GDK showcases the varied exploits of a diverse hobbying community - which orbits around my kitchen table and those of my friends. Its primary purpose is to catalogue and present our miniature painting, hobby game playing, and assorted crafts and nerdities. I hope that it will someday be useful to someone.
Why pay for something you can get for free, with a little sweat equity.
Wife and I wanted a garden, she planted some seeds a few weeks ago. Then we needed someplace to plant the sprouts.
I've been wanting to build some nice planter boxes. Out of Cedar maybe, Redwood, Cypress? I'm a woodworker after all, and any self respecting woodworker should have some nice decorative planter boxes. Of course, Cedar (and Redwood and Cypress) cost money.
Two years ago Wife and ripped out our old patio and walkway, and re-purposed it into a smaller more aesthetically pleasing patio and walkway. We had about 200 bricks and half a cubic yard of paver base leftover; I know because I've moved them half-a-dozen times.
So, first an idea in my head, validated via a quick google search, and i'm digging a trench for the new planter box. 150+ bricks later and i'm done.
Then i need to fill it. I hate spending money on dirt. I hate it a lot. But i did not have any fill dirt, let alone compost laying around. Turns out, the county i live in composts yard waste, and then provides it back to residents for free. You just have to shovel it yourself. No mechanized equipment can be used. Well, I've got a shovel, a couple buckets, a pickup truck, and (for now) a strong back.
So for Free.99 I've got a little under a cubic yard of compost.
I think you can see where this is going.
The total spend was $10 on some seeds and about 8 hours of labor, on a holiday weekend. Wife planted the garden. Daughter helped me stack bricks.
Family time + Sweat Equity = Homestead Economics.
Hopefully we'll get some veggies out of the deal too.
After an extended pause in painting due to the launch of Bungie's Destiny, I'm slowly creeping back into the saddle! I finally broke open a commercial tabletop photo light box that I ordered from tanga.com earlier in the year, and I think it was worth it's very reasonable sale price of $27.99! This is not a product review (and I'm certainly not qualified to be reviewing light boxes), but I will say that I was impressed by the materials included (pictured below) and by how easy this was to use. The bag folds out into the light box, by the way, which is super cool. Results are comparable to my previous setup, so far, but I do feel like these new tools will provide a greater potential for improvement.
For starters, here's a look at my setup:
Miniatures are still a good deal smaller than what this is built to accommodate, so I've elevated the platform with some foam, and I've also added a desk light with a white/blue color hue to balance out the yellowish bulbs in the side lights. I don't know if that was a good idea or not, but I wanted to simulate what I think real photographers do, which is to dim ambient light and stick to the sources you can control directly. An additional note, I'm using my Galaxy Note 3 for photos still, so the quality is fine, but not great, nor do I have any skill at this whatsoever. Lastly, I used that magnifying claw stand to hold my phone in place, in order to normalize the photo angles, etc.
Here's a shot of the setup as it was during actual pictures:
In addition to the light box, I wanted to play around with some more dynamic background options. Thankfully, I know Dave from Thirteenth Company Painting, and he suggested some spot backdrops and the classic blue-white GW fade. I've printed them out on a nice color printer and you'll see below that the they work well as part of the original image as well as when digitally inserted.
Here are a few shots from my first attempt with this light box, with notes about any digital treatments done:
Basic scouts straight out of the light box. You can see that the cloth backdrop's creases have not quite fallen out yet.
The printed back drops were even cooler than I expected, and very easy to use. I slightly adjusted brightness and contrast in some of these. In particular, the Belial conversion at the bottom is a tricky subject because there are a lot of shadowy recesses next to bright and shining gold armor.
Lastly, I removed the white background from a few images and digitally inserted the Games Workshop blue-to-white gradient background. Notably, I have not feathered these layers. Any minimal changes were to brightness or contrast. (before and afters)
So that's that! This light box is easy to use, and I'm really digging these printable back drops. Leave any questions or comments below!
I've completed the first half of the Independent Characters' 2014 Hobby Challenge, and I'll put some cool ravenwing pictures up soon, but after six months of painting inside the lines, it's time to let loose with some Orks that I recently came into from a friend.
I'm very excited to get to work on da boyz, but it's intimidating to move from Deathwing to Orks, who will field at least 100 more models for the same point value! Preferring to minimize any tedious repetition, I sought suggestions from friends and the internet on how best to build and paint this army. Todays post explores the latter. (The basics of the process are down by all of the images, but I've included some backstory directly below as well - for those with nothing better to do.)
