Tonight I fought the laptop to a standstill. It was being what is technically called an absolute ‘b*stard’! It kept on crashing the software then it wouldn’t find the external hard drive where all of the STL’s are stored. Eventually after much swearing and threatening the use of a hammer then I got it working.
I found that the STL’s were as a block so don’t fit on the plate. This means an annoying amount of work sorting them out into individual miniatures. To be honest they do look huge, so maybe they have got bigger somehow. I will have to measure them to see. I reckon I will get two or three to the plate. Luckily my mate doesn’t want them tomorrow!
After taking this photo the bloody thing then decided to run out of battery. I will fight with it again tomorrow.
I do have this lot to print for myself…
The savage nomads are evidently cannibals as can be seen by their meat store. There are some really nice bits and bobs amongst them. The elves are modular.
I decided to get the diorama finished tonight. I went for some blood in the end, I think it looks okay. Not much, but a bit of red to give a bit more to the story.
I also got some paint put onto some more of the 3D printed stuff. I needed the superglue to repair a few miniatures too.
We had a bit of excitement in school today as a pod of Orca came into the bay. We went for a look, but by time we got out they were motoring away…
You can just about see them in the photo…
We took the kids for a walk down to the pier, it was a nice morning for it…
Bloody Hell, tonight I actually picked up a paintbrush and even got as far as slapping some paint on some 6mm Samurai as well as some in 15mm, however… the amount I put on would be difficult to measure without some extremely sensitive equipment.
The other thing I did was consider a couple of ideas for another diorama…
One is entitled ‘He’s Behind You’ and the other hasn’t got a name yet…
I used some of the printed miniatures that I had to get some ideas down so to speak. The first one will have a fair few bushes and I might even try another tree or two… deciduous this time, as for the other, more tundra looking environments.
Today I managed to get some more of the wolves done. They, like the rhino, need some Matt varnish. I haven’t quite decided on how everything will look in the end. So this is a starter for ten.
So this is where we have got to in the build. Part of me thinks that the wolves are a bit dark for this, but it is how they are in reality. I may have a play around with them and see how I get on.
Next question is blood on the calf or not….? I think not, but maybe I should.
So after yesterday’s torrential rain and gales, today we had blizzards. Driving snow and more wind. Thankfully it didn’t stay around long. Shetland is known for having four seasons in a day, so two in two days isn’t too bad really.
It is my son’s 10th birthday today, so fish and chips and cake for tea followed by a film of his choice… Home Alone… so whilst watching this I managed to get some work done on the rhino and the wolves…
As you can tell from the photos they are still a bit wet with the darker colours. I dry brushed the sand with a white coat and then added the Contrast paints over the top.
Tomorrow I hope to get these finished and then get them onto the base.
So tonight I managed to get the trees reflocked, blasted with hairspray and then given a couple of coats of Matt varnish to try and seal the whole lot down.
Not exactly the world’s best photo, but I think you can see what I was aiming for.
I also made a start on the animals, I couldn’t be bothered to try to get them undercoated white, so instead I just brushed on some Foundry ‘Canvas A’ paint. In doing so I sadly snapped off one of the feet off a wolf.
He is the wolf nearest to the rhino, his foot is the grey lump sitting next to the right hand wold. Luckily I didn’t drop it so a bit of superglue fixed the problem after the photo was taken (I finished undercoating everything too).
I am starting to get a little worried as to how this whole thing is going to look when finished. Not sure why, probably just cold feet as it has taken me so long…
And finally, shock horror, my blog has now had, at last check, 6012 visitors with 19200 views. That is pretty amazing if I say so myself. I never ever, ever though I would get 1000 visitors. So a big thank you to everyone who has popped by and to everyone who keeps coming back. I really do appreciate it. ❣️
Today I bought some brown spray paint, it was a satin finish, but for the trees I really doubt it will matter. So the four I did last night were given a spray…
From this…To this, (the sun was going down when I took the photo… so apologies for the crap photo).
I then hunted out my hair spray and gave them a dashed good squirt and then a blast with flock. I found that there was too much liquid on them and the flock dropped off when attached to droplets. I gave the next one a spin after soaking it. This certainly helped as less plopped off.
The lighting was a bit crap in the house, but I reckon you can see the difference between attempt one and attempt two…
Not perfect, but loads better than yesterday’s version…
I will give them a blast of watered down PVA tomorrow and seal this lot in, or possibly will do the lighter flock for highlights first then onto the sealing. As you can see from the photo above the flock is very loose on the hairspray version, hardly any fell off on the spray glue…
I will have another go at making some more trees tomorrow (or start tonight) and then try again with the hairspray, another option is to retry the spray glue. One of the thing it has is this button that you turn to change the spray flow.
So Facebook has this memory thing that keeps popping up, today was a cracker from six years ago when my son was four…
We were watching a nature programme and he suddenly said..
“Why aren’t those camels blue?”
“Well camels aren’t blue.” I replied.
“Arctic camels are! Arctic camels are blue!”
“There aren’t any camels in the arctic!”
“That’s because polar bears eat them!” He replied.
“James, they cannot life in the arctic as it is too cold.”
“That’s why they are blue!” he said triumphantly .
I tried really hard. “James, camels can’t get to the arctic as the sea is in the way.”
“Well they swim there!” He pointed out.
“I really don’t think camels can swim THAT well.”
“Ahhh Daddy, but you have forgotten, camels have swim knuckles!”
At that point I gave up… we never ever worked out what Swim Knuckles are.
So tonight I tried my super duper spray glue and totally ballsed up… I hadn’t realised that although super sticky, it was also foaming too…
So, after swearing lots, and lots and probably more than that I went back to square one and made another four. Tomorrow I will get the super hold hairspray out and give these a blast with that and then throw the flock on
I will get some lighter flock onto the other ones as a highlight so they are not a complete waste, it will give me practice in trying something new.
Bogenwald 