First neighbourhood finished

New installment in my vertical board project!

I have been slowly expanding the town. I had to add new floors and so:

There will be an ascending ramp right there

The issue is that I soon realized that I couldn't move forward without finishing what I already had built. I mean specifically the rock cut houses.

Thre will be another block of houses right there in the centre

The moment I added a new building there I wouldn't be able to reach the interior of that neighbourhood with the brushes. So I had to finish that part before I could go on...

A place to live in

I sprayed the whole thing again to have an uniform colour on the places that were still unpainted and then painted the doors. As it was too plain, I added some piping (the large one is the case of a brush!) and started to work on other details.

Having such an open plaza there was useful in terms of gaming, but I thought I could still add some kind of object to fill in. I found a cologne tap and glued som bits and rubbish onto it...

Air purifier? Comm relay? ATM? Who knows...

Here you can see what I got in the end:

More like a real place

Lights over the doors were almost mandatory, I guess. Of course this is a neighbourhood, so the doors also have a sign over them (the mailman has to identify them so he can deliver all those minis from kickstarters!). AC units, a street lamp... and most definitely tubes and wires, which add a lot of depth to any place.

Still playable. Hardly, but playable

Not quite clean, but still cozy

I thought of adding way more details and colour tones, but I had to keep in mind that this is a gaming board, not a doll house, so this is the compromise within both. While I guess it will be tricky to play this particular part of the town, it's still usable and I'll see to keep it this way when I build in front of it.

This is the board right now

I guess I'll have to work on that large wall on the right before I build the central section, but now you have an insight of my aim here and the general tone I pretend to achieve on the whole board. It looks feasible in my mind, but it's still to be proven on the real world!

It will take some time, but I hope it will be worth of it... Fingers crossed!

Commissars of yore

Today I'm showing just a little side project, the kind of stuff you can manage easily, having a clear beginning and -most important, a clear end.

I had these minis gathering dust all around for too long:

They are called 'Chaplains'. Wow, a lot of things have happened since then

I have an old RT plastic Imperial Guard box, but haven't really put my hands to it in order to get an army back, once I sold my old previous one. But I didn't actually need an army to have these painted, so I thought I could spill some paint on them.

Besides, I rescued this other guy from oblivion:

Calling for a repaint

Manageable project!

This latter guy asked for a few retouches, but nothing too serious. I worked on repositioning both arms (the power glove looks so ridiculously oversized that I didn't consider to replace it!) and got this:

Feeling renewed!

Didn't need to be particularly creative with this other one. Pretty straightforward paintjob, trying to cope with different hues of black:

You wouldn't expect a explosion of colour, I guess

However, I tried something different with the other guy. I really don't see me having an army of such size needing three Commissars. As he doesn't wear the coat, I thought he could make a decent Officer:

The Lt. or Cpt. or whatever

As I'm writing this I'm noticing I made a mistake. I shouldn't have chosen these colours. I'm suddenly envisioning this:

I cannot unsee it now!

Oh, such a lost opportunity! I'm afraid I'm not repainting it, but I'm really chuckling at the idea :D

Whatever the case is, I'm bringing a bonus mini! A friend handed me over this new Commissar, the Severina Raine character, a Black Library event miniature:

Selective wind moving the coat and sash, but not the purity seal

She's the Marilyn of the Commissars!

Coat apart, the mini is really cool. We can finally have a female Commissar which doesn't look ridiculous. You all have seen the absurd sexy Commissars and all kind of pin-ups. This is a mini for current times, and I think it is good to leave some stuff apart.

The only thing is... well, the size! Let me explain with a pic:

That's quite a woman!

It looks like the mini is quite incompatible with any RT project I may start, but that was never the point, I'm delighted with it.

So if I ever start a RT Imperial Guard Army I already have some command structure. But if I ever start any Imperial Guard Kill Team or whatever with new minis, I also have a starting point! It certainly works for me!

PS: Regarding a totally different, but blog-related note, after the Tinypic debacle, I'm slowly working on recovering the whole archives and loading all the pics to Blogger. I'm talking about nearly seven years of pics, so it may take a while. But if you browse through the blog and find that there are no pics showing, don't think I'm neglecting my duties. I can be quite stubborn persevering, so in the end I will recover it all.

Wish me luck!

Brother Shark (Doo-doo, doo-doo-doo)

Today I'm back to the realscale Carcharodons project. I really wanted to finish the Veteran squad, so I've been relentlessly working on that. I still had Space Hulk termies left, so let's see what I've been up to recently.

Firstly, this over the top guy

The pose had something that really unsettled me. I mean, the legs work, the torso works... but what's up with his arms? I mean, he looks like he's stumbling and falling down. I kept as much as I could from the original, but tried something slightly different:

Same mini, I promise

I still think there's something about the pose, butI hope it works better now. After some paint was spilled on him...

