A little Captain in ya..

 DreadTober is on and I'm finally feeling a bit better.. Sunday night I could feel it coming on and it's still here.. but last night during the Hobby Hangout I at least got most of the modeling done .. well at least the basic modeling ... he's got a little Captain Morgan like pose going on .. right now the shoulders are just pinned in but not glued.. I have to mess around with the position still..

 I had Furioso Dread claws I bought a long time ago and figured they would look good on the Raven Guard Dread.. then it made me think what else should I add to it .. So I had some old Death Guard Termies I had sitting in a box so I thought it would be cool to have the Dread carrying a ripped apart Termie..

There is a pin where his arm was and there will be one in his torso that I'm going to green stuff some bone and gore coming out.. I figured it would look cool.. hopefully. Its a lot more work then I was originally thinking haha.. so hopefully I can get it all wrapped up..

I'll also be going through some of the pictures of DreadTober today to write up a first week wrap up...

DreadTober is upon us!

Hey all,. I quickly mentioned it yesterday but I updated the DreadTober Page to represent this years event. It's been going on now for 4 years and this year Joel (Mordian) and I are going to be handling the updates and what not.

If you are interested in working on a Dread / Walker / MC during the Month of October and what to join in with a group of us all working on one and posting up.. please do. Greg (Greggles) and I came up with the idea 4 years ago at the Nova Open thought it would be a great to get more people talking and spark up new conversations!

So.. join us... 

https://dreadtober.blogspot.com/

and here a few banners if you want to show some DreadTober love..

Be cool or be cast out

 Some more work on this dude.. I played around here and there trying to figure other colors out but blended the metallics which I'm pretty happy with right now. The knee guards came out solid..

 I also blended out the shoulders and back spine piece thing .. it looks cool but who would really put that back there haha .. The one part I'm still figuring out is the back piece of the gun. I didn't want it to just be a fully brass/gold gun so I painted it to patch his armor and that looked terrible. So I went with bone.. terrible. I started to go purple but didn't feel like that was going to do it either so I'm going to go with more of a heat fatigue on it and I think that should be cool. Like the energy chamber is supa hot.

 The purples are almost completely done as well so there is only the piece on the gun.. a small punch on his belt and some cording on the spine thing. And the base needs to be wrapped up but either way he'll be done this week. Now I'll need to get his squad all built up. My Son's Birthday party is this weekend so more hecticness has already been added to the week.

I'm pretty happy with this guy and makes me want to get his squad done so I can get a Kill Team game in though I have no idea when that will actually happen haha..  'shrugs'

On another note... it's almost October or should I say DreadTober!!! This year I wasn't going to do it because of the amount of work it requires to put in but Joel from Mordian is going to assist in putting it together. Sorry for the late notice.. I'll be putting together more info today and will make a specific DreadTober post as well as bringing the DT Blog back online .. Get those dreads ready!

Dirty Deeds

 That right! More Sybarite! (AKA Murder  Dude 01 AKA thanks Joe for the actual name). I haven't had a ton of time to get back to the table but I did work a bit more on this guy. I started to work on some of the bone areas and a little more work on the armory green areas.. I ended up going with green for the boots, I was trying to figure out if I should go with a different color but didn't want to spread out too much and have a blast of colors. I still have to figure out the base color which I don't want to be the standard grey.. maybe a solid red contrast like Mars' surface. The untreated metallics are killing me and the next time I sit down to work on him that will be the first thing I work on.

