Making Feathers Tutorial

UPDATE: For a nice and quick tutorial on making cloaks, check out Col. Corbane's Veteran squad cloaks here.

Earlier this year I posted a pic of a couple of Ravenguard character conversions I did as a commission. Quite a few of you were interested in how I did the feathered cloaks. I finally got a chance to throw some putty on a sheet of plasticard and push it around for you. What follows is how I made the feathers for the cloaks on the models above.

Step One: Roll out a thin "sausage" of greenstuff. Lay it down on a flat surface. Ceramic tiles are quite good for this purpose.

Step Two: Use the burnishing (circular, flat-ish) end of your sculpting tool to flatten out your "sausage". You don't want this to be too thick or too thin. Practice will tell you which thickness works best for you. Use plenty of water on your tool.

Step Three: Carefully score a thin line down the center of your flattened greenstuff. Make sure you do not cut all the way through, and that your hobby knife is lubricated (I use my painting water to dip my knife in before scoring). Then start scoring in the "feather vanes" with your wet knife. Keep these small and tight together, and do not cut all the way through.

Step Four: Once you've scored the length of your flattened greenstuff, put it aside to dry completely.

Step Five: When the greenstuff has completely cured you cut start to "cut out" your feathers with your hobby knife. From a strip like the one shown in the pictures above you can cut about four or five. Once you've cut out all of your feathers you can start to glue them to your cloak. Glue them on in layers, starting with the bottom row first and adding feathers so that there's an overlap, the bottom of each row covering the top of the one before.

I hope you find this helpful : )

Cheers

Dave

Glass Porthole Tutorial

A few weeks back I posted a picture of the resin doors for the Incursion game (doors from Fenris Games, Incursion from Grindhouse Games). There was a good response, and a few folks even asked for a tutorial on how I painted the glass in the "portholes"

Well, I managed to paint up a few circles over the weekend, and here is that tutorial.

Basic glass. These were painted in much the same fashion as you'd paint gems.

Step One: Paint the glass with Regal Blue

Step Two: Highlight the lower left two thirds of the glass with a 75/25 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White.

Step Three: Highlight the lower half of the glass with a 50/50 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White.

Step Four: Paint a thin line at the lower left edge with a 25/75 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White, add two dots in the upper right, one slightly larger than the other.

Step Five: Paint with Gloss Varnish.

Cracked glass. These were painted in much the same fashion as the basic glass above.

Step One: Paint the glass with Regal Blue

Step Two: Highlight the lower left two thirds of the glass with a 75/25 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White.

Step Three: paint thin lines of Chaos Black over the glass.

Step Four: Highlight the lower half of each broken section of the glass with a 50/50 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White.

Step Five: Paint a thin line at the lower left edge of each broken section of the glass with a 25/75 mix of Regal Blue/Skull White, add one dot in the upper right of each section.

Step Six: Paint with Gloss Varnish.

So there you go. I've combined Steps One and Two for the first circle in each progression.

I hope it helps.

Cheers

Dave

Battleroad Games & Hobbies Grand Opening Sale!

So a friend of mine has recently been in a flurry of activity up in Massachusetts, getting his new business off the ground. Yesterday I received a "press release" from Alex about his nefarious commercial activities this coming weekend (Thanksgiving weekend) and I thought I'd let you all know about what he has going on. From Alex's email:

"That's right, to celebrate our website's launch and to ring in the holidays, we are hosting a sale for the weekend! From Black Friday (26 Nov) through Cyber Monday (29 Nov) we will be selling all of our products at 20% off MSRP and, to top that, we are still offering free shipping on all orders $50.00 and more.

This offer is only through the phones though so give us a call at (508) 251-0397. Also check out our website as we near completion on it. Soon you, the buyer, will be able to purchase from us via the web! Head to battleroadgames.com

If we don't have it in stock we will still honor your order and price, so now is the time to buy!

The hours for the sale are :
Friday-Monday 9am-10pm EST

-Alex"

So, if you're in the US and thinking of picking up some toy soldiers from a great guy this weekend, you can give Alex a call.

