Building a Better Police Box

So Starfire is taking much longer than I had anticipated and part of that is due to the fact that I have been fighting the lighting in my studio area for some time now.  I believe that I may have a solution to that but I will cover that in the 4th installment of that series.  So I'm setting that down for a moment to do a bit of planning for my next major project.

To give a bit of background, last year I put together a Doctor Who themed diorama as a Christmas present for my girlfriend.  This is the result of about 4 weeks worth of effort:

It wasn't bad, considering my skill level at the time and the paints I was using.  I know I can do much... MUCH better now!

The build itself was pretty basic working from the inside out.  I started by building a box out of styrene plastic conforming to the inner dimensions of the police box.  Around that, I built the panels, the four columns on the corners, and the top bar.  I then topped it off with the roof which consisted of one square of styrene topped with another.  The roof was sculpted out of epoxy putty and sanded down.  I finally topped that with the characteristic lantern... or at least the best I could do to reproduce it at the time!  All of the text was put in using custom printed decals which... sort of worked.

So as I look to re-approach this project, I try to think of how I can do better.  So I looked at what I had come-up with for plans and turns out I had very LITTLE planned out at all!  I had taken some scant measurements and then just went with it.  For what I want to do, that's NOT going to be good enough!

The first thing that I need to do is determine scale.  This helps me translate real world dimensions into the scale world that I will be building.  This will be critically important since this will need to be part of a diorama with other figures of roughly the same scale. What I want is a constant value I can use to translate a real world measurement into the scale world I am going to create.  We can assume that any figures I chose for this diorama are going to be in the 28mm scale range (the scale for MOST miniatures currently in production).  The best calculation I can find to convert real world measurement to this scale is a 1:56 ratio.  So, anything I see with real world measurements can be divided by 56 to give me the 28mm equivalent.

So with a bit of Interweb magic research, I found the following diagram with measurements that should prove useful (source found here):

At this point, I could get into some real serious calculations and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how all of this translates into the scale that I am trying to create.  What I really want to do is normalize these measurements into a metric form that fits easily into the scale that I am working with.

I think that anything beyond 1mm is going to be very... VERY difficult to perceive so I will be rounding all measurements for simplicity (rounding to the nearest millimeter).  Starting with the base, which is showing a real world measurement of 50"x50" = 127cm x 127 cm = 1270 mm x 1270 mm.  1270 / 56 is roughly 23mm.

I'm going to simplify things a bit here.  23x23mm is going to be VERY close to 25x25mm.  So if I take all the measurements as presented above and divide them by 2, I will have approximately what I need in millimeters.

So here is the build list I will be working with (some of which I already have):

1. Styrene plastic sheets (1mm and 0.5mm thickness)
2. Square styrene plastic tubes/rods (3mm x 3mm and 2.5mm x 2.5mm) that can be cut to form the outside columns and the top beams
3. Styrene plastic strips (0.5-0.75mm wide)
4. Milliput standard epoxy putty

That's about all I need.  Hopefully I can get started on this in the next week or so after I have the dragon done.

Super Dungeon Explore - Starfire (Part 3)

Before I get too deep into shading and highlighting on a model I like to do the face and eyes first.  This makes it easier to clean-up any sloppiness that may occur while attempting to fill in those details.  It also gives me a bit of a psychological boost to see that character's face come to life early on in the process. 

I've deviated a bit from what I originally specified in my previous post because I determined I had better colors for what I wanted to do.  First I block out the eyes with the charred brown.  Then I layer on the filthy brown to create the iris, which for lizards fills the entire visible area of the eye.  I finish it off by painting in the pupil with RMS Brown Liner.  I could get fancy and add a drop of white for a light catch but I'm actually going to do something different to get that effect later.  With that done I focus on the mouth.  For that I simply filled in the recesses with RMS Crimson Red, then layered on pink for the tongue, and the blonde highlight for the teeth.  It's not 100% clean but will do for now.

Ok now it's time to deal with shading and highlights on the remainder of the model and then I will be 90% done.  To get a good reference for the placement of light and shadow I took pictures from different angles with the model under my work light:

 

This is more or less how I start laying out the paints on the palette for shadows:

 

The top reds are going to be for the majority of the model that is to read red. There will also be oranges that I will mix on the other side of the spectrum.  The bottom row of colors was an attempt to shade down the khaki with RMS Muddy Brown.  I think it dulls the color down too much so I will likely use something else.

 

 

At this point my process becomes more organic and I won't be explaining a whole lot of what I am doing.  Mostly I simply focus on creating the lights and shadows using the colors I selected and I may decide to pull additional colors into the mix for added effect.

 

Here is where I am leaving off on this tonight with some rough shading/highlighting done.  Hopefully in the next few days I can get to the finishing touches.

