Sunday 31 March 2013

Vanguard - Take Two


Real life took over for a bit there, but I am back on track.  I finished the third test figure soon after the last post and gang painted four Vanguard recently.  Pretty soon, we can play Sedition Wars with painted forces.  Err, painted Vanguard forces.
 
For this new batch, I made a wash from the paint I was using, with a little black and dark blue ink, medium and water.  Perhaps it was not as dark as I would have liked, but it was better.  Instead of using a drybrushing-like technique to add the highlight, where the shape of figure governed which parts were painted, I actually painted the highlight colours on deliberately.  No blending though, and that showed up in the pictures.  I also tried metallic guns.  I intended them to be darker; there are 3 shades of metallic paint and I was heavier with the lighter shades than expected.  I don’t like them and might paint over them.  Thanks to Althai for some advice.

There is a little OSL from the floor lights and the energy source for the guns.  I’m not sure I have that right yet.  Ditto the rust and blood on the bases.  Anyway, progress has been made and instead of a few test figures, I have the beginnings of a force.
Yes, eyes!  First eyes in a long, long time.  Next up, some Strain! 

Sunday 10 March 2013

Sedition Wars - First Brush

I excited to start painting these Sedition Wars figures, the first humanoid figure I've done in a while.  This was just a quick test run, to check a Vanguard colour scheme, but it rapidly changed into actually painting the minis.  I wish I had set out to do that at the start.

I started with some bases.  It's been a while since I did a base.  The Dystopian Wars ships are not based and neither are most of the Epic vehicles.  Anyway, these figures come with many different sculpted bases, so I don't have to do much other than paint:


Now some real results.  I wanted to use a scheme that I had not seen and went with a duck egg blue-grey.  The result was not quite what I wanted, but not bad.

 
 
 
 
Definately, there are things I would do differently.  I should have painted the undersuit first, but I wanted to see how the colours worked.  The Object Light Sourcing, where the light from the blue pot lamp on the grounds illuminates the figure is a little heavily done.  I don't like the wash I used to mark the shadows.  H-Archive has some well-painted minis with black boots that look great.  I was thinking of metallic guns and I think I'll do that in the future, very dark metal.  The guns need a power bar to make them more interesting and that needs to be pained first.
 
But still I'm pleased with the result!  More to come.  Comments welcome.

 
 

Saturday 9 March 2013

Sedition Wars - Unboxing

So, Sedition Wars has been in the house for a few weeks now, our first Kickstarter game to arrive.  It's a sci-fi survival horror game; if you think of the Aliens movie, you won't be far wrong.  So far, the game has been fun to play, although my wife is winning all the games.

For a table-top board-game has many components.  Big boards for the space ship, stats cards for each miniature, counters for tracking effects in the game, and of course miniatures.  A huge number of miniatures.

The Kickstarter campaign had the option to get a double load of miniatures.  This seemed like a bargain, but now I am overwhelmed with little men (and women) and monsters - over 150 miniatures, most of which are multi-part.  There are more to come in a second shipment, including 70 pieces of scenery - doors, computer consoles, etc.  They are very detailed and cleaning them up is much harder work than I expected - they are made from a very hard plastic.  On the plus side, the plastic holds the detail very well and the figures are very well made.

Here's a few pictures of some of the miniatures, straight out of the box.  Some of good guys (the Vanguard):

Some of the bad guys (the Strain):

And a panoramic shot of my dining table: