Adepticon 2013

This past weekend I was lucky enough to be at Adepticon and even though I was not in any tournaments, I had a good time. My main reason for going was to meet my friends from Google hangout and to take pictures of awesome miniatures and whatever. It was achieved.

If you want to see all the pictures, you can go to my Google+ page but here are some highlights of the event.

More robes

I never liked how my terminators looked in the robes I sculpted. Like I mentioned in my previous blog, they looked more like flax jackets then robes. So I decided to handle that by going through the process of striping the green stuff off of them with an X-acto knife. I ended up cutting their details off and shaving into their plastic and my fingers. I did this, not intentionally to my fingers, because I noticed with the extra material on them, their chests looked bigger as if they are fat people in suits so by shaving some plastic off, it will make the robes look like robes.

So here is the new robes I put on them. I am fairly satisfied with the outcome. The biggest change I made was actually using Vaseline instead of water as a smooth agent for my green stuff and trust me, vaseline makes a lot of different in terms of how smooth you can get it. Also, I added some back cloth on one of them. The reason I don't have them all four is because I re-sculpted that guy's front robes yesterday. So the green stuff has cured.

The robes of horror (to my mind)

After I gotten myself together and focused on the tasks I had scheduled up in my head, I finally came around to do some green stuff work on my Terminators. The process begun with me researching over the net for various tutorials and I did find many helpful tips and tricks but in the end, I went in with my own "image" of how robes were sculpted. The results are the picture to the right. Yes, they look strange and totally not like robes. Having seen what horror I have made upon my terminators, I knew these robes will never work and if I stick with them, the painting will be equally as horrific. During the waiting period, I went back to the drawing board and back to my vault of tutorials. I decided I will make my robes simple, not the complexed ones I sort out to do.

This is what I got. Yes, they still don't really look like robes but more like flax jackets. Well, maybe they do look like robes but my high expectation of my skills just make anything I do look bad. Working with green stuff is hard and is the part of the hobby where I both love and hate. The fact that I have gotten this far in terms of scuplting skills has already impressed me. I am normally more of a quitter if things get too hard. Anyways, this is what I got so far. Maybe by adding some rope for belts and some loin cloths will make these terminators look more robes than jackets.

The boys are up and running

Today I came to my peace with the fact I will not be making all of my Deathwing individually unique in terms of poses and equipment. There was too much work involved in them and I did not want to do all of it. Plus, I need to start thinking about how to paint these guys and GW changing their line does not help with that. Anyways, I started working on the boxes I had since a month and a half ago. Basic cutting here and there, gluing this and that together, filing a bit where needed and I got myself two squads of Deathwing ready to be painted. At first I was really reluctant to put on the shields since it will be blocking 80% of the model from direct or at a good angle from a brush. In the end, I gave in to my inner self of laziness and just slapped them on. I painted them like this before and I believe 90% of people paint them like this, so who cares at this point!

However, I am looking to switch permanently to Vallerjo since I already ordered an airbrush and its whole nine yards. I am not sure how the new paints from GW will react to an airbrush. I will let someone with time and money to burn do that review. I am looking forward to getting my order since it is the biggest package I will be receiving since I have been here, both in terms of size and price (minus my computer of course) Also, if you ever had or planned to buy an airbrush you will know that Vallerjo has one of the best paint lines to use directly with it. They have hundreds upon hundreds of paint pots to choose from as well as any additional "technical" pots you may need such as retarders and thinners. So I may be looking to getting my hands on some when the life of my current GW pots die out.

Last thing for today, I tried to work out Bilial's cape and failed miserably. Luckily $10 of greenstuff will last you a life time and screw ups are normal for beginner sculptors. Yet, I wanted to show what he looks like so far, but I did not see a point of creating a separate Bilial blog entry.