Return to Monkey Island

Spoiler-free

Released on the international "Talk Like a Pirate" day, RtMI was at least automagically preloaded on the Switch, so I didn't have to waste most of my limited playing time installing and such. I didn't do long gaming sessions, as I guess was expected, something from thirty minutes to something short of a full hour. I also wasn't rushing around, instead I wondered and adventured in peace with all the time in the Caribbean.

My own Monkey Island history was limited to the multiple times completed first two games, and the third one I once loaned from a friend. The fresher entries (Escape and Tales) had somehow completely flown past me, but as this one was the part 3b, did it matter much?

As I was also absolutely oblivious to anything in parts 4 and 5, I also had no idea where they took place. Therefore I had no way of telling how many times we had returned to the Mêlée Island since tSoMI. None of that mattered, the scenery was familiar but also renewed, at least in the beginning.

You may have noticed that I clearly didn't say anything about how the ending of tSoMI 2 and the beginning of RtMI were connected. Based on my memory of the intro I saw once (a quarter of a century earlier) was a bit weird as it ignored its predecessor's ending.

🎶 The Scumm Bar - Ambiance 🎶

My first playthrough on Switch took, according to the device's own calculations, "over 10 hours" and I didn't dig out everything I could and poke absolutely every corner. To be honest, I had to ask for a hint a couple of times from the hint book, and only once to the deepest level. The hint book was a fun thing: you could ask if for a tip to complete one of the incomplete items on your todo list. First of the hints was very generic ("did you already hear about subject x?") and a dialogue option by dialogue option it got more and more specific, until at last it said something like "Go to the Scumm Bar and eat a candle!". The one time I really couldn't get it myself, the feeling afterwards was, as you'd expect: "aaaaah, of course". Gentle shame included.

The vast majority of the puzzles got completed just by going around and doing stuff accidentally the right way, or after a bit of head scratching. Some of the things got solved with the traditional "pick up everything you can as soon as you've seen it", so sometimes I didn't even know what I had solved when I picked it up, before seeing the puzzle itself.

Music of Monkey Island was again excellent and it changed by the situation, as it should. Maybe I could find the OST from somewhere to accompany the first two. As far as I could say, the voice acting worked fantastically, I just didn't remember more than two of the characters and one of them was Dominic Armato's Guybrush. Then again, when I was playing the originals, they didn't have voices but coloured text :D

I had barely finished the game on the Nintendo when I also installed it on to my work laptop. Just to go through everything again but with more familiar controls and a bigger screen. Also because I didn't want the story to end, when the game ended.

A double-thumb-up recommendation from me.

Another new effect experiment

Skirting madness

Who knew what sort of hubris I was riddled with this time, but I returned to poke the Shilone I had considered finished. You see, I had been somehow successful with the Jump Jet fire plumes and the AutoCannon's heat-mistreated metal, I thought I could challenge myself with an engine glow effect.

The engine nozzles of the Shilone were pretty tiny, and I didn't really feel like fighting with the airbrush and masking half the universe, nor did I want to go for a really strong OSL effect that'd light up most of the rear of the ASF. Somehow those have most often struck me as overwhelming.

Blending

So, it was time to jump from mere thoughts to actual actions. I knew that I was going to use the two blues I bought for my Flanker, and mix some off-white with them, so I searched for the paint pots. First one, Citadel Layer series Ahriman Blue was quite thick already so I also went for a plastic syringe (I seemed to remember we had a number of those for ear infection medicines and whatnot) to add cautious amounts of tap water. The second one, another Citadel Layer paint, Temple Guard Blue had dried up into a solid block so it got tossed out. Damn. My plan changed, but just a bit. For shading I used Insignia White (VMA 71290).

Effect test

To begin with I dropped a good lump of Ahriman Blue and thinned it slowly, until I had something that resembled paint more than play-doh. I expected this to be the last time I could use that paint, if Citadel's current quality was to be relied on.

This stuff I used to paint the three nozzles from the inside. It was going to be the darkest layer in the fierce glare of the fusion reactor.

