Deep Impact

I finally got around to sprucing up the base of my Stormwall a bit. This guy looks heavy, but apparently the ground hasn't gotten that memo. He's a big guy and big guys make big footprints, so I decided to give him some. I cut out some cork in a shape around his foot and carved away the excess to leave a nice little impact crater.

I also added a little more dirt around the anchor to emphasize its mass.

So there you have it. A short little update, but one that's been a while in the making. I'm finally pleased with how the base is turning out. I've got the cork primed up but I'm still a little unsure of how to break up all the flat space behind the anchor, so get at me in the comments with your suggestions! 

Ridin' Solo

What's up Internet?? In my absence from the blog, I've made some pretty good progress painting up my Cygnar army. I fancy myself a bit of a slow painter as I would rather hit all the details on one model than have a whole unit of half-assed dudes. I know this is not the most efficient way to paint an entire army, but homie don't play by the rulez. Because each model gets my personal attention, I tend to gravitate towards painting up my solos first. So here they are, in various stages of doneness.

Gun Mage Captain Adept a.k.a Il Duce (Boondock Saints anyone?). Model-wise, he still needs some final touches and a painted base, but he's at least picture ready. Game-wise, this guy is badass. High RAT, awesome DEF and he gets a sick list of sweet attack types that are all awesome in their own right. Arc Precision lets him keep up with the rest of your favorite gun-toting mages and coupled with phantom seeker, no target is safe. I've only played with him a couple times, but he functions pretty well at removing other pesky solos (yeah im talkin' to you Eiryss!).

Here comes the boom!

Oh look at that! a Wild Eiryss appeared! I know, I know, this silly lady isn't quite "Cygnar" but lets face it, she weasels her way into most factions if you let her. She gets around ;) ;) wink ;) Ok, Enough of that. Here's the model, yo. 

Dear lord, please excuse her face. I plan on cleaning up the skin tones later (don't hit me!)

Backside [moar winks ;) ;)]

Lightinin' Pod! "Geez what's with this guy? First a model that's not even Cygnar, now one that's not even a solo!" Ok, so this post should have been called "Miscellaneous Doodads" but, referencing a terrible club tune from 4 years ago seemed fitting for some reason? I'm terribly sorry. forgive me. but I've gone too far... I saw these lightning pods and immediately thought i had to do something creative with them. A Buoy just seemed so fitting. The water looks messy because it's still unfinished. I have to add the highlights to the wave tips to give them dimension and make the waves appear as though they are crashing against the pod. And before you go all science on my ass, I warned them not to put a giant lightning rod in the ocean. They didn't listen.

hardXcore.

This next guy is quickly earning himself promotions left and fucking right (and a few purple hearts along the way. whoops!). The Stormblade Captain has easily become one of my favorite solos in the Cygnar arsenal. Weapon master?! (Yes please!) with reach?! (Hot damn.) relentless charge and quick work have proven super useful as well. This guy keeps giving and giving, and THEN he gives even more to friendly storm knights. I fought off the need for merc infantry for a long time, so finally having that little bit of synergy to make my Cygnar units work allowed me to build some really fluffy lists and still be viable. (silver line stormguard, zomg.) This dude is quite simply a badass. I even gave him some colorful little ribbons and the like just in case you had any doubts.

Well that's all the time we have for today! Tune in next time for more craaaaaaazy updates! (Spoiler alert: Stormblade Captain will still be the baddest of the asses).

Back From the Deep!

After a long hiatus and a move half way across the country, I'm happy to say that I am breaking my silence! Despite what it may seem, I've actually made quite a bit of headway in the hobby front, but haven't had much time to post about it. Now, enough of the nonsense. Onto the models!

First up is my monster of a project, Dr. Stormwallis. He's undergone a bit of a color transformation but there is still much left to do. His base has taken on some color and once i get his legs fully painted, I'll begin the water effects securing his leg to the ocean.

Doesn't look like much yet, but it will blend nicely with the added water effects.

I'm starting from the legs up since I'll need to plant the legs before adding the water effects. All painting right now is done only as a base coat and all weathering, shading, and washing will be added afterwards.

Hand and anchor pieces (all magnetized) with a bit o' paint.

When I assemble everything I've got painted up so far, he starts to look a bit more like what I had originally envisioned. My towering behemoth takes his first steps on dry land!

"Get over here!!"

And so, Dr. Stormwallis looks on into the future where a full coat of paint and an ocean of water effects await him. Fear not, this project is very much alive and well and I should be updating more frequently now that I'm settled into my new Texas home!

Stormwall Conversion Update

The beast is taking shape. I've managed to get him all magnetized in a state that i can field him whole (goodbye to just legs on a base)!
I started by magnetizing his torso. Because this was an important joint to keep flush, this required some finagling. I drilled two holes in the torso piece first. These holes were determined after I decided the angle of his pose. this explains why they are slightly askew.

