Learning those paint shades!

My business cards are so useful for so many
things besides their intended purpose. 

So here is a cool little exercise that I engaged in this week.  Prior to painting the engine block, I noticed that three of my paints, Citadel's mithril silver, boltgun metal and chainmail look really, really similar.  In and out of their containers.  So what is the difference between these paints?

The painting guides usually call for painting metal items boltgun first, then highlight in chainmail and then just add a bit of mithril silver on the edges of the chainmail.  But why?  They look so alike.  Sometimes when I paint I can't even tell after the work is done what parts have the highlighting and what don't.  What is my eye looking for?  Is it brightness?  Finish?  Are some of those paints matte, and some more shiny?

So I decided to do a little experiment.  I took one of my small brushes and painted a bit of each paint on the back of one of my business cards.  Since the surface is a solid, uniform color, I figured I should get a good idea of what I am looking at.  And voila!  The difference became quite clear.  Boltgun is by far the darkest color, followed by chainmail, and then mithril, the lightest.  And ding!  It all makes sense.  Layering paint is often all about putting lighter colors on top of darker ones- hense, the older the guides suggest you put down the paint.  I also noticed that each color is about as shiny as the others.  They are metallic paint, so it makes sense that they would all reflect some.

The picture does not quite show this because the light was coming from the right side of the image- making the chainmail reflect more of the light, and hence, looking lighter than it i in general, but you get the idea.

I can (and will) use this technique again on other colors to see exactly what order I want to use them in when I am working on other laying projects.  There are a lot of paint shades that look close to alike both in their containers and on the work piece.  Even when I'm a doing a model more or less paint by number, which is where I was and am just starting to mess around with a little creativity, knowing the 'why????' of the logic behind the instructions I am following is useful for me to become better at my craft.  This is one of those situations where a I can read something in a book, but I don't necessarily get the concept until I play around with it a bit and make it mine.  And that's a useful skill in a lot of different situations.

Until next time,

David D.

Customizing 40k Space Marine Terminators

Claws?  Coool!!  Sword? Not so cool!  Lets fix it. 

So!  I'm new to Warhammer 40k, and I'm also new to customizing stuff.  But I found a great project that hit on both.

In the box set that Games Workshop makes to act as a starter set for Warhammer 40k, Assault On Black Reach, 5 Space Marine Terminators models are included.  The models are armed not with hammers or claws, their awesome melee weapons, but with a big pistol and a big gauntlet which are ok, or basic sword that looks cool, but in game terms, is actually a pretty basic and unimpressive weapon.  I don't want to spend points on Terminators if they aren't going to be tearing stuff up.  Seriously, they are called Terminators.  They SHOULD be tearing stuff up.

On the other hand, if you buy the Terminators Close Combat Squad box set, you get pieces to make 5 terminator models but enough weapons to arm 10.  You get 5 of their hammers and 5 sets of claws.  I grabbed a box, and thought, hmm...  I wonder if I could get these claws to work on my Assault On Black Reach terminators?  The trick is, the Close Combat Terminators weapons do not come on fully built arms- you need to either use Green Stuff or some other sculpting medium to build shoulders on those arms, or cut the claws off of the half made arms to go on the arms of the AoBR Terminators.  And you'll need to cut the the gauntlet/pistol/sword hands off of the AoBR Terminators to create a space to place the gloves.

Time to get that aggression out!

So How Did It Go?

Not badly, as a matter of fact.  Even with my lack of experience, I didn't screw it up.  I used the Games Workshop hobby saw (I nicknamed it "Sharp Tooth") to chop up the Close Combat Terminator claw arms right where the claw gauntlet connects to the arm.  There is a little  hose that also connects to the gauntlet, and I cut that where the hose connects to the back of the arm.  The lines are pretty straight, so it wasn't too difficult to cut anything with the Sharp Tooth, which was nice, since the thing is not a scalpel.  Fine incisions is not what this thing does.

I repeated the process with the AoBR arm pieces.  I cut just where the arm fit into the gauntlets, but this time, I tossed the gauntlets (tossed them into my scrap pieces bucket, not the trash.  They could still come in handy) and kept the shoulders and arm.  For about half of the pieces, I ended up doing a little sanding with a hobby file to make sure the angle of the arm connected with the angle of the clawed gauntlet, but the good news is, a little hobby glue and the two pieces stuck together like they had been built that way.  Check it out!

