Verdammt doch mal

The pieces I filed so eagerly were done so I spent a while one evening priming them with the gray spray primer. This time I learned that when the amount of paint in the can is awfully low, it doesn't do much good to the model anymore. The last areas I covered were a bit off, the paint didn't spread in a nicely thing veil as it usually does. I spent a good while filing that stuff down the following evening. Live and learn.

To my joy I noticed that the vast majority of the seams I had been working on were just like they were supposed to: unnoticeable. A couple of them needed a bit of puttying and resanding (and repriming a bit later), but in general things went pretty nicely.

Instead of marching to a hobby store to get another can of spray primer, I thought of doing that with my brand new compressor and the tiny gray primer bottle I got earlier for some reason. To begin with, I rechecked the instruction sheet just in case, attached both(!) adapters, the hose and the airbrush itself. Power on. The machine itself wasn't awfully noisy but there was an extra sound of air flowing in an unexpected way. Those bastards were leaking. Not completely unexpected, for the shopkeep had mentioned it as well as did the instructions.
Ok. I should apply some plumber's tape to the leaky parts. Obviously I don't own any and at some point I have to go to a hardware store to ask for that. In finnish it has many different names (and offensively many ways of typoing it *grumblegrumble*) so even googling it took a nice while but now I know where to go and what to say.

My quick fix with painter's tape didn't fix anything well enough. That would've been too easy I guess.

Anyway, I'll be more than busy this week so I'll do my tape-shopping on my last vacation week. I've got all the time in the world but still I'm a bit disappointed because I didn't get to try my new toy out.

To get something useful done I painted the legs and hip parts just like the Marauder. They're still waiting for a black wash and the red splashes before I get to have another go at freehanding all the logos and stuff.

The kit piece that's supposed to be an antenna and is to be attached next to the cockpit looked way too awkward to my liking, so I used a black bristle from a 0,4EUR brush I got to be used exactly in these cases. It looks like an antenna to me 8) While I was at it, I drilled the torso machine guns open so they look a bit more decent now.
Oh, the half-done searchlight can be seen in the picture! It's missing the protective glass because I'll attach it after the green has been sprayed on the torso. And when I've come up with a plan but let's not tell that to anyone.

Project 4/2011

My Marauder won't get to be alone on its shelf for too long for I started almost immediately working on the Warhammer IIC's variant "something". Let's see what happens with this one. This time I knew that there are certain things that are to be avoided because I did them with the last project. In general I should remember to fuss around less and ponder more... I should.

The model consists of very few parts and the instructions are pretty short again. If I remember correctly, the total part count is about 40 and they're divided into two sprues. Not a problem, I can fail with those if I really tried to :P

As usual, I obediently started from the beginning. First ones were the arms with their guns. The gun barrels tried to grin a bit so I taped them shut to keep them nicely, I didn't think that pegs would be needed in this kind of light bending. For a while I considered the possibility of opening the SRM-6 doors and then scratchbuilding the missile tips inside. But then I decided that my tools weren't fine enough and I'd just ruined the pieces - and I didn't really trust in my abilities in building new missile bay doors out of polystyrene just like that. So those doors stay shut this time. While I was building stuff, I glued the top parts of the legs together.

I almost kept building more and more but then I remembered that no, that's not how this goes nicely. The last time I had just assembled everything and I realized that the seams were awful way too late. Now I filed all the seams of the built pieces down, before joining them to other pieces. While filing around in general I removed the D7-text out of the back of the Torso. That place could be decorated with the Clan insignia or some other Important thing.

Fixing stuff went nicely so I went on with the searchlight that'll be attached to the left shoulder. Laurentius had told me that he opened it in his model and built the insides somehow. That was a really good idea so I had told that I'll steal it - and that's exactly what I did. I started by drilling a bunch of holes around the edges and then cut/punched the piece away. Now I just need to decide how to build the insides and how to get all this painted nicely with no more than one painting run.

Yesterday evening I assembled the rest of the legs and filed down the new seams as well. After doing things like this there shouldn't be any ugly lines remaining. Though I have to say that the cockpit has a rather psychotic "%D"-face on it... maybe it'll look more decent after a couple of layers of paint. I'm afraid that I don't have lenses small enough for those tiny flashlights, but maybe we'll survive somehow.

