Racing ahead with the Reaver Jetbikes: Adepticon 2013

Under the ever watchful eye of Sammy, I continued to work on the quick Reaver conversion.

I noticed on the regular version of the jetbike sprue, you have a rear fin that has some tassles hanging off of it.  However, they are "tied on" through a hole in the back fin.  I started out by using the pin vice to start the hole, and then did the rest with an exacto knife.

I also added a few space marine helmets for trophies!

I had clipped off a bunch of the hair bits from unused Dark Eldar heads, so they were perfect for the task at hand!

I added a skull on the other side...

And placed the rider.

During my first test game, I didn't realize that the riders also had splinter pistols.  I thought they should have a bit more close up firepower than just the splinter rifles!  Yeah, it's not exactly a bunch of heat lances, but every bit helps.

To remind me in the future, I am going to model as many as I can with splinter pistol arms from the Wyche sprues.

If you have done that search on the previous jetbike conversion posts, you will have seen a few of the bikes had a second cowling added to the front.

I did this to get more variety, but also some more places to do color and freehand.

My hope is to paint the undersides of the cowlings with a glowing effect.  We shall see how that works out in the first color test!

I added a second hair bit to the rear fin, and a combat knife.

These are not the most dramatic conversions in the word, but the bases are going to have some fun surprises on them.  In fact, these conversions will hopefully set up some very cool opportunities to have some space marines in the process of being hacked apart by the bladevanes of the jetbikes.

I will be learning a lot about making flying blood spatter and cast off with this project!

Speedy Gonzalez: A quick Reaver Jetbike conversion

For those of you familiar with my Adepticon 2013 Dark Eldar project, you know that the army is based around jetbikes.

The story of the army involves rival Kabals of bikers who have temporarily joined forces to conquer an Imperial world that has a fantastic Hippodrome!  These Kabals are normally rival racing teams... hence the value placed on such a great place to show off their rides!!

I have a bunch of them built already, many of them with a bit of conversion here and there (you can search with the 'search bar' on the left hand column to find them).

I am making them as unique as possible, since I have lots of cluster caltrops and various weapons, so I want to be able to distinguish them from one another easily from one another.

To make an extra rear wing, I glued together a few pieces of plasticard together.

This gave me some decent thickness to work with...

A rough pattern is drawn out...

Followed by a rough cut.

The next step is to start creating an edge on the wing.  The rough cuts are done with an exacto knife.

I took a few files and worked on the edge some more.  Then it was time to do a few cuts into that edge.

Once the shapes are positioned, a round file is used to do the rest.

While there is more work to do on the wing, I wanted to get it glued down to see what I wanted to do with it next...

After gluing in a few little blades from the jetnike set just below the wing, it was time to add a few trophy helmets.  Those extra little bits were perfect for holding the helmets into place.

Some razorflails from the Wyche sprue made a nice little addition as well.

I will post the rest of the images later tonight.  Now I have to get back to more video camera tests!

A solid base for Mordor: The rest of the lava effects

As the Army/Navy game was drawing to a close, I was getting to the latter stages of my test bases as well.

So, I had set up my lightest colors for the glowing lava, which meant that I could now put some transparent layers of fluorescent orange over that layer.  The Fluo paints are naturally transparent, so you don't even have to thin them down.

After the initial layer of fluorescent orange, I added some of my reddish brown to that and did some darker portions around the masses of cooling lava.

That color gets progressively darker, and eventually I start adding black into that mixture.

Some of the orange is drybrushed on the underside of the rocks to get lava reflected light.  Meanwhile, on the upper surfaces, I do some cooler dyrbrushing by mixing a very dark brown with a pale green.

I did some more orange lava reflections and some more drybrushing on the upper areas.

As that stuff dried (in addition to the black/brown washes), I worked on the black marble on the top.

I had a shadow grey mixed with a blue green put down as a middle tone layer.  The veins would be lightened further by mixing in that same pale green color.

The pale green is lightened a bit, defining the veins a bit more...

And this is our ultimate result...

Only 25-30 more bases to go!

