Necromunda Orange - Done Enough

09.06.2024

Since last time in Necromunda land I made an effort to try and be consistent with my painting for a while. After work I would take a break for an hour or 2, and then I would turn on the radio and paint for what would turn out to be 2-4 hours. For 2 weeks I did this. I got a lot done, and I also learned that how I paint can lead to text neck, or maybe I should call that Necromunda Neck?

I had gotten the 1st pass of orange on all the buildings and started the roofs at the end of the last post. I had more roofs, some platforms I'd forgotten about, and then some walkways and ladders that I had completely forgotten about. Oh, and it seems most of the time a 2nd coat of orange is needed to really get the coverage I need. And add in some other colors because just white-ish and orange is boring. By the way, I'm not the steadiest hand so go back and cover up errant brush strokes with some white-ish.

I didn't know the above was the plan when I started, but it turned out that way. It sounds like hell, but it was actually kind of nice. After work, with the radio on, I was able to honestly turn my brain off and just go about painting. When I normally turn my brain off, everything just lurks in the background and I don't attention. This time - off.

There aren't really any interesting stories or tidbits from this round of painting. No big discovery. No big mistake or learning experience. Currently, I think all of this is about 90% done. I need to add some weathering to help cover those errant brush stroke fixes. While putting everything together for some of the beauty shots below, I didn't even notice those cover ups. After dedicating a big chunk of time to painting this set, I'm ready to switch gears for a little while. As such, I'm calling Space:199-Necromunda Done Enough, For Now. There's some more stuff I want to add in (later on), so revisiting will be a good time to add in the weathering.

Permalink Necromunda scenery

Necromunda Orange

08.17.2024

Back in May I posted that my batch of Necromunda buildings had finally been assembled. And then they fell off the face of the planet, evidently. Glue, gap-filling, sanding, and then more sanding. I knew I needed a little break from it, but I didn't expect it to be this long. And honestly, I haven't been hands-off the buildings for 3 months. I've had lots of little figuring it out moments.

My fairly simple color scheme I last mentioned was a classic US sci-fi of white-ish base color with orange highlights. Think Space:1999, but maybe reverse the base and highlights. I think I last saw this in The Martian and liked it enough it stuck with me and I thought it would be a good alternative to post-apocalyptic grimdark.

Eschewing pure-white, Citadel Wraith Bone seemed a good white, kind of with some built-in age/weathering. But first, instead of just priming everything white like I always do, I finally got a little smarter and started with black. This would give shadows to the nooks and crannies I would invariably miss, and I got try out some zenithal priming with the Wraith Bone because I've never done that on non-people. Step one: a little over 2 cans of Citadel black primer. Ok, that was more cans than I was expecting. And I only gotten 1 can of Wraith Bone. Without going into detail, I then learned of 2 stores locally that carried said Wraith Bone - and both are closer than the Warhammer Store. Step two: a little over 2 cans of Citadel Wraith Bone, zenithalled. To be honest, I should have gotten better coverage with my zenithal layer, there are spots where way too much black still shows through. But after looking at it for a while (off and on for a couple of months, after all), I kind of like it. Maybe that'll be my style?

For Step three, I had to find the right orange for orange highlights. I called upon my close personal friend Charles G. for help here, because I suck at picking shades of a color. I knew I didn't want bright, vibrant orange. I took a couple of the wooden blocks I use for paint handles and used my still-had-paint 3rd can of Wraith Bone to spray all the sides. Then I took samples of various orange and applied here and there - I think there were 21 different colors by the end. The winner ended up being Army Painter Warpaint Molten Lava!

My main idea for adding those orange accents was an identifier for each building - a letter or number - and then an orange stripe around the building that was the height of that identifier. Via Amazon, I picked up ¼" letter stencils. I can add A-E on the buildings. I knew a brush wasn't really going to work with filling in the stencils, so for the 2nd time in.... at least 3 years, I was going to use my airbrush. With ample masking around the stencil and wondering how much to thin Molten Lava, I test sprayed the "A" and it turned out ok. Since I was on a roll, I added the other stencils for B-E and their associated heavy masking, and airbrushed away. By the time I removed all the stencils, the letters took pretty well, There was a little marring here and there from where templates took away a little Wraith Bone when I pulled them off, but overall I was happy.

Here we enter the first really long pause. My idea for the orange stripe was centered vertically on the building wall. The letter for each building is also orange, but I wanted to leave a little white gap between the stripe and letter. The first problem was that my letters weren't centered. They were fairly low if you were looking at the vertical alignment. Looking where that would leave the stripe across the rest of the walls, I would have to mask over a lot of greebly bits on the low side. Masking tape on irregular surfaces doesn't really work well. While testing out some masking approaches, I came across another problem (what number am I on?). There are 8 walls per building thanks to shallow angles. Going with high/low masking, the walls also angle inward. Those straight lines I was attempting to mask - nowhere near straight any more.

