Of Dice And Men: April 2015

Airbrushing the night away

So I recently got hold of an air brush. It was something I've been wanting to get for while. Learning all the ins and outs has been fun. Using it is definitely a skill I want to improve on if not master. A few of the things I have learned so far are.

Keep it clean
Flush with water after every use
Clean the needle and nozzle regularly
thin the paint. nope still too thick thin it more
Clean and flush it again
Use thin paint, very thin paint
If you're going to have a problem its probably a dirty nossle or needle

Beast of war have an excellent selection of introductory air-brushing videos for their backstages

Since I got this shiny new toy I figured I better use it. My first attempts were just on paper but I soon tried it out on some minis. I was a little over painting my imperial guard so I practily jumped a friends offer to help him with some Shadow of Brimstone miniatures. He backed the kickstarter and now had too many miniatures than he knew what to do with. Further more he isn't a wargamer so he wasn't used to the heaps of multipart plastic miniatures in sprue form, and wasn't relishing the prospect assembling them. I however enjoy all three sides to the hobby triangle. (assembly, painting, and playing) the miniatures were of acceptable quality, but lacking the multitude of fine detail found on GW miniatures that I have become accustomed to. The vent lines in the sprue were a little thick for my liking and made it a little difficuled when removing them from the sprue. Upon assembly I noticed another minor fault with the minis. Although they fitted together well the smother sculpts made for easily identifiably joins. Other companies have learned to hide joins like these under the edge of some detail like armour or cloth. Perhaps the visible joins were a symptom of an emerging company just starting out, poor quality control of a mass manufactured product that was rushed out to fulfil a kickstarter promise, or perhaps a sign of an uncompromising design direction; to create smother organic looking miniatures on a budget. You'd think Liquid GreenStuff from GW would be the perfect thing to fix this problem, but you'd be wrong.

Harbinger I filled the gaps with liquid green stuff twice.

Yep looks good. Smoothed out those join lines

Goliath I filled the joins four times. The gaps were much more pronounced.

I think they still need work, but I just got sick of green stuffing and waiting for it to dry.

First time air brushing. First I coated the mini in red then I browned the bony structure of the wings. The blue tack is to protect from over spray.

Next step is a flesh tone on the wings. The air brush laid down a very smooth layer of paint.

Green and flesh base colours.

Highlights, glaze, and gloss varnish to make it look wet and slimy

I think it worked

Air brush and dry brushing. I used blue tack to protect the different shades of green from over spray.

Terraforming

For the longest time I've wanted a Gaming table. But I've also wanted the opportunity to play on a variety of terrain, and I don't have the space to store a 4' by 6' table. The solution I figured was a modular table with modular terrain. Several companies have offered different types of tile. Even GW but I was never happy with tether the cost or the size, So begun a slow burning idea for 1' by 1' custom terrain tiles. I figured I could create a variety of tiles all the same thickness and size. And as my collection grew I could mix the different stiles together. I could have battle scared cityscape slowly transfer into a cratered muddy no-mans land then finally into a trench network; then change it up the next time I played. The best bit would be that the tiles would be thick enough so that the craters and trenches were actually in the ground rather than the typical wargaming terrain sitting on top. I started out drawing the designs on top of 5mm tick foam-core then I would stick that on top of insulation foam sheets. For years I've been looking for a local supplier of insulation foam. This wonders material than every hobby blog said to use and would be available in any hardware store. Perhaps North Australia isn't in need of as much insulation as North America or Europe because I could never find the stuff. Then one day when I was looking to order some from the cooler states down south I found a stock listing for a local hardware store "pink foam; perfect for insulation and hobby needs" so I decided to make up some test pieces to see if my idea was sound. I decided on a urban road theme for my test.

I sandwiched two layers of foam core together drew on the design and scored the lines for the concrete joins. Then painted the scores black to hide the white foam core and provide shading.