Weathering and Battle Damaging 40k Tanks: Part One

Hey folks.

I've finally managed to stay awake for writing time for the first time in a couple of weeks so I thought I'd better thrash out this weathering article now.

For the weathering project I decided to go with a Spacemarine Vindicator tank.  I've always liked this model.  It's a big Brutal siege tank with a massive Demolisher cannon, designed for smashing the defences of heretic scum.  I also decide to use this opportunity to do up a model for the Raptors Chapter, which have to be one of my favourite factions of the legions Astartes.

Here is an image of the model once I had striped off the old paintwork.

As you may be able to see,  I have used grey stuff to model in Weld lines.  I'll cover how to do this kind of detailing in a future post.  Today is for weathering and damage.

To start with I wanted to have some bullet holes and divets in the the Vindicator's armoured hide.  These are illustrated in the unfortunately blurry photo below along with some scrapes and the beginnings of a melta damage hole (I'll get to these later in the post)

To make the bullet holes take a pin vice and drill a hole a few millimeters deep.  Then take a modeling knife and put the point in the hole and twist it round so you get a ragged edge. (Be careful the blade doesn't break) This gives a nice little bullet hole to show a direct hit.  For a ricochet get a little Green stuff and role it into a ball a couple of mm wider across than your drill bit. Drill a hole in the surface you want the ricochet on and press the ball into it using a round tipped tool.  Draw the tool down to squash the greenstuff aside leaving a rim at the top.  (See below for a clearer image)

The Melta holes were made by drilling a hole and expanding it by twisting a modelling knife around in the hole until it reached the desired radius.  I then used some Green stuff to build up a rim and some dripping metal.  I was aiming to make it look like the melta had caused the armour of the Vindicator to boil away.

 The trick with melta effects actually comes from the painting, so I'll give you a glimps at the finished effect below, but the how to paint bit will be in the next episode.

In the Image to the left and above you can also see gouges in the armour.  This is achieved by cutting a v shaped channel into the plastic surface with a modeling knife.

Anyway,  here's that Melta damage.

That cover's the Pre paint work.  Now Bung a Black spray undercoat on it and next time we'll talk about the paint. That is to say, achieving weathering and battle damage with paint effects.  Then there will be a final article in the series covering the use of weathering powders and a couple of nice little cheats to take the model to the next level.

Cheers folks.

More Piratey Awesomness

So last weekend was the release of Dreadfleet. The game was fantastic, I wore a costume and much fun was had by all. I'm sure you're all dying to know how I went in the Pirate conversion competition.

Drum Roll Please.

I came Last.  I also came second.  Ruan's Orky pirate was truly awesome and he got a much deserved victory.  My Pirate turned out pretty much exactly as I wanted him, but not very Warhammer-esque.  Here are a couple of photos of him painted and stuff.

 The paint job isn't too special I'm afraid.

And here is Me in the costume the conversion was based on.

Future Piratey goodness is on the way, with some Dreadfleet articles.

If you're interested in seeing Ruan's Pirate conversion go check out the GW Wellington Facebook page or shoot in to the hobby center and check it out in person whilst it's still there.

Cheers.

Path of Chaos Part one: How to Paint an Army

As promised.  Here is the first of the reprints of the Path of Chaos Blog.  I've been a bit rundown of late and haven't had much chance to write new stuff.  Hopefully this will tide those of you who haven't read it over till I'm feeling a bit better.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Painting an army

Hey folk, and welcome to the first of my posts on the actual methods I am using to build and paint this army.

Well we're getting toward the end of week one of the Army builder challenge and I've made quite a bit of progress.  As you may already know, the idea behind the challenge is to paint one unit a week, building toward a 1000 point army over the coarse of the month.  Well in week one I've gotten a little carried away and painted my first unit (20 Marauders) and my General (Tzeentchian sorcerer) and, as of typing this, I have just about completed the second unit (10 Warhounds).  So in today's post I'll give y'all a rundown on what I did with the Marauders.

I tend to have two modes of painting.  The first is meticulous and involves a lot of obscure techniques and arcane murmmerings which I shall not get into here.  The other is army painting mode.  This involves getting the models in question painted to a good game ready paint level in the shortest time possible.

The Three Foot Rule:

When painting an army it is important not to get too hung up on the look of each individual model.  At the end of the day people won't be viewing each model up close and personal.  They'll be looking at them from the other side of the table (hopefully as you march to glorious victory over their forces).  This being the case you want to get each unit looking good from around three feet, hence the three foot rule.

Here are my top tips for getting an army done quicky.

First off,  assemble and paint each unit by using a factory line.  For assembly start by glueing all the legs to their bases, move up the body in stages attaching the same pieces to all the models in the unit before moving on to the next stage.  With painting, start by dry brushing all the metal surface on every model then paint all the brown then the next colour and so on.

The next tip is to keep things neat.  This tends to be quite difficult if you're going really fast (and it's the advice I'm worst at taking myself) but try to get each colour on neat and smooth and only in the places where you want it.  The neater you are at the base coating stage, the less work you'll have to do later.

Ink wash is your friend.  You can save a lot of time on some models by making good use of washes.  If used properly you can get away with just base coating your models then giving them a good coating of the appropriate wash.

Keep it simple.  Keep the number of colours for any given unit to a minimum.  Where possible it is best to pick one metal colour, one cloth colour, one flesh colour and one detail colour.  From here you can expand with a high light for each and a few variations for hair and the like.  By keeping to a limited pallete you'll give your unit's a cohesive appearance and cut down on time for application.

