Star Wars Bunker and Printed Landing Pad

12.29.2024

My focused project for the year has been the Necromunda Hab-buildings for the basis of whatever sci-fi setting I'm going with moving forward. Back in May I made my first post showing some progress, not realizing at the time that there would be but 2 more related posts over the next 4 months. Though to be honest, I've not posted a lot this year. Why? It seems that making slow progress on a large batch of buildings where one looks a whole lot like another does not lend itself to things interesting enough to post. Hence, this latest thing I've been working on for a little over a month is suddenly just shown here out of the blue.

Thanks to a sale at a local shop who decided to get out of the Star Wars Legions business, I got a lot of stuff at half price. In one case, that meant I picked up 2 Imperial Bunkers. The real reason I picked up 2 was that a video I saw at some point from the publisher showed 2 bunkers can fit back-to-back and look really cool. While I don't really envision myself making a board with lush forest scenery and a bunker being defended (or is it attacked?), I quickly saw my white/orange paint scheme used on the Necromunda buildings working on the bunkers and allowing them to fit in with my existing sci-fi scenery. Thus, I had a plan.

It was a good plan, too. Minimal gluing was involved, and most of the work was in picking out details in control boards and screens. This was definitely one of those times that painting before gluing was the route to go, just to help getting to those details easier. The best new experiment: for the computer monitors, I just added some green contrast paint on top of the white primer, then a dollop of gloss on top of that. I thought it was pretty close to a retro-green glow of a monitor.

Everything else was finding the right places to add orange to add a little interest. The outside of the bunker is still Wraith Bone white, but the inside is plain primer white. This also helps to break things up a little, since the inside and outside aren't exactly the same colors. Keeping with my Necromunda building stenciled letters, the blast doors for the bunkers got some stenciled numbers added on. One drawback to those blast doors - thanks to a couple of layers of paint + sealant, I'm not sure I can lift those doors up into the open position now that they're down.

I played around with placing the bunkers together VS apart, and both work well. I can always add a homemade section to join the bunkers, as this also seems a popular video topic.

Thanks to Jerry's new FDM Printer, he printed a landing pad for me. This was meant as a printer test and to add something different to the sci-fi layout VS trying to think of what would be landing on it. As such, I asked Jer to scale it down to about a 5" footprint. He got it printed out with minimal trouble (I think), annd after a little sanding and pinning some parts to help fortify the super glue bond, I was ready to try painting this thing.

Some of the surface was a little rough, and I used that as an excuse to use some UV Resin I bought a while back to see how it would work. I added some resin to the center, used my UV flashlight on it for 4 min, and had a solid covering in the center. I go out and add a layer of black primer, then spray on some Wraith Bone with a slight zenithal approach - basically from all the "above" angles, down to about 90° It was here I noticed my UV Resin test wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped. Some bubbles looked to have popped on the surface, and the edges weren't as uniform as I thought. I grabbed my seldom used airbrush and decided to freehand orange highlights for stripes, etc.

And to be honest, it didn't turn out very good. It took me until the next day to admit that. The airbrush wasn't flowing smoothly when I first started, and instead of trying to fix it I just muddled through. Additionally, I was still spraying paint like I was afraid of the airbrush. Why? I need to get over that!

To help with getting over that, I made a 2nd pass. First, I added some Mod Podge Dimensional Magic (poor man's resin) to more of those "rough" spots, which would help smooth things out a little more. After that had dried, I grabbed the black primer and started over on the landing pad. Black, then Wraith Bone. And after a thorough cleaning of the airbrush followed by tracking down where I had last put the bottle of Flow Improver, I started to airbrush landing bad 2.0.

The second pass went a lot better with the airbrush. I picked out some different details, and decided to add a stenciled number to the center. As this was a landing pad, weathering with some heat-focused soot and fallout would fit in well. I've been avoiding most weathering on my sci-fi stuff, as I don't know what shade the ground will usually be. Here the weathering was intended to be man-made from above and not local flora dependent, so I effectively ignored the parts I normally focus on when weathering. It was weird, but in the end the landing pad turned out pretty good.

Now I have a nice collection of buildings, and landing pad, to call on as the basis for my sci-fi setting. Much like the 4Grounds Mall, maybe I'll get around to using it in a game someday. But that's not the true purpose of this stuff - I just like making scenery.

Permalink 3D Printer Necromunda scenery Star Wars Legion

Bullet Dice

12.15.2024

As the latest terrain building/painting phase is taking a lot longer between anything interesting enough to post about, I instead present a Black Friday toy that had been sitting in my Amazon wish list since April-ish. The CZYY Metal Polyhedral Bullet Dice Set of 7 with Spinning Revolver Cylinder Container - Cyberpunk Style Dice for Warhammer 40K, D&D, Sci-Fi, War, or Crime Theme Tabletop Games (Bronze). Or as I call it, Bullet Dice Revolver!

