Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

3d print of one streachgols from a Kickstarter of ‘years past’.

Caterpillar

Thingiverse is littered with different iterations of this fictional machine, but from I found out this one scales best to 28 mm.

I printed two of them at once as terrain props for my ever-growing spaceship terrain collection.

This is new design of a mini that was part of Quapu Khalki starter (now discontinued). Fun fact (?), that discontinued one (which was second iteration of the model in games history) was actually first Infinity mini I’ve ever painted.

I photographed the old version as well to show my progress in between February 2015 and March 2020 (and progress in CB’s sculpting between 2013 and 2019). The greatest difference between two those models is actually gluing them together. The old one has 4 or 5 pieces with contact points of 1 mm or less, the new one is two pieces – with contact point exceeding 1 cm2.

One more new design replacing old one. Very cool, heroic pose in my opinion.

I love how Myuibs play in the game and the options they bring. Therefore I own 15 or 16 minis (of which game allows use of 6 at onece…). Below are two of my LGL guys in old form. Both painted in May 2016.

I designed them to print flat and resemble one of the types of paper containers from Operation Red Veil box. From dates on my files it looks like I did designing bit in September/October 2018. I also printed them and assembled back then. Fast forward two years and there you have it…

And for comparison, paper original. I guess I could add some details to my paintjob.

I finished painting Hassasin Ragik with Boarding shotgun, the last mini from the line of miniatures realised in connection to Operation: Red Veil boxset. Red Veil premiered in August 2016, as Gencon release. For couple following months CB fleshed out the set with Dire Foes box and Beyond Operation Red Veil.

Until buying that set I played Quapu Khalki and Hassasin Bahram – both sectorial armies of Haqqislam. But since I bought that box I added vanilla Haqq and Yu Jing… and then ISS and then… I recently found out that I actually have two sets of minis from that box.

Anyway, the Ragik:

And family photos, Haqq and YJ:

Forgot about my Ghulams! I painted them before the Ragik from recent post.

From my spreadsheet it looks I bought her in September 2016. I liked the model but I really have piles of cool civis to act as HVTs. With my recent search for good spring cleaning project I found her buried in a drawer.

For this year I pledged to paint 5 minis to higher standard, push myself painting them, employ new technics or pay special attention to some part of each of them. This is the first one. I don’t claim that it particularly stands out from my other paintjobs, however I made special effort with her face and legs which are supposed to be covered with skin coloured stockings…

From the blurb on Infinity store site: The Tariqas are the consultants and senior advisors of the Hachib, President of Haqqislam, as well as their spokespersons and representatives in the Senate of O-12. All of them are women with a deep and extensive knowledge and wisdom, personifying the best of the Haqqislamite culture.

This is a robot from latest AW Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2097161002/uks-governance-of-technology-3d-printable-vehicles?ref=discovery&term=antenoc.

A real joy to paint.

I spent last evening painting bases, some are 3d printed others decupaged, and some just put together from scratch.

Meet crucial member of the most hilarious bunch in cartoon history, Kowalski the Penguin (presumably from Madagascar). I 3d printed all gang, and will paint the rest soon. I may sometime use them as mad-traps in Infinity as more and more YJ profiles get that perimeter weapon option, or just put those sweet birds on my shelf.

Yesterday I started a bigger project. This is Hercules, a craft from latest AW kicstarter (same as the recent drone). I printed all the parts on Elegoo Mars and covered with Vallejo’s light grey polyurethane primer. This needs couple of days to properly set, so next steps will come no earlier than next week.

Continued from newer post above due to restriction on number of pictures.

6. Cut I used hobby knife to cut out rough shapes and then needle file to achieve final shape.

7. Rub top layer off. Now you need to peel off unwanted layer of paper. To do that you need to wet it (I used brush and tap water) and then simply rub of top layer. It won’t be ideal after one peel and don’t try to make it perfect right away because you’ll destroy the print. Instead, dry the base and after it is completely dry moist your thumb and rub again (moist, not wet). Repeat the operation until you’re happy with the result, but remember that the transfer is fragile, use caution and be delicate (this requires a bit of practice).

8. Finish. To finish my bases I used transparent glossy ModPodge, it fitted my theme, but on other occasions I also used mat varnish and it worked as good as ModPodge.

Other uses. Above example is very simple base, but the method can also be used in other applications. You could easily use it to create 2,5D bases (or walls, or floors) applying such transfers to previously cut pieces of HIPS or whatever else.

I also used it on some terrains and diorama. Examples bellow. It has its limitations, and doesn’t compare to waterslide decals if you’d want to use it on actual miniature, but on the other hand it is much cheaper than decals and has white background which is very hard to  achieve on home printed decals.

This tutorial is a kind of response to Golden Button recieved on March 29.

Some time ago I got inspired by the Kicstarter which was advertising full colour, ready to play bases for cheap. While idea behind them is cool, they used technology which is not available to me (and probably most of gamers around the world), also I didn’t want to wait for the bases several months, I needed them now. I found a mosaic design to be particularly interesting and suiting minis which I was planning to paint at that time (vacation in Lisbon were probably important factor in that decision as well).

