Jailbirds Number 2

09.30.2024

Scenery interlude to paint some people brought my next set from the Jailbirds series - the Coyote Crew Command. I hadn't realized it had been a year since I painted the first set I had gotten from the series. No real reason to mention the time span other than how you really don't notice things like a year between something as you get elderly. So remember that, kids!

I had nothing special planned for this batch other than to not paint Necromunda buildings as I had been mostly doing for the past 3 months. I primed this set of Jailbirds earlier so they would be ready for when the figure-painting mood struck. The mood had been struck. These minis required some assembly with all the parts interchangeable between bodies - head, arms, torso, bottom half (not each leg). My bane with arms is whenever 2 arms have to hold 1 item/weapon. In an effort to avoid this frustration, I went with 1-arm wielding pieces. Granted, it's not the most realistic look at times. I like to look at it as supporting strong women.

As these minis are flat-footed in terms of bases (ie no protrusions to stick into bases), I decided to pin these and use some pre-made bases that have been sitting in boxes for years. Normally I use paperclips for pins, but paperclips are too big to really fit in the feet/legs of these minis. After asking for suggestions in a couple of Facebook minis groups, the obvious alternative of sewing pins was used. Sewing pins beat out the #2 option of guitar string, mainly because I can pick up pins at Hobby Lobby and have no idea where to start for guitar string and the various sizes it comes in.

Snip, try to reduce mold lines, super glue and use my fancy drill to hollow out pinholes and only go too far 2/5 of the time. Just white primer today, no fancy zenithal this time around. I used a couple of different flesh shades on the 5 minis so they wouldn't look like clones this time around. Everything else was a mixture of Citadel Contrast and Army Painter Speed paints. Nothing too fancy, just focusing on brush technique and trying to stay in the lines as much as I could.

I picked 5 bases from my stash that were pretty simple to paint, or at least I was going to paint them simply. After painting, I sealed the minis and bases so as to not rub off paint when going to drill base holes and glue in the minis. Post drill and mini gluing, I went back with some mostly-unintentionally-dry Hardcoat to gloss up the metallic pieces.

Overall I like what I ended up with. It was a nice excursion from buildings, so much so I'm looking forward to the next phase of buildings I have lined up!

Permalink gaming miniatures Jailbirds Minis

Zombie Soldiers

06.05.2024

While waiting for the humidity to reach sub-75% for a weekend so as to not make spray priming/painting the Necromunda buildings more fo a challenge than it'll surely turn out to be, I opened up a set of Zombicide soldiers that I've had a mere 2 and a half months. It was an impulse purchase from a flash sale of some type. Zombicide is a game I don't like (after playing twice), but I like the variety of minis for the game so I still find myself supporting said game.

Zombie soldiers was a box of 6 minis cast from 2 poses. I'm not sure of the game backstory for these muscular gun-wielding zombies, but that's part of why I don't play the game. They look cool and look fun to paint. I'm in. A quick priming on a humidity friendly 10 minute window one day, and from there I was good to paint at my leisure.

And leisure I took it, as I dawdled over the course of 2 weeks to get in about 4 hours of painting/basing. This was my first use of the new rolling rack of paint to make use of the dining table setup. There was a wee transport error which occurred right after I decided it would be safer to roll the rack into/out of the hobby closet in the other (180°) direction. Said error was just an inconvenience for about an hour and resulting in no lasting damage, so that's all we'll say about that here.

With the kitchen table paint setup ready to go, I pondered how to make 3 copies of the same sculpt different. I wasn't in the mood to add greebly bits, so I just went with classic military colors - basically a khaki and 2 shades of green as the bases. While pondering I though of going full-camo with 1 set, but I just wasn't feeling the camo this time.

After adding washes and picking out details with some other colors, those 2 shades of green didn't end up as far apart as they started. And that's ok. This painting session(s) was just for some between-projects relaxation. I wasn't trying to learn something new or tweak some style I've not done in a while. Just slather on some paint and don't fret about it.

I had a little fun with the bases, once again going back to my favorite texture paint of Citadel (Something) Badlands. I just really like the way it cracks. Instead of covering the whole base for all the minis, I added dirt-sploches mixed in with some static grass.

Permalink gaming miniatures zombicide

Necromunda Assembled

05.11.2024

2024 has not been shown to be a busy year for me in the usual post-topic work of gaming miniatures and related items and the painting thereof. Barely 1 update per month, and even then there's not much to show for it. While my excuse - do I need an excuse - has been that I'm trying to improve on my technique and not rush through painting minis, a side-truth is that I needed something a little different.

A few years ago I went to a HobbyTown in Georgia and stocked up on some models that looked fun to build. I built one that never saw the light of a camera or blog post, because it absolutely sucked. When I was 10 years old I would crank out a model in 3 hrs that I was perfectly happy with. 45 years later I spend 3 weeks on a model car and nothing lines up, gaps are everywhere, and extra nubs from the plastic sprue are everywhere. I've read a big problem with modern model kits like the car I can never prove I made, are that the kits are cast from molds that are the same as 10 year me used. Or even worse, recasts of those molds, potentially many times over.

