A thing a week 2022, week 50

This week we continue our non-theme of "stuff that's been on my desk for too long" though if we're really honest, that's most of the figs I haven't painted. For reasons I can't explain, I regularly end up with a backlog of prepped and zenithaled figs dozens if not hundreds deep.

First up we have a rage drake from Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. This is a good sculpt let down by a lousy mold like a lot of the D&D boardgame figs and I wasn't able to un-warp his awful base. This is high drama, low effort speed paint with a very deliberate color shift from below to above which I really like. He was mostly painted with the airbrush first the yellow tones and magenta basecoat before hitting him with a transparent yellow from above to shift his back toward orange. I intended his scales to be glossy provided by Golden High Flow Acrylics which I really like out of the airbrush. The rest of the details were done with a brush afterward. The base is basically the airbrush overspray tinted with several layers of Seraphim Sepia. This worked far better than I thought it would and makes it look like he's radiating red. 

This big guy is a Reaper Bones Dragon Tortoise which I own most of two of. The first one was purchased for a campaign I ran in 2016 but found too late that he had arrived with two left legs. Reaper was kind enough to send me a whole kit as a replacement for free, not that I need more reasons to like them. Earlier this year I decided the time was right and after basing and priming I set him aside for the better part of six months. Airbrushing seemed like the right approach which is most of his basecoating. I did some highlights on these in acrylics including most of his details and hit him with an oil wash. If he looks at all glossy in the photo, it's because he hasn't completely cured yet. Oils upside: works like magic. Oils downside: sometimes takes forever to cure. Overall, I really like how he came out and he'll count as this year's second large figure.

D&D is filled with weird monsters and the owlbear is no exception. This entry is from Bones 5 kickstarter and I think he's probably the best sculpt of the bunch. He's also gigantic. The fur basecoat was a green wash that I was mixing that didn't end up particularly green and I can only guess why. The rest of the fig including the base is more or less phoned in but a) he's painted, and b) it didn't take very long. I might do more work on his wings at a later date if I can be bothered but more than likely I won't. 

These last two are of a couple Reaper Bones Griffon sculpts. I bought the dark one for a previous campaign that I expected to play in person in 2020 but 2020 had other ideas. He'd been sitting on my desk taking up a lot of space for quite a while now. The other guy came with the Bones 5 kickstarter. The tawny fur was done mostly with the airbrush and my shots don't really sell all the volumetric shading I did. 

The wings are mostly done with Vallejo Dark Grey Wash. The dark guy could go a shade darker but I didn't want to chance losing the texture any more than I already had and I didn't want to mess around with another drybrush. The other guy probably could have some better feather detailing. As much as I like painting wings, I didn't spend a lot of time on these guys, sadly. But they're painted and I suspect they'll get some game time sometime soon. 

2022 finished mini counter: 232/100, 2/2 large

A thing a week 2022, week 49

Sci-fi was fun but let's head back to fantasyland, shall we? We'll kick it off with this random assortment of props. The stockade, chest, and pair of lantern poles are from one of the Dungeons and Lasers but I am far too lazy to look up which one. The suit of armor and target are from Bones 4 kickstarter. I'd intended to differentiate the two lantern poles as day and night but then got lazy around the OSL. The chest metallics are painted with an ancient and terrible pot of Reaper metallic brass. The tuft on the target does a lot of work to call attention away from a lousy paint job. 

Next up we have a pair of 3d printed aurumvorax..er..aurumvoraces? These are a weird D&D monster whose name translates roughly as "gold glutton" and the model is by Yasashii Kyojin Studio. I didn't follow the D&D directions beyond the golden pelt which makes the figures look glossier than they actually are. These were a speed paint mostly played by airbrushing basecoats, contrast paint on the mane, and a rough drybrushing with that same ancient and lousy metallic brass both done within an hour or so. I might print these again and do some fur patterns as practice in the future.

