Bones Case Study: Aviriel Tellerion

The last mini in my metals collection to get the Bones comparison is Elf Paladin Aviriel Tellerion. The Bones version is roughly the same quality as Lysette, in that there are no obvious places where the model appears to have been smashed with a 2x4. Like Lysette, some of the hard angles suffer from a little over-radius-ing. (Is that a word? It is now!) The shield corners are nice points in metal and a little rounded in Bones. The hair has a typical Bones issue... very fine locks in metal turn into dreadlocks in Bones. Not really thick dreadlocks, but dreadlocks nonetheless.

Bones Case Studies: Lysette and Autumn Bronzeleaf

Now that I have my Reaper Bones kickstart minis, I realize that I already had a few of the included models in metal from ages past. Last night I popped the blisters open, gave each a wash of Agrax Earthshade(tm) and photographed for comparison.

First up, perennial favorite Elven Mage Lysette, sculpted by Werner Klocke. 

 The face and hair details are reasonably intact but the cheeks are more cut on the metal version. The ears also protrude more in metal. The crystal on the staff also appears to suffer from the lack of hard transitions. The clothing detail however translated quite well. The buckles and lattice all seem to have translated well to the newer medium, as did the runes on the sword. I think she could be painted in such a way that it would be difficult to discern which version of the model was used.

Next, Autumn Bronzeleaf, sculpted by Jeff Grace.

Poor Autumn didn't make the transition as gracefully as Lysette, I'm afraid. While the clothing details are again quite accurate, the face and hair have lost a great deal of their fine cut. The nose especially took a beating in the transition. The locks of hair falling over the forehead are decidedly thicker than the metal version. Oddly, I didn't notice before that my metal Autumn has a malformed left hand, so I am unable to compare it to the Bones hand (which looks fine to me.) I can understand how potentially the sharper cuts like Lysette's crystal might be a problem for Bones, but if the clothing details can be reproduced so well it is counter-intuitive to me that the nose or hair would be so different on Autumn. That lock of hair in the front is certainly no thinner than some of the other details reproduced more faithfully.

So all in all, not terrible. Mostly. I will probably approach any detail I am not happy with on a Bones model asking "was this as bad on the metal model?" I assume that sculpting for the Bones medium will take a certain style and that sculptors will get better at it over time. Like injection molded plastic, it has its strengths and weaknesses, and we're only at the very beginning of learning how to tease out those strengths. I have one or two more of these to compare at some point, so maybe I'll do another post like this later.

...

Checking in on the Cloud Giants and my attempts to straighten out their weapons, things were mostly back to bent last night. I can't tell if they are starting to slightly straighten with multiple iterations or it's just wishful thinking.

Country Review: Canada

I rake up too many of these
things to find it inspiring.

Having spent Tuesday night through Friday evening in Canada a couple weeks ago, I feel knowledgeable enough to give a review of the nation in general.

The Arrival: I hadn't received my "enhanced drivers license" (sort of a local passport thing that Michiganders can get for entering Canada) in the mail yet, but the Office of Homeland Security assured my wife that a birth certificate and official photo id would be sufficient. The Canadian border agent was nice enough about it, and encouraged me to get a passport so I could take my wife somewhere nice.

The Driving: This was just off enough to be disconcerting. No, not the transition from good ol' 'merican miles to sinister kilometers but the fact that all the signage was just a little different than I was used to. Word and arrow placement was just varied enough to make me have to think about what each meant. Does this sign mean that if I stay to the left I will be going toward the stated road, or does it mean I should be following those arrows off to the right? Hmmm. I obeyed the 100 kph speed limit on most Canadian highways rather rigorously, and that meant feeling like I was going slooowwwwww. I was fun to pop my instrument panel back and forth from English to metric units and watch my speedometer go back and forth from 100 to 63.

The People: From what I can tell, nearly all the people who work service jobs in Canada are non-Canadians. From the hotel desk staff to any number of people in town, a dizzying variety of accents made understanding what people were saying challenging. I can do okay with accents, but having to adjust to such a rich tapestry of unfamiliar pronunciation made my brain a little dizzy. Everyone was super-nice though. Seriously. Not just regular nice.

