Spring Cleaning Military Orders

For those who do not know what the 6p’s are, it’s “proper preparation prevents piss poor performance”

I often charge head first into trouble with projects and thought I should at least write down my intentions. (yeah I already started)

There are three phases to this project

• Making a set to take photo’s
• Updating model bases and paint on at least 3 models. To different degrees
• Rounding my models out to a force.

I think this fits within spring cleaning. the time limit should be good but it is pushing myself a little.

The set for taking photo’s will serve two purposes one for bases and the other is taking pretty pictures. I have just finished designing this and the bases.  it will be like a part of a medieval monastery keeping it old looking to give a great contrast in time and colour to the shiny blue.

The three models I am updating are, Joan of Arc (AG edition), Seraphs, Military Order Armoured Cavalry and it’s Auxbot. Joan is being stripped, remodelled, repainted and rebased. The TAG and bot are being rebased, freehand added and touched up. Two of these models have golden buttons. I am happy with all of them for different reasons but want them to match the rest when they get here.

The rounding out of the force will be in the form of the recent pre order from Corvus belli.

The project will be more of a tutorial format for the painting and modelling but I will keep my 2d design as it’s dull and even duller to talk about.

This will be tough. In terms of the modelling, painting and my own feelings.

I don’t want to strip Joan, however she has been stripped before. The colour is wrong I don’t like the lollipop head and she has been dropped about 10 times and broken twice. I want to make a more invasive repair and update.

This is a hard decision to come to. This was my 8th or so infinity model to paint. I followed each step in Angels book to the letter and still ended up not looking the same. I think this was also my second or third golden button.

I am however interested on the update and comparison to my painting skills now. I will not be using the AG book to paint the model but my style is heavily influenced by this. It will make a good compare and contrast if I pull it off.

More to come probably stripping Joan and starting on the set.

I got started. My plan was to make the bases then strip/paint the models and then build the set.

When I was doing the bases I thought this is a piss poor plan. If you think about a person walking into a room for a theatre production. It would be a bit odd for the person to stroll out and know what floor they would be standing on before the set was done and their costume on. I has this backwards. (this was quite fortunate)

I did like my 5 or 6 tests I done on the bases. this helped me understand the material as I normally 3D print my base toppers. This will be my first time using MDF in this way.

Instead I will get to work on the set. the bases worked out basically how I would do the floor. This also set the best of my colours. I will use a dark terracotta colour an off white (yellowed white) for some detail or focal sections, deck tan (green grey) for most of the pattern a dark green. with black thrown in. I was also watching time team and seen a few of the tiles and they all seem to be blackened in the middle. Something to do with the process. I will use black wash on the centre for the translucency.

Some things that I considered and decided:

• I won’t use full white as this will be the highest highlight on models and I will reserve it for that.
• I wont highlight the floor, but I will on the bases this should make the models be the focal point and jump out from the set.
• This will be lightly weathered but I should take the weathering from the models and not do this to the base until this is decided.
• I want the colour selection of everything to be considered. I want the dominant colours to be primary colours. Red, Blue and Yellow. But the focal point should be the models in blue. the Floor red and the walls yellow with some strong graphical elements. This sounds like a horrendous idea but I will play with the tones to try and balance this but make the blue the strongest colour (of the models). This does remind me of my local church and as a kid I spent most of my time looking at anything to keep my attention. All the tones of the church interior were natural but that was sort of the reverse of this with red sandstone walls and a yellow/white marble floor.
• I want to keep the set very traditional but cut some corners to speed things up. (writing this from the future, this didn’t work out to well)
• I am off this week and want to get this done so I can start to play with defiance (my reward for prepping for the rest of the models to arrive at the end of this month)

As I moved onto the set I thought, you need to do sandstone and stained glass. Quite a good thought. I knew this needed to be yellow (ish) so sand coloured sandstone. Easy yeah?

No, I have fallen out with sandstone in the past. Which is a cheek, If you have ever been to Glasgow where I am you will soon see that about 80% of all buildings are sandstone. I live in a sandstone building and can see at least 40 sandstone buildings by looking out the window. Can I paint it? Yes a small wall of sandstone is easy to paint. you use a variety of colours and can make this pop and look great. It takes time. Time I don’t have.

I needed to practice my way out of this mess. I also needed to check materials I have decided to use.

Frist comes the texture.

This was an eye opener. All were a little time consuming but I want a highly defined brick shape.  They were done either with a brush or cocktail stick hitting each corner. for the maternal.

• Pumice was too rough for the scale.
• AK was good but took a while.
• Filler didn’t adhere well but gave a good look for the scale.
• superglue and bicarb was indestructible but mopstly shrank from the edges.
• PVA and sand was good but a little too rough for the scale.

I would have went for filler but the fragility of it put me right off. That left me with the texture paste.

Material decision made I would have used this as my test piece for painting but I had a few other things to test as well.

I started work on the stained glass test. It’s been a few years (over 20, sigh) since I have done this. I have never used card as leading. These colours are oil based I think and brushes are cleared with turps/ white spirit. I have 4 colours: Yellow green, blue and magenta. I need 6 one for each window and two tones of each. and a few other elements for logos.  I will do primary an secondary colours and mix tones using a greater addition of the stronger colour. It would be best to have a colour for each white and back but I am not spending money on it so will make do.

The test will be using yellow.

Here is the second part of sandstone saga, spoilers there is yet one more section…

I had my texture and design. Couldn’t be easier, lets paint.

As you can see from the above. I drove myself crazy. But I did get something I was happy with in the end. There was about another 6 times I painted this thing and didn’t take photo’s. I should have analysed sandstone instead of my idea of sandstone. it’s a great lesson I will forget after submitting this.

