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Thanks for looking in Theo- I think the first quarter to a new year is catch up time for everyone. I do appreciate your comments.

Tehnolog is very much a variable- some of their stuff looks as if it should be for pre-toddlers, then other is very sophisticated and highly detailed. I can't tell if the company is actually that peripatetic, or if the scattershot appearance of such varied items is the natural result of the West being very much a secondary market, and we see just the tail end of various production runs, long after they are out of fashion in Russia.

I found the videos on YouTube for Robogear quite interesting. My Russian isn't enough to follow everything, but I think I was getting the gist. Lots of DakkaDakka action anyway, universal language!

Unfortunately, there is not much of catching up on my side. I barely find 15 minutes to stick together a few bits of plastic, much less to browse forum, even my favorite threads here. Sorry. :(

Yeah, activity on DDakka comes and goes from day to day and month to month. But it has seemed particularly quiet recently.

I put it down to myself being a bit slower with updates than how I was when I first joined. Less regular updates always leads to less comments.
And I've noted some of my "regulars" from the early years taking long breaks from DDakka from time to time, which also leads to less comments, especially when they coincide.

I personally have less time to interact on DDakka regularly, as commenting can take a long time for me. Catching up on all the blogs I follow and just leaving a simple comment can eat up hours where I "should" be "working".
Therefore I tend to go through and comment on all the "recent" blog progress in one session, every now and then.
I do read everyone's posts as they come in though, and occasionally I'll chip in advice if I have it at that time.

We just have to plod along at our own pace, keep broadcasting our endeavours when we can and comment on other's when possible.

Thanks for looking in Wirecat, Doc- fully agree and understand. And didn't mean to sound like whinging. Case in point, after a spectacular burst of energy and motivation to weeks ago, I'm now just getting back into the swing of things after illness for mother, wife then self (overlapping, but not concurrent), work changes and 'technical difficulties' with the hot water heater. I am hoping to get some real progress tonight though. And you're right- if you don't post, folks have nothing to comment on.

When I made the remark about how quiet it was here on DakkaDakka though, what I really had in mind was the gallery pages. I always go through the 'This Week' gallery- run through the first two pages to make sure nothing new has come up for me to vote on and then head to the last page and work forward until I'm in familiar territory again. At peak creativity, we'll have 50-60 pages every day; Lately, we're lucky to break into the high 30's, some days.

While some are as productive as ever, or moreso (looking at _you_ philmorgan!) it seems generally that much of Dakka is catching its breath. Probably indicative of a new Renaissance preparing to come bursting over us all!

Thank you both for taking the time to leave comments.

I think Shadowspear?Shadespear? Whatever the new main box set, will bring people out soon enough. Also a lot of big push for getting things done for adepticon. Spring breaks are starting as well, so it might be a couple weeks/ post Easter when things get rolling again.

I'm sure you're right Theo- and I may be gauging the Dakka-verse by my own (limited) productivity. Which is fixin' to change.

Finished up the counts-as ganger heavy weapon gal. Here's pics, and I think I did a bit better with the lighting (Aziz- LIGHT!) although it still isn't ideal. And I really need to build a board for fancy picture taking.

This is "Lust Xenia" from the Heresy Labs Heresy Girls 1.0 kickstarter campaign. I really like these figures: they are a very glue-able resin, the detail is extraordinarily fine, the articulation is excellent and they are smokin' hot (shades of Pygmalion washing over me). And through the Kickstarter, I got them at an awesome price. He's got another coming out on 26 March- Imperial Assassin types amongst other things.













New things:
* Had another whack at doing eyes and more broadly, the face. I think this one is better, but more practice needed, in my own opinion
* I've never tried an Escher-type figure before, so getting to play with colors other than Standard Army was fun
* I've never tried to do a figure with so much skin flashing; fortunately, had White Dwarf Issue November 2017 as a guide
*Never tried to put so much detail into a weapon

So there it is. I'm excited to go on to other figures from the Heresy Girls 1.0 Kickstarter, but I've got a couple (okay, three) projects all underway at once first:

*The giant killer robot of death from Tehnolog
*The Hirst Arts Molds hillside fortified house with tower project
*My own personal 'contest' type project to build an AA gun out of nothing but non-kit bits and bobs floating around

Yes, all three are started. Yes, I've broken my standing rule about one thing at a time. And yes, the AA Gun is almost done!

More follows soonest.

That's some nice work on a nifty model. Kudos to you for using such bright colors--something I can't seem to do these days. Where did you get the police tape?