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Oh my, I almost forgot! Last week I visited my Toy Shop a couple of times and bought myself this, the latest warhead in my arms race against myself: a compressor to power my airbrush! Now things are looking good indeed 8)

Marauder IIC - custom variant

I'm doing my best to keep my BT builds (these models and the miniatures) as wysiwyg so I had to fool around with the specs of the Marauder. My main problem was if all the crap I wanted to have in was going to fit for real. In several posts I've been talking about the ERPPC:s in the arms, as well as the MPLasers and the AutoCannon that sits on top of the machine (not caring too much if it's a normal AC, an UAC but at least I never thought of it as an LBX varian). Oh, and the Jump Jets were talked about the last time, if not earlier.

That was a good starting point, the result was a custom variant of Marauder II C because none of the more official configs didn't provide exactly what I wanted. So this is what I ended up with:

Mass	85 tons
Tech/Era	Clan / 3055
Config	Biped 'Mech (Level 2)
Movement	4 / 6 / 2
Internal structure	Endo Steel (130pts)
Engine	340 Fusion
Heat Sinks	21 Double
Armor	Ferro-Fibrous (221pts)
Weapons & Equipment
Type Loc Heat Ammo ER PPC RA 15 - Medium Pulse Laser RA 4 - ER PPC LA 15 - Medium Pulse Laser RA 4 - Ultra AC/2 CT 1 45 CASE Standard Jump Jet RL Standard Jump Jet LL Combat Heat 43 (42)

That filled my tonnage pretty easily but there were something like eight or nine open Critical Slots. The last tons I spent on an extra ton of ammo for the UAC/2, just in case... Of course I could've fit an UAC/5 but for some reason I chose the /2. Maybe it's the plain range so it can work with the ER PPC's. As a small touch I moved a set of Heat Sinks to arms, on top of each ER PPC, so it'd be like in the model. Those JJ's didn't fit in the torso sides, so they had to go on the legs, but you can't always get what you want.

Fascinating, isn't it? I would be pretty curious in playing with that someday, I'm going to have my arse handed to me in any case, no matter what my 'Mech is. Maybe my "Death to the Freebirth scum! ROAAARGH! Alpha strike!" isn't the safest one? But then again, it's more ClanLike than a safe, cautious style. In any case: as long as it's fun, it's all good.

Detailing the Marauder

For some reason I couldn't wait more than a couple of minutes after publishing the last post. So I continued working on the details on Thursday afternoon/evening. The Galaxy logo was on its place already and I wanted to add a vehicle number and a couple of Clan logos around the 'Mech. After turning the thing in my arms for a while I decided that both sides of the torso will get a logo each and the left leg will get one. Then I just had to come up with a good place for the number (and I had to come up with a number, too). In the end that number found itself from the rear part of the right leg.
I don't think I'll start worrying about the Point insignia (from Point 1 to Point 5) nor the pilot's rank insignia :)

Freehanding the Clan logos was a bit easier on this kind of a large model than on the tiny tabletop miniatures. It's obviously not 1:1 copy of the real logo but it looks recognizable and that's what I was going for. Besides, I just can't draw that (or any other) thing accurately on any scale anyway ;)

The right side

Rear view  with the unit number

The left side

Front view, the PPC & Medium PLas lenses are installed as well

I also tried how that Tamiya's Burnt Carbon pigment works on the AC. Guess it works somehow. At this point all that's left is to install the arms properly and that's all I can think of right now. We'll see if I manage to do that before I attack the Warhammer...

As usual, I took the photo against the light, but you should be able to see the barrel's end anyway. Somehow.

Going green again

Since the last time I've painted the torso and arms of my Marauder with Vallejo's German Green and the end result looked a lot nicer than my previous spearmint-approach. Maybe the extra plates will end up bothering someone but they don't bother me so they'll stay. And I'll use the same scheme on my Warhammer, when I get that far.

While airbrushing around I noticed that the canned propellant starts acting funnily during use and the less there's propellant left, the quicker it starts acting up. I guess it's because the propellant cools down a lot and when it gets too cold it just doesn't push the paint out of the airbrush anymore. With a new can you can paint for a good while but as this one's on its last ~20% I could only paint one arm before the paintflow died away.
This causes extra pauses and excess worrying: "Do I get to paint this piece or does it die in the next two seconds?". The solution is, as I pondered last autumn: a compressor.

Maybe before I go for the second half of my summer vacation...

While I was fooling around with the upper torso, I finished the paint job of the legs. Just like Camospecs (and my initial post) says, the feet and shins need some red paint splattered on them as if it was the blood of the Steel Vipers. This time I tried not to get carried away with all the gore...