Next we have a Reaper Bones Burrowing Horror. I bought this guy as a companion for the various bulettes and other elementals I have in my collection for a previous campaign. Obviously, he didn't make it for that and sat primed on my painting desk for what seems like a stupidly long time taking up more space than I liked. Well, he's painted now and I hit the high points I was looking for. Namely, I wanted fairly subtle tints of grey which I think work pretty well. A lot of the work on his armor is drybrushing but what really sold it was the very laborious picking out of scales, teeth, and claws. Overall, I think it's a good result for a couple hours of work.

This last guy is a Reaper Bones Cretus, Minotaur (notably not metal) and was not a speed paint though it probably doesn't seem that way. I've been painting this guy on and off for a year or so. The important part was selling his crazy musculature and his many metallics. I got half of that ultimately and painted and re-painted his fleshtones probably three times till I got here played by some lousy basecoating followed by airbrush highlights to restore the lighting, and hitting him with an oil wash with last week's Ghar dudes since I had one handy and didn't want to mess with this guy anymore. The metallics are crap but I wanted him done and he is now. 

2022 finished mini counter: 228/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 7 (2022 week48)

As mentioned last week, this will be the last week of our impromptu sci-fi theme and we start off with Ghar Bomber and Ghar Assault from Beyond the Gates of Antares, a game I notably don't play. Pretty sure I bought these on sale as individual sprues on sale somewhere which is why I only have one of each. I'd intended on doing a bunch of airbrush work but only really did the basecoats with it. I also had the intention of doing some fun gem and metallic shading but then I got busy and ended up doing these more as a speed paint than I expected. After a very messy metallics round I hit them both with an oil wash with the associated wiping and removing of said oils. Every time I do this, I'm stunned at how much work an oil wash can do and how it can save an otherwise shoddy paint job.

These two guys are 0-hr starships, another game I don't play. Like the Ghar dudes above, I'm pretty sure I bought these on sale, too. They're also simply painted with the airbrush calling out a handful of details. They'd been sitting around my workshop for quite a while so it was good to get them done even if the best parts don't show in these pictures. I especially like their clear acrylic bases and would really like to buy/make a bunch of them.

Last up we have a couple cars. I don't 100% recall where I got them but I'm pretty sure it was a really long time ago, possibly in the mid-90s or early aughts. With a liberal application of internet sleuthery I have identified the green one as a Grenadier Street Gang Car and the red car as Grenadier Corporate Sports Car also almost certainly a reprint as Mirliton Corporate Speedster. Basecoats were provided by the airbrush as one might expect followed by some questionable detailing. I'm not sure the red car's metallic bubble top worked out super well, nor did the faint shading on the green car's windows. I hit the green car with a dark wash to grunge it up but I don't think it super sells. Neither does the yellow in the headlights. Some day I'll get more practice painting this kind of machinery as I dig into my Battletech figs but that'll have to wait.

2022 finished mini counter: 217/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 6 (2022 week 47)

I thought this would be the last week for this impromptu theme but it looks like we've got another next week. Also, by this time the mini-campaign has already completed (yesterday in fact) and I sure hope it went well! Spoiler: it did.

First up we have Jake Rockatacky from Titan Forge. I didn't do a great job de-supporting him so there's all kinds of pockmarks on his back. I also note that this shot doesn't show some of the subtleties I worked into his flesh tones. Probably I need to do more work in my lighting set up. Someday I'll take better pictures but apparently not today. Him and Anna in the next shot are from a series "Island of Dr Maneater" or something. Probably that's why they have clawmarks or whatnot. I haven't bothered to read the lore.

Next up we have Camile Lipson and Anna Jones from Titan Forge. I drilled through poor Anna's foot when pinning her and I'm not 100% sure my repair job super sells though I suspect not many people would notice. Sci-fi characters give me an opportunity to paint weird hair color so Camile got purple. These figs have such great sculpts that painting their hair wasn't as much of a struggle as it usually is so I spent extra time on these. Their pants were particularly easy (Gryph-charger Grey) with simple highlights and I really like the results. Both of these were one day paints. 