The Hotel: The training and amenities were at the Hilton Garden Inn, and it was certainly passable. I understand that $40/day for parking is not unreasonable right downtown, but I still grumbled about funding Paris Hilton's lifestyle. The room was nice. The restaurant was crazy overpriced ($10 for continental breakfast? Really? Oh, and I can upgrade to some eggs for only $8 more? Wow.) At least breakfast was provided in the training (the same fare as the hotel continental.)

The Money: The bills are weird. Some have transparent sections. I think one of them sings when you spend it or something. The coins are weirder. Canadians seem to hate coins, yet have coins for their smaller denominations of dollars. If you purchase something they will routinely round the purchase price to minimize the number of small value coins involved, then give you your change in all coins. One of their coins even looks like a coin stuffed in a donut coin. Your money frightens and confuses me, Canada.

Work In Progress: As best as I can tell, Canada is a fairly new country because they still seem to be building it. Everywhere I looked there was construction. The only thing that could have used some serious work were the sidewalks in Toronto. It was like the third world from the ankles down.

Tell me again why Canadians
aren't all morbidly obese?

The Food: this was pretty close to what I was used to... a hamburger (presumably) made by Wayne Gretzky, some chicken fajitas, Thai combo platter.... the only decidedly unique experience was poutine.

If you've never had poutine, it's an interesting mix of french fries, gravy and cheese curds. At the franchise poutinerie (yes, that's what they called it) there were many varieties to be had, and two sizes: more than you can eat, and more than your family can eat. I got the bacon and chili poutine, which was tasty. Stef got the steak fajita poutine which she reported as being tasty but which looked revolting. Luke got bacon cheeseburger poutine, which looked as good as my bacon chili version. None of us could finish the whole serving. I will refrain from mentioning Tim Horton's in terms of the food. It is well known that any Tim Horton's establishment in any country is considered Canadian soil for diplomatic purposes, so you can probably experience that for yourself.

The Return: The U.S. Homeland Security agent was somewhat less nice than the Canadian border agent had been. He informed us that all the paperwork we presented him, the same paperwork that we have used to sign up for our enhanced licenses, was all easily forged by illegal aliens. Hmm. It made me wonder why it was good enough to get an enhanced license but not good enough to get me across the border. Eventually he poked at his computer screen and looked irritated enough to make us feel like we had made his day difficult and let us through without detaining us Checkpoint Charlie style.

The Verdict: it was pretty nice. I'd go back.

State of the Bones

A 10.8 lbs box of Reaper goodies arrived at my house last week. I am now 268 miniatures further in the painting hole than I was previously. My wife has already claimed about 20 of them, but considering she has painted about 1/2 a mini in the past 10 years I expect they'll stay white for a while.

Okay, so what do I think of them, you ask? I have decidedly mixed feelings. First off, I am glad I didn't "double Vampire" like I heard some did. There are plenty of figures here for a while, and if I ever want more they aren't that expensive.

Casting quality: I have not seen more than one or two issues with the casting, and even those were fairly minor. The flash and mold lines aren't terrible, but removing them is a pain. I haven't done a side by side comparison to their metal counterparts, but after priming the Tre Manor Ettin he looks very nice. I'll look through my collection of unpainted Reaper metal and see what I have duplicated in Bones.

The bending: This one is daunting to me. I have been told that boiling water/cold water will allow these to bend/harden so that warped elements of the figures can be corrected. While that appears to be true to start, the pieces seem to slowly warp again over the next couple days. The Cloud Giant woman in the photo is a good example of this. I have tried multiple times to straighten her club but when I come back to it it always looks like it does here. Thinner things like axe handles seem to have stayed in position after heat/cold alteration.

Taking paint: I painted a Bones Minotaur a while ago, and one of the things I loved about it was how well the model took and kept paint, without any sort of prep on the mini. Compared to my normal models, where paint sloughs off if I look at it harshly, this is a very welcome change. The Bones I have tried from my Vampire box have been very hydrophobic, so either the mold release was different or was washed off for the retail package and not the kickstart packaging. I hope their domestically manufactured minis are more like the Minotaur in that regard.

Gluing: Some pieces require assembly and some come pre-assembled. I have no idea why. In my experience a very thin cyanoacrylate (superglue) gives the best results. Maybe because the material is a little porous... I dunno.