I think the colors are popping on him and the harsh blends are looking cool but I have to go back and break some up more. It's a weird technique and takes a lot of eye balling to see what works and what doesn't but I'm having fun messing with him. Either he turns out cool or not but he's definitely going to stand out .. haha

Abstract Behavior

 Last Thursday I started working on some Dark Eldar.. at Nova I won the Kill Teams box and I figured I'd make up few Kill Teams. One good thing is I have a ton of stuff just sitting around though sadly I have to find a lot of it because most is still in boxes after the move. But now that Nova is past I'll be concentrating on getting my painting room finished up. But back to DE.. So I broke out this guy .. no clue what DE sergeants are actually called haha Head murder dude 01 sounds good to me. I was also working with a Succubus model and I only know her name because she was in a blister but sadly that blister was Finecast.. blah.. I spent WAY too much time just fixing her and attaching her butt to a base so I just moved over to this guy to actually get some painting done. So far most of the time was concentrated on the armor and loincloth .. The rest I just blocked out.

 I wanted to go with more of the rough blotchy blending which I normally don't do but figured I was just going to play around. There is still a lot more blending to do on it but sI tarted to like it and then I hated it. Now I flip flop on the model going from love to hate haha .. Another thing that I noticed that I haven't done in awhile since I've been paint the Raven Guard is that I forget to block out all the colors and just focus on a section. Then I sit back and realize oh crap.. the rest of the model is black and I have not idea how it's going to tie together. So I started to block it out and then realized that now I was just focusing on the cloth. Forcing myself to stop and actually block it all out it tough for me it appears as I then started to mess with the whip which I thankfully did stop myself and go on ...

I just noticed I did this haha.. or at least remembered that I do since I'm not in full army painting mode. I took one of Roman's classes a few years back and he pointed that out to me quite clearly.. best to get all the colors on there and then work on the model as a whole so you know where you are going and add other colors in as needed. I like the colors I'm going with so far and will be pushing forward with him, I wanted the colors to be hard contrast and rough as the Dark Eldar are the rough version of their race .. and as my other blends are very clean I want these to be choppy. Plus it will only be a small force so even if it takes some time it won't be army time so not too bad. I'm going to blend out the greens a little more and I want to add some scratching or something to the armor .. hard to explain what I am shooting for as I really don't know. I'm just going to be playing around with these guys for a bit... have some fun experimenting.

But the Raven Guard aren't forgotten, a friend is getting out of 30K and has some stuff I want so I'm trading some Malifaux stuff to him since I don't see me playing that much anytime soon. But I'll go into the Raven Guard additions when I have them in place...

Nova 2018 Aftermath

 Hey all! It was another awesome year at the Nova Open and I had so many great games and good times. It was such a hectic year it felt like and this year I was exhausted from the get go haha.. like they say .. getting old is hell!

All of the games I played were awesome.. Win or Loss.. tight or slaughter.. no matter. Just nerds being nerds and loving it. It was tiring but so fun and pretty sad to see it end but I'm already thinking about next year and what I'm going to do for it ..

Here are some pictures -- Sadly some are blurry as all hell as I kept forgetting to pop the flash.. boooo but you should probably go over to Greg's page to really look at all the awesome stuff there. It felt like I was always on the move and there wasn't much down time. The downtime I had was filled with BS'n with friends.. old and new. Thanks to all of the guys running the 30K events they were all awesome to be a part of!

This year ..

• I got in 6 games of 30K with friends... I know six isn't a lot to most but it's the most I've played all year. Plus it's with cool people with amazing armies..
• Hung out with a bunch of friends.. old and new.. I'm sure I'll see you next year if not sooner in some cases.
• Saw some awesome work! This year the painting really seemed to have jumped up in all of the divisions and it was cool to see much love put into the armies. Well done all. 
• I judged the painting competition for the 40K Trios and 40K Narrative. While tiring and a bit hectic it was also very fun. Greg and I both were judges and took it very serious, we wanted to make sure each army got the respect it was due. 
• I entered the Leviathan and Sicaran in the Capitol Palette. Sadly I didn't get to hang out at the Cap Palette cases much this year due to either playing, judging or being exhausted haha I did get to hang out in the lounge with some amazing painters though.
• My only downside this year was my lack of eating lunch haha.. I always ended up getting side tracked. 

It was a good year for me painting wise.. 

