SotF's Work

[deafnala]

The Little Folk have possibilities. A little conversion work & they could be something really interesting. EXCELLENT FIND!

[sotf]

Aug 15, 2017 12:13:31 GMT deafnala said:

The Little Folk have possibilities. A little conversion work & they could be something really interesting. EXCELLENT FIND!

Yeah, and even without conversions, they are extremely well painted for rather little cost.

Plus with younger kids and others, the more classic zelda look is something that would work for ideas.

I just really wish their sets included a more "classic" zelda looking figure since it already has 2 Links even though they're different enough in pose and colors to be different.

[sotf]

Well, I've been watching some of the warhammer TV painting tips/tutorials and while the actual tutorial for the stone basing for bloodbowl dwarves isn't really a technique that I like, it did inspire me in coming up with a really cheap one that looks quite a bit better.

Now, I don't have pics of it right now since I was just messing around with them, but it's a rather simple thing to do.

For the bases, go to the craft store. There are the round wood discs about the thickness of a normal base.

First step is to use your drill if you want to pin the mini to the base, work out the positioning for that because it's easier to figure the rest out now. If nothing else, take a bit of paint and put it on the feet/connection points of the mini to the base and touch the mini to the base and pull it away clean to let you know where those are and then drill for pinning.

Next take a pen and mark the blocks for a stone floor. I found one that goes from end to end about 1/4 the way from one side and then one about 2/3 the way from either side of the base coming from the first line (not crossing the entire base but the other line to the edge.

Now, you can use a utility or craft knife to work in a groove along the line, or, if you have one, use a hobby saw for a far straighter look.

Then you can use a knife to work cracks into it if you want to along with other things of the sort, and use a bit of sandpaper across the top and the rim where the grooves reach the edges.

Take a damp piece of paper towel and wipe off any dust or loose pieces from the base. It tends to mess things up as you go.

Paint the base up. My method was base the entire thing in black (Including the underside), then painted the top in a blue slate followed by a black wash. Then a relatively light sponge of a dark grey and a highlight of a light grey along the grooves.

I also paint the edges of the base for whatever color I want for the minis.

Attach the mini to the base and then gently use some wash of your choice to give a pin wash around the points of connection.

And that's it. You can, pretty much, mass produce them with little effort.

[sotf]

Well, I've started working on a small airship design, working on a scout/courier type craft that is, hopefully more of a semi-realistic take on one.

I'm going with a hanging basket from a balloon while having propellers for it.

For the balloon, I found a rather nice, large plastic easter egg with a long opening that looks like the bottom part of it would be a decent thing to use for a larger boat with a bit of decorative work to it.

Also found a very neat pegasus charging forward charm that will work well for a bowsprit for the ship

The airship is being worked on as more of a wargaming piece than for normal RP use though.

[sotf]

Some recent work for things.

As a major note, these are with a new phone camera...still working out all of the issues in getting used to it.

Fey Mushrooms

The first are some mushrooms, spotted them in the craft store for 12 for $1.25 and decided to grab them to repaint. Only major downside to them was discovering that whatever they used in coloring the caps originally bled through layers of stuff until I pretty much resealed them...after it bled through autoprimer. So I went with red as the possibility of further bleed through kind of scared me off the original colors I was going to use for them.

Based six in a ring for a basic fairy circle piece, two together, and then 4 individually. They're rather large as shown by the pathfinder goblins that I'm still working on that are there for some semblance of scale since I've been working elsewhere in my house recently since the window in my work area needs some work on it (There's a piece that goes up against the glass that's supposed to make it look like multiple panes, but it's loose and I can't fix that until everything warms up for a while because I need to pull out the part of the window to glue it back down...and at the moment whenever the heater comes on the thing starts rattling because of air movement there).

The Lord Of The Forest (Legendary Stag)

Found the deer in the dollar store just before christmas and just got around to working on it. I used some hot glue to cover up the join in the center of it's ribs and the hole where the tag was attached. Wanted something more mystical looking than a normal deer, so I went with the white deer coloration that I'd found some pics of. There are several types of deer with the coloration to it's fur, mainly in the Americas (There are some white tails and some key deer that I found pics of. It's also the color that, supposedly, used to be a rarer one for various european, asian, and african deer and was referred to as golden such as the golden hind from mythology.

