Lee & Clem

12.29.2019

Part 2 of Primer Gone Wrong has the web exclusive pack from the Mantic web store - Lee & Clementine from the Walking Dead Telltale game (series?). This booster was originally a convention exclusive, but sometimes it shows up in the Mantic web store as a chance to redeem all those (proof of purchase) points I've been racking up by getting all the boosters. I originally bought this from a guy in the UK via one of the gaming Facebook groups, but the package never made it to me. Adding up the cost of lost packages, price of all the boosters to get the needed points to qualify for purchase, and whatever else was needed for the purchase - I can't remember now if this was points-only or points-plus-fee - this has turned into an expensive set.

An expensive set that I hosed down with runny primer.

This was my chance to concentrate on 2 figures, 3 if you count a zombie with an animal I didn't recognize at first. Lee and Clem have a pretty standard color scheme thanks to the video game. Blues for Lee, pinks for Clem. Red hues don't normally cover well for me, so this would be a good test. One thing I've started to do while painting is going back and touching up errant smears, usually by (re)painting white. And then I smear the white, so I go back over it with the color I was trying to apply. And of course I smear that, so back with a line of white. Eventually I decide something is good enough. Clem's backpack was the example of this exercise this time. Most of Clem got repeated paint applications. In the end, there's no telling how many times I equivalently painted that one.

With Lee, I tried a customized brown for his skin. It was a half-accident. I had 2 shades of brown on my pallet and a section of each streamed into a mix. Wondering what the worse that could happen might be, I mixed them properly and had a pleasant surprise as to how well it worked. Lee's supposed to have a Fire Axe. Given that I was fighting my "cover with reds" on Clem, I didn't want to wage that battle on another front, so Lee got an old fashioned regular-metal axe.

The poor, forgotten zombie was chowing down on a deer. When I first looked at it, I didn't see a deer. I saw a boar/pig. Pigs have bright pink flesh, so that was the first coat on the poor animal. It wasn't until the flesh coat was completely on that I saw how it didn't look right. Nope, not a pig. It's a deer. I suck at painting animals! How am I supposed to salvage a deer from a pig? About 4 shades of brown of varying thickness will cover up that I have no idea what I'm doing. Also, I was applying the 2nd shade before I noticed the deer-was-pig had a stub of leg resting on top of the zombie leg. That wasn't a piece of the zombie!

Deer-pig with leg-hoof I thought was part of another body. To be honest, anything that qualified as "passable" in the end would be good enough for this one.

And in the end, everything worked out ok. Not my best work, but not my worse. Overall: average.

The painting progress chart... well, I think it's still a little screwed up. Every time I update it, I come across a box that has 3 minis instead of 2. Or 2 boxes I never counted. 2020 may be the year of a proper inventory.

I may get 1 more batch of minis painted before the new year. Next year will have a plan for what to hobby. Should have a plan. Might have?

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies walking dead

Lovemore Defective Primer Agency

12.19.2019

About 2 months ago I finished painting some bikers and crows. Then things got busy. Actually, I primed a batch of minis and then things got busy. This past week things slowed down a little and went back to paint that primed batch.

As much as I go on about painting minis here, I like to think that over the years I've gotten better. Most of the time I comment on the things I should have done better while usually getting lucky enough to point out a gem or two of technique that I managed to do better than the last time. This is not one of those times.

When I picked up the first mini to paint, I saw how bad a job priming I did. I harked back 2 months and remembered that I was priming when I shouldn't have. It was humid. Wet Alabama humid. This makes for a more runny primer. The can was also almost out of primer. This too leads to runny primer. Put the 2 together, I was going to get doubly runny primer. 2 months after priming, I saw how crappy double runny primer was.

This batch was not my normal random assortment of Reaper Chronoscope minis. This batch was the Wargames Foundry Lovemore Detective Agency. I'm not sure what Black Friday sale I picked these up on, but I remember lucking out on the prices + 5 minis per pack. The sculpts on these are a little more angular than I've gotten used to. Angles and super moist primer isn't a good combination. My favored method of using washes and contrast paints doesn't really like angles either.

This batch was doomed from the onset.

I muddled through and painted them "done enough". I didn't know what to do with the bases - usually my favorite thing to work on to bring back a paint job I'm not happy with, but the bases didn't cry out to me for anything special. Road/pavement with a splotch of grass was what these got. Bases are one of those things that's easy to come back to after the fact. Months after the fact, even.

I'm also still getting the hang of the new blog pic camera/lightbox. There's too much wasted space going on in those pics!

The painting progress chart got it's update. It's mostly moot, as I've decided that the new Marvel: Crisis Protocol game looks too cool to pass up. I bet I go the Walking Dead route and have 100 minis still on the shrinkwrap on shelves before I start painting anything.

Next up, as part of the Primed 2 Months Ago batch, are the Lee and Clementine web exclusives for Walking Dead. I'm going to see if focusing on just 2 figures will help cover up the crappy priming job. I'm also trying to decide if next year should have an overarching goal or theme. Jer and I are talking about playing Gaslands (which Christian & Co. managed to finally play, ironic timing or what?). Being us, it's more an excuse to play with Hot Wheels and glue bits on them, while making up some new scenery. Maybe we can get a game in by October?

There's also all the (MDF) buildings I've got on shelves to put together. Not just the 4Ground Mall, either. I'm trying to conscript Jer and Keith into helping convert one of the 4Ground multi-story buildings into a dice tower. Which may or may not have lights in the windows.

There, I said it. Now pressure from the internet will force movement on all of this!

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies wargame foundry

The Mall & Black Friday

12.17.2019

It's been quite a few years since I switched from playing games

Wait, wait, wait. A little honesty here.

