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Like a lot of people, I made some New Year's resolutions. There are a bunch of boring ones in there, like the standard "lose weight / eat healthy / go back to school" blah blah, ect. BUT, one of the more pertinent ones was to start up a hobby blog/plog, in order to keep myself motivated. My CSM sat around assembled and unpainted for about 2 years before I finally finished them off, and I'm hoping no not repeat that with my current various projects.

So without further adieu, i'll give a brief list of what's on my current "hobby cue," and go into my first project: starting this plog: trying to take a decent picture!


The shelf of procrastination!

Projects (in order of priority):
1.) Learn to take better pictures so your plog doesn't suck
2.) Dark Eldar (commission for a friend)
3.) Necron army
4.) Skaven army
5.) Necromunda Skavies gang
6.) various Mordheim warbands (Undead, Cult of the Possessed, Orc... for now)

SO, in order to get number 1 down, my hope is to get some feedback on what I can do to get better pictures. I just got a new camera for X-Mas, a Nikon Coolpix S3100, to go with my DYI lightbox that I made a little while back:


Here are a few pictures I took using the lightbox. They didn't turn out too bad, but I would love to get them a little more clear, if possible. Please LMK what you think:

Mordheim Weight Lord (house rule guy)


Mordheim Ogre Bodyguard



Skaven Clanrat


Summoned Greater Deamon



Aspiring Champion and Obliterator


I'm pretty happy with how the pictures came out as a whole, but they seem kinda dark to me. I've kinda got a ramshackle lighting set up going on, because I'm not sure what all would be the best way to go for getting bright, clear pictures:



Anyway, hope to get some feedback from the pictures from people. and hopefully I'll have some new stuff to post soon.
-Cheers!

Try using the daylight lamps and have them coming from all sides, also does your camera have a Macro setting. It is usually marked with a flower.

BTW cool looking models!!!

I love the bases and conversion work. Keep modelling!

Excellent Plague Marines! I really need to pick up that Daemon model, I've seen it quite a few times now and every time I see it I kick myself for not having picked one up yet.

I agree w/ Mortalitas, daylight lamp, lighting from top / left / right, and try the Macro setting on your camera. Another neat trick is to put your camera on a tripod, pull it back a few feet, zoom in, and use Macro. You can get some sharp results like that, but you absolutely need a tripod because of the shutter time.

Subbed and looking forward to more stuff from you, it's all looking very good so far.

First of all, thanks to everyone for the kind words!

@Skalk Bloodaxe: That Daemon model has to be the favorite of my army, IMO it's the best model available to anyone looking for a large Nurgle model that doesn't want to shell out for the Forge World GUO.

As for the camera, I did have it set in the macro mode. I managed to pick up another lamp (a 100 watt clamp lamp) and I put in a "reveal" bulb, which I think gave me a bit better lighting.


Now, on to a small bit of progress! Things have been off to a slow start, mainly due to be adjusting to being back to work after a two week "break," filled with X-Mas, New Years, a wedding (mine!), as well as a (not-so relaxing) honeymoon.

I made some small progress on my friend's Dark Eldar Homunculus. Got most of the base coating / washing done, but I need to go through and highlight, as well as base it.




That's it for painting, sadly! I have a Venom that is primed and ready to go once I finish the Homunculus, and a Ravenger that is sitting on the shelf, waiting for the weather not to suck so I can prime it. I did manage to get a small bit of building done, however.


5 man unit of Immortals w/ Tesla Carbines (obviously, heh). These bad boys will be joined by 5 more once I receive them (Necrons are my "payment" for painting the buddy's DE). When I first got into 40K, my starter army was Necrons, and I remember thinking what a pain in the a@# Necron Warriors were to build, Well, the Immortals aren't as bad, but they are not far off, especially if you lose the cheat sheet that tells you which arms go together. For a paint scheme, there's a part of my that wanted to go the easy route and go with the standard boltgun / brown wash / drybrush method. But, I decided that after painting so much Nurgle stuff and Skaven, I needed a departure for painting "dirty" looking models (even though I love me some gross / dirty / rusty looking models, heh). So I think I'll challenge myself and try to paint something crisp and clean, using interesting colors (sneak peak):


On a sad note, I decided to shelve my Skaven army and not continue on with them, at least for now. I love the flavor of the army, love the fluff, love models (well, most of them), but I finally stopped kidding myself into thinking that I would be able to paint 230+ rat men and still have my sanity. I hope to have an airbrush sometime in the not-too-distant future, so maybe then I will seem like a not quite as daunting task.

Does that mean I'm done with Fantasy?

Nope. Much to the dismay of my wife. I almost went with Ogres instead of Skaven, before they got their new book. Once the new book and models came out, it was killing me not to play them. But I think painting up my Mordheim Ogre Bodyguard is what sent me over the edge. Really fun model to assemble and paint, and I love the feel of the army.



Have a couple more to build, plus I need to adjust a few of the foot plates, which I had a had time getting even for some reason. No idea how I'm going to base these guys. I had originally though about doing the "slate base" method I saw over at Brush Thralls (http://archive.brushthralls.com/basing/slate-bases-2.html), but I think that might make my already tall Ogres a little too tall. I may look at some resin bases and see if I can find something I like. BUT, I told myself I wasn't allowed to start painting them until after I finished my current round of DE commission, as well as my Immortals, so hopefully that will help motivate me.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have more to post soon, planing on getting the DE stuff that i have primed done by the weekend, so I'll keep you guys updated. Any C&C is most welcome, and thanks for checking my humble little plog out!

Your Necron and Ogre photos are the best yet! Whatever you did, keep doing that.

SO. It's been close to a year. I have made little progress on painting my current 1850-ish points of Ogres. I built some stuff, I base coated some stuff, I based some stuff, and that was about it. My gaming group started to fall apart, I started playing MTG and put miniatures on the back burner.

Well, thank to several WHFB podcasts getting my creative juices flowing (get your mind out of the gutter!), I've got the itch again. There are a bunch of armies that I was excited for and want to start building (Beastmen, Lizardmen, Empire, VC... to name a few, heh), but the deal I made with myself was that I can NOT starting working on anything else until I get my current group of Ogres painted and start working on the ogres I need to bump my list up to 2400/3K points. Here's what I've got on my plate currently:

1 Slaughtermaster
11 Ogres (or Bulls, if you prefer)
10 Ironguts
4 Leadbelchers

I've also got 15 "Gnoblar Trappers" that I cobbles together out of the extra Gnoblars that came with my Ogre battalion, but I'm not sure if I plan on painting them or not, since I haven't been able to squeeze them into any of my lists.

So here is my first sample of progress. Keep in mind that I am still very new to miniature photography, and I'm trying to perfect my technique as I go:


These 3 guys I have nicknamed the "Hammer Bros," which was just an excuse to paint 3 Ironguts with bright green pants, heh. I still need to finish paint the edge of the base, and I will eventually be adding static grass and snow effects (possibly blood effects) at a later point (i.e. when I get money for hobby supplies, heh).


Up next is my converted Slaughtermaster, kit bashed from Ironguts/Ironblaster stuff. I am awful at green stuff (even filling small gaps is tough for me), so I had my wife try her hand with the apron on this guy, and I am extremely happy with the result, especially considering it was her first time working with the stuff. He is base coated and washed at the moment, I still need to do the highlighting on him.


And here are the next chaps waiting their turn to have their base coats cleaned up, then it's off to washing / hightlighting / basing!


Finally, these poor guys made it to the chopping block (OGRE HUMOR!). Due to the fact that I had 2 too many Ironguts and 2 too few Bulls, these poor guys got demoted and had to turn in their arms. The the plus side, the Irongut on the end is going to recieve a promotion to a musician soon. Welcome to the full command!