Worked out just fine!  Only 18 arms left to go. 

It took abut a minute or two of careful sawing per arm.  I was glad to have Sharp Tooth- my xacto knife would not have done very well at this task.  Before going to the store to buy the saw, I tried with the xacto just to see if it would work, and yeah no.  The plastic used by Games Workshop would take forever and a day for an xacto knife to saw through. Maybe with a smaller, finer, blade the line would have looked nicer, but it looked plenty nice with Sharp Tooth.

I had some Green Stuff on hand and did use it in three cases.  In the first case I used it to connect an arm to a claw glove where the angles just did not work and I needed to fill in a gap.  In the other two cases, the hose from the glove did not connect with the shoulder of the new arm, so I created little green stuff hose extensions that did connect from the end of the hose to the top of the arm.  I haven't painted it yet, so I don't know how it'll look when its done.

Yeah.... we look a lot meaner with these claws
than we did with pistols.  ::snicker::  Pistols...

All in all, this project turned out pretty well.  Everything looks great at this point and is structurally  sound.  My biggest question now is how the painting is going to look, since I primed the terminator models in black before I started this project and primed the arms from the Close Combat Terminator kit white.  I'm not sure if it'll make too much of a difference since its going to be ultramarine blue in general, and UMB is pretty opaque, especially after a few coats, but I'll have to see.  I'll tell you how tings turned out in a later post.

Until next time,

David D.

First Custom Action Figure Complete

New Year is a time for many things.  Resolutions.  Hangovers.  Actually getting some snow in Minnesota for the first time this winter.  And new beginnings.  Which means its time to be done with the First Custom Action Figure Project.

Applying the clear coat.

As I write this paragraph, I am waiting for the sealant to dry on the figure so I can reassemble it.  While I wait, I'll reflect on what I did well and what I didn't do so well in this project.

What I did well.

1. Got a clue.  I wanted to do some custom painting, but I didn't know jack about how to actually paint.  I read some forums, watched some youtube videos, and found several great tutorials, but the problem with that was that most of them assumed the reader/viewer had at least some background with painting.  I didn't, so I bought some books aimed at beginners.  This was a good move.

2. Fully disassembled the figure before I began painting it.  Yes, it took time and was irritating, but it made painting everything much, much, easier.

3. Rotary Tool down the rub zones.  Again, this took time, but I think it was the right way to go, if all of the folks on the internet who know what they are doing are to be trusted.

4. Priming the figure.  Some people do not prime their work pieces before they paint.  Those people are taking the quick and easy way.  That is the path to the Dark Side.  If want are taking the time to actually customize a toy, take the time to do it right.  Primer makes the paint adhere to the object being painted.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I expect my customs to be family heirlooms that David Draper XXXVCII  hands down to his children.  That means I want them to last.  That means I prime my damn figures.

5. Come up with a color scheme before hand.  This was a very good idea.  I knew what I wanted.  That made it possible for me to not second guess myself when I was painting, which was good, because at my beginner level of painting I need to be able to concentrate completely on the actual painting, not on doubts I have about the choice of paint.

What I didn't do well.

1. I didn't know my paints.  Just because something looks one way in the bottle does not mean its going that way when it is applied to a surface.  That's a grade school mistake.  I ended up making swatches of all my paints, but I should have done this before I started.  It won't happen again.

2. I painted myself into a corner.  By painting details like eyes and ammo onto my figure, I made it impossible to paint a wash onto the figure without screwing that stuff up.  Washes are watered down mixtures of dark paint that fall into the recesses of a model and give the illusion of shadows and depth.  I could repaint, but eh.  Now I know the correct order to paint a model (once it is primed) is:

1. Apply the base coats.
2. Apply wash.
3. Apply details. 

I won't screw that one up next time.

3. I didn't layer my paint.  When I started the project, I incorrectly thought the idea was to paint dark colors onto the object first, then lighter colors because the darker colors would show throw the lighter ones.  Yeah.  Not so much.  Lighter colors are painted on top of darker ones so the lower, more recessed areas of a model look darker, which, like the washes, helps give a sense of depth and and shadow.  I get that now.  I didn't when I started this project.

Ok- I think the clear coat should be dry now.  I'm going to go get everything from the porch and try to reassemble the figure.  Through the magic of blogging, you won't even notice the gap of time between when you read this paragraph and the next, even though the next will will be written minutes to half an hour after this one!