It's been quite a few years since I switched from collecting new games and leaving them in their shrinkwrap on a shelf TO painting minis and making scenery.... for games sitting on a shelf in their original shrinkwrap.

I've oft remarked about my boardgame hoarder tendencies (got to get it before it goes out of print... and all the expansions... I might want to play it one day!) and although I've drastically cut back on buying games I still buy more minis than I can probably finish painting before I croak. That being the case, I've done the sane thing and stopped buying new stuff to paint and/or construct.

Oh hell no.

Turning 50 this year gave me a few bucket list items.
Pay off the house as scheduled. Done
Get as big a tv that will fit in a remodeled living room. Done

And then there was the purchase I was waiting for a Black Friday sale to cooperate on. A car? A super computer? A developer license for the GTA game engine?

Nope. the 4Ground 28mm Shopping Mall. I didn't win the contest in the linked video, but ever since seeing the mall I've wanted it. Just the primal, want of it. On Black Friday, thanks to notice via Facebook, 4Ground had the 25% off sale I was waiting on - which was the sale they had last Black Friday.

And that is my 4Ground Shelf. Some of those boxes are from the last 2 Black Fridays and not mall associated. In the end, I've got enough for a 2 story 600mm deep mall. Rounding up, that's 2 feet.

I don't know how long it's going to take to put it together - I'm not in a hurry. I don't know where I'm going to store it afterward.

My want is now satiated. Now on to putting the @#%$ thing together!

Permalink 4ground scenery

Too Busy and Not Dead

12.05.2019

In the past month, I've painted absolutely nothing. The only hobby-associated thing I've done was (finally) finished a batch of the 7½" to 6" map tiles: 64 double sided grass/sidewalk cakeboards cut and glued! There was a lot of documentaries and GTA Roleplay Youtibe videos in the background while all of that was going on.

It's the busy season at work. I'm in the midst of "I'm not sure how to do ...." and anywhere from 10 minutes to a day later I've got it figured out. Roughly half the time it's actually close to the right way of figuring it out. I feel like I'm behind where I should be, and I'm vocal if anyone asks, but I've yet to be called out for it. I've committed to being done in 2 weeks. Roughly a week to wrap up all the stuff I know needs to be done (which I think should take 3 days), then another week for testing and filling in holes. So yeah. 3 weeks. Maybe 4.

I've got a side web project for Contractor Craig I've been trying to find time to fit in also. I started down a rabbit hole of setting up a mobile-friendly picture uploader. After a long break, where and (maybe) how those pictures get uploaded will depend on the site layout. The site's a pre-paid template. The goal there was to bypass the early grunt work. Now it's time for the middle grunt work of putting pictures in the right spots at the right size, and making the colors pretty enough.

Once I get caught up on all of this, I'm going to take a couple of days off and paint. Or build some buildings. Thanks to Black Friday sales, I've got 2 floors of mall to eventually build.

And that's a helluva teaser right there!

Permalink work

Web Exclusives

11.03.2019

I didn't mean to paint anything. Not really. I wasn't planning on priming a batch and then spending the week working through them all and trying to get them done. And I didn't do that. I primed some stuff I thought would be interesting to paint, and then I painted a little here and there when I thought about it. I didn't worry about "I have yellow on the brush, what all needs to be yellow?". I didn't rush through the final color that a mini needed to be called finished. Just some nice, relaxing painting.

I had purchased some "web exclusives" from the Mantic website. I'd shown my batch of points I sent in previously on a post I'm too lazy to link to. A special Abraham and Negan were bought. There was also Rick's Badge to replace the cardboard 1st player token - I play solo, so why do I need a 1st player token? A bag of guns rounded out the web exclusives. Those last 2 just sounded like they would be fun to paint. What else am I going to spend Mantic Points on?

I've been grabbing Zombicide minis for test painting (those details are really too boring to go into). Amidst all that grabbing I came across a couple of clutter minis. Mattresses piled on top of random crap. The cast was good enough to actually tell the distinct parts in the pile. Those could be fun to paint! As such, they made it into the batch to be primed.

Even though it's been rainy and humid, I really wanted to prime everything up to paint. I waited until the rain had quit for a day, but even then you can see that the primer ran and pooled a little. Some day I'll find the right patience to wait until the weather cooperates, or I'll switch to airbrush priming.

Over the course of a week I painted a little here and there. Taking my time, plus my $10 magnifier glasses from Amazon, really makes a difference. The 2 clutter minis were 95% contrast paints. The badge went through a few transitions of Tin and Gold before ending up with whatever it is now. The letters on the badge were fun. The letters are recessed and I just filled them with Nuln Oil and a properly small-tipped brush.

I've got to learn to work better with light colors, especially white. The white I put on for t-shirts is too thick. Thin layers weren't sticking to cover errant color strokes underneath. Thick (enough) layer shows mottled brush strokes. Going over the thick layer with just a wet brush helped, but it's still something I need to work on.

This is my 1st try at a new camera setup. There's likely to be lots of iterations on tweaking before settling on something for a while.

Normally I would mention something about progress here, but to be honest I've done more than what shows up on my little spreadsheet with things that don't count toward the progress I track. The case in point is that I painted parts of almost a dozen Zombicide minis as color tests for Star Trek Adventures. I've got a painting guide, but I don't trust it 100%. I don't even trust it 80%. For my peace of mind, I decided to test (and DOCUMENT!) color options before committing to the Trek figures. This is something that I wanted and needed to do, but I've got nothing shareable to show for it. Eventually there will be some Trek minis to show, but not now.

The 4 Walking Dead minis shown above were added to the Painted total, but they weren't in the To Be Painted total before. I believe that is a net gain of 0.

Permalink gaming miniatures hobbies walking dead zombicide