I started thinking of other options for the stripe. Maybe only half as high? Offset higher? A thin stripe? 2 thin strips? Vertical stripe where there's no greebly bits? I didn't like any of these ideas. Finally, I took one of the buildings and just asked myself what I could pull off with my skill level? There's some parts I could just use to highlight the orange. Some parts that are always on the top of the wall, and some gear/screw looking things near the bottom. I tried painting one, and the brush strokes afterward were horrible. Looks like another job for the airbrush. Which meant another round of masking. Lots and lots of masking. If I had planned this approach ahead of time, I would have painted the orange bits and then masked them off while I painted everything else Wraith Bone. But no, this is figuring it out on the fly.

Masking the building took a while, as I was applying tape to pretty much the whole building, and then covering up anything in the interior where some pray might seep in. Additionally, there were parts glued in, sticking outward from where I was going to spray. These had some extra masking added on, which I tried to tape to where it wouldn't block the spray from all angles. Finally, I did a test spray on the building and hit all the parts to highlight orange!

And it was pretty much crap (which I'm going to lay a lot of blame on my novice airbrush skills). The coverage was such that even after 2 coats with the airbrush, it still needed another coat - at least. My masking wasn't straight in places. My masking covered parts that should have been painted in places. Those parts sticking out were I tried not to block the spray... blocked the spray.

The time masking + quality of airbrushing wasn't where I wanted. Again, it was time to revisit what my skill level could do. Not thinning the paint as much would cut down on brush streaks. I could just mask around the bits that need painting to help keep my lines straight. Even then, it'll still probably take 2 coats. Maybe more. Using the airbrushed building as my moving forward test - as even the airbrushed spots needed another coat of touching up, I re-masked just the areas needed and tweaked my mixture of thinner and orange.

This time, not crap. After 1 coat over the airbrush, it looked like this might work. And masking really helped in a couple of awkward angles where the tape blocked an errant stroke of orange. What followed was meant to be a sequence of masking a building, then painting it while taking breaks to mask the next so that when Building A was painted, Building B would be masked and ready to paint. What ended up happened was that I got on a roll of enjoying masking (that makes no sense, but it happened). I would mask the top row bits of all the buildings, which would get me used to any quirks. Then when all of those were done, I moved to the bottom row and got used to those quirks. Before I knew it, the 4 remaining buildings were masked.

And masked they sat for a week or two. I don't know why I was putting painting off. Then Friday night, around 8:00, I had the table set up and started to paint with Def Leppard in the background. Eventually Prince was in the background. I found myself in the zone with a brush tip that was holding it's shape and a paint-thinner ratio that was just working. All the masked bits were painted with 2 coats. There were other bits I wanted a little orange on which I hadn't masked but were free-hand capable, so I continued on. A little after midnight, everything I wanted orange was orange.

There's still more to do, and honestly probably a couple more orange pieces per building, but the standard/uniform parts to be orange are. Along the way, I'm no longer scared of the airbrush. At one point, even after ultrasonic cleaning, the brush was clogged. I took the airbrush more apart than I had since taking the class where I learned how to take it apart and put it back together. It took a while to get rid of the clog as I was missing some handy tools I've since ordered from Amazon, but the highlight was noticing how the airbrush action didn't feel right with the clog, and then once I had everything back together and unclogged, I could tell the difference in the smoothness of the action. More importantly, I knew why/where the difference was caused. This type of thing is common knowledge for anyone that's used an airbrush after cleaning up a clog, but secretly it's a weird quirk or phobia that lends to why I buy so much stuff that stays in the shrinkwrap.

The next hurdles to figure out are how to clean up the little mistakes atop the Wraith Bone, and just how much weathering am I going to do?

Permalink Necromunda scenery

Delve Into Out Of Production

05.09.2023

This is not one of my usual "trying out new things" painting posts. This is just sharing some pics of the last batch I did. Not every painting session has to be a dive into learning and trying to get better. It's ok to just whip something out, too.

Around March of last year, 2 things of note happened in my hobby related world. Mantic Games no longer had the license to The Walking Dead, and 4Ground was ceasing production/folding into a parent company.

Walking Dead has been my go-to for the last couple of years when I actually follow through on playing a game. I like the rules, as they allow for quick play time and can be expanded to whatever depth I want (so far). Mainly, it feels like a good base on which to build house rules for most things I would play. Being a fan of the franchise, I've also gotten almost everything for the game as it came out and enjoy painting the minis. If my spreadsheet is to be trusted, I've painted 197 minis from the game.

Mantic had a sale (last March) for what was remaining in stock for their Walking Dead game(s). I went in and ordered whatever I was missing, most of which had made their way to Mantic's 3D printed product instead of old fashioned cast-in-molds. Once everything arrived, there was a missing part here and there which the company managed to eventually replace.

