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Alright... I have the Sisters done (essentially). I have the online photo dump set up. I have sort of got this camera/picture taking thing nailed (only need more light...) *sigh* Time to thrust them upon you... for upon the gridiron, there is only WAR!

Paterno's Lions

Here it begins. My little blog I am posting as I build a 2k point or so Space Marine army for my wife (and me.) We both went to PSU, and met senior year in a class. My entire family save my father went to PennState (we won't speak of his school) and her entire family went there as well. Yet... somehow we are the only two who don't love football. So in an attempt to amuse her and make some gesture towards school spirit, I have created possibly the longest running string of puns ever crafted into an army. Please, feel free to point them out as you get them.

Since it is late, I am just going to post pics of the two test squads I did. I did a single test marine to see how I liked the color mix, then finished off 5 scouts and 5 marines in a fit of not wanting to see another Sister ever.

Here is the basic scheme. The Marine on the right was the test case (I think.) I have to admit, the football uniform lends itself nicely.

There's the scout squad and the marine squad with lascannon.

Looking at these, I obviously need to get some better lighting with my pictures. That and get some better focused shots, perhaps by only shooting 2-3 men at a time.

Well, as I said it is late, and I want to get the Nittany Lion Chaplain and ~6 terminators done by Saturday, and the washes on the termies just are not doing it. Last time I ever prime something white... So there will be a pile of in progress pics and the like tomorrow afternoon, probably when I get back from the Dr's.

Alright... so I did a mess of painting this morning, and actually managed to mollify the mess I made last night painting.

From the beginning:
Chappy with lightningclaws pre-prime.

Obviously I am not giving Navarro, or anyone else, a run for their sculpting money. First time with GS other than cramming it in gaps in a Landspeeder, so at least it is sort of recognizable.

Until I get some paint on it...

After failing wash after wash, soap or no soap, and getting tired and cranky, I decide to just do some quick and dirty lining in and slap a little color on. Not having high hopes at the moment.

But after more hard work in the morning, more than I like to do, it's getting somewhere...

(you will have to excuse the corn flower blue going on, I took these in the window box for the better light, and that's what I got.)

I am still a tad torn on the lightning claws... without the yellow they look like random protrusions from the gloves instead of weapons, but from up close here they look a little off with it as well.

The other thing that is making me nuts is the pelt. I am having a devil of a time finding the right color mix for it, and now that it has paint I am thinking I failed to make it look furry,

I have also resolved that the wash issue might be due in large part to the damn white primer I was using. Paint does NOT stick to it. I actually was putting matte spray on between large blocks of painting to keep everything where it was supposed to be. I think next time I get a chance, I am putting an AK round through the bugger.

The terminators... well I am really tempted to dip them in Simple Green and start over. Don't get me wrong, most of my minis look like my cat did them until the final few brush strokes. Celestine sat on my table for 6 months due to that. But these guys... having issues with the wash something fierce.

Unfortunately, I have run out of Simple Green, so I must forge on my brothers! In the name of the Emperor, they, shall, be, PRETTY!

But I won't post them till after lunch and a Dr's appointment.

Another damn football army ....................................

That outta the way, they do look quite good, and I think if you didn't tell me they were PSU I'd assume they were some kind of White / Blue Consul or something. Good use of the jump chappy model too, great leg armor on that bad boy. The lion pelt ain't half bad either, only the tail is a slight WUGUH?! part of it

White spray has killed several models for me, including a delaque necro gang - which has been dropped, as the primer basically wrecked them and my hopes of dipping them ftw - and about 1/2 of my Eshin fantasy army. Except in that case I just didn't care and soldiered on, dipping them despite the paint-absorbing fuzz. What brand you using? Mine is Armory, but come to think of it I've never really had white spray work out for me, Citadel or cheaper.

Also, what's with you crazy engineers and taking All Saints Day off?? My fiancee got to sleep til noon today after clubbing last night, but I - the guy who drove to Philly and back, with her asleep both ways - got 2 hours of sleep and then off to the office

- Salvage

Personally I haven't primed white in years. I just prime black and build up colour and/or paint a base of white over black if I need to do a light colour such as yellow.