My top priority was to devise a quick method of painting ork flesh that would still be "high quality" in my eyes. Secondarily, I wanted this process to be modifiable, so that I could introduce variations in shades with minimal effort.
Washes
The first recommendation made to me by a friend was to employ the method used by thoume2 in a youtube video called "Warhammer 40k Painting Tutorial - Orks with (mostly) washes." Let me pause here and provide a spoiler for you: the process works great and (I think) it looks amazing. Go check it out!
So at this point, I was pretty certain I wanted to emulate this process with my greenskins and I took my first 20 boyz out into the backyard for a foundation spray of Army Painter's bone color. Next came a layer of Devlan Mud by brush, and this is where things hit a snag.
Dip Shading
Washing 140+ boyz by hand, then washing them some more, then basing them does not sound fun to me. After one round of brushed-on brown wash, I decided this step could be replaced by a much faster but somewhat unconvincing process I'd heard of: dipping.
I first heard of the method from Matthew, on this very blog (here and here), when he was experimenting with some eldar and tyranids back in 2010. Since then, I had heard that Army Painter released a line of dip shaders, but at the time that I was thinking about this, I was completely unwilling to put the process off for days while I waited for my dip to arrive from an online order. Thankfully, I had also heard of people using wood stains in lieu of one made for miniatures. As fate would have it, there is an Ace Hardware at the corner of my street, so Minwax Polyshades (Stain and Polyurethane in 1) Tudor satin wood stain was my weapon of choice. Spoiler number two: Army Painter dips may or may not work better, but the wood stain has worked excellent for me so far!
Experimentation
This post is going to get a little bit convoluted, so please stick with me. In the images below, I have documented three distinct methods of painting an ork.
Ork A is the "control" ork. He was sprayed with bone and hand-washed with a layer of devlan mud before anything else was painted.
Ork B represents the process I expected to use, and would recommend for highly detailed models. Ork B was sprayed bone and dipped in wood stain before anything else was painted.
Ork C represents the method that I'd recommend for the majority of "troop" models in a horde army. This Ork was similarly boned and then I painted all of his clothes and gear - except i didn't shade or highlight anything - before dipping him in the wood stain.
Below, I have a video and a few photos addressing the process of completing Orks A and B in a parallel process.
First things first: materials. I have 20 boyz, a box top to function as my surface area, the Minwax 2-in-1 polyshade (Tudor color), a rubber glove, some paper towels, and a box to shake excess stain into.
As you can see below, the process is quick. Spoiler number three: people sometimes use a drill to spin excess stain off of minis: I suspect this would be a waste of time for most people. By simply hand-shaking, I'm avoiding the hassle of attaching minis to the drill and am probably saving a lot of time - which is the point, after all.
Once my Orks B were stained, it was time to get painting. The following two photos offer a bit of insight into that process, and reveal that the end results of Orks A and B were very similar. (I apologize for the learn-to-draw-an-owl two-step tutorial.)
Anyway, Ork B was pretty rad! That said, I ended up painting over a ton of shading on the boots, gun, and other gear that the stain had already done for me. Thus Ork C was conceived!
You may recall from a comment in the video that many people online finish their model before dipping them. Turns out those people are smart. My plan for Ork C was to paint anything that was going to get something more than a wash (i.e. not the skin or the bone-colored shirt, etc) before dipping it, so that the stain would do even more work for me. Following the dip, four things would happen: washes, highlights, a matte spray of the entire mini (for protection and to eliminate the gloss created by the dip), and a quick application of 'ardcoat (a brushed-on gloss) where I still wanted things to shine. The process went approximately as follows:
Spray with bone and begin to paint basic colors.
Add more colors, including metals. Avoid painting any of the areas that will later receive a wash.
Dip Da Boyz.
Next step: apply green and brown washes to the skin and shirt, respectively, forget to take individual pictures. Done.
Unfortunately, I don't have a solo pic of Ork C complete, but I do have a group shot of all Da Boyz for comparison below!
As can be seen, there is no significant difference between the different styles once a matte finish and a bit of 'ardcoat are added to each. The only difference comes in to amount of time saved! With Ork C, my dip provided the shading for everything other than the skin and shirt, which took two layers of green wash and a single layer of devlan mud, respectively. I hope to time the process soon, and will be back with an update on that!
Another point that I hope to check back about is the feasibility of using different sprays or brushed paints under the dip and green wash for different final flesh tones. Specifically, I think a white or gray base spray will bring out different fleshtones from the bone without any real change in the process. Other options include painting the flesh green or brown or something before the dips and washes.
Anyway, that's it for this one, hope you liked it!
