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Decided to start a log for all my EFT projects. Didn't feel like cutting up all the tiles today, so I worked on my Dark Knight and Dragoon(M).



Bases painted. Tried to get them as close as I could to the color of the tiles I'm going to use.



WIP metals.



Still WIP, but close to finished.



Cloth WIP. Chose to mostly stick with the colors from the cards, but added some red to the Dragoon to tie him into the Purple/Red/Teal scheme that the Dark Knight and Dark Priest use. I've decide that most of the EFT models I pick up will use that scheme to remain cohesive unless I decide to do a Good/Light Party as well as my Evil/Dark/Neutral/Monsters Party.

I was so excited to get them finished, I forgot to take any more WIP pictures, especially once I started experimenting with 2-brush blending on the Dark Knight's cloak. So, uh, enjoy the final product?









I'll have these two with me this weekend at the Giga-Bites event.

Edit: Hmmm, some of the highlights got washed out a bit. Teach me not to set up proper photo lighting cause I'm excited(not it won't).

Great start, the opalescent greens look nice next to the purples. Looking forward to meeting at Giga-Bites!

Time to start my boards. These are gonna be 1" tiles glued to 8" x 8" sections of foam board. I've got 9 sections total, but just looking to get 4 done for now.



Here's the tiles I'm using. A 12" x 12" square of tiles ready to lay down. It's actually 11 x 11 tiles wise and about $8 a sheet.



Just to show it with a model on it and that it's the proper size.



Here's a sheet all nice and cut apart but not cleaned up.



The first sheet on the first two sections.



And all four. I only had two sheets on hand. Nothing permanently attached yet.

Planning on painting the sides and bottoms brown, not sure if I'll do it before or after I glue the tiles on. I'm gonna grab the third sheet tomorrow which I'll also use to add some height variations on the sections.

That is an EXCELLENT and cost effective idea. I love it.

But dude, those things are going to weigh a TON. Make sure your table can handle it. You should break out a scale to check them when they're done.

I'm also stealing this idea. Time to price out tiles at the Hooooome Depot.


Edit - What're you using to glue them down?

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
That is an EXCELLENT and cost effective idea. I love it.

But dude, those things are going to weigh a TON. Make sure your table can handle it. You should break out a scale to check them when they're done.

I'm also stealing this idea. Time to price out tiles at the Hooooome Depot.


Edit - What're you using to glue them down?

Before adding any height levels, a single 8" x 8" section weighs about 1.4 pounds(it's not even heavy enough for the section alone to register on the scale, I miss having access to a mail scale). I'm not too worried about the finished weight. If my table can't take 4 of these things on it, it can't take having my 4 Warmachine bags on it(they average 3-4 pounds fully loaded with the large one being 5-6), either.

I'm using a simple water mix cement for adhesive, though I've been asking around for other options if that doesn't work.

Ah! That's not so bad. I figured something a little on the 5-10lb scale.

See if you can snag me a brand or a SKU or something, you got me planning a Home Depot run (which is the last thing I should be doing).

I'm hoping to be able to make buildings that fit the width of the squares to use as town terrain and the like. Mainly just big ole' LOS blockers and things, but they'll add some flavor which I am looking forward to.

I just imagine this will be much easier than my pipedream Infinity terrain. And the stone should be much tougher against wear and tear (though probably not paint chipping) than my original plan of scour/cutting the grid directly into the pink foam sheets.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
See if you can snag me a brand or a SKU or something, you got me planning a Home Depot run (which is the last thing I should be doing).

I can do that. It'll be easy since I'm grabbing another set today myself.

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
I'm hoping to be able to make buildings that fit the width of the squares to use as town terrain and the like. Mainly just big ole' LOS blockers and things, but they'll add some flavor which I am looking forward to.

I'm planning on doing the same myself. A friend's actually picking up some of the old Mage Knight Castle stuff for that reason.


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The tile brand is Premium Mosaic.

That's a fantastic idea

I've seen those mosaic tiles, but never thought of this use. Was it hard to "clean" them, getting the backing off after cutting them up, or at least getting them flush with the edge? It looks awesome!