Bright colours draw the eye, so spend a little more time getting them looking good.  Make sure they are applied neatly and are well defined. it'll distract from shortcuts you may have taken in the darker areas of the miniatures.

Finally, base the models well.  Make use of flock and static grass.  If the unit is based well it'll look that much better.

Once you've got the army to a playable level you can always revisit it later and add highlights and details you might want.  In this way you'll be playing with a fully painted army sooner rather than later.



So,  that being said, here's what I did with my Marauders. (I won't bother with the details of assembly, see the tips above for how i went about that.)

First up I picked the palette I would be working with.  They were as follows.
    Tallarn Flesh
    Hormagaunt Purple
    Bleached Bone
    Calthan Brown
    Scorched Brown
    Ultramarines Blue
    Chainmail
    Charadon Granite
    Adeptus Battlegrey
These were backed up by the following washes.
    Badab Black
    Devlan Mud

Astute readers may have noticed that there are a few more colours in my list than the tips above suggest.  This is because there are a lot of similar types of items on the Maruaders, the boots straps pants and loin cloths could have all been done in the same shade of brown but I was worried that if I did that it would make all these details blend in together too much.  So instead I decided to make each of these things a different colour.  As long as you stick to the plan of painting all the miniatures in a factory line you'll still get through them quickly, just not as quick as if you had used less colours.

The first thing I did was I went through and dry brushed all the metal components with Chainmail. This means all the weapons helmets and steel gut plates.  I always try to do drybrushing first if I can so as not to run the risk of getting Chainmail all over the other colours later.

Next I painted all the skin on the models with Tallarn flesh.  I then painted all the pants with Scorched Brown.  Once these had dryed I ran a thick wash of devlan mud over the flesh and the pants. I then went back over the flesh with talarn flesh again making sure to leave some nice shady areas to give the skin depth.

The next stage was to go through and paint the detail items.  The wrist band got Ultramarines Blue.  The fur, Adeptus Battlegrey, The boots Charadon Granite and the horns Hormagaunt Purple (weird I know but trust me) The belts and straps I painted with Calthan Brown.  Then i went back to the horns and painted them Bleached bone leaving thin lines of the hormagaunt puple showing.  All these area then got a thick wash of Badab black.  The horns also got some devlan mud.

The last stage on the main body of the miniatures was to paint their hair.  For this I went outside my pallete using blondes, Reds and browns to get a little variation.

Finally I painted the shields.  When painting shields it is a good idea to remember, The shield is a large and very noticable feature of the model, so you want it to really pop.  to do this I went with Ultra marines Blue and Chainmail as My major colours.  The Ultramarines blue got a blue ink wash to really get the colour to bounce.  The chainmail was washed with watered down Badab black.  Then I glued the shields in place.

At this stage I took a look at the models and checked for any patches I'd missed or needed more definition.  Those That had been missed got a touch up and some areas got a little more Black wash.  Then it was time for Basing.

To base the models I started with Citidel basing sand.  This was painted black.  Dry brushed with Graveyard earth and then given a few patches of Static grass.  Personally I like to keep static grass to patches as I feel it looks better this way.

So,  that was it.  Unit one done.  I started it on Monday and was done by Friday having spent roughly 1-2 solid hours a day on them.  The really time consuming thing with this technique is always waiting for the washes to dry.  You can speed things up by using a hair dryer on low, but be warned.  You may end up pushing the wash to different areas of the model.  It is better to use the time to work on something else, like your character models or something.

Below are some pics of the Marauders at various stages of their creation.  I'll go into more detail on the sorcerer and the banner in the next post.

Cheers folks.

Ben

  

Visitors

Hey Folks.

For those of you who will be in the Wellington region on Monday,  The Perry twins and Adam Troke will be in the Wellington Games Workshop store from 4pm.  The Perrys are two of the most prolific, and in my opinion, talented sculptors out there.  Adam Troke is a writer who has worked on many of the Lord of the Rings books and the High Elves army book.  If you have questions about sculpting or rules development Monday is a great chance to have your questions answered by the pros.

Cheers

Ben

Ooo, that'd be cool.

For those who don't know me, I have a bit of an interest in Model Railroad.  Just recently I've been thinking about trying to do a small 40k model rail layout.

My interest in the idea was originally sparked when I saw these images in the Apocalypse book a few years back.

I shelved the idea back then as being too much work (not to mention ongoing monetary concerns) But now, with the 40k city terrain, trees, craters and the awesome Realm of battle table sections, the idea not only looks way more plausable, but heaps of fun too.

So heres what I've got in mind.  First off, get hold of three or four realm of battle boards.  Use these to arrange a shelf layout 2ft deep by 6ft (possibly with an L layout using the fourth board.)  Build up a raised track bed with Styrene and bits and pieces of City terrain and the like.  Lay the track similar to the way you might have a crossing, paved surrounds etc.  Assemble buildings and other scenic elements utilising the 40k city terrain, Trees, Statues, Barricades etc.  For the Trains,  Scratch build the bodies of the loco's and wagons using plasticard and put these on HO chassis. Then I would add characters and scenes to the layout.  A gang fight might be a good option, using the Necromunda figures.

Obviously right now this is a bit of a pipe dream, but I'm really liking the idea and I thought I'd share it with you all as a way of combining interests.

Later Folks

Ben