Workbench: T35 Death machine

First, a moment of awesome.



See this? This is a Soviet T35. When they built the T28 an engineer came up and asked the designers if they had enough turrets. They curtly replied "Nyet" and sent him to the Gulag. Of course there wasn't enough turrets, IT NEEDED MORE TURRETS. Thus this 100 ton leviathan was born. It had paper thin armor and needed 11 people to operate, but hey, it had more guns than Navarone and was made of awesome. And get this, in later production runs they turned the awesome dial to 11 and installed FLAME THROWERS- Plural. One flame thrower wasn't enough for a tank this cool; they needed more.

It would come up to smaller tanks and go, "hey you there, with your 45 mm gun. Yah, that gun's cool- I had 2, I hear some of your friends have a flame thrower installed too. That's pretty sweet. But look at this... 2 flame throwers. Aw yah, this trash right here is special. I can even do 18 miles per hour and I'm taller than a house. Pretty sweet I know. I can even do wicked sweet back flips. You should check it out sometime." all while hanging out behind a soviet 7-11 sipping on a slurpy and nursing the injury he got in a shallow ditch 'because he wasn't ready dude-GOSH'.

Only 90% were lost in the only action they partook in during the stages leading up to the battle for Moscow to transmission failure alone... and shallow ditches.

But that last 10%- WERE EPIC.




And I digress. Board progress. I actually don't have a more recent photo. The boards are 50% flocked but I didn't photo it. Shame.

Workbench: Tanks-ahoy

My that's a lot of tanks.

FORESHADOWING?

I'm working out the specifics of painting them... but I think they are coming out acceptably so far. I'll accept any tank that shows improvement from the last.

In the above pics, all those are new except the last 3 in the conga line of death.

Workbench: Tommy Cookers

This is one of those odd situations where the photos don't do it justice, but the tanks came out fantastic aside from some glare from the battlefront decals.

I won't be using them again. They came off the sheet hard, broke frequently, and persistently glare beside it all.
My hands are good enough to paint a white square.


I particularly like the tank on the left. The crew packaged a baseball bat, among other things, to the stowage.

Workbench: Of amber waving grain

Just showing off some more terrain I made.






Check out the explosions in the back ground.

Workbench: Progress on the front

Made some progress. I'm seeing the boards to completion, but there are some serious lessons learned on these boards that will follow to the next iteration.

1. Without wood guards on the edges, getting the insulation foam cut at a perfect 90 degree angle is critically important. A few extra minutes spent on this cut pays off 10-20 fold later on. And even then, corrections later on are inferior.

2. I've heard of it before, but Spray paint and foam should never mingle. Foam sometimes dissolves like coming into contact with the acid blood from Aliens. The roads on the large boards did just this and required extra work.

3. Proper surface preparation and cleanliness is also critical. I skimped on this to some degree and many times flotsam from one board or project would complicate the stage of another.

4. A clear well ordered design stage pays dividends. These boards are following a 16" lowest common denominator (being either 16x32 or 16x16), and while I like the room it gives over 12" and it's not big as 24", in retrospect I wish I went 24".

5. Always test. I like in this I made a slight compromise and did various effects on different sections to see their outcome, and then retrofitted where possible to the others.

Using outdoor paint/primer to give the broad colors.



Spray paint to speed up the details of the rest.



Bringing in some color variation and neutralizing the contrast.



Flocking... Really starting to resemble the color tones of the old ASL boards.




ACTION SHOTS!

Workbench: On the flip side

And on the other side of manic...

When optioned to field terrain boards for a local tourney, I could of took in the more than adequate Warhammer Fantasy boards and decorated them with bocage. Or, I could obsess and take on a project to build some purpose built ones.

Which one did I choose? I chose the obvious one. I chose to refine my art, try some new techniques, and charge into a new set of boards using what I learned from my less than spectacular Battletech board.

Some progress on the 4 test mules:








They're completely modular and interchangeable for numerous permutations. I'll work out the rest of the gaping tonight and maybe even have them painted and flocked. We'll see.

Random trivia: Did you know that Gilligan's Island was modeled after the 7 deadly sins? As confirmed by the show's creator (through various acts of collaboration during production), the professor was pride, Mary Ann envy, Ginger lust, Mr. Howell greed, Mrs. Howell sloth, and the Skipper is Anger/Gluttony.
Who keeps them on the island? Satan himself and the last of the crew; Gilligan.
Think about it.
The corollary didn't seem completely intentional in early preproduction however, but once the comparison was made, they finalized the cast and ran with it as sort of an in joke.

Workbench: Dog ate it

I was going to post up a pic by pic progression of painting some churchills, but alas the Tamiya Olive Drab paint I have turned... gloss. To be fair, it's an old paint.

I now have a shiny Churchill VII that I need to do something with.

So instead, lets have a kickass music video from Talvisota.



