“What If?….Wednesday (15th July)”

Its Wednesday again and you know what that means, another round of nonsense from me!

So what shall we talk about this week? Well really the title of this post should be “What is” rather than “What if” as I thought we’d talk about “ground based wheeled vehicles”, now that might be a long winded description but what I am basically saying is cars/ vans/ bikes etc…but not just any cars etc… film and TV cars and what in your esteemed opinions are the coolest cars in film/TV history? There are plenty to choose from, from “Herbie” the Volkswagen from “The Love Bug”, Optimus Prime from Transformers, the A Team van, the Landmaster in “Damnation Alley”, “Lady Penelope’s” Pink Rolls Royce, The Creepy Coupe from “Wacky Race’s” or “Street Hawks” Motorcycle. I could go on all day as there is a vast array to choose from.

We’ll narrow it down to five each so as usual I’ll start the ball rolling with my top five in no particular order…

Batmobile (Adam West’s version) “Batman”.

Lotus Espirit (submarine car) “The spy Who Loved me”.

Shadow Mobile “UFO”

Mini Coopers (original version of course!) “The Italian Job”.

Ford Falcon Interceptor XB (Black version) “Mad Max/ Mad Max 2”

So what floats your vehicular boat? The forecourt is open gentlemen, it’s over to you.

Stay safe and cheers Roger.

“Pooling my Resources”

Week two of the “Summer Scenery Challenge”, and the first thing to do this week was to start gathering together all the other elements I’d need to finish my pond (see last weekend’s post to see what the heck I’m talking about). Now I wanted some scattered debris around the pond so the bit’s box was raided and I came up with a few little model car bits, along with some random cogs (always a post-apocalyptic staple), but most importantly (in fact vital!) to this build I found a trio of “Games Workshop” oil drums, these were glued together and then held over the gas cooker (don’t tell my wife!) with a pair of pliers, till they had softened, and then dents were added by pushing the side of an old screwdriver into them. I got a little over zealous with one actually making a hole in the side, but this will work well later on. I also found an old “tidily wink” that was the exact size of the top of the oil drums, so this was added as an open lid using a little greenstuff. All the debris was then glued in place and a little more greenstuff was used to seat one of the oil drums in the pond were it will be floating on an angle, leaking toxic waste out of the hole I blew in it’s side.

Next I built up the outer edges of the base with more filler that will be painted as rough earth encroaching onto the slabs. And filled the bottom of the pond with a layer of my basing sand (though I doubt you’ll be able to see this once the resin goes in). Once it was all dry I gave it all a coat of matt black and I could start painting it up.

So I began by painting the pond sides and slabs with a heavy dry brushing of dark grey, this was followed with mid grey, followed by light grey and then a very light dry-brush of white. The debris items were then re-painted black (as I’m a messy pup!), before being dry-brushed with chestnut (it appears I gave my pot of rust paint to Myles and can’t buy a new one at present, but this is pretty close!), then lightly with chainmail, then the barrels were stippled with citrus orange, then again with sand, then more chestnut was added to all the pieces again, then a few spots of orange were added to the rusty bits, then more citrus orange to the barrels, then more chestnut (are you keeping up!). I then added the sides of the model car battery I’d added in Navy highlighted with more of the same mixed with light blue and the cover on the shock absorber in dark red with pink burgundy highlights (you can’t see these in the photo) I also printed out three tiny yellow triangles with “skull and crossbones” symbols that I found on the net and glued them on the top sides of the barrels. Lastly for now I gave the base of the pool a quick “scrub” with some chocolate brown and butternut. So a bit more to do on this (including the fun bit) and then adding the “dreaded” water effect…..

Also this week I’ve painted two of the “Knights” from my “back up” figures, I won’t go into details here, it was all pretty standard stuff, I’ll “Quickshade” and finish them off when I do the pool.

Till next time, stay safe. Cheers Roger.

“What If?….Wednesday (8th July)”

OK let’s get serious this week, and inspired by a post on the “Miniatures Page” I thought we’d talk about something we all really don’t want to think about…Oooooh ominous! A few weeks back we discussed what would happen to your figures and such if you met an untimely end, but this time I’m asking what would happen to YOU if that same untimely end was to befall you collection? What would you do if you lost all your Wargaimg paraphernalia in a fire or while moving abroad they fell out of the plane and were lost over the Atlantic or some similar catastrophic event?

OK so obviously first of all you’d sit on your doorstep and ball your eyes out! (Well I would anyway, but I guess I’m not as tough as you lot).

But what would you do? Start again? Or Walk away from the hobby altogether? I know we all have vast quantities of time not to mention cash tied up in our little soldiers, then there is the sentimental aspect. Many of us have been at this so long that some of our collection is no longer available and so irreplaceable, so would you try to replace them or start over in a different genre or scale?

Now normally I finish off by saying what I’d do but I’ve sat here and tried to think what I’d do and I really don’t know. Could I face starting again after all this time, I just don’t know…Sorry didn’t mean to get this deep or depressing.

Anyway as always the floodgates are open, so give us your take on this…

Stay safe, cheers Roger.

“Summer Scenery Challenge, A Bit’ Bitty”

For those of you who are not in the know the next two months are “Summer Scenery Challenge” months, this is being run by Dave Stone over at “Wargames Terrain Workshop”* (follow link at the bottom of the page for the rules and details). Now I have signed up for this even though scenery is not really one of my strong points, and there are some serious scenery experts taking part (you know who you are!), but I do hope to get a couple of pieces done before I go back to work, however I will have to order in some bits to complete said pieces and when you add in drying times etc… progress is going to be sporadic at best. So along with the “scenic bits” I decided to try and paint up a few figures as well, you know “as and when” I get the chance, so I thought I’d begin with a bit of an apology as rather than my usual way of working which is start something see it through to the end and post it, things are going to get a bit “messy” over the coming weeks with things progressing a bit here and a bit there. But we’ll see how we get on.

So I have dug out eight of my “Mega Miniatures” dungeon characters (see right), and I hope to work on these alongside the above. These have now been based and undercoated in matt black and also this week I have finished the cavalry and “Battle Mage” to go along with my 15mm Elven army as well as “Quickshading (strong tone), basing and varnishing them. But now onto the main event, my scenery…

OK so the first piece of scenery I want to work on is a decorative “pond” for my “Into the Wasteland” project. I’ve had this idea for a couple of years now, and even started work on it back then, taking a plastic lid from a whipping cream tub (honestly that was the only reason I bought the jam and scones!), I was going to fill it with “Plaster of Paris” but didn’t have any, so I used “Tetrion” filler instead, now this didn’t work out as well as I’d planned, so it got dumped on my table and forgotten.

Till now that is, as I have decided to re-visit this idea, so tearing away the pot lid (It adheres a lot better than plaster!) the resultant casting was a bit rough to say the least, but with some filling with more filler it might work to my advantage. The gaps on the inside of the ring (I’d tried to fill just around the edge of the lid) were given a rough filling with more “Tetrion” and it was then glued down onto an MDF base, I then attacked it with a scalpel. First job was to cut six vertical lines around the outside to look like it was make of six separate pieces, the defects in the casting were then worked out into cracks and missing “lumps” in the concrete.

Next I spread some more filler around the edge of the pond and flattened this out as best I could with the side of a wet knife, once this was dry I took the scalpel again and carved cracks and joins into this to give a broken tile effect. And that is where I’m up to as I write, hopefully by this time next week more progress will have been made.

Till then, stay safe. Cheers Roger.

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