20,000 years later

Well, OK, more like two years, but still: I let this guy sit unpainted for FAR too long after finishing his assembly. I think he was actually pretty much done in early 2016. Unfortunately for him Harkevich had precedence (both for being a Khador model and for having the more interested lighting system that I was eager to finish and show off). After that I wasn't getting any games in anymore so my old plan of putting together a small Cygnar force no longer seemed to matter very much.

He wasn't too bad to paint: not too many different surfaces, and not too much extraneous detail. I initially painted the cloth in a neutral grey, but it looked terrible so I repainted it in warmer shades. It's amazing how much difference that made, but it looks much better now. The shading on the cloth was somewhat experimental, but I think it came out quite well overall (though the midtones might not be quite dark enough compared to the highlights).

I pretty much just used my standard colour palette for everything. The coils (which were made from acrylic rod that I had filed and sanded into shape) were simply glazed with undiluted Badger Minitaire Ghost Tints: Plasma Fluid. I took a shortcut with the armour and simply painted it Enchanted Blue then applied Asurmen Blue wash directly into the crevasses. I did drybrush a bit of Enchanted Blue over some of the shaded areas to soften the transitions before highlighting with Ice Blue.

The coils aren't as bright in real life as they look in the photos; I don't know why but that always seems to happen. This really dark photo is actually a bit closer to how they look in normal room lighting:

I made a mistake when gluing the rear coil in place; I don't think I positioned it properly (it was supposed to be glued directly onto the LED for maximum light transmission), which I think is why it's so much darker despite having a larger, brighter LED. I couldn't fix it by that point without ripping the whole model apart.

I've already posted about how I assembled the base in my tutorial on powered and light-up bases, but here's a bunch of WIP photos of the assembly of the body:

I cut and drilled the old staff out of the hand.

I didn't like the cables so I carved them off and sculpted back the detail as best I could.

I didn't really have a line to drill straight up the leg into the body, so I drilled two holes instead.

A large hole for the large coil.

A second hole to help me position the wires and LED.

The head of the staff, with a hole for the shaft.

I drilled out all the original holes in the "shielding".

The topmost part of the staff... drilling out such tiny pieces isn't easy.

After my first attempt failed I had to order another off the PP bits store and try again.

The large(ish) LED for the main coil.

Even my smallest LEDs weren't small enough to fit the staff properly.

So I filed the corners off a small LED to help it fit.

Soldering these tiny LEDs is really hard, several did not survive.

Ultimately I had to twist together and glue some wire BEFORE soldering to the LED.

Once soldered I threaded the wire through the copper tube that would serve as the shaft.

Superglue and primer was used as extra insulation, to be on the safe side.

Similarly the holes in the body were insulated as best I could with primer.

The wires were passed up the body, glued into the leg, then sculpted over.

The large LED in it's final position.

You can see the two pairs of wires passing through the base.

The twisted wire of course goes directly into the staff.

Soldered up and magnets glued in place (for transport). After this it was filled with milliput.

You can see here how I ended up cutting the body in half and repositioning it.

This was partly to help with the wiring and partly to fix the "pointing while doing the limbo" pose.

The left arm was reposed slightly and the gap sculpted over as best I could.

It wouldn't have made sense to add the smaller coils since they couldn't be made to glow.

You can see the LED in place here.

The final test fit before priming.

The head worked out quite well; I was never a fan of the original "steampunk Einstein" look, and since this is Nemo's first incarnation I decided it was appropriate to make him looker younger than usual. The head was donated from my second Croe model, who received his own conversion. It's surprisingly "craggy", so he still looks a bit aged. I wasn't a big fan of the expression, but a sculpted goatee helped cover that up.

While the rear coil not lighting up properly is a shame, overall I think the model looks good (and as usual I'm just glad he's finally done). The coils actually look pretty good even when not lit up, and I think the paint scheme is visually pleasing (even if it's quite uninspired, being pure vanilla Cygnar). Plus I think my repose looks a bit better than the original.

