The first building is finally finished, and I could’nt be happier with how it turned out!
After the flock and shrubbery was secure, I added a couple of plastic railroad trees that I was able to twist in extremely twisty ways by soaking them in boiling water.
The rest of the piece was just a matter of concealing joins and gaps with shrubs.
After all of the flock was set, I poured clear resin into the moat for a water effect.
It’s a really fun piece, and will make for a thematic center-point for my games!
Last week, a purchase I have been wrestling with making arrived on my doorstep. It’s a purchase I have had mixed feelings about for months, but isolation and work stress (I work in the mental health field) from COVID-19 finally won.
I bought an Elegoo Mars resin printer. That model you see up above was my first print, and the reason why I finally gave in. He was, to be frank, too cool not to have in my collection.
I have been conflicted for a long time on this technology. Initial prints that I had seen from extruded printers didn’t really impress me, and resin, until recently, has been really expensive. Now, you can get a good printer with a liter of resin for under $300.
My other big issue has been what I see as a disruption effect on an industry I care a lot about. Good prints made at home could be the death of small game stores, but after all of the printing trials and fine tuning I had to do to get things going, I don’t think we’re there… yet.
There is a lot you have to learn to make resin printing effective, and mistakes can be costly and messy. I messed up the FEP film almost immediately, and my garage was too cold for things to work right. But I am stubborn as hell, so I dove into research mode, and now I’ve been getting amazing prints without fail for a couple of days.
This handsome gent is Gino, and he was one of the awesome models Artisan Guild had available in March. $18 a month, and March had more than half a dozen badass dwarfs, including one mounted on a Griffon. I didn’t really have a choice.
Once I trimmed the supports off, it was time to get Gino primed, and start laying on the paints:
I really had a ton of fun with this model. He’s brawny, puffing on a pipe, and he’s stepping on some poor monster’s head. It wasn’t until I was almost done painting that I realized Gino had knocked a bunch of this dude’s teeth out before chopping off his head. Such a great model, and I think he cost me about .50 cents worth of resin to print out.
The final product is stunning! I’m still working my way through the rest of the offerings for last month, but Gino is ready to kick some ass!
We’re self-quarantining through the apocalypse, but I also work in social services. So, I really can’t stay home and completely avoid human contact. So, I’m building a little escape.
My spare time is wide open, so I’ll be building a village to play games in when the End Times are over. And I want to test myself in the process.
I have built a lot of terrain in my life. This time around, I’m going with peeled foam coat as a base, and using hot glue to bind everything. I already love this as an alternative to glue!
I used a pencil to carve in the details, and an emery board to smooth things out. I decided to use wood glue to seal the foam, which I mixed with black paint so I could see if I missed anything.
After getting the test piece done, I decided to paint up the front to see how it looked… and I’m really, really happy!
I airbrushed a light coat of white from an angle, then washed the whole front with a simple glaze made from cheap paint, airbrush thinner, and acrylic floor polish. I went over certain areas with a similar glaze made from green ink to age things up a bit!
Next up I’ll go ahead and finish up the base since the experiment has made me happy!
I’m really excited about these drones, this is the first time I’ve been comfortable enough with my airbrush to do the majority of the figures with it. Practice really does pay off, and the gradual shading makes me very happy!
Matt hired me to paint his Tohaa army for infinity, and I’m really enjoying the outcome! I’m working with a stark black and white outline, with bright green and purple as accents. I’m also looking for ways to pull out any skeletal elements in the army.
Anthony recently hired me to paint up some of his Aleph miniatures for Infinity! The first batch of the project was total paint work from start to finish:
Sadly, I failed to take good pics of most of the first batch, but I did get these two bots to hold still a minute:
Next up were some detail punch-ups on some figs Anthony already had. I’ve faced Ajax before, so it was nice doing something with this model that didn’t involve me wincing as it wiped out my troops! First up is the big man himself, followed by Achilles:
Chris asked me to paint up the Rebels he had picked up for the Star Wars Legion game that Fantasy Flight Games just released. The figures themselves are 32mm scale, and are a lot of fun to put together and paint. For the first two squads of troops I drew some inspiration from the ArtofRogueOne book:
I mirrored the colors on the second squad for the AT-RT:
And for Luke, Chris wanted something a little different, so I painted Luke up in black tones for his fatigues:
Chris wanted to do the basing himself, and the final figures really look great!
My FLGS has a big Infinity event coming up in May, and I have been part of a team putting together a Yu-Jing based board for the tournament. It’s been a fun project, but I want to put a table together featuring alien terrain.
I picked up a big sheet of blue insulation foam, and started carving it up with a knife. Lots of shaping later I ended up with this:
That’s a pretty cool chunk of rock, and I sealed it in a couple of coats of Mod Podga and black paint.
Next up, I started layering in bright, alien colors, aiming for a classic Star Trek look. I also ordered a big bag of plastic aquarium plants, which really added to the overall cool factor:
Now I need to work up enough of this stuff to cover a 4′ by 4′ table by May 10th!
Grimmleigh's Lab 