Rask

Super fast pics of Rask since I've got a game later tonight, potentially using him too. Loved this model. Could have totally spent way more time on him, but I'm trying to close out my February projects. I probably should have done a prototype of a bogtrog before doing Rask so that I had the scheme locked, but I feel like this worked out quite well and should be fairly easy to replicate again.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #24

Instead of getting much miniature painting done, I was painting a room in my house.

Gonna make this one quick cause I'm pretty beat from a weekend full of home improvement work.

Rask progress! He's mostly done. Just need to pour Envirotex. I could have easily spent way more time on him, but honestly I wanted to get him done and ready for battle. It's a sweet model though.

And the Judicator marches on. It's fully assembled now but there is still a lot of details to clean up and fix. What I really need to do is make a list of remaining work to do. But not tonight. In fact for now it's sitting on a shelf behind a cloth so that I can take a break from it and come back with fresh eyes.

And I'm out!

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #23

Day late post because of the 3 day weekend.

First picture is of the main Judicator progress. The main torso is now attached to the legs which makes the whole thing start to feel a little more like it's coming together. There's still touch ups and work to do in general, but it was too hard to work with the torso piece separately anymore so I got it 80% done and attached it. The really big question I now have is how to manage the final painting on this beast once it's fully assembled, since there's going to be a lot of final work to do to make the whole model look cohesive, not to mention clean up a bunch of stuff.

I also got a bunch of base coating work done on the remaining parts as well as detailing work on the shoulders. I actually got pretty brave (for me) with the airbrush at this point and did some highlighting on the shoulders. There was a bit of over-spray since I wasn't using any masking for it, but nothing that I can't quickly clean up.

And now a WIP shot of Rask. He's been the project I work on while washes on the Judicator were drying. He's coming along quite well and I expect to have him done by the next weekend despite the amount of work left to do.

And just a few random notes about painting and life this week:

I got a really great tip on using the airbrush this week from my friend David: Mix my paint in a paint well and then transfer it to the airbrush. As simple as this sounds, it really made a huge difference. I already feel more comfortable about it. I've also ordered a whole pile of pipettes to make it easier to transfer paint with.

My son turned 3 this weekend. Nothing to do with painting. I'm just really happy to see him grow up.

Finally, I enjoyed the self-imposed painting challenge for GRR so much that I'm going to try and do more of those sorts of challenges. My current one is to have the Judicator finished before my next game of Warmachine (probably Wednesday or Thursday). Of course the odds of that are pretty low honestly, but the challenge still stands and I'm taking it seriously in an attempt to pull it off. Worse case scenario, I hope to have Rask finished so I can field him instead.

Ironback Spitter 2

Yep, that's right, a second Ironback. Technically he was done at the same time as the second posse, but I hate to post back to back. This one will be super fast.

What went well:
* Lots of the same stuff as the posse was good with this model.
* Using a very different color scheme on this one worked well. I feel he still fits with the overall look of the army but has a distinctive pop to him. Also makes him easy to distinguish on the tabletop from the first one.

What could have been better:
* Definitely better smoothing of the overall look. I could have definitely done a couple of very thin washes to smooth out the rough spots, but it's still pretty good.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #22 (mostly battle report)

This will be a very irregular weekend roundup for sure.

Before I get to the tournament report, here's a quick overview of progress during the last week:

• Finished Ironback Spitter (pics will appear tomorrow)
• Finished second Gatorman Posse (pics appeared 2 days ago)
• Finished 4 customized Croxor transport trays
• Got Rask started, but just barely
• Nothing on the Judicator

Ok, now that that's over with, here's the highlights from the Gold Rush Rampage event yesterday. And I apologize that these are sparse but it's late and honestly I doubt anyone wants to read much about it. It was 35pts, SR2013, Divide and Conquer with 3 lists, deathclock. The tournament only lasted 4 rounds amazingly and the top spot was taken by a Gator player amazingly. Here's some Lytro shots of various points in the event...

