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2024/01/02 04:30:59
Subject: Re:Gulgog Tuftoof Feels da Heat and Gets da Gunz Out While da Sunz Out
Gulgog Tuftoof presents a curious confluence of events. I've still got somefing speshul in da works, but in the meantime, I realized that I'm only two burnas short of a squad (there's a joke about my mental acquity in there somewhere) and I have a second kommando box so that's one in the hand so to speak. The painting comp theme this month is From the Shadows which fits the kommando thing pretty well. It's too damp and cold here in the PNW to spray prime minis, so I bought a bottle of ProAcryl Black/Brown paint on primer. I rewatched the LOTR trilogy to help stay up for New Years and honestly, this stuff makes the mini look like it just came through Saruman's twisted uruk hai breeding process so I'm feeling some good orky painting momentum building. Haven't painted over this primer yet, so I can't 100% endorse it yet, but it went on smoothly and I do like the color/effect so far. Happy 2024 all!
So here's da latest burna, "From da Shadowz..." I wanted to take at least one photo that captured the theme, so I pulled out some terrain that he could emerge from:
Tatoo:
...and a detail of another decal in my usual photography style:
I also just finished an Octarius Kill Team Kommando slasha boy kitbash today. I was hoping to get him done in time for the competition, but at least if I do complete a squad of burnas, now my kommandos won't be a man (or ork) short:
I love the way his face turned out, I painted the mask with a base of leadbelcher and then stippled on some ushabti bone, then covered it in several washes. Happy with my lens technique on this one too. The base was a rush job, but it'll be quick to redo the black around the base next time I break out the paints.
Speaking of which... da meks are done with their speshul assignment so I'll post some photos when I get a chance, but I'm a little terrified to put paint to them as I'm pretty emotionally and financially invested at this point and don't want to screw them up. Stay tuned...
All right lads and ladies, 'ere it finally is. Cutty has emerged from da mekworkx wif somefing speshul fer da grotz (dey likes dakka too you know).
Presenting, Gnot Tanks!
Gnot Tank 1:
Gnot Tank 2:
Gnot Tank 3:
Gnot Tank 4:
I've finally put all the CAD skill I've developed over the last 17 years to some good use (and by that I mean hobby use). I modeled these up and had a local rapid prototyping shop print them up on an MJF machine. I probably should have gone SLA since the surface finish would be better but I didn't want to deal with the sprues. Now I get to paint them and hopefully not mukk it up. Questions and comments always welcome, thanks for stopping by!
Cool burna boy pics, but those grot tanks are ace I’d not heard of MJF printing before, a quick google makes it sound cool. Was it a work contact that you used?
Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way
2024/02/27 06:35:03
Subject: Re:Gulgog Tuftoof's Meks Make Somefing Speshul fer da Little Greenskinz
@Tzurk, thanks, and yep it's a good feeling. Now that it's painted, I have it on my desk and can't stop looking at it.
@Gobert, thanks. I'm a mechanical engineer, and we actually have an MJF printer at work which is where I heard about it, but we can't print personal stuff on it (although I'm trying to change that) so I had to have a local rapid prototyping shop print them for me (and paid for them myself). For future builds, I need to figure out whether there's a material or method that yields a smoother surface finish (if you look at the pictures, you can see there's kind of a crosshatch to it). If not, I may go SLA in the future and deal with clipping off the supports and filing the surface to remove the support nubs. The advantage of MJF is there isn't any of that. The resolution is stellar though, all of the detail from the CAD model is represented in the physical model, and most of the features like rivets and bolts and such are less than a millimeter across.
Here's the first one painted. I had to paint over the Deathskull decal because the color mismatch between the racing stripe blue and the decal blue was huge, but I learned that you can use the decal as kind of a template and paint right over it. Also, I've only ever done one other vehicle, so this is kind of new territory for me, and I wanted it to look appropriately chipped and rusted as befitting a vehicle of orkish (Deathskull at that) design, manufacture, and maintenance (or lack thereof) so I tried the sponge method for the first time. As with most of my first attempts at a new technique, I'm satisfied with the results but also appreciate that I've got more to learn by trying it more times and have lots of room for improvement yet. At arms length though, this thing looks fantastic and I'm inspired to keep knocking these out so that I can field them in a game soon.
