Itty Bitty Motorbikecycles

08.26.2018

I seem to be at the cusp of starting things that are going to take longer than a week (or two) of my free time. I mentioned that next I would work on finishing motorcycles or starting one of the 1:48 models I'd picked up. I indeed finished the motorcycles, but they're nothing special. Instead of starting a model, I got lost searching various paint/camo schemes and wondering just how do I properly paint a model - gluing everything, masking parts, and painting was how I used to do it, but I think my skill set has risen to something more difficult. I'm not sure what that is yet.

I fired up the 3D printer for the first time in a month and printed some stuff. Most of it was disposable, just to see if some scaling would work (the answer: sometimes). At some point the extruder became clogged, and the simple fix of setting the temp really high did not work. This isn't something I wanted to muck with on a Sunday afternoon, so I'm leaving it clogged until I can talk to the Printer Cabal and gain insight on their learned ways of declogging that bastard.

The last thing I did over the weekend was start the TTCombat Gas Station I've had for a while. I thought I had gotten the deluxe (bigger) version, but I instead got only the basic. While not a big deal, the Dinogas sign & lettering are burned into the MDF so I'm not going the customized route I was planning. I'd talked to Bob (who may be reading this on his phone) about gas station color schemes and most that I know lend themselves to some green, which I want to avoid this time since all the other buildings I've made have way too much green. The Gulf station orange and blue was a good alternate, but orange and blue dinosaur doesn't really work.

A purple and orange dinosaur though....

Since no new minis were bought, progress on the overall list!

Permalink 3D Printer gaming miniatures reaper chronoscape ttcombat

Ninja & More Ladies

08.20.2018

After the success of Pimp & friends I wanted to continue focusing on washes with a little bit of paint for detail. With the 3 Men In Black, I had some ideas to paint dark/black better, so I found the right batch - Snake Eyes and some Ninja! Well, Snake Eyes is named Cobra, which I of course think is supremely clever. Instead of my normal white primer, I went with the traditional grey primer followed up by as even of a black wash as I could apply. From there I picked out some details on each mini with a little color, and it all seemed to work out. The ninja each got a different color accent, Power Rangers style, just to help tell them apart if the day ever comes they're used in a game.

The next batch would require more than just washes. I'd had good luck with skin tones on the Pimp batch, with the skin not looking as blotchy as is my norm. With that, I dug out a handful of scantily clad women. One, Bridgette the Dirty French Maid, I'd forgotten was topless until after I had primed her and started looking at some painted reference pics online. Suddenly I was going to have to learn how to paint nipples (the text here probably isn't helping get past the NASA filters for Bob - sorry Bob!). Much like the time I had to learn to paint pizza when I thought a cop was eating a sandwich, this was an unexpected "oh crap, how do I do this the right way". In the end, it turned out... what's the word? Less sleazy? Yeah, that'll work. Lest sleazy than I feared.

Overall I'm happy with this batch. I made a couple of mistakes, like normal, but nothing that ruined anything. I even got some workable eyes on some of the girls! I've also started playing around more with adding points of gloss coating after the matte sealant, to help bring out metallic highlights (guns, swords, buckles, etc). Or, in some cases, glossy lips.

Over on the Painting Progress front, I technically went backwards (again?). The batch of 8 Chronoscape minis was offset by a clearance sale at Miniature Market that forced, yes FORCED, me to pickup 4 packs of Walking Dead (12 minis) and a Riddler Crew for the Batman Miniatures Game (4 more minis).

Next up is either finishing the Chronoscape motorcycles that I started with the Ninja - to be honest painting these is a little boring - or one of the 1:48 vehicles I picked up at HobbyTown on a vacation jaunt (perhaps more about that later).

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies reaper chronoscape