OneBoot's Bones 1 Kickstarter Figures WIP (picture heavy)

[Baugi]

*bobbing head*

Aperture science, we so what we must, because we can

For the good of all of us

Except the ones who are dead.

 

Damn it, well that's in my head for the rest of the day.

 

Great work! The pommel came out nicely, and the conversion looks great! One thing - I too have ruined a pair of flush cutters with sewing pins, but as it turns out, the "right tool" for me is the bolt cutter built into a 4 dollar pair of needle nosed pliers. You really don't need to break the bank on tools for this hobby. These pliers have gone through dozens of pins and still show no sign of it!

Edited September 8, 2013 by Baugi

[Doug Sundseth]

@unidentifiable - Aha, my ignorance shows! I can use tools, but I don't always know the proper names for them. So, ChannelLock linesman's pliers are what to look for, got it. I'll see how the Kobolt ones do first, since they're here, and they've got a replacement guarantee on them, so if they can't handle quilting pins, then at least we'll be able to get a replacement pair.

 

@Doug - What is this right tool called, so I can put it on my "would like to get someday" list? I considered paperclips, but the ones we have were simply too big for this tiny job. For a bigger mini, I would totally use them, though. A bench grinder would be lovely to have, but given that we live in a teeny apartment, it wouldn't be a practical purchase right now. Someday...

 

I've not tried lineman's pliers, though I've heard them suggested many times. It looks like you need to make sure you get the good ones, because there's no guarantee that the edges will be sufficiently hardened to cut hardened rods.

 

The tool I use is this one. Micromark also carries a Xuron version. (Warning: Micromark can be a dangerous place to visit if you like modelling tools.)

 

Finally, when cutting hardened wire, be particularly careful. Safety glasses are strongly recommended. Also, have a plan to trap the bits that might otherwise fly across the room. It turns out that 3mm lengths of thin wire are especially difficult to find in a carpet. And they hurt if you step on them wrong.

 

... the "right tool" for me is the bolt cutter built into a 4 dollar pair of needle nosed pliers. You really don't need to break the bank on tools for this hobby. These pliers have gone through dozens of pins and still show no sign of it!

 

Among the many tools I've damaged cutting music wire are several needlenose-pliers wire cutters. Music wire is hard enough to notch all of the ones I've tried for that purpose.

[Pixel]

Sewing pins and needles are usually hardened steel, so you need the right tool to cut them. Unfortunately, that tool isn't cheap. But it's way cheaper than buying 4 sets if dikes (diagonal cutters) and then buying the right tool. Ask me how I know this.

 

Although I now have the right tool, I almost always use either brass rod or paperclips (which aren't hardened and can be cut pretty easily by most dikes) for pinning. If you have a bench grinder, it's pretty easy to put a point on either of those, which is useful either for pressing them through PVC or for making spears or arrows.

what size brass rods do you get?

Heidi

[Pixel]

Looking great!

[Doug Sundseth]

Depends on what I'm pinning. When I'm working on 15mm human miniatures, I usually get the thinnest I can find, often 0.020" (about 0.5mm). For larger figures I'll get larger rods, but for many purposes, pieces of paper clip work quite well. (For dragon wings and the like, I use the pieces of wire from the larger sizes of paper clips.)

[Loim]

If you ever do decide to try a tassel I recommend taking a look at DKS's conversion of the Pathfinder Gunslinger to see how he's doing the tassel on her sabre.

 

Excellent work. Keep the pictures coming.

[OneBoot]

Whew! Okay, lots done yesterday/this morning.

 

Firstly, I painted up the last thing on Tanya, her backpack/breathing apparatus thingy. With all the metallic going on, I decided to continue the theme by painting the actual pipe parts with a silvery color. The only silver metallic I've got is Honed Steel, which I decided would do just fine. I was curious whether it would do weird things when I thinned it, like the Molten Bronze did, but all it did was...go on really thin, more like a glaze. You can see it on the left and top of the pipe, sorry the pics a little blurry.

 

 

Which looks totally cool, but not what I was looking for here. I'll stash that away in my "neat tricks to use sometime" drawer in my brain.

 

I went back over it with unthinned Honed Steel, and noticed something very interesting. This Reaper metallic is MUCH less shiny than the P3. It's more of a...satiny metallic than a shiny metallic. It worked well here, since I didn't want it standing out too much, but I'll have to remember that for the future.

