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My Golden Gear Arena Mascot Entry

"Ladies and gentleman! Welcome to Heavy Gear Arena! Tonight is another great Cascade Breweries' TM Free Beer Nights. Even if you don't have a drink, The Kegerator is here to spray the crowd down with his awesome Keg Cannon!.....Young children please exit the Arena at this time..."






This is my entry for DP9's 2011 Golden Gear Contest - Arena Mascot category. One of the sponsors, Cascade Brewery, has an interesting "Free Beer Night" that can help your Arena team gain more Rep during a match. I thought it'd be interesting if they also had a dedicated Gear come out and spray the crowd with some free brew! The Kegerator is based off a stock Hunter Gear, with the addition of some CB flags, a pressurized Keg, and a giant beer cannon.

This is some pretty good stuff, I especially like the heavy gear and arbites squads.

Enjoy!

Well, it's taken me several weeks but I'm finally finished assembling my Heavy Gear Leagueless army - the Terra Nova Liberation Front, a group of political refugees and anarchists bent on eliminating the tyranny of the Polar Leagues.

Note that their V-Engines aren't on yet, as I'll be painting those separately.

The Army Commander Kodiak



The Army Commander Support Group - 2x Badlands Pythons with scratchbuilt MRPs, a Wild Ferret, and a Crusader IV.



The Recon Group - Pitbull, Wild Ferret, Chieftain, Silverscale, Pitbull



The Standard "Assault" Group - Jager with MBZK (there's some Gundam inspiration here), Spitting Cobra with VHAC, Flame Jager. Black Adder with linked MRPs, and a Dartjager.



Some of these were just a bear to assemble (bad mold lines, heavy pitting, etc) and some were a breeze (notably the Crusader IV, which required about 5 mins of filing). I could have easily contacted DP9 about some of the really bad pieces but, I do like a challenge!

Wow, sweet to see some Heavy Gear stuff, and painted so well! Those are some of my favorite mech designs, despite them being extremely derivative of Votoms Armored Trooper.

A small sampling of some of my Necromunda terrain, I had actually assembled these two pieces last year but never got around to painting them. With 10+ tables to fill for this year's Adepticon however, I really needed to get on the ball. I laid down basecoats and some large-pattern weathering with an airbrush. Everything else though is simply drybrushing with a few details picked out on each piece.

Mine Head (this is my wife's favorite piece)



Refining Tower

Some seriously sweet paint jobs.

Here's my completed Duelist entry for Golden Gear 2011. Ladies and Gentlemen, making it's first appearance in the Arena Dueling Circuit........The Wrecker!






For pre-weathering and conversion pics, you can check out my blog entry.

Nice work so far. This may sound strange but I'd swear that your models are alot shinier than mine were out of the box!

warboss wrote:Nice work so far. This may sound strange but I'd swear that your models are alot shinier than mine were out of the box!

I polish my minis to work out any pitting or mold-lines I may miss with the files. This also provides a smoother surface so the mini is easier to paint. I have a tutorial on my blog here.

ancientsociety wrote:

warboss wrote:Nice work so far. This may sound strange but I'd swear that your models are alot shinier than mine were out of the box!

I polish my minis to work out any pitting or mold-lines I may miss with the files. This also provides a smoother surface so the mini is easier to paint. I have a tutorial on my blog here.

Interesting. I've always thought that the slightly irregular surface helped the primer to grip to the mini and not chip away. Have you had a problem with that after polishing? It's nice to see another Heavy Gear blog here (especially after I pretty much stopped for a while). I've still got two units left to eventually build so maybe I'll get some inspiration from your blog to finish them!

p.s. Nice blast shield on the bazooka. Of course, I'm partial to them myself too!

warboss wrote:

ancientsociety wrote:

warboss wrote:Nice work so far. This may sound strange but I'd swear that your models are alot shinier than mine were out of the box!

I polish my minis to work out any pitting or mold-lines I may miss with the files. This also provides a smoother surface so the mini is easier to paint. I have a tutorial on my blog here.

Interesting. I've always thought that the slightly irregular surface helped the primer to grip to the mini and not chip away. Have you had a problem with that after polishing?

Not really, though as I mention in the tutorial, I never polish to a 100% smooth surface. The problem with most metal minis is micro-pitting, which the eye can't see but induces too much of an irregular surface for correct paint flow. This is why so many new painters have trouble with washes flowing into creases correctly, the surface provides too much adhesion in the large flat areas and the wash cannot "spread".

Also, I'm sure to seal the mini sufficiently. Good primer is also a huge help as well, since this is in reality what is actually "binding" the metal and paint together. $.99 Walmart primer is nice (especially for plastic minis or scenery) but won't last long enough to justify the savings.

