Terrain Tutorial #1 - Introduction and Materials

One of the many projects that I currently have on the go is a collection of Imperial Sector terrain. In a previous post, I have put some pictures up of the buildings themselves, which are essentially assembled, short of perhaps a few bits to add here and there.

However, now I am tasked with finishing them, which includes putting them on a sturdy base, adding debris and battle damage, and then ultimately paint them all up. This series of tutorials will hopefully document my progress in a way that can be useful for others.

Grey Knights 5-man Strike Squad COMPLETE!

Well, after another long hiatus from here I am back with some completed work (FINALLY!)

I present to you, a trio of semi-poor quality pics of my first 5-man strike squad. This is a big accomplishment for me, considering I have never completed painting a full "box" of anything prior to this.

Even so, they are still not technically complete as I have to varnish them for safety, plus put some static grass on the bases and decide what I want to write on their shoulder plates and banner icons.

I would feel an even bigger sense of accomplishment if I didn't go out and buy another box of 5 a few weeks back, meaning I am still left with the same amount of models left to finish painting.

Without further ado, the pics (More pics after the jump):

Painting Tutorial #1: Introduction & Materials

After a pretty long break from painting, I got back into it recently and started the long task of getting my force painted up. Until now, I had only primed a few models, and had been honing my painting skills by painting the interior of my Rhino/Razorback. Looking back, I DID paint a test figure earlier this year using an old metal GKSS figure, but I found it was a bit too bright for my liking and put off painting the rest until now.

In any case, I have decided to put together some tutorials to help others in their path to improve their painting skills.

Hills Terrain WIP #1

In addition to the Imperial Sector, I used some white styrofoam to carve out a few hills for terrain. I like some designs more than others, but they will all make do for now. They are based on plasticard, and covered with a slightly grainy wood filler. I still need to add some more rocks and rubble to add a bit of texture before priming and painting.

 

More hills after the break.

Imperial Sector WIP #1

As promised, here are some WIP shots of my buildings. I spent a lot of time searching other people's creations to get inspiration - there are lots of amazing projects out there!

My goal was to create a good variety of pieces, and have some that can be used in a modular fashion to add variety to the tabletop. The shots below showcase the basic skeleton of each building - I plan on adding lots of debris and rubble, as well as some bits such as discarded weapons, etc.

Eventually I will mount each piece on hardboard for stability and to delineate area terrain if it is used as such.

Sanctum Imperialis:

This building set came with 3 Sprues which I used to make 2 buildings. The main building closely mimics the "standard" template for the Sanctum, with a few minor changes. I wanted to give this building a more substantial second floor, as well as putting few windows on the main floor to block line of sight.

The smaller building was created painstakingly with some greenstuff to create the 45-degree angles. It reminded me how piss-poor I am at using greenstuff, and the interior joints will have to be covered with some girder bitz provided by the kits. That said, I do like how it turned out, and the fact that its entrance is on an angle to the rest of the buildings will hopefully add some character to my city.

The Productive Hiatus

It's been quite a while since I've written anything, but that is not to say I have been neglecting the hobby - quite the opposite, in fact.

In the last 3 or so months, I have purchased and assembled a Dark Vengeance box (I needed templates and wanted a portable rulebook, plus the models are quite nice as well so I figured it was a great value).

Also, I was lucky enough to find an Imperial Sector box online (with 20% off of GW price, no less) and so I am now the proud owner of some ruined city terrain! (WIP pics in another post)

Current Work #3 (Rhino)

After a productive day of painting I can comfortably say that the interior of my Rhino is done!

Of course, after I say this, I can UN-comfortably clarify that it is done to the point where I can glue it together so as to start the exterior. I still have the 2 top hatches to finish up, which is not more than a bit of shading and highlighting the boltgun metal. Also, I will likely add a few decorations from my blitz kit to make the interior a bit more Grey Knights-y. (More pics after the jump)

AR Coliseum Project - Preliminary Sketches #1

Not much to say here... just some sketches I hastily put together using the Paper app on my iPad. Enjoy!

AR Coliseum Project - A study in shape and scale

With any successful project there is a lot of boring pre-planning prior to any physical work being done. This post hopes to accomplish just that - set some basic parameters on which the work will be based.

Through Red Republic Games' comments, they stated that any arena size would do for games of Arena rex, but offered a 30" diameter circle as a good starting point. This seems like a reasonable size for a skirmish type game, and I originally started my planning based on this. However, the Antiquity nerd in me quickly realized that the actual Coliseum isn't circular, but elliptical instead.

The Coliseum: in all it's HDR Glory!

Current Work #2

Base painting can get pretty repetitive after a while, so I decided to take a break from that and get working on my actual Grey Knight army. I had my Strike Squad, Dreadknight and Rhino interior primed and so I decided to do a test run on my old metal Grey Knight Marines that I purchased prior to my last hiatus. I managed to finish one (except for the Nemesis Force Weapon) and, although I am pretty happy with the result, there is a lot of improvement that can be done on future models. I also decided on a darker metallic for the armour going forward, as I found the Mithril Silver a bit too shiny for my liking (Pics after the break).

Current Work #1 (All Your Base Are Belong to Us)

This post should hopefully bring us up to where I am at present in the hobby.

Having finally picked up my Grey Knights (an army list and more info can be found on this page), I go to work assembling the models. I read a lot of stuff on how to assemble, how to paint, how to base, and still find the breadth of the hobby world quite overwhelming. I wanted to have a "showcase" army, which meant jazzing up my bases. After deciding that 3rd party resin bases were not in the cards (though I still drool over the bases at Secret Weapon Miniatures and The Dragon Forge), I got inspiration on the boards at Grey Knights Forum, a collection of nice people and immense talent). In this particular case, inspiration came from a member of the board named Valten, on page 24 of his aptly titled thread, Valten's Pics! Specifically, his simple, yet impressive use of plasticard (a new word in my hobby vocabulary) inspired me to seek out some of this product and go from there.

After a lot of slow going, I managed to get my bases together (More pics after the break):

Please mind the poor quality - lost original & linked from old forum post

Introduction (Part 3: Finally. Enough already!)

(continued from previous...)

10 years or so have passed since my last hobby-related activity:

After moving into this last house, we determined that we needed to "scale down" and get rid of any unneeded clutter - our next move would be back to the big city, where prices are high and square footage is low. When I got to the box with my miniatures, my wife and I had a conversation that went something along the lines of this:

"I think I'm going to get rid of my miniatures, I haven't touched them in forever."

"No hun, don't do that!" (Prior to making this statement, she had only seen my miniatures once before, many years ago, and had no particular interest in them aside from the fact that the painting skill was impressive to her untrained eyes)

"Really? Why do you want me to keep them?"

"I don't know, you worked so hard on them..."

Introduction (Part 2: The Boring Middle Part)

(continued from previous...)

3 years later:

Tyranids: geek love at first sight. Invited to one of the aforementioned friend's house one weekend, I was introduced to the world of WH40K. I saw everything: Eldar, Leman Russ Tanks, the Carnifex! (back when it was the crown jewel of the Tyranid army). All of them were fairly poorly painted by anyone's standards, but were still so unequivocally beautiful to my virgin eyes (except some Dark Angels, which were literally dipped in dark green house paint, pulled out and left to dry. The figures lost so much detail that the only way anyone would know they were GW figures was if their owner told them, and only then if they actually chose to believe him).

Introduction (Part 1: Introduction to the Introduction)

Hey everyone!

Welcome to the inaugural post of my first experiment in blogging. I have created this blog as a point of focus for my various hobby gaming interests. I don't actually expect many people to end up following my blog (at least not until I have something tangible to show for my grandiose ideas), but will nonetheless try to keep it interesting for the poor souls that wander in unexpectedly.

First, a bit about me, in the context of the hobby at least. I am relatively new to the hobby, although my interest spans back quite a few years. About 18 years ago, I got my first real look at the hobby when I picked up a unit of WHFB Empire Pikemen (or something similar) to use as pieces for a board game project in 6th grade.

I was fascinated with the detail in the models and the potential to make them look even cooler with an awesome paint job. Although I considered myself fairly artistically inclined in those days, try as I may I simply could not understand my complete inability to replicate anything remotely resembling the paint quality depicted on the box (Hint: I was using bottom-of-the-barrel brushes and old Testors paint applied without a primer).

This setback, combined with my predilection for getting easily distracted by other shiny things, brought a fairly hasty end to this superficial initial foray into hobby gaming - a toe dip, if you can even call it that. This absence would last about 3 years, when I found myself in a new school with new friends...

(to be continued...)