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Thank you. I don't like PVC myself and certainly hope that the initial batch is the last PVC we've seen for Wasteland Warfare. It's even worse because Modiphius makes amazing resin models which makes the comparison with PVC even less favorable.

Still, they're official Zetans and all that is available right now, which is better than nothing.

Woe is PVC... but still, it is indeed better than nothing and You a building wonderful things on top of it.

I finished painting a Minuteman that I started a couple of weeks ago but set aside because of... distractions:



The first of the normal ones, to be specific. I'll try to get each of them their own little variation while sticking mostly with browns and blue jeans. The latter specifically I'm not sure about. I'm not the biggest fan of pants, nor painting them blue. I think I'll try and get some variation in there.

But that's still in the future.This being a small side project, I have both Zetans and the two armored Minutemen that will get painted first (unless I really, really feel like doing something else - which happens, in fact it's happening right now...). I also primed a handful of Settlers for my Minutemen to protect. If I feel like a change of color and can paint them.

Remember those distractions that keep me from painting Zetans? Here's one of them:





After letting it sit for a couple of months because freehanding , I felt like putting in that work last week and I now have a new piece of scenery in my collection. Hurray!

While I do intend to work on the stuff mentioned in my last post, I made a new Fallout 4 character last night that I would like to bring to the tabletop, using a BoS Lancer and trying to sculpt a face so tiny it fits with the scale of Wasteland Warfare models while retaining the level of detail the official models are capable of. That'll be fun...

I look at it as a viability test, really. I ddn't put too much work into the Zetans because their being PVC left the models with much less detail than I'd like. Consequently I don't feel like doing as good a job on them as I can. Lancer-Sergeant Abigail, I hope, will get better treatment, being one of those shiny resin models Modiphius produces.

Just a quick addition:



I did a bit more work on the face that didn't turn out quite right before. Not saying it's perfect now, but it's a bit closer to what I had in mind.

Other news is that I may actually get Wasteland Warfare going at my local store, so my top priority is to get paint on a PVC starter set to demo the game and hopefully stir some troub... I mean, raise some interest. It'll likely be a quick job and not up to my usual standard, but it kind of needs doing now and they're PVC models, so that's OK.

Three weeks later, I now have a painted starter set to demo Wasteland Warfare:



Takeaways:

PVC sucks as a material.

I hate batch painting.

I hate rushing things.

Painted models still look better than unpainted models despite low standard.

I need a break.

So, after tirelessly painting for almost three weeks and having twelve new models to show for it, I'm a bit exhausted and will take it slower for a bit. Maybe do some Warhammer before going back to the Zetans, Billy Joe and Abigail. Who knows. Since I consider these a chore, I definitely want to do something I actually feel like doing next. We'll see how that turns out.

Take Your time. But the result was well worth the effort, IMHO. Very solid starter, nothing to shake a stick at!

So, that wasn't the longest break ever. I got in a game of Wasteland Warfare last week and that inspired me to get back to work. I and have something to show for it as well:



Family picture of the Zetans.

And the individual views of the new ones:





That concludes the Zetans. Took a while but they're finally ready for action.

I gave points values my first look today and for what is considered a standard game, they're a little inexpensive. The plan was to add two Protectrons all along, but those too are really cheap, so an Assaultron will join the merry band to bring it up to playable size size. These robots are already assembled but I'm not quite sure yet how to dress them up. The idea is to make them look somewhat scary so the average wastelander isn't going to nose around their place, what with it being haunted and all. I'm going to play Mothership Zeta again and see if that inspires an idea or two.

Until then I guess I have those Minutemen to paint that I've been neglecting for so long. Maybe I'll do that, or maybe I'll keep procrastinating: I'm not hurting for things to paint, after all.

At any rate, I also finished the rather small conversion of Lancer-Sergeant Abigail:



Not the most extensive conversion I've ever done, but I like the plain look of the orange BoS jumpsuit. She got a combat knife because a backup is always good to have, and a custom head, but otherwise I'm pretty happy. Did some repositioning as well, which went smoother than I expected. The resin Modiphius's models are made of is very good and user friendly.

Maybe I'll base and paint her next. I might even use the opportunity to do the same to the Feral Ghouls I assembled a while back. We'll see.

Very nice. Knife is in place and the combo of high ponytail with ( Ican't see clearly) almost clean head backside is a little unconventional. But good! Thumbs up!

Thanks.

