So I did a bit of work on the Hog this evening. I think the windows sort of work. At least you can tell what they are meant to be.
I got the door gunner with some paint on too.
I have reprinted the two I did on the FDM, this time on the resin machine.
Be warned, this is probably going to be a rambling, stream of consciousness post. Plus I started writing it a couple of weeks ago now and have edited loads. Hopefully it still makes sense.
So, as you probably know, I print and paint as well as paint purchased miniatures and terrain. As part of this I watch many, many YouTube channels. Quite a lot of them tell me to do x or y to improve my painting. Some go as far as to tell me to try something new.
The question I want to ask is ‘why’?
Now before I start, this is a personal question and I am not telling anyone what to do/not do.
I have been painting miniatures for about 35 years. Over time have I improved… yes of course I have. Over those years have I tried new things, again yes.
I am now in a happy little groove, some may see it as a rut. I love my Contrast paints and pretty much use them all the time. So much so I have ordered a set of the Vallejo xpress range. So in reality I am trying something new 😉
Now what about this question. I recently watched Dave on MS Paints asking a question about why miniatures look terrible..
He made an interesting observation, if your miniature does not look like how you envisaged it from either the box art or your favourite YouTube influencer then you have a 180 degree shift in feeling from good… to crap in a heartbeat. I actually watched a video that auto loaded the other day it was a guy painting yellow and as we all know, yellow is a sod of a colour to paint. Anyway he did a close up and there was paint (shall we say) where it shouldn’t have been and it actually made me happy. It was almost like … Yey someone like me. I didn’t read the comments as I was actually worried the keyboard warriors would be in pointing it out.
I am of the opinion that good enough is good enough for what I want. If I entered competitions then I may feel different. I am an amateur, my painting style is that of an amateur and I will probably happily carry on in this vein until I find a different way to do things.
Just to show that I have made improvements over time, both of these were painted quickly for a game.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that to my knowledge I am not deliberately going out of my way to improve. It is happening in a more organic way. Funnily enough I have almost stopped watching painting videos on YouTube.
I am actually in awe of the skill of some people. They take the same amount of time to paint an arm as I take to paint a squad (or possibly an army). The final miniature is exquisite whereas mine are definitely at the other end of the scale… I go for the one metre rule… or maybe ten metres with 28mm.
So if you have got to the end of this, you deserve a medal.
If you remember I said that GW had sent us their Alliance box for the Geek Club.
This came with a pile of miniatures, a set of paints and probably the worst brushes I have ever seen. The ones from Wish were as good or even better. It was me using one of the brushes and not the kids.
The other thing it came with was a little booklet on what else they can get. So me being me showed them how much things cost… they know how much the resin miniatures cost so there were lots of ‘Woah’, ‘Ehhh’ and ‘HOW Much!!!’
They do want to have a go with the stuff after they have finished their current miniatures.
They also got a little piece of plasticised card that acts as a mixing palette. There were a couple of cardboard gaming boards and dice with rules to play the games. Their little booklet had some colour in pages to help decide on what colours to use.
So what do I think of the box… if I wanted to buy what was in there it would cost me loads of cash. There is a lot of plastic in there. Problem is if I wanted to play an actual game then then the kids would have to sell hundreds more.
While I realise the box is designed to get younger kids into the very expensive GW world, they were the only ones to actually respond and to offer something.
I really doubt any of them are going to be galloping off to the local toy shop, but at the end of the day if they decide to then I will support them in whatever way I can.
Well some of you may remember that a while a while ago I posted that I was in chronic pain. The Doctor was investigating and narrowed it down to Poly myalgia or fibro myalgia. Well after draining about an arm full of blood over the last six weeks he has decided on the former, which thankfully is treatable.
So I am now on about an 18 month to two year course of steroids. I started on Wednesday and by Friday the pain had pretty much gone. Because I am a pillock I did too much yesterday so today I am taking it easy 😉
So, because I am going to be on steroids long term then I am going to also have to go on other medication to counteract some of the side effects.
So there you go folks, a huge thank you to the people who got in touch it really did help me realise that that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
If you remember, last night I said I was concerned that the Resin Huey had a void that could contain liquid resin. Today I drilled out the exhaust to find out. It did!
I stood it on its end to drain it out and made a rookie mistake. I forgot to drill an air hole to allow the liquid to escape easier. It oozed instead of ran and as such, I forgot about it and it has messed up the print. It really didn’t help that I forgot about it and it cured.
I have all the bits now apart from the main rotor. That will have to be done on the FDM.
I will have to sand the lump of cured resin off too.
Today has been a crap day health wise. Felt dizzy and in pain all day. Luckily I have a phone appointment with the doctor tomorrow morning.
Well I haven’t totally forgot about my Mordheim plans… it has just got derailed a bit by some goblins and the Nam. I managed to do a bit of painting today…
As soon as I got home I scampered down to the printer shed to see what my APC and boat looked like…. well it looked like this….
Although the power had returned to the house, the printer does not automatically restart. So I will probably have to wait until tomorrow to show you these.
After taking the photo I restarted the printer and fingers crossed it seems to be on track to complete them.
So if yo remember, last night I showed the Huey after fighting withe supports. Eric very kindly reminded me about tree supports l. I could never find them before. He was correct that I needed to get into the settings to enable them.
So we have tree supports left and standard on the right. We shall see in another eight hours whether things are better.
Coming back from the shed I noticed a bit of colour in the sky…
Well this, whatever it is is back . I am hobbling around the house like an octogenarian with bad feet.
Needless to say this hasn’t exactly made me enamoured to the thought of painting anything. I have sliced the Huey and am printing it on the FDM printer to save pennies. If it is naff then I will do it on the resin one. This is where we are up to so far…
The above is showing a lot of supports, the Huey front end is starting to form.
On thé up side, dinner this evening was followed by cake!
Well if you remember I was commenting on the fact that we had written to a load of companies to ask if they would be willing to support us. Of the nine letters sent, one, with sadness, said they couldn’t help. Which is absolutely fine, I am just pleased they replied.
However, the big news is… I wrote to Games Workshop and lo and behold they replied within the day. To cut a long story short they are sending me a school starter pack.
So a big shout out to them. The caveat is that it is their way to hook kids in. I recognise that and accept it. But at least they are supporting us.
Bogenwald 