...

PEG!  GET INTO THAT SOCKET!!!!

Ok.  This is the project that will not die.

All I had to do was reassemble the figure, right?  How hard could that be?

Ha ha ha!  Funny!  Ha ha ha!

These are the joys of doing something for the first time.  Surprisingly long and rather frustrating story short: the little pegs that go in the joints did not want to go back into the joints.  At all.  No matter how hard I pushed, they only went in about half way.  So I had to come up with a plan.  Here is what I did.

Fire it up! Fire it up! Fire it up!

1. Use a hair dryer to heat up the joints and make the plastic nice and flexible.
2. Insert peg.
3. Use my little desk vice with rubber grabbers to CRUSH THE *&^% JOINTS back together.

And this worked great, except for one thing.

THE *&^%^$^%#$ &$^%$#%^_)(*(*$&# vice rubbed the paint right off the pegs!!!!!

So some touch up work was needed.

I THOUGHT I WAS DONE WITH THE PAINTING PHASE!

Talhk, you Svine!  Vee haav your friends in Astreeah!!

Yeah. 

Not so much.

In any case, things are back on track now.  As I type this, the second coat of paint is drying on the ends of the pegs viable from within each joint.  I am very happy that I had my little desk vice here- without it, I would have never been able to get those pegs back into their sockets. If and when this phase of the project is complete, my little desk vice is getting the MVP for this inning of play.

I really was not ready for the pegs to not pretty much slide right back into the joints. Sure, I figured I would need to heat the joints up again, but I thought that they would be soft enough for the peg to fit back in, but it became pretty clear pretty fast that this method was not going to work.  Thank goodness for the vice.  Too bad the paint came off.

Enough stalling... I think the paint should be dry at this point (my paint dries in about 20 minutes, and I only needed a bit, so it should be good now.)  Be right back.

...

Ladies and gentlemen.  It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you, the NEW and IMPROVED Kinji "Rain" Shinto, of The Corps.  First a quick run back down memory lane- here is what he looked like fresh out of the package:

From the front.

From the back.

And here is what he looks like now!

Woo hoo!

Yee ha!!

Alright!!!

WE DONE!

I'm really happy with how this turned out.  I learned a lot of stuff from this project that I will be able to apply to future work.  And it ended up looking pretty good.  I'm pretty stoked right now.

Yeah baby!

This is a good time to mention I could have never finished this project without the support of many people, including most of all my wife, who was nothing but supportive of me spending so much of my free time here in my workshop putting this together.  I would also like to thank Mystic, Numbers, and all the rest of the folks who had supportive comments and advice here on the blog and in the threads on HissTank.com.

I had a great time with this project, but I am also glad to move on to the next one.  It is going to be a vehicle.  Alpha class.  I think you know what project I am talking about.  If not, tune in next week at the latest to see.

Until next time,

David D.

Head Shot

The figure is looking pretty good.

I was not looking forward to painting the head of this action figure.  The way I saw it, heads means details.  Details like eyes and eyebrows and irises and hairlines and all that good stuff that you need pretty good technique to handle.  And until a few hours ago, I didn't really think I had the skill to do any of that stuff.

The good news is, I should have had more faith.

But I didn't know that when I started out this evening, so I avoided work on the face by doing touch up work on all the other parts- used the tiny brushes to really get the lines down on the rest of the pieces to get my ready to work on the head.  When everything else looked pretty good (and there was really nothing else left to do... at all...) I decided it was time to attack that face. 

Hair is Folk Art 479 Pure Black by Plaid.
Skin in Elf Flesh by Citadel.

The first thing I did was give the face two good thin coats of Elf Flesh paint, from Citadel.  It was recommended to me by Mythic on Hisstank.com when I asked if anyone had any suggestions for skin tones to use for Japanese characters.  Mythic is an *amazing* customs artist and I think the advice turned out well.  The skin tone was great for what I was looking for.  Painting the skin and carefully edging between the hair and the skin wasn't too bad.  That mean it was time to work... on the eyes.

Time to man up and get to it.

Eyes over painted!

