Autosentia Mech WIP 2

Here's a quick few snaps of the progress on my 15mm mech conversion. So far I've done the primering,  basecoat, wash, basecoat again, and started the first highlight. I plan to try out the tips and hints I've gotten from the Dwartist on weathering and wear once I've gotten the basic paint job finished. 

 Once the paint is on the tau helmet eyepiece seems to blend right in, which was what I was hoping for.

You can see here that I've so far only highlighted his right leg. Eventually the whole model will be this sort of tone (apart from recesses) and then I'll do an extreme highlight with a little more yellow in it. I haven't got any experience painting vehicles so finger crossed this should work, the details and size of this mech make it more like painting a 28mm figure than a tank tbh.

Auosentia Mech WIP

I've been spreading myself a little thin lately getting things prepped and underway but with little of note finished.

Here's a few pics of a recon mech from CMG's Protelene Khanate line which I've converted slightly to fit more with my Autosentia's aesthetic. I really like these light/medium mechs from CMG and they're very reasonably priced as well at around £4 each (11 something for 3). The detail is fairly crisp, they had no air bubbles and the design, with its nice balance of weapons, does it for me. So far I have three but I reckon I'll probably have 5-6 in the end.

Yep, you guessed it. The sensor block is from a Tau helment. Sometimes having a 10 year old GW legacy to draw upon can be useful, especially all the bits and bobs their plastics have.

This is the original version just for comparison. I like it a lot, but I prefer mine, of course :P

Modeling wise I just cut the face off and trimmed it up. Then super glued it in place and filled the edges with green stuff. After the green stuff had cured fully I went at it with the knife and straightened the edges, making sure it all sat as flush as possible. I've since primed these and you wouldn't know the component wasn't meant to be there.

One of the reasons I went for these is that the legs shape echoes that of the CMG phaseshifters I'm using in my Autosentia army elsewhere. Shame these mechs don't have jumpacks like them though. I could remedy this but the effort seems rather involved...

For me they're about the right size for a light/medium mech, the blockhead is about 16-17mm tall whilst the GZG merc stands at nearly 20mm.

Airbrushing German Armour: Part the Third

I realised I never posted the update on my Airbrushing project continued in this post from a few weeks ago.

As always I ran out of time whilst at home and didn't manage get everything finished. The base-coating took a long-time and I had to wait for a replacement needle to arrive as the old one was bent. I could have done with a finer spray nozzle but had to make do with what I had as there was not one available for my cheapo airbrush. Anyway, here's the result I managed to get when I actually had a go at doing the camo on one of the Panzer IVs:

The colour is wrong, its far too dark, but I was quite happy with the feathered edges I managed to achieve, especially considering it was only my second go at doing this on an actual model. Next time I'll hopefully be able to pick up the right colour and then get these finished off. Finally. 

Before then thought I really need to work out if I want to do a drybrush or highlight on these models before doing the camo. My current thoughts are that I'll do it afterwards for simplicity's sake. 

Anyhoo, back to 15mm sci-fi updates!

Critical Mass Games 'Blockheads' and Autosentia Support Drones WIP

I've painted up one of Critical Mass Games' 'Blockhead Battlesuit' troopers which I purchased at Salute. These are really nice chunky miniatures and the weapon they're carrying looks like it could put a serious dent in anything up to the size of a small tank.

I've been trying to up my game painting wise over the last few weeks and decided to really go for it with the layering on this figure. I initially tried to paint it the same way as the GZG combat bot i.e. drybrushing and edge highlighting but the nice smooth flat panels just looked rubbish done this way. The layering looks a little patchy and uneven in these pics (which were taken from about 5cm away!) but at half an arms length the effect is really good (imo).

(I was having some problems with the sun whilst taking these pictures so the shadows are all over the place)

I bought two packs of these (12 figures total) and the plan is that they will form a mercenary platoon alongside the smaller GZG bots I also got from the show. They both share a 'chunky' aesthetic and with similar unit markings and colour scheme I think they look quite good alongside each other.

