Friday, July 30, 2010

New Stuff from Forge World



Kinda makes me want to cry. I'd pretty much said no to my marines, now I want to add to them again. Dammit!

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Marauder Destroyer Pt. 7 (Camo Time)

The next step in the Marauder Destroyer build is to get the major colors onto this bird. I'm going for a gray on gray camouflage scheme. This would be suitable to Ash Waste type worlds, or even worlds covered by urban sprawl.

The idea when it comes to airplane camo, is not to be seen... of course. But you are going to be searched for from primarily two directions. Below by anti-aircraft weapons, and above by fighters hoping to put a stop to your deadly payload. For this reason many planes are a lighter color underneath, to blend into the sky when the enemy looks up, and darker more complicated patterns on top to make it harder to see them from above with the ground as a backdrop.

On to the how. A solid base coat is the first step. That can be seen in the previous post. There are many (many) great articles on the internet that go into great detail on how to paint a camouflage pattern. I'm just going to show you how I do it.

First I take a strip of blue painters tape and lay it out on my cutting surface. I use the blue painters tape because it is tacky, but not sticky enough to take off previous layers of paint.



I then cut the tape into a pattern using a sharp hobby knife. This is not a precise thing and randomness is all the better. Using wide tape I can get a couple of strips like this one from one stretch of tape.



Peel up the tape and find a spot on the model and start pressing it down. Then just repeat this process.



Here is the finished product...


(You can see it is already blending with the test colors on the box in the background.)





As I mentioned, there are many articles on the internet about how to do this. Some give you a sharp demarcation, some give you a softer line, some require more skill, some require less. This is just my method and it seems to have worked out well for me.

Questions, comments, and whatnot are welcome as always. See you next time in part 8!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Marauder Destroyer Pt. 6 (Your Name Here)

I could tell you about the hellish weekend I had trying to find adapters for adapters for fittings to make my new (though cheap) compressor work with my airbrush, but I won't. I will tell you the old compressor is still working fine and I'd be done if I hadn't wasted time trying new things. The moral of the story is, don't try new things... Unless it involves sushi or the opposite sex.

So, while not getting much done, I had lot's of time to think...

Bombers, and most planes, have some form of nose art. Here are a couple examples that don't involve naked women.... though there is nothing wrong with those either.





As you can see, these are usually a simple picture (though it could be a symbol) and a name of some sort. Now, space on the nose of a Marauder Destroyer is minimal, but I may also look into integrating the 'nose' art onto the midsection, or even a wing top or rudder. It's the 41st millennium, leeway must be granted.

Your name here? I want to give my fellow bloggers a chance to have their blogs name on my Marauder Destroyer! Here is how this will work;

First, you will leave a comment letting me know that you want to participate. We will work out a name to be used if you win in the comments section. For example, if your blog is named The 51st Cadian Doom Weevils, we may make it the Spirit of the 51st Cadian Doom Weevils just to keep it sounding like an airplane name.

Second, you have to do my dirty work and get me some traffic. I don't care if you mention my blog in yours, write a blog about my blog, or just sucker your friends into coming to my blog. The caveat is they have to come here from your blog to count. I'll be adding up numbers of visitors who linked here directly from each participants blog and whoever sends the most traffic, is the winner! And no fair just coming here yourself a million times (though you are welcome to do so), I'll be skimming the traffic to make sure it's not all from the same IP address.

So why the cheesy tactic? I used to have quite a bit of traffic, but then I was off due to personal obligations for several months. I want to make sure that folks out in the blogosphere know I'm back on it! Especially before the WarHound Twins project starts.

So I'll close with a couple of pics of the work in progress...





So, if you want to participate, drop me a comment. I look forward to hearing from you... yea, you!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Marauder Destroyer Pt. 5 (Some small progress)

As promised, before 537.010M3! Even if just barely.

I've finished out the cockpit details and the crew. I say finished, but what I mean is, "gone back and fiddled with" as much as I'm going to. I'm not the super interior detail master that some out on the interweb are, but I've put some paint on the inside of the plane anyway.