The haircut is straight from Fallout 4 (or as straight as I could make it ). Always fun to see a BoS girl sporting one. I thought it was a bit of a shame that all the unnamed official Brotherhood models have headgear.

I'm still taking it slow for the time being, but something came up:



A friend asked me to sculpt an aviator cap for his Behemoth, and so I did.

Goggles make everything 8% cooler. Good work on straps, sir!

Thank you.

Our hero, our hero, claims a warrior's heart!
I tell you, I tell you the Dragonborn comes!
With a voice wielding power of the ancient Nord art!
Believe! Believe! The Dragonborn comes!

It had to happen, didn't it? More after the picture:



OK, so it's probably safe to say that radioactive barrels don't make an appearance in Skyrim. That's alright. I have no intention of stopping work on Fallout. These I painted up on the side while I was busy with sculpting and wrapping up painting on other models. Not the most notable addition to my collection, but I had these sitting on my desk for the past two months and figured now is the time to finish them.

And while I'll certainly keep working on Fallout models, the fact is that I didn't neglect to paint the barrels for no reason. I've been in a fantasy mood lately, putting more work into Age of Sigmar models in weeks than I have in the years before that. Modiphius's announcement of their Elder Scrolls game couldn't have come at a better time. So as of this moment, I'll add Elder Scrolls models to this blog right alongside the Fallout models it was created for.

I may have added the Dragonborn model to my last order from Modiphius... because willpower is clearly overrated and who even wants to resist shiny new models anyway?

But while I wait for that order to arrive, I can work on other fun stuff. Wouldn't do to limit myself to just the official models. So I am currently sculpting a past player character from Skyrim. And you know what that means? It means I'm fiddling around with daedric runes, like all the cool kids:



That's my sculpting board which for the most part gets used to sculpt faces. However my Breton will have a daedric symbol hanging from a couple of chains, and there's no way I can sculpt that while it's dangling from thin chains with nothing else to hold it. So I sculpted the M and A runes, inverted since you're seeing the back here (and yes, as you can see from the drawing, that was not the original plan...), putting the Oblivion rune on the backside and having the chains that hold the icon sandwiched in between. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how well that works.

Third sculpt from the top is her face, by the way.

As I was already smearing daedric symbols on the board for reference, I also added the longer inscription that is carved into her breastplate. I'll have to see if "carve" is going to remain correct. That's how that part of the model currently looks, but since it's still early days and nothing aside from the carved armor plate is sculpted yet, I don't know if I'll keep it or fill out the carving with raised letters instead. It'll depend on how the rest of the armor design turns out. Got to put some more work into it before I decide.

It's summer so I'll post something hot.

NSFW warning because Dragonborn without pants:



Still WIP, obviously, but I had a lot of fun* matching my sculpting to the proportions used by Modiphius for the official models for Bethesda's properties. As you can see the promotional Dragonborn arrived as well. I'll likely not paint him soon because it's hot at the moment and the paint is just going to dry before it even leaves the brush. Hoping for a little cooldown soon, but if that doesn't happen, well, what can you do? At least sculpting isn't negatively affected by the heat, so I still have plenty to do.

Speaking of which, I quite enjoy mashing up daedric and dragonbone armor for the cuirass, because let me tell you that I could certainly not mod Skyrim like that. Which while playing I always thought was a shame, because I like both styles and had to make do with mixing discrete armor pieces to at least come close. Sculpting a physical model, that's not a problem at all. So yay, I'll get my character to look like she was always supposed to.




* sculpting teeny tiny faces may not actually be lots of fun

* but the results are worth it!

Awe mode on.

Thank you.

Ever since Modiphius announced Elder Scrolls Call to Arms I've been toying with the idea of making a nice Skyrim themed manor for my display case. I've gathered some stuff to build it, played Skyrim to get a feel for the architecture, drew up a floor plan the other day and... it just occurred to me that I'd better keep the raised torch and Dovahkiin standing on his personal rock in mind when I build the ceiling/determine story height. Phew, that was close.

So yeah, after a while of other stuff I think I'm down for a larger scenery project again. Yay!

Today I have a WIP picture of...

...a naked girl with a knife. What could go wrong?

So, obvious NSFW warning here.



So, what's this about? Several things, actually. First, introductions. That's a new take on Andrea, my Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3 who has become my favorite Fallout character and possibly my favorite RPG ever played.

