24 Hour Paintathon for a Seraphon / Lizardmen Start Collecting box
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About the Project
So after a very long pause and not doing much in the hobby. I painted like 30 minis between 2012-2018 after I moved to Ireland from Germany and was very busy with work. In 2018 I built & painted the Forgebane half from the Necron Box for a friend's birthday. This again was followed by basically only painting about 20 minis until early this year. I got back a bit into the hobby with Aeronautica Imperialis but was still busy with work, so did not get much done and then Corona hit, and suddenly had more time, and a HUGE pile of Hoppy prep :P So what was the sane thing to do? Right start painting. But what about motivation? I used to paint with friends, and we'd shoot the shit and have a blast of a time doing this. But A) all the people I used to do this were back in Continental Europe and B) moved on for a considerable part with their lives. Also, no travelling and local lockdown did not help either. However, a few years back, I started watching painters on Twitch, and I'm very technical and had cameras and microphones for Business and Hobby reasons on hand. So the sensible solution was to get a Community and paint with other people via Discord. And why not stream this myself? And thus in mid-March, I started streaming myself after starting to paint a bit in January. So we did build up a shared Discord for a bunch of German twitch mini painters. We soon started talking about Projects, and one of our earliest ideas was, oh, let's do a 24-hour challenge? That ought to be fun! All the gaming streamers are doing this. So imagine a bunch of mid-30s to late-40s guys suddenly want to do a 24-hour long paint session. So we've set the premise and yesterday I did this with a bunch of the lads, and it was great fun. Spoiler, I did not finish the Start Collecting box, and I did a lot of prepping before. but I did take pictures, to share on Instagram on the way and I thought now lets document this here :) If you want to watch the stream, you can see on twitch in the archive and Youtube, it is mainly in German, but there is English in-between. My nick there is the same as it is here: StorminWolf. If you have any questions, do let me know, and I would love to have constructive Feedback as well. If you've read this far: Thanks for doing that & I hope you enjoy the posts here :)
Related Game: Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Related Company: Games Workshop
Related Genre: Fantasy
This Project is Active
Cutting and gluing the Bases
After I had let the Greenstuff cure for a day (a bit more than 24 hours actually), I was able to get it off quite quickly with the help of a very sharp blade to lift the sides and was left with three giant pizzas of Green Stuff. So the next thing to do was to cut the greenstuff to fit the bases roughly. To do this, I just took the Bases placed them on the Greenstuff, and then cut around them with the scalpel with a fresh blade.
Note:
Always have a few hundred blades on hand, these are only good sharp and tend to get dull quickly than cutting materials they are not intended for.
After I had cut the greenstuff parts, I just took the cork, placed the greenstuff pieces on to that and used the scalpel again to cut around them.
At this step, it was not necessary to be detailed, so I left a bit more cork on the edges.
I then glued the greenstuff with PVA onto the cork, glued the Cork onto the bases and used small clamps (iI have a load from the Poundland/euro store) to press it together.
If you use glue, it’s important to keep in mind, the corks suck any liquid into itself so be generous with the glue.
I then cut the cork to fit the edges of the greenstuff and let this cure for a few hours. This depends on what kind of glue you’re using. I have a quickly (read 1-3 hours) curing PVA in 500ml bottle of the big A for about 3.50 monies per bottle (pre corona ).
I then glued a bunch of Greenstuffworlds Tree Stumps (One blister of small and one of large, if you want these make sure you get the normal ones as they have haunted ones as well), which I got from store.ontabletop.com using the Army Painter superglue and activator (pretty much the only AP product that is good 😛 ) onto the bases.
After the curing, I slapped very generous the Stirland mud onto the edges to get rid of the “mould line” between the cork and the Greesntuff plates, and also to form the river bed.
This, again, was let to be to settle for a few hours. After which I just primed it with Vallejo’s Mecha Color Airbrush Primer Black.
Building a load of bases using GreenstuffWorlds' rolling pin and Cork
So this happened before building the miniatures because of the involved curing times. But I do think it makes more sense posted in this way.
Materials I used are:
– The Aztec Rolling Pin from Greenstuff World, you can buy from store.ontabeltop.com,
– A smooth-rolling pin (GSTW do make one, but I just use one from baking),
– A sharp scalpel,
– I did get the stencils in base sizes from GSTW as well, but those only work before the Greenstuff is cured,
– Greenstuff,
– A 6mm Cork roll,
– PVA glue
– Stirland Mud Technical paint.
So I first rolled out the Greenstuff flat, I need those silicon rings to get it more easily into one thickness. I used a lot of water and 3mm plasticard sheets to roll the greenstuff onto, so it would not glue itself to the surface and also get a smooth as possible underside. Once I had done that I just rolled with a lot of force the Aztec pin over it. Don’t worry too much if you do not get the ornaments everywhere, you’ll see later on why.
Preparation of the Miniatures: Building and Priming :)
So due to Corona, there is a certain lack of things like a primer. Especially if you’re like me and swear on GamesWorkshops spray can primers.
I tried a load of other primers form several brands and did not find one acceptable to me. However, there is the Mecha Color Range from Vallejo.
And they do make special primers for the Airbrush for this range, which are available on the big A. So a when I ran out of my stash of cans I did start using this, and I’m more than happy. In fact, I’m so happy I’m pretty much switching to this primer. However I do not recommend the usual air primer or the spray cans from Vallejo, but the Mecha Color Primer is fantastic.
So have a look at the pictures of the build and primed minis, which took me about 2-3 hours total plus the curing times. Always let glued minis settle, and also always (!) give a primed mini cure for at least a day before you start painting it.