The battle-suits are pretty big. Here's one next to the GZG merc (aka Hellboy :P) who is the best part of 20mm tall. The Battle-suit isn't even standing up straight but is hunkered down. I'm thinking that whatever system I stat these up for I will try and give them a special rule or ability which reflects their tenacity and stubbornness.

Here's a WIP of the squad leader. I've removed the head (and took a chunk of the shoulder, which I've had to repair, with it) and replaced it with the head of an OG German tank crewman. I'd prefer something more alien but don't have anything to hand, perhaps I'll paint it blue or something?

I've also been working on some reinforcements for my Autosentia army, they're a little short on heavy support atm. I have a few more goodies purchased at Salute for them but first up are some conversions from Tau drones which I found at home in my old GW stuff from years and years ago. Here are the results.

I decided to add some eyes to tie them in with the drones I have from GZG. I also think it makes them look a crapload more menacing. The eyes are just chopped up bits of spear shaft (just what I had around) cut to length and glued in place.



I liked the aerials which came with the drones originally but didn't have enough of them and thought they looked 'too tau' so I replaced them with guitar string (12 gauge). These were attacked via heating the wire with a lighter and then just pushing them into the plastic. The fit is nice and snug. I also cut down the pulse carbines to differentiate them a little and because I think I prefer them this way.

This nasty looking beastie will be the platoon command unit (I have 3 of the standard 'gun' drones). He's made from a Tau shield drone with the modifications outlined above plus tentacles. He was influenced by the droids from star wars (episode V) and the Matrix as well as the 'Man o war' in China Mieville's Iron Council (great book btw).



The tentacles are 32 gauge guitar strings, bent to shape, with plasticard blades attached. They are attacked with superglue and slot into pre-drilled holes. However, they're still mighty fragile.





Well, I'm off to go and paint up some more of the blockheads!

Progress on 15mm project: CMG phaseshifters and RAL infantry + others on the way

Here's the 15mm Sci-Fi update I meant to do a few days ago but never did, I was too busy to take the pictures in daylight. As you can see, natural light seems the way to go.

I painted the customary test figure (one of the CMG RAL infantry) and after only one repaint was pretty happy with the look I was getting and had a crack at 6 of the CMG 'Phaseshifters'.

The painting techniques were pretty standard - I'm aiming for a decent tabletop quality for 'arms-length' viewing so some of these pictures are a little cruel.


Conversions
I didn't do a lot to these figures - they had little flash apart from the shoulder pieces and were in great condition, well done CMG!
All I did was add a short length of wire to the right-hand gauntlet to represent some kind of inbuilt smg type weapon. These robots are meant for close assault but I still thought some kind of limited ranged capability would make sense.

Bases
These were the not-FOW bases from warbases.co.uk and I can't say anything bad about them. Well priced, quickly delivered, smoothly cut and generally all you could want from a base! I plan to do these unit's bases in a dusty, arid style with scattered tufts.

Paints/Techniques
For those who are interested I used a GW snakebite leather base-coat drybrushed with vallejo green ochre mixed with snakebite leather 50:50 and then a lighter drybrush of pure green ochre. This was then washed with Snakebite leather to 'brown' the tone and prevent it looking too yellow. A final highlight of green ochre was applied. The claws were basecoated GW boltgun metal and then highlighted with GW mithril silver. Some of the darker recesses of the armour like the back of the head and some of the joints were painted German Grey and highlighted with German Grey andwhite 50:50 for contrast. The whole thing was then dipped (well, brushed with) Army Painter Strong Tone in a thin coat. Further highlights were added with Green ochre. The lenses were painted using Vallejo Crimson, vermilion and white. The shoulder 'gems' (these were added as a point of interest, I have no real reason for them being painted such...) were done using GW regal blue with progressive increments of white added.

The lenses vary in quality. The left ones pretty good, the right... not so much. I'll touch them up sometime. 

