Project II/23

Legendary but not the Legend Killer

My previous project was supposed to be a bit of a quick snack, but it did eat an amount of time after all. Now I wanted to do something even quicker to cleanse my palate, before jumping onto a larger-scale model again.

I rummaged through my Clan Invasion box and checked what the random boxes had, those unmarked ones living next to my two untouched Star boxes. From the list [Urbanmech, Stormcrow, Mongrel, Archer] I popped out Morgan Kell's modified Archer. The man may have been a legendary 'Mech jock, but the 'Mech itself was a bit boring compared to many others. Of course there were much uglier ones, so this was still ok.

My plan was just to paint one individual 'Mech without pondering on how it would fit into a larger collection. Of course I already had a Lanceful of those awful plastic -molded Kell Hounds from twelve years ago ([Clint, Spider, Panther, Hunchback]) so this wasn't going to be a complete loner. Then again, with one more I'd have five doggies and I'd need three more to fill up the second Lance.

Not every Merc unit needed to be fully equipped and army-sized, so I wasn't going to stress too much about it.

Randomly wandering thoughts

At this point my pre-made plans or thoughts about this project were such that the basic paintjob would be quickly done. Fine-tuning it shouldn't take awfully long, either. I'd spend at least twice as much time with the details (metallic parts either painted metallic or dark grey, right now I was leaning toward metallic paints; green cockpit windows; laser cannon lenses (4); individualizing as in the KH insignia and potential highlights).

Panel line and shadow washing with oils – and cleaning that all up again – would eat something over an hour, a potential dot filtering less than an hour, maybe some modulation would round it up to an hour. In practice the oils would require long drying times, but I wasn't counting them in in my project time even if I could.

The hex base would take two sessions: the surface textures first, then painting it. All in all it should be quick. If I chose to do some water/mud effects, it'd take a bit more time but most of this would be waiting again.

Maybe all this would be done within the hours of a normal workday. The fact was that my calendar had been challenging, to say the least, for a good while, so despite its apparent simplicity this might spread over something like two months. It'd be fun to see in the end how this guessing of mine has hit or missed.

Finished: Project I/23

An Assault Starful of hardware

Well, it took some time after all despite my idea of doing something quick, and I got to try new things again. Most likely the next one wasn't going to include anything totally new, or at least while I was writing this I had no real idea of what I was going to do or what could I even try.

I noticed that I was thinking of this a year ago, but I really should take a couple of comparison photos of these newest CGL 'mechs with the ones I painted last year. Each of these five I could also pose next to an IWM miniature (or a couple of them) that had been painted over a decade ago, to see how my paintings and the paintables differed.

Dire Wolf Prime #231

The people of Draconis Combine called the 100-ton Dire Wolf the Great Death (大いなる死). It was a mad unit indeed, with an LRM-10 rack on the shoulder, both arms with UAC/5, each with a pair of ER Large Lasers and a pair of Medium Pulse Lasers.

Summoner Prime #235

The freebirth little prince named the 70-ton Summoner based on some hammer-wielder from Norwegian lore, because of its weapons: lightning (ER PPC) and thunder (LB-10X) plus the LRM-15 launcher on its shoulder.

Gargoyle Prime #221

In the Assault class the 80-ton fugly Gargoyle punished the Spheroids (among many others) with a pair of LB-5X Autocannons and their underslung SRM-6 packs. It also had an ER Small Laser installed into the chest, maybe to carve some obscenities into the bunker walls of its foes. The baffled Spheroids named it after the Man-of-war ship class, most probably because of its size and the broadsides. Weird people, those.

Mad Dog Prime #222

The servants of the Dragon had given their own name to the Mad Dog, as well – for some reason they called it a Vulture (ハゲタカ) – because why not? Barely in the Heavy class this OmniMech has always been to my liking, a fantastic machine. The LRM-20 racks on the both sides of the cockpit were just a fun approach to life, the arms then housed Large and Medium Pulse Lasers, symmetrically the same set of death rays in each hand.