 

 

 

 

Super Dungeon Explore - Starfire (Part 2)

So now that I've got Starfire primed it's time to start thinking about what kind of color I am going to use.  I've already decided on VMC Red 70.926 for the basecoat and VMC Burnt Cad. Red 70.814 for shading.  To help figure out what else to use I turn to one of the masters of fantasy painting, Larry Elmore.  Here is his classic artwork that many are familiar with from the old D&D red box:

More or less, this gives me a roadmap of the colors I would want to use.  Primarily, the dragon is predominantly red, orange, and gold.  There's more that I'm seeing here but I will save that for later.  For now I will focus on the colors needed just for the dragon.  So I will pick three additional colors to build-up highlights: VGC Orange Fire 72.008, VGC Filthy Brown, VGC Gold Yellow 72.007.  I can also see some cool deep shades and reflected highlights, but for this model I am going to keep it simple.  The underbelly, horns, back spikes, wing webbing, and claws will be basecoated in VGC Khaki 72.061 and a more greenish golden tone will be built up on those.

 

I also need to put a bit more thought into what I'm using for the stonework on the base.  Since the dragon is going to be primarily a warm color, I am going to choose cool colors to produce better contrast.  For that I'm simply going to use VGC Sombre Grey 72.048 as a basecoat.  Then layer on progressively lighter layers using  VGC Cold Grey 72.050 and VGC Wolf Grey 72.047 if I need higher highlights.

 

I will also need to pick out colors for the mouth, and teeth.  For the darkest recesses of the mouth I will use VGC Charred Brown 72.045.  The teeth will be based with RMS Russet Brown and layered up to RMS Blonde Highlight.  For the tongue I will base with Burnt Cad. and layer up with RMS Blush Pink.

 

For the eyes I will use Khaki layered over Charred Brown with Charred Brown for the slit pupil.

 

Now that I have my palette selected I'm ready to start painting.

 

I've started by basecoating the base completely with the Sombre Grey.  Some of the paint got on Starfire but I will clean that up in the next step.

 

 

Because red is highly dependent on the colors underneath it, I don't want the Sombre Grey that I got on Starfire to effect it.  So I will clean that up by painting pure white over those areas before basecoating the dragon.  Once the white paint dries and I'm satisfied that I've covered up the slop I start with my basecoat of red over the entire surface of the dragon except for the eyes and mouth, which I will treat differently.  After the red paint dries I will then apply a second basecoat of the Filthy Brown to the underbelly, claws, horns, spikes, and wing webbing.

 

After applying the red basecoat the model looks like this:

 

 

And here is the model after applying the khaki to the "golden" bits:

 

 

 

I think that the contrast of the khaki against the red is going to work well here.  There is still a bit of clean-up work to do on this tonight but I should be ready to begin shading and highlighting tomorrow.



 

A Cure to the "Vallejo Shine"

So one of the frustrations that I've had with Vallejo paints (both Game Color and Model Color) is that when I go to first use some of them, they come out glossy.  Reds in particular have been notorious for this.  I call this effect the "Vallejo Shine" and I recently found the cure.

While I was at GenCon this year I attended a class taught by Zack Lanier.  He recommended doing additives, which I had tried to no avail.  Then one of the other students in the class mentioned something really simple that turned out to be exactly what I needed.  His recommendation was to add an agitator to the bottle.

The problem with the Vallejo paints is they need to be mixed thoroughly and just casually shaking the bottle isn't good enough.  An agitator is simply a solid object dropped into the paint bottle to help mix it when it is shaken.  When you use spray paint and shake the can you'll hear something inside the can clanking.  That's an agitator in there.

Here, for example, is one of my VGC greens that has the Vallejo Shine.  Notice that not only is it shiny but it's also kind of transparent?  This is straight out of the bottle with no thinning.  What happened is the mix that came out contained less pigment than it should have and more of the binder and medium.  This is not what I want.

So what I am going to use here for an agitator is a simple screw I picked up at the hardware store.  Note that it must be small enough to fit into the bottle.  You can use anything as long as it's not going to corrode and effect the paint.  It also has to be dense enough to penetrate the thickness of the paint all the way to the bottom of the bottle.  If it just floats in the paint mixture it's not going to help much.

In this example I'm placing a zinc-plated screw into the paint bottle head first.  It probably doesn't matter which way you put it in but logically with the screw head down it should help pull more of the denser material up.  Also there might be better choices than zinc-plated, but they are cheap and appear to do the trick.

Once the agitator is in I give the paint a good shake.  If you can't hear the agitator clacking against the inside of the bottle, it might not be doing much.  Now I take a drop of the paint and redo my sample swatch on the bottle top.  I do this without thinning or additives.  The idea is to determine how the paint will behave straight out of the bottle.

 

There's still a bit of sheen and that's mostly because it's not completely dry.  It's still also a little translucent but that's normal for some paints.

So there you have it.  The solution to a problem that has plagued me for months and now paints that I had shelved as useless are once again useful!  I hope this has been helpful and if you have any additional tips for dealing with this problem feel free to share them in the comments below.

