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I love the X-wing. Yet to see the movie. Still traumatised by 1, 2 and 3 and avoiding getting my hopes up. But I have been hearing a lot of good things.

Absolutely get your hopes up, high as you can manage! It's 100% in the vein of the original films, the cast both old and new are exceptional and the visuals and music are bang-on.

what Para said. It's so much the original style of movies and quietly sweeps I, II, III under the 'wtf did we do' carpet. Great watch. Go. Enjoy. Rinse &Repeat!

Great X-Wing there Para. I wouldn't call the new Star Wars the best of all the films, but I'll give it props for being well above and beyond the Prequels and possibly better than Jedi as well. The gut punch left me feeling flat for the rest of the film, I have to say, though - even though I suspected that it was coming from ages before I went to see it.

Still, a great fun film overall - and I'm tempted to go see it again.

X-wing 2 reporting for combat! Neeoooowwwoooowwwm!*









On this one, I decided to build on what I'd learned from the first one. The basics are the same, but the weathering has been taken up a notch and I took Graven's advice on the metal chips (cheers again, man!), a more prominent engine glow and replacing rather than just painting over the existing markings for something a little different. Overall, I don't think it's any better visually than the first one, but it achieved the goal of looking distinct, reinforcing what I learned and giving me another unique ship to play with.

And for the benefit of anyone looking to paint these minis, I took a pic of my B-wing that's just had a single wash of Vallejo Smokey Ink applied over the basecoat, it shows off how easy it can be to get these ships looking good!



That's all for now, A-wing and B-wing are up next (anyone got any thoughts on A-wing colours? The B-wing will be getting blue, the Y-wing I plan to get will be yellow, so it's either green or dark red for the A-wing, I think), then it's on to the Empire's Finest! I'm kind of itching to pick up a T-70 X-wing to paint up in the awesome Poe Dameron 'Black Leader' scheme, but I'm trying to hold off on the new film stuff until there's more to play with than X-wings and TIE Fighters... Trying being the operative word...

Cheers for looking! Any thoughts welcome, and may the Force be with you!


*this may or may not be the noise I made on first taking these minis out of the packet!

Great stuff

Oh stop it ! Stop it ! Stop it !

I'm doing my hardest to not take the plundge and go all out with X wing miniatures... Your new paintjobs are superb !

Stellar job (see what I did there !)

Look forward to seeing more

Thanks guys!

Awesome stuff amigo! If possible I'd like to see a green squadron A wing, I think. Love the chipping BTW.

Actually just a quick question, are the x wing miniatures parts moveable, like the X wing wings or the B wings cockpit ?

Sadly not. Although they are plastic, so it's not beyond the realms of possibility to adjust that sort of thing. I was tempted to do a B-wing repose myself, but decided against it, Maybe if I get another..

I've reposed both my b wings. The cockpit is easily detached with a sharp knife.
Do it, do it now!

Fantastic work on touching up those X-wings, I've not actually seen these models in the flesh, how large are they?

The bases are 1.5" squares, I believe, if that helps. I'll grab a scale pic tomorrow with a Marine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Blue Squadron B-wing and Green Squadron A-wing painted up, pics incoming tomorrow!

That's a big help, I can guess the size from that, really nicely detailed models too.

Thanks Para.

Liking what you're doing with the X-wing stuff, Para! I've considered getting into the game myself, but I don't need another black hole for my money right now (40k eats up my hobby budget pretty good). I have yet to see the new movie, but I've heard great things. Please no spoilers in this blog, though, guys, I'm avoiding the OT thread for that reason. I probably won't go see it until a week from Sunday, if then, as I don't want to have to fight huge crowds (theaters will be packed for Christmas weekend!).

The X Wing repaints look.amazing. I think the new film has pushed a lot of people who were tittering on the edge of getting into X Wing over, myself included. Seeing you repaints I'm tempted to do the same, but half of the appeal was that it didn't as add to my painting backlog...

Foiled again.

Re the film, I have a few minor quibbles but overall I felt it was awesome, really excited for the next!

EDC

Thanks guys! A and B wings are done, but I didn't get pics before the light went. Just wanted to drop in and wish all my readers a merry Christmas! Have a great time, everyone!

Nice work on those X-Wing ships. I should probably do the same to my own sometime soon.

Cheers Az! Definitely recommend painting up the X-wing minis, they make for a really nice change of pace! Speaking of which, on to the Rebel Aces! Took a while to get decent light for pics (how I miss my desk lamp!) but I think I've managed it.

The B-wing, in Blue Squadron colours. Kind of difficult to photograph just because of the shape, but I think I've managed. As far as painting goes, the lower 'wing' was a really nice canvas for some heavy weathering, as befits the B-wing's somewhat tanky nature.





And the A-wing, Green Squadron (bizarrely, in the films Green Squadron actually have red markings, but I figure this makes more sense and looks better)




And a few group shots, first of just the 'Rebel Aces' set and then of the full squadron. Also a scale pic at the end,





That's all for now! Any thoughts on this welcome!

I'll be back later or tomorrow with a 'year in review' post of some kind. As far as upcoming projects go, I've got a few options; the Imperials for X-wing will be pretty simple, just a wash and some squadron markings for the most part. I've just received some assorted Samurai minis from Carlos13th (cheers mate!) destined to become a Frostgrave warband or similar, I have a pair of Infinity Geckos I'll be painting up for Dakka user Methebest, I need to crack on with BaC at some point and I'll be ordering some more BMG minis today or tomorrow, a rogue's gallery of villains including Hush, Mister Freeze, Deadshot, Killer Frost and Firefly.

