Freehand: Iron Cross

It's a busy week for Dystopian Wars here. Today I want to show you the method I use to paint the Iron Cross on my models. It is a pretty simple design to paint as it is basically geometric. However these designs become much more difficult once you scale them up. On my frigates they were hard enough though no bigger than 5mm across. My battle ship was easier as it was tiny more like 3mm. On the Pflichts though I was dealing with about 1cm of space to have to fill. While there are great decals available for these designs I am too lazy to go look for them. Instead I get to practise something I am usually terrible at: freehand. This technique is dreaded by most, including me. However when you see a model with a nice effective freehand design they really are stunning. The shots below are all thumbnailed so click on them to blow them up larger.

Step One: The picture is a little bit hard to make out but it shows the first step. I take some very watered down black paint and I put a dot in the centre of the space where I want the Iron Cross to go. I then define the outer parts also with a dot. So nine dots in all evenly spaced. This is an important step to get right and it is very easily corrcted as you are only placing small dots of black on the model. So if you take your time with this then everything else should be easy.

Step Two: A steady hand helps a little with this step but again it is easily correctable. You are now simply joining the dots up with a thin black line. Using watered down black paint helps. just join everything to the dot in the middle. It is rather simple! Don't worry too much about a wobble on the line. You can correct that in the last step with some white paint if you are feeling lazy.

Step Three:So here is an easy part. All you need to do is to fill in the four triangles you have made. It is much easier to see the shapes if you outline them before you fill them in. Oftern I would have attempted to paint the triangles without outlining them first. This usually leads, at least in my attempts, to a very non symetrical design.

Step Four: So having gotten this far you are pretty much finished. The last thing to do is to get the white lines in. Once upon a time I would have painted the white first and then filled in the black afterwards. However I find that this method means I make better looking designs. So working always from the center out draw even white lines to the outer edges of the cross. This helps keep a point where two lines meet in the center and it means you don't overdo it there either. It is very easy to paint towards the center and go too far making corrections difficult.

So if you follow the steps above you should come up with a design like this one. It was far easier to do than I thought. I was quite nervouse to put this there but really the models need it. The Airships are missing some detail as the baloon area is rather boring. The Iron Cross really breaks this up and makes the model far more interesting. I have also been practising with the Imperial Eagle but I am still not happy that it would look good on this model. Its very much a rushed attempt but I will practise and hopefully I can perfect this design enough to get it onto one of the larger Airships. I can imagine it would look nice on the landing platform of the Imperial Sky Fortress! Though the wooden texture might make it difficult... hmmmm.

Going back to Chaos?

So despite my current attraction to Dystopian Wars I am slowly starting to think about my chaos army again. Again it is the fault of a Podcast, this time Heelanhammer. I think in the year since the relase of eighth edition I have played only ten games. Thats a shame as I really like Warhammer. My current club isn't really that enamoured with it but Hamburg as a few clubs and I am thinking of getting a very quickly prepared army together just to have some fun. However I need practice with weathering pigments and I am going to combine the two. Chaos Warriors are some of my favorite models by Citadel. I can imagine painting them in a very mettalic scheme and then weathering them heavily. It wuld be a very simple way to get an army to the table and I can really improve my weathering skills. As for the composition I am guessing anything with armour. I can't weather flesh so no marauders or hounds, so only Knights, Characters and Warriors. Hmmm lets see if my enthusiasim keeps on the boil. I might pick out a test model tonight to see if the scheme is workable.

I would want them to fit somewhat into the general tone of my current Chaos Army. However I am guessing that they will suit best as Khorne marked Warriors especially considering tht the weathering should give them a strong red tone. I want to get an army on the board as quickly as possible and that is somewhat effective, I am guessing that Chaos fits this bill well. Also it adds to what I have already done so thats a bonus.

Tutorial: Airships for Dystopian Wars

So following on from yesterdays shots of the Pflicht Airships I thought I would show a step by step of how I did them. They were easy enough in the end as they are not too intricate. Most of the shots below are thumbnails so just click on them to bring them up much larger

The bases on the Dystopian Wars flyers are a pain. While nice looking with the arcs marked out they don't fit together at all. After a long long while simply trying to force the stems into the bases I gave up and grabbed my drill. I was lucky enough to have a drill bit the exact size of the stem. However I was unlucky enough that this one was blunt. It still did the trick but it really needed more force than I was comfortable with. The bases are robust enough to take this thankfully. I was a little confused by the white backing the bases had. I took this off straight away but I guess it can be left on to save getting fingerprints everywhere. I can't see that it serves any other purpose. Getting the stems into the model was also a little tricky. One of them really didn't want to cooperate. Eventually I coerced it in. One word of caution however! Don't press the stem too far into the base. I did this and now it is raised ever so slightly off the surface. This causes the model to rotate around the stem easily and I guess it will be annoying when it comes to actually playing. Even with the drill I needed some force to get the stem in and this is why I pushed it too far. So you are warned!