The figure case: So some of the 10.8 lbs was the figure case, which is good not great. I was hoping for that big Reaper logo on one side, but the case is blank. As such, there is no obvious front/back, so opening the case is a crap shoot if you haven't marked which way is up. The first time I opening it after filling it with minis I dumped half of them on the table. Whoops. The cells on the foam trays are quite small, so I ended up cutting the walls on many of them to accommodate larger figures. Even so, I have all the infantry for my 2k+ Eldar army stored in there, minus anything on a 40mm base. It absolutely will not do 40mm based minis on their sides (unless you put two trays so their cavities face each other, which I was not willing to do.

The Old Guards and the New

Do Wraithguard have a rule that prevents them from being photographed in focus?
I'm pretty sure they do.

I assembled/magnetized a box of Wraithguard/Wraithblades this weekend. I was a little surprised at how much bigger the new models are compared to the old metal models. Even with the wider stance, the new one here is significantly taller than the old one. They also changed the base size to 40mm, which is fine with me. I thought the old models looked crowded on their tiny bases.

So, the Eldar army marches on toward field-ability. I am getting to the point that I need to be more selective about what to assemble in what order if I want to sprint to a 2000 pt game. Considering I started buying Eldar withe the last book came out, it's about time I started playing them.

Sedition Wars Glue, Avatar Train-Wreck and Sneak Preview

First off, the biggest news. I found something other than cyanoacrylate that works to glue sedition wars minis together, and does so in much the same way that styrene glue works.

Ambroid ProWeld professional plastic welder works on tons of different materials. I tried to apply it like styrene glue at first, which failed. Once I read the instructions (and followed them!) it made a bond that is quite strong. I dropped this Strain mini onto a linoleum floor from a height of 5 feet or so repeatedly and the minis never popped off the base. I'm sold. It also works exceedingly well at removing the mold lines, a trick scale modelers gave me. I was skeptical that solvent could do a decent job at mold line removal, but it really seems to work as long as you don't douse the mini. If nothing else it makes the plastic easier to work with temporarily.

Update: I tried this stuff on Reaper Bones minis to see if it worked. No dice, I'm afraid.

I've been buying Eldar for ages with the intent to play them. Now that they have a new book, I figured I'd better paint a second model for my army. One per edition. Now that's speed. So I tackled my Avatar last night. Umm.... yeah. Not fantastic.

The theory was to paint the inner portions fluorescent yellow/orange to show off his molten interior, but make the exterior dark to heighten the contrast. Sure, this is a one night paint job, but it just fails to pop on so many levels. Even that guardian looks skeptical. "That is supposed to inspire me to be fearless? Not feelin' it, boss."

Lastly, I've been working on a little project based on some artwork from a 1987 Battletech manual that utilizes some old Japanese models I had, modded a fair bit. I'm posting WIP as I go on the Battletech forums to get feedback from that community, since it's their domain of expertise. 

 I'll post a full write up here when I'm done and can get some decent pics.

Battletech Locust Scale Comparison

The recent Robotech kickstart has me thinking about all the old Battletech mecha that were based on Japanese IP, almost all Macross and Dougram. The light mech "Locust" was the "Ostall Hunter" from the movie Crusher Joe. More on that in a sec.

We played Battletech when the pieces were cardboard stand-ups on a hex board and we used grease pencils to mark damage on spec sheets protected in clear plastic binders. Some of you have probably never even seen a grease pencil, since dry erase markers took over that role completely. They had the coolest method for revealing more of the colored core, a string you would pull slightly to cut into the wound paper, which would then fall away in a wonderful spiral. I can't imagine playing Battletech or Star Fleet Battles without grease pencils. Anyway, enough waxing nostalgic.

When I first saw the movie Crusher Joe I was already familiar with Battletech in general and the Locust specifically. I was quite surprised to see how much smaller the mech was in the movie than I had expected, given the way it's portrayed in Battletech. Here's a picture of a Locust with pilot. In the background you can see a Macross VF-1A Valkyrie (a Stinger in Battletech, I believe.) I've replicated the pilot to scale the mech roughly. If we assume the pilot is 6' tall, that puts the highest point on the Locust's main body at about 4.5 man-heights, or about 27'.

a pile of dudes with binoculars is not an effective recon method

Figuring the height of the Ostall from the movie is a bit harder. According to the opening sequence, the character Talos is 209cm tall.