Hehe, yea yea, but hey, when I put some Michigan State colored chaos bodies it will start to pull together

It was Krylon primer. I usually use black Rustoleum, and I found a can of white Rustoleum sitting around half empty.... I wonder if that is why it worked last time.

I did some work on one Termie between the last post and now, and he actually doesn't look THAT bad now that he is cleaned up. I will have some pics when I am not starving to death and needing to be somewhere. Still, I am going to stick with my "Sister Black" primer from now on. Ironically, I had one termie painted black but then did a light coat to make him white. Should have let it go...

Heh, I never work Thur-Saturday unless I am covering for someone. Ever notice how until today, I pretty much never post last half of the week? Still, I would have poured some caffeine down her throat and had her drive if she had off. Of course, I wouldn't have gone to Philly either. Of course, I am starting my new job in a few weeks, which is part of my drive to get these boys done while I still have half a week off every week to work on them.

Ok quick update. I got 5 of the termies pretty well along, and I no longer want to set them on fire. They actually look pretty decent in fact. Granted they are only ~60% done, but the color scheme isn't looking too bad I think (I was a little worried it would be too much white) and all that errant black from the washes at least gave me a decent grey to build up to white from. Still, that is taking a little practice.
Here's a few pics from right after popping them with a little dull coat to keep the paint in place.

I will try and post some better pictures tomorrow, but I have to go into work for some 8 hours, and need to get to bed. They look a little plain now, but I intend to put the names and numbers of legendary players on each marine, so that is going to take up some shoulder space. Looking at the one on the far right in particular, I am going to have to do some more lining/washing as well. Well... I have a few hours tomorrow to get the Chappy and these termies finished, and 2 more termies as well, for our big Apoc battle one Saturday. I suppose they just need to be table top quality for that, but if I am going to pussy out, I have some 2k points primered. :-P Onward!

Heh, one thing I am also noticing is just hot much bigger the newer plastic terminators are compared to the old metals. I figured the metals just didn't have the dynamic poses making them take up more space, but now that they have color and such on them, it really is obvious that the old ones are the midgets of the chapter.

I wont be getting the puns, but I am looking forward to following this and offering some tips along the way.

Good start!

These are coming along nicely.  Your biggest issue thus far is your images.  You camera seems to have very poor light metering and white balance abilities.  You might check whether you can change the settings to meter based on the center point, for example.  Even if you are stuck on the camera, there is a lot you could do during image manipulation.  I took the liberty of toying with a few images in Aperture (you don't need anything that fancy, just something with white balance, exposure and hue adjustments).  Just wanted to show what's possible.

 

@Scarab: Yea, those look MUCH better Scarab. Now that I don't have a game looming, I intend to screw around with our cameras a bit and try to figure out how to get decent images. We are basically rolling with a Sony... something or other 3 mgp with no macro setting and a 2 mgp with. The top image there (the sharper one) was with my brother in law's crazy tiny Olympus. I think my best bet is going to be to make a little white box on my painting table since it has the best light, and then a little stand for the camera.

Along the lines of image enhancement, I think I might have an old version of Photoshop somewhere from when I was in school. I am a huge noob on that sort of thing though. Beyond cutting and pasting naughty bits on things my skill set falls away rapidly. If I could hone some of those skills though through this project, I would be really happy, so any advice you have would be greatly appreciated! You really cleaned up those pics very nicey, even though the terminators were so blurry it hurts my head to look at them.

@Migs: Glad to hear it! This won't be a super crazy conversion blog like yours unfortunately. This is only the second army I have painted, so the models are still new and exciting enough to not necessitate creating them in my own image. I am mainly going to be playing with some GS for the first time and messing around with blending, as well as learning to use a decal program and get those on there well. The Sisters didn't really offer a lot of opportunity for that, and honestly after a decade of not painting anything, I was just glad they didn't look like a paint mixing tray taken humanoid form.

Now the next army... THAT will be mostly scratch built Clanks/Sentinels. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I will post some pictures of the big Apoc battle I was rushing to get these 8 boys done for when I get home from work.

 

Edit: And don't worry too much about the puns. They are in there, but considering I have probably only watched ~4 football games ever, and have to ask my brother in law what the positions do, none of them are particularly deep.