• I got Best Painted in the 30K Excruciatus event and part of the prize support was an awesome fold able gaming table from Firmeterra... the table looks awesome and I heard great things about it from people I know that have one.. go over to their site and check it out! Thanks Joe! 
• I shared Best Painted in the 30K Bromance Team game.. Splitting it with Brad and Jake who had amazing looking armies. It was originally me and Brad but after three long days of gaming I was spent. Thankfully Jake stepped in and filled out the last game! Great games and made a couple of new friends! I won a Kill Team starter box which was awesome because I was just talking to friends about all starting up a KT and now I don't have to buy it!
• The Leviathan won Bronze in the Masters division. This was the first year of the three painting levels.. Apprentice, Journeymen and Master, they also take the best of your entries in each class so the Leviathan was the chosen one as both my entries in the vehicle category. There was a lot of entries this year with the split ranks which was nice to see a lot of people enter and were very excited. The judges said this year Master class was going to be very picky so I was pretty nervous. I only shot for finalist and as long as I get there I'm pretty happy but the Leviathan pulled out a Bronze! Which was awesome.
• The Display won best lighting.
• And probably one of the biggest surprises was my army took 3rd in the Army Painter Convention wide Best Painted Army award! So many awesome armies there and coming in third was an honor!

It was an amazing Nova 2018! .. It was cool winning things here and there but the best part of the event was hanging out with friends. Most of which I only see at Nova but it doesn't matter.. it's like we were hanging out just last week. 

Nova 2018: Projects complete

 Whelp.. Only a few more days and I'll be off to Nova 2018. Thankfully I've gotten the pieces completed I wanted to bring to Nova this year. I wanted a model for Captain Alvarex, replace my tacticals with Recon models with RG bits, Leviathan Dread and it's Drop Pod and finally the Sicaran I purchased at Nova last year. I'm pretty happy with the way they came together since my move really cut my hobby time and place out of the mix most of this year. Thankfully I worked on the Dread for Dreadtober last year getting it started and also did most of the work on the Sicaran but basically only had about a month to finish the RG Tacs, Alvarex and the Drop Pod.

 The first squad is most in a hunkered down position and are going with white accents on their bases.

 The second squad is up and moving and have the red accents.

 Alvarex is a Praetor with Dark Fury Wings and the PS from the Deathwatch box. I mag'd the backpack so I can swap it to a standard BP but with an antenna. I would have liked to get a little more detailed on him but time was short. I did give him a little sword glow to him and the rocks. I do need to clean up some of the bases a bit more but that is mostly it.

 I'm here suckers and I'm going to bust you up! ha.. I think it makes a cool looking entrance for sure. The Dread will be entered into the Painting Comp and hopefully will at least make finalist.. again my only real aspirations. 8) I added a couple of wear streaks and more soot to the stacks. I think he looks pretty cool ...

 The Dread's ride is all wrapped up and I think it looks decent.. even with Mag'd doors it's still a pain in the butt. I have can not tell you how many times I've picked it up only to have at least one door fly off and go shooting somewhere. So now when it's just sitting there I have a rubber band wrapped around it.

 Done with his annoying transport he's out!

 The Sicaran will also get entered into the Painting Comp.. again just want to get a finalist pin. I think it looks pretty decent as well.

 This year I wasn't able to put much time into display work so I decided to add a lift to the existing display. I was thinking The ship would need a lift to raise or lower vehicles or dudes.. and it made it easier to add something off the front of the existing board.

I love me some lights so figured I also had to add some more. I was watching Bladerunner recently and figured smaller landing patterns would look cool .. so went with rolling lights.. one going clockwise and another going counter CW. Last year I had some marines on the edges of the bunker and was a little so so looking so wanted to add a little more space for people to stand.
With this addition it takes the board to 130 LEDs being powered by 4 UNOs.