The antlers and hooves aren't matching the normal ones as I went with blue rather than the normal colors.

He's also a massive creature that towers over normal minis which is impressive on the table.

Bloodtip the Stegosaurus

This is the one that took the most time to do, entering it into this months mini painting contest as I only just got it and had to paint him up right away...then it took a few days to figure out how I wanted to paint him until I stumbled onto some pics of zebras and followed that up by adding a bit of red to make him pop to the tips of the plates and the eye ridges.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park inspired the muddy creek for the basing with the first scene with the stegosaurs in it and he worked well to spook the party last night when the players stumbled onto him.

[sotf]

Needed a boar for part of an adventure I'm working on, and spotted one that was pretty decent in a package of plastic zoo animals at walmart that was $1.99 along with some rather cheap plastic rocks and trees in it that I decided to use. Haven't done the boar as of yet, but the trees and rocks are now finished for use.

The trees are a bit small and may be more of larger shrubs, but the rocks were rather nice even if two of them needed to be put together to make one of these and could also work as part of some pretty ancient ruins with a wall partially buried in rock and dirt.

The other rock is one that some might recognize from one of Scotty's Farland Isle videos from a while back...and I have a few more of them to use and I'm debating if I want to do so.

Trees

Went 2 of them to a base, hot glued them on because the things kept breaking superglue for some reason and wouldn't stay in position long enough for me to use white glue when I textured the rest. Just painted over everything in a gray paint, then went with brown over everything, followed by a drybrush on the ground and a bit of brown and black inks that were watered down, the brown also going over the trees. A few light drybrushes of first driftwood and then ivory on the ground left it working well to glue flock over the branches and in patches on the bases. They worked rather well for it and seem really durable.

Unfortunately, they don't really seem to photograph well with the camera jumping focus...

Rock/Ruin

This was hot glued down and worked around the join at the top and sides along with the edges because it wasn't quite as flat as I wanted. The ground is the same as my usual, the rocks were given a layer of white followed by a few bits of thinned inks to make it look more like stone. Ended up hitting it with a bit of a drybrush as well since there wasn't enough texture in the plastic for the normal inked stone look.

Rock Platform

Again the lack of much texture was kind of annoying, but the drybrush worked well for it along with some heavier highlighting on the steps.

[sotf]

Well, had the day off, and used it to paint and base a mini for the game along with basing another for use at some point in the future...along with finishing sealing a few more cheaper terrain pieces.

First off...

The Tyrant Lizard King

    My players knew that I bought a Tyrannosaurus toy recently for use in a game at some point, but it has yet to appear in the games despite them really thinking that it was what I was pitting them up against with the demon the locals were terrified of. I think that what did get used managed to make their lives a whole lot worse than a Rex though.

    I'm not sure who makes this one, but I liked the stock paint job and just based it. Suitably impressive for the purpose and is posed rather well for the "I'm gonna eat you look" while not having an open mouth.

The Demon (Carnotaurus)

    This is what they did run into in the jungle at night.

    While the sculpt isn't anywhere near accurate and was dubbed a dilophosaurus for some unknown reason, it's still a great look for a predatory dinosaur. And when you add some of the more fun things in the toolkit for where I borrowed the coloration from...namely the fact that it can camouflage itself with color changing skin.

    It pretty much mauled one of their guides before they realized it was there and got their first clear look as it ripped another in half...

    Then they started running as they didn't know what the hell was going on save for one player who I discovered had recently read the novel with that version of the Carnotaurus in it and he held his ground and took cover and aim before realizing the rest of the party was booking it without him leading to him noping the the hell out of there as well...
  
    So, how many of you can name where the color scheme came from without a search?

Cairn Stones

    A rather simple terrain piece for some rough ground. Just piles of gravel painted up for use. Can be representative of burials in some areas or other things.

Boulders

    Another terrain piece, one of them is a plastic boulder and the other is a rock I found that would work well for the other part and balancing it out somewhat.

