Guyscanwefocusplease

He’s driving it! That reminds me of that old arcade game. So much fun.

Now that my first Gaslands team is done, I am starting to work on my second: Scarlett’s raiders. Mechanically, this team works much like old pirate ships did- by transporting tons of rabble rousers that can hop off and wreak havoc after getting close to opposing cars. I thought a school bus was perfect for this, and it allowed me to practice my rust. I must admit, it is very freeing to paint a vehicle like garbage and not care if it looks messy. more to come. In the mean time, C&C welcome!

TGP, I just added a gaslands post and will be adding more soon!

It’s been a long time since I have posted, and a lot has been going on. Last year my friend got me into a game called gaslands, which is a post apocalyptic death race game using Converted matchbox/hot wheels cars. The game is a ton of fun, but the most fun part is converting the cars. Over the next few days I’ll post what I’ve done so far. In the game you get to choose a team which gives you a certain flavour. This team, Beverly of the highway, has a single corporeal car and a bunch of ghost cars that zip around. It seemed like a really neat idea, so I decided to make a team. Behold! first up is Beverly herself. Took awhile to get the OSL right but I like it now. ghost car 1. ghost car 2, a police paddy wagon. ghost car 3 with skeleton driver pointing at his next victim. ghost car 4. You can’t see from here but there are chains trailing from behind. the team riding the wasteland roads. even when you’re undead, you need a glamour shot for the advertisers. It took me a long time before I was happy with the painted ghost cars. My first attempt was to prime white and do a thing coat of ectoplasm green, which actually worked great but left some uneven pools on the large flat surfaces. I added more chains and flames to break those up, but the second and third attempts went poorly, so I eventually coated green then dry brushed. Oh well. let me know what you think. C&C welcome!

Wow. This looks great. I love the fingernails so much!

Ah! They're delightful! I love them. Actually, how did you do the scales? It looks almost like airbrush?

With Bones 4 out I see more differences in color and consistency from previous builds. Do bones still have that film on them that needs to be washed off before painting?

Hey all, It's been a while! Didn't get a lot of painting done in the back half of last year because of a few things, but I have started to climb back to the painting desk. I have a few projects I have completed that I will have to upload, but for now enjoy this rendition of Nor'Okk the Ettin. For some reason I have a soft spot for large, Ogre-like miniatures. I like the scale, I like that they're humanoid but big enough to have really good opportunities to play with muscle tone, etc. I do have a lot of ogres set up to work on, so I wanted to make this ettin different looking. It's not perfect, but I frankly had to get him wrapped up before Bones 4 inundates me even further! Thanks for looking. C and C always appreciated.

Just finished Assassin's Apprentice. Took a while to get into it, as the writing style is a bit more flourished than I am used to. Once I got over that though, I loved it. I've already started the next book in the Robin Hobb trilogy and have a whole stack waiting for me after this one!

OK, so you all have spurred me to new reading heights! I have knocked out a few books since last time and am up to 19 for the year: Lobsters This is a book I read for work. It's a great reference if you are at all interested in the biology, economics, or cooking of Caribbean spiny lobster. The Dispatcher My wife had me listen to this while we were on a road trip. She FINALLY got me into John Scalzi. I'm hooked as you can see below. Old Man's War Great, pulpy military sci-fi with a fresh idea and great humor to back it up. I very highly recommend it. The Ghost Brigades Book two in the old man's war series. Again, pulpy but wonderful. Good listening for road tripping or fishing alone. The Last Colony Like the last two. Really enjoyed the "futuristic frontier" ideas in this book. Makes me think of writing something that focuses in that genre myself one day. I'm on the edge of finishing Amber spyglass, Assasins' apprentice, and the human division. On a roll! Now, just to find time to paint...

Thanks for the suggestion! I post it here because this is the only forum presence I have- but I think starting in Jan I'll move this over to goodreads. 300 books?!? How do you do it???

Hi all, It's been awhile since I have painted! Summers are always busy for me. A few months back I was approached by an old friend who got back into DnD. He started to buy some minis, and I showed him my profile here. Back in June, he called me to ask if I would be interested in painting a special character for his campaign- Harshnag the frost giant. The mini looked cool and I really wanted to help him out, so I said bring it on! It's taken me far too long to do this, but you know what? I kind of like re-paints. There's a level of pressure that's taken off with color choice that is really nice. Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few. This is what arrived- pre-painted from WOTC, but only color blocking (ans often a bit sloppy in places). The whole thing would need to be painted over since I'd probably mess up color matching. Here's after having done steps 1-10 or so. Model mostly re-painted and shaded, highlighted, and drybrushed where it needs to be. Still some work to do on the leather. Also decided to add in some bronze for a pop of color- though my buddy specified he wants it weathered and worn down. Here we are after doing the verdigris. The chainmail will be rusted as well- after doing the final verdigris highlights I'll move to the chainmail. I really like the messy verdigris look- I think it draws my eyes to it more, though I'll be continuing to refine a range of verdigris effects in this and future works. The nice thing is I am working on a quick and dirty verdigris technique that I think works really well! Anyway, enjoy! C&C welcome as always.