The most important step in my mind is getting the base colours on correctly. Once you have a nice even coat on the model it is practically playable. For these models I copied the scheme I used for my Ships. German Field Grey(vajello) is the base colour for everything. Its got great coverage which is good as I didn't undercoat these models. I was worried about the spray filling up too much of the detail. However the mould release agent will stop the paint adhering to the surface so it is important to wash the models down with some soapy water. A soft scrub gets the residue off. I then pick out the metals in a bronze colour. I dislike the idea of bare iron on sea going vessels and I thought I should follow it through on the fliers. For a little bit of variance I picked out the Prussian flag on the tails. The edges of the panelling helps keep the lines straight.

Of course I forgot to take a photograph of the next steps but this shot will help explain. I washed the whole model down with a light black wash. This brings out the fine detail of the resin models. It also gives some nie texture to the generally flat area of the baloon itself. Without a wash this would look terribly boring. I then go back with german field green, the base colour, and pick out all the raised areas such as the ribs and gun ports. Finally I mix a drop of bleached bone in and highlight these areas. It's pretty simple. That finishes the green ehough so that it looks great on the table top. Getting more detailed in terms of highlights is really not worth all the effort. I did highlight the edges of the baloon ridges with some of the base colour though so that they stood out a little better.

The metals were picked out in lighter shades of gold. I washed them first with Ogryn Flesh (GW). This gives a nice purple base to the metal without darkening the raised areas too much. I also put some patina on the tesla coils to the front but my eyes are not seeing it on the pictures. It is Hawk Turquiose mixed with Thraka Green and some water (both GW). I just let it run into the cracks. Thats basically how I painted the models. Freehanding the Iron Cross is annoying but I will cover that separetly later in the week. So I hope this is helpful in getting your airships to the table quickly and effectively.

Some new undead

So these images just arrived in my inbox! Some very nice new stuff!
This Ghoul King looks awesome. Its a pity that the plastic ghouls are not equally as nice! Thankfully i have pretty much given up on my idea of an all ghoul army due to the difficulty of picking up the old metal models. If I was doing it this model would be straight in there. Its really great, much better than the hideous Zombie Dragon.

The Cairn Wraiths are nice, not much of a change from before. These are seemingly becoming haracters in the new update. Thats a good change but I can imagine that with the need for magic in a Vampire army these will be more of an after thought when constructing lists.

I really like this piece. I will definitely be getting myself one. It isn't a very practical piece as you won't be able to pop a regiment inside it. I guess at a stretch you could count it as a building or something. I think it will be really nice when added to the chapel and some of the walls. It could make for a very atmospheric graveyard. I really like the direction GW are taking with terrain. They have really come out with some great kits. I would love though if they would make some generic houses though. The kit seems fairly modular as the individual tombs are separate pieces. I guess then I will be buying two and making a slightly larger piee. It doesn't seem to have an overly large footprint. Hmmmm I should get the Dreadstone Blight finished first.

Airships!

I was getting pretty annoyed with the slow pogress of my painting reently. Every evening I seem to have something to do and at the weekends I am always obliged to go somewhere. I haven't had a productive painting session in weeks. However I do think I identified another cause of the problem - lack of motivation. Recently I haven't been that enthusiastic about painting. Generally this comes from being bored or overwhelmed. I find that if I have a crowded desk I just don't like sitting there. At the moment mine is on the edge of being overly filled! There is a Bloodbowl Team, a lot of Warmachine, some lurking Warhammer miniatures and finally some Battletech stuff. However what was really getting me down was simply being bored. Everything thats on my desk I have tried my hand at painting recently. There is just nothing new and maybe more imporatnly nothing challenging.

So with that in mind I picked up some Dystopian Wars stuff last week. As always seems to happen I was listening to the d6 generation and they started talking about the game. Then I started thinking about it. I then annoyed some of my club mates to see if they were coming along with their fleets. So in the end I picked up some Airships. Not only were they adding a third to the points of my small fleet but they were something different to paint. I had tried the ships before but not the airships. I have to say they were great to paint. The textures on the canvas of the airship meant it was very hard to build up any form of highlights and that washes would look strange. I am still not sure how to make this less apparent. It would seem that the excellent moulding process picks up too much detail. Whereas the less sensitive moulds used for metals would have given a flatter surface these picked up some of the 3D printing process I think. Its fine in the end, not too noticable, but it does make some of the advanced painting techniques a little more difficult!

So I am hoping to have about five hundred point finished for the next meeting of the games club so I can finally have a game. That depends on some of the other guys getting their stuff done too... It would seem that everyone wants to get their fleet finished before using it which is nice.