The model is obviously still WIP, but now that most bits are on, especially the arms I felt it was a good time to take pictures and look the model over and see how I feel about the proportions. I'm sure I spoke of this before, but I like to have a different view of the model to get a better idea of how a sculpt shapes up and if I missed things the naked eye has a hard time seeing. With that out of the, this is me feeling adventurous and doing fun new things that I really hope work out the way I want. these are:

1. Something pretty mundane, I wanted a model that is scaled and proportioned to go with the official Wasteland Warfare models. I'm not too bothered with slight differences in miniatures whose primary purpose is to increase the range of models I can draw from to enhance my games and whose differences you'll be hard pressed to see at arm's length on the tabletop.. Brother Vinni, Hasslefree, Golem and Modiphius miniatures can happily coexist as far as I'm concerned. While I already made a nice model of her I take the official models as the standard by which everything is measured and if there is one character I won't tolerate looking second rate, it's her.

2. I haven't really had much of an opinion on scars before now. Recessed or raised, or possibly just painted on? After putting some thought into it I think raised scars are my favorite approach and I'm using her as a test bed to see how subtle I can sculpt these. This is coupled with the particularly fine head in line with Modiphius's models, so it really becomes an exercise in improving my fine detail sculpting.

3. Speaking of the head you may have noticed that it's a copy of the Dragonborn's head (who really is the fantasy version of the same initial character concept, so they share the same facial structure). I went and tried getting better results with instant mold. I've done some press molds before and they worked better on some things, worse on others. I think to really get a better idea of how the stuff works I need a model I feel some attachment to and that isn't there for mass production (which is the most obvious use for molds, of course). I need the feeling that quality comes before anything else and not try to do too much at once. this ties in with...

4. RPG progression characters. I think it's a neat concept, having a number of models of the same character, just advanced further along the story. Now try to sculpt the same character over and over without going nuts. I figure if I can get a quality mold of a simply posed character, I can use that to replicate her any number of times and equip her to fulfill different roles. From this, the pit fighter variant, to her standard merc gear, to something more suited for infiltration, and so on. I honestly don't know if I'll go through with this in any meaningful way, but the potential alone is worth looking into the whole molding process in greater depth.

So I've been mostly working on her lately, but since Warcry is going to played at my local store I put most of my time into Warhammer models. I can manage sculpting a single model alongside that, but not much more. Once those guys are out of the way, though, I'm hoping to get a few more Fallout models painted. I've got half a dozen Feral Ghouls that have got some paint on them already, and I primed my BoS power armored models and just need the opportunity to get going on them. And then there's the Raiders and let's not even talk about what happens when I get Liberty Prime...

Plan is solid - good luck to You, and steady hand!

Thanks.

Progress!



After way, way too long I found the time to get some more Fallout models painted. That's all the Ferals I own sorted out. They'll be joined by more Feral Ghouls as I'm bound to get the upcoming Glowing Ones but for now they're done and I can move on to something else. Probably Brotherhood of Steel if nothing goes wrong. Maybe Raiders if I can't resist.

I tried something a bit different on these to get the dirty clothes look, omitting the use of stippling in favor of just blending with thinned paints. I'm not sure that worked out so well. The browns are fine but the yellow and pink seem like I should not have gone with such stark contrast in the recesses. And maybe they could have in fact all benefited from a couple of dirty spatters. They're done, but I think I'm going back to incorporating stippling with the next batch.

On to naked girls. NSFW warning, because you know:



So, I think she's done. I'm not really sure about the knife's design, but as a master model for a mold the knife does not have to be more than an empty space to run the end of a wire through. I can replace it easily enough with a different design. Possibly with a resin combat knife from the weapons upgrade sprue.

Provided of course the whole mold making thing works out in the first place. Figuring that out will be the next step.

I have a mold. I have a replica. I have an opinion. And it's not even as bad as one might expect.

Spoiler because NSFW:



So that's, obviously, the original on the left and the replica on the right. The picture shows the replica after cleanup of the easy bits, effectively flash around the thicker parts of the model. Some thoughts, then.

The good parts:

As can be expected, the front detail came out reasonably well. The mold mass apparently had a few cracks from kneading so there's a spot or two with lumps of green stuff that need cleaning up, but considering how much of the stuff I used that little kink can be overlooked.

The mold halves were constructed to clip into each other on three sides and it worked really well, having the halves align perfectly. I've tried this in the past and this is the first time that really worked out.

I tried to build up the mold in the crotch and armpits and it worked out fairly well, preserving detail and preventing green stuff from spilling over and completely filling up the area. This has been a big disappointment in the past with a couple of things and I'm happy that this worked out here.