[sgtslag]

Superb scatter terrain! The tree pieces are particularly well done: not too many trees, which allows you to put mini's between them. The dino's are SUPERB! Love the color schemes (no idea where the black/red theme comes from)! Absolutely beautiful work, all around. The rocks are extremely well painted, and composed. Wow... Wow... Cheers!

[SpielMeisterKev!]

Howdy,

Great stuff!

EXALT BUTTON!!!,
Kev!

[sotf]

Mar 2, 2018 14:31:17 GMT sgtslag said:

Superb scatter terrain! The tree pieces are particularly well done: not too many trees, which allows you to put mini's between them. The dino's are SUPERB! Love the color schemes (no idea where the black/red theme comes from)! Absolutely beautiful work, all around. The rocks are extremely well painted, and composed. Wow... Wow... Cheers!

The best part about the plastic rocks and trees is just how cheap they are. They're in a lot of the cheap packs of soft plastic animals/dinosaurs/army men/other that are in the cheap isle at walmart and a bunch of other places (sometimes even popping up in dollar stores, though that's still rare).

You really do need to base the trees though, they aren't very stable. You also need to use hot glue to attach them to the base because the plastic doesn't bond that well with superglue (I haven't tried plastic glue) and a lot of the other stuff as well doesn't seem to like it. But they paint up rather well, though it takes a longer time to paint the trees up because of the way the branches are set up and just getting coverage can be a problem...but it needs to be painted because glue doesn't want to be as firm directly to it but it bonds well with paint unless you gouge at it and that tends to wreck the tree as well.

For the color pattern...

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}It's the color pattern that the Jurassic Park toys started for the Carnotaurus which was one of the few dinosaurs not set up for the movie at the time in the large figures (Originally, the sick dino in the movie would have been a Stegosaurus and there was a different scene with a Trike, but that got changed around after the initial toyline was in development). It's been a recurring pattern for the Carno since then with several releases. It also got the nickname, like all of the JP dinosaurs did of "The Demon."

However, it's first appearance outside of the toy line was in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the novel version where it had the camouflage ability that popped up in Jurassic World as part of the Indominus' bag of tricks.

It also seems like the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom debut of the Carnotaurus is actually going to be using that color pattern...[/spoiler\]

[angie1985]

Wow looks great! I use some of the cheap terrain too...the look outs and towers from army men stuff paints up nicely and works on an outside board...when the players get inside I trade it out for a playable sized one.

[sotf]

Well, got the Star Wars Legion starter set and started painting it up.

I'm kind of rushing through the Imperials first, though I'm going to end up waiting some to finish Vader as I realized my acrylic rod stock is gone and I've got to get some blue and red for Luke and Vader.

For the Imps, I'm going with a more industrial/starship style with plastic canvas along with a few other things to let me keep the etched facing lines in the vehicles without making them look out of place...might end up buying acrylic bases for the Rebels but I'm not entirely sure as of yet.

[sotf]

Not very far in my Legion starter set, but I've got both stormtrooper squads and the speeder bikes done, I've also got Vader partially done (Still working out my rebels basing due to the vehicles having the sight lines on them and I'm getting some acrylic rods for Luke and Vader to replace their lightsabers).

Largely did them at the store in a rush bar the basing due to the intro rewards and wanting to play the game...even with a break for lunch, all of them took 3 hours not counting the primer that I did at home, and about an hour and a half of that was going to lunch. (Used a bit of poster tack to attach them to the bases for the early games)

For painting the troopers and scouts (the bikes I painted separately, and I only partially assembled the stormtroopers before painting), I did a very heavy drybrush of white over the primer, then used thinned down black acrylic ink to coat the entire mini. That's where I left them for the big break I took, though did a lot more on the bikes at that point. Then I used black to get everything that wasn't the white parts or going to be hit with the squad colors. Then came the white, which was used on the armor and parts I wanted a bright color for. Then came the color for the officer shoulder pad, the shoulder rest of the launcher troopers weapon, and the bits on the heavy troopers pack. I then used an armor (basically boltgun metal type darker metal) to go over the guns, pack, and a few other things (like the controls in the hands of the scouts).

