Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Project Thunderbolt Part 4: Finished Display Base and Pilot


Today is a quick post showing a few pics of my base completed.  The pics were outside so they're kinda sunny/shadowy.  Above shows the display base complete and the initial paint on the gaming base.  It will get some drybrushing and shrubbery, but now models.  Below are a couple more shots of the finished base.






Above is a shot of the Epic-scale Falcons before they were glued onto the base.

And a couple shots of the completed pilot before I put him into the cockpit.


A side shot of the pilot.  I also have the Limited Edition Thunderbolt Pilot that I will eventually paint to go with this.  I do wish this model was as good as the standing version I have, it is really awesome.

Next time I'll show the final painting and details along with the base.  I still haven't had a chance to use the weathering powders on it yet.  Thinking maybe I should try it on something else first.  I need to search around a little online and see a few more videos of people using the stuff to try to get a head start.  I have also been working on my Trollbloods and will put up a pics of my Mauler I finished Monday.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Project Thunderbolt Part 3: Airbrushing and Initial Weathering(Pic Heavy)


I finally got this baby assembled and primed with a rust red primer.  I agonized over the paint scheme for days and finally decided on a desert theme using the weathering technique I posted here.  The light brown would contrast with the rust red primer to make the weathering stand out.  The above pic shows the salt still in place after airbrushing.  I know top picture is out of order, but the primer pic doesn't draw attention.


The above pic shows the top of the model after the hairspray and salt were applied to the primer.  At this point the bottom of the flyer had been airbrushed with a cream color.  I wanted the bottom to be totally different using camouflage of sky when seen from below and camouflage of the desert when seen from above.


Above pic shows the bottom taped off before starting the airbrushing of the camo on top of the flyer.  This is the part of the project where you learn some valuable lessons.  DO NOT RUSH THE PROJECT.  However, I didn't follow this rule because the fall weather was nice and I wanted to get at it.  So within a half hour of airbrushing the bottom I removed the salt and taped it up.  Do not do this in the same day or maybe even couple days, especially on resin models where even with good cleaning practices the paint doesn't adhere great.  This was also in the same day as applying the hairspray which is another no-no.  Either way, I went on to airbrush the top, then upon removing the tape, removed most of the bottom paint as well.  This really sucked and I had to re-paint the majority of the bottom with a brush. Not cool.


Above pic shows flyer with the airbrushed camo before removal of the salt.  This was pretty tough, as I'm extremely new to the airbrushing thing and really wanted it to come out awesome.  For the most part, I am very happy with the desert camo except for a couple places that I won't tell you about.  Also, in this shot you can see most of the steel gaming stand I made and mentioned in the 2nd part of this series.


Above shows the technique I used to removed the salt and do additional weathering.  I used a toothpick dipped in warm water to removed the salt.  For the really stubborn ones, I would pool a little water around it and wait a few seconds.  This would make it release easily.  Be careful though, to much water and the thin airbrushed coat of paint can lift completely from the primer.  I then rubbed the hard edges with the same damp toothpick as shown.  This would leave a great little worn line along any edge.  This took a half hour or so, but gave a great look overall, adding to the weathering from the salt.  If you look closely there are a few places where this removed all paint including primer.  I touched up these spots with a brush and some paint mixed to closely match the rust red primer.


Another shot of the weathering before blacking out any of the details.


A closeup of even more of the weathering down to the hard edges.


A last shot showing the entire flyer after final weathering, but before any details were worked on.  Next up would come the brush work, blacking out everything and adding some metals.

In the next installment of this series I will show the pilot and Epic Falcons painted for the base.  I also received my weathering powders in the mail and am itching to get a little time to experiment with those to add some additional weathering and exhaust blackening.  Hope you're liking how this project is shaping up, I know I'm wanting to put this large project in the done pile so I can get back on some little guys(time permitting of course).

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Old Stuff Day and my 100th Post


I am going to jump on the Old Stuff Day Bandwagon and show the project that started this blog for me back in '09.  I wanted to convert up a nice army and paint to a high standard(for me anyways).  I had loved the Deathguard army since the old rulebook when they had their own rules and you could have 70 dudes on foot infiltrating and firing bolters like Papa Nurgle meant.  I just post a couple links to these articles below that I like the most from that series.  So check these out if you get a chance.  I hope to get back to this army soon, I kinda gave up on it after all the conversions and little painting.  Once I moved in with the mother-in-law for a year and had no place to model they were packed away.  They will see a return soon though, I'm hoping for a new CSM codex next year and want to be ready.






That was probably to many links to check out but man, looking back at those old posts makes me wanna get painting on those guys.  I have a full 2,500 pt army converted up like that waiting.  I also had a couple useful hobby articles that enjoyed putting together.



There are some of  the old posts I am most proud of on this blog.  And I just realized this is my 100th post.  Took me almost 2 years, but hey I'm not one for spamming multiple posts everyday just to make my hit counter spin.  

This was fun bringing back some of the great stuff from the beginnings of the blog where I was pretty much the only one reading.  If you remember these, thanks for reading.  Has also been fun checking out the Blog Rolls and seeing what everyone else had on their blog in the early days before discovery.