Defender Z... I mean X

Holy crap, this guy was far more trouble than he should have been. Mostly my fault, you understand: the model itself is pretty nice and the cast was pretty good. But I do have a tendency to make things harder for myself than they need to be, for that and other reasons I ran into a LOT of trouble with this one.

First of all I decided that I really like the "rocket fist" from the official PP artwork:

While admittedly wildly impractical, it was a bit of a staple of the giant robot anime I grew up on, and I decided I wanted to try to convert the model to represent this aspect of the artwork better. Trying to modify the model itself would be tricky, so I figured I could try to put my new (at the time) Anycubic Photon to work.

So I took some photos of the arms from various angles (once PP sent them to me... they were not included in the box originally... like I said, lots of issues with this one) and spent a good chunk of time trying to duplicate them in Blender. Now I'm not much of a 3D artist, but I'm not a complete newbie either, so eventually I ended up with something passable that looked good enough when printed out:

My printed arm above, original below.

The actual flames were another issue. After some fiddling around with meshes I eventually ended up with something that I was reasonably happy with:

The next issue was the colour scheme. I definitely wanted to base the colours on one of the robot anime from my youth. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but the major parts of Defender X map surprisingly closely to one of the incarnations of Mazinger Z; based on the name I suspect perhaps not. Even small details on the head map quite well: just look at Mazinger's red pilot module in between the silver protective wings and compare it to the structure of Defender's head.

Initially I used a black gloss primer to help hide the print lines. I decided this was a good opportunity to try to zenithal highlighting for the first time with my new airbrush, so I layered on some lighter greys from progressively higher angles. Which amounted to nothing really as my basecoats were far too thick and solid for those gradients to have any effect.

I started painting the model using normal paints, but after applying several of the basecoats I decided to switch to the new coloured metallic paints I had recently received from Green Stuff World. These paints were lighter and had less saturated colour than I would have liked however, so I ran some tests on some test models and decided that I could add saturation using my Badger Minitaire Ghost Paints.

Unfortunately things didn't work as smoothly as I had hoped: the Badger Minitaire tints did not sit evenly across the surfaces and created some very ugly effects. Eventually I resigned myself to reapplying the metal basecoats, and living with the fact that the colours weren't quite what I wanted.

The next issue was the flames. After a test run on a spare printed arm, I settled on my colours. I was trying to get a smooth blend, and ended up using a LOT of shades: I think I spent around seven or eight hours painting the flames and glowing areas of the model. Even with all that, the flames aren't as good as I had hoped. I think this is because I didn't have the courage to try to paint cast glows onto the surrounding metals, and also because the model as a whole is quite bright (unavoidably so as mentioned above).

Once that was done it was time for shading and highlighting. Which took absolutely AGES. Seriously, look at those legs: look how many recesses and edges there are. I'm pretty sure I spent at least four hours highlighting just the blue parts of the legs.

Seriously, this model was EXHAUSTING. Thankfully it looks pretty decent now that it's done. Still, seeing as my plan is to get two minimum armies painted before I actually start playing the game, I really need to try to work faster.


Colours:
Primer: Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black

Blue:
Basecoat: Green Stuff World 1872 Metal Color Neptunus Blue
Shade: Citadel Glaze Guilliman Blue
Highlight: Neptunus Blue + Scalecolor SC-66 Speedd Metal

Red:
Basecoat: Green Stuff World 1874 Metal Color Caesar Red
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Strong Tone
Highlight: Caesar Red + Scalecolor SC-66 Speedd Metal

Brass:
Basecoat: Citadel Layer Doombull Brown
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Strong Tone
Highlight: Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold

Steel:
Basecoat: The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal
Shade: The Army Painter Quickshade Washes Dark Tone
Highlight: Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver

Black:
Basecoat: Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black
Shade: Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black
Highlight: The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal

Flames & glows:
Vallejo 70.960 Model Color Violet
1:1 Model Color Violet : Game Air Gory Red
Vallejo 72.711 Game Air Gory Red
Vallejo 72.710 Game Air Bloody Red
Vallejo 72.709 Game Air Hot Orange
Vallejo 72.708 Game Air Orange Fire
Vallejo 72.706 Game Air Sun Yellow
Vallejo 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow
Vallejo 72.705 Game Air Moon Yellow
Formula P3 Morrow White glazed with Badger Minitaire D6-170 Ghost Tint Yellow

A Magic Box

This is a box that I CNC-ed earlier this year. It was intended to hold my red/blue starter Magic The Gathering deck. Which I used once before deciding I couldn't be bothered to get into Magic.

So it sat for a while, assembled but unused. Eventually I decided to use it to test some ideas, so I painted in the logos (Citadel Glaze Guilliman Blue and Bloodletter), then airbrushed on a wood staing/varnish, lightly sanding once dry. Which worked surprisingly well, so that was nice.

