Space Marines Land Raider Mk III - 1st Stage

After a week or so of working on this off and on, I've just about finished the basecoat. I'm still out of practice and it's a bit more sloppy than I would like.

This is the inside back panel. I really should have filed off those circles up near the corners. I was being lazy and hoping they wouldn't be so noticable. Once the thing is assembled they probably won't be, since it will be difficult to see inside very well. Also, I'm still making a bad habit of thinning out the paints too much, which is why I've got all those streaks:



This is the inside left of the tank. It's actually much larger than the back panel. In fact the back panel will fit into that vertical slot just left of all the seats:


Right now the inside is more purple than it will be in the end. The final color I plan on making it will be a much more reddish purple than it is now. The final blues will be a brighter one for the main color and a pale one for some of the trim. I tried out the color scheme using the Army Painter in the Dawn of War RTS and thought it looked quite nice.

Apache Pika Pictures

Wrestled with my FTP site yesterday until it finally begged 'mercy' and let me into it. I can't believe what an absolute pain it was to access it.

Anyway, I snapped a picture of the Apache:


and the Pikathulu:



Should get some pictures of the Land Raider up soon. Tried one of the Foundation paints on it today and I really like it. Goes on smooth and covers quite well. I still need some practice adding the right amount of water as I've been getting it a little too thin.

Two down

Well, the Apache and giant Pikathulu are finished.

The Apache came out reasonably well all things considered. Seems as if the worst of the stuff not fitting was pretty much behind me. I decided not to paint it. With the excessive amounts of plastic glue I had to use to get some of the pieces to fit.. and the places where I never could get the two parts to come together correctly.. I decided painting it would just add to the frustration.. and mess. The two largest pieces (the left and right halves of the entire main body) didn't fit together properly and even with multiple gluings, clamps and rubber bands.. there is still a substantial gap right in the nose of the helicopter. I know I could have achieved better results if I had put some real time and effort into it, but I didn't really want to spend a lot of time on this particular model.

The giant Pikathulu turned out really well. I used some interference blue on the eyes (wish I'd had red, I think it would have looked even better) and some iridescent/pearlescent medium on the tentacles. That, combined with a gloss coat varnish gave it a nice slimey appearance.

I'm working on a Space Marines Land Raider by Games Workshop. It's primed and I've checked the fitting for all the pieces of step 1. The fit has been pretty good so far. And I'm very pleased with the quality of the kit. Very little flash. I did have to slightly bend and sand down one piece to get a good fit with it, but now it slides right into place. I just started basecoating the parts for the first step. I'm using regular Chaos Black for some areas, but the bulk of it will be basecoated with some of their new Foundation paints. I also picked up a Chaos Soul Grinder which I'm really looking forward to working on.

I'm also working on the smaller mini's that came with the giant Pikathulu. They're all primed already and one of them has been basecoated.

I'll start posting pictures soon if I can stop being too lazy...

Holy Cow

I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I've done a blog entry... time flies I guess.

I haven't done a whole lot in the way of MMO Gaming lately. When I've played it's been mostly back to EQ2 and PlanetSide. I did play Pirates of the Burning Sea when it came out, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I especially liked the tactical ship-to-ship combat. It ended up being a little too PvP oriented for me to take it up as my "main game", but I still like to go back and play it occasionally. I can be a nice change of pace.

I went to an eye doctor a few weeks ago after.. well.. years of problems with my right eye. Nothing major, just excessive tearing which was making my vision blurry. Turned out I was suffering from dry eye. Go figure. She had me get a bunch of over-the-counter eye stuff and gave me a prescription for eye drops to help with the inflammation. After just one day my symptoms cleared up enough for me to start working on miniatures again. Before that, the constant tearing and blurry vision had made working on them frustrating to impossible. Guess I should have taken care of it years ago...

So my first two projects since the eye doctor visit have been... painting a friend's Pikathulu (I kid you not) and I've been working on an old Revell-Monogram AH-64 Apache Helicopter model kit that I got years ago and never finished.

Painting the Pikathulu has been pretty fun so far. It's a big, low detail mini which makes it a pretty relaxing project to work on.

The Apache, on the other hand, has been a complete pain in the neck. Almost nothing fits together correctly and the instructions are pretty vague in certain areas. It didn't take long after starting this project up again to remember why I quit it the first time. I'm going to finish it this time, though, because I need the practice before I attempt my new Tamiya F-15 "Strike Eagle". That is going to be a sweet model to work on.

Did the NaNoWriMo event this past November and... I made my goal! Finished day 30 with over 52k words. I'm doing another novel challenge right now... and I'm way behind. Guess I should go work on that....