This evening I got my finger out and started on some of the 15mm Samurai forces.
I have made a sort of Bandit force that includes some Ronin and a renegade monk.
The above were all painted with the Dipping Inks. I am really pleased with the majority of them. The only one that is a bit weird is the black shadow dip. I like it, but the guy front right has his kimono painted with it. It is more a grey green. Basically to me, it is a naming thing rather than a useless colour. For full disclosure I had heard this and ordered it anyway as it is a useful colour.
I still have the following dips to try out.
Hopefully I will get some more done tomorrow. I am now off to order the shrine set from 3DAlienworlds.
Today I cracked on and bit the bullet to get the last thirty six undead based (actually there were thirty eight 😉). I had to force myself to get the last dozen done.Tomorrow I am going to go to town with the rust etc…
My youngest and I are now on a count down to our trip south. Thursday will roll up soon enough, but tomorrow my hire digger arrives to get the potholes flattened out. So watch out for digger photos tomorrow.
So this evening I wasn’t in the mood for a massive basing session so I did a set of 24 Zombies.
I think I have double this number to go, then onto the rust, verdigris and moss on the miniatures that need them. Then tufts and a Matt varnish.
This afternoon we went to Reawick beach with the kids and dogs. You can see the post Here.
This morning however the air turned blue above the printer shed. I decided to fire up the filament printer to start doing some buildings for the various scales and as you might have guessed it decided to playbsilly buggers…the blasted thing wouldn’t push the filament through. It isn’t a blockage, it looks like there is an issue with the extruder itself. I have an aluminium top on it, but for some reason the guide wheel is not engaging with the filament meaning that although the grooved bit is doing its job, it isn’t pushing against anything so it is basically just spinning and gouging out the filament.
I spent ages redoing test, after test but it just wouldn’t play at all, so in desperation I have ordered a direct drive extruder along with a bed levelling probe.
So, because I cannot just use an army as it comes in the box, I just had to print myself some extra bits, namely some more shot troops and a couple of minis for the command base.
Unfortunately they are a bit on the big side, but I may just leave them as they are as the majority will be on their own bases.
I am still a bit knackered so didn’t bother trying to paint anything this evening.
Well, I have worked on this army for two weeks now and the end is in sight… tonight I got the Wraith cavalry done…
By my reckoning it leaves the big beastie and the rider to go….
Upon saying, nearly done, I still need to do the varnishing, oil wash and flocking… but the painting is nearly over!
I also redid the Giant and added a bit more to the build plate. I dropped some 28mm Imperials down to make some different guns… not sure why to be honest!
It has been a productive day, but I think I need a break from painting soon. Luckily Joe is coming over for a game tomorrow evening… a good excuse to have a break.
Today I was in and out a fair bit but I did manage to get some painting done… to be honest I am getting a bit sick of painting 🤯. But needs must as they say!
So first up are the Dinocrocuta… these are almost finished….
Really just the two armoured ones to work on.
I also did a lot more on the ghouls…
And finally I got going on the crossbows…
Once the crossbows are done then I have eight riders of various sorts and the big beastie to do. Although I complained about lots of painting, I only really have myself to blame as I added two dozen miniatures to the pile.
Well I got a fair bit done today… the most boring was painting 125 bases brown… so now you know the size of my undead army. As I had the brown out I painted the last twelve that were still in their white undercoat…
So that is ninety ready to get a varnish and various other bits added like rust and ver de gris as well as a bit of grubiness. I actually bought some oil paints and sponges…just waiting on the solvent to get going…
I painted the big ghouls and was pleased with the results…
As you can see I did another Wraith…this time in red…it will be a champion or something…
I also made a decision on the Dinocrocuta, in the end I went for the greys rather than the red and black…thanks to everyone who gave some input. It was pretty much 50:50. In the end I went grey as I was going to do the mounted wraiths in the same red, so this way there wouldn’t be another colour in the mix…
Now these have got a long way to go, but they are definitely getting there.
Hopefully I will get them finished tomorrow, the Dinocrocuta that is, not everything. My wife and two eldest are off gallivanting South tomorrow evening, so it will just be me and my son tomorrow evening. Joe and I are doing a painting and gaming day on Monday again so I should get a long way with things again.
Today I cracked on and got the remaining nine Zombies finished…
This now gives me two units of twelve for Dragon Rampant, or a horde for other games.
I also spent a good while ‘building’ a set of zombie crossbows. There are nine distinct ones and three that are mirrors of some others. I know I said I wouldn’t print any more, but I still had some resin in the vat and it should be enough for the twelve miniatures. Now as I mentioned the Ian Lovecraft ones are a lot bigger than the rest so I took the height down to 92% and the other two planes at 88% to try and match in with the current batch. I will find out tomorrow if I have cocked it up 🤞🤞🤞.
And finally I need a bit of help on deciding on the colour for the Dinocrocuta… I decided to go away from a natural brown colour to something a bit more fantasyesque…
I have got the red/black or the white/grey. I like them both and cannot decide on which way to go. Both take seconds to do, so neither is harder than the other… what do people think… which would work well for an undead army?
Tonight I worked on my spectral steeds. They were a bit of faff with all the colour transitions from the bone to grey to green, but I think it kind of worked…
I should hopefully get a good crack on with the riders tomorrow as well as finish these off… on second thoughts I think I will finish these and then get on with the zombies… speaking of which… I just remembered today that I have a pile of multiple zombies on my hard drive from the Frost Kickstarter…I may have to go and have a peek. The Frost ones though are huge, so a lot of shrinking will be required. Not that I am printing anything else until the undead are done …cough, cough!
Anyway whilst painting the above I was watching a live stream by the Basic Brush… I follow him on YouTube. It was nice to sort of chat on the keyboard… well worth a watch in my opinion. I have mentioned him before when I was talking about the issues with the speedpaints…
You may have noticed the grey ghouls I the above photo. These are the scaled ones mentioned yesterday. The 90% size is what I wanted so I am pretty pleased with them. In hindsight I should have added the head in the software rather than trying to get it glued onto some of them between a raised bone and a neck. It is a miracle that they actually all had heads… if I do decide to print some of the Frost ones then they will be built electronically and printed out as a one piece.
Talking of printing things, if you remember, the big beastie is hollow, today I got all the components to make a small device to shove where the sun does not shine…
The light is a UV one to shove inside hollow models to cure the resin inside. Unfortunately the drain holes on the big one were too small to go right inside, but I was able to shine the lights in to help. Usually I would decide on the size of the drain hole, but these were built in and it never occurred to me to check, otherwise I could have added my own.
He is now undercoated with a zenithal highlight to help with the light and dark.
Well sort of…I still need to get the washes on to add some shading.
So this week I have painted 62 miniatures…. somwhat is left from the printed lot… six wraith cavalry and the mounted Liche and then the zombies… so I reckon that by this time next week I should have the whole army finished…. well hopefully 🤞🤞🤞.
The remaining miniatures are almost all undercoated so I will make a start on the zombies tomorrow.
Today we power washed the stables at the farm…
It got a bit wet in there… but we got it all cleaned off…I now ache though… hoisting twenty odd 6×4 rubber mats that are an inch thick takes its toll.
Bogenwald 