Startup 1/2011

This project is (was) supposed to be a light snack before returning back to the WWII thingamagicks. Maybe I manage to stretch this one over many weeks again, even though the thing itself would be done in less than five minutes...

We're talking about a Revell EasyKit series X-Wing, also known as Incom T-65 space superiority fighter. For most of my life I've been some sort of a Star Wars fan. Nowadays I'm a lot calmer than what I used to be, but I guess that happens to all of us at some point. Despite that everyone who knows or pretends not to know me, knows what I think of the rebellion and all such humbug.

Originally the model depicts Luke Skywalker's Red 5 during the battle of Yavin. These Easykits are some sort of "welcome to the world of scale modeling"-things, that don't require any fooling around with paints or glues. Supposedly. It does look like something as it is, but after removing the pieces from the sprues there are some paintless spots. And it's a bit funny in general. At least in my opinion a blue barberhsop-like twirly thing in the laser cannon is a silly.

Everyone knows the behind-the-scenes story of the X-Wings but I'll summarize it quickly anyway: Incom was developing a new starfighter to the Empire, their model T-65. But those bastards defected to the rebellion with the prototypes, causing some ruckus. I don't support such stuff so I decided that I'll modify the whole thing so it's a prototype for the Imperial Navy.

The first thing I did after my last finished project was to clean and rearrange the working area (the side table of the kitchen) so that I can evacuate my junk whenever the table is needed for kitcheny things. From my awesome lego xmas calendar I got a handy plastic tray where my Vallejo paints fit like a dream. The remaining old Citadel/GW paints - some of them I got to use once before they dried up - don't fit that well but I'm phasing them out anyway so that's not a real issue.

This is a lot handier than my old "these paints are in that box and those are ... there"-themed dynamic random archive. Of course it needs to be adjusted and fine tuned, but I've got the time. And anything's an improvement.

But now to the business. I opened the box and checked what it contains (instructions included) to avoid the problems I had with my previous build. A couple of sprues and an almost pointless instruction sheet:

Naturally the next step was to cut the pieces off the sprues, clean them up and dry-fit them to see fi they work nicely. And to see what I need to fix. In the end I glued the engine pieces to the S-foils because they were grinning a bit too much on their own. I left the wings as they are because you can't change it between the normal flight mode and combat mode. Normally I'd call that cheating but I guess you can't demand all the awesoments from this kind of a kit. In the foreground you can see the pilot that's going to need most of the modifications. But I'll get back to that in a moment.

During the next couple of afternoons I rebasecoated the pieces with my trusty Vallejo gray. No interesting stories or legends about that:

When I get to the third phase I guess I'll paint a couple of lighter layers on select surfaces, aiming for a sort of "Star Destroyer White", as the Imperial Navy has it. As a bonus detail I could try to paint the Imperial insignia somewhere and maybe something that smells like a "prototype". Obviously that's a bit difficult 'case there's no real definite way to mark something as a proto.

Meanwhile I'll attack the dude in those awful orange overalls. In case my greenstuff isn't completely ruined by time, I could go for a new helmet for him and use some metal wire to fix the TIE Pilot tubes. The helmet itself doesn't need to be a normal Pilot bucket for the X-Wing has a life support system, unlike TIE series of fighters.
That idea wasn't my own, I even got a photo hint, though I don't have a clue where that pic is originally so I can't give due credit to the owner.

Maybe I get something like that done, that'd be cool. But we'll see how it goes when I start fooling around with Yet Another Thing I've Never Done Before...

Project 4/2010 is completed

Last night I finished this damn AA-cannon. Naturally I had to fix the right side shield, just like I suspected last time.

I thought that hey, I'll be efficient and drill a small hole with my handy pin-vise to both the shield's connector and the receiving end, glue a short piece of a paperclip to give structural support ("pinning"). WEll, I half-succeeded. The receiving end was easily drilled but the other one... no way. It's diameter was a bit too small to allow any sort of safe drilling even with such a small drill bit. As my second option I used white glue and superglue. That works almost as nicely but isn't nearly as genial and nicely hidden.

When the gluings had set I covered those areas with a bit of paint and attempted to weather the whole structure a bit with different browns. In the end I got carried away and applied the weathering stick I started using with my Sturmpanzer project. I guess it looks like something now.

As a whole this set was a bit weird. Of course I take full blame with the photoecth-failures, I'm just new to them. I'll do better in the future. To add insult to the whole thing, I managed to paint the lower right sector shut! Didn't see it in time, didn't dare to attack it later, because I was afraid of breaking that thing off for the umpteenth time.

