A look at my recent coop battle map for FrostGrave! A good friend and I played a coop game on this modular board last weekend and we had a blast!
As you can see, even if I posted almost nothing on this blog for a while, I was still very active, crafting props, printing minis (I got a 3d printer almost a year ago) and painting, painting and painting again.
More to come (and soon this time).
Enjoy!
Finally, I think I finished my 1/144 Ratte diorama.
I repainted the turret: The huge Nazi flag on it was not to my taste. To give back some interest to the turret, I painted the guns in grey and added an small anti-aircraft turret. I think the model is more pleasing to look at this way, and additional air defense makes total sense on a vehicle like this.
The ground was made mostly with sculpta-mold, but I used some 2 parts epoxy putty for the tracks marks.
It’s also the second time that I am using my little static-grass applicator and I like the result (its better than on my Panzerkampfwagen 35(t) diorama imo).
With the added figurines, the scene has a sense of scale now! That is so important in this case.
Enjoy the pictures!
Just a quick update. Some pictures of the diorama base (work in progress) and of the painted minis. I also modified and repainted the turret (no picture of that yet).
I am sorry for the yellowish tint of the photos: they were taken with a different light setup than the one I use normally.
Since I have taken these pictures, I worked a lot on the project and I will be able to post final photos very soon! Yeah!
These terrain pieces were on my mind for years.
For a long time, I collected a variety of plastic plants, turfs, flocking, etc.
Then I recently started to make the bases, and after I received my plastic palm trees ordered on eBay, I started building.
The ruins were made in part with sections of an broken toy found in a garage sale: the Indiana Jones Temple of Akator playset (see picture):
The ruins were modified and completed with sculpted styrofoam. Everything was glued with hot glue and white pva glue. The dead leaves terrain cover was made with a mix of dried herbs (mostly oregano), saw dust and hemp rope fibers.
The large trees were made from scratch: Apoxy sculpt on a copper wire armature. Next, I glued coconut fibers on the large branches to simulate smaller branches and to provide more area for the clump foliage to adhere.
Every trees was then sealed with a homemade fixative: 1 part matt mod podge, 1 part distilled water, 1 part liquitex matt medium + a few drops of dishwasher jet dry.
Overall, I had a blast creating these cool terrain pieces. Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Wow! It’s been a while since I posted anything!
My 2020 resolution: post a little more than in 2019…
Beginning with this completed diorama for my Panzer 35(t). I tried new techniques for the weathering, using very diluted enamel paints (Humbrol) to create dust accumulation effects.
For the diorama, I also tried using a static grass applicator (battery powered). The result is ok, but I think I will need more pratice to achieve better looking results.
I wanted to suggest a scene in france at the start of the war, hence the road sign for Lisieux (printed on an ink jet printer).
The fence is an accessory from an old Tamiya kit. I used the hairspray chipping technique on this to get a well worn look. The ground is made with 2 part epoxy putty (Apoxy sculpt).
Enjoy the pics! And keep an eye on this blog: another post is coming soon!
YEAH!
It’s done! After multiple retouching and a lot of work with pigments and washes, I can finally show the final result.
Enjoy the pics!
An update on my JS-2 diorama: Here are some photos of the first stages of painting for the base.
I started by painting the individual details with plain colors (no shadows or highlights). I also worked a bit on the rust effects. The corrugated panel in the center of the diorama is more a test than anything, since it will be entirely hidden underneath the tank.
Then I used the airbrush to start simulating brick dust and give some hints of shading.
Next step will be the washes and pigments.
Coming soon!…
I started to work on the diorama for my JS-2 tank. I wanted to keep it small and simple, but as always I got carried away a bit, adding lots of details in the rubbles. The scene is supposed to take place right after the fall of Berlin.
I had a white plastic wedding cake column in my parts bin (leftover from some wargaming terrain I did a while ago). I decided to use this in the diorama as a way to suggest the destruction of fine german classical architecture. A library? A bank? Who knows…
Still, something was missing to really coin it. This small diorama had to evoque the fall or Berlin (and I didn’t want to use another nazi flag, as I did in this other diorama). So I sculpted a nazi eagle emblem, the kind of wich was afixed to many building facades in large german cities during the 3rd Reich. I used Apoxy sculpt and fine tools (including a needle) to sculpt, and did it while listening to an audio book of H.P. Lovecraft novels.
I know. No link. But somehow the combination of sculpting and listening to cosmic horror stories is really relaxing for the brain 🙂
Anyway, enjoy the pics for now: I’ll be painting all this and posting the results in early 2019.
Happy New Year to all of you!
Just a quick update on my Panzerkampfwagen II from Tamiya: I finally painted the commander figure.
Enjoy!
I needed a break from painting tanks. And I wanted to work on something simple…
So I dug up an old model from the “maybe-I’ll-finish-it-someday” stack: A 1:100 AT-AT from MPC. This model was produced in 1989 and is quite decent, even straight out of the box.
The kit was slightly damaged (missing a piece on a leg and some other bits) and the barrels of the two slim canons were broken. I had to dot a little bit of scratch building to fix all this, but nothing serious.
The model was painted in pale grey then heavily weathered with oil paints and washes.
The large rocks on the base are made from bark and cork, while smaller rocks are just real pebbles and coarse sand.
The snowspeeder that came with the kit (in fact, there was 2) is not very detailed by modern standards, but with a good paint job and weathering it looks ok.
The snow was made by mixing Woodland Scenic Snow with Matt Mod Podge in a “peanut butter like” consistency. It was then applied onto the base with a small spatula. The models were pressed on the mix. Once the surface began to dry, I used a hobby knife and a tooth pick to shape the snow around the models and near the rocks.
Once the snow was completely cured, I sprayed small amounts of white paint (just a mist, really) on the whole scene to tie up the different tones in that “frosty” winter feel…
The smoke for the snowspeeder crash is simply a small ball of synthetic pillow stuffing material, lightly painted with the airbrush. The fibers are a bit coarse to my taste, so I might replace that little detail one day.
As for now, I consider this project done. I’m satisfied with the overall look of the scene.
Enjoy the pictures!
MINIONVAULT 