The not quite so good parts:

Filling the mold with the right amount of green stuff to both avoid too much spill which destroys detail around the sides where the molds meet and too little coverage that leaves gaps and also destroys detail is an art unto itself and I don't have enough experience to minimize problems with it. This replica is actually the second one I tried, using less green stuff than before. The first one is not necessarily a bad attempt either, but it has marked problems with green stuff buildup especially around the Pip-Boy. It does have a couple of better cast bits, and I won't rule out using it in the future. That said, it will require a good amount of cleanup.

The arms and ankles seem to be too thin to cast without issues. During mold making there seems to have been more problems with cavities that shouldn't been there. Filling in green stuff is hard because there's not enough to stick to the mold easily. Inserting the wire may shake it loose and because of its rigidity tear away and deform parts when the mold halves are pressed together. The last point may be improved by taking greater care when bending the wire to shape, but overall these thin parts seem to be the hardest to get right.

Because of how the mold was created and how I can't be everywhere at once and have to race to get everything done as the mold material cools down and loses its plasticity, the back of the head did not come out very well. I'm not too bothered because it's only a small detail to fix manually, but still.

Air and I guess water bubbles during mold filling are not great but there doesn't seem to be too much damage cause by them. Still, it's there.

Pretty big one alluded to before, the wire that goes inside the green stuff really needs to fit the shape well. Again it's the thin parts that see this become a problem. Hands, wrists, and ankles are all a bit problematic with this specific replica. In general, getting the wire to bend just right in the right hand to fill the knife hole is very tricky. I may have to try completely ignoring the knife with a future cast simply because I think it's the part that stands out the most. The rest of the model is pretty flat and can be easily molded. The thin knife going off at almost a right angle is a tough one.

Overall I'm fairly happy with how this turned out. There's a good amount of cleanup required in places, but since the replica is generally supposed to be a starting point for further sculpting, that's not that much extra work on top. It does give me a solid and quickly made, and more than anything a consistent base for variations of the character, so I think this whole experiment can be called a success.

Because this particular replica had considerable problems with the knife and because I'm itching to have a model with paint on it, I'm converting this one to be the fisticuffs version of the character.

Today there's and update with a variety of things. First, a Knight:



That's a quarter of my power armored BoS force painted. I'm hoping to get through the other ones quickly, as the color scheme is pretty quickly. With a slight exception for Paladin Danse who doesn't wear a helmet, which is going to add that bit of extra work. Still, I'll be happy to have these painted so I can draw on them as the core of my BoS force.

Hopefully that will also put me in the mood for finishing Lancer-Sergeant Abigail. She's been half painted for a while. Those BoS suits are full of tiny little details and if that wasn't enough the two color pattern is surprisingly complicated. I know nothing beats a power armored Knight for simplicity, but that's a lot of stuff to paint. Very, very carefully paint at that.

On we go then, to the reposed fisticuffs girl. NSFW warning, as usual:



Not much to say here, the missing knife and a bit of a sloppy arm repositioning kind of naturally led to her fighting not quite unarmed. The fun thing is there's a hilarious combination of mods, chems and perks that should make her a blast to play even in games against seriously armed models, even though she's basically running around naked and punching people with a chain wrapped fist. Very reminiscent of what you can do with your player character in the video games. I love it.

Most of the work is in the cleanup of the replica while some resculpting is required to account for the new pose and her new weapon. She's coming along nicely, though, and there's not much work left.

Oh yeah, she's also yelling now. Her old face was too serene for someone who's going to be on Fury all game long.

And I almost forgot, the guy with the minigun is Dave. I love the Enslaved Tech model, and I love miniguns. It's a conversion I simply couldn't resist. I don't know how much else I'm going to add, but he'll at the very least get a deathclaw gauntlet hanging from his belt. Maybe he'll get a sidearm or slung rifle as well, couple of pouches, maybe some grenades. I'm still working out the details.

On to Elder Scrolls. NSFW warning:



Not forgotten, I'm generally not in a fantasy mood at the moment so not much work on my two Dragonborns is happening, but to be honest the thing that took a great deal of patience and that I seriously needed a break from afterwards was attaching those tiny little chains that would swing and come to rest in every possible direction and place except the one I wanted. That was bogus. I don't want to do that ever again.

Great progress on that flame bearer! Fills me with envy and shame, that's for sure.

Knight is a bit too same on all faces. Metal always shows every kind of wear and tear applied, but I still like hos *solid* it looks.

Thank you.