But that instruction set... it was problematic. Mostly because I stupidly believed that it was going to mark all the optional things as such, like it claims in the legend, not to mention the good practice and politeness. In hindsight: I should've read the instructions carefully and write a huge "NO!" to the parts I was going to do differently. As a result I would've got the pose I visioned when I started this build.
Now that I followed the guidelines blindly, I noticed some frellups a moment or two too late. In the end the FlaK is in the driving mode as opposed to the shooting mode I wanted (barrels level, aiming at a wave of enemies).

While I was building I was wondering the aiming system. That piece that connects the aiming devices with the elevator system couldn't have been attached properly in any other way than how it is now: aiming high. If the barrels were any lower, it wasn't attachable between those two. That's somewhat weird, I think. Maybe an actuator(!?)-like plastic thing would've been a bit too cumbersome and difficult to produce in this scale. Had I known (and got the skills), it would've been scratch built just to get the gun how I wanted it to be.

Oh my, the time. Took a couple of weeks more than what I initially said, in my delusions of grandeur. For that reason I'll keep myself from making any those claims in the future ;)


Next time we'll go to space! Yay! Space! Awesome!

Final stages approatcheth, supposedly

At last this thing is getting to the finishing stages.

Or at least until I notice some sort of a gigantic mistake and have to go and fix it. But that's how it goes, onwards with a ton of foul words. The theme for this sprint is: trying something new (to me) yet again.

To me the FlaK looked a bit too clean and nice, the basic Dunkelgelb felt like it was eating details. I was pondering on the correct term and googled around for nothing useful. Obviously I came up with the word on my way to work: filtering. That wasn't what I meant in the end, but at least I got to read about something new.
So I dug up my ancient jar of GW Black Ink (I still can't understand why "Wash" wasn't good enough for them...), but over the years it had gone a bit thick. So I thinned it down quite a bit and tested on the bottom of the gun. Goody goody, I painted (or washed) the rest of the model with that. As far as I've understood, the point is to get the thin liquid into the recesses and notches of the model so they get articulated a bit. At the same time the dark paint dims the original bright colour and at least in this case gave the model a bit of a "this thing has spent a while in the rain". Which is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Of course I had forgotten that the gun looks a bit better if it has all the elemental pieces in it. I cut the ammo cartridges off the sprue, painted and later put them into their places. In the photo they're just cleaned and tried if they even fit there:

After making a bit of a mess and letting the glue dry I attempted to put the shield halves in their own slots. Of course they didn't fit nicely so I had to thin the connectors a bit, let's see if I end up pinning one or both of them.
Sometimes this model is really flimsy and the structure worries me a lot, sometimes it's just really good. It's a weird kit all in all, but I'll rant about the general feeling when it's time.

Tapeage, dammit!

So I began my latest attempt at painting camouflage. First I sliced stripes of masking tape to make a bunch of narrow ones, which I then put on the model at nice intervals:

Next I masked every other "slot" to avoid excess amount of paint going to places it wasn't supposed to go to. The remaining uncovered areas I sprayed with my trusty green.

After drying over a night I ripped off the tape pieces I had previously put there (it looked quite interesting at that point already) and masked the parts I had painted green. One of the fenders had some paint torn off with the tape:

So after another night I removed the rest of the tape and observed what I had done. The result looks fun in a way, the effect is intriguing. It's just a shame that the left fender had a large-ish area of paint torn off and I have no clue how I managed to fail so badly with the tape. Especially as that's the only place where it took 2+ layers of paint with it...

Despite a tiny setback like this my approach worked surprisingly well. Maybe I should reconsider those colours, because it looks more like a bamboo-forest than something that'd work in a central Europe. But then again, maybe it'd work even in that forest behind this building... I'll have to try to weather it a bit as well so maybe that'll tone it down a bit.

The real end result will be seen when the whole set is finally assembled instead of being spread around different tables. But that'll take a couple more days. Or a couple dozen. We'll see.

My TODO list is growing

Last Friday I got happy when HLJ informed me that they've sent my order already.

Today I got even happier when a FedEx dude called in the mid-morning and asked when he can deliver my "packet from Japan". They ended up bringing that thing to my workplace so I (and they) didn't have to wait until the evening, which was nice :) My coworkers at least had fun with my reaction.

That box was nicely light and not too big to carry around. Unlike the other item of the day, but more about that in a while.

Confusingly the boxes of the models weren't of the same size, but then again, the machines aren't equally sized so I guess it's not that weird after all. I've just grown used to the "normal" model boxes that are more or less standardized or something.
The names that are printed on the boxes are to be ignored, for they're going to be handled as forbidden "Unseen" 'Mechs of the BattleTech universe. That cool looking thing on the left is one of my all-time favourites: a Marauder IIC and the one on the right is a Warhammer IIC. In this case letter C tells everyone that it's a Clan variant. Any of those toys of the freebirth scum aren't supported. Unless we're talking about miniatures for tabletop gaming, of course, because that's not as strict as collecting. Playable buttons can be whatever is needed or felt like - these things just aren't for playing.