Yeah, the lack of supports is a cool feature. I quite like the cross hatching texture. It came out really nice on the side of the tank. It looks nice and orkishly weathered too
Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way
2024/04/29 04:34:16
Subject: Re:Gulgog Tuftoof's Meks Make Somefing Speshul fer da Little Greenskinz
One more Gnot Tank painted, this one is going to be the leader of the squad. Still working on my weathering technique but I'm generally pretty happy with the way this one turined out. I've got rokkits up top representing every clan in camp too:
As always, questions, comments, and criticisms welcome. Thanks for stopping by!
I can feel a new plot arc for “Give it yer best Grot” coming on.
I'm still working on getting these printed at my work for a discount rate, so buying some might be a possibility if the shipping cost doesn't make them prohibitively expensive.
As for Giving it Yer Best Grot, I wrote a bit eulogizing my tanks this morning and will post it once this next tank is finished (it's looking pretty sweet so far if I do say so myself, and should be on track for the comp finish at the end of this month).
@theCrowe: Don't you have some other stories to finish first though?
Other stories? …like what? The Tonks final hasn’t been played yet so that batrep is still one for the future.
The ork brewhouse racers aren’t generating much interest,( unless they are, and I didn’t notice) and my Burrows & Badgers comic is going as quickly as my drawing skills will allow. Meanwhile the boy has other plans.
theCrowe wrote: Other stories? …like what? The Tonks final hasn’t been played yet so that batrep is still one for the future.
The ork brewhouse racers aren’t generating much interest,( unless they are, and I didn’t notice) and my Burrows & Badgers comic is going as quickly as my drawing skills will allow. Meanwhile the boy has other plans.
@theCrowe: I guess I was thinking of the Brewhouse Bash initially, maybe I'll put my next bit in there to kick it back up to the top of the list and hopefully the other racer's consciousness too. And the Give it Your Best Grot thread is kind of mid-story too, isn't it?
@Syro_: Definitely join in the mayhem if you feel so inclined, it's been fun to develop a story or even just interject a character and let them get carried along!
(The backstory in my head so far)
Spoiler:
Part 1 A DeathSkullz Tank
BigMek Cutty plunked the last rivet in place and took a step back to admire his work. He circled the little tank appraising it from top to bottom. It was just a bunch of leftover scrap that he had assembled in his usual style. He would pick up one bit that caught his eye, maybe a tread or a plate of armor, then affix some other bit and continue in that fashion until he figured it was finished.
The treads and the main part of the carriage for this creation had come from some ‘oomie tank. Cutty then added a great big rokkit turret from an ‘oomie emplacement, wired in the controls and got all the mechanisms working together. Then he sealed up the sides with armor plating.
Fortunately, this tank had a hatch so that a driver could get in and some little stairs leading up to it (that was Weezul’s idea). It was not uncommon for him to completely seal up one of his creations in armor and have to cut a door later after its absence and necessity had been pointed out to him.
Suddenly it dawned on him that no ork (not even a yoof) could make it through the hatch, much less fit inside. His faithful gretchin minder was busily cleaning and oiling his twin flechette blasters at a nearby workbench.
“Oi, Weezul, wanna drive dis fing?”
“Nah boss, how’m I gonna keep an eye on you if I’m sealed up in a tin can?”
“Oh, right. Fink one uv da uvver grotz wants to?”
“I’m sure I can scare someone up.”
“All right, give it some blue paint fer luck, and so everyone knows it’s a Skullz tank then.”
Cutty had already lost interest and wandered over to a nearby scrap pile to look for his next bit of inspiration.
Part 2 The Bad Moonz Tank
Weezul found a willing driver for the tank all right, the grot that everyone just called Runt because he was barely even gretchin-sized. More of a snotling really, but he could speak and think like a gretchin and was the only one in camp small enough to fit comfortably in the driver’s seat of Cutty’s tank. The tank was almost all engine and the working gubbinz of the turret and there was barely enough room left for both Runt and the controls to drive the thing.