For the next shade I dropped a single drop of off-white next to my blue puddle, and mixed a fraction of it into the blueness. Then I added some of this slightly lighter blue into the nozzles, covering a bit less than the previous time. Rather unsurprisingly I kept repeating this process for a few iterations. In total I mixed six always lighter shades of blue. The end result would've been more visible in larger tubes, but at least I had tried this out.

As the last step I painted tiny single bright dots into each of the nozzles, using an almost white paint. The point of this was to show the hottest spot in the whole shebang. My last photos didn't show them, thanks to the angles. From a normal distance the effect was pretty fun.

Another base plate

An aerial hex

This hex plate was a bit bothersome, as I didn't want to leave it flat black and pretend it was flying in deep space, but muddy goo also didn't inspire. My basic "sand and some weeds" approach didn't sound victorious, either, and I didn't have good sand right now anyway.

Prototyping

Then I remembered my slightly stiff technical Citadel paint that I last used on my Flanker's base/stand. A silly idea I got from that was that I could paint a layer of orange below, then the cracking while drying -stuff and then move from that.

For the first layer I painted two oranges (VGC 72008 Orange Fire; VMC 70733 Orange Fluo (RAL 2005)) in a random way. While wet the paint was much brighter than after the drying time (I also took the photos in different lighting conditions).

Technical mud, pt. 2

Much later I spread a thick layer of this goo (Citadel Technical: Magellan Earth), as I remembered an article I read and how that person told these things behave at different thicknesses, and how they recommended using these.

My Flanker's base had been coated pretty lightly, so now I thought I'll try how a thick layer behaves. My layer ended up being both thick and uneven, which I hoped to result in an interesting result.

After curing until the next afternoon the result was as follows. The goo splintered much less than what I had expected. My expected result was something like "a few large chunks with smaller bits around them" and I didn't really expect to see the fiery-glowy oranges to even show in more than a few selected spots.

Painting on paint

On top of the weak brown I drybrushed my darker general grey (VGA 72750 Cold Grey) and then highlighting some edges with the lighter general grey (VGA 72749 Stonewall Grey). Time-old traditions being honoured and whatnot.

Perhaps it didn't bring a half-molten surface of a lava world, but more like something pretty iron-heavy. But who in their right mind would allow the Kuritas to wage war on Mars itself?

The AeroSpace weather may be somewhat unpredictable

A weathering round

So... It really didn't make any sense to cover an AeroSpace Fighter, generally speaking, with mud, rain streaks or spacegull shit. The panel differences I ended up creating earlier were a part of the weathering process, but especially some dents and such felt to me like key ingredients.

To get one sort of dents onto the plane I used the traditional sponge methond and applied some dark grey (VMA 71056 Black Grey) here and there. Mostly I concentrated to the front edges and the larger panels. A few of the dots ended up lining up, as if they showed where some kinetic projectiles had hit.

As my second dent colour I chose an ocreish brown (VMA 71133 Dirt) that I applied randomly with varying pressure. Maybe I should've taken it easier on the horizontal stabilizers, but generally the brown brought some variety to the overall redness.

Mid review

The destruction of the paintjob was about done now, so I installed the ASF onto its pedestal for the first time. Pretty nice.

Nationality- and unit markings

The Combine roundel

Marking the Sword of Light units was still the same: on the left side a DCMS roundel with the dragon's colour telling the unit (a golden one for the 5th) and a flaming sword (a saber, based on the examples I'd seen) on the right side. The biggest problem here was still that I really didn't have any drawing skills, even less painting skills.

My roundel circles were not perfectly circular, surprise! My golden dragons (VMA 71066 Gold) again... well, being that small you couldn't tell much, but I had truly tried to copy the reference image.

5th Sword of Light

Having little idea of what I was doing I painted a saberlike thing (VMA 71065 Steel) with its handle on the right wing. The cross guard (I had to check the part names from wikipedia) I made out of the same gold I had already been using. Maybe it looked like a sword?

While these were drying I jumped on the canopy bits. For a simple effect I applied a fine layer of a 20+ year-old green wash (Citadel Green Wash).