Super Dungeon Explore - Starfire (Part 1)

Starfire is probably the largest figure I've attempted to paint thus far. It's also the main boss monster from the core game and therefore deserves special attention.  I've actually had the model assembled for some time now, I just haven't had time to do much beyond that.

The first decision I had to make was whether or not to prime the model black, white, or grey.  I decided that since I am going to paint him red, white would be the best choice because it would support red the best.  Black would make it look dark and grungy and I'm out of grey primer so white it is!

Now at first, since I'm shooting for a good tabletop quality I wasn't concerned about cleaning-up any of the mold lines or filling any of the gaps.  But once I saw how it looked after a few light coats I changed my mind.  I decided to scrape off some of the mold lines with a curved blade and fill in the gaps on the limbs with epoxy.  The epoxy I used worked well and now instead of a stark line where the two bits met it looks more natural.  I tried filling with Vallejo plastic putty but it didn't fill very well and just left messy crumbs where I tried to use it.  I should probably shelve that stuff until I can figure out how to best use it.

Anyway, I'm pretty much done with priming and it's about ready for some pigment!  There's still some mold lines showing and some crumbs in the finish but I'm not going to worry about those since I'm just going for tabletop quality.  Working from the inside out, I am starting with a mid-tone grey for the stone pillar and everything else that looks like stonework.  The main body of the dragon itself will be base coated using Model Color Red (70.926).  From there, I will likely shade it down with burnt cadmium red and then highlight up using oranges.  It should be relatively straightforward but because of the size of the model it will be time consuming.  So I'm thinking I will most likely have this done sometime over this coming weekend.

Speaking of the Vallejo Model Color paints I will be using, I had shelved a number of them because they were coming out too shiny.  I asked about this in one of my classes at GenCon and the advice I got was to put an agitator (like what you'd have in a spray can) in the bottle to help mix the paint better when you shake it.  So I added a screw I had laying around, shook the bottle of red paint up really good, and it worked!  My once super shiny red and burnt cadmium paints are both matte now!

Blog Intro and Current Project List

Hello and welcome to my blog, IRNewbPainter.  Just to give a quick background, I first attempted to paint miniatures in 2009 and I quickly found myself frustrated at both the cost and time it would take to get any good at it.  3 years later after deciding to try painting a few minis with my girlfriend (November 2012) and decided I was going to try to stick with it this time.  So far, I've been able to and I've now decided that it would be of benefit to blog about it.  This blog serves two purposes. One, it is a way for me to keep track of what I've done and how my skills have progressed.  Two, it serves as a way to share with the Internet community at large so that I can get feedback that could potentially advance my skills farther.

Here's my current project list.  This may get adjusted or added to as I go along.  I TRY to stay focused on one project at a time but sometimes I find myself in a lull while one project is in a bit of downtime (like waiting for epoxy to cure or a layer of paint to dry).  I also sometimes get bored with what I am working on and find it helpful to have one other project that I can jump to keep my interest from falling off.  But I try to limit this to just one other project so that I don't lose focus.

1. Starfire - Dragon from Super Dungeon Explore
   Treating this as a project separate from the rest of the SDE figures because of its size.  Since this is the main boss in the core game I will be spending extra time to get a good quality paint job on it.
2. Rexx x2 - Mini-bosses from Super Dungeon Explore
   These guys are also pretty big and will probably require additional time to complete.  I also want to try to put some freehand tattoos on them to make them a bit more interesting.
3. Remaining bad guys from Super Dungeon Explore
   I've tried speedpainting large numbers of figures before and it just hasn't worked well at all.  I will see if I can have better luck on these guys as I don't intend to spend more than 1-2 hours per figure.
4. Police Box version 2.0
   I had made a police box for a diorama that I put together as a gift for my girlfriend last Christmas.  It was primarily constructed from plastic with some miliput sculpted for some of the items that were difficult to fabricate with plastic (like the roof).  After it was painted I applied custom decals for the lettering.
   In this version I am going to do a number of things different that I think should yield a more impressive result.  First off I'm not going to attempt to sculpt in the windows.  I can probably get a much more impressive result if I freehand them in and imply a 3D effect instead.  Second, I don't plan on using any custom decals.  All lettering is to be done in freehand.  Third, there will be a lot more work done to add wood texture to the box.
5. Doctor Who themed diorama
   While I made one last year as a gift, this one will be mine.  I plan on using the police box from the above project.  Scene/story will be determined later but I want to make sure I have figures for both the Doctor and the Master.
6. Spells & Chrome (Shadowrun themed diorama)
   This was a project that I wanted to complete for ReaperCon but got shelved due to issues on the conversion figures that couldn't be fixed in time for the convention.  The conversions (a male elf street mage and a female ork street samurai) will be redone and this time I will NOT use a dremel to do any of the cutting.  That caused more problems than it solved so I will just have to invest in a decent jeweler's saw instead.

So that's what I'll be working on and writing about here.  My next entry I will be focusing on the dragon and what I've done up to this point on it.