...he looked even angrier

Let's go for another Space Shark fella:

Nope. That heavy flamer is totally out of place in this squad. Space Sharks. Pokey pokey stuff, man

Well, that's quite a different thing. OK, you may proceed

This has been one of the most extensive conversions I've done for the project. The sword is from the Grey Knights box, and I really had to make some work to make the arms fit the position. I made some additional work and had to redo some parts after that pic. In the end he's like this:

No, that on the helmet is not a moustache

You can read Mate on the glaive, which is Maori for Death. You know, I cannot resist this kind of details.

But at this point I was missing an important part; every squad needs a Sergeant. So I used the last mini left for that:

Originally a Sarge in fact

Of course that hammer had to go, I insist on the blade theme. Well you can see I even didn't put the shield of the original mini for the pic. The thing with Carcharodons is that they are on the aggressive side, so I wanted to reflect that in the fact of bearing only short ranged firearms and spiky close combat weapons. They come quickly, they strike to tear the enemy apart and take care of little thing else. I think it worked more or less for all the previous minis.

But this time I had this bit I wanted to use so badly. The right arm, coming from my old Raptors army, holding a crested helmet. It may make him look more relaxed and less frenzied, but I couldn't resist to use it.

Still a Sarge!

It may transmit less strenght in the composition, but I'm happy with the result whatsoever.

Face tatoo again!

The breasplate says Nguha, which means War. I'm that original, yup. The Maori fern on the belt, the koru, is a symbol of rebirth and new life; there is a moana on the glaive, a sea symbol.

Little else can be added. I have used all the Terminators from the Space Hulk box, so I have the Captain (this wasn't from the box, but you know), the Librarian, Apothecary and Chaplain, as well as a nine men squad of Veter... wait, what? Nine men?

Nope. 2nd Edition Codex clearly states that any respectable Space Marines unit needs ten men. Hmmm... What can be done...? Oh, of course.

BONUS MINI:

I had this Terminator from my Ultramarines army. I had already made some conversion work back in the day...

There's a head missing, yes. But focus

It was just what I was looking for. Ahem, to be perfectly honest with you, I had spotted the mini for this project ages ago. This mini was going to be part of this squad as soon as I realized I had only nine guys, quite at the beginning of the whole thing.

Conversion work is minimum

Now he looks like one of the guys

Ahhh, much better now :)

So I finally have a Veterans Squad!! Weeeee!!

I really need to create a backdrop for this

Wow. A full manned realscale Space Marines squad. This means something to me, I've been attempting to do this for years. Many years. I am really happy.

What now? I have some Primaris I will use to create tactical squads or whatever. But I also have like tons of bits for realscaling regular marines I've been amassing through the years. I have to think what can I do with them. But that's a problem for the future me. Today I'm calling this a victory and feasting on this sense of closure. Not sure if closure is the word, as this only marks the start of a full army, but you know what I mean... :)

Those aren't giants, but windmills

Back again! It's been a while, but I've not been idle. For some time I have been wanting to build this specific piece of scenery, but didn't find the proper way. Finally, with the correct raw materials and the aid from the Muse of Rubbish Scratchbuilding, I've come to this. Let me tell you.

These are the source materials. A promotional freebie whisk from a cocoa powder brand and a couple of... airscrews? coming from Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs:

The CD will be the base for all this

 Just for an explanation, I've found an online pic of what was the original purpose of this thing:

You can bet the final result you'll see here has nothing to do with this

OK, let's go. What can I do with all this? Well, you may remember my Moisture Vaporator or the Takeaway Building. So you know the kind of stuff you can expect. My idea this time is to build some kind of windmill or wind turbine:

Something like this

Or probably like this, I have to use all the bits!

There's little mystery in here. The whisk included these gears, so I did have to use them!

This is what enables the upper windmill to turn acording to the air currents

I used a few mdf and card bits. You may spot a junction box, it's one of the bits I'm producing for my ongoing minig village board. But essentially, all you see here is scratch.

An old syringe cut in three

The central one is not a gear axis, but the access to the upper plant

The only GW bit is that hatch on the roof

So let's go on the windmill itself. I used a toothpick and greenstuff...

I built a structure to set the two turbines/fans/whatever

I had to produce a copy of the yellow piece to place the fans

I've run out of black priming, so I used whatever I had at hand

General idea more or less

Then I started the fun with greenstuff cables

The final stages involved painting and weathering, until I got this:

 

 

A windmill! Sort of..

A few close-ups:

- Now look, your worship -said Sancho Panzer- , for that is not an Eldar Knight, but a common windmill, the kind that provides electricity with its turbines to villages and airships.

-It is easy to see -replied Don Quirixote- that thou art not used to this business of adventures, for that truly is a foul xeno device and an alien intelligence drives it towards our doom. And if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.

So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Ro-102 and charged towards the windmill...

Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you!

Let me end with a pic of my themed scratchbuilt stuff.

I'm making a board step by step...

This could have not been easier to do, as you can see, so I declare myself happy with the result. The idea of a windmill was in my mind since I made Don Quirixote of Manchae Prime and Sancho Panzer. I may have to see how I can combine this style of buildings (dirt white, chunky sci-fi looking) with my vertical board, the mining town. It might be fun if I make some experiments.

I'm working on a few projects at the same time (besides boring real life issues, you know), I hope I can bring more stuff soon!