Anyone got any preference as to what order I go about these? I probably won't get a great deal of painting done until the week, but I'll see what can be done between family visits, exam prep and my newfound Titanfall addiction.

Good stuff, looking forward to your thoughts on the year.

Too bad you had to leave most of your models at home when you went to college. I'd like to see a huge group shot of everything you've painted this year lol!

The Rebel Aces look ace.

EDC

Thanks guys.

Now just a quick look back over the year, mostly through the lens of hobbying.

First off, the year in numbers. In 2014, I achieved a ratio of 200 minis bought to 281 painted. This year, with 1 day to go (might sneak in a cheeky BMG order later on! ), I'm standing at 303 bought, 532 painted, with the bought total not including minis donated, taken as payment for commission work ect, just stuff I've actually bought. Off the top of my head, it'd be like 330ish if it were just minis accumulated. So all in all, I'm quite pleased with the total painted, and that some extent justifies the 50% increase in the number of purchases as the backlog is still being reduced. The bought total is kind of frontloaded towards the first half of the year, where I got good deals on 'big box' games like Sedition Wars and the D&D Adventure System game, since then I've shifted from quantity to quality of minis, hence buying more single minis and stuff like the X-wing and Batman models that are really pretty pricey per unit.

I think that goes in hand with what I was going to come onto next, the difference in my approach to painting that underwent a massive shift this year. Back in Jan/Feb it was all about getting armies on the table quickly, LotR mostly poured forth from the desk slathered in mediocre but effective paint, around April/March I decided it was about time I learnt to paint 'properly' as it were, and since then, I've been focusing a lot more on new techniques, improving my quality of work and generally casting my net a little wider than just tabletop standard minis by the dozen for games I wasn't actually getting to play. Quite honestly, looking back at the stuff I was doing at the front end of this year is at once depressing as a lot of it is just shoddy, and encouraging as I think I've come a hell of a long way. Oddly, I was painting some quite similar stuff now and then, so how about a little comparison?

Raven Guard, December 2014 and December 2015:


X-wing Starfighter, December 2014 and December 2015



Pretty drastic change, if you ask me! I think my painting has come a long, long way in the last 12 or even 6 months, as I've learned new techniques (if you'd told me a year ago I'd have a handle on NMM by now I'd have laughed you out of town! ), started paying more attention, and finally figured out how to take pictures that actually look like the minis they're of! Once again, I want to thank everyone who's helped me along that road, and moreover, stuck with this blog from the appalling stuff I was doing at the start of the year to what I'm producing now. 40 pages of blogging in 2015, let's see if we can't up that next year!

As far as hobby ventures go, I've perhaps not been adventurous this year as last. Buying and then never getting to play Infinity and Malifaux last year put me off buying into new systems for some time, so this year it's only BMG and X-wing that I've actually branched out into. Getting into commission painting kind of fell apart after a few quick jobs at the start, but I'll keep the page and it's blog going and hopefully get some more interest at some point. If nothing else, it's a motivation to keep pushing myself. On the gaming front, I've gone from 0 regular gaming groups to 2 in the last few months, and unlike my previous clubs I'm not having to run either, so I'm getting a lot more games in and also a wider variety of stuff that I'd never buy in all likelihood but can still enjoy playing.


I guess that pretty much concludes my hobby thoughts, so on to a highlight reel of the stuff I'm genuinely pleased to have painted this year. No surprises, it's mostly from the last half of the year!



Phew!

Hope you folks all have a splendid new year, and I'll see you in 2016 for more hobbying!

Great end of year review Para! Love seeing the improvement in painting and find it unbelievable that you've painted 500+ minis this year!!

You're latest x-wing stuff looks amazing. Top class weathering.

What big projects do you have for 2016? Any new game systems or factions for ones currently played?

For me, Gollum, the Aelf Prince on the Gryphon and Joker are my favourites

I like Angron the best, although the Joker and the Gryphon rider are pretty awesome too! Congrats on getting over 500 minis done, gives me encouragement that maybe I can start going faster too (my count for the year is probably just over 30 ). Looking forward to what 2016 brings from you!

Thanks folks! Definitely been a good year!

@AoV and Zerg: I think that if I had to pick a single favourite model, it would probably be the Elf prince; he's definitely the one I'm most proud of, given that it was only the fifth mini I'd ever done NMM on and I'm still not sure I've done it better since. Second and third would probably be Mister J and the RG sergeant.

@Bottle: at the moment, I've no idea what 2016 will bring! More X-wing and the rest of the 30k stuff will feature for sure, and there's plenty more Batman on the horizon; Two Face and Scarecrow will be the next crews I do, but first I'll be working through a bunch of baddies, as the Free Agent types are quite lacking from my collection at the moment. Later this week, I plan to order Mister Freeze, Hush, Firefly, Killer Frost and Deadshot, putting me just one Croc short of a Suicide Squad and giving me a real rogues gallery to play with!

After that, who knows? Infinity is always tempting me back, for the minis if not the game, more 40k might be in order now I have a regular set of opponents, knowing me, I'll find something ridiculously obscure further down the line!

Nice reppaints mate. Realy wanna see your take on more batman stuff.

This plog has been a *joy* to follow, way to push yourself to get better, I should totally emulate that feature of your painting ethic. Really looking forward to seeing more next year