PED Challenge #2

Here's a PED Challenge update.
It's been two weeks since the start, and the only thing I got ready are these five guys, and half of a movement tray. The Gunnery Team got also finished, didn't take a pic though.

From left to right: 2 Hobgoblins, 2 Blunderbuss Warriors, 1 Disciple of Lugar.

This time the "Every Day" aspect didn't go so well. These finished guys are actually made in 9 days instead of 14. So this Challenge might also be going for 3 weeks like the last one.

Hobgoblin hats, movement tray texture, and top right there are few self made daggers ready to be cast as weapons for Backstabbers.

The movement tray has some work put in it too.
I first made a cool texture using cork sheet, molded it, and then cast it with liquid plastic. Then I took a polystyrene sheet and adhered a sheet of rubbery-magnetic sheet on that. Then I cut the cork texture cast to fit the sheets, and painted it like I paint my bases.

About the Hobgoblins: Those are made by combining new Stormvermins and older Goblin parts. I'm also going to equip each one with a hat. Those painted heads came just from a sprue, but I have made some additional ones, as seen above.

I guess this project is all about the hats...

Paint Every Day Challenge 2: Paint harder

Hello again!

Last time I said that I'd take off a week or so from painting, but took a month.
This time I thought to go one week more than last time. Four weeks of painting straight up.
I'll be starting today (monday 23.oct.)

Here are some chosen minis to go with. From top left to right:
Greater Bull with the rider, Regular bull, Lammasu and rider, 3 Anointed Bull Centaurs.
Below them are: Mage lord, Fighty lord, 1 Lugar guy, 2 Hobgoblins, 8 Blunderbussers (and a movement tray!), 3 Warriors, 3 Citadel Guards, 1 weapon team crew that was missing the last time.

I will not finish all of these, and I will build additional minis to be painted as I go. I just wanted to take a random picture to go with my PED#2 update of the stuff I got built.

PED Challenge (0 missed days)

I'm spent. I got pretty much every Chaos Dwarf colored I had glued together. Now I need to take a week or so to just prep more guys to be painted.
I do have some monsters and bigger stuff ready, but am so scared of actually starting them, fearing I'm gonna mess them up somehow (and I've not decided their colors either).

Here's the last thing I got painted. A Gunnery Team, or at least half of it. I've not decided what I'll give the other dwarf to hold on to. The pebble funnel at the top is also still unpainted.

PED Challenge (0 missed days)

Three more dorfs. Two more Citadel Guardians and my first Blunderbuss Warrior at the ready!

The Blunderbuss Warrior took its time, because I really wanted to have it perfect. The goofy old 90's blunderbusses were one of the reasons I fell in love with the Chaos Dwarfs, and now I got them mixed up with my modern Russian Alternative miniatures!

Next up is something different.

All of the painted Citadel Guards.

PED* Challenge (0 missed days)

Well, actually one missed day, but it was a force majeure situation. I made a deeep cut in my finger with the x-acto knife while converting my Dwarfs.
Don't worry though, I will try to make more convoluted excuses to keep my missed days at zero!
(* Paint Every Day means every day that I've not scheduled anything else to do, or have something semi-urgent come up.)

Well here's a picture of the Warriors once again. There's two more of them, and its starting to look like a real unit!
Behind them are two more Citadel Guards and next to them is a Goblin by Mantic Games.
I wanted to have my Hobgoblins made of them, because they have fun faces, are cheap, and they have good variety of weapon options available.
The downside to those fuckers are aplenty. They're made with PVC, which is a bitch to work with, and they have awful details (I'm thinking because of the PVC). The sculpts are also pretty bad, and I'm not sure which parts are which. All these make them awful to paint.
Also, they do not resemble Hobgoblins that much. They are supposed to taller and lankier than normal Goblins.

So my quest to find the best plastic Hobgoblin stand-ins continues. I'm currently looking at Storm Vermin bodies combined with older Goblin parts (GW and GW). Like this.

I'm currently still painting just infantry dwarfs. I can say however, that the next one after those two is something different. They are still under the knife, but I think I'd get them ready early next week.

PED Challenge (11 or 12 days)

12th or 11th day of not skipping a single day of painting. The main thing is that it's been zero days of not painting, so I'll be using the days-skipped metric from here on out.

I just finished the three Citadel Guards. Took a picture of them, but seems that I took it too close for comfort. The attention I'm giving these miniatures does not go well with how close I took the shot. I try to be better with my photography.

These three are also a bit boring looking by comparison, since the limited color palette and not showing their faces. But the plan of differentiating them from the Warriors worked out pretty good.

PED Challenge (8 days)

Eight days in a row! Seven Chaos Dwarfs Warriors ready, and a whole bunch of bases.
These guys are awful to rank up so I took good care that my command group is as close together as they can, so I'll have some leeway to get the others to act nice.

Next up is three Citadel Guards, who have statline of pretty much all 4's, and got 18" rifle that also acts as a halberd in close combat. They will also all have closed helmets, and I'm planning to paint the helmets all black/copper instead of black/red just to further differentiate them from the Warriors.