These seem to be made of very few pieces, but these aren't any highly detailed Panzers anyway. We'll see if I manage to finish one or both of them for Model Expo 2011. One can always hope.

I got something done for the current project, as shocking as it might be. Earlier I complained that excluding the wheel hubs the camo pattern I tried to paint ended up looking more like fruit turron than a weapon. So more painting was to be done. Yesterday I remembered that I had seen an interesting pattern in one of my modeling-related RSS-feeds but coulndn't find the pic I was looking for. This one has that same pattern implemented but the photo itself is somewhat darker and less clear than in the one I originally found. Just before writing this post I painted over my fuckups with Dunkelgelb and will continue tomorrow with some masking and painting. Luckily I hadn't wasted a horrible amount of time with that so far.


Oh, the 10kg packet I mentioned earlier. I finally received the packet I sent to myself over two weeks ago: the Complete Calvin and Hobbes Collection. Damn, it took ages to travel these 2670 kms... and it was slightly damaged as well. I don't think I want to know what all these logistics-people do to luggage and postal packets because they're always (or way too often) completely mashed. Oh well, in the end all that matters is that my precious is where it belongs. Here:

In addition to all that the wise guys (three wise kings, or Reyes Magos as the story I was told says) brought me Fallout New Vegas, it also eats my free time. Between all the other weird things I do it's just nice to go to the Nevada desert and beat several - more or less innocent - bystanders to pulp with a Sledgehammer 8) The previous Fallout ate something like 103 hours of gaming time on the first round, this one has taken almost 10 after the first couple of sessions. And I'm just in the beginning... There are many more interesting games coming along the year for both systems we have around here, both with completely different kind of material.

At least I'm not going to run out of stuff to do. In a good way.

New year, more stuff to do

The year has changed and I ran out of holidays.
Our suitcases finally got here this night with their valuable contents. Only 3 days late. Once again.

The spanish santa brought a couple of new models to work on: the first one is Revell's easykit X-Wing that doesn't officially require paints or glue. We'll see how that turns out, I expect some extra work anyway. Oh, and I haven't built a single terrorist model at all, for I've always stayed on the better side of the Empire. I guess santa didn't know and I don't mind :)

The second one is a Tamiya SdKfz 251/1 with a couple of dudes. For them I had to buy a bit more paint so I can do the skin. My ancient Citadel skintone paints have gone dry ages ago so I went with more Vallejo products. I also trust that the Tamiya halftrack is a lot nicer to build than the Panzerwerfer by Trumpeter or Italeri, years ago. That was awful.

I also made an order to Hobby Link Japan, one that I've been pondering about for more than a year. The ptb of BattleTech went and copied some Macross-designs to their game and these things are the original Marauder and Warhammer in scale 1:100. They'll end up on the end of my FiFo todo-list, whenever they arrive.

My OmniMech miniatures should also be finished, they've only been more or less wip for almost two years now. I'm somewhat ashamed of that. My new dremel pieces are also begging to be used. I'll get there eventually...

At least I'm not going to run out of stuff to do :)

Time was of the essence

No, I didn't have enough time to finish the FlaK. I'll finish it next year, it made no sense to ruin the model by hurrying too much.

I continued painting the camo with the green and kept using the same stencils. The wheel hubs ended up being awesome - the rest didn't. Both the fenders and shield halves look more like mouldy bread than parts of a war machine.

Sigh.

Anyway, the idea works, I just have to improve the stencil so it works better with the pieces I want to paint. This "one masking piece works everywhere" doesn't work too well, apparently. It wasn't a horrible defeat, it just requires a bit more work. And not horribly much of that, after all, just some modifications. If I remember, I'll post some proof next year.

Now completely off-topic for the whole blog: tomorrow we'll take a flight somewhere else and we'll see if the yule goat brings something nice for my hobby or if I have to go and get everything myself :) Eating well at those latitudes is a given, at least for someone like me who doesn't exaclty love the traditional foodstuffs.

May the next year be more active than this one - for each and every one of us 8)

First mottling attempt

Earlier this week I got this thought in my head that the air can that I started in the summer might not be that good anymore. So I took and changed it to the new one. And himmel, the new one shot air like a storm wind unlike the previous one that was closer to a lungless chainsmoker... If those cans run out that quick with my ways of working, a compressor might not be a bad idea at all. As long as they don't cost monkeys covered in chocolate.