I examined the bases closer and came to mind that at the scale of 28 mm miniatures, creating crevasses between tiles is pointless, they will be either invisible or look stupidly wide. Those realizations lead me to one of technics I sometimes use on my terrain pieces. It is something between decoupage and waterslide decals. I learnt it from one of Doctor Faustus of Doctor Faustus Painting Clinic on YouTube.

This is step by step instruction to use it:

1. Choose your pattern/picture. Simply google for pictures of whatever you want to have on your base. Azulejos tiles, Persian carpets, prtraits of the 80′ TV stars etc.

The other way to go is to scan patterns or generaly pictures from magazines or let say your gaming mat to produce bases looking as they were piece of it. You can also take photos of whatever you find around and transfer it to the base or terrain, or vehicle…

2. Process the image. To receive good crisp results you need to crank up colours of the image and contrast, otherwise final result will be blurry and washed out. In the end it depends on the printer you use so you need to experiment a bit (I turned contrast up by 60-70% and lowered brightness by 10-15% on below example). I used GIMP to process my images, but actually pretty much any photo processing software will do.

Of course you also need to scale desired image so it is visible on the base, and arrange reoccurring patterns and spread it over printable surface of the page.

 To that end I used free piece of software called Inkscape.

One last important note: THE PATTERN/PICTURE WILL BE TRANSFERRED IN MIRROR IMAGE! So if you have any directional patterns (like letters) don’t forget to process your image accordingly look at last photo in this tutorial).

3. Print. This is a bit tricky. I had to use highest setting (resolution and colour intensity wise) of my printer, but again your mileage may vary depending on your machine. Bellow you can see how intense my printout was (and couple of project entries back you’ll find washed out bases printed on normal settings).

Use good quality (the less fibres the better) paper, but don’t use glossy or photo paper, they won’t work.

3. Glue. The main secret of the process. ModPdge produces ‘Photo Transfer Medium’. This is kind of water resistant gel glue which according to their own YouTube channel may be used even to transfer photos on t-shirts and alike. But of course I used it on the bases. You need to remember to apply quite thick layer (I did it over the base not paper) covering whole surface so that nothing is visible from beneath. And of course then, stick it to the paper as shown in the photo.

This glue gives white base in contrast to regular ModPodge which is transparent (but otherwise may be used the same way).

5.    

4. Dry. It is extremely important to let it dry thoroughly. I left my bases for 12-15 hours in my humid climate. It proved to be sufficient.

Further steps are described in the post bellow due to restrictions on number of photos.

This dude is one of my favourite minis in whole rage right now. He looks as he really means business and in game he is truly quite deadly for the opponent. Gameplay I’d rather prefer the SMG/DEP loadout but design-wise, only this one. One surprising thing is the paintjob on official photos, it’s really poor considering the standard set by AG.

While I was never fan of PanO, some of their designs, especially new knights is just insanely good. I loved this guy since his premiere as part of Operation Ice Storm back in late 2014, I bought him in 2018 as part of my new Knights army when CB offered 300 pts army pack for that faction.

Of course, since the pack was offered before changes in their roster I also bought a starter to grab some fusiliers… Now with advent of Operation Koldstrom I suddenly find myself in uncomfortable position of an owner of PanO army…

I painted him to fit Knights Hospitalers force from the box.

BTW, I tried hard to achieve passable results on the freehands on this one, I’m not entirely happy with them, but they shall pass.

A second take on stockings, this time much more successful in my opinion.

According to fluff from Dire Foes mission, she isn’t particularly nice person. I tried to give her rather diabolic face to sell that trait of her personality. I call it success, however, I probably gave her too light eye colour.

I painted Zuyong with missile launcher. This is exclusively paintbrush job, well I did zenithal undercoat with black and white primer and painted the base with an airbrush). But anyway I wanted to see difference between very deliberate paintbrush work and average airbrushing which I usually apply. Bellow you can see two Zuyongs:

1. Paintbrush, ca.10-12 hours:

2. Airbrush, 2-3 hours (painted back in October 2016).

I don’t know what is your opinion, but I guess putting one more hour into tidying up the airbrush work would give the very same results as paintbrush in less than half the time…

Some time ago I bought amazing model from MyMiniFactory. It was 1/10^th scale woman and a bike covered with bones. Overall extremely wasteland/post apocalypse feel. I bougt it to support the sculptor mainly and didn’t think I’d ever print it. But having all that free time which I spent mostly on the computer I started playing with MS 3d builder. This is very simple programme which gives you just a handful of tools to play with your .stls.

It proved to be really useful for me. I managed to merge parts of the bike and the main character into just two printable files and even changed weapons on the chick to make her look as Kum Rider from Infinity Haqqislam. Of course I had to scale down the model significantly (22% of the original to be exact) which made some details become hard to read, nevertheless I find final result very promising. I just primed her and really want to paint as soon as possible.