Monday 16 February 2015

Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle Board - Varnishing Act!

It's funny how just a hint of sunshine is enough for me to gamble again by spray painting these boards. So despite the crisp weather and quite blowy conditions I just went and sprayed them [will I ever learn?].


And it actually worked! of course I don't know how tough and durable this is but it's got a coat of varnish on at least. I've still got the Winsor & Newton varnish to follow for added durabilty but at this stage I was really happy. I'd got through about two thirds of the can and criss-crossed all six boards and rotatated them to get decent coverage.


And I was still finding paint chips that go straight through to the board. Reaffirming my need to varnish but I'm beginning to doubt the adhesive properties of the base colours. I'm feeling like my paint on Red Oxide Primer may have been a better solution altogether, but I only know that now. Hindsight is always 20:20!


There's another one just visible on the right side about two thirds the way up. I've dabbed on some Red Oxide Primer and will go back and try and blend it in when it's dry.


Of course at this stage I just decided to finish off the can of varnish and typically the finish went a little bit, erm... weird.


Whether it was the excess, the wind or the bottom of the can but this coat 'fluffed up' a bit, which I'm sure is prompting a lot of you to want to give me a good kicking but thankfully a quick brush with a cloth managed to remove the fluff and dust. To get the powdery bits out of the nooks and crannys a large paint brush helped.

So we're still OK! All I need to do now is fix some of the paint chips and Winsor & Newton it, add a few bits of flock in the crevices for added interest and it's done!

Friday 13 February 2015

Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle Board - Edge to edge

I know you'll say I don't need to apologise for lack of posting but I will, it's only polite afterall. So, sorry for not posting. I've been doing school Governor duties and just appointed a new headmaster. It's actually had little impact on my hobby but that's been just ticking along with stuff but not a great deal to share. However, I did decide it was about time I made some progress on Ferron Proxima. I hadn't really expected to paint the edges of the board butin the end couldn't NOT do it. I picked up some heavy duty red oxide primer. It's in a tin, not spray and even needs white spirits to clean your brushes. So now the edges are all tidy.


Compared to the edges which were stained with the shadow wash. It really is totally unnecessary but I couldn't help myself, even with 90% of the not inexpensive tin remaining. I even dropped one of the panels and got primer on one of my hoodies! Some white spirits may have removed most of it but it was still very tense.


So all the boards got coated and stacked in the garage. My only remaining things to do are perhaps a few more highlights on the skulls and the varnishing.


I have continued to debate what to do about varnish and I appreciate all the advice in the comments so far. I agree that the spray varnish may not be sufficient coverage, howver I think it may create a perfect base, to add to [he says after trying two separatevarnishes with no luck and thinks two unkonw entities may work].


To this end I'll try my plastikote spray on the remaining end of my test piece and then following nafnaf's advice managed to find a Winsor & Newton varnish that was siginificantly cheaper than other varieties for a 500ml bottle. It's also semi-transparent [or even transparent] looking, which unlike the milky Polyvine and creamy Wilko varnish gives me more confidence it will not go bad.

Hopefully the combined spray varnish for durability and paint on varnish for guaranteed coverage and extra durability will be the perfect answer. I'll get the tester going and then fingers crossed there'll be a good day for weather on the horizon to get this boxed off. So close, just need a sunny day.

Friday 6 February 2015

'nids part 162 - Deathleaper and his 'hero' base

With BW9 announced it's about time I stop proxying Deathleaper with my 'Death' Lictor well luckily his 'hero' base is progressing. I've painted the red brick and sand bags. Also the torn flag is white and I'll be painting the Blog Wars 9 logo on it, if I can work it out that is.


Sadly the blue corrugated metal underneath can't be seen but i know it's there.


Still a bit to do but it's turned out alright so far.


I spent the other evening pinning this guy together. It felt like overkill but it actually made it a lot easier for the super glue to bond as I wasn't constantly holding it and that also saved a lot of gluing my hands to the model.


In actual fact he fits a lot better with his foot on the banner but I don't want to obscure what is to come. It's also handy that his right foot has extra rubble that isn't completely dissimilar although I'll probably paint it a bit different.


At 4.5" tall he's quite impressive. I'm not sure if it'll secure best painted character but at least I feel like I'll have attempted it properly this time.


Anyway, despite my nid embargo he will progess over the next few months. It looks like a slightly more complex Spawn of Cryptus. I can see those talons being a monotonous pain so I'll have to manage this paint job without going insane.


Wednesday 4 February 2015

Terrain is everything - quick and dirty trees

Having had my hobby skills tapped by me son a while back in making a Neon particle/atom [whatever] he asked me to help with something else. His geography class are researching 'biomes' [I think] and he got the savannah. His task was to provide the scenery - trees and ground. So that means I do it ;) Anyway the ground was easy, I just took my FREE Ferron Proxima Battlemat, stripped off the red tint and it was pretty much set.

The trees were a little more difficult, I looked at a number of tutorials, sculpting clay over a wire frame, PVA over thick twine, my son even suggested buying trees! [I nearly slapped him into next week... I only say that for comic effect]. Anyway, we nipped to the Range [craft and home items] and they had this broom.