I know what you mean about the silver. I painted a watered down layer on a rusty basecoat to get the desired depth but did little to prevent good coverage and a neat appearance. Now I'm actually cool with it because the Brotherhood of Steel has the knowledge, resources and facilities to keep their gear in good order and I wouldn't want to give their prime assets the kind of wear normal wastelanders have to contend with, but it's true. Metallics have always struck me as taking a lot more work to paint nice patterns with than non-metallic paints.

I have a primed Mr. Handy who's supposed to look a lot rustier than the Knight. I'll probably paint him next and see how that turns out.

The pit fighter version of my Lone Wanderer is painted. NSFW warning because she's still not wearing pants:



The skin came out surprisingly well, which I guess really proves I shouldn't batch paint things and give every model the required amount of time.

I tried something new with the base when I found that the wires connecting her feet to the base weren't quite short enough but I glued them in anyway. Originally I figured I'd just have her stand on a metal plate or a slab of concrete but since a bottle of water effect had found its way into my shopping cart recently, I thought I might as well try it out on her. So the metal plate under one foot got slanted, the opposite edge of the base built up as concrete, and combined with two dams on the remaining side I had a basin for the clear resin to go in. It did not go perfectly smooth. as you can see the static grass to the fore soaked in a bit of resin and I had to fix that as best as I could, but applying the resin in two layers led to surprisingly little pull up effect around the legs, something I had trouble way back when when last I used (a different brand of) water effect. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with how that worked out.

The tattoo on her back also looks much nicer than what I managed in the past thanks to the helpful advice of some Dakkanauts.

Lastly, I already said something about the skin but the scars bear separate mention, especially the ones on the head where scar density to available surface is pretty high. I had trouble with that in her previous incarnation, too. Trying to highlight the scars led to a pretty messy overall appearance and I think I overdid it with my color choices. This low contrast attempt looks much better and is going to be the way I paint scars from now on.

In other news, I think I said something about painting a Mister Handy before? Well, Old Rustbucket is well on his way and I hope I'll be able to finish him soon.

It's time for a little patriotism!



I finished painting Old Rustbucket. Obligatory I still hate stars and stripes and I still don't ever want to paint any more. Until the next time anyway.

Regardless of the difficulty of painting straight lines and fiddly little icons, this ended up working out surprisingly well. The original idea was to paint the flag on the spherical body and leave it at that, but that made the eye stalks and limbs look too disjointed in their muted silver. So the motif got extended to the eye protectors and the upper metal plate on each limb for a more balanced appearance.

In the Geifer does science department, I added a drop of clear resin over the irises to emulate the glass lens the video game model has, and luckily that turned out flawlessly. That's pretty cool and I may do that on more things from now on.

In other news, I have Liberty Prime now and have already begun assembly. No idea how long it will take to paint him, though. He's kind of big.

Danse and his Knights are well on their way and I figure I'll have to put less than an hour's work each into them to get them done. Which may actually take a little while still since I've had a busy week with no sign of letting up, but hopefully that'll change soon. I want to get them painted and out of the way. Obviously I have a big robot to tackle but I'd hate to get started on him while leaving the little guys half painted.

Paladin Danse and his homies:



Alternative titles would have been Forces of Blandness or the Greymarch, but that's the Brotherhood of Steel for you.

I actually am happy that these are painted, and not just because it means they're out of the way. The Brotherhood has a pretty balanced roster of troops and I'll get around to painting combat armored Knights and Scribes in time, but it'll be fun to have these guys specifcally to hand for the occasional all power armored game.

Individual pictures:







Next up: a stupid dog.

Actually I can't rule out that he's going to be followed by another two dogs, but it was sunny today and I managed to paint him in one go, so he's basically just missing varnish and static grass. Those things I'll do tomorrow. The other dogs are only primed and may take a little while until they're done.

Liberty Prime is assembled and I'm currently adding sand to his base. It's a big base and takes some time to do properly, but I should be able to prime him this week. I already got out a big brush I had stored away, just in case.

Woof!



Two hours of work went into Dog's fur, but I figured he needs to look good next to his mistress, so I put in the extra work.

Only two more doggies to go, but I'm not sure I want to do that right away. I'm kind of sick of fur now.

Luckily I have Liberty Prime as an excuse to do something else.

Totally woof! Very good fur in that scale and in that time, beats Schleich at twice the size (BTW, some people who are not averse to repainting this rubbery abomination actually produce amazing results with just an airbrush and patience). Bring on the Prime, good Sir!