Testing out my new Foldio360

This is the first "image" taken using my new Foldio360 turntable and light studio.   It uses my iPhone and Bluetooth enabled turntable.  Using the app, it takes 24 (or more) shots as it rotates the object 360 degrees and then stitches them together into the interactive image.  It took me very little time to set up and appears to have worked well on the first go around.  I did notice that I didn't center the miniature very well and it seems that she rotates around her left foot rather than the very center of the base.  I thought I had marked the center on the turntable and placed the mini on the correct spot.  I'm guessing that this will continue to be an inexact science.  I probably need more practice.

More Super Dungeon Explore w/ an Airbrush Warning

The above picture shows one of each villain from Super Dungeon Explore: Von Drakk Manor.  There are actually many more skeletons like the ones seen on the left.  Total model count for this expansion is 43.  To save time, I relied on my trusty airbrush.  Unfortunately, the airbrush did not provide the instantly amazing results that I have come to love (and rave about on previous posts).  With the vehicles, buildings, and [sparsely detailed] space marines that I've airbrushed in the past, the minis could be considered 60+% complete after the airbrushing was done.  That is not the case with smaller and/or more detailed models.  Despite the fact that I've upgraded my airbrush to the much more precise Hi-Line Iwata ($200), small details are hard to paint and splatter is much more noticeable.  The skeleton on the far left, the green-glowy bases on the witch and flying skull and the smokey "feet" on the grim-reaper mini are examples of the bad aspects of the airbrush.  I was hoping to get a smooth fade, but the results came out less snappy than I like.  For contrast sake, the three characters in the middle were painted without any airbrush and they have the snap I like.  Unfortunately, these models also took the longest to paint.  Long story short: I've found that airbrushes should only be used to  base coat smaller minis to provide the foundation and guide for your hand-painted shadows and highlights.  For example, the giant bat in the back row was based with the airbrush, to include shadowing and zenithal highlights, but significant brush work went over almost ever inch again to clean up edges and add more contrast.  Despite the fact that I'm still brush-painting every inch, the pre-blended base coat provided by the airbrush saves a lot of the normal brush-blending-effort and is quicker over-all.  The model below is a similar case of where I based with the airbrush to get a difficult [to brush paint] purple and brown fade, but I still went over that coat with brush work using thinned downed paints to smooth the splatter.

           

Back to Super Dungeon Explore

Super Dungeon Explore: Legends is due out at the end of this year and I have a LOT of minis that still need to be painted.  All of the Base Set and Caverns of Roxxor minis are complete.  I am now working through the Von Drakk models and will then move to the Forgotten King Collection.  After that, I hope to get to the dozen, special edition Heroes that have been hidden in the closet for over two years.  The above minis are the heroes from the Caverns of Roxxor and Von Drakk sets.  Pictures for the Von Drakk monsters will be posted soon.

Repaint vs. Touchup

I couple of months before we moved to Albuquerque, Ken surprised me with a new Ravenwing Darkshroud model that I prompted painted and added to the display case.  I began thinking of how I could best incorporate it into my games and quickly realized that I didn't have a lot of Ravenwing models in my collection to benefit from its support abilities.  Therefore, I have decided to completely overreact and build an entire Ravenwing Force.  While I wait for the mass amounts of landspeeders and bikes to arrive, I pulled some of the old models out of their transport boxes (because they are not worthy of going in the display case) and set to enhancing them.
One of my favorite Ravenwing models is the second-edition, tornado-version landspeeder.  I happen to have two of them.  Unfortunately, these were painted during my first year in the hobby (20 years ago) and have my most unskilled level of detail.  Instead of stripping and repainting, I decided to try a much quicker touchup.  I feel that the most boring part of miniature painting is the application of the base coat.  My old, rudimentary paint jobs were essentially just a base coat because they lacked the extra shading and details that I now include.  Question: can I get a modern paintjob and save a lot of time by just picked up where my 20 year-younger self left off.  Below is an image of the two old models. Before starting the project this morning, both models were nearly identical.  The one on the right received 3 hours of attention,looks great, and probably saved me the 12-15 hours it would have taken to strip, reassemble, prime, and completely repaint. 

