Paint Stripping Question....

Anyone know of a reliable, safe way to strip paint from soft (well, softer than, say, a model) plastic? Please post in comments.

Thanks!

A Million Variations of Viper....

So as you can see from this compilation of the plastic works of the late Nate "nnenn" Nielson, there are A LOT of alternate Viper color schemes to choose from. Almost.... no, not almost, there ARE too many. In the coming weeks, I'll select one for the resin kit and go from there. The reason I'm not painting the kit stock colors is simple; the highly collectible Revoltech will be coming in (yes, I caved) and the two will stand shoulder to shoulder. So, the kit will need to not only reflect its Gradius forbears, but also its ZOE incarnation. 

Sigh. 

I am not dead....

... I am building transforming robots. 

Because, when one reaches a point where one's 40k habit plateaus, and there's nothing new or exciting, that is what one does. 

The Vic Viper here is almost completely self-contained with no parts-swapping, except for the head, which is magnetized (a joint wouldn't fit in the slender torso with the shoulders and back assembly there) which swaps out with the main computer-nub in the chest when everything folds up. Now all that's left is the sanding and painting. 

The inspiration for me to finish this project came, in part, from Tears of Envy's Tumblr, which is full of all kinds of awesome. 

Also, I wanted to beat the toy's release, which is scheduled for  April, and does require the swapping of hip joints and such. 

Happy Saturday, people. 

RIP Jovian Chronicles: A Bevy of (Not) Doms...

"Doesn't it look like a Kondoh-type Rik Dom?" Marc-Alex Vezina, creator of Jovian said to me in an email. The year was 199- something. (Do keep that in mind when you see the paint jobs, please, I was still finding my way)

1996? '95? Doesn't matter. I had originally struck up an email conversation with him through their fanzine, Mecha Press, beginning a relationship that would eventually get me a gig writing for Votoms rip-off Heavy Gear. Marc-Alex was gushing about his pet project and its skillfully derived artwork bitchin' designs. Now, having been exposed to a bevy of anime and yet only had Battletech's terrible designs as gaming pieces, the Jovian Chronicles mecha and their RAFM minis were a breath of fresh air. So, I decided to follow along with theme and paint the enemy mecha squadron of Wyverns along the lines of its Gundam counterpart. Moreover, I would have one for each Rik Dom model. 

The personal machine of enemy ace Char Aznable. was always painted red, and needed a confidant, aggressive pose, so I chose to model it calling out the enemy (or questioning the falsehood of his cause; Char did that). The Wyvern Commander Type also had a sensor dish mounted on its shoulder for some reason. 

The Wyvern was supposed to had a propellant tank, but for some reason, they left it off the mini. RAFM's quality control was also atrocious. Missing parts, weird miscasts... oh well. They're out of business now, I think. 

The standard, soldier type Rik Dom was in the purple of the Black Tri-Stars, a squadron of Zeon Aces who specialized in blowing apart capital ships. Their paint scheme somehow spread to every Rik Dom ever issued to a grunt. 

I'm torn between loving and being mortified by the old paint, honestly. The more I stare at these photos, the better weathering looks. Maybe it's just me? 

Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory brought the Dom Tropen variant in desert colors, not to mention the longer armor skirts and blast shield on the bazooka. Unlike the other three, this one was painted relatively recently, even though it sat, primed black, in its box for an eternity. 

I wish these things had been around during the heyday of Battletech. I feel like whatever appreciation they would have gotten on the gaming table is gone forever. Oh well, at least they're collector's items. 

Lastly, this Colony Marine version came about due to RAFM's terrible quality control, which led to weird warps on the armor skirts and a missing bazooka. Luckily I had some grenade racks in the bits box, not to mention a weapons upgrade sprue from the large-scale Votoms  Heavy Gear line, which included this fantastic gatling cannon. 

Yes, that ammo belt is the tail from the old pewter Queen Alien. The massive ammo drum was a capsule that pencil erasers came in. Reasoning it would run out of ammo quickly (look up the rate of fire on a vulcan some time)  I also gave thing  a backup rifle slung on its rear skirt. Nowadays I'd drybrush up from that atrocious green wash job.... oh well, the past is the past, and there are other things to do than strip and repaint old minis.

Aren't there? 

Bye-Bye Jovian Chronicles.....