Totally going to steal the police tape idea

Hey Josh, Kid- thank you for looking in! The tape is 1/24 scale for model railroading, but as you can see seems to be well in scale for a 30mm figure. It's from a shop called HobbyLinc at this address: http://www.hobbylinc.com/cgi-bin/s8.cgi?str_s=police&p=2

And it's even on sale now for US$3.39 per 120 inch roll!

Insaniak found this stuff and I've finally had a chance to use a little bit!

Very cool , I used some of the plastic Easter basket liner rafia for police tape years ago. I know I have some in a box somewhere, then just used a fine point sharpie for the words.

Holy cow, Theo- that's a lot of precision work! I don't know if my hand was ever steady enough to write on something as thin as a piece of basket raffia. It's amazing what we can do when necessity dictates though- I had some fairly elaborate workarounds (I guess today they would be called 'hacks') when I was young and starting out because I was a) living in barracks and couldn't leave my stuff all spread out and b) had almost no money. I've gotten older and now I have a better modelling budget, but may be exercising it at the expense of the imagination I displayed earlier from pauper necessity!

Nice work on that model Meer_Cat, are you expecting to get some games of Necromunda in, or like many of use just enjoying working on models? Also those three projects in the works sounds enjoyable, Im looking forward to your future posts.

Hi Syro! I'd love to get a game of Necromunda in, but for right now it's mostly to enjoy doing up a figure that is so different from what I usually work on. And I've got all these great Heresy Girl figures from the 1.0 and 1.2 campaigns that need doing up- I can easily put together a 'squad level skirmish group' to meet the Necromunda requirements, and I'm interested in researching the stats for a Kill Team- got a lot of half-Gothic/half-Viking girls (think: Raging Heroes Commissars meet Viking Berserker Shield Maiden Girl) that might make a good squad for that.

Mostly I want to get paint on plastic!

The Good Idea Fairy hit me over the head again tonight with an idea to take the divider from a double DVD case and make it into a small/light flyer landing pad....

More follows soonest!

Here's the next project- this one was a wild hair and not one of the three I had started simultaneously. I wanted to get rid of some of the good junk I've got piling up on my work desk, and always wanted to build a fixed mount, autonomous anti-aircraft gun system. So here is one with linked autocannon synchronized to produce inter-locking streams of fire at five kilometers.

The first thing was to find a nice, x-shaped piece of sprue the right diamter to form the base:



Clipped and trimmed neatly:





The rest of the base is made from the caps from some oral supplements we give our ponies (they come in a plunger type syringe, it tastes like apple and they love it) and some extra gear pieces from the defensive position competition:



The guns themselves are made from some scrap styrene tube and channel, the locking lip from a can of Old Bay spice, some expended glue tube caps and the disposable locking clip from something or other:



And here's how it looks glued up (the targeting radar dish is the cap from an old bottle of Citadel Wash and the traversing housing is the push button from a can of bug spray):







I'll primer it tonight and tomorrow I'll slap some paint on it. I'm debating whether to base it or not, probably will.

Thanks for looking in. More follows soonest!

Wow, that looks great! The pics make it look like it magically cam together really fast. In my experience that's never true, how long would you say that took you?

Now that is some good scrounging right there - the parts look like they were made for the project!

Thanks, Syro! Along with trying to use up junk on my desk, I also wanted to try to get this slapped together fairly quickly (especially for me- I tend to over-work things sometimes). For this, counting on my fingers and toes, I think I spent about two hours total so far. And, of course, it does still need to be painted. And for now, everything is pinned and superglued- I may have to use greenstuff if the glue doesn't hold.

Lot of fun so far though!


Thanks Kestrel! Sometimes the Bright Idea Fairy hits you, and the project just comes together. What truly was a serendipitous moment is when I found that cutting the spice tin plastic thingy in half made it fit exactly on both sides of the receiver of the gun, almost like it had been intended to go there all along.

Nice work on using up some of the acquired pile . A primer coat will make it look just like a kit from a box.

Good job. Good use of parts. Nice turret.

Excellent bud, really spot on.

Ability to see whole in a seemingly unrelated heap of parts - colden! Congratulations!

 Dr H wrote:
Good job. Good use of parts. Nice turret.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Excellent bud, really spot on.

Wirecat wrote:
Ability to see whole in a seemingly unrelated heap of parts - colden! Congratulations!

 Theophony wrote:
Nice work on using up some of the acquired pile . A primer coat will make it look just like a kit from a box.

Thank you Dr H, Cam, Theo and Wirecat! I'm having quite a lot of fun just playing with the bits (which my wife scornfully refers to as 'junk') on my work desk/bench. I already have another idea I want to try using a DVD divider as the platform for an aircraft pad along with some other gubbins. The Ganger Gunner was actually the first of three planned projects I got going at the same time, the killer robot is the second and it gets worked on as paint and things are drying on the AAA gun. I have to get serious about learning my airbrush, as I itnend to use a stencil similar to th work Big H did on his Tau to create a pattern on the robot's 'shroud/cowl/thingy'.

