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Showing results for tags 'Variety is the spice of life'.
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Hi all, Bit late as we've hit 2020 in the antipodes, but here are my doings for last year. I tend to put off making these posts as long as possible in the hope that I'll pull out of the seasonal rut and complete something before New Year, but it rarely (never?) happens! Too much food, drink and outdoors to blame. I started the year with Adeptus Titanicus Knights in ~1/200 scale - these are Questoris Knights on 32mm bases: (click for bigger/more pics of everything) and these are the larger Cerastus Knights on (I think) 40mm bases: I had a really good time making the bases, out of old sprue and other junk: They make a nice group and I really should paint some more - I have one of the larger yet Acastus Knights built, and various Titans in various stages of assembly. After these I started on a group of Warhammer Underworlds Goblins, which had to be painted ASAP as they were cast in a horrible yellow plastic. Zarbag's Gitz, they're called. The plainer ones took a day or two to paint apiece, the character models were a bit more involved. They're probably my favourite thing from the year and completely failed to succeed at the annual club competition, which was a bit of a shame. They're very characterful and full of neat thing to paint, like the chunks in the potion, Drizgit's brandin' iron, and Zarbag's big mad eye. About this time (June?) GW released their new paint line and I really enjoyed playing with that. This was a half-hour test model which I painted in the shop standing up without my seeing teeth and then finished up at home: and these are more of the same done at home with magnification. Very quick and satisfying, maybe a bit over-contrasty? They fit quite well with my earlier Death Guard models painted with more traditional paints. I painted some scenery using the same process, again very quick and pleasant work: and another Plague Marine who was the usual combination of fun (all those details!) and incredibly tiring (all those details...) I had lots of help with colour choice from BM members, thanks all! These aircraft are from Aeronautica Imperialis and are the same scale as the robots at the top of the page. They might be my other most favourite thing this year? Lovely to build, and fun to paint, in this case using Alclad, a lot of brush painting as they were too lumpy to mask, and a mix of kit and found decals. I then switched back to "proper" kits and built an interestingly-shaped space-fighter from Kotobukiya. It's from a PS1 videogame I never played called RayStorm. It fit very well and if I'd trusted that and the instructions a bit more it would've been quite pleasant, but I ended up having to pin and otherwise repair the nacelle connections and then dropped it and had to do that all over again. Still, it's pretty cool. Also by Kotobukiya is this Zoid, which is a much more detailed kit of one of my favourite toys as an '80s kid, the Tomy Slitherzoid (aka Molga). This time I didn't follow the instructions and it worked out beautifully, so you never know! (I did various assembly and filling of the armour pieces separate to the skeleton rather than around it, and by cutting down various pegs and opening some slots I could slide them into place after painting.) The Zoid and R-GRAY got Photoshop treatments which was fun. The ship one was just graphics, for the Zoid I had to extend the very small base by cloning bits from a pic of the other side... And that's the lot! I was given the new Sisters of Battle set for Christmas so they might make an appearance soon, and I'm working on a big yellow dumper truck. I also made my first model railway purchase for almost a decade so that might be a big time-sink this year. We shall see! If you want to see more pics of my doings they're all on Flickr and I've started using Instagram. Which makes me feel rather old, but is quite fun I also need to update my forum sig as the links are a bit out of date. Cheers and all the best for 2020! Will
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Hi folks, I was putting off posting this in the hope that I'd get something else finished before Christmas, but after my contract finished last week I've spent my time either preparing for Christmas, doing some extra bug-fixing work, or being ill with the traditional end-of-contract cold. So we'll just have to make do with what there is up to now I had a late start to the year - I think it was February or March before I actually completed something, and that was the horrible squiggly beast which is Games Workshop's Tyranid Haruspex. I wasn't sure I liked this model initially but it grew on me after seeing some painted examples and I'm really glad I did one - painting icky stuff is childish fun. He still doesn't have