Stormcrow and Viper bathing in oil

Final tweaks

Before getting to the oils I did some last minute changes to my minis. The Stormcrow got a few blue marks onto its back as it had nothing there before. Viper's fists were painted dark grey for variety and those I also drybrushed with lighter grey, and then I re-repainted the AMS dome blue because I didn't like the unpainted steel there that much.

While working on these paints I also painted the hex bases so that the grey mess wouldn't catch my eyes constantly. For both minis I painted the front hex edges in blue, the others in dark grey.

Pin washes

Somehow I didn't feel like playing with the gloss varnish on the minis, I just sat the pieces on the crappy painter's tape I had for extra holding spots and pretty much covered them with Abteilung's Sepia.

On the first run I cleaned up what was cleanable with an eyeful. As usual, the photos revealed what I had missed but I rarely declared perfect results after just one run.

All this took an hour. We were at 2h 20mins now.

Miniproject VII/24

Executor

Yesterday was the Father's Day in this corner of the globe, and what I've shared in the 'Mumblings about that was anything silly, like this time. The Return of the Jedi 40th anniversary block -decorated set was quickly built, all its six hundred-ish bits. Then it was moved to safety from the cats.

My construction proceeded like an AT-AT on Hoth.

Long stints of greebling was done, that was fun. I guess there could've been more asymmetric parts, but I also didn't remember the movie model that perfectly anymore, so I guess it was pointless to yap about it :D

 

Finished

It ended up looking fine. Even the cats didn't try help more than by biting the plastic bags.

Right after my quick and silly photos we moved the Executor to sail the space over the bookshelves, right next to MP-36 Megatron. This was good.

Stormcrow and Viper detailing II

The wonderful world of additional detailing

On a Sunday evening I got inspired to paint more details and didn't even think of stopping to take wip photos. Not that my freehanding was worthy of closer looks nor documentation, they were ugly in each stage.

Dark grey fine tuning

The previous evening's metal pieces had lost something, so I drybrushed them with the lighter grey. This made them look better, now that the eyes had something in the edges to grab on.

Caution striping was completed with dark grey stripes.

For my gentle surface damage effects I again added a bit of red into the dark grey and went on filling the AMT-coloured bits with this red-tinted grey. The difference between plain dark grey and red-tinted one wasn't immene but there was a difference.

I actually liked the reddish grey so much that I used that alone for my Point numbers (Stormcrow 211; Viper 215). This approach I tried in order to save myself some pain and annoyance of paiting two ~identical tiny numbers over each other with a tiny offset.

Hands free

The Galaxy insignia I tried to implement with an ivory-coloured shape over the lightning bolts, and over that some dark dots. Those were supposed to represent the Ghost Bear that was about to maul you, in this scale.

As always, my personal problem with the insignia was the same: tiny surfaces on a mini and little space on said panels. For the Clan roundel I painted a dark grey circle. Over that I painted a blue asterisk at a 90° angle with counterclockwise-pointing clawlike bits. Over and inside them I did the same shapes with off-white (VMA 71075 Sand (ivory)) and a lump in the middle for the bear's head with the dark grey nose-eye-mouth dots. Or that's what they were supposed to look like from far, far away.

My Stormcrow definitely was missing something from the rear sector, as only the backsides of the shoulder plates were anyhow highlit and that wasn't visible enough for a follower of the Founder. Also the Viper's fists made me consider seriously if they ought to be bare steel instead. Maybe the next evening.

Viewports

All of the viewport panes were either tiny or otherwise strangely shapes. I basecoated them all with Yellow Ochre as the main colour. For jeweling I lightened it up with a drop of white/ivory and did tiny dots however I had space. On a few of the Stormcrow's larger windows I also had the space for the brightest dots.

Yellow was, always, a really difficult colour or I was just bad with playing with some colours.

While writing this I was more convinced that there were a couple of things still to do before the next main step, pin washes. This stuff took about 20 minutes, getting us to 1h 20mins.

Stormcrow and Viper detailing

Finer details over the basic scheme

Like I've mentioned many a time already, I really liked painting the bare metals as dark grey instead of using metallic paints. This was one of the cases where I definitely was going to keep at it.

Bare steel surfaces

The Stormcrow got its shoulder joints, some leg joints and the lasers painted grey. I also painted a handful of grilles and vents as well to make them stand out more.

 

I gave the same gut feeling -based treatment to the Viper: lasers, missile launcher's face, the AMS pod, and some easily doable joints. The AMS made me think if I should've painted it in a brighter grey or off-white, but this wasn't an aircraft carrier from these years but a futuristic wonder. So I left it unpainted to make it stand out more, even if technically it didn't make perfect sense.