It's been awhile! The summer is the busiest time of the year for folks in my field, so my free time has dwindled to basically nil. I did manage to read two more books during the past two months: "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie "On writing: A memior of the craft" by Steven King Both books were fantastic, simple to read, direct, and extremely informative. Dale Carnegie has hit on the inner workings of human psychology in a way that astonishes me- especially since it was written 80 years ago! I cannot reccomend this book highly enough. On writing was also extremely useful to read. I consider myself an aspiring fantasy writer, though I don't work at it all that much. Either way, seeing what makes good or bad writing, and how the master himself does it, was both entertaining and really useful. Next on my list are some science books- going back through the history of my field and reading some foundational works to give myself that context!

Knocked out another book this weekend- "Two's company, Three is complexity". This is a pop-sci book that introduces complexity science. Many fields, from fluid dynamics, to economics, to biology deal with complexity and I wanted to learn more about it for my own job. It's a good introduction- especially the first half. The back half gets a little repetitive, but it's easy to read throughout and is a good starter on the topic.

So it's been a few months. I picked up a new video game (Sea of Thieves) and have been playing that a lot. I don't play many video games anymore, but this one was too good to pass up. I highly recommend it if you enjoy sailing or pirate games! Along that vein, I finally finished How to Read Water. What an excellent book. It's dense, and as such can be hard to just sit down and read. However, it has a lot of fantastic information in there and is a good read for anyone from the landlocked pond watcher to the experienced waterman. I finished it while off at sea, and one of the captains (with way more experience than me) borrowed it and remarked that there were things in there that even he didn't know. He ordered a copy as soon as we got to shore, so that should tell you something. If you ever wanted to know more about why coasts, seas, lakes, ponds, or puddles act the way they do, or if you just like nature in general, this is a fantastic book. The best book on water I have ever read. I see myself coming back to it often in the future, as once it is read it becomes a great reference to have on the shelf. I also finished A wrinkle in Time. I read this classic in elementary school, but it had been so long that I could not remember any of the plot. All I remembered is that when I first read it, I loved it. I loved it the second time around, too, but for different reasons. So much of what I read, even for fun, is dense and requires a certain level of brainpower I just don't always have when I get off work. A Wrinkle in Time takes me back to a time when I could just read for fun and think nothing of it. This puts it in excellent company with the Hobbit and some of the Dragonlance books. If you haven't read A Wrinkle in Time, I suggest it for three reasons: 1) It's very short and easy to read; 2) It's a classic (and if you have kids, you can read it to them); and 3) it's just downright strange and enjoyable. I'm also marking off The Wrong Stars as read. I bought it back in January, and got 95% of the way through before the book just magically vanished. I enjoyed it, but I probably won't be reading the remaining books in the series. I enjoyed the premise and the characters. The crew's dynamics were great, and the author has a very interesting and original take on Aliens that I really enjoyed reading about. However, the plot just seemed like an old re-hash told a dozen times before. Perhaps there is a big twist that I missed, but it just didn't grab me. If you like sci-fi or world-building, I suggest reading it for those reasons. Maybe someone who has picked it up can tell me how it ends and if it is worth going back to grab from the Library.

This paintjob is so good, I forgot about the pun you made :)

I've always loved genestealers. I got into mini painting by collecting Tyranids, and I still remember him and hawing over spending $12.50 for a pack of 12. Those were the days! These little rending machines will always have a special place in my heart, and I am happy to see this one painted so well! I particularly like the brain "lighting up".

Very cool. Considered getting a hero forge mini made for awhile, but have heard concerns over quality. When did you get yours? Do you know if quality has increased over time? Are you happy with the purchase?

These are awesome. There is so much texture and detail on these figures and you really brought them out. Great job!

I completely agree. Speedpainting or not, seeing these lined up next to one another to see how different folks approach a mini is really, really helpful. I never knew I needed this. Would it be possible to make this a more regular thing? I've saved these photos and will be referring to them a lot, I think...

I love this mini! I echo what Arc 724 said, particularly about a wash. There's a lot of texture on this guy (or gal), and a wash + drybrush layer will really, really enhance the contrast and detail. Also, Thanks Arc 724 for the vaseline trick- never knew that!

These look great! You're tempting me to buy more minis- not good!! When referring to the dull metal look, are you referring to galvanized steel?

The bases, models, and painting look great so far. I agree with your choice on the blue.

After ~6 months of not being able to work on projects, I present my first finished project of 2018- an ancient skeleton horde! The goals of the project were to: (1) Start out with a bang in my goal to paint 52 minis this year (2) Add a good deal more skeletons for horde encounters in an upcoming tabletop RPG I am running (3) Get more practice with OSL in a setting that allowed me to try multiple techniques on similar models quickly (eyes) (4) Try my hand at verdigris, again trying multiple techniques to see what I like best (5) Try out doing weapons/armor chipping and weathering. Happy to say all 5 goals were met (just took a long time)! This was a tabletop-level project, so while they aren't perfect, they are "good enough". Please let me know what you think- I relish C&C as it is a critical step in making me a better painter. I also have a question: I need to seal these guys. I want to use a matte sealer for the skeletons themselves (you can see the gloss from where I used quickshade), but I don't want to dull the metals on the arms and armor. What matte brush on sealers does everyone prefer? Thanks for looking!

Here we go! As I said a few minutes ago, not perfect by any means, but as these are meant for play (and painting experience), I am really happy with them. I wanted to get experience with trying a few new techniques, specifically Verdigris and chipping/weathering on arms and armor. I learned a lot and the results next time will be better. I also got more practice with OSL, and while I see room for improvement, I also discovered a satisfactory shortcut that drastically reduces the time I need to spend on it, without greatly reducing quality. Honest C&C are always appreciated- without it, I can't get better!