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Post by Charistoph on Jul 19, 2019 18:05:01 GMT
That's a "cool" summer here . We're glad when it stays that low. We usually average about 46 or more, and aside from a few weeks at the tail end, it's always dry. Of course, our winters are, "Snow? You mean that stuff that makes mountain tops white?", and visiting Canadians are walking around like it's summer, so it's a nice balance (still dry 90% of the time, though). Sounds hellish. It brings to mind a post I saw a couple of years ago, someone said the south parts of the US were never meant to be lived in. I mentioned dry because it's usually incredibly humid here, our average is somewhere between 85% - 95%, I think. Last time the air was this dry I was still in high school.
It is for many, that's why people try to visit us in the winter-time. Of course, we do have access to snow and skiing with about 3 hour drive time, and oddly enough, you could ski this year up till May (usually gone by March). But the dry heat of the SW is actually quite nice as opposed to the wet heat of the South. Sweat actually is able to do its job here, and evaporative coolers can be quite effective for most of the year. We do get a few weeks of the year when it gets wet, and we're entering in to one of those phases now. We get clouds, short deluges (capable of flooding streets), and general increase in humidity during this time.
And hey, people have lived here for thousands of years, the Apache being the last before the Spanish and Americans moved in. Air conditioning and personal pools are two of the inventions which have made it easier for those of us with cooler ancestry (Irish, Norse, etc for me) to tolerate it. Though, driving in the summer without proper preparation is hellish and it is not uncommon to have several child deaths from car-heat and drownings each year.
All this makes painting... interesting, especially with the rattle cans.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jul 23, 2019 18:46:42 GMT
I have a feeling it's going to be a while before I get back to painting my minis, in the meantime I want to at least start taking care of all of the prep work. Started doing some mold line cleanup with my knife and (not my) sanding sticks. I intend to drill the joints on all of my metal minis, from my experience so far they tend to fall apart really quickly. What size would you recommend? Google gave me a lot of different opinions, but they tend to lean towards 0.8-1 mm, although some have also said 0.5mm is better. I honestly don't have a clue which of them is right, what do you guys think? I don't think there are any places that sell hobby drills in my area, so I'll probably buy some on amazon or minimarket. Any suggestions? I imagine it'd be better to buy something that isn't branded (P3, GW, etc) Also, I feel like I misunderstood a post I saw, because someone mentioned using safety pins, and I was sure they meant clippers. Those seem a bit too thick for this. I'm talking about the stuff this demonic apparition is based on, are they any good for pinning the small guys? Also, as far as filing goes, I've been using a metal nail file for cleaning resin channels so far. I saw a vid ages ago that said you shouldn't cut them because it strains the rest of the mini, does using a file that's too hard also damage the surrounding material? Honestly, if there weren't that little lung cancer problem, I wish all of my minis were just made of resin. Firetruck it, even PVC would do, I've been mishandling those minis for over a year now and the paint isn't showing any signs of even thinking of chipping.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jul 23, 2019 19:01:38 GMT
The larger the drill bit the easier it is to drill the hole. Paperclips are typically 1mm in diameter, and the metal is soft enough to use typical clippers to cut, which is why 1mm drill bits and paperclips are a common combination. This would be my recommendation, at least when getting started. Pins tend to be harder, which makes them harder to cut; I like 0.8mm glass -headed tailor pins because they are very strong, but they damage normal clippers so I have to cut them with a small pair of bolt cutters. I use 0.6 mm glass headed pins and drill bits for the smallest stuff, but drilling the holes takes a lot more work than a 1.0mm or 0.8mm hole (don't ask me why). 0.7mm tailor pins (not glass-headed) are much softer and easier to work with, and easier to drill holes for, so they are a decent compromise. I've never gone down to 0.5mm. My favourite pin vice is a "three jaw chuck pin vice" that holds bits from less than 0.6mm up to over 3mm without changing the chuck. It looks like this: There are black and silver versions. Most other pin vices that I have seen require changing the chuck to hold different sized pins/drill bits. I have see a Tamiya electric "drill" meant for drilling this kind of tiny hole in miniatures; I haven't tried it but it could save some work when dealing with metal minis (probably not needed for plastic and resin). By the way, cutting a pin can distort the area around the cut, so you may find you need to file it smooth to fit the hole you drill. Not a problem if the hole is a tiny bit oversized though. I suspect the reason why you were warned from clipping vents and stuff right next to the plastic or resin is because that tends to "pull" at the surfsce of the model, disfiguring it. A file won't have the same problem, so feel free to clip a few mm away from the model and then file or sand the rest off (or even slice it off with a sharp hobby knife where appropriate).
