Sunday, June 8, 2014

The Desert Rats


Here and there I have put a few spots of paint on the British units from the Medeterranian expansion.  First, an example of the infantry.


I will be taking a few of these and converting them to have berets, which should be fun!


Now some Crusader tanks for support!


I had seen a few reference images of a desert camo scheme, and that seemed to be the best idea, as opposed to simple tan.


I did stumble across a happy accident as I painted them.  As I was painting one of the tanks, I dropped it in my paint water!  This has happened a number of times when I am holding a figure that is not pinned or attached to something else.

While the water was still on the tank, I took some of my darker colors and placed them on the tank, allowing the water to do the blending work for me!  That was a very pleasant surprise.


I also used some of the markings that I had discovered.


I look forward to doing the rest of these, and the terrain sets that will go with them!!!


Don't worry, be happy!


Hey folks!  Here's a fantastic new material, one that will make quite a nice addition to the tool kit!

These moulds are from Happy Seppuku, and they are the result of a recent kickstarter. As you can see, there is a wide variety of textures to choose from.


First, I will show you some images of the base texture stamps.  These are some wonderful textures, and the moulds are of a substantial size.


With each grouping, you will find something to suit just about any miniature.  I love the various wood, tile and cobblestone textures.  Those cobblestone textures always take me a lot of time to create, so those will be even more helpful!


And here they are!  These are large enough to cover an entire large creature base, or a typical 20 man unit... or darn close to it! :-)


My plan is to roll out my sculpey sheets, as usual, and press these moulds into it.  I can't wait to see how these first tests go!  Like any experiment, there may be some trial and error to get things just the way I want.


The moment I set eyes on these, I realized that my need to keep buying new sheets of plasticard textures may have ended!  I was going to make some of my own press moulds of deck plating texture, but that is always a hit and miss prospect.

Once again, my plan is to roll out the sculpey, press in this texture, and then work with it once it is baked.


How about this for some riverbed texture, or even lava?  Fun!!!

I should also mention that once the sculpey has been pressed into the molds, I will put them in the freezer to make them as solid as possible.  This should make them really easy to pop right out of the moulds.


These items will probably require green stuff or maybe apoxy sculpt.  Probably green stuff, with more yellow than blue so that I can pick up all the texture.

Just like the sculpey, I will put these in the freezer so that I can pop the green stuff out of the mould and continue casting.  Just check out that pirate theme texture!!!  Yar!!!


More choices for your steampunk and 40k figures.  Perrhaps even some Zombicide.

Wonderful gear textures, saving me the need to search through those science catalogs for the plastic gears.  Some very handy 40k textures as well, which I can't wait to use!

I think I will be able to make some fun urban rubble settings for Zombicide!!

Obviously, my ideas for the use of these moulds is somewhat different than the approach shown by Happy Seppuku.  They have lots of images on how they use the moulds on their website.

Their technique is to lay out the green stuff on an idividual base, and then press it into the moulds.

In the coming days and weeks, I will be showing you pictures of the results I get from the sculpey experiments.  Stay tuned!

Here is a link to their site: