Civilians and sci-fi NPC's

Alright, throughout the heat waves and some house works, I've been following my quest to get as much terrain and as many NPC's done to get more options in my games.

So here's a batch with several nice models I've amassed over the years.

Even more Sci-fi Terrain : tables and furniture !

 

Hey everyone, so today is yet another batch of scatter terrain, I promise I'm gonna paint something else soon but this is clearing the desk and my mental space plus it's extremely motivating because of how much better my tables are gonna look !

More Sci-Fi terrain - Boxes and crates

 

Hey all, so I'm still in my terrain phase, painting a fistful of scatter every other group of miniatures to slowly but surely up my scenery stock. This time is clearly not the most fascinating jaw dropping  batch sinc its all just crates and boxes but I know those really blend builings into their surroundings, fill empty area on a table and they make great visual focus points when your players are seeking treasures.

Plenty of SciFi Terrain !

 

Hey everyone ! Today's a bt of a photo dump of various terrain bits I've done over the past few months and have been amassing on my desk ! I've decided to make this year the one when I getmore scatter terrain and NPC's painted to fill my tables , trying to squeeze some of those every other project.

Small Scale Scenery

 

Hey everyone ! 
So my son and I have had a few games of Flames of Orion now and we've found we're destroying more and more scenery as we play which is a good thing right ?

Warhammer 40k Boarding actions set

 

So when The boarding action set was released (decides to not look for the date to reduce guilt), I was really excited about it like many I guess. It's quite an impressive set though and a huge task which I dreaded.

So I took it in baby steps and first started clipping and sanding every bit off the sprue to organise them in zip bags. That took me the three Hobbit movies with the kids to get every bit sorted and prepared.

Fast forward a year and a half and I started last summer with the idea I could paint this set within the holidays. No kids around, good spraying conditions, if there was ever a time, that was now.

So I set a space in the basement and proceeded.

The first coat was a dark red undercoat from below:

Followed by a Zandri dust zenithal to give a nice preshading

The rest was mainly blocking metal parts and an oil wash on everything with a mix of burnt sienna and black. 
Then a cream drybrush and the basics were done, followed by details, one colour at a time, methodically, using contrast paints whenever I could, trying to be really focused on completing the same colour over all the parts before switching to another. 
WHat I thought would be a tedious mind crushing exercise actually became a soothing mindful moment everyday, using like 20 minutes here and there to complete one task until it all added up and the set was taking shape so rapidly.

If you're ever gonna paint that set or any similar from GW, I STRONGLY advise you to mask the pegs and parts supposed to go into others, the tolerances on those pieces ar eso tight even just a prime coat will make them difficult to assemble and two will make them a nightmare.
I learnt it the hard way and therfore masked those parts before spray varnishing :

Now here's the fun part, I won't detail all teh bits I painted since they all come in 4, there are a few variations between the same bits but it's just minor stuff

I got to say this wall section (and the other 3) is probably the one that took the most attention from me, the screens just demanded it and were the occasion to do cool stuff. It really adds a level of immersion to paint stuff on them so I took the time to make them nice. 

Now the big screens really are where I had teh most fun, can you spot the 5 easter eggs amongst them ?

The power device wall are the ones I dreaded the most and probably the ones I have more mixed feelings about because of the OSL. I tried to follow Artis Opus's tutorial and it honestly went quite well until the last stage where (despite the warning in the video) I tied to rush it and sort of messed it up. It's still OK enough for terrain and at table distance it does the job but I reckon I could have achieved that WOW effect if I had been careful enough.

The rest of the sections are more dull which is a good thing, several pieces are a little too busy in my taste and the copy/paste of details tends to show on some parts

Like often, it's tempting to try and paint every detail you see and that can make things blurry and hard to read. I've tried to keep some stuff undetailed and just let the sculpture do its thing.

The set also comes with a lot of doors on a lot of walls, like A LOT

I said A  LOT

After the attempt with the power devices, I decided not to push my luck trying OSL on every light source so kept things simple with the ligt, I was also afraid it would make the set too gaudy which I dislike in general. I like model to stand out so I generally want the scenery duller.

