Random Day #427

I'm still trying to ponder what to do about the Ogrun Bokur for a conversion. In the mean time I've decided that the Harbinger needs to be next on deck after these Troll Impalers are done. If I don't do her soon, I'll never do her. After that, I'm going to institute a rule to paint 1 troll for each new model/unit/etc that I get. This will help ensure that all the trolls get painted eventually.

On a side note, I recycled a pile of old electronics today. 3 CPUs, a monitor, 2 dvd players, a printer and a box full of random bits of junk. Total cost: $50. If for no other reason than to make a note to myself, the place I went to was Green Citizen. They were super nice, and the whole thing was super convinient. I'd recommend them as a recycle place to anyone.

Went to see The Good Shepherd today too. It was, uh, ok I guess. Complicated, and lingered in the moment alot, but overall I'd give it a modest thumbs up.

That's it for the random day I guess. I totally didn't rant about the American Altar like I planned to do. Maybe tonight before bed if I don't stay up late painting again.

Trolls Roll On

Despite getting a second Ogrun Bokur for xmas, I managed to stay focused and get started on the pair of Troll Impalers. I'm not going for super good on these. I'm going for decent tabletop quality because, quite honestly, I'm not planning on fielding trolls anytime soon, but I'd like to reach the milestone of fully painted within the next month. Well, it's late, and I'm tired from 3 hours of painting so it's time to get some sleep.

Fully Painted Countdown

So close now... but Christmas is probably going to screw up any plan to paint everything I have left before getting new models. Especially since I think Lance got me at least 2 models for xmas. However, here's the remaining countdown:

Madrak Ironhide
Hoarluck Doomshaper
2 Troll Impalers
Dire Troll Mauler
Harbinger of Menoth
Vlad (special edition)

7 models at probably an average of 8 hours each (higher due to the Harbinger), that's like a month worth of painting at best. I wonder how long I can hold out before buying more models. There's also the challenge that I have family visiting for the next couple weeks so the odds of getting even an hour of painting each night is pretty slim. I'll have to paint late in the evenings.

Next post: The American Altar, and my own personal challenge.

Troll Axer

Finished! 5 hours and 25 colors. It's not super quiality, but it was fun to paint and easier than I expected. I'm actually looking forward to painting the rest of my trolls now. Before I started this one, I made sure to read Fluffy's righteous tutorial on troll skin on the Privateer forums.

Now to prime these minis and.... oops!!!

I always feel stupid when I go to prime minis and run out of primer. At least I got one Troll Impaler primed fully before running out (almost exactly). This will be a good opportunity to get some DupliColor Sandable Primer as a replacement. At least the Troll Axer is coming along nicely.

Job Wisdom

Warning... rambling personal philosophical musing:

The Christmas season always gets me a little angry and withdrawn. Being a faithful christian in the midst of a materialistic nation naturally makes it a little frustrating, and it doesn't help that I work at a job that enables people to buy more junk in an even more faceless way. I recently watched The Nativity Story (which was great) and then went into work the next day only to get an email from the VP saying that a bunch of us had to be online and available this weekend to watch the production systems. I just about lost it. Talk about a complete subversion of the Christmas message. Then on Sunday at church, I was struck by a reading from Luke (sorry I don't have the particular reading at hand). Jesus was talking about the end, and people were asking him for advice. The advice that really stood out to me was his advice to the tax collectors and soldiers. He said "Only collect as much as your are supposed to... Do not extort people". Right now you are probably thinking "Duh...", but it's what he didn't say that struck me. He didn't say "Quit that job and find something more meaningful". In a time of year when I am depressed, frustrated and ready to tell the whole chain of bosses above me to get stuffed, this little bit of perspective really helps. I'll let society dictate what is a necessary job, and I'll let myself focus on being meaningful, graceful, and covenental with my fellow workers. Maybe God will visit a little of his peace on me during this season of peace and reconcilliation, cause I could certainly use it.

eFeora Finished

All done with Epic Feora. She was actually no so terrible time-wise once I got started. About 6 hours total of painting and some assembly time. I'm not entirely sure I like the color scheme but I am happy about how the blending turned out. The pics still aren't super quality, but good enough to get the idea.