Random Trivia: Did you know that the movie Biodome started out as the third film in the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure franchise? Much of the references to this are littered through out the movie and are nearly unchanged from the original script where Bill and Ted end up in a not so heinous future.

Workbench: A taste of things to come.

Turns out I did have a bag piper miniature. He was sulking around in the commandos bits. I wonder if it was a mistake as I have a hard time thinking of an elite spec ops team stealthing their way into enemy territory under the wailing of bag pipe music.

But then again, this seems in line with any Scottish person I've met. They'd probably kick their ass too despite being heard a mile away.

And to the left is a new commander ('McCormick'). Since the last one perished leading an infantry charge into a tightly controlled group of buildings (and, with his death, actually secured the battle and saved the lives of two other platoons marching through a stream bed against MG42 fire), I figure a new commander was in order.
This ultimate bad ass is complete with a 1911 and his ultimate bad ass friends to protect him (shooting thompson guy and waving to attack rifle dude). The meta story I suppose is that he's part of the crew that was assaulting the creek.

Perhaps this also will look more appropriate since the last assault was led by a model that was essentially a staff team.



And the other project.

Queue Isengard music.

Workbench: +2

The front two are the new ones. The rest are arranged in the order and batch that they were painted in.

I still don't like how these are coming out. Worse still, they are better than the former and these make them look worse on close inspection by comparison.

But they are still serviceable for a war game and for that they will suffice.

These are actually finished for the most part, barring some glue drying. The others have a series of minor issues I need to redress. Such as none of them having their rifle straps painted and a helmet strap that has gone unnoticed till yesterday.
As a bonus, they took about 25 minutes each to do.


Random Trivia: The movie 'Predator' started out as a sequel to 'Rocky IV'. It was a sort of in-joke that the only thing Rocky could fight after 4 grueling movies that was more impressive was a space alien. The script was penned and worked under the title 'Hunter'. It wasn't until a weekend spent watching the movie 'Commando' that one of the lead authors, John Thomas, decided to substitute Rocky for Hutch and 'Predator' was made.

Workbench: Terrain

Now with thick bocage and some wheat fields.

Workbench: A bridge over the river paint

What started off as this... a silver surfer rendition of Col. Nicholson...

Became this!



Still, I'm disappointed. Particularly so with the ones that contain the bad primer job. They have become quite the struggle and mar what would otherwise be nice paint.

But with every iteration, the process gets easier and the product gets better I think. I'm also drifting from established British colors though I believe. This is in part effect that i've messed with the ink wash constitutions.
I'm favoring a dark ink and a thinned black ink. One for broad application and the other to fill in details.

Also, custom highlight colors are now the standard. The mini's look so much nicer in person with a few custom highlights. For the time invested (an extra minute each?) it seems to really make them work.

(Notice the Heineken bottle cap that still appears big, despite being in the background.)

Workbench: Platoon! +

It's like the movie... only it's British... and the helicopters are boats... and it's Dunkirk, not Vietnam.

Other than that, it's the same, right?




...starting to look like an army.

These last 4 were actually troublesome for me. It was the first push into mass painting techniques and it seems a bit much at 4 to a run. Mid way through, I thought these were the worst of the bunch as well and quite nearly threw in the towel and start over from scratch on them.
But I persevered, mixed a couple of mid tone paints just for them, and made them up to be the best of the group so far.

Biggest change on the last 3 was a new flocking mix. Taking a queue from my own lawn from time to time, I noticed that grass doesn't grow uniformally. So I'm trying to recreate that to some degree on the last 3, in addition to giving a bright green base paint to make it pop.

workbench: Two of them?

More like 4, but the Strongbad reference is perhaps... dated? That episode is almost 10 years old. Wow, I completely digress.



The far left 2 are the new ones. There is some improvement in paint thickness and texture. Two of the soldiers are next togethor in the same pose, one has a popeye kind of grin. The other... pretty plain by the camera's perception (blackberry phone). These two were batch painted and clocked in at around an hour each. That's way too long I think, but then I don't have much basis of comparison.

And I'm not even done. I'll add some standing grass at some point. But that's just time consuming and I can do that a later date.

And speaking of which, I need to repair/update these trees.

The next painting subject will be 4 stands of infantry and see if I can shave off some of the repetitive/redundant painting steps. I think I can get away with a lot if I mix a new batch of thined inks for these guys as opposed to using a strong black, flesh wash, and thin black right now.
I can probably get away with one thin black/flesh mix.

workbench: A little less awful

Still sorting out painting techniques and basing.

Commando: First Paint

It's hard painting at this scale. This right here is a prototype and I will be formulating the paint/basing process in the future.

Complicating this is the heat/humidity. It's really difficult to get a good spray primer job that won't bubble in this atmosphere. And I failed to some degree on that front.

On the Work Bench

Just some primed to go churchills and zippos (here seen in their rarely photographed "Not on fire" state).


And got dang I want some chicken tonight.