Runt however, was delighted. His entire life he had been belittled and forced by the other gretchin in camp to do the tasks that no one else wanted to do. Now he had a tank!
The first thing he did after firing it up was to run over his two least favorite gretchin rivals who were too oblivious arguing over a bit of scrap to even see him coming. Weezul saw that both the machine and the driver he found for it were obviously up to the task of killing things and considered it a job well done.
What he hadn’t considered was that word of a tank built just for a gretchin would spread like wildfire amongst the other grots in camp. A few days after the original grot tank left the workshop, he was paid a visit by Yella, a pompous, conniving little git who got his sense of self-importance from the fact that he served as ammo runt for a huge Bad Moonz nob named GoldMaw da Butcha.
Yella snuck up behind Weezul while he was focused on watching Cutty do his work.
“Oi, Weezul!”
Weezul nearly jumped out of his skin, that voice when unexpected was like getting shivved in the liver. He knew who was addressing him before he even turned around.
“‘Ello Yella, what do you want?”
“I wants a tank. A grot tank! And tell Cutty not like that hunka junk he made fer Runt. I wants a proppa orky killin’ machine wotz fit fer a proppa Bad Moon ork like myself.”
“You ain’t an ork Yella, you’ze a grot just like Runt is. You got da teef fer a tank?”
Yella’s lips curled into a snarl at the insult but he knew that he had the advantage in this bargain.
“‘Course we gotz da teef, we’z Bad Moonz, ain’t we? But since you’ze in an insulting mood, Cutty’s gonna make dis tank fer us fer free, and I’m keeping da teef.”
“Wot? Nobody gets nothing outta this workshop fer free Yella. Unless you’ze a Skull that is.”
“Is that so? You want da Butcha coming down ‘ere and asking fer it in person?”
Weezul bristled. Cutty wouldn’t put up with another ork trying to bully his way into a free tank and might even be able to take on da Butcha in a fight, but that’s not at all how it would go down and he knew it. Instead, da Butcha would come and bully Weezul, and Cutty would be too lost in his work to notice.
“Calm down, Yella, we’ll make yer tank then.”
“That’s right you will. And proppa too, I wants it big and killy, wiv twice da rokkitz you lot put on Runt’s tank!”
Yella puffed up his chest, turned on his heel and left.
“Dat git’s gonna git it one of these days,” thought Weezul, “and I’m gonna be the one to give it to him”. He just had to figure out a way to do it without any of the Bad Moonz knowing it was him.
Part 3 The Evil Sunz Make a Tank Too
BigMek WarpRokka set down his paintbrush and took a step back to admire his work. He circled the little tank appraising it from top to bottom. It looked dead fast, and dead killy, too, wot wiv da rokkits up top that he had pulled off the suit of one of those curious blue fellas. His last trukk had been on the wrong side of some of their rokkits so he knew they were the bizness. And then there was the paintjob…
Rokka became a BigMek amongst the Sunz clan not just for his know-wotz of vehicles and forcefields and such, but also because he was da fastest racer and da toughest in a brawl for decades. These days though, he spent most of his time in his workshop.
If you needed a tune-up, or a real flash paint job with extra flames and some pin-stripey bitz, Rokka was unrivaled. Sure he had taken up the DeathSkullz blue once ol’ Gulgog had become Warlord back on Gork’un, but he wore it over his trusty Sunz red coveralls. If you was a Sun the day before a race, you could count on Rokka to have saved some of his extra-speshul Sunz red paint for your ride to make sure that the Sunz lads came out on top.
He also increasingly spent his evenings around the campfires drinking and listening to the ramblings of the runtherdz as they tried to instill the camp with propper orky knowledge and kultur. Any Sunz runtherd worth his hair squig would inevitably get around to the tale of why Sunz vehicles were all red, on account of the sacrifices made to the dying sun of the original ork homeworld.
Rokka had started out his paint job on the tank by just coating the whole thing in red. The tank itself had started out as a bit of one-upmanship. If those other mek gitz could make a tank for their grotz (which admittedly, was a ridiculous, and un-orky thing to do), he could make one too, and it’d darn sure be fasta than the rest. He had to paint all of the rokkits red too so that their target would have a harder time dodging out of the way.
The rokkit launcha though was already a bright orange, which worked out okay, and he could always just paint it red too, but that runtherd yarn about the dying sun was rattling around in his head and he couldn’t seem to shake it. Something about it fading despite all the efforts and sacrifices of the original orks had grabbed a hold of his psyche. So he started blending the red slowly up to the orange, and now…
There was a low whistle behind him.
Startled, Rokka spun around. Sitting atop a pile of scrap was Likkle Spanna, his faithful grot assistant. There had been plenty of times that Rokka had wished he could whistle; it was an appropriate response for a flash new ride, or a race well won but he never got the hang of it. Grotz had a way of learning useful tricks like whistling which is why you had to cuff ‘em every now and then to remind them who really ran things.
“Yeah, whoddya think?”
“It looks dead fast boss.”
“‘Course it does, I built it, and it’s got my speshul red on it.”
“Looks dead killy, too, wot wiv da rokkits up top and all.”
“Yeah, those blue gitz made some pretty good dakka, huh?”
There was a lull as the large and small greenskins admired Rokka’s handiwork in reverence. Rokka hated to admit it but the thought of his homage to Sunz kultur going into battle and getting all scratched up was downright painful. Surely there was a better use for it.
“Say, Spanna, wot would you fink about racing dis tank?”
“Racing it boss? That’d be Ace!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t even have to use da rokkits if we was racing dem uvver grot gitz. We’d blow ‘em off da line!”
If Rokka was pleased with himself before, now he was downright delighted. Instead of wasting his evenings listening to the runtherdz yammer on, he had just invented a whole new form of orky entertainment. A buncha grotz racing and blowing each other up was sure to be a big hit in camp. Why, you could even place wagers on the little buggers too…
Part 4 A Goff Tank
Grot tank races were indeed a huge hit in camp. They spurred an arms race of sorts with each mek devoting their free time to churning out faster and deadlier tanks. The gretchin pilots got proficient at driving them to their limits as their ork overlords demanded better and better performances to clinch the win for their respective clans.
It was inevitable in an ork camp on the edge of an active warzone that the tanks would be pressed into battle, and they proved to be devastatingly effective when formed into small squads. So as unorky as the notion of giving a grot a tank was, eventually even the Goffs wanted in too, and they built their tanks in typical Goff fashion - all armor, no nonsense.
Pics:
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2024/05/28 05:03:43
So here's the whole process on the last one. I needed a driver since this was the only one of the four tanks with an open hatch. Quick rummage through the bitz box yielded a pair of arms and a head, but no torso. Some of the other folks in the monthly competition have inspired me to work on my sculpting, so I figured a new torso would be a good place to start. A bit of sprue, some paperclip sections and:
I think I did pretty well, although I did have to add a couple of layers to get the surfaces really smooth. I discovered that one of my kids actually had a whole set of ball end shapers with color shapers on the other side. These things were indispensable, and it took me a try or two to stop touching the mini with my fingers (his back permanently has the artist's thumb print for posterity). The result of the extra layers is that he went from being a weedy little grot to being a stim-chem fueled, gnot tank race winning, diesel little grot, so I've affectionately named him Diesel. I also sawed him off a little too short to fit in the hatch properly and had to go back in and add a waistline and the beginnings of his trousers.
Here he is painted. I was a little rushed towards the end because I wanted to get him in under the competition deadline, so the blends could be a little smoother, he could probably stand a couple more coats of highlights and washes, but whatever, the squad is finished now!
Then there's his tank... I got really into the checker theme and I feel like a made an 80's Vans sneaker (a little too off the wall, maybe?)
