Tail Feathers: More birds

Here are couple more birds, a Blue Jay and a Baltimore Oriole. These are very easy to paint, and are still rewarding with minimal effort. For the oriole, it was just a matter of getting the color onto the right spots (though, I would have liked a brighter orange.) Granted, some of the details take a little patience, but the rest of the bird took all of 10 or 15 minutes (of mostly dry- and overbrushing.)

I kind of wished the armor wasn't there (on his belly) so that more of the orange could be displayed, but there is still more color here than there would have been had I painted this as a starling.

The Blue Jay took a little more planning. I started off with an overbrush of the top with a nice, middle blue followed with lighter blue. I went one more level lighter on the secondary feathers and the wing tips. The underside was overbrushed dark gray -- lighter gray toward the wing tips. Then I drybrushed some brown over the transition between the dark and light grays.

Next came the white tips of the secondaries and tail feathers, starting with light gray followed with white. I also overbrushed some light gray/white onto the face. Then came the black stripes on the feathers and the markings on the face. The remaining details fell into place: silver armor, brown leather straps and a check pattern on the side armor(?) For a final touch, I watered down my black paint a little (ink will work just fine -- I was just too lazy,) and I lined the between individual feathers to help define things a little more.

Next up is the smallest of the birds, which I will paint as an Eastern Meadowlark. It will take a little extra planning as did the Jay. But once the plan is in place, it should paint up quickly. Then it's off to paint riders and ground troops!

Birds of a feather

I've started painting my Tail Feathers figures, starting with the birds. They are fun to paint -- easy and fast but still with a nice result.

Just a plain, old crow.

The largest bird has a wingspan of about 5 inches, and the smallest is around 3 3/4 inches. The game lists the birds as crows and starlings (and a blue jay,) but I thought those were to boring. So I'm painting mine as more colorful birds.

I stuck with one bird as a crow, simply because, yeah, a crow should be in there. But instead of having a second crow, I painted the bird to look roughly like an Eastern Kingbird.

Eastern Kingbird (sort of,) but he looks much nicer than that crow.

Before I primed these, I masked the connector sockets off with masking tape. I primed with Army Painter Matte Black Primer, then followed that up with a couple layers of black craft paint (Delta Ceramcoat.) Then I painted as usual, removing the masking tape only after everything was done. The little bit of excess masking tape also provided a little extra hand-hold.

The other birds will come in time; I have other stuff on my plate (on and off the painting table.) But they will all have some color: I have planned the Blue Jay (which is actually what it is in the game,) a Baltimore Oriole and an Eastern Meadowlark.

Oh yeah, I also ordered another copy of the game so I can paint some more birds :)
It will also be nice to have extras of the components, as well as another box in which I can put in some custom battlefoam to carry everything.

Gettin' things done

I got an email a week ago saying my copy of Tail Feathers was on its way, so I figured I better get to painting to make room on the table. I used the extra drive to finish up a few random things.

I still have a dozen or so Low Life figures on the way, but I finished up the couple that already had primer and a little paint on them. The KS delivery on the remaining figures has been going slow, so I haven't put a high priority on finishing those I already have. Still, they are a neat little range, and the most imaginative of any of the figures I have.

On the Zombicide front, I told myself I would paint at least the figures from all the base and expansion boxes. I thought I had fulfilled that promise until I found these three at the bottom of a baggie of extra Z-cide figures. Now I can say all of my base-box Zombicide figures are painted -- at least until Black Plague arrives in the next few weeks.

And then, finally, I managed to get energy enough to finish my Mice and Mystics figures. I had several minions and a couple characters from the Downwood Tales and Heart of Glorm boxes that needed to be painted. I've been working on those this week and just finished last night. And righgt on cue, this morning, my copy of Tail Feathers arrived!
The photo below shows all the figures from the Mice and Mystics base set and the Heart of Glorm and Downwood Tales expansions. There are also extra minions I pulled from an extra base set of figures I bought from Plaidhat Games. (Not pictured are my extra set of heroes.)

Small update

I've been without internet for a while (a couple months), and it's not so bad; I've been getting reacquainted with some TV, been getting outside for some nice long walks, and I've been getting back to the painting table and canvas. I just haven't been able to update the blog as often as I'd like.

Actually, the past couple weeks, I've slowed a touch on the minis painting, but I still sit down to add a layer or two to whatever is at hand. I hope to have my 40mm samurai baggage carriers and kago bearers finished soo
n, now that I've finally settled on a simple scheme/palette.

I still need to paint the kago/palanquin (which has been started,) but it will take a little more time. It's not difficult to paint, but it will still take a patient hand.

I've also put in a small order from Bronze Age Miniatures for a few more of the 54mm generics; I figured it was time to add to the 54mm post-apoc collection. I have some ideas (which are sketched out on the Posdt-It notes behind my Japanese figures in the photo.)

In the meantime, here's a photo of a Mouse painting I did on my jacket. I was bored and I saw that my jacket was somewhat plain.

Space Cadets: Leashed sentinel

This is why my new professor figure has a new faceplate on his head; accidents happen when you're trying to tame a sentinel.
Other parts of this conversion include a new control panel (over the tools) on the professor figure, as well as a control unit fitted to the back of the sentinel (made from random bits.)

For fellow space cadet players out there, For house rules, I'm thinking of something along the lines of this: The professor can use each of his actions to give the sentinel an action. But first, he must pass an IQ roll. Each overkill is +1 action. A fail, and the sentinel attacks in his tile (as well as adds the terror effect). Luckily the professor's control has a range of 2.