Last up we have two gals. I call the gal on the left "Punk Rock Girl" who has the unfortunate name July_J and Jane Ferro on the right from, you guessed it, Titan Forge. Both figs were one day paints about three hours apiece and while I like both figs quite a lot, I note a pretty big difference in quality. Punk Rock Girl has an open pose and a well sculpted face. Jane Ferro due to her giant gun has a very closed pose and her face hidden in her shoulder. As you might expect, Jane was much harder to paint. I'm not 100% sold on the candy coat on her armor (played by Badger Ghost Tint Plasma Fluid--one of my favorites) but I didn't want to leave it as plain metallic. Punk Rock Girl's hair got extra love and I was particularly happy with the orange and blue contrast scheme. Had I spent another day on getting more of the details fine tuned, I might have counted her as a high quality job. I'm pretty sure the sculpt will support a better paint job so don't be surprised if she shows up again sometime in the future.

2020 finished mini counter: 211/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 5 (2022 week 46)

This week we continue our theme with maybe one more to go. Or maybe not? I'm far too lazy to edit these after the fact. You'll just have to find out.

First up we have Reaper Bones Bonnie and my fig did not look that good when I got her out of the packaging. The sculpt is good but the mold I got was very, very not. I did what I could with the mold lines but parts of this fig are misshapen in weird ways. I took this as an opportunity to practice sculpting with paint and so I did. I put probably half the painting time of the roughly three hours I spent on her face and despite the lousy mold, I think it's a good result. Looking at the shot here, I did not realize her pants were so super shiny and likewise, that my shots didn't show all the makeup work I did.

Next up we have Ryan Ford from Titan Forge. This guy was a speed paint to the tune of about two hours. I'm not certain that the red metallics on his face are a) supposed to be metallics, and b) work OK. I figured I needed more red on the fig to balance out the red on the inner lining of his coat, hence those plates and his tie. I also did a very patchy job on a 5 o'clock shadow that I don't think works. This is a pretty good fig for a speed paint since he doesn't have a ton of details. Probably he'll show up again some day.

This is Tex also from Titan Forge and he's also definitely a speed paint. Done in about two hours and mostly with contrast paints, you can see how badly I phoned his pants and shirt in. I mean, I left his shirt with the zenithal. Oh, and I forgot to point out the fancy freehand bases I've been putting on the characters. These are 3d prints that I designed with a magnet holder on the bottom and rather than leave them boring or pile a bunch of flock like I normally would, I hit them with a gradient and a pseudo-interesting pattern. I think they work. 

And rounding out this week is a pile of eight, count them eight, pieces of terrain and yeah, I know that the allegedly marble dragon pillar is more of a fantasy prop but it's my prop and I'll call it what I like. These are from Dungeons and Lasers, I think the second kickstarter but I wouldn't put money on that.

2022 finished mini counter: 206/100

Sci-fi Showdown, week 4 (2022 week 45)

Last week we had the gals, this week we have the dudes from the same Titan City Citizens. These are way more of a speed paint than the gals and the results show it. I didn't even spend sufficient time pulling the support nubs off but meh. Not super sure how much screen time these folks will get but experience teaches me that I can't really predict such things anyway. 

2022 finished mini counter: 195/100

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."

A thing a week 2022, week 39

Another week in the books and I'm both nearly done and feeling really nervous about finishing. There really isn't any space between those two points as it works out. BrickCon is Thursday so time is limited and I've got other commitments I have to meet. 

I do think it's shaped up well. Not as well as I'd have liked, but well enough nonetheless. Assuming I get things finished and shot, we should get glamour shots and show shots next week.

A thing a week 2022, week 38

A week of effort can make a lot of difference although it doesn't show here. I spent most of the last week pulling the sides in and reworking the internals some. Most of the stuff on the left is also reflected on the right which is also nice. Obviously there's a lot more to do and I pulled in the total length by about 32 studs though it'll still wind up around six feet.