a base, which is a bit sad, but eventually I'll figure something out. After that I made a little Schnellboot from Bronco's excellent 1/350 kit that I picked up on a work trip to the Bay Area. Almost out-of-the-box apart from some Fujimi sailors. The etch is scarily thin but I got it (mostly) fitted and it does add a lot of finesse. Around Easter I wanted some light relief from my still-unfinished LTAT GB project, Trumpeter's 1/200 Chinese destroyer "Anshan", which required a lot of bending, straightening, fixing and scratchbuilding: so I found Bandai's nice little kit of the gunship from Nausicaa in my stash. This is a rework of a Tsukuda Hobby kit, and has nice parts fit and characterful figures. I opted for a Zero green finish with a stripe and decal from a Ma.K kit: After that I built another Games Workshop kit which I didn't like initially, but grew on me. This was the new Wood Elf treeman, which I converted a bit, using two right hands and swapping the fingers and thumb over on one to make a left. That let me use both the big flowery staff, and the tendrils. I also trimmed his plaited beard and used it as a ponytail instead. This one was all about the painting, really, although the construction was fiddly owing to the many layers and fragile branches it went together well. We then had our club's BSK (Build the Same Kit) competition and amazingly we had enough votes for a Sci-Fi subject - the Battlestar Galactica Viper. Any variant was OK, I opted to build the newly-released Mark One from the original series. I went a bit far with the lighting on this one, making my own lighting rig with an onboard microprocessor controlling a mix of RGB and single-colour LEDs. I wrote an 8-bit animation system for the ATTiny controller which allowed me to keyframe all the lighting and made it easy to create some neat effects. I also made a seat and harness from epoxy putty, and rebuilt some of the naff detail on the landing gear legs. I left the painting and finishing rather late and it was a mad rush but I'm glad I got it done on time. After a difficult build I tend to retreat into the figures again, and I painted these fiddly-to-build Warhammer ghosts. The basic colours were airbrushed and then I used a lot of edge higlighting and glazes to get a glowy ghostly look. My wife thinks they look like floating cabbage though I then had a kit which went straight from the letterbox to the workbench. This was Eduard's MiG-15 dual combo bought cheap from HLJ. I'm a bit scared of aircraft in general, and small scale aircraft in particular, but I mostly enjoyed doing this one and I'm happy to have painted my first metal finish. I used the provided etch for the cockpit, and the resin rockets, but not the resin pylons or etched u/c details - the rest was quite fiddly enough, thanks! I still need to finish the second MiG... And last of all (so far) is Tamiya's Mark IV Male tank. I knew I was going to buy this as soon as it was announced, and again it went straight from the model shop to the workbench. I would've entered it in the WW1 GB but stupidly I forgot, and because it was so easy to build I was too far in when I remembered. The rather quick-and-dirty base (all done in a day) was to get it up off the table for our club competition, since I think the rhomboid tanks look better angled up a bit. I also tackled my fear of painting "proper" figures and had a first go at something in 1/35 - a modified figure from the British Infantry set included in the export releases. I think he came out OK, hopefully with practice and a bit more time/care I can get better at this. It's motorised (I love toys!) and you can lift it off the base and run it. No issues so far with the mud and so on getting in the way. I suspect it could be bedded-in better if assembled static, but I wasn't going to miss out on running over other models on the table, was I? And that's my lot! Not a huge collection but I like them all for different reasons, and I had fun making them. I also have a slew of WIPs to pick up - the Anshan, an assembled and primed Zvezda Topol, a vinyl figure, more GW stuff, and a scratchbuilt starship which was going great guns and then suddenly stopped for reasons I don't quite understand! I also did some non-modelling-modelling-stuff this year - I've never been much of a joiner of things, but I've been a member of Scale Models Wellington for a couple of years now and have taken over editing the club magazine, which means I'm on a committee (my first!) Ulp. So far I'm surviving (If you're interested in our club we have a Facebook group - all welcome.) Thanks to everyone on Britmodeller for being such a supportive and interesting bunch, and particularly those who have commented on the various WIPs or prodded me when I got stuck. It's really appreciated. Best wishes and happy Christmas! Will
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