Okay, fair warning. This next post is a modding/painting blog. I'm not by any stretch a CSO painter. So the techniques below are aimed at reproducable tabletop quality outcomes, with a high return on invested time, and low skill barriers.
You have been warned ...
SO we last left the 4th TCR with a reposed Assassin. Let's just pick this mini up again, next to another from the Recon lance:
The Firestarter got two simple mods - the right lower arm swung to face forwards, and the left arm pivoted up to aim ahead. Folks, I can't stress how flippin' simple modding plastics are. I pinned these, but I didn't need to. But again it's so simple ...
Also shown is the sword I'm going to use for the ASN-99. A while back my wife picked up a tray of WFB bitz - arms clutching swords, pikes, macuahuitls etc. The sword I've picked is probably for an Orc or similar. I plan to slice off the pommel & blade, remove the Assassin's thumb, drill a hole through the hand, and stick a wire through. In other words ...
Pin vices, beloved of plastic modellers, made this all a one-minute job. Before the glue holding the wire in the hand was set, I whacked on the ends, to get
Face it - any 'Mech called an Assassin isn't going to be using a tiny shank, no? We want a gutting knife ... and some assorted bitz make up the light PPC.
The Stinger needed the rocket pods removed. Now full removal would be a big job, so I sliced the tops of the pods off flat with my trusty Stanley knife and put some clay over the remaining RL tubes.
Now the Recon lance needed to be put aside to set, and to get primed, so in the meantime, let's talk ...
drybrushing!
Okay, if you know drybrushing, zoom ahead. I won't mind. But if this isn't something you do now, be prepared to be amazed at how easily you can get great results.
SO here I'm laying down the basic brass for the Tau Ceti Rangers scheme. But we don't want metallic toys - we want tiny war machines, right? This is how we're going to achieve that. Remember how my Regulators were all primed & based black? This is the reason.
So we start with our materials.
In this case,
1) A black painted mini. Happens to be a Regulator; could be a battlesuit, a 'Mech, anything. Preferably something with details and panels - so not watermelons.
2) Paint. Here brass; this works just as well with green, brown, etc.
3) Given I'm using this one Vallejo paint (I hate bottled paints, but I'm not wasting something I did buy), I need a pallette to drip paint on.
4) A large, sable, round-tipped brush. All three properties are really important. You need coverage, sable lasts way longer under punishment than synthetic in my experience, and - as I believe Savage Coyote pointed out many years ago - large rounded brushes just work better. My experience supports this.
So first ...
Dip the end of the brush into the paint. Only the tip. THen,
Wipe most of the paint off. Yes, this seems contra-intuitive. I'm using an old piece of towelling here; others use paper towel, handy pets, or whatever. You don't really want to see paint on the brush. Trust me -
This is what you're looking for. THen ..
Swab the brish over the mini. Sorry, focus slipped here, but see how it's goong on thin? This is what you want. Using nice sweeping strokes, cover the mini repeatedly. Paint builds up on the flats, and avoids the panels & details. If you find one area doesn't seem to pick up the paint, dab it with the brush repeatedly.
When the brush dries, and the little paint on it is rubbed off, dip/wipe/repeat. If you're finding paint gets into the panel lines, you need to wipe more off.
And after you've done this for a little while, what you end up with, is:
THis. See how all the details, panels, etc are there? Believe me - the first time you do this you won't believe it. After you've done it, you'll never forget it. Pick a mini like the Hunchback - somehow it's impossible to make a Hunchback look bad in any paintscheme - or a Lao Hu, or anything covered in panels. Do this in green, then go over again and lay down some stripes or blobs in brown, and you've got a simple table-ready mini - just add black cockpit & metal weapons if you want!
I'm going to drop the detail level here. I hope someone out there finds this useful, and is inspired to give this a go. Drybrushing is only slightly harder than using magic dip/ink wash, and on the right minis gives brilliant results for small effort.
So with the brass laid down, I just loaded up my second-smallest brush with some gold & laid down some panels.
Oh, notice those guys infiltrating in the background? I got to the brass stage with my Fa Shih before the "A Call to War" project was mooted. So they've been sitting patiently for some loving. Now is their day ...
Basic brass on black on the left, gold details on the right. BA are small, you don't need to kill yourself - here I did a central stripe. shoulder pads, mine tops and the stripe around the mine containers on the back (not shown).
(And yes, I tend to mount my BA on half-hexes. The rules say you can fit two in a hex, after all!)
So here's the lance, with that Gauss Demolisher photobombing once again ... Everything up to this point in 2 hours.
Came back in the afternoon and put in another hour. First, I painted the intake grilles & a few details on the Regulators black, including the hover skirts.
I then drybrushed those black details with steel, and did a grey drybrush on the hoverskirts. The driver's panel got a green detail.
I'd also filled the hex bases for the vehicles, and around the bases for the 'Mech minis. As shown below, I use Polyfilla interior large cracks:
This is my wonder base filler. It's dry, flexible, not sticky, but stays in place. Unlike clay, it doesn't shrink, nor does glue peel off a thin layer. It takes glue & paint brilliantly, and dries usefully in an hour and fully in a few hours. As you can see, I get lumps of various sizes in a container, and then apply it with my knife. Scraps go back in the tube for next time. A tube lasts forever.
The BA, having been base-filled long ago, get a coat of paint over the base. The aim here is to go with whatever I'll flock them with, so if I have a flocking error it won't look too flocking bad.
So with the bases filled & dried, guess what!
Time for more drybrushing! But this time I'll just cut to the chase:
And that's all - enough?! for this week. I may do more tomorrow, but I promise not to go on at such length again O:-)
MOre seriously, I hope someone finds this useful. We learn by doing. There are all sorts of great tutorials online, including at CSO, but I think there's a place for a simple, not-to-technical explanation, and place for people who know CSO-level isn't in scope.
Comments welcomed, questions even more so - at least then I know people are reading this ;)
Cheers,
W.