Because I had started on this, I had to continue. The mandatory flame effect I painted as if I was watching Bob Ross: it was good, why did you make a mess of it now? Oh hey, it actually worked and the full piece became better thanks to the change. As it fit the theme, I borrowed some paint from the Project Assistant I (VGC 72008 Orange Fire).

Washing and detailing a bit

Following the footsteps of the Savage

Before I started using the purpose-made washes, I wanted to try darkening the engine nozzles in a different way. First I just applied flat black on the center tube on the top half of the plane, and then wiped the fresh paint off. What remained was a noticeably darker but still red surface.

Encouraged by this working so nicely I flipped to miniature around and did the exact same thing on the three engine bits. At least in this case it worked, in my opinion, more nicely than a brown or black wash applied over a gunmetal (or some other metallic) layer.

Panel linings too

I didn't want to get the full AeroSpace Fighter that dark, so for the panel lines I used some black wash (Citadel: Nuln Oil). Wherever I got a bit of an overspill I wiped it immediately away. This of course darkened some panel edges a bit, but I didn't find it detrimental to the overall look. It was always nicer to look at a bit lived surface than a fresh one.

My weathering was purposefully pretty simple. I also just found the look fine. Of course I'd need to compare it to its bipedal siblings in arms, whenever I had the time.

Cockpit canopies

On my four earlier red DCMS warmachines I had used some pretty bright green colour on the viewports, so I was going to stick to the ancient plan (VMC 70942 Light Green). This mini had three bits to be painted this way: the obvious main viewport, the round dome behind it, and one that was going to be useful for landings in the bottom front. Later I'd apply a green wash to make them look a bit more interesting, but that'd be later.

Things I missed earlier

While I was detailing the chin-mounted LRM launcher (Shigunga LRM-20) I noticed that I hadn't even thought of checking what a mainline Shilone even had as the loadout, so I may have committed errors when painting the laser barrels in the wings (2x Diverse Optics type 20 Medium Laser)! Sarna.net/wiki knew to tell me that in addition to these there was a centrally mounted LLas (Diverse Optics type 10 Large Laser), so that one I painted on the right side of the cockpit.

Those little panels in the inner edges of the wings I painted steely (VMA 71065 Steel). I expected that these panels were protecting the fire control system's sensors.

The tail end also had something obvious that hadn't been obvious enough for my woeful eyes, but as soon as I knew what I was looking for, I found it. The rear-facing medium-capacity SRM launcher (NCK "Thornbush" SRM-4) got a dark metallic surface to make the tubes nicely visible.

I really had to tip my hat to the WYSIWYG modeling on the CGL minis. With a very little effort the key details were highlighted and drawing the eye.

A change of heart re: nationalities

Doubts

I really pondered on the idea of painting a lonely unit for Rasalhage and how much sense it made. To help myself I checked my archives for what I'd done with the awful-plastic -made Inner Sphere BattleMechs. I had done this pondering once already, at least.

Of course!

Draconis Combine

So, one of the five freebirth Lances was a DCMS quartet. Their group photo pretty much jumped into my eyes and almost yelled "me me me meeeeee". I considered myself properly inspired, and as everyone knew, Rasalhague was just a space-Sweden that detached itself from the Combine yesterday afternoon. So with the same ease I changed my pre-locked decision on the motherland of this Shilone.

Therefore I painted the ASF bright red (VMA 71003 Red RLM23).

 

Funny thing, the belly had space for a sick amount of bomb racks!

Shiny metal

Next I painted the obvious bits with Gunmetal: the outermost wing bulbs to represent the lasers, three sets of engine nozzles and the LRM20 launcher's front plate just behind the cockpit's lower front window. Those inner front corners of the wings I left untouched at this point, to wait for a slightly brighter metallic such as steel or chrome even. If my memory served, these plates covered the sensor- and tracking equipment.

For a short while I thought if I should paint the full engine tube from the back of the fighter as metallic (re: Su-27) but I just felt it would make this setup too bright, somehow. With the same reasoning I left the corresponding engine bits red on the bottom too.