Dreadball 2 Springclean

I have to start with i am happy with th amount of painting I have got done. It’s more than I thought i would be able to about 5 weeks ago. A team a week if I look at it like that. That’s great for me. I would have said id be lucky to have done a team a month at my usual rate of painting. I did get lucky with a few days off here or there knocking about the house by myself to get some teams to the painting table.

Shame I didn’t have 2 more weeks lol. Only had 2 teams left and the magnetar circuit characters left to do, and I’d have everything dreadball I own, painted. Yeh a team a week was not pheesable to me 5 Weeks. My goal was I’d be lucky if I’d finish the 4 second Ed teams. But I’m so glad they are done and look amazing(to me).

What’s nice is the mix of robots, cyborgs, aliens, aliens and aliens lol. Not a plain human insight.

But like I say I’ve hit my goal of doing the second Ed teams atleast by the deadline. I think because there is only 2 teams and 4 characters left I’ll carry on with them, plow on. Not leave them and do them sometime in the future. Make sure they are done next and I can say I have everything I own painted.
The nameless team I plan to paint using inspiration from one of the muscalloid races from Stellaris. The fleshy/tentacle parts being orange and the shells being dark grey/brown.
The Asterian team i want to paint up like Narns from B5. Leathery heads with red eyes and brown outfits. Have found an image of Gkar from the animated movie I may use for my inspiration as he has a like mint green colour that I fancy trying.
The magnetar and I can see painting very similar to their studio paint jobs.

But then and only then will I return to my regularly scheduled dead mans hand. A posse and a character a month I was doing I think. Or turn my hand to the new Chicago way Peaky Blinders starter box I bought. We’ll see. 

The nemion oceonics were a pretty nice team to paint, I quite liked them. I had a couple of evenings this week to get on with the last team before the deadline.

The outfits were inspired by the outfits of Prince Lotor and his team in legend of Voltron. I remember when I first bought the sphyr team I wanted to paint them in that uniform. The characters that really sells the look of the outfit is Zethrid. She’s one of the alien lasses that could be part Shark lol.

The sphere i had in storage came in the old 1st ed containers, and the current captain was part of an MVP set. I had painted her a long time ago. So it was just the 10 players I painted up. Again I did enjoy painting them. I enjoyed layering up thr speedpaints.

Base coat – dsrk grey colourforge
Drybrush – basecoat white
Speed paint – ashen grey
Speed paint – dark grey
Vallejo colour – black
Wash – strongtone
Details – viking blue
Details – Red 

The end of last week and the weekend wasn’t as quite as i thought it would be. Not a bad thing, was pretty busy and doing events and meal, Babysitting kids aswell as my own kids lol. What it did mean was i was only able to pop out a few MVP’s over the weekend. That’s not to say i had a bit of a chance to get the first basecoat colours on the next team. 

I found the MVP for the Prisoners team quite easy to paint  and to gain inspiration for. The outfits of the teaam  id originally done was yellow, inspired by the yellow prisoner garb from Guardians of the Galaxy. But went with the traditional orange to make Brickbat stick out. Metal and boots were standard speed paint colours. With the skin, i ussed Garrosh from Warcraft for inspiration, so i used Aged hide for the skin and a simple wipe of black over the lower jaw. After a strong tone coat to unify it all he was a nice simple but effective looking character.

With Kailasa i had found an image of a space elf that i thought looked interesting and would be cool contrast to how id painted the team. With the team i had painted them years ago inspired by the space vampires from defiance the Series. Purple skin with touches of Orange, and white hair.

With the Kailasa herself i went with a crusader skin tone, with dark grey upper parts with silver chainmail, and ivory over the lower parts and heavy drybrush over the hair. Quite happy with how she looks.

To start ive had a bit of minor surgery which has meant i get a couple of rest days, which means i can get stuck i to some painting. Definitley my version of rest.

Elmer and dobbs. where I’d left them when they went into storage was the main booth was undercoated in steel. The skin had been painted on the 2 characters 2. That was it. I wanted them to draw the eye in the booth so I went for simple almost Industrial colour around them. Bright red and distinctive blue definitely draws the eyes.

I took some special care with the eyes on both, being an impressive miniature, as I had done with the eye in the sky ref years ago. I went over the basecoat of the booth with a speepaint coat of broadsword silver and then dry brushed with silver chain mail. The characters I painted in their clothes and details as best as I was able. Was pretty happy with how they came out and their chairs. The chairs were black with a dry brush of dark grey. Picking out details in bronze. Giving that old lazy boy look of black leather seats.

On the side I’d painted another shirren character from starfinder, the shirren operative. Using paints as they were in the pallet and dry brushing him when he was done. Was an easy model done with minimal detail just to get him done. May go back and give him more details later, paint his eyes a yellow I think. 

I’ve been quite quiet lately and haven’t had much chance to paint. And when I did it was short little bursts and wanted to do as much of the details justice on the revenants.

With the revinants I wanted to pick out alot more of the details. Because they have pistons and mechanics aswell as skin and armour I wanted to make sure I took advantage of the interesting parts of the models. The scheme was sort of inspired by well pretty obvious the bore, but also the assembly from paradoxes age of wonders planetfall. They have alot of metallic with bright colours. I’d painted the the coats of metallic and wanted to show the basic armour as worn and beaten. I decided to stipple orange onto the dark grey of the armour, showing the basic colour of the armour through the beating and chipping. This was like some of the heroes from planetfall. Adding bright red and orange and blue to the eyes and some piping really brought them out.