As an added bonus, I picked up a new Series 7 size 1. It's faboo! I love these brushes. I'm still in search of a good filbert though. I might just have to order one online and sacrifice some quality.

13 Pieces???

Made a ton of progress on Epic Feora today. I've used primarily P3's on her and they look very nice. The whites don't suck too bad and the sanguines are lovely. The real challenge is getting all the pieces pinned together now. My hand was just starting to cramp up from all the careful pin vise usage. It's late anyway, so I'll leave the rest of the work until tomorrow.

There's a point at which I stare at an unstarted miniature and just fail to get started. That totally happened with eFeora. She was all primed and in pieces (which was a feat in itself), and then I just stared at her for the last few days unable to really get started. Part of the problem was of course my stupid work schedule, but it was also a challenge to figure out a scheme for her. I decided to reverse the scheme I used on eKreoss, that is, to do sanguine red for the armor plates and white for the fabrics. She's definately dark red, but I think it's turning out pretty good. Certainly better than if I had tried to do her all white. Anyway, enough musings, time for sleep.

Proxying - The Dirty Little Secret

As promised, here's a pic from the battle the other night.

There are others on my photobucket album. The battle was very amusing and gave us both a chance to experiment with some troops we haven't used before. People don't talk about "proxying" models much, but everyone does it alot, and this battle was no exception. I forget the details of each list but it was 500pts of mercs vs cryx. My merc list included Ashlynn, Devil Dogs, Steelheads, a Talon, a Mule, and of course, the Alchemist and Bokur combo. My opponnent's cryx list included the witches, soul hunters, satyrix raiders with the sea witch, the deathjack, and a skarlock and alchemist. VP-wise I'm pretty sure I cleaned up (we bailed after 4 rounds), but in a kill-the-caster game, I would have lost at the end of the 4th round.

In summary, here's what I learned about the mercs I fielded:

• Devil Dogs seem cool, but are hard to position effectively.
• Steelheads don't seem cool, but are remarkably badass.
• The Talon is so-so, but I like the vanguard better.
• The Mule seems badass, but I really need one more use to make a proper verdict.

The highlights of the game were the Steelheads getting to charge the Soulhunters and wiping out almost all of them, and also watching helplessly as my mule got magic jarred deep in the battlefield to sit ineffectively.

Behind on News

Got to play again last night! Hooray! Probably for the last time until after the new year. I snapped a few pics, but I'll post that tomorrow. It was great to play though.

I finally finished building a light box and tested it tonight. Here's a pair of samples. The background makes a huge difference it seems. I'm really such a terrible neophyte with lighting and cameras. My dad is probably embarrased but I'm slowly learning. Anyway, it's late, and my work has me jammed up pretty good, so here's the samples as a preview and tomorrow hopefully I can post more about it. These make a good contrast to the previous pictures. The light box was easy to make too. Thanks to Strobist for the tips.

The Unpleasantness

With painting miniatures also comes the work of prepping miniatures. There's all these steps before a model can be primed for painting and, for the most part, I don't like any of them. One of the few remaining Warmachine miniatures I have left to paint at this point is the Harbinger. I'm going to chronicle the entire effort of assembling and painting her, just for fun. Attached is a picture of the 13 pieces she comes in (excluding base). These are the pieces before I have done anything with them, with the one exception of straightening the banner pole. I'm going to guess this will end up being a 40+ hour project. Let the pain begin!

eKreoss done

Finally finished him. Over 8 hours of painting easily. That doesn't count assembly and such. The new P3's are pretty fabulous. The reds are extremely easy to blend with. The whites are, well, whites. P3 makes white easier, but white is always hard to work with. Anyway, here's the pic.

Lost Time

So I've put about 4.5 hours into epic Kreoss now... roughly... but I unfortunately left the timer running overnight, forgetting to turn it off. So it's now just going to be a very rough estimate when I finish.

On the plus side, the P3's are working pretty well. White still sucks to work on, but I definately like the shades.

The P3 Experiment

I'm about 3 hours into working on epic Kreoss with primarily P3 paints and so far I love them. They definately behave differently, but not dramatically so. Well, perhaps, but my painting style (or lack thereof) seems to mesh well with them.

