Hobby Break For Movie Time

10.09.2018

I'm taking a little bit of a hobby break. After wrapping up the gas station, and it taking as long as it did, I just haven't had the gumption to finish up, well, anything. I could force it, but a hobby is supposed to be something for fun, not because I have to.

I've been catching up on watching TV, which for me is Netflix and Amazon Prime. The great thing here is that I no longer feel guilty when I start to watch something and don't finish, after deciding I don't like it. On the other hand, I'm more likely to watch something I'm iffy about in case I like it. After wrapping up season 5 of Agents of SHIELD, I was in the mood to watch some movies. While this may not make sense to common folk, there are times I want to watch something that's a story encapsulated within 2 hours, and other time I'd prefer the serialized adventures of a TV show to develop characters and story. Also, there's a fresh batch of DC and Marvel shows on Netflix (7 shows, I think) to watch, and I while I don't binge I like to keep a steady trend of watching so I don't forget what's going on. I've taken breaks from Game of Thrones and Walking Dead to where I don't know if I could remember what's going on or who's doing what at the point I left off without going back and re-watching more than I really want to.

So with that, here's some of what I've seen recently.

I'm not just vegging out in front of the TV. Hard to tell with that list, I know. I'm reading Crucial Conversations in an effort to better myself while not biting the heads off people I think are trying to sass me. It's a good book, but I'm rueing my slow reading speed on getting through the 240 pages because I can really use this stuff at work!

This weekend also sees Dr Blondie turn 50. The first of my "school friends" to hit 50. I have to push down urges to give her hard time about her elderly status. Mainly because it's my turn in March.


movies/tv/dvd random

Dinogas Is Open

09.23.2018

After mentioning the TTCombat gas station for the past couple of weeks (or maybe a month), the final product really doesn't live up to the hype.

Thanks to a suggestion from Bob, I was going to go with the Gulf Oil color scheme of Orange and Blue, but the signage on this version of the kit had Dinogas and the dinosaur burned into the wood instead of heavy cardboard (which could be easily switched out) that I was expected. For whatever reason, I thought of the Joker and his classic orange & purple motif, which was an easy jump to make the dinosaur purple, ala Barney!

I still need to work on masking when spray painting stripes. I still got a little bleed this time around. I was also using old, and I mean old, Citadel paints for the detail work on this kit. Most of the paint was just shy of dry in the pots. I was thinking the thickness of the paint would work well on the MDF - and once again I think I came away with mixed results.

The 3D printer was cranking out interior fillings for this building for the past couple of weeks, too. Thanks to a Kickstarter (which I'll link to the website when I can dig it back up) of modern furniture and building materials, there was a "Tire Shop" set which gave me enough stuff that would fit in my little gas station. I actually printed a lot more than I used. Once again, my little trick of using sticky tack to keep everything in place worked out. I Google-Imaged some random vintage signs to help fill out the walls. My favorite little inside joke was getting some Roxxon signs as a throwback to when I read Iron Man all the time, a good 20 years before the movies came out.

I don't really count buildings in the To Paint tally. They're on the list, just not the part I show. As such, this counts as progress in spirit!


3D Printer gaming miniatures ttcombat

Still not the gas station

09.17.2018

The TTCombat gas station is taking longer to wrap up that I predicted. Once I got the 3D printer printing again, I got on a bit of a roll printing things out. I'm not sure how much of the above will end up in or around the gas station, but it's sure not going to be an empty building! After ~2 (maybe 3?) weeks of printing, at 100% infill just to give Daniel a coronary, the printer is now off and getting a little rest. Printed models have had brims cut, errant plastic trimmed, and run through a thorough warm, soapy rinse to help get rid of cruff that will get in the way of the next step, PRIMING!

The way the rest of the week is looking, said priming may not happen until Friday or Saturday.

Just because they look out of place, the 4 discs at the top of the picture are tank tops for Pringles cans, which will hopefully work as fuel tank/storage for the gas station.


3D Printer gaming miniatures

Chronoscape Nova Corp/IMEF

09.11.2018

En masse army painting. It's a wargaming thing. Prime, wash, drybrush, seal. You can crank out minis by the gob this way. "Gob" is a lot, don't even bother Googling it. Just trust me.

