Orktober 2019 Hobby Project - Tabletop Hub

Hey everyone!

So for the past few years I’ve seen a lot of people I know take part in Orktober and I’ve always kind of stood on the sidelines and watched it happen, envious of the productivity I’ve seen in others so this year I decided to plan ahead in order to take part too!

I told myself that I wanted to try and challenge myself in undertaking a hobby project for Orktober and there are two things that I’ve been super curious about and have wanted to do but haven’t had the confidence or know-how to do it:

• Get an airbrush and figure out how the heck to use it
• Paint a miniature and submit it into a competition

So for Orktober this year, I’ve decided to tackle both of these things….daunting, I know.

About 11 months ago I did quite a bit of extensive research into airbrushes, I watched countless videos (including the series that the guys here did years ago when they were still in England), I talked to staff at Element Games, I chatted to other hobbyists and even had a forum thread going to gather info from all of you.

In the end there was just a swell of information for me to dissect so I took bits and pieces of what I had been told to inform me in my purchases. Christmas and my birthday cropped up and Element Games had an airbrush sale so I managed to pick up an Iwata Revolution for a really decent price, after consulting the Miniac and a number of others the Iwata seemed to be a solid purchase.

Then came the compressor, again there were tons of options, each with their own merits but I decided to go with a tank compressor (terms could be completely wrong here, forgive me) that had a moisture trap in-built to it as I was surprised how many didn’t have this and it seemed like an incredibly important piece of kit.

In my eyes if I didn’t get a compressor with one of these in-built it would be an added expense to get one integrated into the workflow so why cause an added headache.

I managed to pick up a compressor that was designed for Badger airbrushes, got the Badger air hose and equally had to get the adaptor so that it would connect to the Iwata (something that can easily slip your mind if you’re not careful so be sure to pick up a couple of adaptors if you’re going down the same path, they only cost like £4).

So with the gear in place it was just about finding what I would paint for Orktober.

I’d been seeing a lot of people painting busts and large scale models recently and I thought that painting something similar would not only give me a larger canvas with which to test out the airbrush but equally perhaps give me a little bit more scope to test out my own painting skills.

I stopped by the folks at Scale 75 while at UK Games Expo this year and picked up their Orc Fury model as I thought it was the most fitting for Orktober 🙂

So now all I’ve got to do is figure out whether to assemble the model before I start painting or whether it’s best to paint each part separately before I assemble (any advice is greatly appreciated).

I’ll get the compressor and airbrush running this week to do a couple of test runs before I start using it on the model just so I can get accustomed slightly to it but I’m really excited to get stuck in, I think it’s definitely going to be a challenge and hopefully it’ll all turn out ok 🙂

I’ll keep you all updated with video and written updates as I go!

S.