Hellbringer Prime #223

A sibling 'Mech of the Summoner, the sixty-five ton Hellbringer worked awesomely as a pair, which was most likely the reason the little prince's henchman Galen Cox decided to call it Loki. The amount of weaponry, especially in the eyes of freebirths, was indeed shocking: ER PPCs in the arms, an AMS above the cockpit, a cluster of three ER Medium Lasers in the Left Torso, a SSRM-6 launcher, four AP pods in the legs against any infantry, and to top it all a pair of Machine Guns in the Right Torso. Still there was armour and cooling fins for actual operations, just like on its sibling.

The end

These five didn't really belong into the same Star, at least in my current list of the Cluster, but based on their unit numbers they were from the Trinary Beta's Stars two and three. Of course that made no actual difference, because I was never going to play anything that serious, I was just doing all this collecting, painting and organizing just for the sheer fun of it. I may have mentioned it a bunch of times already.

Next Wednesday I should have something new going on. At this point I was thinking between two options, at this rate I'd end up tossing a coin.

Final detailings

Hex bases with their jade stripes

To keep things simple I painted the edges of the bases flat black. While I was playing with black I painted the barrels of each of the Autocannons as they were a bit too light in dark grey.

Earlier I had been thinking if I'd paint the lower third or even half of the front-facing hex edge with jade green, but based on a freehand attempt it didn't look as neat as I had hoped. I then painted the full edge in green instead.

With a bit of masking and a new layer of black those could be transformed into having a caution stripe, for example. I left these thoughts simmer while the second layer of the gloss varnish on the energy weapons was drying.

Metal pigmentage

This one was a pretty quick operation. I dropped some AK Interactive's Dark Steel pigment onto the palette and added thinner on it. When I had a thin enough liquid mixed up, I applied that on the metallic surfaces of mine. These photos were taken in a somewhat funny lighting conditions, and in general I felt the pigment didn't stand out as interestingly from the German Grey surface as from the Jagdpanzer's camouflage colours.

Despite my earlier ramblings I didn't use any acrylic water on the muddy bases.

Painting the bases and varnishing glossies

I started this session by painting the various canopy bits with new creamy white dots. This wasn't important enough to take photos of each just to show I did it, as they were going to be visible in the next photos anyway.

Disgusting browns

On the bases I painted some sort of a haphazard layer of dirty brown (VMA 71133 Dirt), and as a result this made each of the hex bases look like my 'Mechs were ankle-deep in a dog playground. Then I painted with a different emphasis some woody brown (VMA 71077 Wood) that didn't really improve the overall look much, if at all. After giving these paints a short bit to dry, I applied a wash (VMW 76513 Brown) over the bases.

They really looked disgusting, but I was going for a nasty muddiness. Maybe I could use some acrylic still water on some dots, or something, later on.

As one simple detail I finally painted the Summoner's LRM-15 launcher's tubelike bits with a rubbery paint (VMA 71315 Tire Black). Not to make them look like they were some rubber hoses, but to separate them from the camo and the other parts but not so much that they'd stand out like a Pride parade in Moscow.

Gloss varnish on the !glasses

All the canopy pieces and the energy weapon lenses got a layer of Gloss Varnish (Vallejo 70510). Each of the death ray tubes would need three layers, the canopies would be fine with one. At this point I only had time to do one layer only, as they would need to cure for a day before the next layer could be applied. Also, this was nothing that would need to be photographed every time.

 

These five Points were just about done now. Playing with the gloss coat would take a few days, but that wouldn't even need to be mentioned considering active project time.

All I knew I still had to do was to paint the edges of the hex bases, maybe I could paint the first edges with a jade highlight (to mark what was "forward" for the 'Mech). Maybe I could spend fifteen minutes in trying out how the dark steel pigment would look in this scale, there were quite a few non-metallic bits to experiment on.