Project II/25

More Points for Jade Falcons

After a long stint with the diorama, I wanted something simpler to spice up my life, so I checked my Operation:REVIVAL minis. I only had about two Binaries unpainted so I took the most fitting ones for the 9th Falcon Talon Cluster, and the remaining, less prominent Points would become some enemy troops or other.

Every once in a while the enginerd inspiration struck and I improved my BattleTechTracker, which I originally set up just to get rid of my A4 paper with the Point numbers and have something more updateable. As you might imagine, that got out of hand quickly and repeatedly. While writing this post, my setup had 8 sheets of which was dedicated to following the state of the 9th Talon Cluster: there was the overall painting status based on the completed minis; the positions of individual Points in the org with their variants, numbers and weight classes; and a table for the weight distribution through the Cluster. This one made me drop almost a Binaryful of 'Mechs from my original setup, which included a pair of Cougars and Fire Moths each, for example.

 

I wasn't staring at tables when I picked which minis to paint, no worries. From the Clan Heavy Battle Star box I got a Turkina and an Ebon Jaguar, and from the Clan Fire Star box I took only the Warhawk.

Partially primed init();

During some evenings last Autumn I had primed a Binary of miniatures, the other Binary or the last two untouched boxes were still waiting. So this project started with 33,333...% of the initialization already done out of the way.

Like I said, the Warhawk had been primed several months ago, mostly likely while waiting for some other paintjob to dry.

Finished: Project I/25

Schweres Wurfgerät 41 im Vorfrühling - diorama

When I started on this model I mentioned that I got it as one of my farewell gifts when I last changed my job. A couple of cups of water had flown through river Vantaa since that, but the model was now done with the extra stuff brought by delusions of grandeur.

At a first glance the model was simple: a wooden frame, five guys, four rockets and their crates. It took a silly amount of time, not only because of the PE but also the unplanned scene base for the diorama. I had to admit it was much more impressive this way than as random pieces laid on a flat surface.

Photos

Below was, again, a couple of so-called better photos, or at least they were taken with an actual camera and edited more than just cropped. My white background caused some funny glitches with the snow and the winter uniforms when tweaking them in Krita.

What I intended to be a subtle little detail, the "rocket-scorched-earth" effect pleased me greatly, I was astonishingly happy with it in the end. It had taken a good few iterations, so it ought to have become at least acceptable.

 

Someone may have noticed that there were some unexpected differences between these and the last ones from last week. A funny thing happened after I had put the finished diorama into the kit's box and set the lid on carefully before leaving the box on a table.

One or both of our cats had done what cats do, running over the box and the three victims were the boss guy and the carriers. Two heads and three arms snapped off. I swore and fixed the bits, then set the Pacckiste onto the hands, but it didn't find as good a place as before.

Launcher weathering

Vallejo effects

Weathering was quite a wide term in this case, when the goal was to cover the diorama base with who knew what, and to get it to look like anything but a piece of styrofoam. Luckily I had a few products handy, so I didn't have to rely on just one type of goo.

These'd be a good start. The largest and newest jar (Vallejo DFX 26811 Brown Mud) was maybe predictably the one I'd use to cover most of the terrain. That'd be accompanied with european mud (VWE 73807) and maybe some of the mud and grass (VWE 73826). Finally I'd add use some snow (VWE 73820) to produce something like the end of Winter or early Spring.

All on brown mud

My first mud layer was pretty quickly spread on the terrain. I then added some euromud into the adjuster guy's lower right corner to make it a bit different in general. To the edges of the bumps I added some mud and grass, as far as it was spreadable.

Now was the moment to glue the wooden launcher rack into place. I used white glue as I didn't want to melt the XPS foam with the plastic glue at this point in the process.

Let it snow, let it snow

I gave the snow stuff a go and it behaved surprisingly well. The trial lumps were just tiny dollops, due to my worrying with a completely new product.

Earlier in life I had taken some reference photos of melting snow, just in case I needed them. The tiny mounds here had more vegetation in than what I was going for.

Another muddy layer

To make my terrain a bit more elevationally varied I add some more brown mud in various places. Over that I built more remains of melting snow banks, especially to the raised corner. That corner didn't feel right being both raised and also covered in runny-looking mud.

My second idea here was that where the launcher rack was, and especially right behind it, would be pretty much clear of snow, and more blown clear by the fiery jets of the rocket engines. I had no real life experience or self-witnessed memories of how any sort of a recoilless rifle or any rocket weapon's backblast area looked like. And I had not really paid that much attention of how the front side of the shield line of an artillery battery looked like after some rounds in the winter. So, like so much of my hobbying, it was done based on an unscientific gut feeling.

So far I had kept the black mud (VWE 73812) off my palette, because it was so strong in colour compared to the different browns. The fireblasting made me have a change of heart and I did use it, thinned and especially where I imagined the backblast to scorch the nature.