For the bikes (For the bikes I assembled them except for the foot petals which were painted separately because you need to mount the pilot before you can position them properly), I started with giving the main hull of the speeder bike and the forward fins a brown layer, the bedroll a bone layer, and the rest of it was hit with black. Then I hit most of the black areas (Only the seat and the bedroll straps remained black) with armor. Then I went in with a thinned down black acrylic ink wash over everything but the bedrolls which I hit with one using a thinned down sepia acrylic ink wash.

That's when I attached the parts together for all of them and glued the flight stands for the speeder bikes to their bases

Speeder Bike Squad

Red Squad



Blue Squad

[sotf]

Got some more of the Legion Starter done despite some massive allergy issues this week that I'm still recovering from.

Vader doesn't seem to be easy to get a great picture of due to the similarity in colors...

Also, I decided that I'm probably going to get another starter set at some point, so I just painted the lightsabers rather than replacing them as I'd originally planned.

As another note, while I managed to make it stand right, I got the leg pistons switched between the legs for the AT-RT legs which created a different pose. It looks decent, but it took a LOT of work to get it to be stable on the base.

Decided for a more jungle ruins style basing for the rebels as opposed to the more industrial look of the Imperial ones as well...Scotty's vines work pretty well for basing as well as support for the AT-RT.

Luke & Vader



Darth Vader









Luke Skywalker





AT-RT (Flamethrower)

[sotf]

Finished painting the minis and terrain pieces from the starter set with 8 barricades (There are two different barricades with 4 of each).

I also managed a rather good deal online for one of the stormtrooper expansions plus the full set of adepticon promo cards for $20 with shipping, so I've got that squad on its way.

Rebel Brown Coat Squad



Rebel Tan Coat Squad



Barricade 1





Barricade 2





Full Rebel Force



Full Imperial Force

[sotf]

The new stormtroopers have arrived and I've gotten a good start on them.

After washing and priming them, I gave them a heavy drybrush of white before using watered down black ink to pretty much cover the entire thing. That's where I'm leaving it for the night, but the next step is to use black paint to get the black and what will be metal, then white for the armor, then the squad colors, and finishing with metals.

I'm trying to decide what color to use for this squad since I already have a red and a blue stormtrooper squad. I'm kind of torn between Yellow, Green, or Purple.

But, I'm also trying to sand down off the texture of the base to do a death star flooring basing for the squad.

[Draklith]

the weathering or battle scars effects you have really add that extra detail...great job

loving the speeder bike guys awesome

[erho]

Orange or Yellow next, IMO the others are too close to Red and Blue

Orange and Yellow are right behind white, and right before black in frequency.

Glossy black base would be sweeeet!

[sotf]

Went with yellow for the squad, took a few tries to get the right yellow for it.

However, I ended up having a few issues with finishing the squad up.

My intent was to work the bases into the smooth, reflective flooring in order to try matching it up with the floors shown on both death stars that are almost a mirror finish. It took me an hour due to only having a nearly expended sanding block I'd picked up a while ago. All of the other sand paper I have is to rough to do what I wanted. Worked the surface smooth, then using some high gloss metallic black spray paint and a high gloss varnish it looked great.

Then I screwed it up by grabbing the superglue to attach the minis rather than the other glue I'd planned on using. It blobbed up and frosted right around the connection point and seemed to pull the gloss out of the rest and leave strange mix of matte and gloss.

My first thought was to simply try using a bit of gloss to try fixing it, which did bring it back to the more glossy side, but it looks off now due to distortions due to not being able to get it as smooth around the feet and it has a few other issues.

At the moment, I've kind of given up on directly fixing it, end result isn't horrible, and I might try again when I get some more stormies to paint up, or I might go for something else entirely.

But here is Stormtrooper Yellow Squad...

[erho]

You did it!!

Looks fabulous!

You could try pinning them, but I'm not sure how many you need to do. That would be torture to do it on 30+

Need to dig out Battlefront on Xbone now!