Do I need more dice? No.
Do I need dice in the shape of bullets? Definitely not.
When was the last time I rolled dice? Maybe 2021.
Do these dice have a little spinny gun cylinder thing? Yes.

Then once it remains in my wishlist until a good enough sale, I must purchase it. Thus, on Black Friday, I purchased it.

I've still not rolled the dice for a game, but I have rolled them. I've also spun the cylinder/holder a lot, as it makes for great desk bric-a-brack.

I was lunching with Jerry yesterday and noted that for the past few years I've gotten some overpriced hobby-related tool that I enjoy. Ultrasonic Xacto, teeny Electric Drill, etc. While not really a tool, maybe this will count as filling that void this year?

Permalink hobbies

Jailbirds Number 2

09.30.2024

Scenery interlude to paint some people brought my next set from the Jailbirds series - the Coyote Crew Command. I hadn't realized it had been a year since I painted the first set I had gotten from the series. No real reason to mention the time span other than how you really don't notice things like a year between something as you get elderly. So remember that, kids!

I had nothing special planned for this batch other than to not paint Necromunda buildings as I had been mostly doing for the past 3 months. I primed this set of Jailbirds earlier so they would be ready for when the figure-painting mood struck. The mood had been struck. These minis required some assembly with all the parts interchangeable between bodies - head, arms, torso, bottom half (not each leg). My bane with arms is whenever 2 arms have to hold 1 item/weapon. In an effort to avoid this frustration, I went with 1-arm wielding pieces. Granted, it's not the most realistic look at times. I like to look at it as supporting strong women.

As these minis are flat-footed in terms of bases (ie no protrusions to stick into bases), I decided to pin these and use some pre-made bases that have been sitting in boxes for years. Normally I use paperclips for pins, but paperclips are too big to really fit in the feet/legs of these minis. After asking for suggestions in a couple of Facebook minis groups, the obvious alternative of sewing pins was used. Sewing pins beat out the #2 option of guitar string, mainly because I can pick up pins at Hobby Lobby and have no idea where to start for guitar string and the various sizes it comes in.

Snip, try to reduce mold lines, super glue and use my fancy drill to hollow out pinholes and only go too far 2/5 of the time. Just white primer today, no fancy zenithal this time around. I used a couple of different flesh shades on the 5 minis so they wouldn't look like clones this time around. Everything else was a mixture of Citadel Contrast and Army Painter Speed paints. Nothing too fancy, just focusing on brush technique and trying to stay in the lines as much as I could.

I picked 5 bases from my stash that were pretty simple to paint, or at least I was going to paint them simply. After painting, I sealed the minis and bases so as to not rub off paint when going to drill base holes and glue in the minis. Post drill and mini gluing, I went back with some mostly-unintentionally-dry Hardcoat to gloss up the metallic pieces.

Overall I like what I ended up with. It was a nice excursion from buildings, so much so I'm looking forward to the next phase of buildings I have lined up!

Permalink gaming miniatures Jailbirds Minis

Necromunda Orange - Done Enough

09.06.2024

Since last time in Necromunda land I made an effort to try and be consistent with my painting for a while. After work I would take a break for an hour or 2, and then I would turn on the radio and paint for what would turn out to be 2-4 hours. For 2 weeks I did this. I got a lot done, and I also learned that how I paint can lead to text neck, or maybe I should call that Necromunda Neck?

I had gotten the 1st pass of orange on all the buildings and started the roofs at the end of the last post. I had more roofs, some platforms I'd forgotten about, and then some walkways and ladders that I had completely forgotten about. Oh, and it seems most of the time a 2nd coat of orange is needed to really get the coverage I need. And add in some other colors because just white-ish and orange is boring. By the way, I'm not the steadiest hand so go back and cover up errant brush strokes with some white-ish.

I didn't know the above was the plan when I started, but it turned out that way. It sounds like hell, but it was actually kind of nice. After work, with the radio on, I was able to honestly turn my brain off and just go about painting. When I normally turn my brain off, everything just lurks in the background and I don't attention. This time - off.

There aren't really any interesting stories or tidbits from this round of painting. No big discovery. No big mistake or learning experience. Currently, I think all of this is about 90% done. I need to add some weathering to help cover those errant brush stroke fixes. While putting everything together for some of the beauty shots below, I didn't even notice those cover ups. After dedicating a big chunk of time to painting this set, I'm ready to switch gears for a little while. As such, I'm calling Space:199-Necromunda Done Enough, For Now. There's some more stuff I want to add in (later on), so revisiting will be a good time to add in the weathering.

Permalink Necromunda scenery

2024 Model Show

08.25.2024

Last year I found out about the Huntsville plastic model show the day after it ended, when I was looking at the website of one of the attending vendors. I thought that might have been fun, so I made a Google Calendar note when they announced the next show - Aug 24, 2024. That date was one I actually kept up with and would monitor the sponsoring group's Facebook page to make sure I both had the right date and that the date didn't change.

