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These are the medium and small Xairbots. I was aiming for a clean future-tech look with more plastic and colored parts, and no chrome or rust. The smaller bot is really small, and cleaning mold lines off used a lot of words I can't repeat here.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnbearross/the-28mm-scorpionmech Story Eerie in the contrast of their lethal size and silent movement, ScorpionMechs are deployed on the orbital and planetside battlefield when no quarter is to be given to the enemy, and none expected. They're colony killers. You send them in when you want the enemy base and any feeble defenders protecting it razed to the ground. These scuttling terrors can chop enemy armors in half in close quarters or pound them to pieces from a distance. Using a variety of modular payloads, the ScorpionMech can tailor its weapons suite to the mission, whether it be cold, quiet up-close killing, napalm and gatling cascades at ballistic distances, or missiles beyond the horizon. (Pre-production 28mm ScorpionMech sample shown with additional Viper Suit weaponry. Waldo and PugBots shown for size ref) Though they usually make their way overland to the target, there are rumors of ScorpionMechs deploying from orbit with bolted-on belly packs containing fuel and maneuvering thrusters. The thought of an orbital insertion of these lethal machines is terrifying, but not beyond reason. There is even a confirmed case of a jetpack-equipped ScorpionMech being used to rip a pirate raider's ship to pieces during an attempted boarding action. Needless to say, scratch one pirate ship. Viper suit pilots may try and put a brave face on it, but when faced with a ScorpionMech, they know that the best place to be is somewhere else.

So I finally fell into the temptation and got my first ground based sci fi minis!(I do have spaceships.) A Cataphract, conquerer , and a halberd by Reaper minis came in with my horsman today! Sadly the halberd is missing a piece so it may in end up being returned. So my first order of business was a small conversion to the cataphract Before conversion And the conquerer has donated the necessary parts for said conversion, specifically his smaller missile pods. A bit of work with an exacto knife removed said weapons. And a bit more exacto work to make a spot for the pods on the Cataphract. Some super glue to assemble the cataphract and voila! It is time for paint! And don’t worry about the Conquerer, I have a conversion in mind for it too. It just might not be a true mech when I’m done....... More sci-fi stuff to come soon I hope! And maybe just maybe I’ll try to make a backstory for these guys. Thankyou for looking!

A pair of speed painted 3d printed robots I completed during my 4th of July Paint Binge. I found the GW Contrast paints to be very good at covering large smooth surfaces easily. The red one was from a KS project by EC3D. (and yes, it's missing an arm) I am not sure where my husband found the other one, but maybe Thingaverse.

This is a Cataphract mech by Reaper minis from Cav with added missile pods from a conquerer mech. Paints used: Vallejo paints white surface primer Olive Green Dark Brown Oily Steel, Gunmetal Testors paints, Gi. Red Flat steel Model Masters paints, Gun Metal, Burnt Iron Other colors Burnt Umber and Black. Man! I didn’t realize I used that many colors on this thing! Enough about paint! Time for pictures! I have enjoyed painting this up and even got to try something new. Thankyou for looking and feel free to offer constructive critiques!