With all of that said, I now have everything I'm going to get for the Walking Dead game. Unless I go to eBay for the Negan and Governor special sets, and the last time I looked those were asking for more than $100/set. Not worth the price for my circumstances. But the point this ramble is getting to is that I really should finish painting what I have for the game. I came close to having everything painted, and then a new wave of minis was published. The only other "game" I've painted is Zombicide Invader. I could double the painted-game count!

Outside of that last-March purchase, I've got duplicates of minis I've painted before. These are the last of the mold-instead-of-printed minis. I grabbed 3 packs and primed them... and didn't keep track of "who" they were. Normally I would make a note of the cards, or google the stats and match up with the pics, but since the game isn't published any longer that info requires a little more digging to share here. And in the end, it doesn't matter who these guys are supposed to be. I've already painted them once and they're in some past post. Now, they can just be "Walking Dead Folk".

4Ground, makers of the mall I worked on for a year or 2, had been under threat for closing down for some time. Around last March, they announced a going out of business sale, also some things might still be available from their parent company (Tymeagain). This was going to be my last chance to get their product. Thanks to lots of planning, I had about everything I could think of for the mall. They had other lines/scales that always interested me. The church I have came from their Old West line. I came across some buildings under construction in that line and thought they would be interesting to fit into my minis city. Just the framework of a building could fit into most eras. I ordered 2, a large and small commercial building. Each was nice and straight forward - floor, 4 walls, and then fitting 6 triangles together for a removable roof. Looking at them afterward, they'll easily serve as under construction houses, strip mall shops, and other things of that ilk.

Permalink 4ground gaming miniatures scenery walking dead

The Station That Plays The Hit

03.10.2021

The last couple of weeks have felt productive, but I don't really have much produced to show for it.

First up is the 4Ground Tyre Store, which has been rebranded to a local radio station. I have no need of a tyre store as I have a perfectly good full service gas station that seems to be stocked with plenty of tires. Maybe even tyres. While gluing everything together it hit me that much like the other 4Ground building that I turned from whatever it was into a vacant building for lease, I could tweak this one to my needs also. After a quick meeting with Jerry to go over the list of what the city needed, neither of us could remember anything past "radio station" and thus, radio station it was. There's no interior details yet. This was one of those times to just get the outside glued together for when the detailing inspiration strikes (hopefully) later.

My side trip into quirkiness is trying to make a semblance of an antenna out of scrap pieces of the kit, just to have something to stick on the roof that might help say "radio station" a little better. Maybe I should have tried making an antenna out of tyres?

I'm taking some PTO this week, so I'm playing around more than usual. Since I like setting up for games more than actual playing, I took an evening and set up scenery for a Walking Dead game. This is the first time I've used the map tiles printed via DriveThruCards. Even more importantly, it's the first use of the frames from Michaels for holding them. Frames which I think I purchased around Black Friday 2019. Luckily, it seems to work! With the help of some rubber shelf liner on the backs at the corners, the frames don't slide around and hold everything well. I can even throw in some scatter leaves under the glass if I want to, which I realized after I'd sorted map cards and put the glass back in 16 frames.

I was worried about light glare for times I wanted to take pics. There's glare, but in a happy accident the road sections almost look rain-wetted. The one, maybe major, drawback is the bevel of the frame above the glass. This will raise/tip anything that crosses the frame border. Right now, it's not bothering me too bad. We'll see if I try to move to some type of border clip to replace the frame down the line.

With the map setup on the kitchen table, I'm going to play a little solo Walking Dead with some tweaks to the rules now that I've gotten the rules compendium and don't have to cross reference between umpteen supplements. The crux of what I play will be testing out those tweaks and see how they work (if they work, I'll pass on good news next time). My tweaks focus on a loose campaign style of play, with bigger maps (duh) than the 20" x 20" standard the game uses. I've got 4 ft per table side and more than enough scenery to fill it up... I want to use it!

Permalink 4ground scenery

Mini Church

02.07.2021

In the miniature world of terrain and buildings, I've got a lot more to make than just the 4Ground mall. The mall is a huge, multi-year project that I keep telling myself that I'm in no hurry to finish. If you base that timeline on when I first started purchasing pieces of the mall back in Oct 2019 I'm taking that timeline to heart. I'm in nor hurry, no reason to rush, and I want to enjoying the process of putting it all together. With that comes a need to take a break and do something different every once in a while.

One of those "not-mall" buildings I picked up was Rev Johnson's Church. It reminded me of the kind of churches Pawpaw preached at. This is also one of those buildings I want to customize depending on (1) how it turns out and (2) if the customizations I have in mind will actually work. They're not big customizations, so don't get too excited. First up, though, is putting the kit together.

And that gives you the basic church. There's fencing and a cemetery included in this bundle, but I'm saving that for another time. With the final result here, I think my little customization ideas will work. Part of those ideas needs the garage to warm up enough for the 3D printer to be cooperative.

And that's how my hobby timelines get strung out.

Permalink 4ground gaming miniatures scenery