After the last batch of random minis I'd sorted through some sci-fi/military minis that I'd gotten a gob of at some point. These minis were old. They were likely some of the first Chronoscape minis I'd ever seen in a store, so I got them. I like space marines (more Starship Troopers than Warhammer 40K) and these would come close to fitting the bill when the day would come that I'd need them. Many days passed and the need never happened. Being me, I managed to pick up at least 2 of most of these things. Since I first picked up these minis, my painting skills have gotten better. I've also gotten a little more picky in the details of the molds that I buy, because these Nova Corp/IMEF figures aren't very good compared to what I've seen and gotten over the last couple of years (the date on the bottom of one of these minis had "2009", so mini-sculpting has come a long way in a decade-ish). The first thing I do these days when getting ready to paint is look online for what other people have painted. For the most part, they're not good. With this in mind, I didn't hold out much hope for anything really usable, but tried to focus on not screwing up too bad along with a dash of tweaking my wash and drybrush skills.

16 (well, 15 by the end of it) minis would be a lot for me to paint at once. All but 3 (well, 2) I had duplicates of.

With that many minis, I knew I would bore painting details on each one, so I went the pseudo-army painting route.

I little more detail than army painting, but I still did three times the number that I normally get done in a week. And they're done, which is mainly what I was trying to accomplish with this batch. With the SHIELD shoulder logo as the theme for squad organization, I've got plans for the 1:48 military vehicles I picked up about a month ago. But that's yet another story for another time.

I've already forgotten what name goes with which mini(s), and the pics aren't really for showing any detail since I was skimping on the real detail. Still, I've got a tradition of posting pics of what I paint (and Bob gets bored at work sometimes).

I dug out some of the original Nova/IMEF minis I painted from Feb 2017 (which I had completely forgotten about) for a little side by side comparison. 3 minis that I took my time + dedicated detail work VS their modern counterparts that I whisked through. While the old ones aren't as rough looking as I half-remembered, the speedy results from this week are just as good/better.

A momentous occasion in the painting progress list - there are now more Chronoscape minis painted than left to paint. There was one in the batch that was sacrificed for testing. The head and arm didn't glue on very well, and I've been looking for another mini to test things out on. In the batch of 16 primed, only 15 completed painting. I've never (successfully) painted that many minis at once, especially without rushing and doing a crappy job - that makes me proud of this batch!

Next time... the gas station should finally be ready. 3D printed whatnot still has to be cleaned up, primed, and painted. And maybe some bonus scenery, but we'll see how carried away I get before the next post.


gaming miniatures hobbies reaper chronoscape

Not The League of Justice

09.03.2018

Most of my work over the past week was on the TTCombat Gas Station. So with that, I don't show any pics of the gas station.

Thanks to the 3D printer once again printing, the interior of the gas station is still in progress. I'll save till next time any details about said printer, along with the fun of using paint that might have been sitting around for a decade.

On the mini-painting front, I did one of those things I'd been saying I would do - just grab a random handful.

My big change this time was priming some minis in white (my go-to) and others in grey. Since half of what I randomly pulled were super heroes, I wanted to try some techniques I was planning on using on the Batman Miniatures Game minis. I feel much more comfortable trying something out (with my erratic painting skills) on a $6 Chronoscape mini VS a $15 BMG mini. It worked well as I learned some important things.

I had the most fun with Shadow Talon. Originally this one was primed grey with a Nuln Oil wash so I could test out some Batman painting schemes. After the wash, the armor-ness of the mini came out, so I changed direction and tried going an Iron Man (Red & Gold) route, but still using washes. The Citadel yellow wash worked well, but the crimson wash on top of the grey was just... kind of purple, kind of violet. I went over with a light gunmetal drybrush, and then a little copper drybrush. Usually by this point I've glopped on enough paint to cover all the mold details up, but it seemed to be working this time. I added some gold drybrush to the yellow washed parts, then the lightest stroke of drybrushing silver over the whole thing. In the end the red is duller than I wanted, but it turned out better than I thought.

In getting the next batch of minis to paint, I found some more duplicates that required updating the list, even though nothing new was purchased. Ok, there may have been a Knight Models Sinestro that had a good deal on Amazon, but everything else was a duplicate, I swear!

While waiting for the printer to crank out the interior contents for the gas station I'm trying another new thing - painting an army. This shouldn't be as daunting as it sounds, as the plan is to paint the rest of the Chronoscope IMEF troops (16 if I've counted right) primer grey w/ black wash + some highlights. That's what I've been doing with the last couple of batches that turned out well, so I'm going to see what happens when I commit to that from the start.


gaming miniatures reaper chronoscape

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