"But wait!" you say, anonymous reader, "100 studs is less than 32 inches! Why is your SHIP so big?!" To this I have two answers: yes, 100 studs is 31.25 inches or about two and a half feet, but why would you stop there? I guess that's a question. Whatever. I am not known for my restraint and I like building at stupid scale. Need proof? Check in sometime next year.

A thing a week 2022, week 37

It's September and that means it's SHIPtember. The goal: a 100+ stud long ship in a calendar month. This offers those of us in the greater Seattle area an opportunity since it ends right around when BrickCon starts and I've brought home a trophy from such efforts. 

I've been mostly unmotivated to take on a big building project for the last two years--mostly (details later). BrickCon was virtual in 2020 and I wasn't able to attend last year due to work which further sapped any impetus I might have had. So heading into this year I knew I was going to finish something and it worked out that SHIPtember would be it. Yes, I'm tempting fate. 

This is about 32 hours in and maybe 1/3 of the way through. There's some serious structure that keeps the spine in alignment and it's about as stable a thing as I've built at this scale. It started as 3x blow up of a buddy's build but as expected it's drifted pretty seriously from the original. Also true: my lousy shot here obscures a lot of the subtle shaping. Tune in next time to see how far I've gotten in another week and if my photography has gotten any better (hint: no). 

A thing a week 2022, week 36: new campaign edition

This week we're back to minis. Truth be told, these were painted out of order since I want to play fully painted and this campaign started in May of this year and it's notably many months since then. These are the sacrifices we make to keep a schedule. 

This is Virgil, otherwise known as El Luchadore Magnifico, otherwise known as the flying magical death lizard. He's a pit fighter from the mean streets of Calacita. The fig is a 3d print from Artisan Guild, specifically Goldmaw Lizard E from this set. and I didn't realize the fig was female before I built the lineup for Ed to pick. Luckily he doesn't know and doesn't read this blog so I think the secret is safe. He chose the color scheme and I think shehe looks good with a minimum of effort mostly painted with the airbrush.

Next up we have Gervitz, a cantankerous religious weasel. The fig is a metal Otter Knight from Dark Sword Miniatures. This is a great fig painted only adequately and I think I primed him with the wrong stuff since the paint is already coming off in this shot. This is the first Dark Sword fig I've painted and I'm super glad I bought a bunch more. Watch this space!

This is Bev, a crazy dwarf soldier from an abandoned fortress named Stabbed Wheel, in actuality, one of my settlements from Dwarf Fortress. The figure is Baily Silverbell from Reaper Bones and we super thought from the pictures that she had two blades which would match the character. Turns out that she's got a crossbow in her off hand. Whoops. I still painted her as the PC right down to the busted up skellington pieces on the base by request, and she still gets screen time in game.

First of the NPCs is Lilya, a bear shaman hailing from the ravaged North. The ravaging part was due to the PCs' bumbling in a previous campaign and the fig is 3d print of Hunter Oathenshard from TigerSkullRPG. This a great sculpt despite me bodging a hammer head rather than the double-bit axe she normally comes with and cracking the base on the dismount from the build plate. I have another less broken one that'll get paint eventually and don't be surprised if I crank out a larger higher quality version someday.

Last up we have Anvil Thricedamned, Evil Warrior from Reaper Bones and I could not find a link from the reaper site. He's not a PC or NPC, but he needed paint and was prepped on my table and had picked up random colors over a few months. I don't recall which batch it was, but I needed to do something that wasn't that batch so this guy got paint. 

2022 finished mini counter: 165/100

A thing a week 2022, week 35, Return of the Dauntless Edition

And now for something completely the same. This is The Dauntless again, in its fully 3d prop form and I can already hearread what you're sayingtyping. "That's not a building." It's not, but it's nonetheless spectacular. If you read last week's post then you probably know that this is the player characters' ship in my current bi-weekly in-person Saturday game. This is the fifth campaign played in that world and at this point this campaign started several months ago.