Cheers

Dave

More Artillery Train goodness!

Before I get into the meat of this post, I just need to say thank you to Nicolai from Denmark who bought the Space Hulk boxed set, and Jim Bailey from Grindhouse Games for buying up my Incursion set of models. It is very exciting to deal with people who are not only incredibly passionate about what they do, but are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Jim, and his brother John, are just those guys. The way they approach everything exudes quality. Thanks guys!

And on to the post. I'll say up front that there are more pictures over on our 8th Edition Challenge blog, as well as a bunch more explanation. It's getting late, so this one will be a little light on text. For more depth, head on over and check out the new blog, there's even a post from Jim Bailey about the Wood Elf army he's building!

Here are two of the wizards I painted up this week. Only five more wizards to go ; )

Ultimately inspired by the Grundel's Defenders artwork by Dave Gallagher, this army will include quite a few diorama-style bases. Here's one for my Greatswords unit, The Red Bears of Mecklenburg.

The artillery bases are nice and big (100x100mm) so that I can make them all little dioramas. In this one, a member of the court of Nuln is taking an interest in the latest acquisition, a Helstorm Rocket Battery.

And finally, here's something I'll be photographing as I make progress on this army. It is a board containing all the Dragon Forge Temple bases I'm using for this army, all laid out just waiting for the models to populate them. It should be interesting to see the army grow.

Cheers

Dave

Only Seven Hours To Go!

Just over seven hours left on my auction for a complete Incursion "starter set".

Head here to check out the auction!

Head here to get a close up of all the goodies!

Same goes for this Space Hulk set, completely new, still in the shrink-wrap!

Head to the auction page here!

Bid high my friends, bid high ; )

Cheers

Dave

The "hobby mojo" is well and truly back!

So, after being in a bit of a funk, I'm now well and truly back on my hobby track and chugging along with quite a few projects. Very happy with that indeed!

You may remember I ran a little poll recently regarding the scheme to choose for my Light Panzer Company for Flames of War. Lots of you voted (or a few of you voted lots of times) and the result was very close (less than 7% difference). The overwhelming bulk of the comments were, however, guiding me towards the simple grey color scheme. So, that's what I went for.

In the evenings of last weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun) I was able to get in a total of 12 hours painting which, surprisingly enough, was all I needed to complete over 1,500 points of FOW goodness.

You can see the results below.

I split it all into simple batches to get things rolling, and that worked out incredibly well. Following a "recipe" from my buddy Mike, and it goes a little something like this.

• Prime all models with the Flames of War German Armor War Paint spray (the dark grey one of course).

• Drybrush with GW's Adeptus Battlegrey

• Drybrush with Vallejo's London Grey

• Wash panels with a 20/40/40 mix of Vallejo's Charred Brown, water, and GW's Devlan Mud. The focus for this should be the crevices and angle where the armor plates meet.

• Paint the tracks and exhaust covers with Vallejo's Red Leather

• Wash the tracks and exhaust covers with Badab Black

• Pick out any details (like shovel handles etc)

• Paint on the German insignia and squad markings

• Lightly drybrush with GW's Khemri Brown, paying particular attention to the tracks

Quite simple really. And very quick to do in batches.

I painted all the vehicles based on the Panzer I body (8 tanks) on Friday night, just to make sure I was comfortable with the plan. All three of the Panzerbefehlswagens (left) have a crew member poking his head out, denoting that vehicle as a command tank. The Panzer Is (right) do not. One word of advice with the Panzer Is, be careful with the little machine guns on the turret. If you knock them too often they might break off.

Saturday night I painted the 11 Panzer IIs (right) using the same methods as on the first batch. I was able to get more done as I was familiar with the process and there were no crew to paint.

Then I finished it all off with the Panzer IIIs and Bunkerflaks on Sunday night (while watching the Cowboys fall apart again - warmed my heart). The Panzer IIIs (in the left of the pic with the Panzer II) were quite nice to paint as the "muddy brown" wash over the larger plates looked great. Very smooth and subtle. Same goes for the Bunkerflak. I also had to paint up some 88 artillery crew and I followed the suggestions for the colors found on the Flames of War site.

