The end is near! Again!

Over a couple of evenings I've been superefficient and that means these gaming pieces are getting done. At long last. I mean, I have complained about the offensively bad quality of the material...

But I should get to the point already. The Kell Hound 'Mechs got a bit of grey highlighting on their black surfaces and obviously a bit more of that red on the red ones. I tried to achieve some sort of "line highlighting" effect but as it was the first time, it didn't end up being anything awesome. To make something look better easily I applied a light coat of my ancient Citadel Yellow Glaze on all the cockpit viewports to give them a shiny surface - the yellow pigment doesn't really alter the orange/green parts noticeably. They look better and less like odd splotches of colour. So I did this to all the minis of the set while I was at it.

While I was happily detailing the ComGuards 'Mechs, I went through all the important panel lines with Badab Black to bring back the panel line where I had made a mess with the grey and white. This made them look quite a lot nicer, especially Cicada's cupola looks neat. I had to check Sarna.net's wiki where I should apply antennas (and how many) on the 'Mechs that hadn't got theirs yet. Then I applied those, playing time because I was somewhat concerned of the looming logo-painting.

No matter what I did, I knew that the logos were to be painted at some point. As the first step I just fixed the Draconis Combine BattleMechs: the Combine logos were to be converted to the Golden Dragon logos, and I did that to the best of my ability. Next ones up were the Kell Hounds with their simple triangle logo with the dog's head. Another triangle-based logo was to be painted on the Death Commandos, so they got theirs next. I just couldn't try to paint that skull the way it's presented in Camospecs, so I did something. Not that one could see many details in these tiny miniatures anyway.

The sunburst of the Federated Suns was done by first making a small red ring on each of the four 'Mechs and later making a weird, yellow, star-like splotch on that red dot. The sword's blade was made with two gray stripes and its handle with a bit of black. A couple of them may actually look half-decent or tolerable, even. Crusis Lancer's logo is just a yellow box with black and grey stripes going through it, so that being recognizeable on these things is maybe a bit of a stretch. That's not an exciting logo to begin with, though.

Lyran Guards' regimental logo was somewhat painful because of the shield. The purplish paint I mixed dried too dark, but that's how it sometimes goes. Maybe those crossed swords make it more recognizeable?
As the last ones on the list, the ComGuards tin cans needed their insignia. I got wiser from my previous attempt ("Pesterers") and I didn't even dream of painting the 3rd Army's hooded falcon on a black gauntlet. Instead I painted black rectangles, a blue dot in each and then the two-pronged star's tail. Not too happy with those things, either.

In this scale and especially with the lighter 'Mechs most the logos didn't get too much space, so recognizing them is challenging. The viewer needs to use some (=plenty) goodwill ;) The main thing is that I know that they're there, even if no one pays a picosecond of attention to them.

The ultimate step for this post were the bases. I painted them brown. Next I'll apply sand and maybe some flocking on them. Maybe I could even try to set up a gravel road somewhere, even? I'll find out when I get there. These pieces won't be for display or anything, they're for playing, so I can experiment with them pretty freely.

All in all I guess there's a load of tiny stuff that's still missing (in addition to the bases), mostly the ACs, lasers and PPCs need something to tell which's what and where. While painting the Jade Falcon OmniMechs I've painted the LRM and SRM tips slightly differently: LRM's are completely red and the SRMs are likewise red but they've got white caps (I should upload pics of them, too). As you can see below, the SRM-6 launcher of the Commando is the only one in the set that's not just a tiny half-clogged hole. Maybe it looks better with the missile heads painted and not just drilled open. I just pondered for a while if it made any sense to take the Jade Falcon - approach or if that just makes them a mess. I decided not to try.

Full speed ahead again

Now that I got the homestuff done, I had the time (and space) for the real deal. Those Death Commandos I painted earlier were bugging me. Something in them eluded the eye, in a bothersome way. So after a small amount of googlage I decided that the black parts need highlighting to take the dullness away. Semiconfidently I drybrushed the upper parts of whichever bodypart I deemed to be "in the light" with some gray. My plan was to highlight those parts that get some sunlight from a sun that's more or less in zenith.
What I didn't grasp (because I forgot) was that the sun doesn't shine with a tiny spotlight like my worklamp does, instead it provides more like a "circlestrafing" effect, a broader light. So the effect I got on the 'Mechs is maybe too "tight". I'll fix what needs fixing, if it looks a bit too dull.

The last two Lances were going to be the next ones I worked with, so that I'd finally have the pieces in a good recognizable form. Missing logos and the final details weren't that important to me. First of these last eight IS BattleMechs were going to be assigned to the infinite sea of BattleTech Mercenaries. Maybe my choice was a bit clichéd, but they ended up being Kell Hounds. The other option that considered really strongly was the Gray Death Legion but I thought that the KHs would be a bit more recognizable.
At this point I just divided the basic red-black pattern somehow. A couple of those tiny 'Mechs caused a bit of head scratching because I wasn't sure of how to share the colours. Here's the Red Gore + Black -combination:

Spider

Clint

Panther

Hunchback

Now the last Lance could've gone to just about any remaining IS faction, but as they had their important impact in the Big Story so far (I'm reading about the beginning of the FedCom Civil War now), I decided that ComStar should get a Lanceful of ComGuards at its disposal. At least I got some extra practice in "painting white".

On the base there's the Grey Primer, on top of that I liberally applied some Cold Grey and later applied a good amount of Stonewall Grey (with the same idea than with the aforementioned Death Commandos, but done better). As the final touch I, obviously, half-drybrushed the topsides with plain white so that the shadows still stay darker, but with a hint of white on them anyway.
I think it ended up looking decent, though the panel lines most likely need some fine tuning.

Cicada

Commando

Dervish

Grasshopper

Next step's going to be, if schedules and everything else allows: windows for the ComGuards (green?) and then metallic surfaces, washes, highlights and windows for the Kell Hounds. Depending on the mood I may return to the highlights of the Death Commandos, but we'll see about that when the time comes. I'm not going to run out of stuff to do in any case.

Oh, and there are those two OmniMechs lurking in the shadows...

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.

---

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...