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jul 23, 2019 20:43:00 GMT
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jul 24, 2019 2:31:18 GMT
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jul 29, 2019 22:33:54 GMT
Hey all. I'm fiddling around with the colors listed on PP's color chart and trying to figure out which match Hemera's most closely. I thought I was pretty close while making it, but I got another lesson about both hubris and using (Firetrucking) references. Wrote an entire post before I decided to whip out the OG picture of big H and realized I'm making a foll of myself. Anyway, that aside, I think my color idea isn't that far off, it's just that the official paint scheme uses a LOT more of that almost but slightly off-white on Hemera's body, which the gradients obviously don't quite reflect. The shade color on the official picture is also WAY more cool (cold, not awesome) than pure CBHL, if I had to guess I'd say there's a couple of drops of something blue mixed in there, but not that much, it looks very neutral. PP seems to really like very low saturation, complementary color shading, the kind that makes you feel like there's an aura of colorlessness there, and I can't blame them for it, it looks really cool (awesome, not cold). From what I've seen and heard the color previews also tend to be relatively unreliable, so I'd appreciate it if you guys could tell me how close the color previews are to how to paint looks IRL.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jul 29, 2019 22:41:51 GMT
Hey all. I'm fiddling around with the colors listed on PP's color chart and trying to figure out which match Hemera's most closely. I thought I was pretty close while making it, but I got another lesson about both hubris and using (Firetrucking) references. Wrote an entire post before I decided to whip out the OG picture of big H and realized I'm making a foll of myself. Anyway, that aside, I think my color idea isn't that far off, it's just that the official paint scheme uses a LOT more of that almost but slightly off-white on Hemera's body, which the gradients obviously don't quite reflect. The shade color on the official picture is also WAY more cool (cold, not awesome) than pure CBHL, if I had to guess I'd say there's a couple of drops of something blue mixed in there, but not that much, it looks very neutral. PP seems to really like very low saturation, complementary color shading, the kind that makes you feel like there's an aura of colorlessness there, and I can't blame them for it, it looks really cool (awesome, not cold). From what I've seen and heard the color previews also tend to be relatively unreliable, so I'd appreciate it if you guys could tell me how close the color previews are to how to paint looks IRL. Well, I've taken another look at Hemera's official painting. On a white background she looks quite a bit less yellowish. The color scheme isn't the regular color scheme from the battlebox guide book, though, there's not a hint of blue on her hull. I did a bunch of color sampling on her a while back and it was all shades of yellow and orange. Hate to admit it, but I'm kind of at a loss now.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Jul 29, 2019 23:09:25 GMT
Alright, here's a color probe. I'm too tired to properly analyze what exactly I'm looking at, but now I have a more accurate color chart of Hemera's hull on hand. Also goes to show the colors I would've thought were the right picks are still very far off the mark, at least in their raw form. Also, didn't notice it until now, but the insides of Hemera's wings are colored a much more bluish tone than the rest of the body. It also turns out I was wrong, the lower shading on a lot of the body is various shades of (extremely desaturated) blues and turquoises.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Aug 3, 2019 19:45:05 GMT
Minimarket's running another sale, and I'm somewhat tempted to buy the wrath of kings Goritsi box. I've seen people talking about using them as proxies for warpwolves, apparently they're the same scale. I think they might work as rogue warpwolves, but they'd probably need some converting to pass as proper members of the circle. I might get the box just for the wolves, although the dancers could work decently as practice dummies for NMM. Shipping included it'd cost me 17$ to get the starter box, which is 24 models in total. Honestly, that's a good deal even if the models turn out to be garbage. I won't be using any of them for actual WMH stuff, just for IK/D&D, and I'll have to use a bunch of greenstuff to cover their tits and bondage gear since I'll be playing with kids. Anyone else who owns these? Are they any good?
