It BEGINS!

Yes, I've finally begun work on my tanks tonight.  Went by the local hobby shop and picked up some extra powerful magnets for this project.  Counting that Landraider, I have 4 tanks to work on.  I've got 3 Rhino-type tanks to build, all 3 will be magnetized, too.  I would've started yesterday, but I didn't have any glue anymore.  Picked some up today at Target.  As an aside, apparently the new Transformers Generations (G1 styled) Voyarger class figures are out.  They're Blitzwing and Springer, both triple changers (Blitzwing's jet mode looks like the Alpha/Legioss from Mospeada).  It was kind of funny because there was an adult in the toy aisle very jealously guarding the only two figures left.

Anyway, onto tonight's progress.

Mostly, I was just building the chassis.  The top portion and front armor aren't glued in yet and obviously no tracks have been added.  I'm going to paint those separately.  The turret is from Bitspudlo and the front armor is from Chapterhouse Studios.  I've got some other armor bits I'll be adding to it from the Chapterhouse set.  They'll make it look more like the old Rogue Trader era tanks.

I'll be adding hatches from the leftovers of my other two tanks.  The turret btw is not glued in, either.  I primed it tonight to see how it'd look and how many more air bubbles I'd need to fill in.  Apparently I still have quite a few to go.  This tank is acting as a test run for the other two (I'd bought it cheap on ebay as it was just a barebones kit).  The real test with this kit is the magnetizing.  It takes some work, but isn't difficult.

Here you can see how I did the door hatches.  That square magnet on the door is one of my new powerful magnets.  It is indeed very strong.  While the parts go together pretty much perfectly, the fit is not so perfect when I try it with the sponson mounts.  I'll have to do some adjusting to get those to work.  I may mount several small magnets into the door frame for the sponson.

Here's the rear hatch.  This was actually really easy to do.  I've circled the two magnets I've added.  The one in the hull frame is mounted on a piece of cut sprue.  Simple and effective.

Here's the top of the tank.  I've added a pair of cross beams there for stability and to mount the magnets.  They're my smallest magnets.  I have larger, more powerful ones set in the hatch itself.  The cross beams were also made from cut sprue.

Here's the larger magnets attached to the underside of the roof hatch.  They snap right into place on top of the tank.  Since it's getting late though, I won't be doing any more work on the tank tonight.

Well, tonight wasn't especially productive.  My glue decided to turn into sludge over the weekend, so I can't build anything until I get it replaced.  Painting pretty much didn't happen either.  What I did do though was work on some bits I've received over the weekend.  On Friday I received a resin Twin-las turret for a Space Marine Predator tank.  Today I removed it from it's Simple Green bath and scrubbed it down.  I trimmed it up a bit, cleaned up some mold lines and I started filling in the air bubbles that were on it.  The sculpt is nice but the air bubbles were kind of annoying.  Granted, I was expecting them and they're NOWHERE near as bad as GW's Finecast resin.  Ick.  Although, the resin from this turret has an odd spongy quality to it.  I'm guessing it's from the air bubbles, but I haven't handled any that was as soft as these pieces were.  The parts came from Polish bits maker Bitspudlo, btw.

Speaking of resin conversion bits, today I received two packages in the mail.  One came from Chapterhouse Studios.  This particular conversion set will allow me to make GW's current Rhino tanks look more like the old Rogue Trader era tanks.  I did a quick once over of the parts and while I didn't notice any air bubbles, there's a lot of flash, so there'll be a fair bit of cleanup on those parts.  I'll be using those parts with my Chaos Predators/Rhinos.

The other thing I got in the mail was this.

I got one of Takara's scenic sets from their VOTOMS Actic Gear line.  These were 1/48 scale toys and were actually pretty well designed, the Fatties being some of my favorites.  The Scopedogs are good, but they can be a bit fiddly with all of the little flaps on them.  Once I get some glue, I'll fix those.
Also, potentially of interest to my brother, who is backing Mantic's Deadzone game on Kickstarter right now, I've got a size comparison

It looks like 1/48 scale is just about a perfect match for Truescale 28mm.  Should I play my Scopedogs and Fatties against your Teratons?

Also, yesterday I got around to finishing up my test model for my Mantic Forgefathers.

