Sci-fi Showdown, week 3 (2022 week 44)

Continuing our theme this week we have civvies. These are Cyber Forge Anniversary Titan City Citizens and they have the benefit of being modular. These six would be the gals. Despite what I might have set out to do, they are not really a speed paint because, well, I can't help myself. They're painted in the typical fashion: zenithal, speed paint basecoat, then highlights. I didn't spend as much time as I could have (obviously) but I'm not unhappy with the results. 

2022 finished mini counter: 189/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 2 (2022 week 43)

Last week we saw the bads, this week we see the PCs...and some other folks. And because I'm dumb I forgot to post this on the right day but through the power of the Internet, I've backdated it.

First up we have Reaper Bones:  Pulp Era Female Pilot and Reaper Bones: Sascha Dubois. They are good sculpts let down by bad molds and worse paint job. They were a speed paint done in around three hours for the both of them over a couple of days. Both are both re-painting if I can get them in metal. Given the time spent, I think they turned out pretty well. 

Next up we have Titan Forge Strahva playing the part of Jerry Noble, smuggler, hotshot, and Han Solo lookalike. Jerry Noble does not dual wield pistols and does not have two cyber arms but he was closer than a lot of the other figs I might have had. Then again, it's a three session mini-series so probably this is OK. This is also a speed paint mostly with contrast paint or in the case of his shirt, just letting the zenithal do the work. I don't think his boots turn out super well though the metallic arms are awfully well textured and picked up the wash and highlights well. Not bad for a couple hours of work.

This would be our wall of meat in a wall of mech, Stephen Lancaster, ex-shipbreaker and ex-union tough played by Titan Forge Lecter Hernandez. The orange in his color scheme was the choice of the player since we figured he met the narrator of this series in a jail. The pants and browns are both highlight contrast paints which are rapidly becoming my go-to for basecoats. The fleshtones and face were most of the work which clocked in at about two hours all told. 

The first of the non-speed paints is next. Josephina Jonaka, a rocker and former streamer is played by Titan Forge Jenny Silverleg. I bought this STL early last year because I liked it more than because I had any particular use for it. Imagine my surprise that it fit this PC so well! While her pants and red coat are mostly phoned in, her face and hair were not. This sculpt is pretty good and aside from some negative space which is really painful, it'll hold a higher quality paint job than I could afford here. So naturally, I printed a second one which we'll see some day, some time. 

And at this point it probably doesn't come as a surprise that next up we have Titan Forge Bonnie Gun

 playing the part of my combat medic NPC Ellen Hargrove. Since we weren't going to be spending all that much time with these characters, I figured I'd make them stand out and aside from their very different poses, I painted them in very different colors. I didn't spend as much time highlighting her dress as I should have and didn't realize it had come out quite so shiny. Probably I should have done more with the copper metallics as in, not painted those parts in that color. I don't think it works. Overall, I think a reasonable results and I just so happened to print another one of her, too.

2022 finished mini counter: 183/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 1 (2022 week 42)

One of my regular players is out of town for an extended period so we're switching gears and doing a two or three session sci-fi mini-campaign. Problem: I have no painted sci-fi characters. Solution: paint some!

These are Reaper Chronoscape Bones Nova Corp Riflemen and Soldiers and they are not good paint jobs. Oh no. These are slapchopped which is basically a new funky-named painting meme that I've been doing for years. Given how long I haven't been painting, that's a feat! We're basically going to zenithal, dark wash, drybrush, then glaze to get almost everything we want in a speed paint in not much time. 

Naturally, I couldn't stop there. Possibly this is due to the month I took off to build a thing from small plastic bricks. I took it a half step further by highlighting things at least a tiny bit. They do not hold up to close scrutiny but that's not really what they're for. They're here to present a pseudo-credible threat and to ultimately be shot up by player characters. 

2022 finished mini counter: 179/100

A thing a week 2022, week 41

This week we're back to minis though nothing particularly exciting--you'll have to wait for that.

These chunky beasties are Dire Boars from Reaper Bones 4 and yes I still have a pile of Bones 4 figs to paint still. I've recently (well recently as of this paint) started experimenting with Contrast Paints. For subjects like these two that aren't going to get a lot of screen time and generally don't need a high quality paint job, contrast paints are a great choice. I think they came out OK for probably not even a half hour of effort though they aren't quite so shiny in person.

These are most of Genadier #305 were creatures, specifically the were-boar and were-ape. The were-wolf is MIA. I don't 100% recall when I bought these guys but it was probably in the late 90s and for the era, they are OK sculpts. The molding, however, is questionable in an appropriately vintage kind of way. They're painted and based simply  again mostly with contrast paints which IMO fits their sculpts and I'm happy to have them done.

Bones 4 bed mocking beast because mimics. I'm starting to gather quite a collection of these and they are one of my favorite monsters in fantasy settings. This isn't a good paint job but really, none of these are. It's contrast paint with a coat of gloss wash in the mouth with several coats of IIRC Seraphim Sepia for the wood tones. I don't remember what I did with the planking on the base, looks like Pro Acryl Transparent Brown which is one of my go-to paints for this purpose. 

This next guy is a Chainmail Starter Set Hyena and not a terrible sculpt. It's a metal fig and I kind of phoned in both the paint job and the basing. Also the shoot and I'm not sure why the right hand shot is so out of focus. He'll go with the rest of the beasties in my collection and will likely see some screen time at some point.

This is a Nolzur's Bulette, another one of my favorite D&D monsters. This is probably the most complex paint job of the set and it entailed a bunch of drybrushing and washes. I wanted the purple to be a little more subtle that it turned out and probably the dirt would have been better with a little more orange. Overall, he's OK and most importantly: painted.

2022 finished mini counter: 172/100

A thing a week 2022, week 40

As expected, the glamour shots have arrived! She shoots better than she looks in person and I was able to capture some of her best angles almost purely by accident. Usually it's the other way around but more glamour shouts can be found on flickr for interested parties.

This was a very challenging build and though I'm happy with the result, I'm far from satisfied. She ended up at about 73" at 96 hours in a month. There were 20 work days logged which averages to just under five hours per work day. That's nuts and what added to the stress of finishing. 

The good stuff first. She's awfully sturdy. The other giant build I worked on this year (not shown) taught me some very important things about building large and building sturdy which I replicated here. This was reciprocated since I'm using the same stands and the same connection type (slotted into the keel) and learned some top tips for doing it better. I also think I did some good shaping near the back and on the conning tower and some reasonable detailing in the middle area with the negative space. The engines in particular are good, and probably the best part of the build even though few folks at BrickCon ever saw those.

The bad stuff is too much to enumerate here. Because of her size and the time crunch felt nearly from the beginning, a lot of the details are off. The proportions of the aft section are wrong as are the nose bulby-things and the big fins. The nacelles need to be separated better from the aft section by structure or color. The color blocking isn't particularly good. All of those things have good solutions but not easy ones and not ones that I'm ever going to get to since I've already started disassembly. 

If this weren't SHIPtember and done at the last moment from BrickCon, I would have fixed all of those things and probably added more details, but we don't live in that world. I hit the point of "I just want to be done" too many times and too early in this build for it to ever have been great, but instead of dwelling on that, I think there are one or two angles that are legitimately good and I've taken away a couple really key learnings. The most important of which is "don't build so danged big for SHIPtember."