I've moved three or four times since I made my first lightbox, and I have no earthly idea where it could be, so I made a new one last night with great ease! The first time around, I wanted to use wax paper to diffuse several lights coming from above, right and left, but I only have one decent light right now, so I decided to go with an aluminum foil-based reflective box.
The process was refreshingly simple:
1. Cut the flaps off of a small-to-medium sized box.
2. Using tape, apply aluminum foil to the sides and top with the matte side facing toward the miniature.
3. Using a thumb tack or some other fastener, put a piece of paper on the back wall that will be your back drop.
**Cool Tip!** To avoid any visible corners or creases, use a legal-sized piece of paper and stick it so that it's half on the back wall and half on the bottom, under the miniatures. This way, the paper will gradually curve in front of the bottom rear corner and provide a seamless backdrop!
4. I have no specialized knowledge of photography, but I think that a fluorescent bulbed desk lamp is probably preferable to a yellowish incandescent. (Though these days those are going away anyway, right?) Regardless, the "more natural" the light the better. I happen to have picked up this cool light/magnifier hobby lamp and it's working well.
5. Take pictures and adjust the white balance/exposure/metering settings on your camera to optimize your results!
**Camera Phone Tip!** My camera hated the white background that I was using and really dimmed the models at first. Even upping the exposure didn't make a substantial enough difference, but then I learned about metering. My phone has three settings: Matrix, Center-Weighted, and Spot. Matrix was the default, and it basically looks all over the view-able area to determine how to brighten or focus or whatever, and since it was seeing a lot of white background, it was being a jerk. For small models, the Spot setting was ideal. Choosing to look only at the center of the view-able area allowed me to take reasonable images based on the lighting conditions of the model, not the blazing sun behind it. Center-weighted is some mix of the two and may be useful for vehicles or monstrous creatures or something?
Anyway here are some fruits of my labor! (Sorry, these are basically all models depicted previously, but now with greater quality!)
ACTION SHOT!
A common terminator
Some tactical dudes
Dark Angel Terminator Librarian (traditional librarian with a converted Halberd of Caliban and Ravenwing swag book)
Belial (conversion with marneus calgar and some dark angels/deathwing/kinghts bits)
My full HQ Selection is now complete for The Independent Characters' 2014 Hobby Progress Challenge!
I've never been a huge fan of the blue that librarians typically sport, so I wanted to duplicate the color of an old tech marine I made (see here), and I think it turned out well! I also wanted to break away from the typical accessories for this model: weapon in right hand, bolter or nothing in left. This [spell] book from a ravenwing kit seemed perfect and beautifully oversized, and the Halberd of Caliban worked nicely once I trimmed the sword off the top and extended it a bit at the bottom.
Here's a rundown of the work as it progressed!
Stripped down from a previous paint job (I got this guy for a great price at the Origins Game Fair last year!)
I like to assemble models and test color schemes before any real painting, so this shows the basic concept in foundation paints.
A watery layer of lich purple went over the mecrite red foundation and was topped off with a thin layer of red gore. I was tempted to stay with the purple for a bit, but the fluff around this successor chapter calls for red armor, so I stayed the course and enjoyed the final shade too.
This is where things got interesting! Warpglow Green is an awesome color and I decided that I'd like it to be the warp energy for this miniature. Originally, I wanted to make the eyes and mouth the central warp features, but I just could not get it to feel "electric" enough without making him look like he had recently barfed a toxic avenger. Even bringing Scorpion Green in for the brightest shade didn't do it, so I decided to fool around with the book. From there, the concept took off for me and the result is a lot more dynamic than I could have hoped for, based on previous attempts with lighting.
With the overall concept complete, all that remained were the details, some red highlighting, and - more significantly - the modeling/green stuffing for the hands and accessories. I won't pretend that this is professional grade, but once there was paint on there, they came together well.
The final product is probably best seen in the first picture of this post, but here you can see a couple of near-complete photos taken in better lighting.
Anyway, that's it for the Librarian! Next up, Deathwing Knights!
It's been an exciting month for me and 40k, thanks to the Independent Characters' Hobby Challenge; I have a couple fun updates, but first off, the conversion from Marneus Calgar to Belial is done, shy a base and sealer! Have a look!
First, the penultimate stage, which introduces a few new swag items and shows a couple different parts of the original model that were removed - like the eagle heads above the hood.
And finally, the finished model. I look forward to basing him to appear as though he is cresting a small hill or mound; having endured battle and emerging untarnished, using his sword as a sort of a walking stick.
That's it for Belial, next up will be the new librarian conversion!
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