Quick Side Project - Diorama

Well last night some painting needed to be done (you know when you get that itch that only working with models can scratch?) So I gathered up my son and we headed down stairs to make some magic. I wanted to start on the Vindicator and Predator but they were not yet fully dried from their Simple Green baths. I really didn't feel like painting my Legion of Everblight, and my son wanted to work on his Protectorate of Menoth by himself.

Then inspiration struck. I have always loved looking at wargaming diorama's. The good ones, the bad ones, the jaw dropping stuff you see from folks like Maz at Winterdyne. I started looking around at my shelves to see what I had that I could use. I decided I wanted to do something fun, on the easier side (it's my first time so why not try and be gentle?) and big.

I remembered that my wife had these 10" basswood rounds in her craft room just taken up space.... I grabbed two of them, some spackle, and it was time to build.

This is going to be a Warmachine Diorama as those are what I have laying around. I had purchased a few models that I wanted to paint but dont have armies for yet so they will go in this thing.

So here is the break down of what I have done and how I did it.

1. Two 10" wood rounds glued together - no picture because come on, use your imagination of a circle people.

2. I grabbed bases for the sizes of models that will be going into the diorama and used blue tack to hold them down on the wood, laying out where I want them to be.

3. As I was doing this my son (8yr old no less) was making sandbags (well cutting them off the sprue) I got these at Hobby Lobby for like $3 fantastic investment I say

4. It was time to figure out where to lay out the sandbag line. I did this dry and then used a pen to loosely mark how I wanted them layed out. Then glued down the base layer using super glue. 

5. Then it was time to build the wall up, we went with 3 layers as I figured it gets the idea across without over kill.

6. Now the fun part, laying down some spakle, I don't own a "spakel knife" nor would it be a good idea to use on something like this (too big) but I did have a few plastic knives about so we used what we had. I like using spakle for something like this as its light weight, can be primed and painted and you can make it smooth or give it some texture depending on how you applied it. It was my go to for basing when I took a month and did a FOW army way back in the day. Also a small tub of the stuff is like $4 and is more than enough to fill this entire thing up.

If you notice from the picture, I filled the spakle in high around the bases and up about 1/3 of the way up the first row of sandbags, its going to be the ground (obviously) so it needs to reflect that. The reason to get it slightly above the bases is so that when I put the models on it they look as seamless as possible.

This should dry in about 24 hours and I can start priming and painting it up. Just in time for the Vindicator and Predator to fully dry so I can work on them.

GW Vindicator and Predator. 1.0

My friend sent me some models to redo for him. I got these bad boys in the mail today. Just a few broken off pieces here and there so nothing major needs to be done to fix em.

We are going to be doing a Khorn theme for these. The came already in the process of being painted. So right now they are in about a gallon of Simple Green. We discussed how they should look and the over arching desire is this, Evil! Expect to see some fun and new things as I go on this one. I hope it turns out like I see it in my head.

So here are the before shots..... You will notice the whites are a bit blotchy and the golds appear to be painted strait over black. One should never paint gold over black. Always go for a brown first. This will allow for better coverage and a more natural gold look. You can alter the light and darkness (richness if you will) of the gold by the brown you use. I tend to stick with Vallejo Beasty Brown for most golds but you can go as dark as Mahogany or as bright as a Khaki if you want.

See ya'll in a few days after these have been scrubbed clean and dried. 

Menoth 3.0 - Finished off the Choir.

Finally got home from work and finished these guys up. I am happy with how they turned out. I was shooting for a good table top standard and I think I have achieved that. Keep in mind these are for my 8 year old to play with so I didn't go all out and spend 30 hours on a 6 man unit.

Also this was the first time I got to try out a light box. Still messing with the lighting to figure out what is going to work best. Now to convince the wife that I need photoshop and classes on how to actually use photoshop....

Next up I think I am gonna paint some GW stuff, Its been a while and a really good friend is sending me some tank type stuff to do. 

Menoth Choir 2.0 (and some legion to boot).

Well it's been a bit and I realized I hadn't been down to paint in over a week.

So I put the baby down for a nap, let the older kids get on the MineCraft (aka Kid Crack) and headed off to the painting cave.

In our last installment of painting the Choir I had just used an oil wash on the leader. I had since finished the base coats on the grunts and used Tamiya Gloss Coat on them to seal in the freshness (well that and seal them off so I could apply the wash).

So today I washed them using my last pot of Devlin Mud. For those new to the game Devlin Mud is probably the best GW product to come down the pipe. It really is talent in bottle. It's just shy of an actual oil wash but I was a bit lazy today and didn't feel like mixing a wash so I didn't. All that's left on the grunts is to let them dry, hit em with a dull coat of varnish, add the highlights and squiggle some lines on their parchment looking things. The Choir's Leader is just about done. He needs a few more highlights on the golds and some Gloss Coat on gem stones and we can call it a day.

Have some pics (they're free ya know).

As a bonus I put together a Legion Angelious. This is somewhat of a side project for further down the road. I felt like putting together a model or two and the box was just sitting there all innocent like, just begging me to open it. 

