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....

Blargh

Hardware failure at my webhost a few weeks back. Need to re-upload the pictures but I've been lazy. Which is also why I haven't updated this thing in months.

ZBrush 3 released last week. As amazing as I thought ZBrush 2 was.. ZBrush 3 is that much more amazing. Lots to learn but the basic sculpting has an incredibly natural feel to it now. Having loads of fun with it.

Can't believe it's been a month

Time sure flies. I keep telling myself to update this more frequently, but it never seems to happen.

I've been beta testing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. This game is absolutely amazing. Visually stunning with lots and lots of complexity and depth. I've pre-ordered it and I've already joined a guild for it.

I won't lie - it still has quite a few annoying bugs an some of the features it's *supposed* to have aren't implimented yet. But even so, I've found it to be a highly enjoyable game.

Okay, screenshot time:


Vulmane Warrior in some sweet looking gear.


Another angle


Half Elf monk


Those are all screenshots I took from character select. The first two images were from the old character select screen, the last one from the new screen. They've both been cropped and resized, and I believe the video settings are maxed for all three. (Not 100% positive about the first two, but I know they are for the last one.)

Click this to see a fullscreen unaltered screenshot of some landscape. This was taken in the mountains just north of the wolf city. Again, all settings were maxed. And in all honestly I was surprised at the performance I was getting that way. Much much better than I would have expected.

Well now that...

over a month has passed since my last entry I guess I should give an update. I didn't reach my 50k word goal. Hit around 35k. I think next time I try this I will move my computer to another room. There's just too many distractions where I've been trying to write. It was hard to stay focused.

I did discover that it was easier for me to write more late at night then early in the day. I think my inner editor goes to sleep before the rest of me does.

The other big stumbling block I hit was that the plot I came up with didn't offer much opportunity for dialogue early on. And conversations is where the word-count usually really takes off for me.

So while I didn't reach my goal I did learn alot from the experience. Even more than I did the first time. I'm pretty confident now that next time I will hit 50k.

Near Mid NaNo

Almsot halfway through the month of NaNoWriMo and I'm behind. Really, really, really behind. I'm not worried yet, though. There's still plenty of time left in the month and I'm coming up to a part where I think I can make up quite a bit of word ground.

In some ways writing is kind of scary. When you think about it, it's really you putting your thoughts out there for anyone to look at. There's always that fear that someone is going to see it and go O_O on you. Worse, they could go O.o even. They say you eventually get over that, and I think they might be right. I feel a little more comfortable this time around than I did the first time.

Now if I could just stop playing FFXII (incredibly beautiful game, btw) and a half dozen other games my word count might just go up....

Still...

Getting things organized for next month's writing frenzy. I read over some tips and tricks that a veteran Nano'er put together a few years back. I think I came away with some good ideas of how to keep things rolling. Still struggling with character names... that always seems to be the hardest part for me...

More NaNo

Another day and still no plot. But the world and the main character are really starting to take shape in my mind. I'm starting to figure out some of the secondary characters as well. So I guess it's all coming along pretty well.

In my first attempt at a novel I didn't have anything planned in advance, really. I kind of had an idea for a story and I had a name and physical description for the two main characters. Beyond that I had nothing. And the story never did quite go the direction I had planned, but it seemed to be gearing up to head that way, at least.

I actually read over the whole thing today and realized it wasn't half bad. Certainly it wasn't exactly 'good' but I think it's workable and I'm actually considering finishing it in the next few months. Not next month, of course, I have another book to worry about then....

I Think...

I may have figured out at least what the setting for my novel will be. And I'm starting to figure out the main character. I still don't have a plot figured out yet, though. On the one hand I'm trying to avoid anything too cliche... but on the other hand, when you really take a good hard look at all your favorite books/movies - it's all cliche.

Oh well....