And a size comparison against a GW Cadian.

The color scheme is based on the generic Imperial Guardsman scheme GW uses on the Cadians.  I'd wanted my Forgefathers to have a more militaristic color scheme to them rather than the Ultramarines-esque blue and gold mantic gave them.  I like how this turned out and I'll be putting it onto my other Forgefathers as well.

Lastly, I received replacement turrets last week for my brother's old, beatup Rogue Trader era Landraider.  I've been very hesitant to work on this thing due to it being A)busted up, B)missing parts, C)having a really crappy glue job, D)requiring a fair bit of work to mod it.  I was able to get around the glue issue in that it's actually barely glued together as I found out last week.  I've got replacement parts now, so the missing bits is no longer a problem.  The biggest hurdle I had was removing the old, cruddy sponsons the thing had.  Naturally, this was the one section my brother actually did a thorough job gluing in.  But, with a bit of effort, tonight I managed to yank 'em out.

I did a bit of checking with the new poison mounts and there's a slight issue.  They're too small to fit into the old troop bay doors and they're a little too big to cover up where the old sponsons were.  See that little box underneath where the old mounts were?  The new sponson mounts basically go from the top of the old mount to about halfway down that box.  So, I can't just glue the new ones on and cover up the gap between the sponson mount and the hull.  I'm probably going to have to actually cut a new hole into the thing.  How I'm going to do that, I have no clue.

Just a quick update

Not much today.  Just a quick, short update.  I completed the first of my Warmachines infantry.  It seems I'll be playing the Protectorate of Menoth, a bunch of religious zealots with a penchant for using fire.  Here is the first of my Knights Exemplar.

Due to the low lighting, it's kind of hard to tell, but the cloth bits are purple.  I really hate painting white.  I wish I'd chosen a better color for them.  Like purple, or black, or red, or green, or hell, even yellow.  I've got 5 more of these guys to paint.

Wed. Night

Not much of an update.  Just this.

Totally doesn't look appetizing, I know.  However, it did taste better than it looked.  I said I was going to make that Indian dinner and I did.  This is a Tikka Masala w/ Potato Curry and a Mango Chutney.  Yes, I made this.  And it was more time and effort than I think it was worth, to be totally honest.  It took a while to make, but didn't really leave me full.  Then again, I did save some for tomorrow's lunch, but it just didn't satisfy me like I was hoping it would.

Anyway, onto tonight's updates.  My brother is now interested in Warmachines/Hordes from Privateer Press.  I've got some stuff I'm working on, but I don't have any pics tonight.  I'll wait until I've got at least one figure done before I post.  I went by the local hobby shop after work to pick up some spare 25mm bases.  As I was heading to the register, I saw they had some of Bandai's Gundam Assault Kingdom toys out.  I was going to wait until my June trip to Japan to get one, but I figured, what the hell.

I picked up the Sinanju.  I believe this figure and the line in general is in scale with last year's full action Gundam AGE trading figure line.  These are a little bit more poseable than those were.  They do however have one huge improvement:  the gun is hard plastic!  No flimsy, droopy rifles!  On the down side though, the Sinanju's backpack thrusters don't splay out as much as they're supposed to, but they are mounted on a ball joint, so they have some movement.

And a size comparison with a Mantic Skeleton.

Now, my brother lent me one of his Sedition Wars Vanguard over the weekend to paint.  Here's what I've come up with.  I think he turned out alright.  Granted, he would've been better if I didn't have to paint him in white, but it was requested that I do him in his official colors.

Speaking of Mantic though, I've had their elves from their fantasy range for a little while.  I started them a few weeks before I moved, but never really got anywhere.  There's a lot of hate for these figures online that I just don't get.  They have really good sculpts with some surprisingly detailed armor for their small size.  And these guys are small.  They're kind of difficult to paint though.  In hindsight, I probably should've chosen a different color scheme.  Maybe a silver or a red instead of brass.  Oh well, too late now.

I know his face isn't painted.  I left it that way on purpose.  I like to think of it as being a mask on his helmet.  This guy is actually supposed to be a commander for the section I'd bought.  I've also got a standard bearer and a dude handling a elven cat that I'd started as well.  I actually really like these figures, I just wish they were easier to paint.

