More painting done!

First up a shot showing what the masking is like. Fun fun! I’ve gone through a bit of Tamiya tape on this project (need to buy some more 10mm wide type).

And next the one everybody has been waiting for! I unscrewed my “painting handles” and sat it all together on the base to see how it’s coming together:

Probably wasn’t optimal to do the lower legs in brown like that, but there’s no turning back now! Oh and my taping was a bit anaemic so I’ve got a few spots of brown overspray on the desert yellow. I’ll fix them up on the weekend. Overall I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out. Obviously it still has a long way to go, but just having three colours applied really gives a feeling of progress.

Remember how I said I thought I’d damaged my airbrush needle? Well it turns out I didn’t. I think I just needed to strip it right back and give it a really good clean out. I might have had needles and nozzles mixed up too. Last night I carefully matched up the needles and corresponding nozzles and am now running my beloved 0.3mm combo again. 0.3mm really is the perfect size!

Next major step: gloss coat in preparation for oil panel lining and washing.

I guess I’d best start painting up my figures – will probably hit them with the airbrush too! Oh my Forge World tank commander turned up too so now I have to bring myself to chopping off his legs so he can be mounted in the SAW top hatch.

Some small progress this weekend: painting has begun!

First up, last weekend while playing around with the chassis I dropped it, smashing one of the vents that sits behind the top hatch. Although the vents were just Kotobukiya detailing bits, I didn’t have any spare. But I did have the original SAW chassis mould! So I mixed up a little bit of resin and cast just that area, giving me a spare vent:

Easy!

Before I could prime the parts I had to have a method of holding them while the paint is being applied. Since I had some threaded rod left over from the base I decided to use it and some wooden dowel to temporarily screw to the chassis assembly and legs assembly. These screwed into the chassis-pelvis joint areas so the holes would be hidden once assembled. The dowel for the chassis was then screwed to a piece of plywood for a base. The railguns, gattling cannons and sensor turret were all mounted on kebab skewers for painting.

My primer of choice is Tamiya Surface Primer (in the spray can). It’s grey and in my experience gives superior adhesion (at least to styrene, which I admit is irrelevant here). Yes, it’s more expensive than the cheap acrylic rattle cans people buy from Bunnings to prime with, but for good models you’ve spent a lot of money on why risk it? Pro tip: buy the 180ml can; it’s only a couple of dollars more than the 100ml can and gives you 80% more!

Here’s how things looked post priming:

Just like on a scratchbuild, the priming stage shows up all of the little flaws leftover from cleaning up the casts and gap filling. So I’ve done a quick run around with some Tamiya Putty. Those spots will need some quick sanding later, then some touch up with the primer and priming will be complete.

Since this is my first time airbrushing a model I’ve been hassling my mate Jas for a lot of painting advice. He’s an awesome painter and if I can get this to turn out half a nicely as his Elysian Sentinels I’ll be happy!
After a lengthy phone call with him the other night I think I’ve got the process sussed. The next stage will be to airbrush everything black as the first step in pre-shading. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do this one night this week…

That’s all for now!

I’ve only just realised how long it has been since a proper update on the Centurion. While progress has been slower over the last few weeks (mainly due to my hobby time being hijacked by my SAW build up), there has been progress. I guess I just haven’t posted about it because I’m working on the torso and still aren’t 100% sure of the direction it’s going it. It really is just “build and see” (and then rebuild because the first go didn’t work out).

Anyway I made some progress today that I’m proud of and decided to share. Again I’ve run into the headache of photographing tiny styrene parts (as encountered on my BFG scratchbuild diaries) so I apologise in advance for the crappy photos

First up we have the motivation for the update: the main hatch. I’ve put way more work into this than one would expect, but it turning out really nicely. This pic is a collage, so clockwise from top left we have:
1. Hatch mounted to the cockpit top ring (there is a technical name for this; I just can’t remember). Hatch hinge yet to be added.
2. Hatch underside. Note the handwheel and locking bolts.
3. Hatch top side. Lever and other detail yet to be added.
4. Inspiration for the hatch mechanism. This is from a large scale model tank.

Next up we have the two symmetrical vents that will mount either side of the torso front. They need to be sanded down a little so they’re not so deep, but the overall design has turned out really nicely. The baffles inside are technically pointing in the wrong direction, bit I only realised this far into their construction and I wasn’t going to redo fiddly stuff like that again if I don’t need to!

Finally we have a very crude shot showing the torso itself. The central core is hollow (that’s where the cockpit is) but for the time being I have some strategically glued temporary braces holding it all together for the construction process. I have a set of shoulder armour plates made up but they’re far too small and need to be replaced so I didn’t bother showing them. It’s all still very WIP so probably isn’t really worth commenting on….

Hopefully that will tide all of my fans over until the next update! The torso is really going to start coming together soon!