You don't really need a macro, but a small tripod would be great. Actually, you stand a better chance of getting the whole model in focus if you back the camera up a little and zoom in. As far as light goes, try to get diffuse light from a few sources that are not too close to the model and are all the same white balance (sun or incandescent or fluorescent, but not more than 1). Best of luck!

Hmmm... I was thinking of some sort of little base for a camera, like a clamp of some sort. The other problem I have is that the 2 mega pixel has an optical zoom, but the 3 only has digital. Makes things a little awkward. I think I might break down and drop 2-300$ on a decent camera if I can find one. The one I have is nice for pictures of people, but anything small is questionable, and I don't take pictures of people much. They keep closing the curtains.

I also gotta figure out my lights. My table has a giant bay window that faces south, a "true light" little flourescent that is kind of small, and a 3 bulb incandescent pole lamp with Reveal bulbs. Depending on the time of day, my colors look fairly different. (Which is why one of my Death Cult Assassins looks like she is a 49ers fan... not my intent!)

I am slowly working towards being a "serious" painter, slowly replacing my ghetto fabulous gear with more practical things. Some day I might even pay more than 1$ for a bottle of paint!

A mini-tripod should be around $5. They are about 6" tall. Don't bother with the "digital" zoom aka crop. You can do that later on the computer. Your light situation is terrible for your poor little camera's internal white balancer.

Hmmm that explains why I keep finding post-it notes with bad Goth poetry littered around my desk when I go to use it. I was wondering what all that drivel about "white swans turning yellow" was about...

Do you think the best idea for pics is to use flourescents and one of those thin paper diffusion box thingies? I have a few rooms with really bright overhead flourescents. Alternately I could try and rig up the little tru-light to get light, or arrange the incandescents to get it working.

Good looking color scheme. This should be a rather nice looking group. And it's nice to see you are trying to branch out while you're painting them as well. A will to learn can go a looooooong way toward getting where you want to be artistically.

I will probably have an update this Wednesday. I took a break painting after the game Saturday, so I have only really put some blue and white on two dreadnaughts. I will get some of the game pictures up and get something painted as well. Just not for a day or so.

Grey Death: Thanks, I am gonig to be looking towards your blog for ideas. I particularly like the style of your power sword and the weathering. Which is another thing I want to try with these boys, a little battle damage as opposed to the "just out of the shower" Sisters.

Me too, but my "after the game" was 2 AM ... o_O

A general question on the army, do you have a set list you're building toward or are you knocking out squads you like or when the inspiration hits? So far we've got lascannon tacticals, 2x ass cannon termies, jump chappy ... All solid choices, so I vaguely smell A Plan behind all of this ...

Look forward to Wed's update.

- Salvage

Come to think of it, I think I did post a list some time ago... I am sort of making changes, but 2000 points or so are built and awaiting the gentle caress of the brush. The main change is pulling the so/so master command squad in favor of two more termies and accompanying terminator librarian. It is pretty far from a competitive list exactly (despite 5 assault cannons) but mostly just has what amuses me.

Also, Angela is going to show me how to make pictures not suck, so that will be good. If you are enjoying my new easy to discern avatar, you are already reaping the fruits of her efforts!

Ok, so back to the painting work for me! I had done some detailing on the Chappy and Termi's since last I posted. I took a quick snap of them today in the display case, because that's where they sat. I am sort of hitting a wall with them, now knowing really what I want to add (other than perhaps a little glint in the eyes and the purity seal detailing. Any suggestions are appreciated.

So, Chappy NL and the Termi's sat. In favor of:

Bits o' dread. (Side note, I took this shot off hand before I started painting. The 'quick shot before I start' turned into probably the best picture all day...)

After 3-4 hours

Well, after 3-4 hours I took some blurry pictures, then the camera's batter died. I am charging it now, and tomorrow morning I will get some better ones. One thing that pissed me off to no end, I put some of my Matte sealer that usually workes very well on. Today, it came out in chunks, and is what is giving the terminators the "paint applied over old chipped paint and rust" look. I am hoping I can smooth that out a bit with another coat of paint when I do the highlights/touch up.