Robot on the left gives some suppressive fire with his in-built plasma smg.

I'm not sure what these backpacks were in the original CMG rules but i play to use them as either teleporters or jumpacks. 

I'm very happy with the shoulder 'gems'. 

Here's some photos of the test figure I did, he was painted in the same fashion as the phaseshifters.

A comparison picture just to give you an idea of scale. I plan to use the phaseshifters as power armoured infantry and I think this holds true when you put them side-by-side with a grunt who has roughly human proportions. 

Work in Progress

I was inspired by Spaceman Spiff's awesome 'special effects' on his mechs and plan to do something similar on some of my units. I decided to make my own (rather than use armorcast's) as it really didn't look hard, just a few minutes with some green stuff and some short lengths of pin. The results not too bad, altho I'm gonna need to practice Object Source Lighting painting techniques to get these to look any good. 

Here's the next unit on the way - two spider drones. I've added a small missile launcher made from plasticard to the side of the turrets on these and plan to stat them up as power armour/light armour snipers with guided missiles for taking down tougher opposition.

Drone units are also on the way although I haven't decided whether to add additional weapons or stick with what could be interpreted as multiple rocket pods on small stub wings. Perhaps I'll use them as micro-missile launchers?

I'm really pleased with all the models I picked up from GZG and CMG, they all came without too much flash and very cleanly cast on the whole. I can't wait to start getting them all painted and based up!

As you can see this project is starting to move along, although I have a work intense period coming up in the next few weeks so progress will probably stall big-time around then.

Review and WIP: Nazi Zombies!

This post is a brief review mixed with a WIP of how my shambling horde is looking so far. 

Whats more evil than a Nazi? a reanimated dead one of course... 

If you haven't seen Dead Sno, then you should. Its a great foreign film and its basically, along with Call of Duty, the inspiration behind this little Weird World War tangent. That and some discussion on the WWPD forum. 

These models are from Rebel Minis; they also do American GI zombies and Russian Strelkovy zombies which look great. However, I didn't have the colours for these and well, they're just not Nazis are they? I picked these up during the Christmas sale with a cool 20% off and worldwide shipping for $5, basically, they were a steal! The models themselves are great; only a little flash and fewer mould lines than say Old Glory. However, the the detail is a little soft on some areas such as the helmets and the faces could be a little crisper. Overall, very good though. 

The set (21 zombies, I bought 2) comes with seven different poses, 1 officer and 3-4 of each of the rest of the poses (see below). 

I couldn't resist the modelling opportunities to be had with zombies and decided I'd try and make each one look like an individual (ironic eh?)

The horde

Here's a few of my personal favourites. 

A crawler. Just some clippers, some green stuff and some bending. 

This guy had a hole drilled right through him and some intestines sculpted. 

Some head injuries. 

'You gotta aim for the head!' ... one zombie down for good. 

I didn't do anything to this guy, he just looks great!

Here's a few pictures grouped by original pose so you can see what I did to try and differentiate them.

I should probably bend a few arms here come to think of it.

As you can see I made liberal use of headswaps, some head repositioning, arm bending, snipping and some drilling to get the results above. There's a few where I could have done more with but nevermind, this took long enough. Painting to come!

Pros

1. Great value at $10.99 for 21 (or cheaper in platoon packs depending on how many you want). 
2. Good detail - not as good as OG, but pretty damn good. 
3. No equipment  - they don't have the breadbag, zeltbahn, bayonet etc on their backs. This'll speed up the painting so much!
4. Good scale  - they line up really well with Old Glory and PSC. Maybe a little on the slim side for BF. 
5. Very little flash/mould lines. Didn't need much cleaning up.
6. Great for conversion fun!

Cons

1. Detail can be a little soft on boots, helmets and some of the faces. No biggy. 
2. Couldn't think of anything else!

If you want some 15mm zombies, buy these! 

I'm working on some rules for these in FOW so I'll probably post those up once I've finished mulling it over.