You can see on the sides where I had to sand the parts back to plastic to make them fit easily in the other parts.

For some reason, I particularly liked the wall ends, don't ask me why

The pillars (all 32 of them), were simple enough to not take long and I kept the tiny control panels you're suppose dto attack on them for ater projects and keep them simple.

And then you have the 60 connectors where just sprayed metal, with a couple of black and brown washes, a silver drybrush and a bit of rust washes.

The whole set takes far less time to assemble than I feared and covers quite a juge area even if you've not really thought things through. There are definitely several uses in the near future where I'll need those.

So here we are, if you count the preeping phase out, the painting stage of this set took me about a month with small sessions done at lunch breaks and in the evening, nothing excruciating, nothing tedious. Some will look better or woll have been faster to do but against all odds, I had a lot of pleasue doing this, up to the point I'm now looking forward to other sets of the genre. That in itself is a great reward !

Happy painting to you all !

Trashed Townhouse by Fogou

Hey all, a while ago I painted this incredible set by Fogou and somehow managed to forget posting about it, lost in real life considerations and house works !

Octarium terrain

 

So a year and a half back from now, my lovable Rochie handed me a set of Octarium terrain just because that's the sort of bastard he is. Fast forward to now with a couple of house moves in the way and all sorts of real life and unfocused brain issues, I finally took the opportuniy to finish a set started a year ago. That's how it happens.

GW's scenic kits have been stellar for a few years and this one is great because it's versatile, fits with plenty other things, looks good and is well designed. Some parts double up with some I had from the mek workshop I had painted but scatter terrain excess is not real, it just doesn't exist.

Wicker Man and Magic Stones

So I have this gaming week end planned in March involving Celtic barbarians, demons of the sea and weird worshippers of giant worms. While I'm not meant to bring a whole table's worth of scenery, I thought it would be silly not to paint and bring the related scatter terrain kindly printed for me by my mate Michael.

Fogou Mud Brickstarter 2

Hey all ! If you've been reading this blog a few times, you might have noticed I'm a bit of a Fogoumaniac and well, Fogou just happen to be releasing their new Kickstarter at the moment ! YAY !

I had got the first Mud Brickstarter a while ago and I was eager to get the new ones to expand my setting a bit !

Fogou Stone Ruins

So I've been in quite a terrain mood lately (for a couple for months actually) but these things taking so much time, I usually putting them on the back burner and do the heavy lifting during holidays and then details pretty much when I can.

Now one of the last sets I've been working on is this set of stone ruinsfrom FOGOU from their latest (at the time of writing) Kickstarter LIFE IN RUINS.

At this points, if you're checking this space now and then you might know I'm a huge Fogou fan and I love their stuff, it paints itself, requires little to no prepartion (it's really paintable out of the box) and is modular enough to suit several settings, historical, fantasy, weird wars and sci-fi.

Stargrave Loot Tokens

 

Hey all ! Bit of a palette cleanser today. I have an upcoming Stargrave week-end with friends in april and though I have painted my Stargrave band a while ago, I still haven't used it for its intended purpose so here's the perfect occasion !

Now amongst the few things one needs to play Stargrave, there are of course a ruler/tape measurer/anything to give you distances on the tabletop, dice (of the 20 sided kind) AND because this game is like its fantasy big brother, a treasure hunt game, you need treasure tokens !

Crashed Aquila and Scatter terrain

Hey all ! Sometimes it's not about painting little models to your finest standard, it's about giving them a frame to shine in and a setting to tell stories in. Well today is about just that.
During one of the lockdowns here, I had taken all my scatter terrain out and started priming it and putting some basecoats on with some help and the lot has been resting in a box since then until a couple of weeks ago when I decided a sunday with bad weather was all the excuses I needed to finish it. It actually took me another lazy sunday afternoon to complete it but that's another 27 bits in the bank !