...and here it is finished:
My office got rearranged a couple times and I lost use of the surface that used to be my photo setup location. However, I noticed that we now had a white bookshelf whose lower shelf could be easily cleared temporarily when needed, and it suited my clip on lights perfectly. This was the easiest photo shoot setup I've had in perhaps forever:
I'll try to get some pics of the whole squad together, I'm awfully glad to have them all done. Next month's theme is footslog, and I'm really looking forward to getting back to modeling and painting infantry cause that's really my jam, although it's looking like I'll have very little in the way of free hobby time. Thanks for stopping by, keep it orky!
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2024/07/02 04:26:14
Finished annuver shoota boy fer da Waaagh! This one is replacing the fellow I did a long time ago with the dual-bladed hand weapon. I love that miniature but he's just not practical on the tabletop; he mostly has to be sideways to maintain unit coherency.
This was for July's Footslogger challenge. I waited until mid month to even start him because somehow I wasn't inspired despite the topic being the single most relevant keyword for my army ( ). I was out of town for a week, back for a day, and inspiration hit so I modeled him up, and then promptly left town for another week, leaving me not much time in the month to greenstuff and paint him, but I did manage to get him done in time and am digging the end result. Hope you like him too. I had to shim up the torso from the legs pretty substantially and then greenstuff his waist line to hide the gap, file down his left shoulder to fit the torso, and sever his right arm at the elbow to repose it, then add a sleeve to his right arm since the kommando kit with the gun arm has a sleeve, but the old school boyz are all bare-armed:
Thanks all for the comments, it's been a month and a half so I reckon it's time for a little update.
August's Beep Boop competition theme threw me for a loop until I started researching bioniks and cyborks and got inspired like midway through the month. I was out for a couple of weeks too, but I'm happy with what I accomplished. There's always a point during painting a miniature where I have really thin translucent coats sketched out and it looks really good/promising but still needs more paint to make it look more than just primered. I get the sense that the layers just need to be a little thicker to really sell the whole vibe and all I have to do is not screw it up by glopping on too much and making the paint job too thick. With this guy I managed to keep it simple and appropriately thin for the most part.
As an aside, all the brass bits are brass metallic paint, but lately I'm leaning more towards grey for the more standard metal bits instead of metallics, so that's what all the non-brass metals are - a combination of greys and washes. I also bought some orange iron oxide watercolor that is the bulk of the rust effect. He and the last guy I entered put me solidly mid-pack in the competition standings which is a step up from the bottom third where I usually skulk.
Here's a couple of process pics in addition to the final results:
September's theme is Absolute Unit, and I've been wanting to finish my Skitarii Kill Team which has been one man shy of an absolute unit for like a year now. The last to join the squad is the sniper specialist, wielding the transuranic arquebus, the only weapon in the game that you can fire away from your target, it will transnavigate the planet and still arquebus uranus. For this one I'm really leaning into a rubble type base similar to what I did for the demolitions specialist of the GSC Kill Team but I want him to look like he's found a nice niche in the debris that provides a little cover and stability for his shot. Since taking these pictures, I've added more debris and textured the whole pile with sand to tie the various elements together.
There's another thread where someone was asking about how to keep minis from looking like they're sinking into their bases, and I explained my method of pinning my minis to a cork to use as a handle and painting the base separately. This guy takes this even further. He's got a pin in his foot that's long enough to go down into the cork, but I marked and drilled the base using the pinhole in his foot with a little blue paint (for good luck) before gluing the pin into the mini. This way, I could run the pin through the base into his foot and build up the scenery on the base (using the cork as a handle for the whole shebang as I did) and would know exactly where the mini was going to be so that I didn't put debris in that would obscure him or interfere with him. I can still pull the pin out of the cork, pull the base off the pin, and then re-insert the pin into the cork and have a handle to paint the mini separately from the base, then pin the mini back to the base and glue him in when it's all said and done.
Oh yeah, and yes I did drill the barrel of like a 1mm diameter weapon because I'm obsessive like that:
Great kitbash on the Ork. I would’ve never guessed it was NMM, could’ve sworn it was a dark gunmetal! Good work on drilling that gun barrel, must’ve been tricky!
Goberts Gubbins - P&M Blog, started with Oldhammer, often Blackstone Fortress and Void Panther Marines, with side projects along the way