The gun has a spray coat of tan Rustoleum, some ersatz Agrax Earthshade wash and a couple of bits highlighted with gun metal grey (like Bolt Gun Metal) and just wants basing and a couple other dabs of paint and I'm calling it done.

And then the aircraft platform is no good without an aircraft, and I've got a Robogear Sprut lying about someplace here, and then there is still the wizard's cottage from the Hirst Arts molds, and more Heresy Girls to paint, and....

More follows soonest.

Hey Meer_Cat! Liking the work of that flak gun

Hey shas- great to her from you! And thanks for the kind words. This pile of junk was very fun to make, and I'm looking forward to thinning my desktop even more in the near future. This piece is nearly complete in its painting (not in these pictures, more coming shortly) and then just needs to be based. Thanks for looking in!

I didn't have a lot of time tonight, but wanted to get something done on the AAA gun towards finishing it off, so broke out a product I've had on hand for a while, waiting for a chance to use.

Here are the materials I used to make a custom base for the gun: A door knob wall protector (the circular disc that is to be the base itself- $2 at Walmart), some greenstuff, my mirror greenstuff rolling surface, some shaping tools and LOTS of water:



And a Basius Max pad:







These pads are two-sided- one usually shows the theme intact, the other in a ruined state. They are a hard resin and quite solid. The idea is you roll up some greenstuff, put it on the top of the base, press it hard against whatever section of the pad you want to use and presto- instant textured custom base for your figure. Naturally, I should have started by trying this on a 25mm or 30mm base, but I needed the gun system _tonight_, so learned how on it. The wall protector is 80mm in diameter, so it was a handful for a newbie to learn on. For one thing, I couldn't squash a ball of greenstuff down under it evenly- I had to roll the greenstuff out into a pancake and fit it under the base and then press. It was also a bear to get back off again, without stretching and distorting the pattern pressed into the greenstuff. However, anything worth doing is worth over-doing. So, several attempts and a lot of water later, I think it came out not too bad:









I've already smoothed out most of the creases you see in the last two pictures- it's amazing how much detail I catch in a photo that I don't see looking directly at the piece, even under magnification! And I used my standard go-to for excess greenstuff: made a bundled tarp and a small bedroll:



So, things learned:

I think the Basius pads are pretty good- I have two, the Sanctuary that I used here and the Urban one (I might purchase a couple more- they've got a couple dozen styles out)
Smaller bases are easier to cover than larger, I think
These should paint up pretty nicely when cured, and no need for additional sand, pebbles or flocking (unless I want to or I need to hide my mistakes)

More follows soonest.

I'm not used to the concept of a hard resin mold, sorry to hear it was kind of a pain to work with. Sounds like you have to remove the greenstuff before it cures? Will it ruin the mold if it sets in there? I like the way the base turned out, and I always love the tarps and bed rolls you make from greenstuff.

Thanks Syro!

I didn't mean to leave the impression I wasn't happy with the Basius Max mold- I think they're great and offer a lot of potential for different uses. But I surely set myself a steep learning curve using an 80mm disc as my first attempt to use one! Here's the link to the 'how to' on the kickstarter page- kind of clever how they did it, really:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/984996675/basius-max

I keep using the term 'mold', but really it's more like a press form, like kids have for Play-do and things. The intent is to remove the pressed greenstuff with the base, so that the greenstuff can be trimmed to exactly match the base circumference and when it dries, sticks.

Something you said though made me think and then prick up my ears- I'm wondering if instead of lubricating the mold with water, if I used light oil, like when we make molds out of greenstuff itself (take an impression) and when hardened press greenstuff in and let it cure, and then pop it out. I may try that. I know something that may have made things a bit harder last night was that I got water on the surface of the base, which made the greenstuff not stick as well, so there's that.

I just need to try more bases (maybe a 30mm, this time)!

Cool, I hope trying new ways with the mold goes well for you. But I like you're idea of a light oil. I've always been tempted to spray a mold with WD40, what works very well for me (When not using silicone molds) is using petroleum jelly on the mold, I have a dedicated paint brush for getting in the tiny areas of a mold. I think it's really great that you think of any setback or difficulty as just a learning experience. Keep up the great work

If I'd just take the time to practice first, the learning curves mightn't be so steep!

Instead of greenstuff I use a 2 part gray putty called Apoxie-sculpt with for my bases. I find it doesn't stick to the Basius pads as well (though I use some water too).

It definitely takes some practice to use though.