 

Detailing without mud

This made the muddy goo look pretty done to me. It wasn't all done yet, of course, I wanted some muddy puddles especially behind the launcher. While waiting for that to be done I superglued three tufts of grass (NOCH 07132 Grasbüschel Herbst) that had somehow remained half-alive from the Autumn. They'd give some tonal variety to this brownness.

That also gave me an idea how to improve the tinkerer's corner. I painted the straighter parts as rocks using cold grey (VGA 72750) and drybrushing them with stonewall grey (VGA 72750). Now this felt more reasonable, visually.

Adding some granite

The next day I realized that just grey stones were a bit boring if good addition. I took some more cold grey and mixed in some red and yellow ochre. This mix I tested into the first photo's lower left corner's rocklike piece and it felt good. Then I continued to another grey bit that I turned into a piece of granite. After a few corners and shades of grey-red I was content and stopped painting.

Mud puddles and meltflow

For the nasty mud puddles I mixed a bit of Dirt (VMA 71133) into gloss varnish (V 70510). With that I made a couple of puddles. When they flashed, we'd see how this worked in my terrain.

After doing the puddles I used some plain gloss varnish and added that along all the edges of the melting snow piles. The point of this was to emphasize the idea of the snow melting away, and that this patch of terrain was simply a disgusting place to walk in.

Crew

Painting the five-head crew of Germans got started by oil washing their camo coats and exposed skin with brown (ABT080 Brown Wash). My idea was to highlight especially the seams of the coats, and to make them a bit less pale. I was a bit concerned of how this'd work with the snow pants, so I didn't at least start with them. Being full white they would definitely benefit from their few highlights (or in this case the opposite) getting a bit of attention.

After some time I made some very thin Sepia wash (ABT002) and attacked the snow sides of the winter gear. When the paint had sat in for a bit, I cleaned up most of the paint while leaving the knees a bit dirtier than the rest. Those things could not remain pure white in the field, even if the weather was good.

These photos were taken immediately, so the guys needed a day or two to set. I didn't expect the difference to be enormous enough to take separate photos later on.

Mr A

This guy who was tinkering with the fuzes of the warheads was clearly someone who had crappier pant knees. Sadly there was nothing I could've put in his hands.

 

Mr B

One of the ammo carriers had remained relatively clean.

Mr C

This guy who had taken the heavier end of the Packkiste had also crawled more in mud than his buddy.

 

Mr D

The tinkerer's expression was a bit sad. Maybe his snow pants were already wet and cold.

Mr E

Sir team leader sir was clearly an old school superior who didn't waste time on the ground. His left boot showed how I had tried to use him as a footprint maker on mud and snow. That hadn't worked as I had hoped, but on his boot the snow looked good.

Attaching the loose pieces

Now, many evenings later, I was deep enough in the project that I could start gluing these guys onto the terrain. The big boss was the first one to go, being the one stanging alone on that side. Next one was the tinkerer on the opposite side of the launcher. Third one getting set was the kneeling dude, after which I did some figure-assisted measuring and glued the guy with the lighter end, because he had the worse ground options.

When these supergluings had been setting for a while I glued the last guy in while also playing with the Packkiste and its position. I never got the hands and the frame aligned perfectly, so I had them now as they ended up. Looking close up this made little sense, but from a distance it worked.

I also glued the final, empty Pacckiste, and the free-rolling 280mm HE rocket on the opposite side of the fuze-setter. There was a bit of an element of danger for someone falling, luckily there was no banana peel on the ground.

This was just about done now. I left the superglue to flash before going for the last touchups.

The final mud/snow tweaks

I devoted the melting snow piles some more attention. A few got more mass from fresh lumps, and a couple of others I expanded a bit. Those shoes that were next to snow piles, got some snow applied on them to make them fit in better.

Using the same idea I applied some brown mud by almost everyone's feet and on many boots, as far as they stood next to this stuff. Mostly the guys had crowded behind the rocket launcher, which was somehow dominated by the darker mud, so I used plain black mud to include them. I also used some black mud to reinforce the rocket-scorched look here and there. A few knees also got some mud on them to make it so very clear that this was a nasty place and time.

 

These latest photos showed the freshly modified parts more shiny than what they'd be after a bit of time. I also used some satin varnish on the exposed skin of all five crewmembers, just like I did with the ancient submarine captain.

While on the varnishes I was thinking if the helmets ought to be satin-varnished as well, being made of stell and all, but I let them be. Just like I had thought of whitewashing a helmet or two some dozens of hours earlier. Sometimes one had to know when to stop :)

Launcher terrain base

A diorama idea

Now I had the launcher and five guys around it, what was I going to actually do with them? Just having them scattered around didn't sound like any sort of a solution. That made me think if I ought to make some kind of an imitation of map topography with pieces of styrene sheet, but that sounded pretty risky considering the expected squareness/rectangleness of the base itself.

I thought I had seen a piece of Finnfoam (XPS foam) left from my 2011's Imperial Incom T-65 prototype and its asteroid base. The leftover piece, if I still had it, would be stupidly shaped but might provide a solution.