I cut the mesh backing flush. It takes some due to there being 121 of the things to do, but each one takes a couple seconds.


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Saturday, a friend and I hit up Giga-Bites Cafe to meet the OTL gang and get a demo and grab some goodies. We also threw down for a 10C game to get a feel for some of our new stuff.

My haul was a Dark Priest, Pugilist, Gunsmith, Beastman, Risen Warrior, Minor Demonite, and 2 Miasma Thralls.

Wicked. Thanks for the SKU mate.

How did you like Giga-Bites? Did you take any pictures? GA is a bit of a haul for me, so unless I was vacationing down there I don't think I could make the time for it. Seems like a cool place by their website though. How was the OTL crew?

 Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
Wicked. Thanks for the SKU mate.

How did you like Giga-Bites? Did you take any pictures? GA is a bit of a haul for me, so unless I was vacationing down there I don't think I could make the time for it. Seems like a cool place by their website though. How was the OTL crew?

Not sure how I missed all these:

Giga-Bites was cool. Nice and big, plenty of tables. They weren't fully up and running. No pictures unfortunately. It was great meeting and hanging with the OTL crew, I still need to get in touch with some other people about something we talked about that weekend.

Also: UPDATE!

Wasn't going to work on anything EFT related until after GenCon, but a buddy goaded me into it.



Blurry pic, but a bunch of bases painted. No Beastman in there, he's not primed yet.



Basecoat for their red going down. This whole plog is like an exercise in how NOT to take pictures. Also, that's a terrible angle for the Pugilist to be photographed from, apparently.



Purple basecoat.

Looking good, if a tad bit blurry.

 Cyporiean wrote:
Looking good, if a tad bit blurry.

Tell me 'bout it.






Basecoat for the green.

I highly doubt they'll be finished tonight, but I've decided I'm bringing my paints anyway to get some on Jaga-Jaga, so maybe they'll get some love on Wednesday night.


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Purple and Red highlights.





Green highlights.

Going a little faster than I thought, but I really need to pack the car soon.


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Base coat for the Priest's bones.



First layer for the Priest.



Base coat for the skin and further work on the bones.

And I'm back at it, now with a new camera(Nikon Coolpix L830)! Haven't figured out all the settings and tweaks, but I'm slowly getting a feel for it.





Brown with highlights. Meant to grab pics before I did the highlights, but completely forgot about taking pictures.



Skin with wash.



Highlighted back up the Pugilist's face, she came out really dark in person compared to everyone else.





Metal work started.



Hair for the Pugilist and grey highlights for the Dark Priest and Gunsmith. If you zoom in using the gallery, you can see some of the transition from dark to light greys.





Couple more angles for the Pugilist's hair. Base of Vallejo Prussian Blue with layers wet blended using Altdorf Blue/Ultramarine Blue for the mid level and P3 Trollblood Base for the lighter layers. Final highlight is nearly pure Trollblood Base.

Figures are lookin great! Loving the new camera, btw.

Are you using the flash? Don't.

Get a lamp, and put a sheet of printer paper behind the models. You should get better results with the photos then.

Another quick tip with the paper, is to lay it against a corner, like on a book shelf or such. That way if gets a gentle curve in the paper. This will basically make the paper go on forever in the picture.

I usually do mine in the bathroom on the back of the toilet if it's not nice outside. Bathrooms are typically the brightest room in the house and the toilet seems to just work as a picture station.

These are more just "snap it and get back to work"(especially last night, I only had 2 hours to paint) things I do, there's no staging or moving from my work station. The noticeable flash in these is a combination of not knowing the camera yet and not having any natural light to help brighten the room.

Normally, I have a pretty elaborate set-up for finalized pics. It involves a number of lamps(how many depends on where I can place them, how dark the room is, etc.), two canvases, and paper(new addition, honestly).

I had a picture of the setup itself, but it's disappeared into the warp, apparently. Here's a picture using it before I introduced the paper(to fix the seam issue).



I'm actually doing research for purchasing a light box and wanting to do a professional photography class as a friend and I are looking into starting a commission painting service.

Another Update! I promise all pictures are flash free. I'm also using the ceiling-mounted, ball-jointed TV light I didn't have on yesterday in addition to the room's light.