Anyway, let me know what you think, I appreciate any comments/questions/suggestions you might have for me . Any tips on taking better pictures are very much appreciated. And please keep checking back, I plan on posting some more work in progress pictures soon.

Cheers!

P.S.: Oh, and as a side note, thanks to the podcasts that have got me motivated to get these guys done, namely Pointhammered (http://pointhammered.com/) and The Bad Dice Podcast (http://baddice.co.uk/). A shout out to Jaded Gamercast, even though they have been more 40K focused since 6th ed came out (http://jadedgamercast.com/)

Time for another round of updates!

Currently on winter break from both work and school until January. My plan was to have a ton of time to sit down and paint, but it's been busier than I had hoped. Spent a couple of days with the wife to celebrate our 1st Anniversary, followed immediately by having to deal with getting the carpets cleaned when we got back. This, combined with me being slightly obsessed with Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and Dungeon Keeper 2 (courtesy of www.gog.com) has left me being slightly less productive that I would have liked, only getting an odd 15 minutes or so of painting done here and there since I've been on break. I decided to remedy that today!

The carpet is still damp in the "hobby room" from the carpet cleaning, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. I decided to set up right smack in front of the computer, so that way I would not only have a place to paint, but I wouldn't be tempted to sneak off early to play some games.


I was happy with the decision, although the dog was less enthusiastic, as she no doubt sees painting as yet another thing to get in the way of getting tummy rubs.


Anyway, on to the painting. Not a TON done, but enough I think to warrent a post. I got the standard bearer for my Ironguts unit finished:


I decided after finishing the "Hammer Bros" that I didn't like they way the "bronze" was coming out (basically it was straight Tin Bitz, washed and highlighted with Chainmail), so I decided to try to give it more "pop" by using a method I heard on Bad Dice Daily. Basicly it was just drybrushing Dwarf Bronze --> Shining Gold --> Chainmail, and giving it a wash of blue/green in between drybrushing to weather it. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I'm pretty happy with the real-life result.


And lastly I finally got around to "fixing" the 2 demoted Ironguts.


Priming when it was this cold was a bit of an experience. The primer went on kind of "runny" and didn't give me as complete coverage as I'm used to, although I was still happy enough with the results.

Hope to have some more posted soon. Got another 2 Ironguts that I'm working on so I can be done with the "blue pants" Ogres, then it's off to the red pant fellows!

Time for a post-holiday update!

Somewhat unexpectedly, the week of Christmas saw me doing a bit more painting than I would have thought. Was able to sit down in the now-dry painting room and get some work done on Xmas eve, and then the day after Christmas we had our internet down for 4 days. Without Facebook and Warseer to distract me, I was able to burn through all my backlogged podcasts and get some good painting sessions in (with only minor breaks to play the new XCOM game that I got for the holidays).

First up I was able to finish up the last of the "blue pants." (Sorry for the fuzzy pic)


Was much happier how the bronze parts came out after I started adding a few more dry brushes of dwarf bronze/shinning gold, though it's hard to tell from the pictures. Not sure if I'm happy with how the banner came out, might go over it again with the deneb stone. (again, blurry pictures)


And then it was off to the red pants! I'm not sure if I'm happy with how the whole "wash the model brown, highlight the skin" method is going, as I think it's coming out patchy. Might experiment with more selective washing, keeping it just to the crevices and creating highlights that way.


Side shot. Supper happy with how his sholder shield came out (the Ironguts Standard Bearer has one too).


And finally, since I had some extra skin color mixed up, I added a skin basecoat to my leadbelchers.


Now I just need to keep plugging away at what I have left and wait for the bits I ordered so I can start working on some maneaters. Until then!

Looks cool, I like the effects you're getting on the metal gut plates.

 Two Spartan wrote:
Looks cool, I like the effects you're getting on the metal gut plates.

Thank you! I'm much happier using a straight green wash on the bronze parts of the gutplates to get a verdigris. I tried watered down turquoise / green, but I thought it stood out too much, while the wash is a lot more subtle (the pictures don't do it justice).