Like my other large ships, the Golden Sun and Cutter featured in Week 25 of 2020 has multiple decks connected either by friction (top decks) or magnet (bottom decks), and yes, that is my dining room table. This ship is big, ~30 inches and I was far too lazy to clean off my large photography area to take these pictures. Her size posed multiple challenges not all of which I handled well but overall, I think the result is good and she is quite striking on the gaming table. 

We start with patterns. The cross section templates I had from the last builds though they had to be re-scaled to the proper size. The deck template is exactly the template in last week's deck map reference. These were printed to roughly the right size with the cross sections pasted to medium weight chipboard and each deck traced on Readi-Board which is still my go to for such things. The cross sections were fixed to a slab of XPS foam (the high density green shown) and traced badly with my Proxxon. These would be further shaped badly with the wrong-handed OLFA knife in many of the WIP shots. And before you ask, yes, they do come in left handed versions and I didn't know that when I bought it. Deck texture was done with a medium ball point pen that I keep solely for this purpose with grain made by running a steel wire brush over the top. 

Basic construction is more or less what you might expect. I jam things together with a hot glue gun adding crafting sticks to reinforce things that require it. Somewhere before then, I cut the cross sections at a regular height and magnetized them. The keel was laid into carved channels across the cross sections. XPS is naturally flexible which makes it mercifully forgiving to work with. 

The only really scary part in this phase was cutting the keel horizontally with that same OLFA knife after everything had been fixed into place. Note that I had to increase the number of cross sections for strength and because I had concerns about milling planks long enough to run front to back. 

Speaking of planks, I milled them much thicker than usual, right around 1/8" and wider than usual to cut down on construction time. I let the front and back run wild until I got the majority of the planking where I wanted it. This worked fine for smaller pieces but for this build it ended up being really unwieldy. Eventually it all got cut cut down and glued down appropriately. 

During construction I noted that despite the thicker planking, that the whole thing gave a lot more than I was comfortable with. Thus began the laborious process of reinforcing the hull with various off cuts and other bits. This also gave me an opportunity to force waylay planks into closer alignment. The smaller ships don't have this and I think they'd have been better with it even though it was a pain. 

The last step was painting which started as usual with Black Magic Craft foam primer made from Mod Podge and black craft paint. After that I had grand plans of airbrushing the basecoat on it but my airbrush had other plans. I settled for painting the base and my mini photography background. With a trusty 1" craft brush I basecoated everything except the metallics and proceeded to drybrush with a very light tan before washing the entire thing with Liquitex Raw Umber Ink. The penultimate step was airbrushing AK Interactive Matte Varnish instead of the rattle can dullcoat I'd have preferred because it was like a billionty degrees outside and I was hiding in the one air conditioned room in my house. The last step was finishing the metallics, this time with Pro Acryl metallics which I otherwise don't normally use.

All told this was a multi-week effort probably 20 to 30 hours all told. The Dauntless will fill this year's complex structure requirement and despite not being a building, I learned an awful lot that should be transferrable to more conventional buildings.

A thing a week 2022, week 34, Dauntless Edition

And now for something completely different. This is The Dauntless, the ship we're using in my bi-weekly in-person Saturday game. They're gallivanting around the world in style this time partially because last campaign they barely left the city and one of the selling points of this world is liftships. It also keeps them from being murder hobos since they technically have somewhere to live. Giving up the murdering part is a harder sell.

Liftship schematics have been featured here quite a lot over the last few years and since I've got this one, I thought I'd throw it here, too. From the poetry layer, she's a new ship commissioned by Thraxis, the ancient sphinx ruler of Vasseosp and the Widdenroll. It's a bespoke liftship of war, the first of its kind with an experimental drive system harnessing cutting edge arcane powers. Feel free to use for your home games and whatnot (c) me 2022.

Four years of painting - batch edition (2022 week 33)

I managed my timing pretty poorly this year so this post arrives at about a month later than I would have liked but I really had to finish the mega batch of nord-saxon-viking-barbarians. Since I just got done with a giant batch, I thought it'd be fun to see the difference between big batches over the years. It's worth noting that the cleanup quality also changes through this sequence so it's not just the painting. 