Oh, and the banner will come later.

And as a bonus, some unfinished bases for the character mounts. All of the bull sculpts have them standing on only two hooves. So I'll be balancing them with the base clutter.
Lammasu's base on the left, will have its front hands (weirdly enough it has both, hands and hooves) resting on the dried up tree; the Great Bull has its hind hooves up in the air, so one of them will be balancing on top of the tree stump; and the smaller Bull will rest one of its front hooves on top of the rock pile.

PED Challenge (5 days)

Here's a higher quality, but still a bad picture of the bunch. The four dudes below are finished. The three on the top are the command group.

My own private Paint Every Day For a Week - Challenge (2 days)

I've decided to get something done for a change. (And update my blog for a change, too)

I dug up my three undercoated Chaos Dwarves and started splashing paint. I'm keeping it to a moderate 3-man-at-a-time system that will actually end up finishing something.

Now these guys will not end up being the prettiest of the bunch since I'm also moderating the amount of layers. 2-4 layers per surface. I'm such a lazy painter that I just need to take some shortcuts...

Maybe if I ever get to paint some characters I shape up and bring my A-game, but for now these will do.

These guys have had undercoat and a single layer of red before starting. After two days they are as seen (so I guess this is actually three days of work showing).

I'm actually planning on doing this at least a week, and hoping to go for a month or so. Or however long I can.

All the blog updates will be quite quick and dirty too, like this one.

Mordheim Report #14 - The making of my new table

Hello again. This time I've come up with a doozy of an update. A new table for Mordheim! Below I try my best to break down every step how I did it.

This has been a long time coming. Drawing up inspiration and lessons from the first foldable table I made some 15 years ago. The actual spark for starting this project came when I was casually looking at some gaming mats (for Kill Team I guess), and realized they actually had deployment zones pre-measured on the table graphics themselves. That was a real tangible advantage I wanted to have in my new table.

From there gathered up the list I wanted to have in it:

- Pre-measured deployment zones. As said above.

- Strong wooden frame. My last one which is made of 2 inch foam is somehow slightly warped in weird directions.

- Make it more pretty. Old one was just two pieces of foam with some spare wood, hinges and other stuff slapped on to it.

- Take more advantage of the foam. Old table was pretty much all foam, but I never carved it in any way. I chose it just for its weight and durability.

- Make it more diverse. This time I used five-ish different textures on it instead of one.

- Try new techniques and hope for the best. Luckily pretty much everything worked out how I thought they would.

Here's the plan of making deployment zones on the table.
I also wanted to mark the center for whatever reason.

I'm used to work without doing any notes or graphs. This time though, I had plenty of spare time and a project I wanted to be proud of. So I made a little drawing to help me get everything out of my brain (not that much, durrr...), and on to the finished project.

The table frame, not made by me (thanks Antti!)

Stained and sealed. Again, not by me.

I commissioned a friend of mine to do the frame. Gave him the measurements, and chose the cheapest smooth wood available. He asked me if I want to to be stained also, and without giving it any thought I think I said "Sure, whatever", or something along those lines. Now thinking about it, I'm sure it was the right decision as I was told it would also resist any warping.

Start of the first zone.
The big circle has no other meaning than to break up the monotony.

Making the stone texture... with a stone.

2 cm (a little less than 1 inch) thick FinnFoam was chosen for the surface, and was cut in 4 feet by 2 feet pieces.
The frame and the surface is actually almost within one millimeter of the 4' x 4' common gaming table size, which is super awesome.

I wanted to work with textured wallpapers, but decided that it would be good variation to do something by hand. One of the four deployment zones would suffice for this.
I made the deployment zone tiles with ballpoint pen, textured them with anything that has a nice texture, and sealed with watered down PVA glue.

The other deployment zones were carved in. I used a soldering iron which has this carving-knife-tool attached to it. Cuts through like butter. Basic wall filler was used if a cut was too deep.

Masking is important.

Carved (or rather melted) the other deployment zones.

One of my miscast sewer grates got a new life here.

Put two textured wallpapers on top of each other and cut them.
Then swap the identical sized pieces and tape them.

All taped.

Use watered down acrylic paste and a piece of cloth for bendiness.

Here's the biggest part of the surface, the vinyl wall paper. For some reason I wanted to mark the center of the table (Mordheim doesn't really have a need for the exact center), and came up with this plaza type cobblestone design of sorts. The main reason for it though, was to break up the monotone texture of the dominant wall paper.

I took a wide slice of the other (green) wall paper, and taped it over the bottom one (red). Then I took a knife and cut through both at the same time to get identical pieces, then swapped out the pieces and taped them in place for gluing.
Flipped the taped wall paper design over, and glue it underside. I used watered down acrylic paste to adhere a piece of cloth to hold it tight.
Because the design marks the center of the table, it is in the spot the table folds, so no glue that dries hard, or warps, or does any other funky business would do.

Some additional texturing to break the monotone.