I had issues with the mill bit being slightly out of spec leading to loose fitting parts, and I screwed up the positioning of the logos just a little bit . Still, I'm quite happy with the result, although the woodstain turned out more yellow that I expected - I would have preferred a more reddish-brown. Ah well.

Tiny Tanks

I've slowly been hacking away at some Monsterpocalypse models. The scale on the units is a little bit new to me; the only time I've painted something this small before was when I did up my mini Juggernaut. I actually put a lot more care into him than into these guys, but that's not to say I didn't face some challenges with this lot.

I decided to try to paint the G.U.A.R.D. models in relatively realistic colour schemes; in your average Kaiju movie you tend to have pretty traditional military vehicles after all. Even though it's technically a military vehicle, I wanted to paint the repair truck in the colours of familiar civilian construction vehicles. That basically meant yellow and black, with some basic metal colours. I probably should have added a touch of red for the brake lights, but couldn't be bothered. I tried to distribute the colours in a balanced way, but at the end of the day it's a pretty simple yellow truck. That's fine I guess.

I considered black and dark green as the primary colour for the tanks, but settled on a desert tan as it's a common colour for modern military vehicles and would help the tiny models stand out. Plus I haven't really used this colour before, at least not as a primary colour, so that was a little interesting.

Traditionally one tank gets a base with a star and a slightly different paintjob to mark it as the "elite" unit, but it went against my nature to "hard-code" things this way so instead I decided to try to find an alternative. I settled on a magnetised rocket pod to mark the elite models:

I designed the rocket pod from scratch in Blender and 3D printed it on my Anycubic Photon. It took a couple of iterations to get the details at the right scale, but overall it wasn't too bad.

I installed small 2mm round magnets in the bases of the pods and on the tops of the tanks. I magnetised all four tanks; why the hell not right?

While at first glance I thought they were not very different from normal tanks, as I painted them I realised that there were some details that weren't exactly "realistic" and I wasn't sure how to paint them. The turret armour and cannon especially; I felt that they should serve as the focal point of the miniature. I tried painting the cannon in the same tan, but it was a bit too subtle. Painting it in steel just led to too much steel colour. In the end I settled on painting the cannon in brass; it has a bit of a sci-fi look to it after all, so I though painting it in a less "realistic military" colour was excusable, and overall I decided it was just the best looking option.

I'm not sure why I tried to paint the headlamps in a bright blue, but after doing so on a one model I realised that the barrel would also need a glowing blue energy effect or else the headlamps would be the focal points of the model. I wasn't able to make the effect look good however (plus it took things too far away from the semi-realistic look I had settled on), so I abandoned that idea and painted the rest of the headlamps yellow.

For these tiny models that I was trying to knock out in a hurry I decided I couldn't be bothered with highlighting. So pretty much everything was just basecoated and washed. I think it worked well enough; I really want to get enough models painted up to play Monsterpocalypse fully painted from the start, and I don't care very much about the units to be honest, so... good enough.

While varnishing I ran into another case of Sugar Coated Frosting Of Doom! I had started with the "blue energy effect" tank as a test; I was unable to fully remove the frosting with olive oil so I gave up and stripped the paint from the model, painting it over to match it's brothers. I'm almost glad to be honest as I much prefer it this way.

After some research and trial and error, I eventually settled on applying Vallejo 26.517 Gloss Acrylic Varnish and Vallejo 26.518 Matt Acrylic Varnish straight from an airbrush. Now that was a whole story involving much time, effort, frustration, and money, but I don't want to go into it right now as the story is not quite over yet.


It took me FAR longer than I had hoped, but at last I have five pretty good looking models. Unfortunately in Monsterpocalypse the minimum recommended game size is fifteen units and a monster. Sigh. This is going to take a while.

Repair Truck:
The truck was first basecoated with Vallejo 72.705 GameAir Moon Yellow, Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey (I think, might have been Black Grey), and The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal. Then the yellow parts were washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Light Tone Wash, and the black and steel areas were washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone wash (basically a black wash). The headlights were then painted with Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow, then a touch of P3 Morrow White was added.

GTanks:
The tanks were basecoated with Vallejo 72.763 Game Air Desert Yellow and The Army Painter Warpaints Gun Metal. Then Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold was painted onto the Desert Yellow for the brass areas. The whole thing was then washed with The Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone Wash. After this the headlamps were painted Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow with a dot of P3 Morrow White. The rocket heads were then basecoated in Vallejo 72.106 Game Color Scarlett Blood (their typo, not mine), and a dot of Citadel Wild Rider Red was added to the tips to help them really stand out.

You Can't Kill What's Already Dead

I played a 1000 point game of 40K the other day. I didn't take photos and I'm not going to write a proper battle report as it probably wouldn't be a very interesting read (plus I don't exactly things in great detail as I was busy trying to understand the rules), but it was fun so I'm just going to give a quick summary.