So one night I'm painting away on my second ReaperCon entry when it hit me that it didn't qualify for the Open category, which I was shooting for. So, brushes down time and had to think. Next day, decided that I'd skip to my third planned entry, since it would qualify for Open and Ordinance. Thus starting a mad dash to finish a custom created Mech/CAV/BSR with only about three weeks until the convention. Spent a few days drawing up the figure in 3D, then over to the printer to pop it out last Saturday. And while it came out more or less fine, the phrase "what have I done to myself" came to mind. Why? I designed it to be small, and much smaller than the mobile howitzer I did last year. It's supposed to carry around a phased array antenna as some sort of ELINT or AWACS (GWACS?!) vehicle. Not meant to be a brawler, so it only need a set of small guns. And came up with a cool shape for the cab/upper part of the figure. No problem there until it came out from the print bed. The picture below shows off all the pieces but one. Didn't have Sir Forscale handy, so a paint bottle will have to suffice. The two curved pieces are the top and bottom of the array, printed like they are shown. I've found that curves work well as long as it's not curving across layers (circle laying flat versus on edge). But, as it was printing, it was a mere single pass along the curve and another coming back. Two whole filament passes. Uh oh. It's very thin and flexible, and that's when the alarms started going off that it wasn't going to be a rugged little piece like my previous design. But... let's roll with it anyways! It wouldn't be the first time I've done something with a product the salesman never intended. In reality, bending it a bit back and forth, it was rather plastic. Well, duh. But I mean in the sense that while flexible, it wasn't being damaged. And that one piece missing I mentioned before? The features were so small, they didn't print. I was left with a single flat layer of plastic. No reason to even bother with that then, since it was meant to be a decorative plate. So on to the next step! Artists gesso aka the poor man's body filler. The general concept is for the gesso to be lathered on, filling in the spaces, gaps, and layer lines. Won't get them completely, but will make things a lot better. The results are below. That piece at the lower left was started to be sanded when I remembered I might want to make a WIP thread, and so it looked more like the one in the right when I started. Spent yesterday going over all the pieces with a sanding stick, and getting down to about where the plastic starts. That should give a sufficiently smooth surface to get to priming and painting. And that is where it stands at present: ready to be assembled a bit and then primed. Originally, I was planning on making a bunch of evergreen like trees (found a cool tutorial using floral wire and fibers), which would have led to a grey and white camo scheme. But a trip to Michael's to get a birch disk for my first entry uncovered some really cool floral items that look like really odd alien palm trees changed my mind. So now it's going to be a sandy base with some tropical overtones. Active camouflage is going to mimic the tops of the trees, and I might put in a beach. But... I might go with a desert palm look, too. Tropical fits in with the faction concept I have going. Have to see how well things work. The most difficult of my plans (other than vehicle markings in three languages, two alien and one English) is how to work in something that makes the phased array appear, but camouflaged at the same time. I'm thinking a masked off grid on top after the camo is done, then lightly hit with a metallic paint, going with either gold or silver. The paint underneath should show, but have a slight sparkly appearance. All the painting starts tonight! As a reminder to myself, I need to post up pictures of: 1. Screenshot of the CAD 2. The floral find

Hi all, It has been a really busy year for me, between moving across the country, starting a new job, finding a place to live, getting married, major surgery for the missus, and evacuating/rebuilding after a major hurricane. Unfortunately, this has left little time for painting- and it’s been driving me nuts! After the wedding a few weeks back, we finally had some time to take a step back and breathe. The wife poked me and said “why don’t you start painting again?” The first thing I picked up was this squad of half-finished Ritterlich Republic cougars I had been working on last winter before the move. They had been painted and inked, but not assembled, highlighted or jeweled. I’ve been working on them a few hours at a time over the past few weeks, and finally had a big chunk of the day yesterday where I could sit down and power through them… here they are! I still need to do the bases, but I couldn’t do that last night as the glue was still drying. They will also get a matte varnish coat, but I'd like to get your C&C on a few things before then. As I have mentioned before, this is from the CAV kickstarter; one of the things I wanted to do with the kickstarter CAVs was to explore a different painting technique for each army. For the Ritter, this was edging. As time went on, I started to become a bit fatigued at the sheer amount of edging required. This caused me to slowly rotate from display quality (for me at least) to more tabletop quality. But hey, a painted mini is always better than an unpainted one, and easing up a bit on the quality allowed me to finish them quickly. I am also trying to incorporate more blending in the canopies, as well as some OSL effects. As you can see, I am still practicing. I expect I will get better with time (at least I hope I do)! As always, C & C are very welcome. I am trying to get better and I can’t do that without critique. Any comments about how to improve the jeweling or OSL in particular would be most appreciated. If anyone wants the paints or techniques used, I can provide that information too.