Lastly for tonight, I have a slight update to my work in progress Sternguard prototype.

You can't see it really in this picture, but he does have his backpack on.  For all intents and purposes, he is done.  I just have a little bit of touchup on the figure itself to do and I plan on adding some rubble to his base.  I might pop him off and reposition him too so he's leaning a bit more forward.  At least that way it'll actually look like he's running.

Tuesday night

I have an Indian dish in my cupboard that I meant to make tonight, but I just wasn't hungry enough for it when I got home from work.  I wound up making another of those Velveeta Mac & Cheese things.  Maybe tomorrow I'll be more in the mood for the Indian stuff?  I also redeemed my free gelato later in the evening.  I love how the place makes so many funky oddball flavors.  Last week I'd got a flavor called "Love Story" that was this funky honeydew flavor.  Tonight I got a much weirder flavor though.  I got Kettle Corn.  And... it tasted exactly like kettle corn.  It was pretty good, in fact.

I have a few new pictures to share of my progress on my minis.

I'd picked up the Rifleman set of Eisenkern Stormtroopers from Brookhurst Hobbies a couple weeks back.  I really like these figures.  They have incredibly sharp castings.  The biggest problem I've got with them though is that they all have MG-42 looking machine guns.  Those aren't assault rifles.  That's something the team's heavy support guy should be carrying, not everyone.  So, for my test model I trimmed it down to a more manageable size.  I think it works  a bit better like this.  I wanted these guys to have a nice militaristic look to them, so no bright colors.  Just subtle grays and greens.

These guys just look cool.  I'd love to pick up the accessory set.  It comes with a robotic mule to haul their gear, alternate unhelmetted heads, pouches, spare magazines, grenades, all kinds of extra junk to stick on them, and it also has extra SMGs.  Personally, I think they look better with the SMGs.  I'm glad I've got at leas this one set of 10 figures.  Whenever they get around to expanding the line, there's at least going to be a faction of space Russians (yay!) and some pretty cool looking aliens.  Also mechs. 

I've also nearly finished my Plague Dogs' plasma gunner.

I like how the cooling coils turned out on him.  Just a bit more touchup on him and I need to fully paint his base.

One final item.  In my previous order from Anvil Industries, I was able to snag a couple of their Black-Ops figures.  I'd wanted to get them since he first showed them off.  I figured that since it'll probably be a while before I can get a full set, I could at least experiment a bit with a couple of them.  Also, this will give me a chance to work on my camouflage painting skills.

He's still very much a work in progress.  I mean, the wash is still wet on his torso.  I'm thinking I'll use these guys as Sternguard Veterans for my Relictors.  The Sternguard are basically the elites of teh chapter who get to use all of the really fancy, cool gear.  To represent their elite status, mine will wear camouflage.  I've left a spot on the upper left shoulder in black.  That's where I'll put the chapter insignia.

Well,  I got my wireless router up and running.  Actually, it was very easy.  Thank God I didn't have any issues with that.  So, now I have access to Netflix again and regular TV has once more been rendered useless.  Huzzah!  Unfortunately, that also means I didn't do much in the way of working on miniatures.  I did watch Paranorman however.  I'd wanted to see it when it was in theaters, but for some reason never did.  It was actually pretty enjoyable.  Plus, one cannot go wrong with stop motion.

Also, probably of interest to just about nobody, the new Japanese hobby magazines came out.  Dengeki Hobby and Hobby Japan reported that Bandai is making a HGUC Gerbera Tetra finally!  Also, apparently the upcoming Real Grade GP-01 and GP-01fb will be coming with in-scale Core Fighters/boosters.  Oh, and there's a new HG Astray Red Frame model with the extra equipment it used in the Red Frame one-shot anime.  Oh, and HGUC Messala (Yay!), Master Grade Geara Doga, and the MS carrier that was used in Char's Counterattack.  Also, Max Factory is doing something with Dougram.  I'm not sure if it's models or toys, but probably toys knowing their track record.