The main thing is that now the model is nicely covered in Dunkelgelb and no basecoat is visible anywhere. *cough*

So I decided to take and attempt the "mottle camo" idea I was talking about the last time. I also happened to have a bunch of small cardboard pieces that were protecting the photo-etch pieces. They were a bit big for what I had thought, but then again, it's better be safe than sorry. Especially knowing how my experimentalism usually ends up.
Anyway, if that ends up looking even half-decent and keeps the rest of the model clean, I'll call it a victory. To begin with, I decided to start with the brown and maybe go for the green tomorrow when everything's nicely dry. Unless I have to go back and cover everything with dark yellow again. Judging by the stencil itself after use, maybe I should've adjusted the airbrush head to be a bit smaller, to avoid wasting that much paint:

The wheel hubs were the first victim of mine, they ended up looking pretty fine to me. Encouraged by this tiny victory, I turned my attention towards the shields and the fenders. They didn't end up looking as nice, but we'll see how it all goes when I've added the green as well:

You can see some splashes and shit, some of the blots aren't quite what I was going for but then again, this was my first attempt and if you don't count the wheels in, all the pieces were a bit "funny" to paint by their shape / size. I believe this'll be a lot more doable with testing and developing (a couple of dozen iterations maybe?) and quite nice looking, too :)

To finish up my evening's painting session I took my paintbrush and started painting the gun's barrels back - again. I'm afraid I have to throw that brush away or redelegate it to weathering, because it's not useable for small details or finishing touches anymore. Oh, I had almost remembered to attach the armour pieces to the barrel-thingies that I forgot to use ages ago. You can see them in the photo, but for some reason I managed to take this pic from an angle that mostly hides one of the left side barrels.
But these aren't final pics but just stuff I take on the go to post here, so who cares at thise point? For that same reason I don't modify them more than just cropping and downscaling.

As a nice end a photo of that damn gun from another angle, that traditionally shows that no, there's not enough paint inside the muzzles after all. How the hell does this always happen?

If I get to "finish" this model on the weekend, as I'm insanely half-expecting, good. Otherwise it's going to be finished next year.
How exciting!

Trickery of random quality and some painting at last

So I finally got the basecoating redone (as I had originally intended). Because it's so damn cold and dark in the balcony at this point, I decided that the kitchen is a really good place to paint with the airbrush. I mean, those Vallejo model air paints don't really smell, unlike that sprayable primer.

The first pic shows the gun right before re-basecoating. I had to do some trickery to get those photo-etch pieces stick. A trick that I had come up with with my OmniMech projects: my modeling glue and some white glue. If you use a thin layer of white glue on the other metallic piece and and some liquid glue on the other piece, they set very quickly when they get in contact. It's pretty handy with pieces like this that don't have much contact surface to begin with. And when the liquid glue either dries too quickly or way too slowly.
Maybe it looks a bit silly from a certain point of view, but who cares if I get the thing done so you can see at least something in the first place? :P

First I had to clear some space on the desk, then dig up for all the junk like the canned air, my breathing mask and the painting box. Something was missing. That damn airbrush of course. Back to the storage room it was.
Luckily this apartment is so small that you can't really lose anything forever (sarcastic reference to my military passport, wherever the hell you are).

I had decided earlier, that the FlaK shall be mostly painted in dunkelgelb, with a couple of camo stripes on the shield halves, fenders and the wheel hubs. The biggest single parts, that is. When this dark yellow is fine enough after a couple of layers, I'll repaint the gun barrels black and then go for the camo.

Maybe I'll try to come up with a stencil of sorts to make a ridiculous attempt at a mottle camo, I saw that in FSM's rss feed, regarding the mottle camo on a Luftwaffe plane. I think it sounds cool and I should maybe try.

The rest of the pieces:

The point is to make a stencil and keep it slightly off the model while you paint with the airbrush. This way you end up nice, soft edges to the camo. At least that's in theory and what the übergurus accomplish. I'm not a guru, as we've noticed quite a few times already...

And now that I think of it, I'm almost in a hurry already if I want to get this project finished this year! The last 1,5 weeks I'll be abroad and I guess that the last days before flying will be busy enough so I won't have that much time to waste with silly things like this. We'll see.

Swearing and crawling ahead

That photo-etched shield has been a huge problem. Damnit. Maybe this can be salvaged somehow, but it doesn't look too bright at the moment.

To compensate for the slowness of the shield building, I started to work on the carriage. I haven't got too far with that, either, but at least I've got something done for real instead of regluing metal pieces back together after they've broken off for some stupid reason....

Photos? Haven't bothered taking them because the slowness annoyed me too much. I mean, "yay, I got four pieces built" doesn't really make cool pics. Maybe next week.