Painting for Quality, part 1

I am publishing a four part article series on MyBattalion.com designed to take painters to a level higher than basic tabletop. Part 1 is there now. I plan on publishing one segment per week.

Let me know what you think!

Old Guy Update

Last week I experienced what some would call a "rite of passage" of aging. I got bifocals. At some point in the past I could have imagined not liking the idea, but I absolutely love these things! I can see again! It was getting hard to do much of anything up close with my glasses on, and my vision isn't clear for very far with them off. I have to retrain myself to not look over my glasses at near objects now.

By the way, did I mention I love my bifocals? I really do.

The only complaint I have is that I have to actually move my head to look at things. If I hold my head level and look at the floor using only eye-tilt the floor is somewhat blurry. It's disconcerting at first, but you adapt quickly. And I can see!

Social Networking for Gamers

Go sign up at mybattalion.com. I've been hot and cold about social networking in general, but I'm interested to see what a niche specific social network will produce. I've already discovered a local gaming club that plays regularly in the neighboring town, which was terribly difficult in the low signal to noise ratio environment of facebook.

Don't even get me started on myspace....

Working with Water Slide Decals

I've been thinking about decals lately, mostly due to having to paint so many Blood Ravens chapter symbols on my growing army. It's a bit of a pain to get them consistent, and somewhere along the line I had enough people ask me if they were decals to actually make me want to try decals.

The problem, as most of you who have tried to use decals on space marine shoulder pads know, is that flat decals don't sit well on aggressively curved surfaces. From various other tutorials around and about the interwebs I discovered "Micro Set" decal solution. Basically, it softens the decals so that you can smoosh them into position, more or less. Its counterpart, Micro Sol, is even more effective at softening. The fellow at the hobby store told me that if Micro Set does the job, then there's no need for Micro Sol. They were out of Micro Sol anyway, so I bought what they had. I've been testing it with decals on Mr. Missile Launcher here, and the results have been encouraging. Basically, you brush Micro Set on the shoulder, place the decal, then brush more Micro Set over the decal. A few minutes later the decal should be soft enough to tap down with a moist towel into some semblance of flat. I've had to make multiple passes with Micro Set over the highest part, so I might pick up a bottle of Micro Sol and see how that works.

After the first try I was surprised to see the first decal dry up and fall off the model! Maybe I wet it too long and it lost all its adhesive. For try #2 I put some matte varnish over the decal to try and "glue" it in place and hopefully obscure the edges a little. Big mistake! The varnish (Vallejo Game Color matte varnish) clouded the decal significantly. Spot testing the varnish elsewhere didn't cause the clouding. With the current run I wet the decal with a cloth from the back, hopefully retaining as much of the adhesive as possible.

Once I get these things to wrap around a should pad properly the next step is to print my own and see how they work. I bought a Testors decal printing kit (a paltry $10) and have been experimenting with the free image processing software Gimp to get exact measurement printing. Gimp 2.4 was terrible at it, but Gimp 2.6 is wonderful. Once I get a reasonable decal sheet of Blood Ravens icons I'll post them here. I'm a little concerned that the spray sealer that covers the printed decals will stand up to the rigors of Micro Set, but I'll find out in time.

Masking - No Salt Required

Salt masking has been all the rage lately, mostly thanks to giganticdark's amazing Space Marine. The technique requires multiple passes with a double action airbrush, which can be something of an inconvenience if you don't actually own one. This tutorial describes how to use a brush-on masking medium to achieve natural looking wear. This is a very basic tutorial, so please experiment and see how you can alter it to produce more complex effects. The key is this stuff: Vallejo Model Color Liquid Mask. It's a water soluble acrylic that dries to a gummy consistency like rubber cement. The key here is that when it's set it is easy to remove, revealing whatever color was under it.