Bokur Finished!

About 8 hours worth of painting. This was a fun model. Fun details, fun features, relatively painless to get to everything, and a good opportunity to practice shading. I could probably spend another 2 hours on him touching up details and such, but this is adequate for now I've decided.

For Your Amusement

My painting desk... in all it's glory. If you look carefully, you can see that I got the menoth P3 paints set which I am finally getting to experiment with.

2 More Hours

I just managed to get 2 more hours in on the Bokur. This model is turning out to be one of those rare models that turns out to be very fun to paint. Often I get so engrossed in finishing the model that I don't notice whether I'm actually enjoying the act of painting. This guy though, he's a blast. Lots of details that are large enough to actually feel like I'm doing a halfway decent job of painting. I've already got 4 hours on this guy and it's looking like I'll probably need another 3-4 hours to finish him up. On the plus side though, all the pinning and basing is already done and he just needs some final gluing at the end. For now though, it's time for sleep.

Next In Line

Started the Ogryn Bokur tonight. Got about 2 hours on it so far. It's amazing how much more painting it takes to do medium and large bases. I'm guessing probably 7 hours or so for this guy.

A couple days ago I posted pics of Alexia on the privateer forums for feedback and have definately learned that using inks to shade is just not the right plan anymore. I'm definately better off working on my shading skills. The real problem I encountered was that after using inks to create an overall shade effect, there's no way to properly match regular paint color properly.

Ashlynn Finished

I seem to be on a good roll lately. Ashlynn took about 4.5 hours to complete. Parts of her are good and parts are pretty mediocre. I really hate painting faces. I've decided I need another Series 7 brush that's smaller than my existing #2 to do those details. On the plus side I got some additional blending practice in which worked out decently well. The model is pretty small which made it harder to shade, but I feel like I did a better job than my previous average and it didn't take that much effort.

My picture quality is still suffering, primarily due to lighting and focal length issues. However, here's the pics.

I've also created a photobucket album for all my pics. I'll upload more as I get unlazy. The link is on the side.

Alexia Finished!

Close to 6 hours of painting time. She turned out ok. The cloak is definately not what I was originally planning, but it worked out ok enough. I can always paint another one I suppose. I tried a tiny bit of OSL (Object Source Lighting) on the sword and runes, but I suspect I need alot more blending practice before I can do that effectively. Overall I'm happy though. My inner perfectionist is disappointed but hey, she's paintined and ready for the case.

I think I've finally got a photo setup that is workable for me now. I'm also able to use Gimp well enough to resize and color correct images. I'm using a different camera than before that my Dad provided for me. Eventually I'll do the research on cameras and make a final decision on one. Next post, after the camera batter recharges, I'll post pics of Alexia's Risen, Thralls, and the whole mob together.

On to Ashlynn!

Put a couple more hours into Alexia. The face was a challenge but it looks not terribly mediocre given my lack of experience with doing faces. The holiday weekend has severely cut into my painting time so far, but tomorrow promises to be better. Probably another 2-3 hours left on her.

Experimented a bit with color correction on the pictures I took of the Nomad. Also took an outdoor picture just to compare with. I'm feeling kinda lazy right now though so I'll post them later.

Nomad Finished

8.5 hours roughly. I actually finished this a few days ago. The picture quality still needs work, for which I will probably try some outdoor shots today.

Started Alexia last night. She'll probably come out pretty mediocre, but at least she's geting painted. I'll post a pic of her and her entire host once she's done.

smashed

My merc list won. Amazingly enough, the Hammerfalls didn't seem useless. In fact they performed admirably. My force consisted of Ashlynn with a Vanguard, Gorman with a Bokur, Hammerfalls with a Driller, and a short-staffed unit of Devil Dogs. All things considered, the Hammerfalls were well worth the points, but the Driller turned into an unaffective distraction for my opponent. I was facing a Karchev list with 2 Devastators, 10 Kommandos, and a Manhunter. There was alot of luck on my part though, and twice Ashlynn should have been whacked if the dice had rolled even close to average for damage.

Photo References

Smoke: 1

Fire: 1

Rust:1