When all these key components had dried, I finally got to tinker around with the details. In my opinion, Battle- and OmniMecs just have to have some caution stripes (you know that cool yellow-black warning pattern), otherwise something vital is missing and that's never good for the model or its builder. In any case I had decided to take it easy and I chose a couple of key points where the caution striping fits. As a helper I used the surface details of the hull.
Both of the gun pods get two for each side and left/right torso, where the arms go attached, get narrow stripes on the front and rear sides. This way they'll stand out but don't steal all the attention.
While I was working, I painted the pieces I decided to call the nozzles of the Jump Jets, the thing in the rear hull I call a Heat Sink and the gun ports with Vallejo's Oily Steel. The Heat Sink I'll cover with a thin layer of brown ink, the rest will stay cleaner. As the grand final I painted my own version of the Omega Galaxy's logo on the outer side of the right leg. I think it ended up pretty neat.

That thingamagick on the nose needs something but I'm not sure of what. Because it's supposed to be a cockpit window, I guess I could paint it glossy black and maybe it looks good enough that way. Other than that there's not horribly much to do anymore, just a bit of touching up and freehanding some Clan logos and Point numbers. Oh, and the jewel-like things but they'll be the absolute last ones to go on the model after all the painting is done.

Fixin' the mistakes - or trying to, at least

That's how scabby the upper torso and gun pods are or were a day ago. Not good enough for me, not by a long shot. Though, in a sense that kind of a mark could represent something that was gently caressed by an azure bolt from a PPC or a beam from a LLaser. In any case I slapped pieces of 0,5mm polystyrene to cover the scabs and filed the edges down a bit to make them stand out a bit less.

It doesn't look any worse, at least. Last evening I went and rebasecoated the whole thing because this had gone beyond reparation with mere painting skills... Not that those pieces bother me, this isn't supposed to look like it just walked out from the assembly line ;) One of these days I start repainting it with some german panzer green, hoping it looks better than my previous attempt. We'll see soon!

That moment between vacations has begun again

The first set of vacations came and went, the trip to almost-in-laws ended with a bit of bringables, as it's a sign of a good vacation. To fix the Marauder and to prevent the same ones happening with the Warhammer I got some Tamiya's Putty and 0,5mm polystyrene sheets. Of course I tried first if a quick re-application of black wash helped. It didn't. So I'll take and repaint those couple of things completely again, what else can I do? Maybe I'll lay a piece of plastic to hide some scars on the Torso and gun pods. We'll see, though as long as the weather stays as hot as it is and the calendar tells me it's not a weekend, I'll do something else because spraypainting in the balcony under the evening sun doesn't work for me right now...

Naturally I had to get something new as well, it's not fun otherwise. In one of the shops I saw a model of the Kugelblitz but as it want to support my favourite toy/hobby shop in Gijón (Capua Hobby's), I skipped it. During my hobbying years I've built the main types of the Tiger series so next in line are the Panthers, at least the Panther and Jagdpanther. The latter being the latest entry in my TODO-queue.

At the moment my plan for that beast is to do a triple colour camo and on top of that I'd apply a light "field applied" whitewash, just like with good old Hobbes. This time I'll make it even better.
As if :P

Cave Johnson here!

This is an awesome quote. I laughed for real when I first heard it. That's not a surprise to anyone who's had to listen to my stories even once ;)

"When life gives you lemons, you gotta do lemonade, right?"

Cave Johnson, CEO Aperture Science Laboratories

"Alright, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager. Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons. Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons. I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

© Chris "ammnra" Myles @ Flickr

Found a couple of neat examples with google, just in case you felt like watching/listening to a bit more:

Some genious had done this in Minecraft and I approve of it! Bravo!

Clickety-click, blam blam

I've posted a couple of times about these gaming projects between a bunch of modeling-related posts, even if I'm not the best one to write about games or gaming. Some change is nice every once in a while, so I'll comment a bit on my New Vegas adventures. I have to do that pretty briefly because I can't remember where I exactly left this thing the last time.

While working with mr. House I adventured through the whole map and did all the sidequests that I found. The bothersome thing is that the levelcap struck so damn early. I should've installed a mod to get ten or twenty more levels. Not that I needed them to complete the game but because I enjoy hearing the ka-ching sound every time I do something worth something and get some experience. It's a bit late to complain about that now, but anyway.

Most of the House-specific went mostly just like the ones for Yes Man, this time I should've prevented an assassination but because the other factions didn't trust me at all ("shoot on sight") after a couple of misunderstandings, that quest wasn't even tryable. Oh well, who cares, I didn't like the target anyway ;) In addition to that the only mentionable difference I can think of was that I used a couple of skill magazines (+10 Speech, +10 Barter) so I could talk to Lanius to get a peaceful conclusion with him, just for a change. Of course I put down that NCR general and his bodyguard because he got on my nerves. I didn't even consider negotiating with him to solve things peacefully.