To speak in broader terms, it's actually the acrylic paint that's the underlying problem with paint job longevity. We all use it for its ease of use and the fact that it can take so many different additives but its' not really made to cover metal parts, especially not in the extremely thin coatings miniature painters use. A better paint would be an enamel but the problem with enamel is two-fold - they're not easy to use and (because they lack the polymerization of an acrylic) they won't deal with drastic temperature changes well. If you take them in and out of a warm car to old outside air then back into a warm FLGS often enough, this can cause cracking and eventually chipping, though it would take a long time.

Have you bought any of the cans of walmart flat black in the blue can recently? I assume you mean that when talking about the primer. I used to be a big cheerleader for the brand but I've had horrible experiences with it recently in the last 6 months and suspect they changed the formula. I've tried 3 different cans from 2 different walmarts and all of them have ended up layering a layer of charcoal dust-like grit on the models (including the HG stuff in my blog) to the point that they had to be stripped. I've tried this both indoors and outdoors in different temps/humidity and gotten the same result since about April.

Some really really great stuff here!

warboss wrote:Have you bought any of the cans of walmart flat black in the blue can recently? I assume you mean that when talking about the primer. I used to be a big cheerleader for the brand but I've had horrible experiences with it recently in the last 6 months and suspect they changed the formula. I've tried 3 different cans from 2 different walmarts and all of them have ended up layering a layer of charcoal dust-like grit on the models (including the HG stuff in my blog) to the point that they had to be stripped. I've tried this both indoors and outdoors in different temps/humidity and gotten the same result since about April.

This happened to me early this summer with an entire FOW Finnish army! Changed back to Krylon since then and haven't been back.

Norn King wrote:Some really really great stuff here!

Thanks!

Shanty little shack! Started work on my Shanty Town board, here's a large-ish group shot:



Some more close-ups and info on my blog:
http://empireofghosts.blogspot.com/2011/11/terrain-wip-shanty-town.html

I'm finally finished with work on the shanty town and wanted to post pics of the finished pieces before painting and small details. I mentioned how they were built in my previous post so I won't re-hash that here.

More info and MUCH more pics here

Well, it's not as nice as I wanted it to be but for a few days work (total), I think it makes a fairly nice board. Mostly, I'm frustrated by the fact that the weathered wood tutorial I found online do NOT work the way the author pictured (which is why much of the wooden pieces appear white-washed, rather than weathered).

More pics on my blog

A little conversion of Reaper's "Ape-X" I did recently. Mostly this consisted of replacing his right weapon-hand with a Mutant Goo Cannon made from brass tubing and Armorcast's Cinematic Effects fluid stream. I also added a small pressure valve to its backpack.





Scale comparison on my blog post

That Ape-X conversion is awesome, ancientsociety!! The goo spots on the base are really well done and eye catching. It's always great to see your work. Thanks for sharing!

Just a quickie before the holiday today - a re-paint of a pre-paint, Reaper's Legendary Encounters Great Worm. I mounted this on a 60mm base and built up its "entry hole" with slate pebbles and gravel. Then I re-painted the main body, focusing on eliminating the out-of-place silver highlights between the upper and lower torso, and finishing with a reddish-pink mouth and brighter teeth.

A quick drybrush over the pebbles and gravel to bring out the highlights and a purple wash and its done. Disgusting!

Cool... a little bit of desert mashup with some Dune in your Terra Nova? Or just a completely separate project?

warboss wrote:Cool... a little bit of desert mashup with some Dune in your Terra Nova? Or just a completely separate project?

I'd intended the worm for my Adepticon 2012 Necromunda tournament as a "monster"......however, when I sat it in my display cabinet next to the Engineering Cobra, I realized its perfect for Terra nova's badlands!

I threw together a small marketplace in a few days this past weekend. I was inspired by Nevermore's thread on Lead Adventure on how to make simple market stalls from matchsticks and foamboard. The tutorial is really simple and the only changes I made were adding a second crossbrace to the end pieces and using pre-printed fabrics on the roofs.

I used some charms as small sculptures, rolls of fabric, some dollhouse cutlery and dishes, and various weapons to round out the goods offered.

The sack stacks are made from oven-baked clay. I just rolled out a length, cut small pieces and tapered the edges before building up the stack and using a piece of canvas to add texture to the surface of the stacks. 30 minutes of bake time and 30 minutes of drybrushing and a wash and viola! - instant sacks!



More pics of the market here

ancientsociety wrote:

Epic thread! Love a lot of your stuff, especially the gorilla! I saw this and immediately thought about the "Party Gorilla" from the Oatmeal. gak had me rolling! Thanks for sharing some amazing & very imaginative work.

Oatmeal Party Gorilla Snipet made even more appropriate that it's a Tuesday when I found your Gorilla!

FINALLY!

Pro-tip: White balance and indirect lighting are your friends. I believe that, with my model of camera, this is about as good as it's going to get and it's about 98% true to life.

Special thanks to generalpoleaxe at Lead Adventure and the Redditors on /r/minipainting for the useful tips!

Nice tutorial intro for Heavy Gear on your blog, btw. It does a nice job explaining the basics of the game and game world.