painted figs this year.  Only one way to find out!

These eight beefy fellows are Greek Hoplites from a single sprue from Warlord, my favorite place in Englandland to buy figs from.  I documented my Phalangites last week painted in red so I didn't want to do that again.  So this time around I opted for blue and green.  In retrospect the green makes them look a little too Sparty-like.  I had the thought that I'd glaze these guys like I'd started with so very long ago.  Pro Acryl transparents probably would have worked better if I'd worked more to bring up the highlights of the value sketch more or watered it down more.  In actuality I had to re-add the highlights anyway.  

The fleshtones were normal layering with Army Painter paints that I'm desperately trying to run out of covered by Army Painter flesh wash.  Their teeny-tiny-hidden-behind-their-shields eyes were especially painful though the poses are all my fault.  The bronze armor is Vallejo Metal Color gold and copper 3:1 tinted by Badger Ghost Tint Golden Yellow so they'd match their Macedonian neighbors.  This sounds pretty complicated but it really isn't.  I was too heavy with the candy coating on a couple of their shields because I was in a hurry and not being super careful.  

These dudes were glued to thin bases and magnetized like everything else.  Coarse sand was glued down with PVA very poorly and then primed and painted with the fig.  Flocking arrived after painting.  Prep on these guys wasn't great and I missed quite a lot of mold lines that I was too lazy to deal with during painting.  Their poses which I'm pretty pleased with also made painting really inconvenient but I knew that going in.  All told, I think these guys are OK for a speed paint and the lot of them were done in about 12 hours including prep and assembly.  

2020 finished mini counter:  107/50