Space Cadets: Rocketeers

Here is my second set of the Space Cadets Rocketeer crew painted up in my "special operations" scheme. The professor had an accident while I was using a lighter to heat some plastic back to shape (his face melted off,) so I had to find a replacement head. I also gave him a control tablet instead of his tools -- what will he be controlling?

Space Cadets Captain

When I pledged for the Space Cadets kickstarter, I added a second set of the plastic figures, so I could have extras and also play with painting. Here is the first of those.
For my second set of Rocketeers, I'm going for a more advanced-looking special operations look. To help identify the character, I'll be painting their color across the top of their shoulders and on the elbow connector rings. (And yes, the click-on base also helps :)

I kept the leather (belt and holster) brown to keep him grounded in his retro setting.

I'm not sure what I'll do with the remainder aliens -- maybe I'll paint them in monochrome as was my original plan? Maybe I'll do them full color but in a different scheme? I have plenty of time to figure that out since I already have enough to play the game. All in good time.

It's been a while, but this is the first figure in months that I've actually enjoyed painting. The past few months, I've gone through the motions to get stuff done, worked out solutions to minor painting problems, and have finished quite a few figures. I didn't hate doing all that painting -- it helped pass the time -- but this was the first figure in a very long while that I truly enjoyed painting. This was also the first in a while that I actually sat down with purpose, used a good brush and took my time (OK, it took me all of an hour to do him, but he was already primed in black, so most of the work was done.)

I steal ideas, too: Painted Zombicide skull markers

Apologies to the person who painted his first and posted them on Facebook somewhere; I was going to give your name, but I can't find the original post!

Anyway, what a great and fun idea he had to paint the skull markers for Zombicide. They're easy to paint (it took me 20 minutes to paint these 12), and they look good, even if they're only use is to pimp out the game.

I primed with Army Painter. Drybrushed a dark khaki color, followed by drk. khaki+white, adding a little more white to the mix for two or three more layers of overbrushing/drybrushing.
When I drybrushed, I stroked in the direction from the top left of the skull to the bottom right. This helped to simulate a light source to give the skull a little more depth.

I'll probably paint the other 20 or 30 skull markers I have, now.

Samurai clan

I finished painting figures to represent a new samurai clan in my Steve Barber collection. Nothing new here, but it's nice to finally get these guys off the table so I can finish painting the new 40mm samurai figures (including my kago.) I guess there is one minor conversion here; on the yamabushi monk (second from right) I've taken away his staff, which would normally be in his back hand, and added the sword to his front hand. This was part of my original conversion intentions when I first commissioned this sculpt.

Space Cadets: Rocketeers

And here are my Rocketeers for Space Cadets: Away Missions. Nothing much innovated here; I painted them up just like on the box.

I'm happy that I got everything painted up so fast. It's nice to get a project cleared off the table before the next one arrives (I have two minis games "scheduled" to arrive in October -- Dragon Tides and Mercs.) In the interim, I should be able to finish up some older 40mm samurai (and maybe the newer palanquin retinue, too.)

You need brains to play Space Cadets: Away Missions

I didn't count the hours (let's say it was three,) but I painted my entire alien force in two sittings for the new board game, Space Cadets Away Missions.

For Zombicide, there were three main factors steering me toward monochrome zombies:
-- If they were full color, the survivor figures would have blended in with the zombies on the board.
-- I wanted to pay tribute to the first Romero movie (Night of the Living Dead.)
-- I wanted to get everything painted fast.

Well, for Space Cadets, I certainly wanted to get everything done fast, but I wasn't sure at the last moment if I wanted to go monochrome. So I compromised. I drybrushed the uniforms and weapons in silver. The I drybrushed the heads in three shades of green (starting with light green, highlighting with yellow.) The effect was good enough for me!
I did do the leeches, bugs and sentinels in monochrome green, though. Instead of tying everything together with one monochromatic color, I tied them altogether with the simple scheme: Green/silver.
I think it worked. Everything is in "full color," and everything is easily identifiable.

How I did the brains/step-by-step

The tinted resin serves the double purpose of looking like liquid and keeping the jar glued together. And it's pretty easy to do.

Paint and Primer: Use Army Painter Black matte primer (best for pvc plastics, I think) and then whatever acrylic paint you prefer

Jars masked off before priming and everything painted.

1: Mask of the clear cylinders so that you don't get primer on the clear portion. Be sure to pinch off the bottom of the tape so that any primer won't sneak in through the bottom.
2: Prime everything. Keep the tape on and paint the top portion of the jar. Once dry, go ahead and peel off your masking tape.
3: Go ahead and prime and paint the bottom portion of the brain in jar (the pedestal and the brain.)
4: Prepare some two-part epoxy resin (I like five-minute). Now place just a TOUCH of red paint into your resin, just enough to tint it. It's an unbelievably small amount you'll need.
5: Use a toothpick to gently drop some of the resin into the jars. It's difficult to gauge, but I try to fill them about half way -- remember that there will be some brain filling the remainder of the jar.
6: Place the jar over the base and push together. They should slip/snap right in.

Braaaaaains! Oops, wrong game.

Zombicide: Film and Television

To scratch the Zombicide itch while I (we) wait for the Black Plague pledge manager, I finished up a few more survivors from the last KS campaign. These are most of the film and TV survivors. It was fun to get back and paint survivors again.

I still have samurai, Mice and Mystics, and Space Cadets on the way. Plenty to paint! I also don't have internet at home anymore, so these posts might slow down a little. Might; I've already slowed a bit the past few months as my painting mojo weakened. It's slowly building again though. Hopefully, my Space Cadets will arrive in the next few days: I have vacation starting this weekend, and I'll be staying home, so I'll have plenty of painting time. Space Cadets equals more monochromatic fun!