And the dirt is done! I think…

As I said in the last update I had to build up the ground a bit under one of the rear feet so I did that with some foam and plaster/dirt mix. Then following the instructions in Bryan Krueger’s Groundwork PDF I taped up the black areas of the base and did a final coat of dirt, gel medium and pigment over the top of the plaster/dirt mix. This is by far the best technique to use, although it would have worked better if I had some super fine dirt in the mix as well. Overall though the final result looks good and feels pretty solid. Oh and the tape is definitely necessary as this final dirt/acrylic mix tends to get everywhere. I used 10mm Tamiya tape due to its general awesomeness, particularly for this kind of application.

The bottom of the feet and Tau figures were both sprayed with mould release before they were seated into the still wet final sand mix. This would ensure that I could actually remove them again for painting without breaking up all of the ground around them.

After the groundwork had dried for 48 hours I then attacked it with the airbrush and various mixes of sand and brown Vallejo model colour paints thinned with clear Windex. Works a treat! Any random rocks and the cliff face were sprayed with a lot of grey added to the mix to give them some contrast (even if that might be less realistic). Unfortunately I forgot to mask off the cliff face when I was spraying the black on the sides of the base, so the paint has ended up too thick in a few spots near the sides, which is unfortunate.

So here’s how it’s looking now. Next step is to apply the Mininatur grass tufts around the place. I had planned to dust some pigments around too (I’ve got a bunch of Secret Weapon ones), but some experiments with them during airbrushing proved pretty disastrous. The main problem is that I don’t have any that match the tones I’ve airbrushed with properly, so maybe I just have to source an appropriate pigment…

The SAW itself has been receiving attention too. The holes in the hips where the pins were mounted have been filled with putty and sanded smooth. The larger gaps in the hip ball joints were puttied up also. I dare say that the next step will be priming! However that will have to wait until I’ve finished cleaning up the chassis so it can all be primed in one go. The beauty of the method I’ve used to fix the legs to the base is that it’s really quick and easy to remove for painting (I had it removed while painting the base).

Air brushing the base was really good practice for when I’m ready to do the SAW itself. I’ve been using the airbrush for priming and stuff like that, but nothing that required fine control of the colours. I’m pretty confident that I’m now ready to do the big model!

I’ve just got a quick update for tonight to show off the current state of the pilot’s seat. It’s about to be handed over to my mate Wereweevil who will be sculpting the pilot for it while I continue on with the rest of the torso. There’s still heaps of detail to be added (in the way of brass etch bits and pieces) but I’m happy with how it’s progressing!

Enjoy!

Well things are coming together! The legs have been epoxied and pinned to the pelvis. The sides of the base have been painted gloss black. M5 threaded rods have been screwed into the base and the feet drilled and tapped to accept the rods. So finally the walker is connected to the base!

It’s not sitting as tightly against the ground as it should in the following pics – that’s because I need to cut a tiny bit of length off the threaded rods. Also, because I glued and pinned the hip joints before fixing it to the base, I screwed up and one of the rear legs is sitting about 15mm off the ground. So I’m going to have to build up that area with some foam before I do the final basing layer. Oh and one of the mounting rods for the front legs ended up miles off course, so I’ll just stick with three mounting points rather than try drilling and tapping another one.

The dirt, plaster and PVA mix for the groundwork actually seems to have worked really well. If I hadn’t already bought the gel medium I’d try another layer of just that mix to get the ground appropriately even. Hopefully this will happen over the weekend.

Anyway here’s some pics for now. Note that the front cliff is partially covered in masking tape.

I made a lot of progress on the SAW yesterday. The legs are all pinned (which took ages to do!) and are now ready for painting. I’m tossing up whether to glue the legs to the pelvis prior to painting or not. Each “hip” ball joint has two pins inserted from the outside so if I paint first it means I will then need to putty up the holes and patch up the paint in those spots once I do assemble them…

I didn’t get a shot of the final pose (which has the front legs facing forward more) but here’s one of the test poses:

Anyway I also got the foot to base mounting points sorted, which meant that I could finally do the initial sand/gravel layer:

As is the sand coating is a bit ordinary. It’s a mix of sand, small rocks, plaster, PVA glue and water. I tried “patting” down the mixture after application but it still left a far too uneven effect (I know a degree of unevenness is good, but this is a bit false looking). Then I remembered I had this groundwork article saved, which recommends the use of acrylic gel medium. So I’m going to do a second, thinner coat over the top of the current groundwork, which should even things out a bit. I’m thinking I might pick up a tube of this texture gel rather than muck around with the plaster/PVA recipe again. I didn’t tint the first coat although the dirt I’ve used is probably pretty close to the kind of colour I want anyway!

It was two years ago that I completed my Superheavy Assault Walker design. Following this and subsequently casting half a dozen copies for some people I got a bit sick of the project and had lost the urge to have one of my own. A year back (and a year on from completing the original design) though I suddenly felt the urge to have a SAW of my own built up!