	Round 1: I got the bye, but one of the TO's had a list available to play for the purposes of earning achievements, so I played Barnabas vs pSkarre. Amazingly I won this game, partially due to having really hot dice.
	Round 2: I played Maelok vs Bethayne. Legitimately I should have won this game, but I totally misplayed a couple of critical things and totally put Maelok out in harms way with no fury for transfers. I felt like a total rookie. The other guy was really nice though. In a strange sort of way though, I was happy to have lost since it put me in the loser bracket and that made the rest of the event into a "for fun" situation and I was just looking to earn various achievements.
	Round 3: Rask vs Carver. This was hands down my favorite game of the day. My opponent was a really great guy and we just had a blast. We were both rooting each other on out of minion kinship, and at the same time we were railing into each other. The match nearly went to time as we slugged it out. In the end I was down to just Rask, a Croak Hunter, and a Feralgeist. It's a little hard to see in this picture, but Carver charged in on Rask and rolled triple 6's for his damage roll. I was forced to capture it for posterity.
	This is a picture of my buddy Mike's sweet looking Skorne army. I was trying to snap pictures of everyone's armies that were set out for the best painted army evaluation, but somehow I only snapped 2 of them.
	Here's the other one I snaped: my other buddy Brian's sweet Retribution army. Oh, and yeah, totally didn't snap a picture of my Croxor army. Figures!
	Round 4: It was Barnabas vs Amon. Ironically I won this one via pop-and-drop. I feel sort of dirty, but hey, a win is a win. In all fairness, it was my only shot. He had 4 heavy jacks in his list and Gators just don't have the muscle for that.

And that wraps that up! Hats off to the GRR organizers who put on a spectacularly fun tournament. I even managed to win a Kreoss3 model in the raffle at the end which was like the cherry on the awesomesauce sunday.

Gatorman Posse 2

More Croxorz! I wrapped these up just tonight by adding the grass tufts. The Envirotex had just enough time to cure, and fortunately in time for the Gold Rush Rampage tomorrow. Quick analysis...

What went well:
* Setting a deadline for myself of getting these ready for GRR was great. It forced me to push hard at painting and I think I've found my muse again.
* Having an existing formula to use as a basis helped speed the process as well.
* The drying blood on the spears worked out far better than I expected. See the picture below.

What could have been better:
* Uh, err... well lots probably, but honestly I'm stoked with how these turned out for spending only 5 evenings painting them.

This shot gives a somewhat better impression of the blood effect on the spears. It's nothing particularly hard to do, just a little secret sauce that I learned from Stahly's Tale of Painters. I adapted it and just make sure to create the spray of blood in a logical way across the blade so that it looked like a slicing or stabbing stroke.

From the Desk: Weekend Roundup #21

Busy week. Very busy! Sorry if the formatting sucks but I need to get up early so I'm trying to slam this one out fast despite all the activity.

First up is the progress on the Judicator. The legs are pretty much done, with the back, uh, armored loincloth, added on as well. So this now reduces the total remaining pieces to assemble to 8. I also got some progress on the main torso part but not enough to really make worth showing a picture of tonight in this already packed post.

A quick micro review: Krylon primer. I recently failed to obtain more of the Duplicolor automotive primer that I normally use, so instead I picked up a can of Krylon primer. I have to say that it worked out quite nicely. I honestly don't see that big of a difference and the Krylon can seems to hold far more primer than the Duplicolor did.

Next is an adjunct paint rack that I assembled. This actually got mostly done a week ago but the final assembly and loading up didn't happen until early this week. This nicely expands out my paint rack capacity to handle all the GFA paints I obtained for airbrushing purposes. This picture actually shows both racks as they are positioned on my desk.

Ok, so before I go on, I need to set up a bit. This coming Saturday is Gold Rush Rampage and I'm planning to go assuming everything falls into place work-wise. To that end I decided to bring my Croxorz, but I wanted to fill out my collection a bit to be more viable. So I picked up a second Gatorman Posse and a second Ironback Spitter, along with Rask. I'm now in a mad push to get them all painted prior to the GRR event. There's a lot of challenge there though as getting them based includes pouring the Envirotex by Thursday night so that it has enough time to cure properly. So I've been a painting fool.

Here's the Ironback Spitter progress. He's pretty much done other than a couple minor touch ups and, of course, getting based. This one is a huge departure from the original Ironback.

I also got 4 more customized transport trays mostly done. The Envirotex is curing still though so I don't have any pictures at present. They had been sitting on my in-progress shelf, half done, for months. Turns out I wasn't really that far from getting them done.

And in the vein of things I completed but don't have a picture of, I got a bunch of Croxor bases assembled today as well, which consisted of drill out the blanks, adding magnets, and then green-stuffing and adding gravel. Once the green-stuff cures I'll prime them all and knock out the painting step. The Ironback has high likelyhood of being ready for Saturday!

And finally before I collapse into slumber, a quick WIP shot of the Gatorman Posse. Just really got about 75% of the chitin done and nothing else. Still a lot of work to do, but I've got a good start towards being painting complete by Thursday.

And I'm out! Happy painting out there!