Class 1 priority override

This may sound like a weird and a boring post, but who cares? A project is a project, this just happens to be in 1:1 scale for a change :)

One day not too far in the past we (the Berry and me) decided that those 3.14kea class items of kitchen furniture (two chairs and a table) would work better if they had some colour on them instead of being boringly unpainted. After a while of pondering and whatiffing we went to a hardware store and bought some junk. Basecoat, paintbrushes, surface paint and such.

As the first step the surfaces were sanded clean to remove the inevitable traces of being used for 4.5 years. The next obvious step was basecoating. Doing things like real professionals, weren't we?

As a dude who's very used to acrylic paints these oil-based things were a pain in the donkey: cleaning up the tools, the smell and the 24-hour drying period... sigh. I guess it's not that bad, we luckily had enough space to have our dinners somewhere else during the project.

The local habit of having the furniture mostly white/black/unpainted disturbs us, especially the Berry, so we decided to go with more colour (especially as the kitchens, too, tend to be white-walled):

That green is perhaps a bit brighter than what we originally had in mind, but it works anyway. I even had to take a photo of the completed and ready-to-use set because the table happened to be empty. For a change :D

To the bit sauna aka a pointless filler post

I've had a quite a busy set of two weeks, so I haven't got much painting or building done. As a compensation I'll post some nerdy silliness, also known as Minecraft stuff. Yay!

At some point I built a sauna. Now that there are more than one type of trees, I even have a birch "vihta", whatever those things are called in english. This is what I call progress.

I had also built a wooden submarine and quite a bit later I wanted to make a lifesize type VII U-Boot. The first one is on the foreground and looks more like a type II C ("Vesikko" style) boat. The other one is correctly 67m long, 6m wide and 9m tall with the tower and all that. Inside that thing I built two "row 4" piston engines that make a funny "puf-puf--phahh-phahh"-sound.

That's all this time, maybe I get to post something more reasonable next week :)

New Lances started

This time I started with the easier Lance, easier in the sense that "I could maybe, potentially, perhaps... be able to freehand that logo. Badly.". Didn't have a go with the shield + swords -unit logo, maybe later. This time it was enough I tried to paint the Lyran fist. Not all of the miniatures had an excellent place for the logo, that's why that Zeus is standing differently from the others.

After collecting some courage I took a deep breath and started with a Draconis Combine logo to each left side of the foure Sword of Light 'Mech. Of course the Assassin didn't have enough space for me so I stamped the logo on its forehead.
Later I noticed that I had failed, the Sword of Light units don't use the standard Combine logo but their own, in this case the Golden Dragon. I'll fix it later. It's a pity, because those black ones worked a lot better than the golden ones (Vallejo's Old Gold) on the right sides of each... Oh well.

Maybe they'll be just fine for playing, anyway. Oh, and I forgot! I had attached the correct number of antennae to the 'Mechs that need them, according to Sarna's pictures.

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On Monday evening I started painting the next eight BattleMechs with a good pace, I got inspired somehow. I chose the unit for the Capellan Confederation's 'Mechs to be the awesomely named Death Commandos. It sounds even cornier in finnish :D Anyway, I had thought that a black 'Mech with green trimmings would be a nice change and their logo isn't too difficult to do - somehow.

The Federated Suns Lance ended up belonging to the 7th Crusis Lancers, because their scheme is different enough from the other schemes and as a super bonus: it doesn't look like the french flag, unlike the traditional FedSuns parade units such as the Davion Guards. I had enough of that divided pattern with the Lyran Guard and the Davion Guards would've been almost the same but with two added red stripes. Meh.

The project was started with a puff of Gray Primer, as usual. After that had dried on the minis I airbrushed a coat of Grey Black (I decided that it'll look nicer than pure black) on the Death Commandos and the Lancers got a coat of Panzergrün. Nice and easy, especially as both basecoats were of a single colour and were found in my stash as a Model Air variety, too.

After the basecoats had dried I wondered for a while how the DCommando tins looked and then painted a bunch of semirandom armor panels with Sick Green. While they were drying I turned my attention to the Lancers. They all got a similar treatment with Bloody Red but this time I kept in mind that a symmetrical amount of panels would be painted blue. As I complained earlier, the only blue I have is the Magic Blue, but luckily it fit the other colours nicely without any adjustments, like an Alpha Strike to the heads of my enemies!
Erm. Right.

When all eight were in their proper schemes, I went through all the metal joints and gun barrels with some Oily Steel. Obviously I let it dry and then washed the Death Commando 'Mechs with Badab Black and then changed to Devlan Mud to wash the Lancers. I just thought that the Panzergrün would get a bit too dull under a black wash.

Today the sun was shining so nicely when I got home so I took out the paints and mixed a new set of orange to paint the cockpit windows. According to my mental image that'd be a good colour and it'd work nicely with both schemes. When I got to paint the window panels of the Quickdraw, I noticed that I had accidentally painted them green already because I hadn't been able to tell them apart from the rest of the paneling.
These IS tin cans are a bit stupid in that sense, if you ask me. Or these miniatures just suck arse. I'd bet on the second option.

