Hellboy (an old Spring Clean Challenge)

So obviously Rus vikings, I conected some dots and found an excuse to give some quasi uniform colours and save myself some work.

Not much to say really , more or less the same technichniques as outlined when I painted the main box.

Fortunately I still have a few of my custom paints and glazes in little glass pots so I’m comfortable the pallet is consistant enough. I was concerned that painting additional the Hellboys could be difficult to match to the earlier figures but I think it turned out well. As I was doing the Hellboy from The Wild Hunt I also did the Helboy from Box Full of Evil  which led onto doing all the wrestlers. I’ve shown the earlier Hellboy on the end to compare.

Building up few thin glazing layers I blended and tweaked till I was happy they were table top ready.

I will matt varnish when I’ve completed the whole box and I can do as a complete batch.

So the Wild Hunt box came with 2 giants. Two of the same giants, as per the  middle giant in the pic above with an armoured right arm.

Taking a bit of Apoxy sculpt and a little liquid green stuff I gave 1 of them another paldron and a roman helm to move his likeness towards one of the other giants. It isnt perfect but does help provide a little variation thats closer to the original art.

Interestingly I thought I was doing a bang up job till I re-zenithed and dry brushed over my work. The surface does look a bit rougher than I hoped for.

I think it is in part because the Apoxie Scult I use is almost jet black so can hide the surface depth a bit but to greater part, its my skill level.  Certainly seems difficult to do perfect sculpting work.

So a freind walked into a bar one day………no scrap that I dont even remember if he’d been drinking. But I do remeber him putting these in my hands and saying “Paint them”. So thats what Im going to do. Now I have completed all the standard case files in the core box I’m keen to get more stuff on the table to play.

So other than the ‘how much better would this be with a resin printer’ I am kind of satified with the result. It ticks the box as a 3d version of the card. Is generic enough to be used in other diesel punk minitures games of wich I might have 1 or 2

Honestly I didn’t really enjoy the trouble shooting on the printing, It took me most of my weekend with a lot of back and forth remodeling the last few pieces and testing print orientations and settings to get a finish that I’m accepting simply because it’s the best I can achieve. My task may have been made a little easier with a better quality PLA . This one was just too black and also a bit soft so. But ultimately I think this sort of model should be done with resin.

As you can see in the pic below there is a growing pile of rejected parts. I even gave up on printing the fuel drum , the piece I thought should be the easiest , and grabbed one out of a 1/48 Tamyia Jerry Can set

With the model completely tacked together I’ve given a quick rattle can coat of Vallejo black flowed by a top down Bone White to show up more flaws.

Next step will be to disassemble, clean up some daggy areas and touch up with a bit of putty, and get on with adding some colour.

So I found the generator token kind of anoying in that it it looked like a bit of random oblong with glowing bits, could have been nothing. I could have taken the idea of a generator quite literaly and looked for a typical diesel engine shape and stuck a cylinder on the end , and this would be fine for a typical german generator from WW2 but I I felt that a generator thats probably firing up cyber apes and zombies should be something a bit more.

I did look to cheat and see what I could down load and print off but I wasnt satisfied with anything. Honestly as an Architectural Tech I actually spend a lot of time 3D modeling but spending all day at work on CAAD doesnt inspire me to pick up more software for hobby fun, and its been some years since I’ve fired up Blender and dived in for hobby purposes. But I wanted to have a crack.

So basicaly I took lots of inspiration from very early generators and dynamos chose a radial engine to power it and gave a diesel conversion.

With a bit of luck I’ll have the modeling finished by the end of week and printing next wekend.

With the craziness that’s been surviving Christmas now behind I finally found a few moments recently to put the finishing touches on some more pieces. I must admit I’m pretty chuffed with my broken ‘jar’

Perhaps the most difficult thing to find a decent example of, the orrery. The Mantic orrery that comes with the Wizard Study is ok I guess but I couldn’t justify a whole Terrain Cate for it. I did consider making my own model but it wasn’t like I had the time . After printing I did think to remove some of the struts to see more of the planets and in hindsight I probably could have shrunk the sun a little but on the whole I’m pretty happy with it.

So way back before covid ,when gaming was still a regular thing, one of my mates donated a few pieces from Mantics Terrain crates to my Hellboy box. There is no doubt that the bookshelves and desk work wonderfully on the board but from an aesthetic view they also highlight how good it would it would be to do away with all the cardboard counters.

One other thing that happened shortly before covid was the arrival of my Creality CR-9 FDM printer. I’m not going to get into depth about printing the stuff here. But I will say that after 18 or so months of keeping an eye out for appropriate STLs and learning a few ropes about printing I’ve almost put together a collection I’m happy with. I say almost as there is an objective generator/science experiment that I’m not settled on yet but I have Brain In Jar and the Arc Of The Covenant to cover me for now.

Finding Doors was relatively easy, thingiverse is good for much

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1126259

The Boxes and wardrobes were by Epic Minitures on MyMiniFactory

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-mimic-set-2-disguise-monster-classic-encounter-collection-165610

And the tables, chairs and orrery were by Darkest Desire on MyMiniFactory

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-orrery-re-supported-168057