 

Pathfinder Card Game Mini

This is the 3rd and 4th model painted for the Pathfinder Card Game: Skulls and Shackles.  The first two weren't worth posting.  Miniatures are not required for the game, but make it much more fun, IMO.  The bases are supposed to look like rocks on the edge of the sea.  Unfortunately, I haven't discovered the magic painting trick for making shaped and painted spackle resemble a convincing wave.  On a completely different note, this is the first time I've taken the image with my IPhone and I was surprised how closely it would focus--it behaved almost identical to my other camera in macro lens mode.  The colors and focal point are not bad.  I did not have a tripod or equivalent and I believe this is to blame for the slight blur.  If I can find a way to steady the phone, this will likely become the new way I capture miniature images (it is much simpler).

Kaptin Badrukk

Kaptin Badrukk was a lot of fun to paint! He has so much detail, the only hard parts were: staying consistent (staying in a common color palette) and the tabbard. I wanted to paint a treasure map, and I'm not great at freehand. I settled for a simple map, but I think it works.

Kaptin Badrukk

Da Powder Grotz

These are Ork "Ammo Runts", I put the 3 of them on a single base to accompany Kaptin Badrukk.

Dedicated to Airbrush 5: Buildings

Ken gave me the Fortress of Redemption five years ago as a Christmas present and it has sat in the box until two weeks ago.  Without the airbrush, painting a model of this size was just too daunting.  I could have just spray painted it with a green, washed it, and then finished with a copious amount of drybrushing; but that is no longer my style.  BTW: this still consumed a full can of Chaos Black primer. 
Like many of the large models seen in my previous posts, I painted this model in parts.  The floor was painted with Vallejo's air metallic rust color and the lascannon was painted with air metallic boltgun.  The green parts of the model were painting using the zenithal highlight technique and then the edges were hardlined.  The steel wings of the dark angle on the tower were the first parts airbrushed with air metallic steel while using a paint on [latex] mask.  After painting the main tower portion green, I applied the liquid latex around the edges of the wings and then taped off the larger sections.  Results were not as clean I had hoped but I think that is due to lack of practice.  Some of the latex peeled of nicely, but some of it did not and efforts to remove it just smeared the steel paint that was on its surface onto parts I did not want steel.  In the end, I had to do much more touch up work than I had expected.   
On a non-airbrush-related-note, I have found and come to appreciate alcohol-based metallic (brush on) paint; specifically Vallejo's liquid metal gold.  See this YouTube video for a great demo.  I have found that both GW's and Vallejo's arcylic gold require several (4+) coats while these liquid gold paints are very opaque in 2.  The fortress model had lots of areas that I wanted to be gold and using GW's gold would have driven me nuts.

 

Dedicated to Airbrush 4: Space Marines

Space marine vehicles benefit from the same easy fades as the Eldar ones mentioned below, but the simple shapes of their infantry models makes zenithal highlighting almost automatic.  This means that you can created well shaded/highlighted Space Marines in very little time.  There are a plethora of articles out there on zenithal highlighting, so I won't go into details.  In essence, you spray lighter shades of the base color onto the model from increasingly overhead angles to simulate the glare from an overhead light sources.  After that you paint the details (like guns, etc) you apply the decals and you're done.  I still like to outline the details with black hardlines as well as hit the edges with bright hardlines.  The below picture shows a tactical squad and to the right, an honor guard squad.  The honor guard squad was painted in parts so I could separate the robe portions that needed to be painted tan from the arms and backpacks that would be green.  Additional shade and highlights were added with a brush.

Dedicated to Airbrush 3: Imperial Knight

Large models used to take a long time to paint, especially if you were using a color that didn't coat in one go.  Not with the airbrush.  I painted the Imperial Knight (seen below) in 5 days.  This model was also painted in parts.  The main infrastructure piece (stuff painted raw metal) was assembled but the individual armor panels were separate and unattached.  I learned a couple of lessons on this project.  First; the metallic air brush paints from Vallejo are magic and coat extremely well.  The boltgun coated the frame in two easy coats and took less than 10 minutes to complete.  Second, I learned how to paint checkerboards with tape masking (as opposed to a template).  Its actually a two part process where you have to lay a grid that paints every other box.  Unfortunately I didn't take any work-in-process photos.  See if you can figure out why it can't be done in one go :-)
In case you were wondering; the banner between his legs is actually a decal.  

   

Dedicated to Airbrush 2: Eldar

Not Airbrushed

Large Eldar models seem the perfect candidates for concentrated airbrush attention.  I love to use high contrast fades and creating these with a brush is hard to do evenly and without stroke marks on the large surfaces.  I wish I had the airbrush while I was working on my Dark Eldar, because I tried to do a smooth brush fade with less than optimal results.  See the pic of the panels on my Razorwing's wing (to right).  Not only are the transitions rough, but this took a lot of time.  The below images of my Eldar were painted with the airbrush and show much more satisfying results.