I'm starting to get lost here, so I figured I'd make an index of stuff I've posted. Many of these are loaded with enough pics and text that they're almost mini-tutorials. Questions and comments are always welcome. If you don't get a reply within a couple days, find me on Facebook, or add me on Battle.net (Xumenicus#1118). ReaperCon Final Photos 2016: https://reapercon.com/mspopen/2016/artist/Joshua Anaya 2015: https://reapercon.com/mspopen/2015/artist/Joshua Anaya Projects Massive Voodoo Water Base (No Minis) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/77445-massive-voodoo-water-base-no-minis/ Pathfinder Seoni Bust (ReaperCon 2016 Open Gold) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71475-pathfinder-seoni-bust-reapercon-2016/ Dagon's Emissary (ReaperCon 2016 Diorama Silver) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71496-dagons-emissary-reapercon-2016-parts-03707-and-03497/ Grudge Power Armor Bust (ReaperCon 2015 Open Gold, Bronze Sophie) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71528-grudge-power-armor-reapercon-2015-bronze-sophie/ Dark Sword Mole Alchemist Diorama (ReaperCon 2015 Diorama Gold) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71534-dark-sword-mole-alchemistdiorama/ Ork Timberwolf Vehicle (WiP) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71497-ork-timberwolf-half-scratch-half-gw-stompa/ 14479: Dryad (Heavily adminned because she's female. Haven't gotten around to fixing.) (WiP) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71536-14479-dryadbut-more/ Power Armored Dwarves (WiP, and possibly forgotten and/or lost) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71652-power-armored-dwarves/ Caddisfly Larva (Fishing) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/72652-caddisfly-larva-something-completely-different/ Completely Failed Tower Implosion Diorama (Dead) http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/71535-completely-failed-tower-implosion-diorama/ Informational Me hijacking somebody else's thread, and using it to track conventions in Colorado http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/77238-colorado-cons/#comment-1636600

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vedragames/csw-armoured-warfare-ii?ref=category_newest Reboot that expands the range of new sci-fi armoured figthing vehicles from the universe of the wargame COLONIAL SPACE WARS.

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I have posted something, but here we go! I have decided to take a break from my terrans and try something new. There were several new techniques I had been wanting to try, including camouflage, washes, and edging. I also wanted more practice with OSL and jeweling now that I had purchased some Matte medium. I had been going back and forth about how I wanted to paint my ritterlich force, when I came across this wonderfully painted starship fleet over at triple zero painting: https://triplezeropainting.com/category/spaceship-miniatures/brigade-models/oness/ I was blown away by this paint scheme and had wanted to do some camo for awhile, but nothing I had seen so far in the CAV realm really stuck with me. This was my answer! I started out by airbrushing my force with Reaper Breonne Blue. I let it dry and applied the sticky tack as explained in the article, then airbrushed with Ashen Blue. Note: If you do this, you need to be very careful to make sure the sticky tack is flush against the model, or the top color will bleed underneath. I had to do a lot of cleaning up, but this is how it turned out: To get the crevasses nice and dark, I applied a wash of 1:1 navy blue/black, with some water and matte medium to thin it out. This was my first time applying a wash and I think it came out pretty well (though the photo is crap) Next came the highlighting. I don't have a photo of just this phase for the cougar, but here are some Tiamat legs which were my test piece: Highlights were achieved by mixing each blue with Reaper Misty Grey in a 1:1 ratio, with some matte medium to thin it out once again (that stuff is fantastic!) I realized almost immediately that I had made a terrible mistake in terms of time commitment... there were so many edges. However, I think the final product came out pretty darn cool. I am really proud of this one! C and C welcome! I would like to go over the jewling one more time, and if anyone has any recommendations for a good spray matte sealer I am all ears. Going forward I will be doing these in a more assembly line fashion than one at a time, but I needed a test piece first :)

This one took a long time to complete. I claimed it finished two times, but got more feedback. Fixed a little here, added a little there.. And as they say; All good things are three. :)

30-ton Battlemech UrbanMech Capellan Regular Unit Paint Scheme This walking turret is scary in urban settings where it's hard for everyone to move. Slow and ponderous, the lack of a large engine to move it allows it to carry a wallop. Reaper Spattered Gore, Reaper Scorched Metal, Reaper Sunshine Yellow and Reaper Black. Washed with Reaper Walnut Brown.