At some point, when I had the time, I started playing the endgame for the Legion. Because it's the endgame already, not much changed from the previous two attempts, so there's not much sense in repeating the same stories here. I got to play surgeon with uncle Caesar's head and I had to do the simpler solution because my medical skill was one (1) point too low even with the skill mags! Well, I'll do that the next time, then. The important thing is that now I got to be the assassin at the Hoover Dam. Didn't come up with anything more interesting than planting a bomb to a Vertibird (once again that Patriot's Cookbook and its +10 Explosives saved me), but I guess you could have a couple of different approaches like sniping from a tower or filling the platforms with mines.
The end fight was interesting and nicely different this time. I also got to see the Boomer's bomber at work because it wasn't the middle of the night this time. As the icing on the cake I got to execute that cocky general Oliver. Which is always good.

"Firestorm coming closer,
Napalm to the bone"

Now I have just the "working for NCR"-story to be checked and that's definitely not a horribly exciting thing because those NCR people are just suspicious and plain

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Of course I went and got Duke Nukem Forever, haven't got far yet. Just a couple of hours worth of fooling around, I've taken my sweet time.

The beginning is somewhat unsual for an fps game but that didn't bother me mentionably. There's a bit of walking around, looking around and listening to what people say. And fooling around with the environment. Then you get to drive a bit and after that the shooting gets to start for real. So far I've got out of the Lady Killer casino, got through the Strip to the Duke Dome and fallen down to its basement. Based on this I can't understand why half an internetful of nerds have thrown insane tantrums...

Ok, the humour is incredibly bad ("poop, ahahahahaha!" or "Hotel Fellatio, khihihihi") and Duke's oneliners are just as bad as in the good old '80s action movies just like it should be. No one *forces* you to pick up poop from the toilets and to throw it around. At least I wasn't forced to do that.
Otherwise all the extra stuff you can do is more or less how it was in the previous installment: you can fool around with the lights, play the pinball/nineball/one-armed bandit and all that. This time you can really play them instead of just "using" it and hearing some noises. Oh, and each new thing you try or game you win gives you +1-+5 Ego boost, which means maxHealth.
The only thing that has got on my nerves so far is the female characters. All three have been annoying, screaming bimbos, I don't want to hear them in my games, it's enough to hear that in the train stops in the real world... Oh, and the levels seem to be straight pipes, that's a thing you can and should always be complaining about.

The action itself is quite nice. Monsters attack and you mow them down. Some monsters stay far and shoot you, some of them rush straight at you and some just warp around and cause a nice amount of panic when they surprisingly find themselves behind your back. Sometimes an enemy falls on its knees for a while and you can execute it for your amusement. For some insane reason (consoles?) Duke can only carry two guns at the same time, but luckily the pipebombs and tripmines go to their own slots and don't count as weapons. The famous Ripper is very nice but it eats through its ammo painfully quickly.

I think that the graphics are more or less at the same level with the other 3d shooters nowadays, I can't go and call it ugly. All these cool effects are used from motion blur, focus-thingies to those things I can't remember how to call them. Lighting effects and water effects look neat and when you stand in the shower your sunglasses get wet and in the steamy pipes they get steamy. Well, I saw those "crap is on my screen" effects for the first time in Metroid Prime, so what?
At leat I haven't read a single comment that tells with some examples, why they call DNF ugly.

No, I really can't understand all the crying and bitching that people have had with this. Maybe I'm just weird or maybe I didn't expect something impossible. With my experiences so far, Duke Nukem Forever is some good old-fashioned shooter fun.

Suffering for my "art"

The contents of this post is supposed to be little and short, for a change. We just had a neat heat wave in here combined with a very nice summer flu and that didn't really invite to tinker around in the kitchen's corner. Obviously the main reason was the flu, because I quite enjoy assembling and painting in the bright sunlight.

Those stupid-looking seams started to annoy me quite a bit. At first I tried to file them flatter but that didn't really go anywhere. So the next logical step was: take the Dremel out and start dremeling!
The end result wasn't quite as smooth as I had hoped but then again, is that really a horribly bad thing in a warmachine? Not in my opinion. Anyway, I started repainting the surfaces (top torso, gun pods, legs) once again.

Now that I look at how my fixing attempt looks like on the green elements, I just feel like throwing all that crap out of the window. Damnit. I really, really wouldn't want to repaint the whole model or anything... But we'll see what happens.

Maybe it's a good thing that I'm going for the first half of my summer vacation and I can just leave a couple of more random posts to be automatically posted at some point, so this thing stays alive and I don't need to stress about it at all.
Not that I *needed* to post once a week or anything :P