The baseplate

Surprise of all surprises, I had it stored, and it was larger than what I needed. For an initial idea I dropped the dudes into firing position and marked the overall area with a pencil and a ruler.

Of course I didn't own anything that was perfect or even good for cutting this (or any other) thickness of XPS foam, and I surely wasn't going to start sawing it apart. I cut the thing with my well-used xacto knife instead. The result wasn't beautiful.

Ground shaping

The first step into locking my scene started with a 90° counterclockwise rotation of the launcher rack, in comparison to how it was in the previous photo. I drew a deep line along the front plank, and opened the foamboard a bit by twiggling the end of the ruler in it. Then I set the front edge in place, and marked the rear leg's place the same way and repeated the ruler-widening. The launcher sat nicely in place, so one potential crisis was nicely averted.

 

My groundforming started with shallow slices cut off from behind the launcher. Being limited with imagination I ended up making pretty much an arc, which I then tried to deform by chopping a radial groove into one part.

I also, obviously, tested out my space by plopping the guys in place with rockets and all. To counter the shallow decline on one side I drew a shape for a tiny bump on the opposite corner, which ended up looking like a nicely aligned arc. Exactly against what I should've done. At this point I was thinking if I wanted to turn this into a road of some sort, or even a cobblestone plaza. Especially that kind of a semiurban space didn't match my idea of where these were used in 1941, so they were going to be in the countryside with their howling cow.

A bit pointlessly I marked the things, and without any thinking in the same way we planned our Doom wads back in the day. These didn't stay visible for long, I just tried it out while I was poking around anyway.

To get my bump started I covered the corner with white glue and laid my random pieces to somehow fill the area.

For a moment I had a small rock in there, the same I used to press some random shapes all around the sheet. In case the Project Assistants weren't in the habit of saving cool-looking rocks for an army, I'd used a balled-up piece of kitchen foil instead for the shaping.

Preparing the surface

While my glue was curing I used the rest of my Mr White putty, and spread it along the outer edges and then also the upper surface. I let the white glue -covered surfaces to wait for the next day and an application of the new Tamiya Putty (Basic Type) I got some months ago.

At this point my plan was to cover this all with putty so I wouldn't maybe need to panic using oil paints to tweak the ground style. Abteilung's mud and industrial earth sounded like great names for this theme.

Puttying the final corner was its own operation, I applied excess lumps to places that looked like they would benefit from extra coverage or less sharp angles. Of course I could still later on cover the surface with thinned down white glue and sprinkle ballast on it to break the remaining flatness.

This intermediate result of two different putties looked a bit funny, but I decided not to get stuck on that but would prime it all and then see how to proceed. Somehow it felt like staring at it wasn't going to help at all, but to make it even weirder.

Of course I had to dry-fit my bits again, with the assumption of getting some inspiration or a mental guideline. It looked much better now than a few days earlier.

With all the equipment I started thinking that the adjuster guy, who would be standing on the bump, could be standing on some disgusting and sloppy mud. The others could have a bit more dry, sandier ground. Perhaps I could even give a shot to the Vallejo snow effect as long as it wasn't dried up in its bottle/jar.

Side plates and more surface texturing

I managed to get annoyed with the sides of my Finnfoam pieces and that led to a decision of wasting some time in making side plates. To get them done I cut proper chunks off my thinnest styrene sheets, only one of them ended a bit short. These I glued onto the sides with white glue.

Straight plastic and not-straight edge required some gap-filling. Being lazy I taped the open edges with Tamiya's masking tape and used a number of days to slowly fill this up with white glue. After a couple of runs I trusted the solidity and cut the upper edges of the styrene sheets to follow the contours of the terrain. Based on these lines I resumed my silly filling operation.

Finally I used glue around the terrain and sprinkled ballast for texture. I didn't cover all of the ground as I was going to use some weathering mud to get variety onto the earth. Later we'd see if this made any sense in reality.

When I was happy, or at least content enough, I tore my tape off and glued pieces of L profile onto the corners to hide some of my crims. Luckily I had two sizes of that profile, as the smaller one I had thought of using was a bit too short.

 

This was an unplanned improvement. Now I could paint again.

Repainting

For the best coverage I airbrushed the bare side plates and all the ballast-covered parts with Vallejo's black primer. To get a bit of a lighter tone for the ground I mixed some sand yellow (VMA 71028) into the black and dusted it around.

For some reason I didn't want to leave the sides flat black. Maybe I thought it was too harsh, even though it was a perfectly reasonable way to separate the frame from the content. Still, I painted the edges and corner reinforcements with black grey (VMA 71056).

I drybrushed all the ballast-covered surfaces and the harder edges of my terrain, using a shade brighter colour from the one I airbrushed some moments ago. The difference wasn't huge, but I wasn't looking for a dramatic look. This quick dry-fit made it look like the guys were on a lava field. I expected the upcoming mud and snow to help a bit.