I'm surprised it didn't include blood type

I grabbed a frame from the movie where Ostalls are chasing Talos and Ricky in a hover technical thingy. Talos is in the back, firing a machine gun at the pursuing pack of Ostalls. I've tried to roughly represent his frame with the yellow line.

I then straightened out (more or less) the line with a rotate tool and placed it in front of the Talos to see how it measures up. From here it looks to be about 1.75 Talos's tall, or about 366cm (12 ft.) 12 feet tall compared to 27 feet tall. Big difference. But wait! There's more!

I acquired some model kits of these a long time ago. The Dougram mechs it turns out were being sold as "Battledroids", which was the precursor to Battletech. They even have the spec sheet on the back, naming each as its Battletech equivalent Griffin and Wolverine. Sadly, I can't find my model of C.A. Bigfoot, aka old school Battlemaster.

Combat Armor Soltic = old school Griffon

C.A. Blockhead = old school Wolverine

Ostall = old school Locust

Instructions on inside of Ostall box... odd

They are each 1/144 scale. The Ostall/Locust is 1/48 scale, a factor of 3x over the others. Doing the maths though show that the Locust was probably scaled in Battledroids to allow 1/48 scale model be used with the 1/144 Dougram/Macross models. Combat Armor Soltic (aka Griffon) is listed as 10.02m tall on the spec sheet that came with the model. Scaled down 1/144 gives us about 70mm, or 2.75 inches. Scaling the Ostall model the same way based on the Battletech pic should give us a 2.25" model, which is almost exactly how tall the model is, depending on how the legs are bent.

Executive summary: Locust size in Battletech was retcon-ed from a differently scaled model kit.

Queadluun Rau (oh no, my wallet)

What anime nerd from the 80's doesn't immediately recognize this mecha as the female power armor from Macross? This has been one of the universal favorites among fans of the show for decades. Want a kit/figure of this girl? Better be willing to fork over a lot of money. Check eBay. Go ahead. Yikes.

Another 80's staple was the paper and pencil roll playing game played with real live filthy humans. Let's face it... computer RPG's back then were a novelty compared to the marathon gaming sessions playing RPG's with actual friends. My nerd buddies and I at Michigan Tech actually played Palladium Books' Robotech RPG. Yeah, I even admit it publicly. I can't say I remember much about the game system, but the idea of the mecha and the setting were enough to be compelling. That same crowd also played Battletech when the best mechs were the ones taken directly from Macross, Dougram and (in at least one case, and so far out of scale as to be laughable) the movie Crusher Joe. Those designs are long past available.... sort of.

Oh, no. Another kickstart. Yeah, all that for the current price of a Queadluun Rau kit. And the stretch goals just a keep on coming. Miria is included in the set, and a squadron of three QR suits is currently a $30 add-on. One upcoming stretch goal is to switch the male version of the power armor (Nousjadeul-Ger... yeah, Zentraedi names are weird) to be included in this pledge level rather than extra cost. I'm kind of hoping that adding QR's to this level is one of the high level goals.

Battletech/Mechwarrior people, do you see the old school Stinger, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk (Hybrid and LAM), Marauder, Ostroc, Warhammer, Archer, Rifleman and Longbow? The Behemoth (Mk II Monster in Macross) is available as an add-on purchase too. The Crusader (Armored Valkyrie) is a future stretch goal. (The "fast pack" upgrade for the Stinger/Wasp/PH aka "Super Valkyrie" is also an add-on.)

Here is the scale compared to something we can all get a feel for... it looks to me like 15mm terrain might work well for them.

I actually own some model kits about this scale (they are really old....) that are about the same scale. You don't want to know what I paid for them. I dug them out of the basement for this photo, taken about 10 days ago. SD Zeta Gundam and Giant Gorg are making an appearance because they were stored in the same box.

I thought these were awesome paint jobs in 1987

Yeah, I need another 50 or 60 miniatures (or a new gaming system for that matter) like I need a hole in the head, but.... actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the benefits of trepanation are well documented. Hmmmm.

Game in a Weekend: Ludum Dare Success

Ludum Dare is over, and the result is I now have a "D" next to my name on Kongregate. The "D" dear readers, stands for developer. I have now published a game on Kongregate. My development partner has published his own entries on his Kong account, so I got to put this one on mine.

