94006: Spectre - CAV - WIP

[Steg 138]

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".

 

 

[robinh 9917]

Well your off to a good start with a smooth base coat.   Since he is a spare (and possibly battlefield wreckage in the future) just have fun and slather away.  If he falls flat there is always the cleansing Green bath!

[joshuaslater 1892]

You're making me hungry.  

[Jasonator 29612]

Great Start !

Good choice of base coat.. you can go UP or Down easily with that color.

Ginger cookie, taking over the world, one miniature at a time..ROFL

Look forward to see what you do !

Edited January 18, 2015 by Jasonator

[Steg 138]

Legs glued, everything flipped and basecoat finished:

 

I'm trying to think of a way to stick some of these parts up on a peg, so I can paint more parts at once, instead of flipping around. Mostly too late to be useful on this guy, but the other CAVs will have the same issue. Maybe I can find a bit of bones sprue that fits in there, but I worry about poster putty getting stuck in there, or it falling off while painting.

 

Next up: Another color. The Ginger Cookie is kind of pale brown, and it reminds me a little of desert camo. Looking up desert camo online, I saw a mention that one of them for a while used mint green. Mint is sometimes used in cookies, so that must be another sign. I don't have Mint, so it's time to mix some up. I started with Ghost White and some Viper Green, and it was... not minty enough. I think it needed more blue, so I put in a drop of Sparkling Blue. At least, that was the idea. Instead of a drop, the bottle extruded a wierd viscous worm of paint:

 

It mixed in OK with some vigorous toothpicking, though. A bit more tinkering and my final recipe is 4 drops Reaper 09063 Ghost White, 2 drops 09228 Viper Green, 1 'drop' 09104 Sparkling Blue, and 1 drop 09294 Alien Goo. Also one drop from a bottle labeled "Jen Haley's Recipe" which I think is a combination of water, flow improver, and slow-dry.

 

I figure if the base machine was cookie color, then the next big color would be the metal plates that were bolted on (armor? access hatches?) then I just randomly started picking things on the mech to paint. I did the big wheel things on his ankles as only half painted, and alternated them. Maybe they rotate as he walks? I'm not sure if I should leave it, or paint the other half another color, or paint the whole round part all green. I think it's easiest to see in the last picture.

 

 

 

 

So, ginger cookie. It's kind of pale for a cookie, assuming a ginger cookie is the same as a ginger bread cookie. I vaguely recall gingerbread being a darker earthier brown, so I think I'll use something like that for some more of the panels and accents or whatever. Also, I think I should have done some lining with something real dark for the crevices and the little valleys between the panels, but hopefully a wash will fix that once I'm closer to done.

 

Thanks for the comments! =)

[robinh 9917]

you could always slip a dark green into the various crevices/lines...

[Steg 138]

you could always slip a dark green into the various crevices/lines...

 

Good idea! Here he is lined with 09226 Peacock Green:

Looks good! (The color, not my sloppy painting)

 

So back to the gingerbread. Cookies are eaten around the year-end holidays. People also roast chestnuts (over open fires!) and walnuts are basically chestnuts, right? So I mixed a drop of 09136 Walnut Brown with a couple drops of Ginger cookie. The result? More Walnut Brown. I dropped in a couple more ginger, and some thinner, and slightly pale walnut brown. Add some more and.... an ugly mess. (Final estimate: ~6d GC, 2d WB) But lots of paint that I would feel bad about wasting, so I slapped some on the shin panels, around that green square. And it looks ok, I think, so I slathered it on some other places.

 

 

Here's the head (it's upside down) next to the side of the body:

 

And here's what it'll kind of look like assembled (no arms yet):

 

Boy, that looks terrible. I'm fairly happy with the colors, just those edges all look bad. Hopefully a ginger touchup at the end (and hosing it down with wash) will help. Also, guns. Guns will make anything look better.

 

So I kind of have an idea for the cockpit glass, I'm going to probably go with silver on the missile tubes and the 'staples' on his knees, red warheads (of course!) but it kind of feels like there should be something else going on with those big flat expanses of cookie on the body. I don't want him to not be cookie, but I'm not sure how to break it up a bit without just painting it a different color. I thought about putting the darker color on the... crotch... protrusion, but I really don't want to call attention to that area.

 

 

[Steg 138]

Tubes and staples done in Reaper 09053 Honed Steel. Base and the back of the missile tubes in Reaper 09037 Pure Black. People say not to use black as it looks like cheap plastic, but I've never really tried it, and the bases these CAVs are supposed to use are black, so what the heck. Looks ok to me, maybe a bit matte, but not that different from Walnut Brown. The backs of the tubes came out better than I expected.