So, there you have it. My army is now ready to invade Poland (or France) and should be seeing the tabletop before the end of the year. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Cheers

Dave

What's that over there?

It's the 8th Edition Army Challenge blog! And it has a brand new post from me with not only a slightly revised list, but some pics of a whole host of wizards, plus a couple of this guy...

...and a bit of descriptive text about these guys.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over, check out the blog, and encourage the other guys to get some photos of their models up online!

Cheers

Dave

PS. Don't forget tp check out the auctions I have going at the moment. For details, check here.

Two new auctions up on eBay!

So, the two new auctions I've mentioned earlier are up on eBay.

The first is for a complete "starter" set of INCURSION. I've been blogging all week about this set, and how great the models are.

You can start bidding on this auction here.

The second auction is for a brand new, unopened, still-sealed copy of SPACE HULK. This was donated to the cause by the winner of the auction for my Legio Custodes army. Alec is truly a very generous guy!

This auction can be found here.

UPDATE - Nov 8, 2010: Outrider Hobbies have donated a set of their Space Ship Bug Hunt foam trays to add to the Space Hulk auction. Great stuff!

For those who don't know why I'm auctioning off this stuff, you can read more about it here and here.

I've also had a few folks ask about what Battlefront is doing for all of this. Well, we're currently working on a nice big Flames of War project that will certainly help out. It's a project that'll take a bit of time, but will be well worth the wait.

Take care everyone, and have fun!

Cheers

Dave

Almost there!

So, tomorrow (Sunday Nov 7) I'll put up the whole Incursion set I've been pimping all week. To check all of my Incursion posts, click here.

So, as I draw to a close with all this Weird War 2 fun, Here are a few shots of it all in action and the resin accessories made by Fenris Games. Above you can see the board set up with the resin doors, entry points, and the generator control panels. Below you can see the set of resin objectives. Across the back row are the five generator control panels, and in the front row are (left to right) the escape hatch, Zombie pinger, Doomsday Device, and cave-in markers. All of these pieces are very nicely cast and painted up quite easily.

Below are the ten doors that are part of this auction. These cool resin pieces were not only easy to paint, but a lot of fun. The colors I use for the paint on the doors were the same as for the armor plates on Hans the Hunter: a basecoat of Vallejo's German Camo Dark Green, highlighted with Vallejo's German Fieldgrey. I loved the little "portholes" in the doors, so decided to paint them up like thick glass. A few of the surfaces were not as smooth as the others, so I used this opportunity to paint some cracked panes. I hope you like them.

And finally, the entry markers. As Incursion missions use the same board (or two, as the board is double-sided) for each mission, just swapping around the doors and objectives, it relies on varying numbers of entry points for the Germans and the Allies. Fenris Games have done a fantastic job of turning the counters you get in the boxed game into 3D resin. I really enjoyed painting these up! I think you can tell.

So, with all the resin bitz above added to the APEs, the Nazis, the zombies, the bases, and the boxed game itself, the retail value of it all unpainted is around $240. Painted it could only be more right ; )

Tell your friends, club together, and get your hands on this excellent game. I'll post the auction details once I have them all sorted.

Cheers

Dave

The Lucky 7th!

So, after seeing the horrific creations of the vile Nazi, Doctor Hugo von X, it is now time to see the roughnecks that get to sweep the corridors of the The Rock with cleansing fire. Let's take a look at the men of 1st Platoon Company B, 17th APE Regiment.

Above you can see the six models that come in the Allied Starter set for Incursion. In their Armored Personal Exoskeleton (APE) suits, these warriors are anything but monkeys. I'll describe how I painted them up below, but I must point out that I've based them all (like the Nazis) on Tech Deck bases from Dragon Forge Design.

From Left to Right: The APE HMG - toting a water-cooled, belt-fed .50 cal heavy machine gun, an APE Grunt - armed with a .30 cal machine gun and a pair of power shears, and the APE Sergeant - who favors a fire axe for close combat and a .30 cal with underslung grenade launcher for range.