Here it is: http://www.kongregate.com/games/hakoMike/fade

The theme of the event was "minimalism" and graphically it is quite minimal. Is it great? No, not at all. Is it a functional game (albeit with no losing condition) created in a portion of a weekend? Yes. Yes it is. As a learning experience it was great. I feel equipped to take on more ambitious gamedev projects now. You will likely hear of them here.

Ludum Dare ... Game Jam Time!

This weekend is Ludum Dare, the themed game development compo/jam across the world. I attempted to do something solo for the competition a while ago but didn't get very far. This time around I will be working with my coworker jomomomo and our families to produce something for the "game jam" portion. There's no competition for this part, but you get an extra day and we're looking forward to using what we've learned on our gamedev lunch sessions.

So far, we've been putting together a quickie vertical scroller, which will eventually become a shooter. It's hosted at http://github.com/jmorast/LunchHaxe if you want to see the code. It's all in Haxe using the NME and Flixel libraries. Good stuff, Maynard. The cool part is it ports directly to my android phone with no coding changes required.
And now I'm going attempt to embed the silly little WIP.....


Hey, it looks like it worked! The arrow keys move left and right... and that's it! No shooting. No collision. Nothing. Yay. The part about cross development for Android is exciting to me. It can do iPhone as well, but I'm skeptical about my ability to do this with no iPhone or Mac of my own. From what I can tell in this how-to videos, the process isn't entirely straightforward.

I just can't connect all the dots from start to finish...

 The Ludum Dare theme will be announced at 9:00PM Eastern time!

Legend of the Nurglecorn

In the grim darkness of the far future, yadda yadda yadda. From the same novelty store that sold the flies that I made into Nurgle Furies, this $0.99 plastic unicorn becomes ... something. I'm not sure what yet. He's on a 40mm base, so I could either use him as a spawn, a beast of Nurgle, or maybe even something like putting a chaos space marine lord on him and counting it as a bike. Or a palanquin of Nurgle maybe... the options are endless.

I started by hollowing out the abdominal cavity some (influenced by the KD:M antelope no doubt) and carving the mouth back and the eyes out. The original mouth was closed, so that was a bit of work. The intestines are milliput rolled out and given segmentation by rolling a stick of balsa at intervals. My wife suggested the ragged skin at the abdominal opening (love that woman!) and that is made from thin paper towel and super glue. I just tore a strip of paper and glued it to the border, soaking the strip, The tear was ragged enough to do most of the work, but I reshaped some of it with snips after the fact.

The mane and tail were, go figure, originally green. The unicorn was pink, I think. Funny, I can't remember now. Anyway, he got a base of the usual corrugated styrene that I've been using plus some Vallejo heavy gel with a light drybrush of Praxeti white. If you haven't used the new Citadel dry colors, they are awfully strange, more like a gel than a paint. They remind me of oatmeal with not quite enough liquid in it.

All those years in art school won't help you now Eldar

Kingdom Death Resin First Model

I know Monster is a long way off, but I thought I'd show my one and only Kingdom Death model, in all its completely unassembled glory. The model in question is "Beyond the Wall" which depicts a survivor hiding, terrified. The vignette feels like there is more going on than one can see. I love that untold story feeling. The pic on their site shows the model well.

Notice the "not aimed at crotch" angle

The packaging shows how a boutique manufacturer differs from a mass manufacturer. From the stamped card box to the included art print, even to the black tissue used to pad the mailing box, it just drips with classy execution.

Presentation means a lot here

The resin is absolutely gorgeous. I don't have a ton of experience with resin models, but this one is far superior to what I'm used to. The cast is absolutely flawless. Only the McVey models I have rival this level of quality. Two torsos are included, one of which is dressed as in the illustration. The alternate torso does not have all the armor but is still clothed (to an extent.) The legs join the torso where the stockings end, so assembly should not require too much smoothing. The head is my favorite part, with deep crevices in the tousled hair and great expressive eyes.

pictured with the art card in the box

The base is nondescript, and honestly a bit disappointing. The wall is nice, but the circle is just too plain to warrant using resin. A 50mm styrene base would have accomplished about the same. I will probably either paint faces into it (a la Monster) or sculpt something more interesting.

The piece also comes with a postcard artwork prominently displaying the subject's crotch. Way to keep it classy, guys.