I’ve now seen a handful of these built up and painted around the internet, but I don’t feel that any of them have captured the kind pose I had intended for the model. So this is my chance to set the record straight as to how it was supposed to be assembled

Since my moulds were partially worn out and I didn’t have the time or motivation to cast it up myself, I decided to order a kit from Chapterhouse (exercising my designer’s discount and purchasing it at cost). It still worked out pretty expensive by the time I paid for post, but I’m not complaining. I got most of the parts cleaned up and ready to go and then got sidetracked with non-hobby stuff (girlfriend, work, commissions) so it got shelved. Actually the larger reason for shelving the project was because I was struggling with the base that I was going to mount it onto. I did periodic work on the base building it up with foam but was still pretty uninspired with it.

Recently I caught up with my mate Jas and decided to show him the progress I had made and ask for his advice on where to take it. I explained that I wanted to represent the edge of a cliff in an arid Afghan style landscape. He gave me the perfect answer: Woodland Scenics Rock Moulds. So I had a browse and ordered a C1243 Base Rock mould. Postage was stupidly slow for some reason (probably because it was so cheap) but then this week, after a month in transit, it finally arrived. I hit the mould with some release spray and mixed up a 4PU resin (tinted grey) and talc (as a filler so not to waste resin) combination, which was then sloshed around in the mould until it gelled. The idea being to cast the rocks “hollow” (even though they are single sided).

I had built up the base with another layer of foam since the pics above, and these were the perfect height for the large rock mould parts. So I hacked off part of the foam and hot glued the rocks in place. The edges of the base that represent where the base had been “cut from the earth” I wanted to be flat and painted black so I glued in some styrene sheets and used a heat gun to curve them around.

With all this done the last step was to attack the base with expanding foam to fill all of the gaps and level things out. Man the expanding foam really expands! That brings us to the current state as of 11:30 this morning:

Next step will be to trim the foam back and then I can start looking at the ground cover mix. The bush out the back of my work has provided a perfect sand/gravel mixture that I have washed and dried in preparation for the base. The legs and pelvis are all ready to go, so soon I will be ready to drill the holes into the base for the bolts that will screw into the feet to hold it in place.

Don’t expect frequent updates on this one, since this little flurry of activity has happened while waiting for another mate Wereweevil to sculpt me up a pilot blank for my Centurion Mecha project (which he also completed this week).

OK so I have to admit I have a bit of a soft spot for well sculpted female figures. I’m sure if I had a psychologist there would be some kind of connection to something in my upbringing. So when I saw the line of Statuesque Miniatures Sci-fi chicks I felt the uncontrollable urge to buy a few of them. I find myself more and more being an unintentional miniatures collector these days (see my recent review of the Dreamforge Sturmtruppen).

Andrew C. Rae, owner of and sculptor for Statuesque Miniatures has that rare sculpting talent that produces simply stunning miniatures. Sure, it helps that this line is 32mm rather than 28mm (it’s amazing how much difference that 4mm in extra size makes), but to me the proportions are absolutely perfect. I’ve never been a massive fan of the “heroic” scale of GW miniatures (although I do quite like the Forge World figure proportions). Andrew’s proportions on these girls are just perfect and if I were running a miniatures business I would certainly be trying to commission female sculpts from him!

So as I said, I couldn’t help but pick up some of the Statuesque Miniatures figures:

• Bella the Partisan
• Emilia ‘Foxy’ Foxwell
• Tilly Tumbleworth

The prices are very good for boutique figures like these, plus postage was very reasonable. Andrew was very quick to pack and post the figures, and they arrived quite quickly.

As many know (and you might have guessed from the name of the site!) I prefer my figures in resin, simply because it is far superior in reproducing detail in the figure. Also as a material I much prefer working with it. I was disappointed to discover that although these figures were available in resin, the resin versions were a very limited edition (which apparently sold out within hours of their release) so my only choice was metal. Prior to purchase I spoke to Andrew about my preference for resin and he assured me that his metal caster was producing very high quality that I would be happy with. In short he wasn’t wrong!

The following is a shot of the three figures on my cutting mat (10mm grid). The figures were broken into parts very smartly (and no more than needed too) and supplied with a 30mm bevelled lip base.

Well Andrew wasn’t talking crap when he said that his caster was top notch! The casts are very nice! The mould lines were very slight and there was no mould slip to speak of. For the most part the mould lines were well placed (except for the Bella figure which has a mould line up the right side of her face). Here’s a shot showing a line on the Tilly figure (down the side of her torso):

I’ll leave you with some parting close up shots of the assembled bare metal figures. Yeah I know it’s hard to really appreciate them like that but I didn’t want to prime them from a rattle can. Next time I’m priming some scratchbuilt parts with Mr Surfacer from an airbrush I’ll do these figures too

Oh and for some nice painted pics check out the Statuesque gallery.

So to conclude: do yourself a favour and pick up some of these figures: beautiful sculpts, excellent casting and a great price!