Kondo-derivative artwork © Dream Pod 9, used without permission

Dreap Pod 9 has announced that it's discontinuing its Jovian Chronicles line and retiring (read, "breaking") the molds. (read all about it here). This is kinda sad, because Dream Pod 9 really, really, really wanted to make a Gundam game (just like they really, really really wanted an Armored Trooper Votoms game with Heavy Gear.) Their problem, however was threefold in that 1) their rules set went from so-so (Mekton) to not-so-good (their own), 2) they changed their designs from pretty damn good to absolute shit:

BEFORE ©Dream Pod 9

AFTER ©  Dream Pod 9, and they can keep it. UGH!

Third, the scale of the above model is ultra-teensy-weensy (smaller than a Space Marine)  which allows for next to no customization, not to speak of detail at all. You can see the horrors here.  Really, they were also doomed by the fact that giant robots never really caught on past Battletech (which also went under for a time) as far as gaming was concerned, and that what they were trying to do in the first place (tell a Gundam story) was done, and in a better medium, by the people they idolized (you know, the  folks who actually MAKE the Gundam anime). Their Heavy Gear line seems to be going the same way, which makes me sad, since I wrote some copy for their RPG books. 

If it's not, do correct me, because I haven't seen anyone play Heavy Gear in a gaming store, ever. Not once. 

Anyway, the demise of Jovian Chronicles has left us with some AMAZING artifacts; the entire first line of models, which I happen to own a set of, because I absolutely bloody love giant robots, and had a ready source of cash during the 1990's. In addition, I purchased a few extras for conversions. You'll recall this fellow: 

But I neglected to introduce you to his friends, namely this chap:

I neglected to blacken his base, and I should have. Originally, I had planned to have all of the Jovian models in flight, partly due to the fact that they were all too wide to fit on hex bases. Oh well. 

Yes, that's a large rifle stowed between those two propellant tanks, yes, those are Assault Marine jump packs on his legs as extra thrusters. Peer closely at the rear shot of the right arm and you'll see that weapon is mounted to on the side of his forearm instead of replacing it. I'd like to add I'd never have done this nowadays, as the joint is tremendously flimsy. Whatever he doesn't demolish with the bazooka or saw in half with the underslung vulcan, he can slash in half with the beam saber hidden cunningly inside the shield, or blast apart with his stowed rifle. His mate, on the underhand, is comparatively under-armed:

Although she is carrying a rather large beam rifle, she's not meant to get into great big battles with lots of nasty suits that are larger than her, anyway. Like her brother unit, the legs were cut and extended, compared to the stubby originals (see the B&W art, above). What? The pink is an abomination? Yes, well, you know, we all do stupid things in our youth. Plus, it was the 90's. Pink was in for femme-bots. 

These models both received a bit of airbrush weathering because I was doing that sort of thing to everything back then, although by the time I did these the poor contraption was at the end of its life cycle. 

Next time, the villains of the Jovian Chronicles universe, who are probably responsible for a lot of Japanese staring daggers at Montreal....

Mechanicus Praetorian H-Alpha-Rho-Kill-3-R

I'm slowly eking my way through the characters in the IG Codex, and I wonder why I haven't  made (or used) Harker (or HaRK3R) sooner. A BS4 relentless Heavy Bolter? Yes please. It took a bit of bits box digging to make him work, however. I'd quite forgotten I had some Maxmini bionic bits left over from some time ago, including these fantastic kneeling legs. His left arm is from an old Battletech Banshee-S that was in a container not meant for such things. As such it was a godsend when I found it and the reason the whole project went forward. 

I am, however, now severely low on machine-y looking backpack bits, and am having to make do with scraps. I suppose I could cobble together an alternative and send it to a recaster, but my AdMech army's pretty much finished as far as infantry models go, so is it worth it? Hmmm....

The mounting for the right arm is from a Micro Arts Iron Brotherhood mini. There's a metal rod running down the center of it from his body to the HB. Looking back, I supposed I should have done a drum and a chain feed, but really, he has to fit into a Chim with the rest of his squad, so it'll have to be clip-fed. 

He, of course, doesn't have a power fist in the rules, but I gave him one anyway. Punching an enemy with your cannon arm is an awfully 40k thing to do, so why not? The fingers are made out of pewter daggers from the old RAFM Heavy Gear line, and held on by CYA glue and prayer. I tried to go Weathered Penny while painting his metal bits, but then decided to bring the higher areas up with some silver and boltgun metal to distinguish him as a good guy (as opposed to those nasty copper Necrons...)

Doomsday/Ghost Arks and the magnets that bind them...

