So today I set up the village and shrine with a few miniatures too.
I am really pleased with how everything came out. I was going to flock the edges of the pond, but decided against it. I may have a rethink tomorrow and do it anyway 😊
Another view of the same scene!
So that is everything done, including varnishes too. The only thing missing is the rice cart…
I also managed to get some more done on the 6mm lizards…
They aren’t looking too exciting at the minute and I think I may have done the crossbows a bit too dark, but we shall see tomorrow.
Today was a bit of a productive day, I have pretty much finished all of my mates birthday present. The Buddha and Tori gate have been neglected, so I gave them a bit of vegetation. I am not sure whether I like the bits on the statue, but it may grow on me. The last bit to do is the wagon with the rice bales on it..
I also managed to make a start on a 6mm Lizardmen Army, I decided to give these a go as I wanted to have some practice before I went for 6mm Samurai. I was thinking of doing a 6mm Sengoku participation game in the October games day (that is if it goes ahead).
Yeah the colours are a bit GW, but I couldn’t think of what other colour to do them. I will do a bit more tomorrow evening on these.
So today I decided that I needed to get some water into the ponds and paddy fields and here is the result…
I added clear to the ponds then put a couple of drops of sepia ink into the paddy fields. This is the first time I think I have used a two part resin. I have used other stuff years ago… so absolutely no idea what his will end up like.
I also got all the miniatures and buildings coated in a couple of layers of Matt varnish. The shrine and fences have been coated too.
Hopefully by tomorrow I will know whether the resin pour worked 🤞
If it has I will get these flocked up to go with the miniatures. Soon I will be moving onto these.
Tonight I got a bit of a wiggle on and got some more done on the fences…
All 3DAlienWorlds apart from the Buddha
I have misplaced the foam flock that I used on the village roofs. I wanted it for the Tori and the Buddha. Hopefully it will turn up tomorrow.
The minis and houses have all had two blasts of gloss varnish. I will give them a blast with the Matt one tomorrow.
I also found a pile more 6mm fantasy, some Irregular miniatures Lizardmen and wood elves I think. I also have the sons of Set army too which would probably go well with the Samurai as they are the fantasy version of them.
WordPress is eventually costing me money as I ran out of space last night. I really never expected that day to come, I will just have to take less photos or blog less often….nah, I have two years to fill up 6GB… challenge accepted 😂
I decided to get the Battle Valour minis stuck onto their bases this evening. I have the half dozen Oni who will become something for my monster hunters to hunt down. I may get some of the other beasties that Battle Valour have.
I was going to get some of the buildings done tonight, but it never happened. Hopefully I will get some more done tomorrow evening.
On the home front, my wife got a message to call her boss this morning, even though she has a meeting with him tomorrow. As you can imagine we were fearing the worst, but thankfully he asked her to come back to work starting onWednesday. She will still be working from home, but the problem we have now is how to get the kids work done from their school.
I just can’t wait to get on the road again… actually my times on the roads are coming to an end… a couple of 90 degree bends and perhaps another couple of straights then I will see what it covers.
The table it is sitting on up to the line is 70x75cm. I think there were four straights still sitting there out of shot. So the road is quite long now.
These are printed at 50%, the full sized ones are huge.
So that is it, the miniatures are all painted and based. I need to get the bases sealed with watered down PVA and then everything varnished. But thank the lord for that. These have been a bit of a chore, but at least they are finished.
These seem to have taken a lot longer than I thought they would. I suppose in all honesty I have been making and painting the terrain that came off the printer, so it isn’t really surprising.
A bit more of a close up shot.
Tomorrow I will get on with buildings and hopefully get them sorted soon.
When I found my 6mm Samurai I noticed that they were all on cardboard bases. This got me thinking as to things that have changed over the years.
I hated basing armies as you had to cut out your own bases out of either beer mats or mounting card. It took forever and I for one could never get the bases at ninety degrees all of the time. Jump forwards a few years and voila, you pay someone pennies to cut you some out of MDF. These can really be any size that you want.
Then there was the paint, highly smelly humbrol enamels. Or oil paints. I only ever tried oil paints once on a 54mm Airfix model. I don’t think it ever dried. The enamel wasn’t much better. Now we have a plethora of paints, from airbrush paints right the way through to the oils and the enamels. Of course there is my favourite go to paint in the Contrast Paints… I really must try painting with other ones again before I forget how.
Models themselves were sometimes blobs of metal or there was plastic in the terms of Airfix. My first armies were of course these. unpainted as I didn’t have the knowledge or inclinations paint them. My first ‘real’ war games army were the old Donnington 15mm Early Germans. my mate went Imperial Roman. Compared to 15mm miniatures today they are so dated… but funnily enough here I am using them and adding to them for my HOTT army.
With regards to that, here I am with Tin soldier 15mm Aztecs and conquistadors, original army sold years ago. I seem to be rebuilding all of my armies from my youth. All I need now are Museum miniatures crusaders, Two Dragon Samurai and Essex Miniatures early imperial Roman and I am there. Oh and a pile of ACW confederate troops from Essex I think.
I suppose one of the biggest changes now is the internet. I can now talk to manufactures or sellers in real time. If I want to compare miniature sizes someone out there will have done some pictures. There are so many different manufacturers out there too, so the Magpie approach to ‘my’ hobby is really bad for my wallet. It used to be the case I went to a convention and saw some great games and go and get enthused and come away with an army of Goblin Monkey riding ninja, which would end up in the bring and buy three years later …unopened! Now I can buy them whilst sat on the toilet! YouTube let’s me watch other people painting things or even playing the rules of my ‘new game’ all great stuff.
Blogging… yep it is great. I have met (virtually) some amazing people in all parts of the world. Without this here blog I never would have had the privilege of meeting them. I can honestly say that the people that are following my blog Are extremely supportive, and I hope I am for them. I have had only a couple of problems, and that is mainly people posting dodgy links as messages, they get deleted as soon as I see them.
And finally for me especially… the elephant in the room (although I haven’t printed it yet) is my 3D Printer. I remember many years ago my mate and I talking about how great it would be to get someone to make an us an army of our choosing. We talked about how much it would cost to get a sculptor to do it and then to get someone to cast them up. We did think about Prince August moulds at the time, but it never really got off the ground. Roll forward 30 years and I am printing my own miniatures and terrain in my shed. I pay for a file and print as many as I want for pennies. It gets even better than that. I can get things free and print them for pennies.
The down side of the printer is that it is sometimes too easy and cheap and I have printed so much crap that I will never use! My next consideration is to move into resin printing and give that a bash. Maybe Christmas next year.
The one thing that I do miss is going to conventions. Yeah I could go to some in time, and I did think about going to one of the Scottish ones next year just for the hell of it … If I manage it no doubt I will come back with some Goblin, Monkey riding ninja!
There are bucket loads of other things that have changed so much, but these are the ones that really just popped into my head. So what do you reckon are the big changes
Bogenwald 