I was running some old Marines I had lying around (mainly Black Reach models) under the old Raven Guard chapter tactics (which apparently no longer exist):

Chaplain in Terminator armour (Storm bolter)

10 Tactical Marines (bolt pistol & chainsword on the sarge, rocket launcher)

6 Scouts (sniper rifles, rocket launcher)

5 Vanguard Veterans (thunder hammer & storm shield on the sarge)

7 Terminators

2 Venerable Dreadnoughts (twin lascannon, twin autocannon)

I played against Gru, who had a beautiful fully painted Necron army with two units of basic troops, one unit of guys with slighter stronger guns, two characters, and three Wraiths.

Basically we stood and shot at each other for five turns. I brought down my Terminators and Vets around his units; the Vets failed a charge, got shot at, then got charged right through a building by Wraiths. The grunts were wiped out almost immediately, but the Sarge killed two Wraiths over the course of several rounds and would have killed the third if Gru hadn't saved him by rerolling a save with a command point. The Terminators did a lot of shooting, eventually got into melee, then got wiped out. The Tac Marines eventually got gunned down. The Snipers did almost nothing all game and were completely ignored. The Dreads killed a few Necron grunts.

I killed a few Necrons each turn, but they kept coming back; I think by the end there only six or seven dead Necron grunts (certainly less than 10). Thankfully the Wraiths stayed dead, but not before they cleared one of my objectives. This left me scoring one objective and Gru scoring two, for his win.

So yeah, not a hell of a lot of maneuvering or anything, just a lot of rolling dice. I'm pretty sure I messed up a lot of rules (I think I repeatedly forgot to add negative hit modifiers for thunder hammers and moving with heavy weapons etc, but I may also have forgotten to reroll failed wound rolls with the Chaplain, so maybe it all balances out), but hey, it was a learning experience. I didn't enjoy it as much Warmachine, but it was still fun to hang out with friends, throw dice around, and (occasionally) push some toy soldiers around.

The Smartest Belt Buckle In The World

It's so smart it even has it's own brain! But serious, I was very impressed when I happened across this Krang belt buckle sold by Christopher Genovese on Etsy. I figured it would be a perfect gift for a friend of mine. And hey, it should be easy enough to paint; I'm a decent miniature painter after all right?

The seller's amazing paintjob really sells the piece!

Yes, it is a functional belt! Practical? No, but functional? Yes!

Well, it wasn't quite that easy. First of all I was using mostly colours that I don't have as much experience with, that caused me a few issues. Then I discovered that my techniques for shading and highlighting don't quite work as well on this scale as the do on the smaller scales that I am used to. It didn't help that some of my less used paints had dried out due to neglect.

The biggest issue that I had was the yellow. I've never painted such a large area in yellow before, and I knew that yellow had poor coverage, so I decided to airbrush it over a white primer. I got some Vallejo Game Air Moon Yellow and ran it through a makeup airbrush that was... not completely suitable for the task. Anyway, I got a nice bright yellow basecoat and was happy with that.

Until I came back to try to clean up my mistakes that is. I hadn't much experience with Vallejo airbrush paints, so I didn't realise that their coverage is very poor when applied with a brush. I had to order some Vallejo Game Color Gold and Moon Yellow to try to touch things up. They also had poor coverage (as most yellow acrylics do), but they were at least usable. Except, as I discovered, by the time you build up Moon Yellow to a solid colour it's actually darker and slightly more reddish than the colour I had built up with a few light passes with the airbrush earlier. I managed to reduce the colour difference by mixing in some white, and luckily the trouble spots are subtle.

By the way, I had a hell of a time trying to mix a dark yellow for the background. There aren't really many "dark yellow" paints; most yellow "lines" darken into orange, but I wanted, well, dark yellow, not orange. I tried various mixes of GW foundation Iyanden Darksun with browns like GW Snakebite Leather, along with various attempts at glazes to darken without introducing too much red. By the end I had put down so much paint that I couldn't even get a smooth surface anymore. I don't even really remember what the colour was that I ended up settling on; it might have been or included Vallejo Kakhi Brown, but I don't remember for certain.

Close-up to show off some of the details.

I mixed P3 Morrow White into the Moon Yellow for the frame highlights. I believe I used Army Painter Red Tone Wash (which is only reddish and not actually red) to shade the yellow. The skin was GW Fulgrim Pink, washed with I believe GW Baal Red, and mixed with white for highlights and GW Blue Horror for the veins. The mouth was done with mixes of the pink with Vallejo Scarlett Blood. Krang's control sticks were Vallejo Neutral Grey highlighted with Sky Grey and washed with Arm Painter Dark Tone Wash. I used GW Liche Purple and Dechala Lilac for the eyes, with Vallejo Black for the pupils. Some of the paints used:

Initially I had the buckle mounted to a piece of cardboard, but I later designed and 3D printed a "handle" that I mounted the piece to, to make it easier to... um... handle.

After applying a couple of VERY heavy layers of varnish and attaching the metal bits to the back I managed to get it all ready JUST in time for my friend's birthday... only to not be able to give it to him that day for various reasons. Well, it was a few days late, but at least it was a surprise!