The Great Beast

This Oboros champion figure was a bit tricky to paint.  Aside from all the different pieces protruding in the way of potential brush strokes, I had to do some major shifting of the colors on the fly.

As I have mentioned many times about the Shaded Basecoat technique, one of it's many advantages is that changing the entire color scheme in "mid flight" is no trouble at all.  To keep in harmony with the other figures in the project, the armor really needed to be more of a grey.  However, the wolf also had to be black/grey, which resulted in way to many things being the same color!

Right off the bat, I knew this wasn't going to work, so I tried a bit of gold for the armor, which made an instant difference.  By using some grey mixed with the golds, I was able to shift that more towards green, and that meant it would not be too jarring.  Also, there were a few other instances on other figures where a gold had been used as an accent on certain champion figures.

I have demonstrated many times in front of a live audience how completely changing around a color scheme as you are painting it can be a lot of fun, and very liberating!  You know that you are never "locked in" or trapped by what you have already done, as you are not investing vast amounts of time on any one area.

Working "globally" as you do with the Shaded Basecoat also reveals these color theme issues right away, instead of remaining hidden because you are only working on small portions of the figure at a time!  As you alter your color scheme, you can even use what's already been painted as an underpainting, as was done here.

Snap to it!

Time for the next review of the amazing Rubicon Miniatures vehicles!  Here we have a mid war Panzer III.  As always, the packaging is beautiful, doing justice to the wonderful kit that it contains.

For all the detail and options, there are just three sprues.  Just like previous kits, the pieces were very well placed on the sprue, which made everything really easy to reach.

When pieces are jammed together on a sprue, it creates more tension on each section, making smaller more narrow pieces more prone to breaking as you remove them.  With the great distances between pieces here, you never run into that situation!

Just like every other instruction set, this one is very easy to read, and sets out the entire project in simple steps.  There are also guides along the way as to which type of PZ 3 you want to create.

Let's not forget the decal sheets, which have an incredible array of options too!  Just like the sprues, the placement allows you to actually get at them.

I quickly started off with the turret, choosing the long barreled option.

As an aside, these emery sticks are excellent to all kinds of mould line and sprue burr removal (not that there's lots of it to worry about on Rubicon kits!).  Each stick has two different gauges of roughness, as you can see in the picture.

You can leave the barrel in a moveable position if you want.  Also, notice the pins on the lower ring of the turret.  This thing just snaps together, like nearly all of the pieces on this vehicle.  I could swear that half of this could be built using no glue whatsoever!!

The completed turret with cupola.

I really loved the detail of the tracks and running wheels.  While the details is fantastic, the complexity is reduced.  It's the easiest set of tracks to put together.

The individual spring for each drive wheel is there, even though most of it is covered by the subsequent pieces.  However, you can still see a hint of them, offering some very nice depth for a vehicle intended for gaming use!

This is the neatest thing about the track assemblies. So easy to put together, minimal mould lines, but super detail!

And yes, this just snapped on.  The value in that comes in the painting phase.  If I wanted to, I could leave this entire assembly off, and paint it separately.  Should this be for a diorama or painting contest, that would mean ease of access and higher quality results as well.

As I mentioned with the Opel Blitz post, the concept behind Rubicon kits is to walk the line between gaming kit and diorama subject matter for competition pieces.  The price is great, as is the detail... but without hundreds of tiny pieces as you would have to deal with on 1/35th scale models, for instance.

The upper section of the hull also snapped together.  The smaller bits and extras were also added at this time.

Just when you thought it could not get better, I realized that the Shurizen armor snaps into place too!  Yes, this means that you could paint the armor first with ease, and simply pop it back on.

Talk about options!  If you don't want the extra armor (or you want it to be an earlier war vehicle), it can be taken away before you start the game.  Of everything else I love about this kit, I believe this gem is my favorite.  Once again, it shows that balance of painting detail and gaming playability.

Some images of the finished assembly.  Boy, I can't wait to get at this with the paints!!! Stay tuned...

The Ancients

This figure was a nice exercise in balancing Non-Metallic Metals with muted earth tones and greens.

It was also an opportunity to do a little freehand!  I wanted to reflect the profile face from the base onto the shield.