After that, I filled in the waist piece with putty. the next part is the best way to ensure that magnets are flush with any model. simply connect them! I placed 2 magnets over the torso magnets and pressed th etorso piece against the puttied waist piece. this results in 2 perfectly positioned and flushed up holes for the waist magnets to sit. Then after the putty was dry, I applied glue (putty or greenstuff alone may not always reliably hold magnets in place).

Something was missing, however. As you can see, there was too much space on the base. So i began to brainstorm and then I decided to throw in the anchor...what could POSSIBLY be more badass than a hulking metal monstrosity swinging around an old ship anchor!?! Trick question. The answer is clearly, "nothing."

I started by drawing an anchor on a post it note, getting a relative size down. then found an old lid with the right angled arc for the anchor bottom. I cut a piece from this and formed putty around it, freehand, until it vaguely resembled the slight taper of an anchor.

It needed a post, so I cut the inside inkwell of an old pen and connected it to the newly fashioned anchor. I cut little triangles out of plasticard to act as the anchor blades and fashioned them in place. all that was left were the support rods on the side which i threw together with toothpicks and a dab of putty on the end.

The end result looks pretty good for having been thrown together with scraps. Next was altering the hand. I connected the anchor to the hand using my girlfriends old necklace chain. I used his already "fist" hand and altered it to appear as though clenched over wrapped chains. this way the anchor is implied to be an epic weapon.

To add a sense of dynamic awesomeness, I decided to sink the anchor into the earth a bit as if Dr. Stormwallis had just hurled it ashore. to do this, I cut a small chunk out of the base for one of the anchor blades to occupy and formed up a bit of "earth" that the anchor displaced upon impact. the result is exactly the kind of dynamic space filler i had envisioned for the base and adds a bit of character and yet more nautical theming to my creation.

I magnetized the anchor to the base as well as the hand to the wrist, so that the entire contraption can be removed for storage OR as a failsafe if the chain accidentally catches on something.
The close-to-end result is something I am very proud of. Behold the mighty Stormwallis!

 

The Base-ics

I wanted Stormy to be hulking out of the water onto some sort of bank. This base is going to take a lot of time and consideration if i want it to look as awesome as I've got it pictured in my head. the concept is simple...

Pretty much this but more epic and awesome. if that's possible.
So far, I've got this:

Stay tuned for updates... they are sure to be frequent as I've basically done all my Stormwall converting within the past two weeks, driven by my excitement for the project! Thanks for checking it out :)

A Knee-t Little Trick

One thing plaguing all robot like models since the dawn of time... LACK OF BENDY KNEES! seriously... check out this Khador Kodiak jack:

He's got squatty knees. WOW! SO DYNAMIC!

Or this Tau Battlesuit:

Man! Hope he doesn't have to tie his shoes!

 Without the ability to separately pose the legs, these models lose the war on dynamic posing (a war that, to me, is more important than the battle on the actual tabletop). You need cool looking models, people! otherwise, we would just be playing our wargames with pieces of paper and crayons.

So  my stormwall needed bendy knees. This meant an enormous undertaking, having to remove both halves of the leg without compromising the leg itself. I decided to cut along the area shown below:

The fruits of my hour or so of delicate xacto sawing...

Step 2 was to shave down all the crap still left in the joint.

once the joint was relatively smoothed out, It was time to ensure that the piston "achilles tendon" would align properly with my leg adjustments. This required hacking off the bit altogether and shortening the piston as it would be if the heel was retracted and leg was bent.

The end result represents and entirely retracted piston, allowing enough headroom to fit the bent thigh section in. The next step was to grind out the square holes in the hip connection to allow for free rotation while I found the proper angle to prop the leg up. This was then glued in place with the other leg resulting in the torso piece as shown

Dr. Stormwallis was now clearly ready for a base on which to perch himself!

Would You Give Me a Hand?

I'll start with exhibit A:

WTF is this? this isn't a fist, its not a relaxed hand, its not a pointy finger, its not a clutching claw of doom... this isn't even a natural hand pose for anything less than that of a hormonal teenage boys embarrassing past time. SURELY this is no hand pose for such a monstrous yet majestic iron death machine. So, I decided to chop off his fingers and perform reconstructive surgery.

Being such a tall object on the battlefield, he would serve as a lookout for most ground troops, warning of dangers ahead. so naturally, he should be pointing towards something. I started hacking away his right hand at the knuckles to better pose each individual finger.

The image below depicts an unbiased comparison between the factory fist and my work in progress hand...


I then added the all important pointy-finger finger

All that was left was a little green stuff (or grey stuff in this case) to hide my gaps. the end result made me quite happy and im confident that once primed, the grey stuff sections will be much less noticeable.

Its got an almost "sistine chapel" feel to it. Clearly what I was going for...

For the left hand, I decided to alter the fist a bit, to make it a bit more punchy. If the Stormwall were to punch anything with those goofy excuses for fists, it would break every gear in its hand. Not enough clench! so I altered this. A simple procedure that yielded and over all more believable fist.