My only regret is that I didn't put enough contrast in the fades (ie. they are dark blue to light blue rather than midnight blue up to sky blue) especially on the Crimson Hunter (below).  After the first few projects, I began to notice that the intensity of the color, straight out of the airbrush and still mostly wet, is more opaque than when it drys.  Therefore, the high contrast I thought I had painted became much more subtle upon drying.

Airbrushing more than one of the colors on a model is an art in itself.  The simplest method is to paint the individual pieces before assembling it and the more creative method involves masking.  Masking can be done with templates, tape, or paint-on latex.  I did some simple tape masking on the crimson hunter and painted the Wraithlord and Wraithknight in parts. 

Dedicated to the Airbrush 1

Despite my gap in posts, there has been quite a bit of painting going on.  Kenneth finally pressured me into setting up a photo station and snapping some pics.  The next series of posts will go into the details but the theme running through nearly all my recent projects is a love for the airbrush.  I first mentioned my fascination two years ago when I used the airbrush to base and shade the druid/bear model in the Super Dungeon Explore.  I now use it to apply the base coat to nearly all of the models and perform the majority of the shading and highlights for the larger ones. It is much faster and leaves no brush strokes.  Here is a picture of me in my "setup".  I've basically positioned myself next to my kitchen sink so I can easily rinse parts.  I use a 3-part science fair display board to block overspray (the airbrush hose penetrates the board to reach the compressor behind) and I line the counter with newspaper.  I wear a nitrol glove on my left hand and a respirator.  Despite the fact that I'm primarily using acrylic paints, there are some nasty chemicals in the spray that you don't want to inhale.  Even though you won't smell them, you will inhale them (as evidenced by the Dark Angel Green snot I had the day I realized I needed the respirator).

Terminator Librarian

This model was an attempt to use printable canvas for a banner. It didn't work the way I wanted it too. Later, I found out why. You need to tell the printer to print at the highest ink level (like high quality photo). I was afraid of bleeding colors, but the later attempts turned out MUCH better. I'll post pictures of the better banner later.

Blood Angels Terminator Librarian

Blood Angels Razorback

So, I finally painted the Razorback I received for my birthday, just in time for 7th edition. For a brief time they lost their "fast" trait according to the official FAQ, but it came back.

I had a slight primer malfunction while painting this. Couldn't do much to fix it. I also learned that it would have been MUCH easier to paint the treads separately and glue at the end... I painted the turret separately and helped a lot.

I considered taking the lascannon and twin-linked plasma gun option, but decided not to. I think I regret that now, since fast vehicles can move and fire 2 weapons... Maybe I'll paint another one, it's not like they go out of style. Especially since vehicles are slightly safer in 7th edition (blow up on a 7, and always WS1 in hand-to-hand).

Blood Angels Razorback

Ork Freebooter Pirates!

Games Workshop only released a single model for this unit (plus a special character, not painted yet). So I had to get creative to make a complete squad. I kit-bashed most of the squad from Ork Nobz sprues (converting kombi weapons into Snazz-guns with more-dakka). I also replaced the heads with some custom Ork Pirate heads I found online. The heads were resin, and needed some conversion to get them to fit the bodies, but in the end I think they worked out!

Ork Painboy

Who wants Feel-No-Pain and 5+ invulnerable saves? Orks do! I painted the Painboy (and Grot Orderly) to accompany my Free-booters.

Sielendria (Reaper Miniatures)

I painted this for my wife, she wanted a miniature to represent Seoni in Pathfinder. We weren't excited about the official miniature, so she found one in the Reaper lineup that she liked, and I painted her to match the color scheme. The golds are sloppy, but I like the way the red and skin turned out. She wanted me to make sure she had the tattoos.

Blood Angels Librarian

I have had this miniature in my collection for a long time, and I finally got around to painting it. I used the jump packs from the Sanguinary Guard to make it more clear that this guy owes his allegiance to the Blood Angels (plus it looks great with the blue armor).

Skylanders Repaint 13 (Ninjini)

Before and after.

Skylanders Repaint 12 (Sprocket)

The factory paint job is on top, followed by my repaint (in two views) below.  Once again, I felt compelled to fix the metal paint on the original model with a non-metallic metal paint scheme.  The armor was given strong highlights to indicate a metallic sheen as well.  The pants were given better definition and shadowing and the goggles were painted to look like the character card.