 

Knee/shin ovals, staples connecting the round ankles to the leg:

 

 

Missile tubes, in dire need of a second coat:

 

 

Arm Gun ports, and the rivets on the shoulder panels:

 

 

 

So for the glass, my idea was to use Tamiya X-19 Clear Smoke. This is the stuff that magically turns translucent bones into great models (as seen here among other places). Here's a test sprue, with Clear Smoke over the top of:  Left - Reaper 90104 Sparkling Blue (metallic). Center - plain Boneseum. Right - Reaper Honed Steel.

 

Different angles/light:

 

 

 

I think the blue didn't turn out very good, it just got darker. Smoked Silver looks a lot like normal silver, not sure it really did much for it. Smoked Bones looks the most different (from plain paint) so maybe with a bunch of coats it'll work. Other things I could try is a real pale blue like Ultramarine Highlight, or maybe Ghost White.

 

 

[Steg 138]

So I realized that Smoked Bones is irrelevant, since I already painted the cockpit Cookie during the base coat. Derp. I made another test sprue, here it is un-smoked:

 

Left is 09009 Lemon Yellow, center on the end is 09063 Ghost White, right is 09051 New Gold (metallic), then going up from the center part is 09189 Ultramarine Highlight, then 09207 True Silver (metallic), and finally 09659 Ginger Cookie.

 

Then I put on some Tamiya X-19 Clear Smoke:

 

bad lighting:

 

I think my best bet is to go with Ghost White. It looks kind of grey-silver, which I think works ok (maybe it's armourglas or something). I kind of like the smoked cookie, but I'm worried that'll be too close to the base coat once I wash it. So, barring any excellent ideas, I think that will be my next step. I also have an idea for the big flat areas of cookie, but I want to try it first. Also: suspense!

[Sergeant_Crunch 7959]

Something you can consider for the cockpits is to highlight using different colors to suggest an anti-glare coating or glass that has different elements incorporated in the glass. I generally do this by basecoating the canopy with black, then glaze it with the darkest shade of the color I'm using (I usually go with green or blue), then use very sharp highlights where I want to show light reflecting.

 

Some examples from way back are:

 

 

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/23858-kikyu/?p=350241

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/27977-what-ive-done-in-the-last-two-months/?p=413025

(if the links don't work I'll fix them later)

 

I haven't done this in a while as I'm usually trying to just get them done and put a dab of gloss sealer over a black canopy.

[Steg 138]

Oh god the Bones are shipping on Monday! I've got to get this finished! So this weekend is panic time, after a (looks it up) week and a half of getting basically nothing done.

 

 

Something you can consider for the cockpits is to highlight using different colors to suggest an anti-glare coating or glass that has different elements incorporated in the glass. I generally do this by basecoating the canopy with black, then glaze it with the darkest shade of the color I'm using (I usually go with green or blue), then use very sharp highlights where I want to show light reflecting.

 

Those planes look incredible, Sergeant_Crunch. I'm going to give it a shot, because even assuming I don't do it well, it's probably going to end up better than my test sprues. And even if it turns out bad, I'll probably have learned something (which is far more valuable, given that I have 32 more cockpits to eventually paint (and more in a year or so when the rest of CAV ships).

But before we get to the exciting parts, boring stuff!

I liked the way the dark green lining looked, but after more work it didn't seem visible enough, so I added more:

 

 

 

Next I painted the cockpit with Walnut Brown, and did a bunch of touchups everywhere else using Cookie.

 

 

 

Red warheads! I was going to use 09217 Magma Red, but once I got it on the pallet with some thinner it was a bit too orange, so I added some 09135 Carnage Red.

 

 

I Smoked the business ends of the barrels with Tamiya X-19 Clear Smoke (this machine has been in heavy use, and those rockets have dirty exhaust!):

 

 

 

 

The warheads ended up being kinda plain, so I topped them off with Tamiya X-27 Clear Red:

 

 

 

Those big expanses of plain cookie were bugging me, so I figured with the kind of sandy look it had, that maybe a camo pattern would be nice, and break things up. My idea, since I'm barely capable of painting 'within the lines' was to basically use a stamp. Pingo used a brush that was all splayed out to sort of drybrush stamp a base, making long thin feathery lines, which were then built up into a really nice and complex grass base. (Link!) I figured I could do the same for a feathery/leafy kind of thing. And it didn't work, at all. My splayed brush hairs just clumped together, and I ended up with smears bigger than a normal line of paint from a small brush. Next I tried using a single (human) hair to dip in the paint then stamp, it didn't work at all, not enough paint transferred and it was really hard to do. So I gave up, and decided to just free hand that thing with my small brush and hope for the best.