Next morning I got up and started on the base. I was behind now. Just as well I planned at the start… 6p’s remember?

So this project is going great! well planned and flawless. I am so glad I didn’t decide to do my drop fleet, fleet.

I woke up the next day and seen my lovely sandstone. LOVE IT!

Fired up I start to try and laser cut my floor. It wouldn’t load into my software. Problem is my design is full of splines which is another word for very complex line. Not a problem, I have a magic wand that can turn complex splines into lines. Make it simple. Now I done this and tried multiple settings. There was not a good setting between quality (lots and lots of lines) and simple (a complex curve is broken up into a few straight lines). So yeah I had to redesign it.

(missing out a section where I tried to get the simple program to use more resource and trying multiple different programs to get it to work, this sort of worked but created more problems than it solved)

Making it simpler made the bases I had before not match. not only that but I planned to split my time and make proper arches while the base was cutting. [so the structure of the arch was correct and would appear to be able to sustain weight. I should have just done it in hindsight it would have been easier to texture and looked better. If you are triggered by the non supportive arch, then remember it’s sci-fi and it’s a space sandstone wall with arches].

I redo the design, making it simpler by changing all of the complex lines into sections of circles e.g. arcs. It looks good I try and cut again. It loads now. but I keep losing alignment when engraving the design. It’s moving around too much. I simplify it further and remove the 4000 small circles from one of the designs, slow down the engrave and make sandpaper feet to stop it moving from the quick small details.

It worked!

The above was sarcasm. To paint a very high contrast design green grey over dark red… Would only give this 1 out of 5 stars on trip advisor. In total it took me a day. So my working day (on this project) is 10am – 2am with breaks. This can do one. But it looks like I imagined when it was done. Scary thing is the bases are almost this board over again but at least it will be broken up between each model I paint but will have more steps and detail. Something to look forward too.

I also mentioned I had problems with my airbrush. Yeah I got a infinity H&S about 2 years ago now. It was the two in one so I split the parts between my old evolution and kept the 0.15 needle for the infinity. Problem is that it seems when I done that I got the front sections mixed up. So for the past two years they have been working with the wrong sized hole on the front. Good to know I have done what I have done on the airbrush with a handy cap… Both however work so much better. I have no idea why it’s taken all that time.

Moving on from the base. Gladly. I was looking forward to the walls. However if you read the previous test on the walls and sandstone I think I have this cracked. 6p’s.

I built everything. it went mostly smoothly. Assembling was a little tough the floating arches in the midground are 6 pieces of MDF. I worked from the inside out and used PVA in the centre and when aligned used thing superglue and used capillary action to take the superglue into the edges and then used activator spray worked white well only 0.25mm misalignments which is to be expected.

The rear wall was simple enough sanding the middle piece and assembling. I then sand sealed it, but didn’t sand it as I wanted this rougher to take the texture paint.

No major problems so far. I also know I made this overhang the base due to the simplifications I had done before but I didn’t want to change the wall. No problem. It’s a set piece not a diorama.

Then came the next 1.75 days. It’s like a holiday (which I am on from work) you forget to take pictures and it doesn’t matter as it was so dull. I watched (listened to) the entire series of meet the painter with Vince Venturella. Great series. Worth a watch.

Painted one face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick. Painted the next face of a brick…. read that another 1000 times and you will just start to begin to understand the horror show that was this decision.

I was blinded by the sandstones beauty. It lulled me into a false sense of security, then abused me. I am a victim of sandstone.

That’s the project up to date so far. Next is to finish the walls tomorrow. and move onto painting models which is so much more fun.

You may be thinking? You should have stopped, redesigned this to be a simpler. Changed techniques, taken elements out. Compromised your concept for the sake of your sanity.

The main compromise was the arches and they are now my only regret. I will die on this hill! If I truly accept that, I might just live through it…

In all seriousness. This is not my first rodeo. I am experienced and qualified modelmaker and this is not even close to my worst project ever (story for another time). Though in the past I could normally blame someone else. I find it better to get close to the vision and see if it works out. if it doesn’t it’s only paint, wood and time. Still get the experience, the story and have the ability to change it.

More to come.

I wanted to be at this point a couple of days ago, but things have not went as smoothly as I had hoped.  Things are looking up and changes have been made. A couple of things done behind the scenes namely one that I wont show which was to recut all my bases. no point in showing that again.

Time to move on and paint some sandstone!

So that’s it for this update. I took a half day yesterday and the same today. I will start painting Joany and finishing rebasing tomorrow. then start to look at adding details to the older models. Again the faster I can get this done the more time I get with defiance and my other infinity projects before the rest of the military orders arrive at the end of this month but I may also just take my time and see how well I can document and paint what I have already. Who knows!

I got started on painting Joan, This will be a sort of tutorial I purposefully didn’t refer to Angels book through my current painting style of Pano is very much in his style and he deserves a lot of credit. If you want to know how the master does it, get either of his books. Both are great and will go over fundamentals and covers just about everything you could wish to paint in his style.

Some of what he done in his book didn’t work for me. This would have been down to my experience and the fact that painting models is not paint by numbers. If you wish to be incredibly generous to my previous attempt the main difference would be the water we used. Possibly Spanish water has magic in it… I think this is down to inconsistencies in paint and measuring probably in my part but there are thousands of variables and you can see that from looking at the original model which has been painted by thousands of people and none look the same.

This is still my origin and my roots, I cant imagine painting infinity models in another way as his art style is interlaced with infinity in my mind. At this point as I write I still have not compared my process to his though I would almost be certain that there is cross over.

I am trying to crate another milestone moment in my painting. I will take longer than normal to paint this and will be trying to pay more attention rather than everything is painted by the rule of cool which is what I normally do.

I am nervous and excited. Cant wait to see what happens!