The other day I did a ZBrush experiment using someting that has been dubbed the "Zeeble". As near as I can tell, a Zeeble is when you take a standard primitive object (box, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, etc.) apply a simple texture to the object, turn the texture into a mask and then deform the object. Here is my first attempt...

NaNoWriMo

Well, next month is National Novel Writing Month. I plan to give it a shot and signed up at the official NaNoWriMo website.

I first heard about NaNoWriMo after last year's offical challenge and attempted the "Novel in a Month" thing earlier this year. I only made it halfway to the goal by the end of the month, but I did learn quite a bit in the process. One of the most interesting discoveries I made is that it's actually harder to meet the goal when you have nothing else to do.

The whole reason the novel in a month thing works is that you're (theoretically) so pressed for time that you just write and leave editing for later. But when you aren't pressed for time (like me) you end up going over passages again and again trying to make sure you get the scenes just right until you eventually end up at a point where you realize there is just no way you can finish in time. Even though I still don't have a busy schedule, I hope just recognizing this will help me succeed this time around.

NaNoWriMo - Don't get it right... Get it written!

Finally

Well I said I'd post some of the results of my "practice" sessions with ZBrush. For the first picture I decided to post an image I made from following one of their tutorials.



I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, but I still need more practice with this program. I'm dying to get some of the tutorial dvd's available at The Gnomon Workshop. I've heard a lot of great things about them. From the clips I've seen of them, some of their techniques are amazingly simple.

...and Again

Well, things got a bit crazy for me here. And then I ended up out of town almost 2 months with little internet access. I just got back last week.

I did get in some good practice with ZBrush and I hope to put up some of the results from those practices in the next few days.

Back again

I've been really slack updating this thing again.

Played alot of EQ2 and then Oblivion.

I really enjoyed Oblivion. I finished the main, thief and assassin quest lines with my first character (an assassin). I've started a crusader to go back through and just explore the dungeons. There are an amazing amount of dungeons in the game, but my first time through I focused on the quests and did not explore the wilderness, and therefore didn't discover and explore most of the dungeons.

At the moment, though, I'm not doing much gaming. I am getting back into A Tale in the Desert but I plan to play it casually. My hope is to base my character in one of the remote regions that progresses more slowly so I don't constantly feel that I'm being left behind in the tech. I also hope to join a large research guild and contribute to the region through them. ATitD is fairly unique among MMO's in that even if you only have the skills of a brand-spankin-newbie you are still usefull. The most basic materials are always in demand.

Lately, though, what I've been doing is 'spring cleaning', yard-work and playin' with my puppy. I really need to get some pictures of him up on here. Looking back, I'm kind of surprised I haven't mentioned him before. He is a 100lb, 10 1/2 month old rottweiller puppy. His name is Kodo and he is named after these guys.

One of my cleaning projects is to get my painting area back in order so I can finish that Tyranid and start on other minis. My husband got me Games Workshop's 'Mega Paint Set' for my birthday earlier this month and I'm anxious to get back to painting.

I'm also going to be cleaning up my computer desk and I hope to find a way to arrange it so I can use my old Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. I still want the Cintiq 21UX, but unfortunately, plans to get it had to be put on hold. Either way, I want to get back into using ZBrush. I really love that program, but I find using a mouse with it to be a bit awkward. Unfortunatly, I've also always found using a regular graphics tablet to be a bit awkward too. It's that whole 'working on one surface but looking at another' thing that I have never been able to quite adjust to.

More KoS

Okay, Kingdom of Sky is quite frankly the best, most beautiful and most fun expansion of any game I have ever played.

As such, it will probably be another week before I do any real updating here. I will leave you with this picture of the outside of the Palace of Awakening as seen from the platform outside.

KoS

Today, EverQuest II: Kingdom of Sky launches.

I've been spending the last week getting ready for it and I will probably spend most of my time this next week exploring it.

That said, I have done some work painting the miniature. I *might* get a photo of it up by the end of this week if I finish this stage of it by then. Holding your breath would probably be a bad idea, though.