 

Some chipping

For gentle highlighting I started using the Soviet shade (VMA 71318 AMT-7 Greyish Blue) I had used as the main highlighter on the Mongrel, but these had a stronger contrast and my original idea didn't work the way I imagined. Pivoting like an agile developer I decided to turn them into chippings and added some more with as light a touch as I managed.

The third, darker colour would enhance these chips noticeably.

Yellows

The Blitzkrieg Galaxy's crossed lightning bolts got painted on the left legs on both Omnis, again with Yellow Ochre (VMA 71033). My photos didn't show too clearly how boltlike the freehanding was, my bare eyes helped even less.

Again the Stormcrow's back didn't really inspire any caution stripes, but Viper did that much more happily. Some part of that came from the Jump Jets, that Stormcrow didn't have.

Preparing the cockpit canopies

For my jeweling attempts I based the cockpit glasses black. I knew that yellows were always a bit difficutl, but like in all these long cases, I was now paying for quick choices made over a decade ago.

This was another half an hour. Total timer: 1h.

Stormcrow and Viper of the Delta Galaxy

Delta Galaxy's greys and blues

As we had seen here before, Delta's scheme was grey with blue highlights. In this first stage I thought that this time I wasn't going to go for a spectacular camo but leave it mostly grey. Thinking of it, the Mongrel's camo scheme didn't stand out that much.

The grey mass

Over the black primer I overbrushed a layer of my trustworthy Cold Grey (VGA 72750) and allowed the shadowed lower parts to remain darker.

 

To bring out the surface details I drybrushed all this with Stonewall Grey (VGA 72749). Again, I let the shadows be.

Highlighting in blue

This time I used UK Mediterranean Blue (VMA 71111) for highlights and just did some panels and chunks based on my gut feeling. The Stormcrow had fewer pieces that called my attention, especially in the back, so I thought I'd give the hands something new.

Viper already had more blue bits, so I thought the hands also being blue might've been a bit much, so I left them as they were. Another option was to paint them steel grey, if the lighter grey was a bit too much.

I purposefully left enough bits grey so I'd have space to mess up my Clan and Cluster insignias instead of painting some blue on another shade of blue. This showed that I actually learned something from Doomguy Urbie's UAC insignia.

This stuff took about half an hour and that made me decide to roughly track the time usage in the posts again. It had been years since I did that the last time. Time spent: 30mins.

Project VI/24

The final Salvage box, and a friend to go

As so often, I was pondering what to do with the mini at hand. I didn't want yet another Medium Point into my 3rd Falcon Talon Cluster, but the opposite actually, as I felt I ought to turn my Cluster's average further to Heavies and Assaults.

Then it struck me, thanks to the seed of an idea from months ago when thinking where to put Grendel A. To accompany this one I plucked one of the unpainteds from the Clan Direct Fire pack. Now we'd top up the Clan Ghost Bear / Delta Galaxy / 73rd Battle Cluster / 314th Battle Trinary / Star x in my collection.

At some point this year I had primed a couple of handfuls of miniatures black, so I didn't need to worry about it. That time was also not included in my tracking.

Miniproject V/24

Lego 10338

A couple of years after Optimus Prime the next Transformers Lego was released this summer. I wasn't nearly as excited about this one (the Goldbug version was for some reason more to my liking) so I hadn't ordered this as my first thing after waking up on the release morning.

My partner reminded that if this one sold well, maybe there were going to be more. In addition to that piece of wisdom, Bumblebee was a neat character so I wasn't really fighting myself much when I encountered the box in the shelves of Verkkokauppa.com the previous weekend. And this was the reason why we didn't jump from the 1940s to 30350s without a gentle sidestep.

Bumblebee

Building the set took a bit less than two hours in the same Sunday afternoon I bought it. The rest of the family unit were watching cartoons while I was smiling happily by the table.

The roof could either take an Autobot emblem or be left plain with a flat 2x2 plate. Clearly I chose the emblem.

Two options were available for the register plate, I opted for the model 1984 as the one presented first. The other one went into the spare part pile.

On the left side of the hood I could again choose between a marking and more yellow. I had no reason to save the emblems anywhere, so I put it on also for the comic book effect.

There was a tiny bumblebee trapped inside the car. What looked like a hifi set behind the windows turned into a jetpack in the robot mode. That was something I didn't clearly remember from the eighties, but that was a few years ago, so...

Volkswagen Type 1

We ended up with a cool beetle!

 

The robot mode

With a gentle amount of twisting and turning the VW Beetle turned into a smirking rohbut. The instructions emphasized the leg and torso angles with separate pics and the reason became pretty clear when you stood the robot on the table: standing straight like an arrow he'd fallen on his mechanical nose as if struck by scraplets.

Maybe I had some more shelf space for a couple more :D