Well.. this will probably be my last post before NOVA as tonight I have parent student night and I'm pretty much done all the stuff I really needed finished. I'll be playing in the 30K events for most of the weekend  or walking around. If you see me stop on by and chat ! Looking forward to seeing some old friends and meeting some new peoples. I'm ready to roll some dice!

NOVA 2018... BOOM!

Oh yeah,,,.. and Dave sent this to me. Pretty Cool... my Eldar is the first pic that pops up on the left 8)...
https://www.facebook.com/WarhammerTVteam/videos/321116495113194/

Nitty Gritty

 Last night I got some more work done on the Leviathan. I'm started smoothing some of the blends on the armor and brought up some of the metals adding some brighter highlights. The metal on the base was a little muddy and wanted to add a light brighter areas. I will be adding some more weathering to it though as I need to blend in the red.

 I also started playing around with the claw arm a little more. I added some blue energy lines on the arm, I think it looks pretty cool and adds a little bit of detail. I did a little more glow on some parts but I'll still need to hit that up more.

 The cables will get a little highlight as it's a bit too mono color. I'm going to add more soot to the stacks. I added a little more metal fatigue.

 I brought the metals up a bit on the drill but that will also be getting weathering to level them off.

 Since I had the soot our I also started adding some to the Drop Pod. The bottom thrusters and the doors.

This pretty much finishes the Pod up. There really isn't more I need to do to it. Pod is complete. I'll be clearing it a few more time to make sure it's protected but then it will be moved over to the shelf waiting to jump in the bag.

Glowy hands..

 A short post today, yesterday after I finished up the Tac/Recon squad I started working on detail on the Leviathan. It looked decent but needs a little more love and some special options. Honestly I was all over the place while painting on him haha.. I was blending some grey and then was touching up some other parts but then I kind of zeroed in on the blue. Which honestly I should have worked on other blending first as it might affect the blue.

I don't want the blue glow to be too much so it will be lite. I still have more to do with the blue but I'm going to work on the other parts first so I don't have to start over on the blue and paint it twice 8) .. you know ..  the smart thing. So.. tonight I'll be working on that... hopefully.

Stuck in it

 Thankfully the boys are pretty much 99% .. I think I'm going to do one more black pin wash but that is really it. I think they came out looking good. Gritty ... dirty ... out in that thick of it.

 I think the the bases match really well with the gritty look. I did add a little verdigris to the copper areas to add a little more detail and color.All the detail took time but I think it was worth..

 Pics of the second squad. One has the red markings and the other white plus I went with most of the guys crouched down in one squad with the standing in another.

 I gashed their cloaks a bit to make them look even more worn.

 I went with purple lens for the gun scopes.

I was playing around with the model I'm making for Strike Captain Alvarex, I just started playing around with the sword and it's not showing up too well in the pic but I'm pretty unsure of it.I'm going to keep playing around with it and see if I can make it look better. The sword has cool designs on it so I want to do something different with it.

Digging in the Dirt

 The Recon/Tacs are almost done.. thankfully! Last night during the Hobby Hangout I pretty much worked on annoying little bits haha.. I missed a few straps which I finished up as well as an internal battle as to whether to paint the grips of the combat blades on the BPs.. which I was thinking about going with leather for ease but it already had too much brown so I went with a red.. I didn't want to add a completely new color so since the lens and seals are red I stayed with that.

 But .. (as John mentioned last night) it's pretty hard to see after the weathering haha.. I got the first coat of weathering done on half of them which is drying in the pictures.. I'm pretty happy with them as I took a long painting break and on a short time schedule they are really coming out nice.

 This weekend I should be able to wrap them up which is keeping me on schedule.. other then the weathering I need to finish the bolter lens and a few other small details so it shouldn't take too much time.

The highlights are strong so they are still visible after the weathering. I'm also up in debate about the sides of the bases.. I normally paint them black but they also look good metallic as the GW bases also have details on the side. But will it looks weird not matching ..  I'l probably pull the others down and line them up for a visual..