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25.7.12

Diorama: Pesterers

Idea

Years ago I got an awesome idea (at least I thought it was awesome) when I had started fooling around with BT miniatures. In all its simplicity the idea was this: an Atlas being swarmed by Elementals. Being a fanatic Clanner it was pretty obvious how the idea got worked on, nor did I need a lot of time to ponder who the combatants would be.

Participants and the field of battle

The Clan of my choice was naturally Jade Falcon and the Cluster the 3rd Falcon Talon - the same I chose for my Clusterful of miniatures. As the victim I accepted ComStar's Com Guards and that led me easily and funnily the cursed Battle of Tukayyid. Based on the story I decided that the Com Guards Third Army - whose units I painted in my Introbox project all these years later- would be the perfect fit in my diorama. The paint scheme of the 3rd Falcon Talon Cluster was very familiar already because I'd chosen it years ago and painted a few Stars in it.

Building

The first phase was assembling the Atlas in a comfy and neat-looking position. For some already forgotten reason one of the details of my plan was that Atlas would have something in its hand for some Elemental swatting. Atlas itself wasn't problematic at all after I got the slightly wobbly hip section cured. I left the hands (those that require the Hand Actuators) last so that I'd get the tree trunk into a good position.

Before I started painting the 'Mech I grabbed a set of plies, a drill and other useful things. With those I dug a couple of holes and dents in selected spots in the structure, where I wanted to see what my five one-ton Elementals had caused damage on the one hundred ton BattleMech.

Atlas

There's not much uncertain about the paint scheme of ComStar's units. Anyhow, I started basecoating the whole thing black, then applying layers of increasingly lighter grays on it, leaving crevices and such darker, while finishing with a light white layer. All sorts of gun and missile ports I darkened a bit while applying some brown on the legs for weathering purposes. Those damaged areas I did pretty simply: first I liberally applied largish black stains over the general areas and then painting the dented / punctured armor parts themselves with a silvery metal paint. That's not the prettiest of ways but it was the best idea I had at that point.
I also tried to do some jeweling for the first time on the eyes. The idea was to make the eyes glowing green from dark to light. Surprise of all surprises: my first attempt at jeweling didn't quite go like in the tutorial. Not that anyone claimed it was going to be easy, anyway.

In one of my moments of insanity I decided that I need to paint the insignia by hand (as usual). On the left shoulder I doodled something like the ComStar's insignia. Maybe, maybe with some good intentions and if you know what you're supposed to see there you can tell it's the ComStar's star. But if you don't? No, not really. On the box on the right hip I tried to paint the insignia of the Third Army: a perching falcon.
Yeah, right. Representational art is definitely not my cup of tea.

Trickery

The tree trunk I made nicely from a piece of plastic tube, from one of those cotton swabs. Those things are damn hand, I say, for I've built a number of gun barrels out of those! With a few lumps of white glue and some filing combined with some splotchy painting I finished with something that reminds one of a tree trunk. Let's say it's a pine so there's no reason to worry about the nonexisting branches.

One funny idea that just occurred to me while assembling the whole thing was that "what if one of the Elementals was shooting at the Atlas in the leg with its Small Laser?" I drilled a tiny hole into the right arm of one of them and glued a short straight piece of a paper clip in. Later I painted the metal red and had another go at slight jeweling by lightening that red with white as far as I dared without going into pink. Somehow I didn't want to have a pink hello kitty laser beam in my piece of manly art :p Finally I attached a piece of torn cotton to the end of the beam and dirtified that a bit with black and gray. Just to make it look like it was hitting something.

The Elemental swarm

Like all the other Elementals I've painted these ones were members of the 3rd Falcon Talon Cluster: first the whole suit was painted green. Then I applied something camo-like with gray. On top of that went some drybrushing with lighter gray. The visors got a bit of glossy black (could've been my already dried up Citadel's Black Ink) and the SRM launchers got normal black on the ports. Each Elemental got a stripe of Vallejo's Jade Green for trimming on the front edge of their SRM launchers, as the 3rd Talon does. The Point Commander got a mohawk-like stripe on his/her helmet, so one could find the main Elemental from the chaos.

When these guys were done, I glued them around the Atlas in random but in my opinion proper-looking places. One's climbing up the rear leg, one is just about to do something mean to the backpack, the third's working out around the right biceps and the fourth is at the neck with mean intentions. So, in the end the Point Commander ended up being the one kneecapping the enemy before joining the swarming attack.