I am not certain that I love the color scheme on these boys though. I don't know that I am going to feel like changing it at this stage, but it just isn't doing it for me. Maybe after highlights...

Oh, and you had asked about the rest of the army Salvage...

That's pretty much the rest. There is going to be a librarian in terminator armor as well, just waiting on the Bitz. You can see Angela's contribution to the cause on the bottom left part of the cardboard.

No real conversions to speak of other than Chappy and the standard bearer you can't see, just posing multi-part plastics. That was a lot of fun, and a nice change from "Hey, another 30 metal Sisters. Woooo"

Jelly bean to the first person to accurately total the number of pointing fists in the army. I do love those.

\mm/ @ the inexplicably pink battle brother


The dread twins - metal bodies + gigantic plastic weapons? - are looking good, they about done now? The white looks the tiniest bit like it could use another coat, but I'm sure that'd be like coat 6 or so.

Rest o' the boys look suitably space marine-y and solid black basecoat ftw. As a man who also respects / abuses the pointing motif where possible, I can only guess "Not Enough!" for the number of pointy fists in there.

- Salvage

Hehe yea, pretty much on the pointy fists. Battle Wagon Bitz only had like 4. Sometimes I worry my constant pestering is what drove the poor fellow to maddness and liquidity.

The battle "sister" is one of Angela's contributions, because, like you, she desperately wants pink marines. That took her a week, not because she is a bad or sloppy painter (she is exceedingly precise, 200 times the artist I will ever be) but because she has like 35 layers on it. She has plans some day of making an entire pink squad. I am thinking that since I am giving up on the command squad with plasma cannon, missile launcher and tank hunters, she can have that. I need to make some pom-poms, and some sorostitute letter decals for them. As well as replace a few marine helmets with extra Sisters of Battle heads from the immolator sprues... more auspex's held as cell phones... It will be fun, just not high on my list right now.
If only I could think of a way of conveying "standing outside in February in a tube top and miniskirt waiting in line to get into a club". Walking by those lines into "Players" multiple times complaining to my friends how "My coat is just too warm. I think I might take it off. I am so toasty, I am starting to sweat under all these warm clothes!" was a fun way to kill 20 minutes in school

As for the other boys, there is a 10 man assault squad, 10 man command/elite melee squad, 6 las/plas squad, two tornado speeders, an emperor's/company champion, and a 5 man plasma cannon and missile squad. I also have another 5 man clone scout squad with missile that can get stripped and put in, as well as a vindicator and some 30 odd other models that just need some Simple Green lovin. No plans on those yet.

Edit: The dreads: the one on the right with the asscannon has a metal body and left arm, the other is all plastic. I had an old Furiso Dreadnought so I used that along with one dread kit I had bought. I try to keep it cheap The weapons just look ginormous because the camera is like 3 inches from them. I was tired, and not thinking very clearly about how I was doing it.

Posted By Wehrkind on 11/08/2007 5:47 AM

more auspex's held as cell phones...

Very nice!

On painting pink marines, this is far too complicated for me but has a nice result ...

I too tore apart and reassembled my furioso dread, into an indirect-firing "defiler."  Pretty decent model if I do say so, but so weedy - even with CD base! - that I couldn't stomach running him alongside my big mean legit defilotron.  Also that whole indirect business is lost for my boys

So ... Go Pink Chaos! 

Also Wehrkind's Football Marines.

- Salvage

EDIT: I just realized that the Dreadnought Quatient for this thread has officially shot up to ...

2 DREAD ()

Ok, I didn't get to post anything yesterday because things got a little busy. Painting a room is a lot faster than a dreadnought, but a lot slower to set up...

So, highlighting began. First I put a medium blue on the edges. In retrospect, I should have stopped there...

Pressing on, I put the normal very light blue on the vertical and upward facing edges. Usually that works really well for infantry, but I am not thrilled with the results on the dreads... perhaps I should have blended more. Or at all...

I did fix that spot of blue on the rocket launcher.