This is in contrast to the portion of the illustration shown on their web site, which oddly enough is the exact aspect ratio of a postcard in landscape. Oh, the choices we make.

Eye-rolling aside, it's a nice model. The attention to detail on the sculpt and casting makes me anticipate getting Monster all the more. 

The $5 Nurgle Fury Unit

I have been playing around with Chaos Daemons, more from a fun approach than a game approach. There is a local novelty store across the street from The Model Cave, so I decided to see what they had in terms of a fly for a fury proxy.

As it turns out, the plastic flies they had were pretty much perfect and I bought a full unit's worth for $5. To bulk them up a little and give someplace to put the brass rod I added some black milliput to the abdominal cavity. The paint job is mostly Nurgling Green drybrushing, with some of a lighter green too (the name of which I can't remember.) Tamiya clear yellow (thank you, Javi!) was used to tint the wings. The eyes are Vallejo air color silver (my single favorite brush on silver of all time) with a coat of Tamiya clear yellow over it, then a green wash on the bottom half of the eyes. The legs are not changed. 

A base, a little cork and some Vallejo plastic putty snow later we have a full unit of these pretties.

Ultraforge Greater Plague Demon

Not bad for a night's work. I am slightly mystified at this model's disappearance from the Ultraforge lineup. Dakka Dakka forum threads as long ago as 2009 confirm that it's gone and not coming back, and theorize that GW cease-and-desisted poor Sophia. All blame casting aside, I am glad that I have one of these.

You like grilled cheese?

Like all Ultraforge minis, he's resin and horrifically hydrophobic. Seriously getting this guy even primed was like putting two like pole magnets together. Scrub and scrub these minis until you don't think there could possibly be any mold release left, then double the time spent scrubbing. I kind of surprised myself painting him this far in one night. It was regular hobby night and we started early, so this is maybe 4.5 hours work. He was only primed before that.

Oh, and he's big. Like Forgeworld GUO big.

You! Stand still laddie!

We Need More Zombie Antelope

I finalized my Kingdom Death Monster Kickstarter pledge today. Realization: I really need to stay off Kickstarter.

Imma hoof you!

I really find the artistic direction of Kingdom Death appealing. All fantasy is a collection of tropes and cliches at this point, and a good execution requires expertly picking your cliches and fitting them to your imagery. Say what you will about the hyper-sexualization of that world, Kingdom Death Monster is stylish, disturbing and consistent.

The mini I am most excited about painting from the game is the never-really-mentioned antelope. He appears for a moment in the Kickstarter pitch video and in group shots of the game contents, but that's it. I l love the eviscerated abdominal cavity, the exposed musculature, the bushy tail, all of it! It's the sort of mini that I want to show to every manufacturer as an example of how to still be original with cliches like zombie animals.

Sanguinary Guard and a Sandwich

Yes, they're very gold. It's kinda their thing.

 The Sanguinary Guard are complete. Well, at least as complete as they are going to get because I'm giving them to their recipient now. It's March, and we're getting into ridiculous territory for late Christmas present. Talking with my friend today, he mentioned selling some of his Blood Angels, so I may deliver these guys just in time to be complete pointless. Whoops.

CMON link for attractive, intelligent people.

==== Completely Unrelated ====

Take a Wendy's Crispy Chicken sandwich, no mayo. Take a Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, also no mayo. Take the bottom bun off the chicken sandwich and the top bun off the burger, then combine them to make The Barnyard. Chicken, cow and pig surrounded by lettuce, tomato, cheese and wheat. I feel so rustic. Also fat.

Man's Greatest Culinary Triumph

The Plan Backfires

In an attempt to diverge from the path of "everything 30% complete" that I seemed to have been on lately, I attempted a new policy of not switching figures once I started painting one. I would paint it start to finish. Wow, did that go wrong. Instead of focusing me on painting one model, I ended up just not painting if I didn't feel like painting the current exclusive model-of-the-moment. Whoops.

Anyway, here is the current thing I am finishing. Yes, that's the same model that was going to be part of someone's Christmas gift. It still is, just a tad belated.

A few things need completion (including the gems and top piece) and there is some cleanup to do. I tried to stick to the box art for the banner as much as possible, but I'll be going with a darker cloth base to match the wings I did with the darker interior.  I did learn one thing with this... don't make the background of any detail work a series of paints and washes. You will inevitably need to fix some slop and you'll never get it right if the fix is elaborate. Stick to paint color that you can reproduce easily in one small spot.