IOU

A Quest Reward IOU Note: This note signifies that we owe the bearer one (1) Quest Reward. We greatly appreciate the effort you took in completing this quest, but unfortunately, it hasn't been itemized yet.

Too funny...

The Story: I play EverQuest II. Recently they revamped all the lower level content to make it more interesting (especially for people who like to start new characters all the time). Well, during the testing phase these IOU's were used in place of quest rewards for new quests that did not have rewards assigned to them yet. Long story short... once they put the rewards in and finished testing, they forgot to remove some of the IOU's before pushing the new content to the live servers.

Okay now...

Yesterday (yeah, I consider it yesterday still since I haven't been to sleep yet today) I left you with a primed model. Totally white, woohoo, go me, I bet everyone was impressed.

So now it was time to paint the model. Well, actually now it was time to choose a color scheme. I decided to go with a predominately blue model but with purple in the fleshy looking joint areas. The spikey bits are going to be yellow/orange and the mouth will be pink with the teeth some off-white color.

First I chose a very dark blue and painted it into the recesses of the areas that were going to be blue. Next I took a medium blue and thinned it down alot making it very watery... then I painted it over the rest of the 'to be blue' area leaving a strip of white at the highest points. Since the paint is watery, I end up with a very pale blue.

So far so good..

Now I let it dry a bit them I paint over the medium blue with that same watery blue paint.. but I creep just a bit into the dark blue and into the white. So what I end up with is a thinner strip of white and four shades of blue. Now I repeat that a few times creeping into the white and dark blue areas more each time. What this results in is a fairly gradual blending between the different shades of blue.

(( Some people mix their paints and apply it in strips but I find I just end up wasting a ton of paint that way... also with this method, if I need to retouch an area later then there is less worry about getting the color to match. Really, you want to apply your paints in thin layers anyways since it keeps the paint smooth. ))

The general goal here is for the raised areas to be the lightest and the recessed areas to be the darkest... adding a little extra depth to the model. In some places on this model I chose to leave a more abrupt transition between the medium blue and the dark blue (such as on the edges of the armor plates) to make them stand out and look a bit more dramatic.

The only other thing I did at this stage was to paint the fleshy connective areas a dark purple.








... more later

I decided...

to make history here (personal history, at least) and post two days in a row.

One of my favorite hobbies (other than staring at a blank monitor for hours on end, but I guess that's more of a pastime than a hobby) is painting miniatures. It's a pretty relaxing hobby except for when I get lazy and don't keep my brushes in good shape. Then I either end up spending nearly a whole day trying to get them back in good condition or whining to my husband to buy me more.

A while back a friend of mine bought me a Tyranid Tyrant Guard (thanks Ed!) and I really love the model and thought it would be cool to post a progression of the work I do on it.

The first thing you have to do to any miniature is prepare it to be painted. Most miniatures have little excess peices of metal on them that are left over from the molding process. These all need to be trimmed, scraped or filed off. Then the mini needs to be cleaned. I use plain old soap and water and scrub it with an old toothbursh.

Most of the mini's that I have painted have required some assembly, and this Tyranid was no exception. Here are the pieces of the mini after it was prepared and cleaned.



Assembling this one was a bit of a bear. Since the parts are big and heavy I decided it would be best to pin them together. Pinning parts consists of drilling a small hole into each piece and connecting them with a small metal rod to give it extra stability. I've done this with many models in the past, but for some reason this one gave me difficulty. After assembling the model I cleaned it again.




Next I primed the model. Some people skip the priming process and base coat instead (painting the entire model in the one color that will dominate it) - some people prime and basecoat - some people just start painting straight away on the bare model. In most cases base coating is probably adequate, but primer does make everything stick better. I would never recommend painting on bare metal.



Because of the technique I currently use, priming in white is key...

(more tomorrow! promise!)