So, that about summed it up for them. I found out what seemed to be the issue with the matte sealer, or at least a new bottle didn't exhibit the big chunky spray, so I assume I was low on propellant. So, the dreads are set aside for the moment, though upon revisiting (I do that a lot with minis) I am going to add some weathering. I am to understand the most basic way of doing that is adding a little black to an edge in a splotch, then going over with some metalic, leaving the black showing a little, to get the illusion of chipped paint. If anyone else has some good tricks, I would love to hear it. I want this army to be a little more rough and tumble looking than the pristine, "just had my nails done" Sisters.

Anyway, having become a little tired of dreadnoughts, it was time for the jump assault squad.

The dread's don't look too bad from this distance. Still, a little heavy on the light blue I think.

After I got sick of putting blue and white on marines, silly family pictures!

The models I finished since I started this blog in the case, along with a small bird my wife inexplicably placed in their midst. Obviously it needed protecting by the Emperor's finest!

The sun sets, with our sacred charge unharmed! (Fun with effects in the graphics program Angela hooked me up with. It also covers up the horrible glare from the flash.)

Hey much better pics. These are coming along quite well.

Thanks man! Angela hooking me up with that program REALLY helped. I am going to play around with it a lot more to see if I can't get some decent grasp other than poking the auto-enhancement with a stick.

I might even resist cutting and pasting the marines on random backgrounds.

Aye, I think the light blue dread highlights were a bit much, given the darkness of the blue in the rest of the force. Ah well though, they still look good to me, and will be solid on the table to be sure.

The item you left at the Portal is still there, by the way. Saw it Thur when my Tau were being walked all over by Tau Kid's 1k Sons, and I expect it'll be there Fri when my chaos boys take on Studder's 3x Fire Prism, 1x Harlies eldar pansies ...

*returns to milk duds and "work"*

- Salvage

Hehe and it will be there Saturday probably. I might try and make it out this weekend for a game, but there is so much stuff needing work in my house, and so much training material I have to go over for my new job, that I just don't see myself being able to make it out.
Are you guys just leaving it on the table as terrain? Or has it become sort of a reverse objective?
It is just a broken flash light though. It only LOOKS like it came from a store without windows. That said, gloves might be appropriate...

Wehrkind wrote:Hehe and it will be there Saturday probably. I might try and make it out this weekend for a game, but there is so much stuff needing work in my house, and so much training material I have to go over for my new job, that I just don't see myself being able to make it out.
Are you guys just leaving it on the table as terrain? Or has it become sort of a reverse objective?
It is just a broken flash light though. It only LOOKS like it came from a store without windows. That said, gloves might be appropriate...

Reverse Objective <-

Naw, I actually donned gloves a week after APOC and moved it to a side table ... where it's sat since then. Actually brought my fiancee by to see it () but she was more impressed with Dave's big bugs and loudly mocked my small chaos guys ...





November & particularly December are pretty low turnout months judging from last year, so no worries on being busy. Just keep pounding away on that basement so we can make with the subterranean gaming come 2008.

- Salvage

Heh, perhaps I should do a WIP blog of the basement... Angela won't mind a few aquillas and purity seals on the walls.
That is actually a solid third on the house work list now, after installing the new oven and insulating the crawl space. So it might materialize relatively fast when you get right down to it. What size table do you think is accessable to most of the guys? I am thinking a 5x8 or perhaps 6x8 for easy modular surface tiles. Most of the store guys are pretty tall, so I am thinking that will be fine for reaching. I hate 4' tables. Any game that has a turn of just movement for the first turn is starting off well so far as I am concerned.

We should introduce your fiance to Angela. They can watch movies where one person dies slowly upstairs while we kill many people quickly. (Name THAT movie line! POW!)

Here I am blathering about the basement and forgot to post about the minis!

I am thinking a solution to the "dark panels / OMG BRIGHT edges" might be to do a very light drybrush of the medium blue over the panels. The idea is to make use of the rather rough coat of matte sealer on it (you can really see it in some of the pics) and catch those edges a bit, giving that rough, really old paint look that tanks and such get from being out in the weather. Let me know what you boys think.

Also, any tips on weathering would be appreciated. I was thinking some dust/mud around the feet, and some chipped paint, but I am only fairly certain how to acheive that.

You might try my little mini tutorial over here.

I use that as a base to most of my weathering techniques. It does the job for me every time ^_^.