Random Things

Is it just me, or does anyone else tend to lose all sense of stability as to their time and place when they get sick? And I'm not talking like, "oh, I have allergies, my head is in a cloud blah blah blah" but like legitimate it-hurts-to-move-and-makes-you-dizzy-to-sit-up-and-focus-your-eyes sick. I'm not sure if it's exacerbated my insane hobby-ADHD or clarified how poorly I manage my myriad of distractions.

So, if you can't already tell, I'm taking a bunch of mucinex.

What's first? Ummmmmmm...

Oh, I painted another Ork for my Kill Team!

May I present my team's Leader, Arnold aka "Leg Day":

"Wiff my alllll-see'in eye..."

I couldn't decide what color to make his titan-shoulder guard so I opted for "dirty"

Overall super pleased with how he turned out, and enjoying this format of just sitting down for a night and knocking out a model in one session, letting inspiration carry me where it will for that given model rather than stressing about his adherence to a theme or fitting in with a unit.

Besides, the "powdah" (aka weathering powder, most powerful and sacred of all miniature painting utilities) I'm using on these guys end up bringing the theme right back together, making them all look like the same location is covering them in grime and filth.

Also last week, Artel miniatures posted a preview of some *incredible* orks they have coming out soon, and I will definitely need to add them to my growing forces!

That bottom middle ork jumping off a rock might be my favorite ork sculpt I've ever seen

So what else?

Inspired by talks I've been having with my gaming bro's as of late about playing some Zone Mortalis, I decided it's finally time to get out my corridor terrain sets (acquired through a couple of different kickstarters in the last few years), get the damn things fully assembled and painted, and use them on the table. Expect to see some more updates on these soon.

Advertised as a pretty simple set of "spaceship corridors", I feel like these work for bunker/laboratory settings, too.  I'm trying to give it a grungy, nurgle-y vibe without being too overt. Could work for a multitude of games!

A more complex set, these "Bug Hunt Corridors" were originally done with Space Hulk in mind. I'm trying to go with used/industrial spaceship or factory. I have slightly more of these, including several room modules.

The Bug Hunt Corridors actually already starred in a blog post here way back in 2015 (seriously, what) but I'm updating them now because 1) I never finished them and I want the paint job to look consistent across the whole set and 2) the old paint job looks better in the pictures because of the lighting than in person, where they are really way too dark. I want to throw in a bit of color and life and dirt and grime. Da powdah! (I mean, amirite Rambler?)

And finally, I've been stressing these past few days over what events to participate in during the upcoming NoVa convention this summer. The registration goes live on March 1st, so I need to have my events planned out and be ready to sign up on that date, then use the months between to get my forces ready and practice!

I'm going back and forth pretty hard on some things (looking at you Infinity and your damned 2-day event) and sizing up events I really hadn't considered before (Guild Ball and Necromunda), but our group did settle on one event:

Horus Heresy 30k Zone Mortalis.

Do I know how to play it?  Nope!

Do I have models for it?  Weirdly, yep!

Do I have any of those models assembled or painted?  Of course not!

Ermahgerd?  Ermahgerd.

"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines." - Claude Shannon

Green is the New Black (Ork Kill Team Part 2)

After managing through a super stressful week at work and illness invading our home, I stole away a few hours over the weekend to finally get some paint on some of these silly Ork bois.

It was upon first sitting down, though, that I realized I hadn't decided how I planned on doing the green skin.

"Maybe like an olive green? Or cartoony and bright!? Or a deep blue-green!?!? Or what about, like red or something weird!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"

I'm not much of a planner, when it comes to painting. As maybe my favorite aspect of the hobby, painting is something I typically lose myself in, and I just go with "whatever feels right" at the time. This means I can almost never repeat a scheme and need to paint whole units at a time, I almost never remember to write anything down, and there are many occasions where I look at painted figures on my shelf and wonder how I achieved a specific technique. It's not very practical, I guess, but it's how I do things. 

So, I've decided it's super cool and perfectly fine if all of my orks have variations to their skin tones, rather than being a uniform green across the Kill Team (and eventually 40k force, but more on that later).

Looking through the wonder that is Pinterest, I found basically too many schemes that were cool, so I figured I'd just start trying stuff until I was happy with it.

First, I decided to break out the airbrush to simulate a technique I saw in this wonderful video (though his skills are far superior) where you put on a base green and throw a zenithal highlight using a typical "flesh" color before busting out washes and brushwork. It worked out okay, but ultimately left the orks feeling a bit too pale with the colors I used. Plus I'm going to have to go back and try to really bring out the faces. 

I can't decide if that video just inspires the hell out of me or discourages the shit out of me.

Anyway, after giving everything a wash with some Army Painter Green Tone, I felt like I needed to do some more substantial highlighting.

Josep has had it with Danny's shit!

On the left is an example of a full repaint, using a couple of different greens and some yellow to fully color and shade the grot. It's pretty cartoony and bright, but I like it pretty well. On the right, I only used the Army Painter Green Tone wash and then used some Vallejo Dead Flesh to highlight, and he's a much paler Ork. Liking them both really cemented in my mind that I'm going to just have to have various tones throughout my force in order for me to have a good time with it.

After playing around with greens for a bit, I decided I needed to knock out at least 1-2 of the Kill Team and get them finished. It made sense to finish up Cap'n Sarge first since he's a transplant from my Deadzone force and would only need some touch up and basing work anyway, but it felt like cheating, so I also worked on Beep-Boop.

At first I had his can pretty clean, but if there is a single painting skill that I'm best at, it's making something nice looking become all shitty and grungy and like it's survived some terrible catastrophe. It's my "thang".

"Nooo orkses 'ere... jus' ol' Beep-Boop." 

I decided I wanted for this Kommando to have found some trash and scrap to create his disguise in the field, but when the mission was over, he just never gave it up. He didn't choose the Beep-Boop life... the Beep-Boop life chose him.

So after some GW and Vallejo paint effects (Corrosion and Rust, respectively) and a helping of the-most-underutilized-hobby-material-out-there Vallejo weathering powder, I touched up the edges of the metal again and called him done.

So sneaky. So dirty. 

Next up I'm hoping to power through some more of these orks and finish up the Kill Team, but it's equally likely I'll become distracted and start/continue a different project.