Step 1: Deepest color. I started with a Rhino that I had basecoated Red Gore. To the area I planned on weathering I painted Reaper Shadowed Steel (basically boltgun.) Viewing the result, I think I would go with a brighter metallic next time, like Chainmail. After the steel dried I applied a very diluted wash of VGC Orange Fire, the brighter of their two oranges, to give the impression of corrosion. Let this coat dry thoroughly before continuing.

Step 2: Apply the mask. Put some of the mask on your pallete, pick a bit up with a coarse brush and then tap the mask lightly on the areas you want to reveal when the process is complete. Try to keep the pattern of application somewhat random while controlling where you want to wear to show most. It's much easier to see when dry, so don't be afraid to apply a little, let it dry, assess the pattern and then apply more as needed. I haven't tried this myself, but the "toothbrush spray" technique may work for random splatter patterns. Let the mask dry thoroughly before continuing.

Step 3: Match the base color. Paint over the mask and wear color with the base color again. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but multiple thin coats make for smooth paint jobs, not thick paint globbed on in one coat. Let each coat dry before applying the next, until the wear area roughly matches the rest of the paint color.

Step 4: Remove the mask. Use a colour shaper, pencil eraser, or a stiff brush that you have an irrational vendetta against and gently brush the mask off the area. It's gummy and will pill up, but it comes off eventually leaving the wear color from step 1 revealed. If you get it on a brush, soap will do a pretty good job of removing it.

That's it! A low sodium technique for natural looking wear. I'm sure this group can figure out interesting variations to get the most out of this. Show me!

My Level 18 Tourist has GDSM and Magicbane

This one comes from the "if you have to ask..." department.

I'm a long time fan of the game Nethack. Even before it was Nethack, I was busily souring my first stab at higher education playing its predecessor hack. It took me something like 17 years to win it for the first time. Yes, I kept coming back for that long, and I'm still coming back.

Currently, I have a very unlikely game going... a tourist in Gehennom with basically a full ascension kit in hand. I don't have the Book yet, but the Bell and the Candelabra are mine. As you can see from the screenshot, I have nearly every intrinsic. Currently, I am on a very low level (or high, depending on how you think of it) in a locked room doing the "cursed scroll of genocide" with nurses thing to gain max hit points. I still have two wands of wishing (wow didn't always mean World of Warcraft, kids!) that can be charged again with the Platinum Yendorian Express Card. I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I may just ascend a tourist.

And for the uninitiated, GDSM is "gray dragon scale mail" and Magicbane is a unique artifact athame.

Blogger Tip: Wrapping Text Specific to Multiple Images

One thing I've struggled with in my blog is the ability to post multiple images and have text roughly aligned with each image. That way I can actually write about the image that's next to the text.

It's going to take some html changes. Don't be scared. You can do this.

If you don't know what html is, don't worry. It's the language that a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) uses to know where and how to put stuff on the page you are viewing. Html "tags" tell when to start and stop a particular format. The starts look like <this> and the stops look like </this>. Got it? Good, because you don't need to know any of this. Read on.

Here's the quick list of what we're going to do:

1. Load an image into the post
2. Add some text to go with the image
   
3. Add a snippet of html before the image
4. Add a snippet of html after the text

So start by composing a new blog entry and import an image into it. Just for grins at this point, click the "Edit Html" tab in the upper right of the compose window. The code for the image is a big scary block of html that starts with <a onblur="try... and ends with ...border="></a>. It should be about 5 or 6 lines total. Again, you don't need to understand it... you just need to be able to find the <a> at the end.
Okay, so switch back to "compose" mode (upper right tab) and add some text to the post. Now, switch back to "Edit Html." If you entered your text to the right of the image if should show up after the </a> part. That's good. That's what we want. Now find the end of your text. That should be pretty easy to do. Got it? Great. Guess what... we're half way there.