I had read a really good post on painting eyes somewhere that I can no longer remember* [update: I found the reference.  This is discussed on page 35 of the free MiniWarGaming ebook that I discussed here. - Dave] that recommended over-painting details on the face such as lips and eyes, and then covering the excess up with the skin tone again.  That seemed like an easier approach than just trying to get the eyes painted just right, so I completely over-painted the eye area with white paint using my two smallest brushes.  I used a second new technique here as well; instead of using short, smooth brush strokes over the eye area, I just tapped the area with the very tip of the brush almost like I was tapping in Morse Code.  I used just a dab of white on the brush in order to paint from landing anywhere I did not want it to go.  Using this 'tapping' technique was really nice, because it made hitting spots I wanted to hit easy, and made putting the paint where I wanted it much easier than it would have been if I just wiped the paint on with my normal brushing technique.

Eyes cleaned up.

 Next I went over the edges of the white that had spilled over the actual eyes themselves with the skin tone again.  And again, I used the 'tapping' technique to put the brush exactly where I wanted it. It worked great, and in very little time, I had two pretty well shaped eyes.  I liked how things were going; the eyes, which I thought were going to be a pain, were going well.  It had a lot to do with the techniques I had picked up from watching plenty of you tube 'how to' videos and advice I received from folks online, but I should give myself a little credit too.  Even with the advice, I didn't think I would be able to hold my brush steady enough to paint the face, but it was actually much easier to accomplish than I thought it would be.  Next would be the real challenge though- painting the irises.

The face is looking not too horrible.

I tried using the 'tap' technique to get the dark spots in the middle of the eyes a few times, but I just was not getting enough paint exactly where I wanted it to make much of a mark on the eyes using my paint brushes.  The dots were very, very light.  Over the white eye paint, they looked like faint grey spots that practically blended in with the rest of the eye I didn't want to tap the brush too hard, because I thought it would end up making a black spot on the face which would undo everything I had just accomplished.  But then I got an idea- how about putting paint on the end of an unbent paper clip?  I grabbed a paperclip out of my desk, pulled it straight, and popped it into the paint.

Guess what?

Paper clips make excellent iris painting tools.

Hobby tool of the day: the light up magnifier.

For the rest of the face, I ended up using a tool I picked up at a hobby shot a few months ago but had not used until today.  It was a folding 2x magnifier with built in LED lights, and made painting the eyebrows and soul patch a breeze.   Again, I used the tapping method, which took a lot longer to do on the eyebrows that I thought it would, but minimal touch up was required. And hey, whatever works.

So where I am now is this figure is pretty close to done.  I want to get some rest and take a look at it tomorrow to see what touching up may need to be done, and then I need to reassemble the figure.  But for my first try, I think this thing looks great.   Sure it could be better- I could have come up with some additional colors for the face and done some layering.  I may also do a dark wash to add some shadows, but I'm not sure.  I'm so happy with how things look at the moment I think I may decide to quit while I'm ahead and try those techniques on the next figure painting project.  You'll see what I decide soon.

Until next time,

David D.

Know your paints

Ok- I'm back from the conference in DC, which was very cool, and am at my painting desk.  I made a pretty big mistake last week in assuming what my paints would look like out of the bottle.  I had planned on painting the armor, gloves and boots of my figure a gray, and the rest of the figure black.  My black paint looked fine, but my highlight shade of gray paint looked like chalk; it was way, way lighter than I had expected.  Back to the drawing board.

You landed on boardwalk, sucker!

This was one of those times that educators call a "teachable moment".  I should have had an idea of what my gray paint was going to look like.  I figured I could make swatches of each of my colors, and made swatches today I did.  I painted a bit of each color on the backs of old business cards.  I also threw the name of the color, the manufacturer, and the product ID on the card to make I can easily buy more when I'm out.  They came out looking like deeds from a Monopoly game, but they serve their purpose.

Another thing that I had not thought of but should have is the finish of each paint- besides the colors themselves, a few of my paints have a very glossy finish, and the rest are pretty matte.  I figure knowing what is what on the finish front is also pretty useful. Figuring this out is an unintended benefit of the project.  Yay for unexpected results!

Now that I know what colors I have, there is a dilemma: I could paint medium gray over the old steel gray paint, not knowing how that is going to turn out, or I remove all of the paint and start again from scratch.  If I start again from scratch, I'm going to need a good way to remove the paint.  I know there are ways to do this, but the methods I know involve buying more supplies, and I'd rather accept that this is a first try and that it isn't going to be perfect.

So- time to get back to actually painting the figure.  More soon.

Until next time,

David D.