Week 33 of 2019 presents a danger of kobolds (installment #1). Installment #2 would cover many of the same figures as a batch from Bones 5 starting in Week 5 2022. I didn't record times for the first danger  (top) but I recall it being pretty grindy. The second batch was just over 65 minutes per fig. When I was doing the 2019 batch I was in a real hurry and even noted that they really wanted more effort. Luckily, I got that opportunity with Bones 5.

Week 41 of 2020 presents Stark Sworn Swords from ASOIAF. Week 48 of 2021 ended the not-award winning theme A Song of Ice and Paint with these four Sword Bothers. Apparently there's a lot of swearing going on in that game. The former (top) was done in about 68 minutes per fig including prep and basing which at the time felt really fast. The latter completed in about 75 minutes per fig not including prep and basing so no speedup here but the quality is pretty different. I mean, I barely painted the Sworn Swords' shields for crying out loud. As a random note, I really wish these guys were quite so big. They tower over most of my figs at 40mm or  so. 

And now a three-for. The figs in question are Saxon Fyrd Warriors painted somewhere in the Fall of 2018 (no records) on top, the identical Viking Bondi in teal from Week 42 2020 in the middle, and from the mega batch on Week 22 2022 we have 4x Viking Hirdmen. The first batch has no records and were among the first figs I assembled and painted. The teal guys are around 105 minutes per fig including assembly, cleanup, and basing. The mega batch guys clocked in at around 45 minutes per sans assembly, cleanup, and basing which I don't count anymore so likely right around the same mark. If memory serves, the first guys were awful grindy and I ended the batch by slapping a wash on everything which looks pretty awful. I didn't slop a heavy wash on the teal guys (I was far more judicious with it) and on inspection, probably the wrapping and sleeves could have been better handled. Also, the belts are a little garish. I'm pretty happy with the last batch though their shields are a little plain (note: meant for decals). It doesn't super well show from the photos, but everything is just a little bit better on them. Non-painters could probably spot the difference in quality but likely not the details. 

Last comparison: Frostrave Soldiers. I painted the first ten of these in the fall of 2018 (top) which seems like a completely other age. They've gotten a lot of screen time as mooks, bandits, and other ne'er do wells and I distinctly remember being very impressed with their configurability and very confused by the many (many) layers of their clothing. I don't have any records for them but I recall the batch taking several weeks of effort. Below, we have five of the rest of the box of 20 done Week 51 2021 and I did more with these guys than I might have earlier in the year. These figs are great and three years and many hundreds of figs' experience between, I think they show a marked improvement. 

Ultimately, we paint for all kinds of reasons. I want to play fully painted for in-person games from here on out. I've got enough figs, the flexibility of 3d printing, and a process that completes reasonable figs in a few hours to make this realistic. Somewhere along the line I started to enjoy the process which makes it even easier to push to higher quality levels and part of that is seeing how I'm progressing. I'm not a world class painter and I may never be, but that's where I'm setting my sights. Tune in next year for my half decade update!

Nord-a-thon week 11 (2022 week 32)

This week we (finally) round out both the batch and the theme with team green of Frostgrave Barbarians. It's notable that the duration of painting these guys spanned many months (late April till mid July) and were done out of order with respect to the order they're presented here. I started a new campaign and I'm sticking to my vow of playing fully painted and I had some other needs which will show up sometime in the future.

All told, these 20 dudes were done in 42 hours to the tune of just over two hours per fig. That doesn't count priming/zenithal/assembly/prep/basing but it feels low for the result I got and the mental space that they took up. There's definitely more that I could have done on them, but I'm not unhappy with how they turned out. This also pushes my "total miniatures painted ever" over 1000, so I got that goin' for me, too. 

That's going to round out Nord-a-thon 2022 and because these guys were pushed in quality, I'm counting the 20 of them as 3 toward my high quality total (one per team). That'll round out that goal as well.

2022 finished mini counter: 160/100, 10/10 high quality