At first glance what did you think this was? ;)
It's called a 'Beason' Broom, all I saw were some really handy twigs that I could split apart and potentially glue together. And at £3 it was great value!


Here's a closer look at the twigs that would form the potential trees.


I picked up a pack of 10 50mm aluminium discs to base them on but I still hadn't sussed how I was going to try and fix these twigs to it and each other. I contemplated hot melt glue but didn't think it would look particularly realistic with globs of glue everywhere. PVA might do it but how do you hold everything in place while the glue sets?


So I come home that night and find out that the deadline isn't next week, it's tomorrow! I'd been telling him for weeks to get it sorted and he got confirmation on Monday from his teacher it was next week only for the teacher to shift the goalposts! So we go to it, quick and dirty. I strip a bunch of twigs out, using a clothes peg to hold them together.


 I then used some spare fishing wire to tie the base together. Ordinarily this wouldn't be enough but time was short. I'd have probably coated the 'trunk' in PVA so it became a solid mass. For this I want it to be as natural as possible, luckily the fishing line isn't too noticeable. I then hot melt glue them to the aluminium discs. I was a little concerned about the blue and black glue sticks but hoped the basing would cover them up.


However, for the purpose of potential gaming terrain these are quite a bit taller than they need to be. I'm sure with some clippers they could be trimmed down.


However, these all came together in a couple of hours. For 40k I'd spray them white and be done with it, maybe even add some yellow/orange/red flock. The only concerns are the twigs do have a waxy/dusty feel to them so I question how well spray paint would adhere to the twigs.


Additionally the twigs feel brittle so I would question their durability for continuous use, however I did find even some of the thinner branches particularly difficult to cut with heavy duty scissors so perhaps my fears would be unfounded? But that's a pretty good forrest for £6 in materials and there are still four discs remaining and practically a whole broom [I only did 6 stands of trees for convenience]


Lastly we based them up - PVA and sharp sand. For his project I wanted to keep things natural and luckily my sharp sand mix is similar to the ground print out. The only real concern is whether the PVA can dry in time. I propped this box on top of a radiator and hit it with a heat gun for a bit so fingers crossed that helps speed the drying process, it's got 8 hours until school at least.


Of course the heat gun started to melt the fishing line a little bit but I stopped well before these things burst apart, although I think the hot melt glue probably is holding these things together quite well.


Anyway, if you're looking for trees I think these are quite nifty and don't require a huge amount of effort. The most difficult thing is tying the knots in the fishing line but that may be just overkill. Some of the bases I just put hot melt glue on and stuck three or four twigs in without tying them together. If these get returned I'll paint them up so you could see simple yet effective they can be.

As a matter of house keeping it seems the PTBs have now decided to restrict access to blogs for me. funnily enough I can still edit and post just not view. There were always some blogs that I couldn't see if it was referrenced as a 'games' blog, regardless of what sort of game but now all blogs have been denied. So repsonding to comments and viewing others blogs may be less timely.

Monday 2 February 2015

BREAKING NEWS - Blog Wars 9 - King in the North


Luckily for me, as I'm short of content today [and maybe Wednesday], the latest Blog Wars info has been released Blog Wars 9 - King in the North so I thought I'd share.

If it hasn't been apparent already I love this tournament and I'll definitely be doing my utmost to support Alex to ensure it continues to be a success. Hopefully my gaming buddies will join me again, and anyone who reads the blog (if it isn't too difficult to attend).

Really excited for this, check out the link and any of NY previous battle/event reports in the tabs above.

Friday 30 January 2015

Polymorph moldable thermoplastic

Recently on the internets you may have seen a number of products that are moldable thermoplastics - materials that when heated [usually in warm water] you can then remold into any shape you wis. Recently I picked some up from the Aladdins cave of art shops in Manchester - Fred Aldous. This 100g bag was just £3.35


As you can see it all comes in pellets and what i was hoping to do was just make a quick cast of a dreadnought foot to go in my destroyed dreadnought crater. So here is the polymorph in it's raw form.


When dropped into hot water it all clumps together, although I fihed it out a bit quick - inexperience.


Mt Dreadnought foot in a plastic tub.


This is the Polymorph pushed on top, as you can see some granules had not melted enough to go transparent


From underneath.


I then dowsed it on cold water to set the plastic...


which was a mistake as this stuff sets rock hard and made it extremely difficult to remove the foot. Now Fed Aldous also do that Japanese Oyumaru molding plastic which probably would have been better for a push mold.


Eventually I got the foot out but I don't hold out much hope for this as a puch mold as extracting a milliput foot would be difficult as there is absolutely not flexibility in the Polymorph once set. Also the detail is patchy, I thinnk because the beeds hadn't all melted properly. I'm sure I'll find some more uses for this though, G.O.D. if they had this in a transparent version I'd have so much fun!


Anyway, it was worth a shot and I've still got loads more to play around with but just thought I'd share my experiment.