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envoy
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Post by envoy on Aug 4, 2019 14:42:13 GMT
I own three WoK starter sets, and I've seen the Goritsi one. They're decent quality - some mold lines, not super crisp in spots, but decent. I don't know about using the Alphas as warpwolves - that's a whole lot of steampunk gear to convert for the Circle. Unless, of course, you're going for an "urban jungle" sort of theme. That might actually be kind of cool.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Aug 5, 2019 2:38:42 GMT
I own three WoK starter sets, and I've seen the Goritsi one. They're decent quality - some mold lines, not super crisp in spots, but decent. I don't know about using the Alphas as warpwolves - that's a whole lot of steampunk gear to convert for the Circle. Unless, of course, you're going for an "urban jungle" sort of theme. That might actually be kind of cool. If I ever want to run a gothic horror campaign the Goritsi box would be a perfect fit. For IK, since characters like the wolf with no name exist, sort of, I could pass them off as ex-circle humans who've moved into the city.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Aug 30, 2019 12:43:03 GMT
Hey all,
I recently got my hands on the Widower's wood set. The trogs are easy and fun to paint, same for the Tatzylwurms, can't really complain, but then I don't really have a very specific scheme in mind for them so it's easier to experiment. I want my color scheme for the Gators to be as close as I can get to the way the Gator Husk was painted, and I can't can't seem to nail it. Very displeased with my results so far.
Any idea if there's a paint guide for the husk out there? I don't mean just general Gator painting guides, I know there's one in the MK2 forces of minions book, and in one of the older no quarter, but I'm guessing those only apply to the old way they used to paint the posse (possibly all the way back before the "new" sculpt?", and that's not the look I'm aiming for.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Sept 10, 2019 16:25:19 GMT
making some progress on the widower's wood minis. Coming back to PVC after doing a bit of metal reminds me how much I prefer to paint plastic minis. Overall the WW minis are pretty fun to paint. There's a couple of spots I'll never be able to reach because of the way they're assembled, but honestly I don't mind it too much. I'm the most pleased with how the gobber's skin, the gator and the pale tatzylwurm turned out, I'll paint the carapace on the back umbral umber for the next gators though, I think it'll look better that way. Playing around with the Trogs' colors is a lot of fun too. Only limitation I gave myself is the skin has to be some shade of yellow, and the fins have to be some shade of red/blue, but beyond that it's fun to throw shit on the wall and see what sticks. I'm also playing around with the gold trims on my trolls, I'm kind of torn whether I want to paint them with brass balls, regular gold, or gold tinted with a bunch of brown ink (looks a bit like screaming bell, actually). I'll have to experiment some more and see what I like.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Sept 10, 2019 19:14:21 GMT
Nice work, I really like the tatzylwurms, and the feathering on the gator's back is a nice touch.
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shmeep
Junior Strategist
Posts: 742
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Post by shmeep on Sept 28, 2019 21:07:41 GMT
Hey all,
The varnishes I ordered a month ago finally arrived, and I started testing them out. I have Vallejo's gloss and satin varnish right now, I'll probably buy the matte varnish very soon. It's nice to be able to touch my models without being afraid that all of the dogganm paint will peel off in the blink of an eye.
Something I've noticed right away is that the gloss varnish seems to dull down the color underneath a lot more than the satin varnish. I'm legitimately not sure if this is down to the varnish itself, or how thick I've been applying it. It's a bit hard to describe, but it kind of makes it feel like you're looking at a photo of the colors rather than directly looking at a colored model, if that makes sense. I varnished my cyclops savage with a layer of satin, and it didn't have a big impact on the colors, but after I put on a layer of gloss it looks a lot darker and more dull.
Anyway, is there any significant difference between the varnishes in terms of color impact in your guys' experience? from what I've read matte varnish tends to kill dark colors, so my reptile brain makes the connection and assumes gloss kills brighter colors (which seems to be the case so far), but that seems like a bit of a reach. If I finish my varnishing with a thin layer of matte, would it matter which varnish is underneath?
And, of course, how much varnish is enough? Should I water down my layers? So far watering down has led to some pooling, but as long as I pull out the varnish in those areas that hasn't been a massive issue, and it seems that applying the varnish unthinned makes it layer on a bit too thickly, which kills colors. Once a model's varnished, about how much punishment can I expect it to be able to take before it start chipping?
Thanks.
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