Okay, here's the fun part. Go back to the html and find the beginning of the image code again. Right before the <a paste this code:

<table style="border: medium none ;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="100%">

Good, now go to the end of your text and paste this code in:

</td></tr></tbody></table>

Good. Now go back to "compose" mode and look at it. Okay, so it's not so impressive.... yet. The trick of this is that those code blocks can be repeated to get the text to stay with the relevant image. Each separate picture and the associated text is surrounded by its own "table" tag. This way, the browser knows to keep them separate. The post immediately below this one is a good example of two pictures with associated text.

Here is the updated post html, the parts I added are red. Since there are two pictures there are two "table" tags included, as you can see below:

<table style="border: medium none ;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="100%"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoSWLwihwZWVfFdR_DapsP5f3wDUbiWr0t_LeV3-g3a2OUf4G1rmRD4IKmcPON4WyrOjBmpKTtJaUArTPHFxwFUTVYixn_o_DVPgv6ohDcla-fUPls9GS7GQd6T3AbyvYzoGIM/s1600-h/wip1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 243px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoSWLwihwZWVfFdR_DapsP5f3wDUbiWr0t_LeV3-g3a2OUf4G1rmRD4IKmcPON4WyrOjBmpKTtJaUArTPHFxwFUTVYixn_o_DVPgv6ohDcla-fUPls9GS7GQd6T3AbyvYzoGIM/s320/wip1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319591784571512354" border="0" /></a>Hmm. The title sounds like "Kibbles and Bits"... Menites and Kans, Menites and Kans, I'm gonna get me some Menites and Kans.

But anyhoo.... I converted a Killa Kan from various bits, and I think he turned out okay. Meet Stompy and Chompy. I think the rationale behind Chompy's name is self evident, and of course Stompy is up on one leg. The third in the set is tentatively named "Clyde," named for the ghost in Pac-man who broke the rhyming pattern. I don't know what Clyde will be, but he won't be a stock Kan. Anyone care to share ideas?</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table style="border: medium none ;"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="100%"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7BKuVUUoiBG7FlpdUc-sMU92_6vsgFNQ1TWwqvwK2Of2xQ15z646NKEKaUf3IGz8KIAMx1wIIQrIGlthF-fFf8TMl-9BnL5ykODbw4rvj02tffVjuXqF2gvsgNcR2wvpwfzL/s1600-h/wip1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7BKuVUUoiBG7FlpdUc-sMU92_6vsgFNQ1TWwqvwK2Of2xQ15z646NKEKaUf3IGz8KIAMx1wIIQrIGlthF-fFf8TMl-9BnL5ykODbw4rvj02tffVjuXqF2gvsgNcR2wvpwfzL/s320/wip1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319593172141889330" border="0" /></a>Also up are some models from the game Warmachine. I play the "Protectorate of Menoth" faction, and I absolutely love the models in this game. I have a standing challenge for a 500 point fully-painted game around May 1, so I'm planning what models need painting. My opponent will almost assuredly field Khador, so I'm in for a first-class whuppin'.</td></tr></tbody></table>

That's it! Go to town and let me know if it works/doesn't work for you or if you've found a better method to accomplish this.

On the table: Menites and Kans

Hmm. The title sounds like "Kibbles and Bits"... Menites and Kans, Menites and Kans, I'm gonna get me some Menites and Kans. But anyhoo.... I converted a Killa Kan from various bits, and I think he turned out okay. Meet Stompy and Chompy. I think the rationale behind Chompy's name is self evident, and of course Stompy is up on one leg. The third in the set is tentatively named "Clyde," named for the ghost in Pac-man who broke the rhyming pattern. I don't know what Clyde will be, but he won't be a stock Kan. Anyone care to share ideas?

Also up are some models from the game Warmachine. I play the "Protectorate of Menoth" faction, and I absolutely love the models in this game. I have a standing challenge for a 500 point fully-painted game around May 1, so I'm planning what models need painting. My opponent will almost assuredly field Khador, so I'm in for a first-class whuppin'.