I have been trying to transition to the new GW paint set someone bought me for Christmas. Ouch. I am surprised how much of my planning involved knowing the colors of the old range. I find myself scanning the cardboard "chest" that holds the paint jars (a great idea if you ask me) for something that looks like color x.

Thrift Store Treasure = Good Photography

So I found myself at a Salvation Army thrift store recently. Now typically I can't stand pawing through thrift stores or garage sales... that's not to say that good things can't be had, only that I have no talent for finding them. (In contrast, my brother-in-law excels at finding things that will have 10x eBay value.) Anywho, I come across a "Clairol True-To-Light VIII" in the electronics area, which looks to be a lighted vanity for seeing how your makeup looks in various light-types. There are settings for day, office, evening and home. Two fluorescent tubes provide the light, and colored filters provide the difference in light coloring. On a whim I dropped the $6 figuring I could try it for photographing minis.

Here is the setup I contrived. I took out the central rotating mirror from the vanity and stuck a plastic tab on the bottom with construction adhesive. The stand it came with was made to tip it back so one could look slightly downward at it, not really conducive to my intended purpose. The backdrop for the mini is a 40k Razorback box I hacked up with a piece of thick gray poster-board nestled in it.

So then I started taking some pictures... and .... wow!

I have never, never gotten a good photo of this guy. Until now. This was my first attempt at a Golden Daemon entry and it got an honorable mention, finishing just behind Cathy Wappel's bronze winning Chaos Spawn.  I'm tempted to throw this guy back up on cmon now that I have a decent pic.
 

And this feller is what I actually won a daemon for. Again, a better photo than I have ever taken of him.

Best $6 I've spent this year.

The Perils of Low Light Painting

No no no no NO. How many times will I fall into this trap of stupidity.

So, there I was, painting up some Sedition Wars Vanguard troopers. They weren't anything special, just tabletop quality. A little clean, a little dirty. I have enough of these that I can use a few to get a feel for the model before I try to make anything look nice. Still, I was pretty happy with the overall effect.

30 points of shooty goodness

For reasons of sheer laziness I had painted under my kitchen overhead lights instead of my Ott or gooseneck CF lamps. I thought, "Hey, the light isn't that different, right? I mean, how much could light affect my ... OH MY LANDS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE, WOMAN?"

Looks like phase 2 infection to me

Seriously, what looked like a smooth skin tone and decent eyes from my overhead light looked like horrible acne scar makeup death mask under real light. On top of the acrylic texture issues, the mold line remnants don't help one bit. So are they getting repainted? Noop! Like I said, I have so many of these that I don't care all that much if some look like crap. I'm certainly capable of painting faces (shameless, I know) but this one is going to stay disfigured. Maybe I'll paint a big scar there. I dunno.

I still haven't come to grips with this plastic either. The mold lines are just torture to remove for me. Maybe I should have bid for the chance to spend the day with Mike & Aly at their paint studio just to learn how to clean the models. Sigh.

Ubuntu Wireless and 2Wire U-verse wifi

Ah, technology. It enables us to do so many things, yet spend so many hours banging our heads against a brick wall trying to get the simplest thing working. Like Wifi and my Ubuntu laptop. For the longest time it just worked with my home network. Then it didn't. Then it did. Nothing that I am aware of changed.

Finally, after a little poking around I determined the problem was the Wifi encryption protocol. Ubuntu and the 2Wire router play just fine with WPA-PSK (TKIP) but not with WPA2-PSK (AES). So when the router is set to use either, of course the two of them negotiate to use the one that doesn't work. Yay, technology. The solution was the tell the router to only use WPA-PSK (TKIP). Every other router I've tried just works with my laptop, but something about those 2Wire routers is just odd.

Anyway.... played Sedition Wars for the first time last night. Lots of rule questions. Lots of inconsistent terminology in the rulebook. I guess it's a matter of "come for the miniatures, stay for the voluminous FAQ and errata." All the same it has a lot of fun potential, and the wonderful cinematic climax to scenario 1 was worth the game. Everyone was pretty happy at the end. Vanguard won, by the skin of their teeth. One more turn would have ended it. I love a close game.