Keeping to the food theme (kinda?), what's good when you've had enough cookies? Olives, of course. Everyone loves olives. At least, I do. So here's the Spectre with sloppy random freehand camo made from 09158 Olive Drab.

 

 

 

Next up is the cockpit and my adventures in glazing!

Edited February 8, 2015 by Steg

[Steg 138]

Glazing, having looked it up, is apparently using a very thinned down semi-transparent paint to slowly build up coats. It's thinner than a wash, which is, according to a random post-it note on my box, about 10:1 medium(water/flowimprover/slowdry) to paint. So glaze is even thinner. The glossary thing said that brush on sealer works well for that, since it's not as runny as water, but still spreads out the paint to make it transparent.

 

So I need to start with a dark version of my color (green), I used 09226 Peacock Green, 09208 Black Ink, and 09107 Brush-On Sealer, and a bunch of Jen's thinner stuff.

 

Also, you can see my brush going crazy. What the heck.

 

My other brush (top) looks normal, I'm not sure why this one does that. It's supposed to be a way better brush. Am I doing it wrong, or not taking care of it?

 

After using it a bit I cleaned it off, and while dragging it on a paper towel and twisting, it went back to normal:

 

Baffled. Anyway, that's probably for another thread. So here's some shots of a few coats of the dark glaze:

 

 

I can't really see much of that in person, so I made another one using 09014 Grass Green (and a bunch of the dark glaze). It doesn't look quite so pea-soupy in person.

 

Now things got wierd. I would brush some one, and some areas would just get wet, while others would get painted. Maybe it wasn't mixed enough? I really went at it with a toothpick, maybe I had some water still in the brush and that came out of the tip while the paint all stayed up in the back? Also note, there is no highlight there, that's an actual reflection. This is just the dark and semi-dark green.

 

Gently dragging the very tip across didn't seem to do much as far as depositing color. Jabbing at it, though, would leave blobs of color that I could kind of smear around. This can't be right. When it mixes, it looks ok, but I think I'm doing something wrong.

 

And then, tragedy struck. A hair landed on it, and in the process of removing it, my clumsy ape hands hit the cockpit, and gouged a big chunk out of the entire paintjob. This does reveal how thick things got (holy cow) so maybe I was supposed to thin way way more.

 

Attempted patching:

 

I think things got a little too even, and too light, so I went back and re-did some of the edges with the dark mix, this time with some extra black ink (it had somehow turned kind of turquoise blue). Here's some progressive shots of more coats. (Again, all highlights are actual reflections, not paint.)

 

 

 

 

Attempted highlights, inspired by the Sarge.

 

 

Good Enough will be my motto. Gotta get this finished. Next is the wash with my good friend 09136 Walnut Brown:

 

 

With a coat of brush on Liquitex gloss varnish (it's too cold outside to use the aerosol)

 

Another coat of gloss, and a coat of matte is currently drying, hopefully it'll be finished tonight if not tomorrow morning (depending on if it needs another coat of anything). I'll post pics of it assembled and stuff once that's done.

 

[Sergeant_Crunch 7959]

I keep a pair of tweezers on my table for hair removal (we have two dogs and a cat). The cockpit came out well!

[Steg 138]

Tweezers, good idea. I'll add that to the list.

 

Here's an important thing I learned: Tacking parts to the handle is bad when combined with varnish!

 

I had the pegs pushed into poster putty, and some of the varnish pooled around there, so when it dried and I removed it, there's a big flange of plastic sticking off. And while Reaper bones are indestructible, Reaper paint isn't. I scratched off some paint trying to thumbnail off some of the waxy varnish deposits.  Argh.

 

Anyway, Leftie is done!

 

It was fun, and a relief to have a 'practice' mini to work on without needing to worry so much, and in the end, I don't think he would be out of place next to the others (if I ever get them done).

 

Thanks for reading, and thanks very much for the comments and ideas. I'll leave you with a bonus picture: Kang Kong vs MechaCAVZilla!

 

[Arc 724 18318]

Something you can consider for the cockpits is to highlight using different colors to suggest an anti-glare coating or glass that has different elements incorporated in the glass. I generally do this by basecoating the canopy with black, then glaze it with the darkest shade of the color I'm using (I usually go with green or blue), then use very sharp highlights where I want to show light reflecting.

 

Some examples from way back are:

 

 

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/23858-kikyu/?p=350241

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/27977-what-ive-done-in-the-last-two-months/?p=413025

(if the links don't work I'll fix them later)

 

I haven't done this in a while as I'm usually trying to just get them done and put a dab of gloss sealer over a black canopy.

 

Hey thanks for posting this! This is a great idea! I have an old hero clix style mech warrior I try this one. Although He has flat glass panels... How would I do that effect with a flat panel?