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This was touched on in another thread but I thought I would broaden the subject here. I have been building models since I was 9 years old and gaming since I was in my 30's, good pastime with out the DUI's and explanations but I digress. In that time I have read anything that had to do with improving my skills as a model builder. Since delving into the world of gaming and GW I have found that most of the guys I played against used White Dwarf as their Canon for all things model related. Don't get me wrong, I like WD, I have found it to give item specific info for a model, mini or gaming board. That said, it's scope is very narrow and not everything that's required to make a good model into a great one is not there. So where do you find the info and technique to make yourself better? In the magazine rack at the local hobby not game store. Like I said, I have read anything I could get my hands on and I'll list the pubs that I have found useful at least to me.
1 Fine Scale Modeler
Over the years they have printed items regarding basic building technique, brush painting, airbrushing, and how to handle photo-etch and resin parts.There are also how to's on decaling, covering both putting them on a build ina way to make them look painted on and how to make your own with your PC and printer. Not only do they print these how to's some of the builds featured can be used for reference to make a unique army in terms of uniforms and translated background. In short this is a good overall tome of information for any model builder and everything we put on the game table is a model. They also have a readers gallery and over the years I have seen WH40K and WHFB subjects printed there.
2 Railroad Modeler
Why am I pimping a model train mag you ask? Simple, a model train layout is on huge diorama that has moving parts. In order to achieve that one has to learn how to make buildings and groundwork, learn weathering skills and how to kitbash and scratch build any thing you need that is not available in a kit. While you may pass up the things about trains, there are always something printed in this mag that deals with making the ground work and foliage look real. There are more articles on weathering a model than in FSM and they go from using an airbrush to add dust, smoke or dirt to modeling deep scratches and rusted nicks and dents in paint. There are are always items on making unique buildings from scratch using everything from sheet and structural shaped plastic to using wood and metal.
There are other magazines that are more or less the same in subjects, the UK seems to have more model related publications than the us which is fine, sometimes they deal with things that the US magazines have overlooked or not touched on yet. As to relevance of these magazines, the diorama I posted in the showcase a couple of weeks ago would not have been possible without learning to do the basic groundwork with styrofoam berms covered with plaster and then painted in the 'right' colors so no white shows. Going on to building up the ground cover, trees, tall grass and finally pouring the "water" without it going everywhere but the riverbed. All these techniques were from the railroad magazine. Building up the troops lessons learned from FSM helping me to merge plastic, resin and metal into distinct individuals. Everything that is printed in a mainstream model magazine has a direct application to our hobby here. There is always something to learn form them but only if you open them up and read them.
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