Propapalloza, week 1 (2024 week 30)

This week we start a not-terribly-exiting theme that will likely save my desire for cranking out at least 365 painted figs by the end of the year. I didn't intend to crank through all of my many prop boxes, mostly from Dungeons & Lasers kickstarters over the years but I did. Unfortunately, their accounting isn't worked into my "to do" count but they were part of my Pile of Potential(TM) and they're now mostly painted. Also of note, I'm still mucking with my photography setup so we have dumpy shots of dumpy paint jobs. Enjoy!

These are a chunk of the stone props in the collection. If you've never painted stone-like items, they're pretty easy. As per usual I primed with the airbrush and then did a quick drybrush with golden heavy body titanium white. 

After that they all got a heavy dark wash and another drybrush of a neutral dark grey. I could have stopped there but I didn't. I followed that up with a lighter neutral grey drybrush and a final very light titanium white drybrush.  

The thrones got a (very) brief pop color in case I ever need to tell them apart but otherwise were done more or less the same.

Also of note: I did experiment with one of these varying washes with a coat of Speed Paint 2.0 Gravelord Grey which was way easier to control and way less splotchy. Probably not worth it to do on big terrain pieces, but that's a good thing to know.

From this point until I get 100% caught up with my posts, my mini counter is going to be extra sus but I guarantee it'll all line up in the end.

2024 finished mini counter: 167/208

edit> through the magic of the internet, I've backdated this post because I was dumb and forgot to post it on the correct day.

A brief fantasy interlude (2024 week 29)

My typical workflow generally involves picking up random prepped figs to finish off a blob of paint that I might otherwise waste. That sometimes means that several figs are mostly painted at various times which is an excellent excuse to not do what I should be doing in order to do something potentially more fun. Also true that I often do that on days that I can't or don't want to be painting but really want to get that dopamine hit of marking something as done. We cope with our demons in any way we can, right? 

This gal is Human Fighter from Vae Victis, one of my favorite sculptors and a sculpt I like a lot. I'd intended to do more with her but really didn't. She was printed on my old printer and I found the chunkier layer lines really hard to work with, especially the metallics. She was done in about four hours and don't be surprised to see her again sometime in the unforseeable future.

This is Female Minotaur from Bones 4 plus a weapons rack from Bones 5. I don't particularly like either sculpt with the added downside of probably never getting any screen time as minotaurs aren't part of my fantasy world. As I'm hoping to complete the figs in Bones 4 this year, that meant that she needed painting in the near term. She sat prepped on my painting table for most of the year and I don't think she came out well. The sculpt is pretty soft and I picked a not good color scheme. Ultimately she's painted and that's what counts.

 

 

These are (pretty clearly) not figs, not painted very well, and not particularly good pieces to begin with. If you were thinking "hey, those look like corks glued to bases!" then you'd be 100% correct. I always seem to run out of pillars and can't be bothered to print out or buy more so I made these extra low-rent ones because I have a bag of used corks that seemed like a good purchase at a time. I could have put a bunch of grit around their bases to hide that they aren't glued on straight. I also could have done more to hide that they're cork but I didn't do that either. What I did do is paint all six in about fifteen minutes which means that they're done and ready to get in the way the next time I need pillars on a battle map. Sadly, they're not figs and don't exist in my accounting so they don't move the finished mini counter. 

2024 finished mini counter: 157/208

Sci-fi Showdown, week 4 (2024 week 28)

This may be the last contiguous week of this theme but as I expect to be running a Sci-fi mini-campaign next month, expect there to be a fifth installment somewhere near. I've been working through my backlog of figs printed/prepped over the last N years that have been cluttering up my work area. Like last week, I've also been futzing with my photography setup so expect worse pictures than usual.