Always Sing Second... lava and football

On this last Saturday of college football, I was trying to recover from a very late night of camera testing.  The guests arrived very early, so I had an early start as well.

Before that game started, I played my first game of Warhammer Fantasy since the WFB tournament in April.  Man was that different from my beloved LOTR.

Watching the Army/Navy game was a bit all encompassing, so as that was on, I did a little painting on those LOTR bases for my Mordor army!  Time for some hot stuff!

I set it up by painting my brightest lights, so that I could do my transparent Fluorescent orange later.

I tried to establish my initial darks with a reddish brown mix...

The darks of the rocks further from the lava got a cooler shade of brown.

A blue/black mix for the marble surface on top...

Just about ready to start adding the fluorescent elements to heat things up.  You can see how that orange glows just sitting there on the palette.

Sammy was watching me very closely the whole time...

As I was watching the Middies get that first score!  What a game.  Go Navy...

More to come later!!

Forward Progress: First and Ten!

Well, yesterday was an interesting day for the Kickstarter!

This item was kindly donated by Marty to the cause.  In the quest to get the old camera to communicate with our existing computers, we have been consistently stymied.  Even the folks at Sony said that it was an impossible task, no matter how many drivers we downloaded.

So, enter a brand new camera!  As you can see, it is about 1/3 the size of the previous camera.  Marty also contributed a tiny tripod, since he knew what kind of a setup I had been working with.

Late last night I did about a 45 minute film of another Raging Heroes  Vestal.  So, we will be uploading this film and see what we have!

It was different enough from the other camera that I will still have to tweak my own positioning a bit.  I was amazed that even at the highest quality setting, the memory card was still not filled up.  That's cool!!!

Here she is after 45 minutes...

Babo was also very excited.  Christmas came early!  And there were tons of cookies, since Cathy and Kimbery were baking dozens of them!!!!

Mordor is stirring... and my spidey sense is tingling!

First of all, a huge THANK YOU to all the viewers of this blog!

In just over 10 months, there have been over 400,000 page views.  Wow!!!  Many thanks to all of you who participate by leaving comments and such.  Those are much appreciated, especially when it is 5 AM, the alarm will be going off in 3 hours, and I am working on that last blog post. :-)

OK, back to the topic at hand.  You guys want to see hobby stuff!

To get away from my Lord of the Rings 600 point tournament armies, and back into our more informal games, I thought it would be best to create a whole new army.  Our typical game is 1000 points.  Yes, I will be adding to my elves (more eagles) and to my Axles of Evil (more chariots), but I wanted to do something completely unrelated to them.

I just got the Mordor source book and a box of Morgul knights with a prize coupon, so it was time to create!

I have been given the Battle for Skull Pass boxed set to create the Civil War Dwarves, and was left over with all the goblin stuff.  Rich had cleverly used a few of the spider riders as an add on to his usual orc army.

I knew I didn't want any orcs in my force, so I thought of a few ringwraiths with various powers.  One of which will be the Shadow Lord on a Fellbeast, which had also bee around for almost 10 years.  Add the Dark Lord himself, a batch of spiders along with the spider queen and BAM, big time Mordor army.

I have some Reaper figures which will be specters as well.

The bases are all going to be lava OSL.  Big surprise, given the whole volcano thing...

So, how to make this into something useable without taking all day?

First, some cork, and then some sculpey

Oxide paste to the rescue!  Add on some rocks and gravel, and it is all set for painting!

By the way, this kind of basing will be one of the first basing DVD's that we will be making.

Now we need to get that spider to look a little less weird!  I mixed up some green stuff, with more yellow than blue.  I need to sculpt some very basic furry texture to cover that crazy skull, and make the torso less flat.

Some furry texture on the thorax!

Now for the same treatment on the abdomen, and you have a passable spider!  Only 12 more to go...

Cathy suggested that I borrow one of her shirts on this Pearl Harbor day.  My dad was a Marine serving in the Pacific.  We still have a ring that he fashioned out of a 1942 New Zealand coin!

Once again, many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the blog!!!