The baseplate

Being a cheap guy I tried to build a gameplay piece and glued the Atlas on a hex base. For my diorama I dug out a round baseplate that I had got from a random WH40k piece. On that round slab I tried to set up some sort of a terrain shape with putty and what have you. I left an opening for my hex base so I could attach and detach my Atlas from the base for gaming purposes.
Of course I realised later that it wouldn't be a good idea because of the swarming Elementals. In addition that kneecap-lasering Elemental would've always caused problems during the operation. So, in the end this one ended up being a permanently unplayable piece of art, which wasn't a problem anyway, because it was somehow to be expected. I just tried to circumvent that.
My terrain ended up being like I always do them: a sand base, some random greenery here and there and this one also got a puddle / wet ground (Vallejo's Still Water). That's pretty easy to do and in my opinion it works just fine.






I like it.

18.7.12

Fogging around

From the deep archives

Years ago I spent a good while searching for a nice 1:35 scale model of a Nebelwerfer, finally I found one by accident while ordering something else (could have been a 1:35 Soviet D-30) from Combat Models. Obviously I couldn't turn that one down so I ordered that too. Sadly at that point in history I didn't take any work in progress photos, I only took "this is how it ended up" photos to bother people I know.

edit: I found a photo of the box, updated 23.9.2013

Thoughts

Weathering the barrels worked awesomely, I thought back then and I still like the effect. At least I was pretty proud of them, when I had the model finished. Somehow I got the idea of using some random thread to make the cable/wire for the launcher, I believe it worked pretty decently. Especially when you put the launcher in the hands of a 88FlaK36 gunner.

At that time (2001) I used enamel paints and just about nonexistent tools. I also didn't have many completed models under my belt, either. This Nebelwerfer was something like the third, fourth model in the 1:35 scale, as I had started with Revell's 1:72 tanks.




12.7.12

Vacationnnrgh

As my sudden three-week vacation started without a warning, it took me another week to realize that I don't have all the time for my hobbies. Sleeping is much more fun. So my tank destroyer has to be drydocked for a few weeks, waiting for its arrival to the next painting phase in my small and inefficient model factory.

As a filler replacement I offer random Minecraft-related stuff I waste time on every once in a while. Several weeks ago I got interested in testing the mods (TMI, Redpower, IC and BC) and the result of that is (or will be) a fortified village with a Command Contol Bunker underneath it. With a bunch of levers you get to turn on and off things like the village main power, street lights and what have you - the buildings will have their own light switches that depend on the main power line, obviously. That may sound a bit boring but it's quite a lot of fun to build.And occasional 'crafting doesn't take long and it doesn't require fooling around with paints and very unpredictable timeframes :)

The better houses and the market

Poor houses, shooting range and the library corner
Maybe I could dig a long tunnel and build an underground train from the bunker to my awesome ICBM silo...

28.6.12

Insignia time

The time of Balkenkreuz

Yep. I've been pretty busy last weeks. Despite that I sat down with my paints and did a bunch of Balkenkreuz on the model. One on each side and doubles to the rear side. And as my habit is, I did all by hand. This time I painted them relatively small, just for variety.

Running out of playtime

I'm afraid I can't keep fooling around and wasting time, soon I must attack the remaining pieces. The build order is just something I need to take care of first, so nothing gets ruined or ends up needing a bunch of repainting.
Most likely I end up making the wrong choice, but that's how it sometimes goes.

20.6.12

Steel paws of the steel kitty

Simple and short posts have been trending lately, I've noticed. This time I've painted the rims of the road wheels and attached all the wheels - excluding those obviously missing drive sprockets. Next up: random tools and the winter camo.


This has to be the record-breaking shortest message in my history...

13.6.12

A fancy camo job

Kicking my own arse

So I decided to get myself (and my act) together and started painting this bugger for real. The priming didn't really need much more, for it was mostly done. Which was pretty nice at this point in the project...

A hastily taken photo of the primed model

A simple and easy plan

I figured that  a simple approach would be the best one. Supposedly. In any case, unlike with my earlier german devices I thought that I'd apply the paints in a bit different order this time. Somehow that "start with Dunkelgelb and then go with the rest" approach didn't feel as nice as the previous project's "green goes first and the rest follow later".

Maybe the different painting order was better or perhaps I had actually learned something at some point. Or maybe the Lifecolor paints were better. There was only one way to find out!

From the pot to the jar to the tank

Round one

Vallejo's Verde Panzer got the greatest of honours and ended up being the basecoat. At some point in history I had diluted the paint a bit too much and the result was a bit thin. But that was fixed by applying a bunch of layers, so nothing was lost except a bit of time.

The green experience

Round two

Somehow it felt natural to apply the brown (Vallejo's Marron Panzer) stripes and lines next. They'd be a handy general pattern-definer to begin with. Then I'd paint the rest of the stripes in the third colour to break the form a bit more strongly.