Here's todays status of the pieces, starting with the Death Commandos

Cyclops:

CP-10-Z (90 tons)

 Enforcer:

ENF-4R (50 tons)

Quickdraw:

QKD-4G (60 tons)

Trebuchet:

TBT-5N (50 tons)

And then the 7th Crusis Lancers

Commando:

COM-2D (25 tons)

Hermes:

HER-1S (30 tons)

Whitworth:

WTH-1 (40 tons)

Jagermech:

JM6-S (65 tons)

They're ugly as a a bunch of cave trolls, but they're mine. There'll be more to come!

Simple cockpits

The topic of this round, as the title tells you, is the cockpits. Or to be more exact, their viewports, but it's all essentially the same as far as the game is concerned.

All the windows of the DCMS tins got a layer of not-so-bright green to begin with but the paint was so runny because of earlier dilutions (or time) that it didn't really stick too well or noticeably. So I let it dry out of the way and then covered those same areas with some Sick Green. In the end I think it looks pretty neat even without any jeweling. You can tell where the viewports are and that's what I aimed for.

Being the next ones the Lyran machines needed some sort of a custom orange to be mixed up. All the others have the same shade except the Atlas that needed a bit redder one because of the white head. This was to give a bit more contrast between the eyes and the skull.

My favourite cockpit of this set of eight is the Zeus and Catapult being a close second. Rest of the 'Mechs have so simple and plain cockpits that there's nothing really special to be said of them. Mostly they're just rectangles.
On the next round I'll have a go with the rest of the details, especially logos. I may have to gather some courage to try freehanding the logos because I've never tried them, unlike the Jade Falcon logos that I've painted many times already... If these end up being even half-recognizeable, I'll call them a success.

Those bases will be the last ones to be done. Maybe I'll even do all of them at the same time instead of four or eight at a time.

Working on the first two Lances

This week (read: two evenings) has been pretty efficient. Naturally I started by priming the miniatures. At least that Model Air Gray Primer smells a lot less than a sprayable primer. In fact, it doesn't smell. That's a victory in my books.

I attacked my DCMS Lance with great eagerness. Naturally it was a good idea to check at this point if I had any decent red paint in my storage... There were three shades of red, I decided that two would be just fine. As the bottom layer I applied a coat of Game Color -series Gory Red on all four 'Mechs. I thought that they looked a lot better at that point already.

While the red paint was drying on the surfaces of my DCMS tin cans, I went for the Lyran Alliance 'Mechs. Years ago I had bought some Citadel's blue paint for my friend's Ghost Bears and a lot later I had bought some Vallejo's Game Color - Magic Blue that was supposedly the same shade and I thought that's just what I need for my Lyrans. I started with the Right Leg so that I left some space for the white stripe that I'd paint a bit later. The space was chosen so that each leg was about 50/50 white and blue, vertically. After I had finished the last one I took a short break and painted Dead White over the remaining surfaces + Atlas' head.

At this point I returned back to the Combine 'Mechs and washed them all with Badab Black. This way I got the surface details brought out. Maybe that can be seen in that photo, but not necessarily too well because cell phone photos in a suboptimal light... they're just grainy to begin with, as everyone knows.

While I was at it, I repeated the procedure with the blue-white 'Mechs. After considering my approach for a moment I decided to wash the white surfaces as well, even though I had planned on not doing that. Maybe this is better, this way the deeper recesses got their details brought out and the whole area ended up looking less flat.

At this point I think I just called it a day and continued the next day. The first step of said next day was to highlight the joints and other random parts with a bit of Vallejo's Oily Steel. I hadn't done it before applying the black wash for a reason.
The problem with washing is that it, surprise surprise, darkens the painted surface unless you apply it to the recesses and cracks only. So I picked up a Game Color series Bloody Red and drybrushed all the dark red areas of the DCMS miniatures. This way all the panels got a lighter colour and generally a not-so-flat surface. I haven't worked much with red surfaces (I think the only red thing I've painted is an ancient Blood Angels Dreadnought), my red usage has been just for details. Below are some pics first with just the metal highlights and then with red drybrushing. First one in line is...

Catapult:

CPLT-C1 (65 tons)

Jenner:

JR7-D (35 tons)

Assassin:

ASN-21 (40 tons)

Dragon:

DRG-1N (60 tons)

Obviously the metal highlighting was an identical process for the Lyran 'Mechs but because that blue is the only blue paint I have, just like with white, I just drybrushed those to undo some of the darkening effects of the Badab Black wash. Especially the white parts look a lot better.

Banshee:

BNC-3E (95 tons)

Awesome:

AWS-8Q (80 tons)

Zeus:

ZEU-6S (80 tons)

Atlas:

AS7-D (100 tons)

After all this was done I returned to the metal parts and applied some Devlan Mud on them. There's not much to say about this simple step but I at least took photos of the Catapult, Assassin and Dragon. At least they were somehow photographable at this point.

So the next round will consist of painting the viewports of the cockpits. All these red DCMS units will get some sort of green on them. The blue-whites will get an orange effect on them if I manage to mix up a good one. Somehow I don't think I dare to try any sort of jeweling at this point...