From Left to Right: Another APE Grunt - this time with a powered fist for crushing skulls and doors, Captain "Slugger" Murphy - with his trusted .50 cal revolver (Bambi) and baseball bat (Thumper), and the APE Blazer - with powered fist and flamethrower.

Above and below you can get a closer look at the Captain and the HMG APE. I really liked the scheme on the Incursion site, but I decided to go for a slightly darker look on the armor, something a bit closer to US WW2 tank armor.

These APEs were based with Vallejo's Olive Drab, and highlighted with Brown Violet. For the deep recesses and dark parts of the armor chips I used Vallejo Charred Brown, and I highlighed the edges of the armor plates (and chips) by mixing in some Vallejo Green Grey to the Brown Violet. The armor plates were then given a light wash of Devlan Mud (particularly on the lower parts of the plate) to add "a bit of grime".

For the boots and straps I base coated them with Charred Brown, and then built up the highlights by adding Vallejo Red Leather. The pouches around the models were basecoated with Red Leather, then highlighted by adding GW's Bubonic Brown. Both the boots and the pouches were given a thinned wash of Ogryn Flesh.

The tanks on the backs of the models (presumably fuel tanks for the Exo-suits) were basecoated like the pouches, but built up by adding Vallejo German Camo Orange Ochre, followed by a thinned was of Devlan Mud.

Perhaps the toughest part of painting these "lucky" warriors was putting their divisional symbol on the front right shoulder of their suits. A little bit of patience and building up in layers was the key.

If you thought that was it for the Incursion set posts, you were wrong. Next up is a look at the various resin accessories that have been made by Fenris Games, and are included in the final auction.

Cheers

Dave

Evil Nazi Creations (and poll result, sort of)

Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll. I thought there might be a bit more of a spread in the results, but even at the end things were pretty close. The two-tone scheme garnered a mere 7% more than the simple grey scheme, suggesting it should be the winner. However, all of the commenters went for the simple grey scheme, providing some very insightful reasons for choosing that one. So, I'm going for the grey scheme. More on that later.

Above and below you can see the front and back of Doctor Hugo von X's twin daughters, Ilsa on the left and Gretel on the right. These two characters are inhumanly fast and strong and essentially run what is left of the research facility beneath the Rock of Gibraltar. These are some of the most finely sculpted and cast 28mm metal figures I've every had the pleasure to paint. They seem so incredibly petite, but they stack up really well against the Zombies from my last post.

Below is the Blitzhund, a lightly armored, incredibly swift killing machine. The Blitzhund is capable of sniffing out the enemy in the dank and crumbling corridors below the Rock.

I had a lot of fun painting the Blitzhund. For his whitish pelt I started with Khemri Brown, and highlighted it by adding more and more white to the highlight mix. The armor plates were basecoated with the Vallejo paint German Camouflage Dark Green, and highlighted with German Fieldgrey.

Although the Blitzhund on the Incursion site features camo pants similar to a Fallschirmjager pattern (UPDATE: actually an SS camo scheme - thanks Alex), I decided to go with a simple grey. I'm also really happy with the "warning label" on the barrel of toxic agent (see the first Blitzhund picture), which I freehanded based on the "studio model".

And the final beast on the side of the evil Nazis is the brute to end all brutes. Son of Doctor Hugo von X, Hans the Hunter did not escape his father's crazed predations. After a battery of experiments, he is left the twisted hulk you see below.

For the flesh I started with a basecoat of a Shadow Grey/Liche Purple mix. I then highlighted up by adding Dwarf Flesh, then small amounts of white. The armor plates and barrels are painted in the same fashion as for the Blitzhund, basecoat of Vallejo's German Camo Dark Green highlighted with German Fieldgrey.

Perhaps my favorite part of the paintjob on this model is the rust/weathering. I thinned down some Vallejo Red Leather and applied multiple thin washes in strategic areas over the plates.

So, I hope you enjoyed seeing these guys. Next up, the American 7th Armored.

Don't forget, all of these models and more will be going up on an auction this Sunday to benefit my buddies, John and Justin.