Quick rant. This model has eight pieces. 8! It should not have taken me a goram hour and a half to put it together. Its white metal and that's awesome, but man the flash and the need to pin (big and small) because of its weight was just nuts. Add in all the spiky bits.... and erg, Why? Why did I get two of them? 

Display Case!

My amazing wife and I took the kids to the Ikea today. I have wanted a display case for my models for a very long time. We did the Swedish  meatballs and all that jazz, dropped the two middle kids off in the play area and went a walking through the maze that is the Ikea store.

Low and behold there it was all on sale and glorious. The display case of my hobby dreams. It was all glass and for only $69.99 (plus $9.99 for the lighting). My Wonder Woman of a wife actually said yes when I asked if I could have it.

So after two hours a few choice curse words and lots of Windex, here it is. Bask in it's glory. It's ok if you want to be a bit jealous.

Now I just need to hurry and finish a bunch more models to add to it.

 Now that right there is some motivation to get painting!

My son's first real game!

Well now that we have this gaming table in the basement it was time to play on it. My son is 8, he is awesome and really likes Warmachine. He like Protectorate of Menoth so we got him a 50 point list together. He has played a bunch of caster kill games on our dining room table but never a real game before.

We played scenario and it was fantastic. He lost, but he did really well. I can't wait to play him again.


Here he is deploying his models.

 Hmmm where should I put these guys?

Counting em out to make sure his stuff is all there.

Awe man, is that a Galleon over there? Good Thing he has the Avatar of Menoth.

 Look at that pretty table!

Indulge me in quick diversion or rant if you will. (This is gonna be a long blog post but I think its worth it).

Let's have a conversation about Professional Painting Services. The good, the bad, the downright deceitful.

As an upfront confession. I used to take commissions locally. I stopped as it was killing my joy of painting. I like to paint what I want, when I want, and having deadlines and painting to someone else's vision just was not for me. I will still do models for friends (see the Knight Titan) but I don't charge for it as it's usually something that I want to paint but don't want to buy (I don't play 40k so why have a model or 12 that look interesting paint wise to me).

First let me define what I think a professional commission painter should do.

1. Communication - It is key, they need to be available to you. They need to ask a crazy amount of questions to really drill down on how to make your vision come to life. You need to be able to speak with the person that will actually be working on your models. This should be a priority for the commission painter as well.

2. Pictures - Lot's and lot's of high resolution stuff, taken in a light box. You should be able to see your models. They should be sending you updates along the way. I highly recommend a test model to see if your vision and what the painter thinks is your vision, are aligned.

3. Attitude - You should get the same level of professional enthusiasm from the quote process to the delivery.

4. Timelines - Delays happen in miniature painting, always. You should expect regular updates without having to ask.


Anyway back on topic. You might have seen the shit-storm that is a brewing over Blue Table Painting. They took a $8000+ commision on a Forge World Chaos Dwarf army and basically butchered it. The owner of the army tried to work with them repeatedly and wound up taking his cause to YouTube (please note this video is long, like an hour long but it shows the whole army and all the problems, he also goes over the contract in detail to be completely transparent).

Apparently Blue Table Painting offered untenable solutions and then rescinded them 

Another studio has stepped up to the plate and offered to repaint and fix the models at no charge to the customer and should be praised for being great members of the community. 

Front Line gaming is the company that stepped up and is making the army look like it should. Please go to their website and show your support for them. 

http://www.frontlinegaming.org/

If you feel like reading through 50+ pages of rants, white knights, videos and the like you can find it all here. DakkaDakka Blue Table Painting Issues Thread.

Also if you're that bored or interested you can follow the repaint here. 

Front Line Gaming stepping up to help out.

I would recommend staying away from Blue Table Painting. They have clearly shown time and again that they can not paint to even a table top standard. I would invite you to look at the Blue Table Painting Portfolio. You will notice that the images are very low quality which prohibits zooming in, but also notice that lines are not strait, highlights and washes are over used and blending is quite frankly atrocious. 

Now onto the good. There are a plethora (yea I used a big word) of good professional services out there. They genuinely care about making you happy and providing amazingly well painted miniatures. 

GMM studios is an example of this. They do amazing work fast. They post very high resolution pics and actively engage the community. 

GMM Studios. 

Jolly Rodgers Studios puts out just amazing work. They are out of Poland but man can these dudes paint. 

Jolly Rodgers Studios.

Les Bursly at Awesome Paint Jobs is another fantastic painter. The things he can do with an airbrush are just out of this world. I am not sure if he is taking commissions right now but if he is and you are in the market I would recommend jumping on it. 

http://awesomepaintjob.blogspot.com/

These guys are my favorites. Some of the things Winterdyne has done just blow my mind. Check out the Titan he did for a client. Just the base alone was enough to make him the man, the Titan it's self is just unreal. 

http://blog.winterdyne.co.uk/.

Per Maz he now uses Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/winterdynecommissionmodelling/

The point is that there are some amazing studios out there doing some incredible work. If you are in the market to have someone else paint your models. Please check around. Don't fall for the Blue Table Painting studio line.