Here are a couple shots of the crew, cockpit, and dorsal gunner...





The rear of the cockpit is molded onto the plane itself. This shot is from the 'nose' looking towards the tail.



So now comes the joyous time of airbrushing. I've been doing a lot of pondering on how to paint this odd shaped beast. The answer finally came to me just yesterday! I think this idea is many shades of cunning and should work on a Marauder or Marauder Destroyer...



And a close up...



That's right, just hang it out to paint! Now I just need something to hang it from that's within reasonable reach of my airbrush. This will be great and allow me to spray it all over without having to wait for bits here and there to dry so I can turn it over and such. Please hold your applause till the end of the blog.

On another note, I've been reading the Gaunts Ghost third omnibus, The Lost. I'm working through the first book, Traitor General right now. It's a great book, but then all the Gaunts Ghost stories are. I don't know about you, but when I read a good 40K book, it makes me want to work on stuff for that army. I think this time is the exception. I just keep thinking how much easier the Ghosts would have it with a couple of Warhounds traipsing across the countryside. I can't wait to finish the Marauder Destroyer and start the Hounds!

Please feel free to leave any comments you wish. I like the praise and have a pretty thick skin in regards to critiques, so bring it on!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Do You Know What Today Is?

Sure you do. If you don't, you can always take a look down at the clock in your system tray... or wherever the clock is for you wacky Linux/Unix and Mac folks. But, what if you need to know the Imperial Date as used in the 40K fluff??? Well, look no further! Well, no further than just to the left of this post. I've added a widget to the left sidebar that will tell you today's date displayed in all it's Imperial glory!

First off, the thank-you's. This is by no means my invention. I stumbled upon it on The 18th Lyubov Rifles website. The sites owner was happy to share the script and even tweak it a bit for me as his forwards the clock to the 41st millennium. He's really a great guy and has a site worth checking out!

I won't go into too much detail about how to read a calendar done in the Imperial fashion, that information is readily available at the link above. But the gist of it is, for those not in the know, the first three digits are the time of year based on a thousand parts. This puts each part at about 8.76 hours. To be honest, my calendar will update based on day, but not time of day. So, in theory, at the end of June which is halfway through the year, the first three digits would be close to 500. Near the end of December they will be approaching 000, or one thousand. The next three digits is the year of the millennium. So last year was "009" and next year will be "011". Nine hundred years from today will be "910". The "M" and the number after represent the current Millennium, of course. Remember, we may be in the 21st century, but we are technically ten years into the the third millennium. Knowing this while reading some of the Black Library books is nice, as it at least gives you a since of what time of year it is when they use a full date.

You'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit too excited about this for my own good. I love gadgets (and widgets), so this has really tripped my trigger. I can even set holidays. The day of this posting (and the next day too) are to be Calendar Celebration Day, but there will be other 40K themed holidays showing up on appropriate days... Can you feel the Geek-ness yet?

Thanks for stopping by. As always critiques, comments, and other babbling is welcome in the comments. Also, I've been getting a bit of work done on the Marauder Destroyer, though it's slow going right now. I expect to have an update on it by 537.010M3!

Friday, July 2, 2010

I've Moved!

Online that is. A new domain to spiffy the place up a bit.

Ok folks, the last few months have been beyond busy for me. Not too much sign of letting up either. However, I do plan to try and get some work done. Maybe a Marauder Destroyer painted... maybe some other resin products built and/or painted. My plan is to sleep less, I think. Let's face it, the beauty sleep isn't living up to it's name in my old age.

I want to apologize for falling off the radar. I have lurked many of your blogs over the last few months. Speaking of you guys blogs, when I moved my blog to it's new address, I mysteriously lost all my blog roll entries. I'll be building that back up over the coming week. That's how I keep up with you guys, after all!

Google has assured me that all old links to my blog should still work... of course, I thought my blog roll would be coming with me too! So, while you shouldn't have to, any links to this site can be replaced by http://www.theinnergeek.net.

I hope to have some sort of progress to show on the Marauder Destroyer to show in the next few days. Till then, thanks for stopping by!

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