Also, Bandai announced another Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru toy.
http://blog.yahoo.com/cybergundam/articles/1216082/index

Thursday update

I couldn't figure out what I wanted to have tonight for dinner.  I decided on a whim to try out a local restaurant.  A place called Sergio's Mexican Food.  It actually wasn't too bad.  It's right next to A Bowl of Heaven, which I've been wanting to try.  Anyway, Sergio's, I'd say it's about average.  Not the best Mexican Food I've had, but it certainly wasn't bad.  I think it might be something that could be worked into the Friday night dinner rotation. 
I also went by A Bowl of Heaven.  They've got a peanut butter item on the menu that sounded good.  So, I got one.

It was interesting.  It wasn't yogurt or ice cream.  It was sort of like a fruit smoothie.  It's hard to describe, but it was alright.  Not quite the strong peanut butter flavor I was after, but damn did they give a lot.  I could've made a whole meal out of this thing.

Now, since I didn't have any hobby updates yesterday, I have quite a few tonight.  Or at least a bunch of pics anyway.

One of the figures I got from Anvil Industries that I was looking forward to painting was the Paranormal Investigator they have in their Miniatures of the North line.  For some reason he isn't listed with the others though and you have to search to find him.  Anyway, I primed him yesterday and actually painted him up today.  The base he's on is also one of Anvil's

Better watch out when you're out there investigating the paranormal. 

And yes, the zombies.  You might notice there's a couple more of them now.  I've added two more zombie Guardsmen who I like to call Cleaver and Shiv.

Click the pic to expand.  I updated Shiv a bit by adding a fair bit of blood to him.

I also did a bit more work on my Chaos Marines' plasma gunner.  I'm still practicing that Object Source Lighting.

I'm thinking I might add some eyes to the fleshy part of the gun.  Obviously the guy is still work in progress since he doesn't have his backpack.  The rubble on his base needs to be painted up too.

Now, tonight I've completed what is, so far, my biggest project.  My Plaguelord is complete!

 I'm loving how his base turned out.

 The grenades on his hip are proxies for Typhus' Blight Grenades.  I tried doing some more OSL on them.  I think it turned out alright.  Not as nice looking as it is on his eyes though.

 Detail of the face embedded in his scythe's blade.  You can also see some of the texture that was added to the blade itself.  It was a major paint getting that crackle medium to work properly.

Of course I have to have an action shot of him leading his undead minions.

Not much tonight

No pictures tonight.  Sorry.  I just don't have anything done yet.  I started working on my Anvil guys.  Got 'em primed and I started basecoating one of them.  My Plaguelord is almost done.  Got two more zombies almost done.  And two of my Plague Dogs Chaos Marines are almost done.

Today at work we had our monthly staff meeting and our MUCK awards, which is supposed to be a goofy awards ceremony where awards are given out for stupid things, like repeatedly losing keys or things like that.  I don't really care for the MUCK awards.  I honestly think they're kind of dumb and a little mean spirited.  It's all done in a joking manner, but eh.  Yeah, not cool.  Nobody from my department attended.  None of them like the MUCK awards either.  I actually did go though.  The only reason was because I wanted to see if they would recognize the work our department did in moving furniture out of one of the cottages last week.  Low and behold, they actually did.  They gave me and the coworker who did it with me the agency's TEAM award.  It isn't really anything special, but I'm just glad they actually acknowledged the fact that we pretty much moved that damn cottage out by ourselves and spent the entire day doing it.  Also, I got a $10 gift card to Chilis with the award, so not all bad.  I pretty much ducked out of the meeting afterwards since they were starting the MUCK awards.

After that, we had the Lunch With Coworkers thing today as well.  I forgot about it and brought a lunch, but I'll just have that tomorrow.  This month we did it at a butcher shop, if you can believe that.  Apparently the place serves meals regularly.  They had a special menu for us with discounted prices, but we could only really choose from three things: a pulled pork sandwich, a tri-tip sandwich, and a hot dog.  I kind of wish they'd let us pick from the main menu, but the agency chose the menu for the lunch.  I got the hot dog with a side of feta cheese and Greek olives.  That side was damn good.  The hot dog was good too.  I have not had a hot dog with a natural casing before.  I'm not sure if I care for it or not.  It was certainly different at any rate.  Had a bit of a snap to it.  The flavor was good though.  The meat was a beef/pork combo.  I might go back some time.

