If you think that I am joking about the amount of hours spent on this project, consider that I woke up at 3:30am this morning and slipped into beast mode with the brush until long after the sun rose.

Here is the vig, most of the colors on the model still need highlights.  The only finished colors are blue and silver.  But, I am getting there–slowly.

The brown planets here will be painted red.  Also, you will notice a small white paint drip on the red planet in the foreground, which will be cleaned up soon.

Below is the cage that surrounds the sun at the center of the mobile.  It’s skulls are not yet painted.

Some minor problems with the mold that needed fixing (broken block on top during molding) but otherwise, 5 shiny new buildings.

UPGT – Terrain Part One

I put together a video from our terrain party on Saturday. I cut it at a natural break in the conversation, but there is enough footage left to make two more videos. It’s been posted to YouTube. Perhaps we should start fleshing out the GT section of this website, so interested viewers will have a place to turn for information.

Oh my.  I had not imagined that I would still be working on the carriage at hour 25.  What a project!  As you can see, I am between several steps here.  The silver needs a wash of nuln oil and a few hightlights (culminating in mithril).  The brown areas are the basecoat for the wood, red, and cream layers.  The books give you a sense of what the red and cream layers will look like, but they still need their last line highlights.  The blue is the only color that is done.  The candles will be done in the cream color, with object source lighting off of the flames.  The window frames will be painted as wood, so I hope that the orange flame washes will play nicely on the brown.  Oh, and the edges of the wheels are not painted silver yet because the black paint keeps rubbing off, despite the fact that I am using a plastic baggie as a glove on my left hand (to reduce that sort of thing).

Call me crazy, but I think that this carriage will be done in about 5 hours.  I will check back in tomorrow afternoon!

@ Noah, I laughed out loud when I read your comment.

Update:

Finished the wood parts and the first three coats of blue paint on the carriage.

Up next, I will clean up the ornamentation with black paint, line highlight with temple guard blue, and paint the silver bits.  After the silver is done, I should have a much better sense of which colors will go where on the ridiculous moldings and such.

@ jon, it is just black.  the lighting was poor on the last photograph.  hopefully my new set up works better

@ greg, I would be happy to talk about/continue working on this on your podcast.  We should do an empire episode where Peyton and I talk about the armies that we want to bring the Crossroads Gt.  I am free any night this week and most days in the near future.

Wow.  Just wow.  I have no idea how I am going to paint this Celestial Hurricanum.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the kit, but this model has details on top of details.  It was designed in CAD with absolutely no thought into how a player would paint it, which is actually kind of disappointing.  If maybe 3% of Gamesworkshop’s customers can actually do this kit justice with the paintbrush (based on my own scientific, voodoo statistics), then why wouldn’t the designer of “the best miniatures in the world” give any thought at all to how one can paint up the model.  If you want an illustration of what I mean, compare this Hurricanum to something like an Eldar or Space marine vehicle.  As I assembled the first bits of the model, I shaved off details like the rivets and spikes on the carriage frame and decided to attach only minimal bits from the optional details section.  I felt that the model was far busy enough as it is.  Also, in order to actually paint this model above a 3rd grade level, I need to prime it in no fewer than 11 pieces.  Ya…

Alright, so enough whining.  I aim to make this model the centerpiece of my new Empire army, which I intend to bring to the 2012 Conflict GT.  (I can’t rightly let Peyton release all of that new book mojo all by his onesie, can I?)  Since I have a few days between my grad school semester ending, and my insane summer reading prep for my fall PhD. exams, I plan to bring this model from start to finish by Friday.  Can it be done?  Well, let’s just say I have a few McChickens riding on it.

To allow you all to join me in this magical mystery tour of love, estrangement, contempt, despair, and celebration (I am currently at stage three of the process, see paragraph 1), I will post up various pics along the way.  I may post before and after pics of the individual parts, or just random shots as I proceed with some especially crazy detail work.  Things to look forward to: agonizing layer painting in places where it is nigh impossible to get a brush, freehand work, and (my personal favorite) object source lighting.  The latter will go in places like the window arches on the chariot, which will be illuminated by mad candles.

So, if this process sounds fun to you, then (baby) please join me for the ride.  You bess buckle up, kids.

Love,

Jeff

The back to a staircase that you might be able to see from one obscure angle…

Hey guys,

I have something that I wanted to discuss with the club. Ive seen a few Chaos Dwarf armies at the Grand Tournaments that I have attended over the past year-year and a half, all of them were using the "Indy GT Chaos Dwarf Book". I have yet to play against that book but know that some of you have. What is everyone stance on allowing the Chaos Dwarf Forgeworld book and the Chaos Dwarf Indy GT book to be playable/usable in the Unplugged GT?

Heres my thoughts:

• While Chaos Dwarf players are few and far between, they do exist and there are a few in our area who I beleive are interested in attending our GT.
• The ETC board has approved the Forgeworld book to be used in their event and have comped it along will all the other books.
• I understand that none of us play Chaos Dwarves (yet) so we dont have alot of play time against/with them, I can safely say that there are other armies that I have barely played against and I am sure its the same with all of you. So I think the fact that no one really has alot of experience against them shouldnt really factor in for the simple reason that there are plenty of armies that each of us barely fight against.
• By allowing either/or we open our GT to a few more people and add a little more variety to the GT. I think that is the biggest selling point, I want the Unplugged GT to be the best and variety is a great step to that.

Now heres a few things that I see could be a negative:

• The fact that it will add another army to the list of armies that we need to comp for the GT.
• We dont have a local Chaos Dwarf player to play against(yet), but Peyton owns the Forgeworld book so it wouldnt be to hard to run a proxy game to play things out.

Maybe I am a little one sided with this topic, but I just want the GT to be open to anyone who wants to come play. I think the fact that the other GT's in the area allow the Community Chaos Dwarf book should make it a little easier for us to allow it to be played.

I apologize for my spelling mistakes and grammar, im typing this at work while trying to tackle 1,000 other things.

-Brian

Many coats of silicone rubber later…