Not so fine-tuning

I'm sorry but I forgot to take proper work-in-progress pics of my moddings because I got so excited while hacking around. So I'll try to explain things without all the images I wanted to show.

To begin with I started with the Cyclops because I thought it's going to have the easiest modification I had preplanned. And it's a new unit for me because I've only built Clan OmniMechs so far, these freeborn tin cans have only been around in the games, novels and as the cardboard stand-ins in our BT sessions. So here it goes:

As the first step I started to look for the AC/20 that was supposed to be molded somewhere. Then I checked what the wiki and a bunch of pictures say about its location. After learning what I wanted, I chopped off some kind of a random lump off the Right Torso and wondered what sort of a tube I'd install there. In the end I chose a piece of a Tops stick: I cut a short piece off and cut a nice ~45º degree slope in the rear end of said piece. Then I tried if it sits in nicely and glued it.

That was quick and easy, next one was going to be a bit more complicated.

As I had started replacing the AutoCannon barrels, the next target was obviously the Atlas. Whatever those things on top of its hips were, I chopped them away for they were horrendous. To describe the quality I tell this: I couldn't tell which of the turds was a laser and which one an AutoCannon... My three-year old memory of my Model Expo diorama told me that the AC belongs on the Right Torso but the reference pictures I checked said it's on the Left Torso. Somehow I decided to put in on the left side.
Because I had already decided that this gun is going to be Big, I cut a nice piece of that copper pipe that I bought this spring from the Model Expo. It's diameter is 5mm IIRC. While I was pondering on the location and testing how it fits, I also noticed that yeah, this model is anorectic and that looks bad. I rolled a chunk of Greenstuff to make a new Center Torso for the Atlas and I even scraped the panel lines on that thing. In a couple of minutes from a starving skinny person from a KZ to a middle-aged beer-bellied geezer. Not bad.

While I was at it, I rolled the already mixed surplus Greenstuff into some sort of filler between the new AC barrel and the torso. Sculpting is so nyt my thing.
After pondering for a while, I decided that the laser gun barrel on the other side torso was to be made of something else than that Tops pipe. Somehow I came up with the thought of using a piece of a sprue. I cut a piece of one and carved a hole in the end to make it look more like a gun of sorts. Maybe it's good enough after some painting.

At this point the whole pose of the miniature bothered me quite a bit. Even with the replacement parts something just didn't look right. It looked somehow submissive. To fix that I cut the Right Arm off, attached pins and reattached the arm at an angle, so it looks a bit less static and boring.

After these two monsters I started working on one of the main things I wanted and needed to do. Catapult's LRM launcher doors. To build them I cut two small sheets of thin styrene and tried to make them match the shapes of the launchers. That match is somewhat far-fetched but maybe it looks decent enough after the painting.
For some obscene reason the plastic used in this miniatures is weird and it doesn't play well with anything else, including that styrene and glue. Oh, I did think that it worked until I made the mistake of poking one of the doors. They didn't stick after all.
As I'm a cruel and evil person, I lit a tea candle and warmed the upper edges of the LRM launchers a bit. They softened up enough for me to just press the new doors in place.

While that candle was still lit I used it to clean up all the random crap in the minis I had prepared. With "random crap" I mean those annoying random flaps of plastic that just don't want to go away with an xacto or a file. So melting them away worked.

In general I have to complain: that plastic is something incomprehensible. I have never, ever crossed my path with anything that bad. My (rather extensive) collection of swearwords is not even nearly enough to describe it.
And I haven't even started painting on that stuff...

Here's a group pic of the miniatures that are more or less ready for painting. Most of them didn't need anything more than regluing a loose limb, head or so. And getting rid of those enfuriating mold lines. Many of them, if not all, need an antenna or a couple. For those I need to consult images and all that, I didn't want to do that just by guessing. That's not a big deal anyway and it won't take long to do, whenever I get to start.

I don't think it makes any sense to start painting individual 'Mechs but a Lance at a time. In that picture I have arranged the minis so that there's a column for a faction and as you can see, two of those columns have all four BattleMechs in place. Those are the ones to be painted first.

The Lance on the left side is going to be painted in one of the DCMS patterns, mostly a red one because that's how the Combine is easily recognized. With this in mind I'm most likely going to choose one of the Sword of Light units or any of the Legions of Vega (those are commonly red-gray). Because the SoL's unit logo is the same as the logo of Draconis Combine, just with a different coloured dragon, it'd be easy if I manage to freehand the DC logo to begin with. That sword-wielding rat of LoV units would be a bit much for a guy like me who can't draw at all ;)

The other Lance is earmarked to the Lyran Alliance and so far I don't have a good clue of what to do with them. Those chaps at Tharkad like blue and that's just about all I know about Lyrans and their colour schemes.... I guess that those Lyran Guards RCTs are the most recognizable with their blue-white parade schemes. Those also seem to have unit logos designed, unlike most of the other Lyran units seem to be.

Whatever happens, at least I get to try a bunch of new paint schemes.