First up we have O-REN and Kimiko from Titan Forge. O-REN was printed on my old Mars Pro and Kimiko was printed on my newer Saturn 2 not that it's particularly easy to tell the difference. They're both painted in pseudo-analagous color schemes and both sculpts are great despite their various negative space issues. One clever thing about Kimiko's sculpt is that it's higher detail at face level which  I appreciate intentional or otherwise though it strongly implied that I should pick out the ribbing on her parasol. If that sounds tedious, it's because it was. Probably her hair could have been slightly darker overall. O-REN by contrast has far fewer details and I took the opportunity to do another unnatural hair color. Because I can. I probably could have painted her shirt a different color but clearly I didn't. I like both of these so don't be surprised if they show up again in the future.

These two are International Women's Day Free Figure from Wargames Atlantic, an absolutely free download. I've heard quite a lot about Wargames Atlantic but as I don't play a lot of wargames, I hadn't had any reason to purchase their figs. Browsing their catalog on myminifactory, it looks like they have a bunch of fantasy stuff too so possibly more of their sculpts will show up here in the future. For these, I quite like the sculpts except that their eyes are sooooo tiny. The huge amount of detail picked up speed paints exceptionally though seriously slowed down subsequent highlighting attempts. I mostly kept to edge highlighting.  Unfortunately, I was in a hurry so didn't spend as much time as I could have picking out details. Regardless, I think this is a pretty good result for the couple hours of effort I spent.

Last up we have Jenny Silverleg from Titan Forge and Female Mercenary a free download from Moid. Jenny's been here before, way back in Week 43 of 2022 in a previous Sci-fi Showdown. When I painted the first one, I was in a hurry and noted that the sculpt would hold a higher quality paint job than I'd done. This year I got to prove it! In addition to several hundred figs' experience difference, adding several more hours of effort paid off well and yes I know that her leg is golden and her name is silverleg. The gold fit better with the synthwave color scheme. The female merc didn't get the time that Jenny did and I think it shows. I had a heck of a time getting her glued together, her head in particular which is why her neck looks weird. I like the sculpt well enough but was in a hurry like the Wargames Atlantic gals so kind of phoned it in. Both of these will likely show up here again at a later date.

2024 finished mini counter: 154/208

Sci-fi Showdown, week 3 (2024 week 27)

This week we have some Zentradi from the Robotech RPG Tactics game. I'm also experimenting (slightly) with my lighting setup today so on top of these not being great paint jobs, they're also not well shot.

These first dudes are 2x Regault Battle Pods and one Recon Scout Pod. You might remember the first two from way back in 2019 week 15. When assembling those I lost two of the leg assembly bits that I subsequently found years later when moving my hobby station from downstairs to upstairs. I'd been looking for batches to do this year and found the next four dudes and figured, this would be the right time. The scout pod was assembled, primed, and washed and subsequently kicked around for the intervening five years. Yay. I wanted a grimier, grittier finish on these so they're basically a zenithal + simple base coats followed by an oil wash. They came out a little grimier than I wanted but the heavy wash covers up many sins in the basecoating so I'm going to be OK with that. 

These dudes are Zentradi Artillery Pods and they came in a box of four that I should not have bought. It was the beginning of the pandemic and a bunch of stuff was on sale at Miniature Market and I bought *way* too much as is typical (I'm slightly better about it these days). They sat around until I started looking for not-difficult batches that would help bring my Pile of Potential(TM) at least a little under control. Pretty sure I've typed this elsewhere but these sculpts are good but in *way* too many parts a bunch of which I've lost but don't care enough to replace. I especially dislike that so many of the large artillery bits have such small attachment points. Assembly was pretty tedious and I dread looking back in the main box because I super lover the destroids and expect pain. The whole batch of these was done in like eight hours.

Last up we have a...er...the internet tells me it's a Zentradi Recovery Pod and like the Recond Scout Pod above, it was also assembled and partially prepped in 2019. It's big and it's weird, and I don't really know what to do with it. Since I was already doing Robotech stuff, I figured it was high time to get it done once and for all. It came out a little grittier than I wanted but it's pretty lacking in details so the wash really wasn't ever going to do well on it. I think it's also missing one of its tiny fins on the bottom which is gone forever. Maybe it'll show up on the table at some point but I wouldn't hold my breath.

2024 finished mini counter: 148/208