It actually looks fun this way, too

Round three

As the obvious finale I filled the paint jar with Dunkelgelb that the chums at Vallejo call Amarillo Panzer for some odd reason. This paint caused some confusion because the airbrush occasionally spat half-dried lumps of paint out... Damnit.
The end result wasn't going to win any awards, but it's all my own fault. Big parts of what I painted seem to be at their best in the rear half of the tank and oddest in the front - no matter which model I'm working on. This appears to be a clear sign of "practice more" and "study yourself and improve" it.

Right side without tools
Left side, equally toolless
A part of the weirdness of the left side is caused by that I stubbornly tried to keep painting instead of taking an airbrush cleaning break that was clearly needed. As I said, my own fault. In any case, the oddness and imperfectness of the camo job isn't the main thing in this project. In addition to camo being painted by people this is also going to be whitewashed over in the end anyway. So it'll be just fine.

Background activity

Without any special mention: I did paint the road wheels, drive sprockets, idlers and those random items that belong on the outside of the tank. The wheels will be needing some manual painting a bit later, but otherwise they're done. Yay.

7.6.12

A green basecoat

This is a yet another photo-deprived posting because I haven't remembered to take photos of my small steps lately. After I got done with the priming and painting the interior of the fighting compartment white (including the rear part of the gun), I sealed the hull and felt smug.

Rumblegrumble

I wasn't smug for a long time, because the nose was grinning a bit. Of course I could've opted to have the chasm in the rear part of the tank but as that's a lot more difficult to fix and hide, I didn't go there. The hole got a good amount of putty on it and after a bit of smearing and leveling I left it to cure for a nice while.

This evening I took my files out and fixed what I could, then I wiped the surfaces clean. For some reason I didn't really want to have a layer of fine-ish dust under my paintcoat. Ultraexcitingly the next thing I did was to cover about 60% of the surfaces with Vallejo's German Tank Green. The rest I'll fix either tomorrow or whenever I actually have the time. That and the potential fixing that may need to be done if I find some annoyingly large bald spots on my tank when the paint has dried

And then?

When the green surface is set, I'll set up a random camo scheme with the brown and Dunkelgelb, maybe even with a set of selfmade national markings. Scratch that, I'm going to do that and we all know it already.

After that part is done I'll set up the wheels and the tracks and decide "that's almost finished now".


When I've declared that I've got the perfect opportunity to make more of a mess on my hunting kitty. In english it means I'll return after almost ten years to the world of water paints. Just in case I manage to make a better wintery whitewash this time, improving from my first attempt.
For a brief moment I pondered on preparing a base for this beast but maybe I'll take it easy right now. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

30.5.12

Mostly primed

I had thought that I'd start painting the interior of the tank yesterday evening, but I didn't get to. That's because the periscopes weren't attached (and therefore were unpainted) yet so I had to glue them in first. Not that the interior makes a horrible difference anyway, but It'd be nagging at me if I knew that the insides are untouched. Yeah, I'm the first one to admit that I'm lazy but I'm not that lazy.

Feature uncreep

After a bit of pondering I had decided that I wouldn't be scratchbuilding a firewall between the sections of the tank. Mostly because the hatches are shut so that no one sees inside and that I've never built them to any other tank, either. Maybe I'll do that for a bit more insane model. One of those with a full (ish) interior? If I recall correctly, Dragon had a boxed set, something like "Tiger with interior" or something. Interesting.

Why the slacking off?

In case someone was wondering why I'm doing so little and advancing so damn slowly, there are two main reasons. First: the pollen, it doesn't actually motivate me to put a mask on and fool around with the airbrush. And second: I just haven't had the time. That happens every now and then.

21.5.12

Splish, splash

I'm currently working on priming all the random pieces. It's not particularly exciting, so there's nothing more to report right now.

Oh well, I relearned that if I keep my 'puter & co on at the same time with the compressor, there's not enough juice for everything. My video card say bleh and goes offline. Somehow I didn't remember that from the previous round of airbrushing.

And no, I'm not going move my modeling area away from the computer. I do so little airbrushing compared to everything else that it's not worth moving everything.

7.5.12

The last steps before basecoating

Issues with painting

I built the last few missing pieces to more or less completed state. When the muzzle brake of the gun has been glued, I can start basecoating the random pieces I have prepared. The outsides of the hull are obviously included, the wheelset and the track links, the artillery and all the small tools are simple, but what about the insides? Of course the end part of the PaK is going to be mostly white but what about the engine area? And the suspension system? I don't think there was any sort of a firewall to separate the engine room from the fighting compartment. Do I have to start scratchbuilding that? Himmel.

I decided to use the aluminium barrel after all

Test-fitting

Of course I had to try if the halves actually fit together, so I'd see what's coming. And if that the top- and bottom parts were compatible or not... it wouldn't have been the first time that at the critical moment I'd need to start fixing stuff.
Yep, they do fit