Bronze work and metal washes. You can see the Dark Priest's red eyes better if you use the gallery zoom.





Eyes, hair, and gems on the Gunsmith.

The rest of the update is pictures of the finished models but it's a big spam of them whilst I play with settings on my camera in experimentation before I set up my rig and take "official" pictures of them. The last batch has the entire party so far.

Looks alot better without the flash!

Thanks!

Progress?



Painted the sides and bottoms of the boards brown so that they're not naked and pink anymore. Hopefully, I should be able to start adhering the tiles this weekend.

Wow, your models look really nice :p Guess I might give my dark knight's sword guard another colour like you did, it breaks the metal colour perfectly, keeping it interesting ^^

 soulcow wrote:
Wow, your models look really nice :p Guess I might give my dark knight's sword guard another colour like you did, it breaks the metal colour perfectly, keeping it interesting ^^

Thanks!

Yeah, it really helped break up the sliver more.

 Platuan4th wrote:
Painted the sides and bottoms of the boards brown so that they're not naked and pink anymore. Hopefully, I should be able to start adhering the tiles this weekend.

Looking forward to seeing them come together.

Welp, I finally got up off my butt and finished these.









The building was just there so that I knew where to leave space for when it gets used after being finished. Speaking of, anyone have a Mordheim, Mage Knight Dungeon, or similar door frame and window frames? That thing's pretty spartan with details beyond the roof.

The adhesive I found to replace the original tile concrete I had planned was extremely easy to use, just spread on the foam/tiles and place the tiles. For single tiles(such as the rock spire), I just dipped and placed. For those looking for something similar, I used Tec General Use Multi-Floor Adhesive. It's designed for carpet and vinyl backed laminate, but works just fine for this purpose.

I didn't build anything taller than 5 tiles high and I tried to avoid symmetrical patterns to the varied height sections as I could to make them look a bit more natural.

I've still got the foam for 5 more of these, just need to paint them and grab 4-5 more sets of tiles for 'em. Will probably get a bit more adventurous with a couple of those with regards to the sections of varied height, may even do a nice hill section that takes up the majority of a board on one.

And since I know everyone will ask: yes, I'll weigh each individual tile for you lot when they're dried.

Edit: Turns out they're dry enough:

Tiles 1 & 2 are 2.4 lbs

Tile 3 is 2.2 lbs

Tile 4 is 1.6 lbs

So the 4 together as a 16x16 would be about 8.6 lbs, give or take with added terrain features.

I would send a message to Tonio, the little widow frames and doors he added to the monastery were from some company, whose name I can't remember.

 Alfndrate wrote:
I would send a message to Tonio, the little widow frames and doors he added to the monastery were from some company, whose name I can't remember.

Thanks, I'll shoot him a message.




More Updates! This time, I'm working on my 1C models, a Risen Warrior, Minor Demonite, and 2 Miasma Thralls.



Base colors laid down. Tau Sept Ochre for the Risen, P3 Beaten Purple for the Demonite, P3 Thrall Flesh for the Thralls.




Building up the color. Colors added: Rakarth Flesh for Risen, Genestealer Purple for Demonite, Elf Flesh for Thralls.




Finals before washes and final highlights applied. Both models had Ushabti Bone mixed in.




Light wash on all the models. Agrax Earthshade for Risen, Druchii Violet for Demonite(beak, back and tail feathers unwashed, I liked the starker contrast between highlights on those parts), Reikland Fleshshade for Thralls. The picture doesn't show it well(will have to take better lit ones tomorrow), but the Thralls went through a radical change from the very pale color seen in the 3rd pic to a flesh shade that matches the package insert very closely. I was worried about the drastic shift in color when I first applied, but it actually worked out really well. Hopefully I can replicate it properly on the next 12 Thralls after I purchase them.

 Alfndrate wrote:
I would send a message to Tonio, the little widow frames and doors he added to the monastery were from some company, whose name I can't remember.

Typical Ohioan, half useless that's why I love ya


The minis look good, I think the risen warrior is my favorite model in EFT. It just looks so good in all the right ways.