Disgruntled old man me decided that it's time to re-learn how to make a plastic model. Model car #2 was a little better, but still crap. Those old molds are not conducive to modern-me learning. So I pivoted to known modern-molded plastic. In this case, some Games Workshop Necromunda (plastic) scenery.

A while back, as I never buy something and immediately crack open a box, I started getting Necromunda Thatos Pattern buildings - Hab Modules and walkways, with Ash Wastes being the set that came with more stuff/rules than I will use, but the price was cheaper than the individual scenery pieces.

I had a fairly simple color scheme picked out (more on that in a later post) which will work better trying to paint everything at once. Which leads to making everything at once. I did say I wanted to practice on plastic models. Two months ago, I started putting together the first Hab Module kit, and then kept on gluing, snipping, and sanding until everything was built.

I had no idea I had gotten so much of this stuff.

Along the way, most things lined up, or at least lined up better than the model cars I've been trying to make. Old man me uses nippers to cut the parts off the sprue, instead of twisting them off like 10 year old me would do. A long time ago, it was twist part off and then glue together. Now, there is snip, and then a long and involved sanding process. I've got a variety of sanding strips to try and clear the mar on the plastic left from separating from the sprue - this was the big new-to-me thing learned from the model car kits. After lots of sanding is good old glue/plastic cement. There's then potential for more sanding, as that's when I look for places that need some gaps filled, and post-filled sanding.

That's where we are now. Glued, sanded, ready for primer. Once the humidity is down to being spray-paint friendly. Plus, I'm not in a rush. I may need a zombie painting fix next.

Permalink gaming miniatures models Necromunda

Johnny Rambo

03.27.2024

At some point in the last couple of years I picked up the complete Rambo boardgame + expansions during a really good sale. The game looks like it's fun for solo play and follows the plot of the first 3 Rambo movies close enough to be fun, yet no so close you just copy whatever's done in the movies. Of course, I got the games and promptly put them on the shelf, as is my way. One of the extras for a different game is an unneeded mini of Rambo. I also have this Rambo game, sitting on a shelf. I suddenly don't know why I'm even mentioning these 2 games, as neither are particularly relevant to the mini. But, once you start typing why not just go with it and see what happens - or delete it?

Little mini Johnny Rambo arrived and he wasn't quite as nice as the image shown for purchase. Arms and head has visible seam/gaps that I didn't bother to mess with before priming, and after priming I didn't think would be too obvious. I was wrong. Especially on the arms. Very, very wrong.

Damn the gaps, Johann Rambo would be painted! And painted he became. It's been a while since I played around with a camo pattern, and his britches reminded me it had been a while. Thus, Jojo got some camo pants. I went heavy on the skin wash to try and bring out the musculature on the body, and even lightened the tone on the pecs the way I see other people do... and I'm not quite there yet. A little too light on the pecs, I think.

A little static grass for the base and sealed everything up to be done. For something that was sitting on my desk primed for at least 2 months, roughly 2 hrs of paint-dry-paint-repeat was all that I spent on this one (yeah, sure, maybe it does show). I've been doing more plastic model building over the past month, without anything in the end phase enough to show here, so a quick many to show I'm still alive was a nice snack.

Wow, the lighting in the pics below really make a difference in showing the exact same skin tone...

Permalink gaming miniatures

Gordon and Flass

02.08.2024

After the Gotham police disaster of the last post, I didn't have high hopes for the companion box I primed at the same time: Lieutenant Gordon & Detective Flass (Year One). Still, once primed something has to happen. Onward!

While not sticking to the color scheme of the box, I went close enough to count, in my eyes. From the onset I wanted to make the varsity jacket standard yellow/black Batman colors. Normally I would have painted yellow arms and black torso, but this time I erred on the side of easier clean up of errant brush strokes. I even went so far as doing the skin last instead of first on both of these minis. Much like the previous batch of police, these 2 received tweaks to their bases. Flass even managed to get a completely different, bigger base more fitting his widened stance. Although I pinned and attached the bases to these two at the same time as the previous batch - these are straight! Probably because both feet are modelled to completely touch the ground.

Flass received my go-to of Citadel Drakenhoff Nightshade on top of white primer for the stonewashed denim look. This is the one technique I seem to get to work consistently. After the previous post, I needed some good consistency. The yellow and black on the jacket worked well, although the black lettering for Gotham High on the back could be better - both for how the paint bled in, and the print of the model could have used some cleaning up that I didn't see earlier.

I'm a little disappointed with the speed paint job on Gordon's clothes. Too much pooling in crevasses again. On the other hand, his hair and glasses feel spot on to me. I managed to paint the glasses frames and the skin behind the lenses without messing up everything else - such as smearing everything on the rest of the skin. While the pics don't really show it, each lens in the glasses have a dot of Mod Podge Dimensional Magic to really make it feel like there's some glass in there.

A 2-mini completion post. Better job than the last post, yet still not as good as I originally hoped. At least more things went right this time.

Next up is some scenery/post-apoc buildings. I'm not sure if I'll work through one with enough to post something interesting, or get bored and sidetracked with something else person-sized to paint.

Permalink Batman Miniature Game gaming miniatures Knight Models