 

 

I also did the little breathing...thingy...bits on the front of her mask in the same color, since I reasoned that the pipe feeds up through her suit and into her mask. I figure the round bit on the left of her mask is a sort of filter thing, but I'm not bothered by lumping it in with "general breathing apparatus stuff."

 

 

Next was the square piece in the middle. I debated whether to make it black, bronze or some other color (I've got New Gold and Antique Gold in MSP), and decided to see how the Bronze would look. It turned out nice, but I think it's distracting from her awesome gun; too much bronze in one area.

 

 

I then attempted shading on her gun. I tried adding a little bit of Muddy Brown into about 2 drops of the Molten Bronze, and after a great deal of mixing finally got them to combine. I tested it on her rifle; no change. I added more Muddy Brown, still no change. A little bit more, and I could see a slight change in color, but nothing noticeable. Exasperated, I started adding tiny bits of Pure Black, and eventually ended up with a usable shading color. The problem I was running into was that my paint puddle looked VERY dark, but when I put in onto the figure, it looked only slightly tinted, if at all.

 

Metallics are weird.

 

Anyways, not sure if you'll even be able to tell from the pics where I painted the shade color, it's very subtle in all but a few places, but it reads nicely from tabletop distance. Could stand to be darker though, probably. I also used the shade color on all the other bronze bits, except the backpack, I'm going to end up changing that I think.

 

 

Next, I tried mixing some Sun Yellow into about 1.5 drops of Molten Bronze. This did something unexpected. Instead of grudgingly blending in like the Pure Black and Muddy Brown, the Yellow mixed in right away, and made it look...dull, somehow. I wondered if it might be a trick of the light, and applied it to where I wanted to highlight on her gun. No change. I added a little more Sun Yellow, and now the metallic looked VERY dull. A little apprehensively, I applied it to the gun, where, rather than brightening up the area, it killed most of the shine. I only tried it along the right edge of the top of the gun barrel (the area to the right of the white shine in the picture), then stopped, since I really wasn't liking what it was doing.

 

 

I guess my question at this point is, do I really need to highlight the gun when it's already so shiny? The shade color did a good job in bringing down the brightness where I painted it on without killing the shine much. Maybe I should just try messing around with mixing paints. It might be due to mixing paints from two different companies, I don't know.

 

That was all I got done on Tanya for now, more painting on other stuffs in the next post.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

Edited September 10, 2013 by OneBoot

[OneBoot]

The reason I didn't get more done on Tanya was because a chatty friend of mine called and needed to talk for 2 hours. I wasn't going to be able to focus on both at once, so instead I grabbed the Well of Chaos I've had sitting on my desk for the past few days and did some undercoating, since that requires very little brain power. The black parts will be painted in Stone Gray (except for that eye/jewel thing bottom center), and the brown parts will be a metallic of some kind. I'm planning on Molten Bronze for the most part, and I'm going to try for a bluish TMM on the head and tentacles.

 

 

She was still talking, so I pulled Rat #7 out of my Box of Shame Imagination. He'd been basecoated in Muddy Brown and given a Black Wash already, so I grabbed Oiled Leather and did a little drybrushing. It ended up going on a little patchy, but I liked the end result, so I didn't try to fix it. I did the usual for his eyes, mouth and teeth, but instead of mixing up something different for the tail/ears/paws, I just used more Oiled Leather. I did very little to his paws, just the slightest little touch along the tops of each finger as a sort of highlight, and ended up not doing anything to his ears, since the drybrushing had already highlighted them a little. One thing I'm happy about is that my brush control seems to be improving; I had absolutely no problems painting his teeth, and nailed the line down the middle on the first try, no cleanup needed. No cleanup needed on his tail, either.

 

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Corporea]

Curses! That it a problem with the demi-metallics (pigment mixed in with metallic paint)- they aren't as bright as the stand-alone metallics. One reason folks end up getting several different shades of metallic to keep that shine. Do you notice a color difference outside of the dullness? If you like the color contrast you've gotten, you could put a gloss sealer on the metallic to keep the shine. Or try this- use the molten bronze just for the highlights, and shade down to your dark brown/black- you could use a wash of the pure dark color- that way your shadows will get darker and won't have the metallic shine of the bronze. That may give you the contrast you need. Sorry!!

 

How about a molten bronze "clockwork" rat?

[OneBoot]

Oh goodness, Corporea, don't tempt me. I'd end up wanting to paint tiny gears on him, and sculpt a pair of weensy little wings for him, and call him "Cheesegear, the Clockwork Rodent."