Base coat – steel colourforge
Speed paint – broadsword silver
Speed paint – malignant flesh(skin)
Vallejo colour – bronze
Wash – flesh wash(mainly on the bronze)
Drybrush – chain mail silver
Drybrush – desert bone
Stipple game colour – fiery orange
Eyes – fiery orange/Base red/ shieldwall blue

With the character I wanted to show him at his almost clean basic colours more inline with the Borg. Solid dark colour on the armour. So I stuck with the dark grey and didn’t stipple the orange this time. Came out nice and clean.

Base coat – steel colourforge
Speed paint – broadsword silver
Speed paint – malignant flesh(skin)
Vallejo colour – bronze
Wash – flesh wash(mainly on the bronze)
Drybrush – chain mail silver
Drybrush – desert bone
Eyes – fiery orange/Base red/ shieldwall blue

I think next I’ll try and finish my Elmer and dobbs. I’d painted the 2 characters but none of the other parts of that model. And possibly 2 mvps after that, maybe even the 4 coaching staff from magnetar circuit, before moving onto the 3 teams I have left.

I haven’t had time to paint the last couple of evenings as I’ve been away. I went up to the big City, London, for a stag do. After being really rinsed by how expensive everything is, I’ve now come home hoping I can financially recover from the trip.
Great fun was had for sure, lots of drinking and eating and catching up with old friends and making some new ones too. It was really nice to see my close mate enjoy himself and have a few days all centered around him and his likes.

As part of some of the events and things we did for his stag do we went to an experience. As my mate is a big star trek fan and sci-fi in general we partook in bridge command the experience. We had great fun, he was the captain, obviously. My mates didn’t quite take it seriously as some would and had a laugh, and everything that could go wrong did. The captain named me chief engineer, well that was crazy for me, jumping between 2 stations and trying to fix/change 3 different areas. I spent alot of it running around to say the least. I may have also jettisoned the warp core as I saw it going haywire and yeh cost us the mission. But I wouldn’t change the experience we all enjoyed especially the captain stag!

They had a bar and lounge in the experience like a small 10forward. Was a nice place to sit and drink some interesting cocktails and Ipas, and also try and take some photos of some dreadball MVPs in some suitably sci-fi surroundings.

With the Matsudans I’d gotten a bit lucky. When I pulled them out they had been undercoated but also had 2 layers of the Malignant flesh Speed paint put on they’re skin. This was great for the belly colour and just one coat of a darker green all over apart from the belly would be perfect. What I settled on for the colour scheme was the concept Art for the matsudan. I really wanted to do a lizard race from one of the 4x games I like but yeh age of wonders planetfall’s Lizard race the Shakarn are green skinned with red armour, the Sakkra from master of orion are green skinned with red armour, the Matsudan concept Art is green skinned with red armour. I mean if its worked countless times its got to work for my team right. Not a fan usually of following the studio scheme or basic scheme for dreadball, but it’s such a strong concept I thought I’d go with it. Turned out nice and strong a look too.

Base coat – white acrylic colourforge
Speed paint – malignant flesh(stomachs)
Speed paint – Orc flesh
Speed paint – Slaughter Red
Green details – Vallejo Green Olive
Teeth and eye details – warpaint desert bone
Strong tone – to give it a lived in feeling and blend the 3 shades of green together seamlessly.

With the MVP Raiden, I really was stuck for a long time. Didn’t know what to do with him. The going through lots of space lizard concepts I came across an image of a Vessk from Starfinder with silver, purple and blue armour and liked that idea instantly. I thought it would contrast against the teams monotone really well. But with the mask I wanted a bit more of a traditional bone white kind of colour with black eyes for the mask. Think it turned out OK, pretty happy with the colour all over.

Base coat – white acrylic colourforge
Speed paint – malignant flesh(stomachs)
Speed paint – Orc flesh
Speed paint – Gunmetal silver
Green details – Vallejo Green Olive
Mask details – warpaint desert bone
Teeth and horns – ivory vallejo
Strong tone – to blend the 3 shades of green together seamlessly on his skin.

I had an evening last night to sit, chill, and do the bases while we watched something we’d seen before.

I painted both teams round bases black like I have done with all my previous teams. I then glued them to the hex bases. Once dried I then painted a contrast colour onto the front 3 facings, this was something for the solid colours to cling onto a bit better.
With all my basing for dreadball I’ve always painted the threat hexes amd I’ve always done them in a solid block colour. For some reason it feels more tron to me, simple solid colours.
With the Neo-bots I went with a flat red as it matched their main colour and went with their starting colour and ball.
With the Yindij team I went with an olive green to match their main colour and went with their starting colour and ball. In hindsight I feel like I should have painted it a sky blue to go with the skin/fur.

A thing I’m doing, some may think odd, is pulling in other sci fi miniatures and IPs to use for things like coaching staff, and cheerleaders possibly even spectators. I picked up some miniatures for starfinder the RPG, with plans to play it someday. I may even jump in and pick up some of the Archon plastic ones. At the moment I’ve picked up some of the wizkids ones. As the speedpaints were being used for the teams I painted up a little Shirren miniature I could use as coaching staff with his hologram item in his left hand (ignore the gun in his right hand). He came out alright. Could go back later and pick out a few details, but hes not a main priority atm.

As for other ideas I have had, in future. Ive never liked the dreadball medibot, but could possibly use beyond antares drones as medibots. Possibly planet of the apes characters as coaching staff/cheerleaders for the Zees. Cylons or even cylon command and Baltar from Tangent miniatures as coaches. And I’ve seen some 3d printed Londo Molari and G’kar plus other B5 minis that could be coaches/spectators. But this is all pie in the sky, way down the line ideas. But also added motivation to keep me going and get the official stuff done first.