45-ton Battlemech Phoenix Hawk Command Conversion, Yellow/Maroon Paint Scheme I will take better pics later. Vallejo Japanese Uniform, Reaper Maroon Red, Reaper Red Shadow, Scale Color Thrash Metal, and Scale Color Black Metal.

40-ton Battlemech Assassin Jungle/Forest Paint Scheme I will take better photos soon. Reaper Griffon Tan, Vallejo Yellow Green, Reaper Walnut Brown are the main colors.

Just finished this lance (plus 1) and thought I would show it around a bit. To see more detail photo's of the individual mechs please go to IB Studios Battletech Support Lance plus 1 Questions and comments are always welcome. Thank you my friends.

This week, I've been working on some of my CAV vehicles from the Kickstarter, and I was thinking about a box of leftover Mechwarrior clicky base stuff I had, and the idea came to me to make a destroyed mech or two to use as scenery on the tabletop. I wanted it to look like it had sat on a long-forgotten battlefield for decades or centuries. I began by slicing the mech from its clicky base, and then I used a pair of pliers to rip the arms and head off. I then used a drill to make a big hole in the torso to look like where a missile had hit, knocking out the mech. I also used the drill to enlarge some of the holes where the arms and head had been connected. I used my hobby knife to pry open the cockpit, and then cut down a 10mm Warmaster skeleton figure and glued it into the cockpit to represent the mech's long-deceased pilot. Next, I cut some small sections of thin wire and glued them in the holes with superglue to look like cables that had been ripped apart when the mech was destroyed. I glued the parts with hot glue to a 3-inch plastic base that I had beveled the edge of with a hobby knife; and then covered the base with Tacky glue and applied a coating of sand. I sprayed it flat black, and then painted it with a series of browns and oranges to give it a rusted look. I painted the ground cover and added some static grass to finish it off. And here's the finished piece, shown with some 10mm Dropzone Commander infantry and a tank for scale. For the full build write-up and more photos, please see my blog: One More Gaming Project

This is the Reaper CAV "Spectre" in Bones, number "**94006" (I hope). Story time: Having only painted a handful of fantasy figures, my CAV earlybird robots arrived, and I became paralyzed. "How do I paint them? What colors? Do I paint them all the same color? Or in squads? How do I build squads? Where are the rules? Oh no what if I do it wrong?" Yet, when I assembled them all, I found an excuse! A Spectre with two left arms. Aha! Reaper wastes no time in shipping out a replacement, so my reprieve will, it seems, be brief. When my box arrives, I tear into it expecting a tiny mech arm to be floating in all the packaging materials, only to find an entire complete Spectre! They sent me a whole figure instead of just the arm! Well, that means I still have a 'spare' Spectre, with his unorthodox firing methods, so that's nice. But what's this? Paint? Free paint! A bottle of Reaper MSP Promo 09659 Ginger Cookie! Clearly, this was a suggestion. Sophie, upon packing up my Spectre knew I needed a nudge, and thus provided it. So "Leftie" is going to be a cookie mech. Blessed with freedom from choice, I actually started getting to work. Paralysis blasted! He's an extra, so who cares if I ruin him? I can't go wrong! To start, I filed off (some) mold lines, boiled him to straighten things out, washed him with a soapy toothbrush, rinsed, dried, and stuck his bits to bottles. Then I slathered on a coat of unthinned Ginger Cookie. By the time I finished the parts I could get, it had dried enough for a second coat. His bits: Closeup of my slathering skills: I'm planning to glue in his, er, Crotch, to the knees, but leave the rest un-glued so I can rotate him and stuff. Tips, ideas, suggestions welcome, but don't expect the painting to get much better than "looks ok, mostly, from a distance, without your glasses on".