I named him Joules Verne, which I happen to think is a hilarious name that is highly appropriate for him.

Soviet Steel

I finally went back to my X-Men miniatures. I figured Colossus would be quite quick to paint, and he would have been if I'd had the time and motivation to actually sit down and finish him. Sadly, lately I've been lacking in both.

The other reason I elected to paint him next out of my superhero figures was that I figured he would be a good model to test out an idea I had. You see, I've been focusing on painting smooth gradients across organic shapes (that is, comic book style muscles) when painting my Knight Models minis. So far I've been painting each gradient with a single colour, however with some miniatures - such as Pyotr here - there's instances where a single shape (muscle) requires painting in two colours. This would mean trying to match the gradient when painting two different colours at two different times.

This sounds challenging to me, so I wanted to see if there was an easier way. I've read in the past about shading in greyscale then applying colour on top; this sounded like it could solve my problem, so I decided to try it here.

I painted the metallic skin first, trying to get smooth blends from darker to brighter metallic shades the same as I would with normal skin/spandex (I believe this is similar to "true metallic metal" techniques). Then I painted the rest of the model in various shades of grey (I purchased several new greys specifically for this; I think I have around 8 different shades now, and I still think I need more sometimes), building up my gradients as before using heavily thinned paint mixed with medium and drying retarder. Finally I applied a wash of Badab Black over both the metal skin and the spandex costume. I think the first wash was watered down, then I applied straight Badab Black into recesses such as the lines across his skin for extra shading.

I then glazed the different areas of his costume with Badger Minitaire Ghost Tints: Fresh Blood and Yellow. Finally his hair was Vallejo Black-Grey drybrushed with Mithril Silver (I think). His eyes were just dots of Scale75 Speed Metal.

The whole experiment didn't work as well as I had hoped. The colours came out darker than I had expected - especially the red. Meanwhile the raised areas (which were also the brightest highlights) weren't as saturated as I had hoped - you can see the red is quite pale (without necessarily being overly bright) in some areas, especially around the legs and shoulders. The gradients don't look as good as I had hoped either; they look a bit flat to me overall. Perhaps I could have avoided that if I had added more contrast in the greyscale stage, but I think I will try painting the next "dual-colour" costumed model more traditionally, and just try to match the gradients manually.

Having said all that, I think he looks decent overall. Not one of my best to be sure, but certainly table-ready.

One of the better Knight Models casts I've had, although some of the muscle striations were lost and I had to try to carve some back in. As usual I tried to add a bit of variation to his base.

You can see his card in the background, which I was using as a reference.

I named him Ivan Danko, after a Russian character played by seven-time Mr. Olympia winner Arnold Schwarzenegger. I think it fits.

This bed is too small

I wanted to build a bed extension for my CNC machine. First of all, this would allow me to move the clamps a little bit farther back, giving me slightly more practical working area. Second, it would theoretically allow me to use the CNC machine a little like a pillar drill, since the milling head can actually extend slightly beyond the end of the aluminium bed.

After carefully measuring the CNC machine, I designed the bed extension to bolt onto the end plate, making sure to allow for the existing screws etc. In order to bolt it on I drilled two holes through the end plate, using the existing grooves to help me maintain a consistent height.

Now that I could take the final measurements (to make sure I wasn't off on the position of the holes I had cut), I generated the g-code and milled it out. I used my new 90 degree V-bit to cut the large grooves.

Finally I bolted the first plate to the machine, and the second plate to the first. This way I could grip something between the two like a vice. It all fit together quite well.

I haven't actually tested it yet; but of course I can always cut a new one if needs be. The only real issue that I see is that the mill head might not extend far to use it the way I would like; I believe it would be possible to extend the distance that the mill head can reach if I was willing to dissassemble the machine and take some material off from the beam the crosses under the bed, but I really don't want to have to do that, so fingers crossed that I won't need to.