 

...And now I'm eyeing my remaining rats and seriously considering the idea. I've already got two rats basecoated in similar grayish colors, and I don't really need two gray rats...

 

Gosh darn it.

 

I really didn't notice any color difference, sadly. I'd considered washing the whole thing a bit darker, then just hitting the highlights with the Bronze, but we'll see if that happens. I'm starting to run out of steam a bit, and I've still got her boots and armor to finish highlighting. No need to apologize! I'm actually having all sort of fun doing SCIENCE with my paints and seeing what sort of weird things they do when I mix stuff. As far as getting different shades of metallic paints, the olive green I got ended up being waaay too yellow for this job, so my FLGS was kind enough to allow me to exchange it today for another shiny P3 metallic: Quick Silver. I think I'll use it to highlight the silvery piping on her pack thingy.

 

~~~~~

 

Adventures in transferring paint into a bottle!

 

Things got kind of...messy. If you grow faint at the sight of spilled paint, I'd recommend you go look at something more pleasant. Like this video of fuzzy kittens on a slide:

 

 

All good? Okay then, moving on.

 

Trying to scoop Molten Bronze out of a pot onto my wet palette so that I could mix other colors into it was starting to get really bothersome, so I decided to try putting it into one of the empty Reaper dropper bottles I have. I just opened the lid and carefully started pouring (it's kind of thick, so it more sort of glopped than poured). This worked wonderfully until I got to the last 1/4 of the pot, where it wouldn't really pour anymore. So I closed the lid, turned it upside-down, and smacked it against my palm a few times, and got some more out. I did this a couple times, and since I was reading the forums while I was thumping the pot against my palm, it wasn't until I noticed that my hand was feeling sticky that I looked down.

 

 

The Horror!

 

Apparently, some paint had gotten on the outside of the lid, and while I was blissfully smacking the pot, had inadvertently half gilded my hand. Whoops! I guess I'll know to wear gloves next time.

 

I was able to fish out quite a bit more using a toothpick, until I was satisfied that I'd gotten out every bit of paint that I reasonably could. Ta-da!

 

 

Don't worry, I thoroughly scrubbed my hands afterwards. It's a testament to the sturdiness of P3's paint that I had to wash my hands twice to get it all off. :)

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Baugi]

I need to get about 3 dozen empty droppers and do the same thing.

 

I started my paint collection with P3, before I found Reaper paints. Oops.

[araziel]

"Cheesegear, the Clockwork Rodent."

My new project, starting it now! :D

 

Edit:

And here it is: http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/51314-my-take-on-cheesegear-clockwork-rat-idea-by-corporeaoneboot/

Edited September 10, 2013 by araziel

[buglips*the*goblin]

The limited edition Clockwork Brass is the only Reaper MSP metallic I genuinely like. That's why mostly I use old pro paint and coat d'arms metallics. CDA is probably very similar to P3.

[OneBoot]

Due to a bit of serendipity, I found http://arcanepaintworks.blogspot.com/2013/09/p3-metallics-black-label.html'>this article talking about P3 metallics. I wasn't even looking for it! Anyways, it mentions that they blend nicely with P3's inks for tinting, so I'll give that a go next, since I just so happen to have a bottle of their Brown Ink.

 

@buglips - I think I'm starting to understand your feeling for old Partha paints. Just thinking about P3's metallics makes me want to run right over to my FLGS and buy every last bottle of metallic P3 paint they have.

 

~~~~~

 

Did a quick Black Wash on the black parts of the Well of Chaos, and a Brown Wash on the brown bits, to help with durability. There's just something in Reaper's washes that's tougher than their regular paints. I didn't bother with a pic of this, since it looks...exactly the same. I did however start playing around with the metallic parts of it, and I can't decide whether to coat all of the brown bits (except the head and tentacles, I've got special plans for those) in the Bronze (as seen on the left), or whether to just do the outlines and do something different (maybe silver? drybrushed Bronze?) in the middle (as seen on the decoration on the right side.) Opinions wanted!

 

 

 

Last, but not least, I'll just leave these here:

 

 

Consider me quite thoroughly sidetracked.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

Edited September 10, 2013 by OneBoot

[smokingwreckage]

Try using careful washes to shade metallics. If you have P3 washes and inks, they're probably very like CDA which are in turn like the old Citadel paints, in which case, try using their inks to shade their metallics. Brown for gold, black for steel. There's a theory as to why this works... I think the ink tints the metallics without dulling it because mumble mumble mumble metallic fleck.