Also started playing Spec Ops:  The Line.  I've heard the game is really good and that it is heavily based on Heart of Darkness of all things.  I can see it.  I'm about about the midway point I'd say where the game starts going for a tonal shift.  I just got to the infamous "White Phosphorus" scene.  I've avoided spoilers about the game, but being familiar with Heart of Darkness and having seen Apocalypse Now, I could pretty well guess what was going to happen.  Though, the scene was very graphic and probably pretty shocking for though who aren't familiar with Heart of Darkness and its adaptations.  The gameplay has actually been pretty good though, being a military 3rd person shooter with some squad tactics thrown in.  The story has also been good, but then again, the source material was pretty good to begin with.

another Z for the horde

Today is my niece's birthday.  She's turning 4.  Went over to my brother's house tonight after work to celebrate her birthday.  I had a nice surprise for myself though.  My order from Anvil Industry arrived.  I'll have plenty of new stuff to work on now.  I'm thinking I'll be taking  a bit of a hiatus on buying for a little while since Mantic's Deadzone Kickstarter will be going live this month.  Also, I picked up some new games, so.... I'll be playing those most likely rather than painting as well.

However, I do have an update.  A small one, but an update none the less.  I have a new zombie completed.  This one is almost entirely the regular Mantic Ghoul with just the forearm off of a Corporate Marine.  This is the guy I sculpted the pant leg onto.  He'll be the first of the convict zombies.

Monday night

Well, I know at least one person who would be disappointed if he didn't have an update to read in the morning.  So, I've got some works in progress and a completed model or two to show off tonight.

First, my Dad's Ultramarine.  Let me just say that GW's decal suck.  Like, a lot.  They don't even go on their own products smoothly.  I think I'd have been better off free handing these insignias.

But yeah, he's all done.

Speaking of done, I don't think I ever posed pictures of the completed Aspiring Champion I've got.

 There's still that problem of him just being too detailed, but I think he turned out good and the picture just makes him look like a jumble of colors and blobby bits.  He really does look quite decent in person.
I especially like how his demon possessed axe turned out.

You can also see my free-handed chapter insignia for the Plague Dogs there.

I've decided to split my Chaos Marines and my Plague Marines now.  So the Plague Marines will either be sporting the haz-mat gear or they'll be sporting mutations while the regular guys will use the basic Chaos Space Marine armor.  Here's one that's nearly done that I'm working on.

I'm kind of wishing I'd rethought that shoulder pad on his left arm.  Oh well.  Here's another one, this time the squad's special weapon guy.

I really don't like the horned helmets in the set, but this one is the exception.  I don't know why. 

Sunday I went by Brookhurst Hobbies and picked up some figures so I could flesh out the zombie portion of my army.  Unfortunately, I only came across a Mantic zombie box after I'd already bought some of Mantic's ghouls.  Yes, there is a difference.  So, for now I'm stuck with converting a 10 man set of Mantic's Corporation Marines and a 10 man box of ghouls.  Here's some of the preliminary results.

The ghouls, unlike the zombies have a lot of squatting, running legs.  The zombies have upright and walking legs.  Those would've made these much better looking.  So far, I've actually completed two conversions.

These two were completed tonight.  At first I wasn't liking how they were turning out, but once I put the washes onto them, that really made all the difference.  I'm really liking them now.  I've made one further conversion tonight.

I had to resculpt his left arm and I sculpted some pants onto his left leg.

The addition of sculpted clothing is really what's going to help me add some real variety to these guys that use mostly ghoul bits, like the one above.  I'm thinking to help keep variety, I'm going to sneak a few former convicts into the group.  Though, that'll just be the ones like this guy who don't really have any of their armor on them.  For the most part, this batch of zombies is going to be zombified Imperial Guard.

Plaguelord nearing completion

I'm almost done with him!  Just a little bit more to go and he'll be finished.

Even unfinished I think he's looking pretty damn cool.  I love how the Object Source Lighting turned out.  I didn't photoshop the glowing bits.  They naturally look like that.

Here's a picture of him in better lighting.

