Will's 2019 weirdness

[Will Vale]

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andy Moore]

Amazing work as always Will. Zarbag's Gitz are definitely my favourites. I love the portrait montage you made for them.

 

Andy

[Will Vale]

Cheers Andy! It's was handy that there were nine of them!

 

W

[Stew Dapple]

I always like to keep an eye on your work Will, I'm not into Games Workshop stuff but the quality of your painting is always an inspiration  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[DalekCheese]

Brilliant stuff Will  

 

will we we see the Acastus/titans any time soon?

[Will Vale]

Thanks Stew & Cheese

10 hours ago, DalekCheese said:

will we we see the Acastus/titans any time soon?

I wouldn't like to offer any predictions. I'm between contracts at the moment so in theory have lots of free time but stuff keeps filling it.

 

W

[DalekCheese]

12 hours ago, Will Vale said:

I wouldn't like to offer any predictions. I'm between contracts at the moment so in theory have lots of free time but stuff keeps filling it.

 

W

Oof, I can relate to that. Well, whenever they come along I’m sure they’ll be great.