That turned out the way I had hoped... these views show the base as well, made from a Green Stuff World texture roller.

Here's an article showing some mosaic tile bases under construction:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-new-realm-of-basing.html

The Temple Ruins

Here's the next texture roller design from Green Stuff World.  They have a very large (and growing) collection of textures which cover all sorts of genres.  The fantasy theme rollers are outstanding and now the Temple texture joins the group!

I made a small series of bases, once again focusing on the simpler cork and sculpey method. A few extra bits were added to take advantage of the theme, such as the broken pillar chunks from Secret Weapon Miniatures.

There are a few sets of the pillar pieces, and you can see that it does not take very much to create a little more "story" to a base design.  Now this cavalry base can support one of those Templar style knights with elaborate freehand and other techniques.

Notice that I experimented with orienting the cork and sculpey at an angle.  To me, it gives the long, narrow base a little more heft and counterbalance.

Just as I have with previous designs, I tried to make a few levels on the bases.  It's pretty easy to establish these different heights by placing one piece of sculpey onto the cork.

To tie all the 'broken' pieces together, I used the Vallejo Oxide Paste, along with a variety of gravel and sand.

Adding those additional pieces to the sculpey texture really completes the look of the bases, especially the larger versions.  This is a 60mm base.

This group shot shows a nice set of bases (for any number of game systems) which was created using one rolled out sheet of sculpey.  As I mentioned in the last post, I normally use the grey extra firm sculpey for these sheets.  I didn't have any at this time, so I made do with the regular white sculpey.

One has to be aware that the white sculpey is more fragile than the extra firm, but it does allow you do make more interesting 'breaks' in the sculpey.  More subtle chipping along the edges can also be achieved.

Here's a link to the site:

http://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/textured-rolling-pins/365-rolling-pin-hobby-roller-temple.html

Hunting Expedition

Now it's time to see some finished images of the Matilda test vehicle!

If you recall the step by step articles, there were a number of experiments conducted with the AMMO paints and pigments.

It was so different working with the oil based products!  Most of the time, I was just seeing what a particular type of paint might be able to do, so I focused more on pushing the limits of the materials.

In the future, I will be working on several tanks and vehicles all at once, which is a better way to take advantage of the oils and their slow drying times!

I have a whole army of Italian vehicles set to go, along with all the German units, so that should be a great opportunity to try more techniques.  I'm also using the oils on my regular infantry, in yet another grand experiment.

I also have an entire Soviet force that will be winter/urban in nature, so we'll see how many different ways we can winterize vehicles.  I'll probably be using a lot of the white Filters, and even mixing the white powders with pigment fixer to scatter that around the vehicles.

I was especially happy with the way the various mud products mixed with the leaves and grass.

This was the one vehicle I had visualized for that effect, and now I can't wait to see what other crazy mixes I can develop!

An yes, there are still some BEF infantry that go along with this tank, so stay tuned!!

The Ranger

I seem to remember painting this Ranger figure for our role playing group many years ago, so it was interesting to work on that same figure again with the knowledge that I have now.  This had been prepped for Marcon, as it is a Sandra Garrity miniature.

There was probably not much freehand on the first version, because it was more difficult at that time to tone down the design in recesses.  I have a few ways to do that now.  

In this case, I used a Vallejo transparent brown paint to create not only some shadows, but to alter the color as well.  This pushed it towards warm, as opposed to the usual cooler dark blues which I have used in many instances to shade such areas darker.

The base is yet another Green Stuff World sculpey base.  There are many more designs yet to be featured on the blog!

The ground level view gives you a better look at the underside details. It was a lot of fun to balance all the warmer reddish browns with the yellowish greens.  To get a little bit of contrast to all that, the color of the base is more of a cooler flesh tone pink.

Blood and Brides

Here's another fun conversion for the Adepticon Dark Eldar army from a few years back.  I wanted to make a unit of Hexatrix Blood Brides, but I thought they should be much different from the usual Wyche figures.

Fortunately, I had some old Warhammer Fantasy Dark Elf figures around, and all it took was swapping one of the knife hands with a plastic gun hand to do the trick!

She's also here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/322279220899?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649