Here's an individual WIP of an idea I had, upon realizing I had excess Blasters for my Mechadrome mechs. The original Superfortress looks gnarly but is heavily outfitted for anti-vehicle firepower. Most 28mm combat is more about infantry, or at most, many infantry and a handful of vehicles. I recalled having another, and set about making an anti-infantry version that visually blended the Mechadrome and original LOS aesthetics; as a bonus this leaves me with a BFG laser to stick on, say, a Rhino, in order to have an in-theme IFV/APC. I stuck the legs on with huge amounts of automotive epoxy putty and some superglue; the bottom detailing is hollow, which you really never see on the table, and the legs fit up into the body cavity. (Huge amounts = two small blobs). Then I Devcon'd his feet to this Basix MDF base, just to be sure. Here he is near a fully assembled, based, shaded, but incompletely painted twin. As you can see, I have, with a combo of big pins, Devcon, and aforementioned putty, plus some superglue to make sure the putty grabbed, mounted one of the BFGs in place of the disposable 2-shot missile pack of the standard variant. (Like the standard variant, I have lost this guy's chin gun.)

Here's a quick and slightly nasty photo of some sweet sweet resin mecha. The Big guy there has some fairly bad blemishes on his left leg, but the rest was beautiful. All the weapons are modular and available individually, so might be worth a look for conversions, find 'em at Gangfight Games.

I finished my first bones CAV received from the early bird kickstarter. Its been years since I've painted a mech so its not quite as great of a paintjob when compared to the fantasy stuff i've been doing lately. Still, it was a joy to paint up the first member of the Black Dragon Mercs. As usual, feel free to comment. I could use the direction on how to improve my mechs.

Another great model from Infinity. I love the anime feel of this guy.

So, thanks to those on this board, I've been inspired to try my hand at sculpting my own miniature. I've never attempted to do anything like this ever before so I am a complete Noob at this. If I can make anything even close to what others here have done I'll feel good about this. I'm going for a Cav/Mech type thing in about 50mm scaleish. Perhaps a couple of arm mounted cannons and a couple rocket launchers with a cockpit Nd "chicken legs" We'll see what I actually get... SO! Here are some pics of the tools and supplies I'm using and some pics of where I've gotten so far. I have both sculpy firm and green stuff to start. I'm going to try using the sculpy more than the Green stuff. Here are the tools I have at the moment, Sculpy pearl tools, Size 0 color shapers, Various wax carvers from harbor freight & the flgs. A close up of the color shapers... Now on to my first attempts at sculpting. I'm thinking I should start at the bottom so I'm starting with the foot of the mini. First a bolck of sculpy... Roughly carved the shape of the foot... And where I am now. I smoothed the fingerprints from it.

I came across the start of a conversion from the last time my group played Battletech. The battlemech in question comes in several pieces and the stock look for the mech is firing platform on two leg-shaped struts: example of a well painted version in a stock pose (not painted by me) Now the idea of the mech coming in pieces is for you to adjust the pose yourself on assembly ... and of course for casting ... but really the only thing you can do without cutting the mech up is to create a "running mech" with the arms and legs pumping. However, if you look at the arms you can see that any real conversion comes from cutting and rebuilding: So, I first considered straightening one or both arms. However, upon closer inspection and sleeping on it, I decided that the effort wasn't worth it. However, I did get an idea as to how I wanted the Daishi to stand. I wanted its left foot raised onto a building's remains with the left leg straightened to hold the mech high as if it had just stomped through the HQ of the enemy. So I cut the left leg in two places: at the backward cantered knee and the toe. The knee joint is curved and sits in a groove so that was fun to cut apart. I cut the right leg at the knee and at the ankle. I built walls on the base using plastic and some putty to lock it all down. I left space around the left foot where the foot had shifted and left a partial impression. You can see the foot pinned to the base: Time to test fit all the pieces and see what pieces I would have to manufacture to get the final pose. So with some sculpey to hold the one side together I fit all the leg & torso pieces together: As you can see above I had a fairly decent gap in the right leg assembly to get the mech stable. So I built an ankle actuator around the pin above the right foot. And to ensure balance and stability I added a large piece of metal to the inside corner of the wall for the mech to stand on. After some fiddling and a series of tweak and dry fits, I finally had what I wanted: Finished parts: Final Assembly: Next we'll prime it so I can better see any outstanding mold lines or details that need fixing.