You can see the detailing I put into his scythe better here.  I used the Vallejo Crackle Medium to get that lovely pitted effect.  The downside to using it though is that while it took to one side of the scythe, the other (the one visible in the pics) didn't take very well and kept flaking off.  I managed to get it to stick though after sticking some blackwash over it before it all came off.  The other thing you can see better in this picture is the stuff I've added to his base.  I've used cut up bits of sprue for rocks and put Liquid Greenstuff over them to give them a more natural look.  I think I'll spray the whole base down with some brown spraypaint before I go over the rocks.  Those long bits of sprue sticking out will be painted as bits of rusted metal.  The idea is that I wanted it to be like he's standing on rubble as he leads his troops.

Speaking of leading his troops...

I needed a group shot of them together.  If my Ebay and Anvil Industries orders ever show up, I'll be able to expand my army further.

I also got another cultist painted up last night.

He didn't turn out quite like I'd wanted.  I wanted him to look like a Blood Pact soldier, but it didn't work out too well.  Instead, it looks more like he's wearing a Buckingham Palace guard's tattered uniform.  This guy was actually a bit of a pain to paint.  I think that may have been due more to my choice of colors for his uniform though.  If I get another of these guys, I'll have to try a totally different scheme.

Monday evening

I was feeling a bit lazy this evening after work and didn't feel like fixing anything for dinner.  Instead, I went by Fruizen to try out their ramen.  I know, I know, why would I get ramen at a dessert place.  Actually, it was not bad.  I ordered the spicy sesame with roast beef, but I think they gave me kind of a mish-mash.  It had the roast beef, but the other stuff, which included mushrooms and a hard boiled egg were from different ramen types and the broth tasted like soy, not sesame.  Regardless, I actually enjoyed it.

Now, onto the hobby parts.  Okay, my dad has been bugging me about taking the masking tape off of my Storm Talon.  I did tonight.  I'm... not really happy with the results.  Here's the left side.

 The left side looks alright.  Not great, but I guess passable.  My problem really is with its right side.

From a distance, I suppose it looks alright.  But when you actually look up close at it, you can see that a lot of the white layer bled through.  Not only that, but the white paint I used just plain sucked.  It left a sort of orange peel like texture on the right side of it.  That paint always did that to me regardless of how well I shook the can before spraying or how far away I stood.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this.  I may be in need of a bucket of Simple Green.  I hope it can strip this paint.  If I start over, I'll just do it straight in a dark gray and leave it at that.

In other news, I tried an experiment today.  I've been looking around at different techniques for doing weathering.  One that I've been intrigued by is the salt method.  Basically, after you base coat, you take a wet brush and run it along the edges and generally where you'd like to have the paint peeling.  Alternatively, you can spray it with hairspray.  After that, you sprinkle salt onto the model.  It sounds really stupid, I know, but it actually works.  After the water or whatever medium you use dries, spray it down either with spray paint or an airbrush.  Once that's dry, you just rub or scrape off the salt.  Here's the results I got.

This is the Zvezda 1/100 scale KV-2 I got from Pegasus.  This was just meant to be a test model for when I work on my Chaos Marines' Predator tank, but I think I might actually go ahead and finish painting this thing.  I like how the weathering came out.  The salt works surprisingly well I have to say.  Before I get to the Predator itself though, I might try another technique using a Liquid Mask.  I know Vallejo makes one.  The results should be about the same, but I'll have more control and I'll be able to cover larger areas.

I worked on a few miniatures also.  These guys are from yesterday.

 I got another of my cultists that I'd received for Christmas finished.  It's taken me way too long to get to these guys, but I am getting to them.

I've got another of my Iron Warriors almost finished as well.  All I really need to do here with this guy is paint his chainsword, add the hazard stripes to his pistol, add some rocks to his base, and paint it up!

Here is one of today's samples.

My father has been bugging me to do an Ultramarine for him.  I don't like these guys.  They're total Mary Sues and they get way to much focus over the other Space Marine chapters.  At least he was easy to paint.  Just need to do his weapon, his backpack, and his base.

The final bit for tonight is an update on my Typhus proxy.

As I post this, he's actually even further along.  I've chosen to make my Chaos Marines' officers in gold so they stand out more, but still match the general yellow color of the chapter.  Just a bit more work and he'll be finished!