xraytango wrote:I usually rinse the sprue in warm soapy water, then I cut off the parts I want to use. Then I scrape the mold lines, assemble the models, base and decorate the base, finally prime, paint, add decals, and seal.
Thats how I build my armies.
D
I am positively OCD about that sort of stuff.
One of the things that first drew attention to my painting was how clean the miniatures were.
I would become apoplectic if a miniature had a mold-line showing, or any flash on it.
I also don't assemble most of the models until the parts have been painted.
I tried the 1970's style and tutorial recommendation of leaving the parts on the sprue, and painting them on the sprue, and then cutting them off and touching up before assembling, but the extra work was too fiddly.
I
did discover that trimming mold-lines off plastic while they are still on the sprue is WAY easier than trimming the mold-lines after they have been cut off the sprue (I'll get some photos of my few finished Rohirrim Horses to show the effect. There is not a mold line existing, and I was able to cut out the undercuts on the miniatures due to the sculpt for Injection-molding). It took me about ¼ of the time it took a friend who cut his from the sprue first.
MB
Automatically Appended Next Post:
To answer the
Op....
I use the pre-existing worlds created by others, predominantly.
For Fantasy, this would be Tolkien, Howard (Conan only), Moorcock (Elric only), or Greg Stafford (Glorantha), but primarily Tolkien, since I am recognized among a few professionals as being somewhat knowledgeable in his cosmology, and theology behind the sub creation of Ëa, Arda, and Middle-earth).
For Sci-Fi, I tend to primarily use the Imperium of the game
Traveller, but have ventured into the. 12-Colonies of Kobol as per the Ron Moore, 2003
Battlestar Galactica (where I got to go to a viewing held by Moore in. Berkeley, where we grilled him for hours on the mechanisms and cosmology behind the universe). Moore's world of
BSG has probably the most realistic space combat in existence (there is a bit of "fixing" the flight of the fighters, but they primarily fly off of an in-world physics programmed into Maya's animation. But the Capital Ship Combat is nearly spot on: Lasers and beam weapons at light second ranges would be useless, and projectiles carrying nukes would be most effective, but even then not a sure thing (The Pegasus has 100 meters of armor around its main belt, and around 20 meters at it's most vulnerable. The poor Galactica has to get by with a belt of only 50 meters and only 15 meters in it's more exposed regions... Although some of its belt armor has been stripped), and ranges would be in the five to thirty mile depth of field.
But... I sometimes use some worlds of Traveller that I created myself back in the 1970's... A set of worlds that exist in the Great. Expanse: Öomed, Cumbri, and Wa...
And... I eventually want to do something for Ghost-in-the-Shell/Kōkaku Kidōtai/攻殻機動隊
Oh... And I do historical.
And as for buying the figures... Whatever grabs my attention is first, usually the core units.
And then the supporting units.
MB
P.S. As for buying the figures... Being a bit OCD' when I wind up with a lot of cash, I tend to buy a lot of expensive figures.
This is how I wound up with all of my
FW Epic Tau (I am still trying to get four of the Orcas), and my Thunderbolt Mountain Orcs/Great Goblins. Dropped nearly $1,000 on each... It was painful, but a comforting pain.