Saturday of the show came and I was ready to go. I had no idea what to really expect. I've seen videos of various model show/contests online and most have a section of models on display for judging, and then a section of vendor tables that pretty much reminds me of flea markets. My plan was to go and look at the models on display, then check out vendors to see if there was anything special enough that I didn't think I could get locally or online - and there, I wasn't really expecting anything or have a "must buy something before leaving" urge.

The show info had vendors showing up at 8:00 to start setup, model contest entries/admission starting at 9:00, contest judging starting at 1:00. 11:00 seemed like the right time for me to show up. Everyone setting up should be set, and the 1st wave of hardcore people would be done doing whatever people do. It was an oddly pleasant 83° when I arrived shortly after 11:00. I went in and to the left were models on display, to the right 4 rows of 10-12 tables per row of vendors.

The lines winding through the contest models were, for me, a little narrow and not moving in an easily navigable direction, so I opted to go right and browse vendor tables. Along the right-most wall I kind of scanned while walking by - old cars... old military planes.. old cars... old cars ... really old cars... random aircraft. This continued along the length of the wall, where I ran into why I don't go to conventions, shows - basically any large-group thing occupied by people interested in the subject/hobby a lot more than I am.

3 hrs from when people started coming in, 5 minutes after I entered, I walked into a wall that is best described as the odor of old man musk on a hot day plus onions. Once I smelled it, I had a hard time getting away from it. I continued walking the tables and almost speed-browsing as I continued to see car... car... Corsair... Apache... car.. It was here that I ran into a more random, but oft present, reason for not going to special-interest-group centered events.

The random person milling about is oblivious to anyone else, which generally steers them toward coming across as an asshole. I first noticed this when looking (from a couple of feet away) at 3ft high stacks of boxes filled with models atop a table. An old guy in blue shorts is suddenly standing in front of me. Ok, he's not moving. I move to the right to see the next stack. He soon moves to the right and is still right in front me. Even better - I swear he's an onion-smell source. I skip down to the end of the next table, skipping about 4 rows, and there's fewer people so I move in a little closer to the stacks. Maybe a minute later, blue shorts shows up beside me and is trying to wedge in as if I'm in his way. Deciding to go look at other tables, on a return pass I found out blue shorts was working and moving models around/filling empty slots as they were being sold. Had there been any empty spots where I was looking before, I might have given him a pass here.

But in general, people just weren't paying attention to other people moving about. Maybe I'm more cognizant of this as I can inadvertently mow somebody down with my mass if I'm not paying attention, but fully 1/4 of the men there - and let's face it, there's maybe 4 women at this thing - these are dudes close to my size. It was here I thought back to my string of 1-and-done events: Star Trek convention, Wrestlemania, comic/gaming things I can't remember any details of right now. It looked like "model show" was going to enter that list.

I went and looked at some of the model contest entries. I started on the side that had naval ships and sci fi - the combo of which took up 1 row of tables. The other 5 or 6 rows were cars and aircraft/military, and still seem to have the awkward path to view. Along the back wall were some dioramas, which was a category I specifically wanted to see as that's a little more geared toward my game-painting mindset. I managed to look at some of the aircraft as I looped my way out, and all were good but they just seemed kind of generic-good. I say that as someone who hasn't been able to finish the last 4 model kits I started because I get frustrated with how badly things seem to fit together.

I had reached the point I wanted - browsed vendor wares, looked at some models. The odor had lessened so I went for another quick browse of vendor tables. One had a couple of Tamiya Porsche models that had caught my eye on the initial go around, which unfortunately was where the old man + onion had kicked in. While looking along tables as I walked by, it really was 90% cars/military that I've always seen. I reached the spot with the Tamiya models I'd seen from a distance and looked closer. One was still in the shrinkwrap. Another was open, so I checked to make sure it had everything since that's something you're supposed to do. Then I noticed sitting below the table was a Trek Enterprise with the Light & Sounds kit. I opened up the box to see what was inside, as the honestly friendly guy on the other side of the table said in his best faux-car-salesman voice "what's it going to take to take that home with you today" as he mentioned something about the rarity. There were no instructions for the kit, and it was marked at $50. Even missing instructions, that sounded like a good price for a kit that came out in 1991. We chatted and I added the 2 Porsche models to the Enterprise and managed a 10% discount.

With that, I was out the door and continued on to have lunch with my good close personal friend Charles G. Part of lunch was showing him the pics below. Most of the story time details while viewing pics were about the smell. I started out with no real expectations and a very low bar. I think that's where I left this adventure out. Would I go again? Not unless the vendor who's website I originally learned of this event attend again - as they tend to stock more than cars and military models. Of course, all of those are available for purchase online. If I modelled well enough to enter the contest, that might be interesting. Based on how my re-entry to model making has gone over the past couple of years, I don't think my skills will reach a level I'm comfortable being judge in public for quite some time.

Permalink models road trip