Dark Imperium Death Guard WIP 1

The Dark Imperium box set is wonderful, however GW seems to have forgotten that people have to paint the miniatures. The Death Guard models are so complex, it they really should be painted individually rather than batch painted as I did here. That way the hyper individualized sculpts can be individually analyzed. That said, I think these models are doing ok. I wish I had not lost my bright green base coat, but that was a lesson learned with my blending layers. What I thought was a semi transparent mint color went on super-opaque.

Things like lenses and faces have not been painted yet. I have to wait till I dull coat the models to remove the semi-gloss protective coat on them right now. If I don't do that the acrylic paint beads up on the lacquer surface. Normally I wouldn't take a photo of models while in this state, but I like these guys. They get a pass.

So what about basing? Cracked red martian earth would be a good base color. Alternately, I could mix up some plaster and weathering powder and make mud. That would let me splash wet mud all over their feet, and have pools of yellow water effects. The counter to that is that orange/red cracked dusty bases would contrast really well with the cool green.

Primaris Space Marines First Take

I've finally spent some time putting together the Primaris Space Marines that come in the Dark Imperium boxed set. Initially I was ambivalent towards the new models. As I've hinted at for a while, I've been slowly accumulating a large Dark Angles for to paint. Then these new models dropped. I like them a lot now. All it took was building two squads for my opinion to radically change. I'm not sure I even want to paint old GW plastic marines anymore. I wasn't expecting to experience such a shift. I agree with some of the reviews I've read online that GW must be planning to phase out the old plastics. These new models are so vastly better proportioned than the old kits. Gone are the gorilla pose marines!

So what should I paint these up as? Do go Dark Angels as planned, or do I paint these up as ultramarines and add them to the Guilliman model I already painted?

3D Printed Terrain Painted

I've been printing out loads of terrain on my 3D printer, but this is my first finished piece. This building represents a French town hall typically found in Normandy and will be used in our WW2 club games. I wasn't sure how well the print would take paint, so I painted this fast and loose using a giant brush and very little care. This was completed in about two hours. For a piece costing around fifty cents of material, I think it works pretty well. I did have to sand the raw print and fill in some holes using green stuff.

I guess the question now is whether this terrain is good enough for a board, or if I should go back to buying resin pieces? I like this more than MDF buildings, but maybe I should experiment with some kind of hybrid MDF+FFF.

3D Printed Terrain is Here

I've been experimenting with 3D printing for a couple of years now. I started using an XYZPrinting SLA printer, and after that failed decided to try one of the inexpensive filament printers. It turns out that two years make a huge difference in quality. Using a Prusa i3 clone, made by Wanhao(duplicator i3 plus), I've been able to print at lot of interesting terrain. I'm only printing at .2mm resolution here, which is half the vertical resolution possible, but that is just due to impatience on my part. My goal is to have a new model to paint every day. The prints do require finishing, but the bones are here for some really nice resin-ish quality terrain.

Since I'm currently printing in PLA, the only way to finish a model is to sand it. However, once this spool is done, I'm going to switch to ABS (lego plastic), which can be smoothed using acetone. With that with, the time between printing a model, and having it ready to paint will be nominal.

I'm still dialing in my printer, so the quality keeps improving. I've even printed out some printer parts to upgrade the printer itself!

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 4

 I continued working on the charity Knight today. Oils were added to the pneumatics, eye lenses were repainted, and pigments were liberally distributed to tarnished surfaces. This guy is getting close to completion. I wish I had the opportunity to win this army!

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 3

The gloss is starting to go away, and the finished knight is beginning to emerge. I usually take photos of stuff, not just to share, but also so I can review the painting and clean up spots I might have missed. For instance the sensors need cleaner green transitions, and the leaking oils to the pneumatics needs to be reapplied post matte. I am happy with this guy. Some lucky person will win this model along with eh rest of the army as part of the charity raffle.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation WIP 2

The NOVA Charitable Foundation knight is in the home stretch. It might be hard to tell due to the gloss coat, but the armor plates are done. Once I dull coat the model the shading will be brought back forward, and the weird interplay between the matte oils and chipping and glossy undercoat (for protection) will have the same finish quality. For those who don't know, you can win this knight along with a beautiful Mechanicus force by entering the NOCF raffle. Once again we are supporting Doctors Without Borders, a wonderful organization providing medical care to people all over the world.

NOVA Open Charitable Foundation Knight

This ungainly fellow is a 30k Knight for the Charitable foundation. Every year I paint something for charity, and this year I was lucky enough to be tasked with painting an all resin Forgeworld knight. Since this guy is part of an army give away, I am sticking to painting style of the team leader. His style involves a lot of transparent paints, which is new to me. So far so good.