Here are pretty much all the detail I did to the table. Not much is needed when it is supposed to be covered in other terrain. I couldn't go buck wild with the foam melting either, because the surface needs to be pretty flat. Otherwise the buildings won't stay put.

Making marks!

All glued on and trimmed. Also a road has been added.

This is pretty much the final form of the surface. Wall papers have been trimmed and glued, the gutter and other "bald spots" have been cut through and made visible, and the road has been marked and started.

There was a slight problem with the design though. There is a 12 inch area in the middle of the table that can't be glued because the joint hinge is above the surface level, and would rip the paper off when folded. This left a bit of bulging in the wall paper (as seen above), which I didn't mind as much since it would - again - be covered with terrain. Miraculously though, this flaw corrected itself in the latter work steps. Read below.

The gutter.

Additional minor details.

Rubbing in some sand for additional texture.

The random sand texture to really break up the monotone of the wall paper. This was pretty much the last big work step to be done. I didn't know if it would work, and was super nervous how it would end up.

I made this watered down (to a light creme viscosity) PVA glue with aquarium sand, and some random color just to see where I've applied it. My vision was to rub it in the crevasses of the wall paper and hope the glue would hold it. The reality was that the sand wouldn't really go in the cracks and would be left all over the place. I compensated by adding more of the stuff.
In the end it worked out, really random patterns and the glue held good. A lot of the sand went to waste, and a lot of work (and sore fingers) was needed to rub the excess sand off. But now, my biggest worry was behind me.

The miracle that also happened, was that the watered down glue shrunk so much that it flattened all the bulges that formed when adhering the wall paper to the foam. I was glad indeed!

Lower part of this picture has been rubbed out of excess sand,
the top part is just glued.

A mud paste made out of acrylic paste, water, sand and wood dust.

A muddy road.

The last thing before painting is the road that marks the last deployment zone.
A paste was made from acrylic paste, water, that same sand, and wood dust. I settled on a stuff that was comparable thickness to a yoghurt. Applied it and ran the other end of a brush through it to simulate some wagon tracks.
Then after drying I picked off the bigger clumps to flatten it a bit.

Black spray paint.

A full coat of cheap-o brown acrylic was applied.
After this was gray spray paint.

A few different brown washes were applied at different spots.
Pictured above is the first and the heaviest one.

Without the light gray drybrush.

With the light gray drybrush.

Now was the time to get painting. First up were the gray parts.
The layers were as follows: Black spray, cocoa-brown acrylic (with some added acrylic paste to maybe protect the surface more), gray spray. Over the gray base I washed over with few different browns, leaving random spots and marks.
Once that was dry I went over with the same gray as the base, but with a bottled paint. Using long strokes and the brush almost horizontally, I carefully tried to only paint the raised parts of the vinyl wall paper.
The last thing to do was to drybrush the whole thing with one step lighter gray.

WIP brown parts. These have five-ish layers of different browns brushed and washed.
A few more to go still.

Fresh out of the masking removal.

Brown parts weren't given any thought at all. Just mixing different colors and seeing what shows up over the base color. Some washed, some brushed, and others drybrushed.
I think I ended up painting eight to ten brown layers overall, last one being really diluted smokey ink applied by my index finger.

After all the painting all there was to do was to varnish it, and remove the masking, and voilà!

Some minor repairs were necessary after the masking tape had ripped some of the paint off.

In the end I'd say I'm 90% pleased with my creation. There's a few thing that nag me a bit. 

One being that the few reddish tiles I painted don't really show up, and kinda just look painted on. The other is that the sand particles might still - after so many precautions - get loose, and they might be bad with terrain that has really hard base. I think it would've been better to use wood dust instead of sand there.

Some paint may chip, and holes get poked on it, but that is just to be expected.

So here we have it. My new Mordheim table.

The very next day my table saw its first few games.

A cat warming her butt on a wireless router.

What up bull?

He's starting to be ready to be painted.

There's still a handful of details to be glued on, but I wanted to seal off the gaps beforehand.

There's crazy amount of stuff you need to do when assembling Forge World miniatures:
Count the pieces, remove that huge gate mold, remove flash and seams (which were fortunately quite rare), remove miscasts, wash off the release agent, straightening any warped parts, fill bubbles, pin and glue together, putty gaps, file smooth if needed.

One last seam on his leg to be puttied. The biggest seam was going all around his neck.

Don't worry about that badly filed spot on his back. It's where the throne will be glued.

Test scheme for my Infernal Dwarfs

Hello again,

Today I bring you a batch of bad pictures of my Chaos Dwarf warrior I just finished. Red, black, metallic trimmings, and WHOLE LOT of washes. Only surface that has over two layers is the face. Everything else is just flat color and a layer of wash.
I really want to get these ready as soon as possible, hence the really simple plan of doing barely decent.
Also, my phone is the worst at contrast. As it turned out, I have to have a dark background for the miniature to show up at all. So I put that green thing behind him.

Anyway. Better pictures when I have few of them ready and on base.