This is a bit of a cautionary tale; not because of the Puppetswar head-bike, which itself makes a wonderful Ghost Ark Prow, as you can see from Command Ark Charon, here:

Rather, the caution comes from the other task he and his sister (brother?) ark encompassed; a magnetized conversion to Doomsday Ark. Choosing not to do as others have done (the magnetized  flipping and switching of little guns) I instead took the less wise path of painting and modeling TWO MORE HULLS, which, as you can imagine, takes absolutely forever and tests the limits of human patience. Charon, as you can see, is also a bit longer than the average Ghost Ark: 

And thanks to the addition of coupling bits and the Head-bike, rather off-balance. Nonetheless, I recommend the Head-bike as a nice prow bit. I think it lends the right bit of character to an already wonderful model. GW did a disappointing job with the viking-like prow bits, which is why I whipped up something different for the Doomday Arks altogether: 

I thought the Doomsday cannon needed something more substantial than those underslung orbs, and so fashioned an imposing-looking bit from Annihilation barge backings (since my "barges" have legs on them; see the Tyrannocrons from a year ago).

Now they have more a living insect look that matches the rest of the army. The magnets sit at the opposite end of the hull, tucked into the spine and gun. 

As you can see, this necessitated a bit of fabrication for the Ghost Ark hull, which just plain didn't have a second contact point and was too damn heavy to hang on without one. I rigged up a sort of Resurrection Orb out of a hull piece and some plastic tubing, and anchored it with a metal rod cut to size. Now both of the command sections are these lovely detachable pods. Maybe the Necrons have other war machines for these to attach to? I understand the next Imperial Armor is Necron-oriented, which may prompt me to buy on of these super-expensive tomes after all...

The stalk nestles quite well between the back ranks of the Necron passengers, and makes these models quite a bit more solid than their counterparts. I also altered the operators a bit, giving them the cyclops targeting eyes of the Deathmark/Crypteks to differentiate them from the steersmen of the static arks from so many posts  ago. 

One of them suffered a fractured crown, but really, any minor breakage like this only lends character to the Necrons anyway, so it doesn't bother me. What did bother me was the excruciatingly long process of painting not two, but FOUR HULLS full of little gauss flayers, which is something I don't recommend, at all, ever. Whew!

Also, Happy New Year!

A Sculpt from Christmas Past....

Has it really been that long since I've posted? October? Mortarion? Well then. 

This girl (her name is Sirius) has sat on the shelf overlooking my hobby area for well over ten years, and despite being a conversion that required some effort, has never occurred to me to feature here until recently. 

No, really, an hour ago this entry was going to be about Ghost/Doomsday Arks. 

Yes, I've already had Christmas morning. My family celebrates in the afternoon. 

Anyway, a recurring character in sketchbooks of mine throughout the years, her appearance has changed slightly, but overall she's remained quite the same. The figure itself I made for a 3D design course where we were required to make character maquettes prior to CG modeling . I bought a quantity of Green Stuff and delved into my bits box, then set to work running a coat-hanger armature through some parts. A few days of sweat and cursing later and you get this. 

The face is rubbish, I know. I never claimed to be a great sculpting talent, plus there was a deadline, and I was in a "how hard could it be?" mood. The ankles are kind of awful, too. She's based around bits from an EVA model, along with a few other odds and ends. I textured the wraps on her thighs with the handles from my sculpting tools, and there are fingerprints on some of the rougher spots (which turned out to be a blessing, as they lend a rough look to some of the armor bits). Her pose is meant to be halfway between guarding and coming around for a strike with that wicked forearm blade, and she stands freely quite by accident. 

Yes, by accident. Really, I should build a base for her, because she's not that stable. In fact, the blade shown here is the second one, installed quite recently, after she took a tumble off the shelf and the original one broke. Green stuff is so wonderfully flexy that it doesn't break after a big fall, like everything else in creation, and a figure incorporating much of the stuff, it turns out, is quite durable. Not that I'd go tossing it around, mind you.

So much of her weight is on that front leg, though, and she really should be bending a bit more at the waist, but oh well. As imperfect as she is, she's probably my most favorite creation, simply because she came from a sketch. Because of the bits I used, she doesn't even follow most of the details, so she is, in fact, another iteration of the design, and probably my favorite one. 

Even now there are a dozen things that I would do differently if I had to make another one, and yet, there are so many other things to do I wonder if I'll ever find the time? This thing is ten years old, after all, and here I haven't made enough time for regular blog entries. Well, shame on me. I'll try to be more timely, with everything. After all, if you never make time, you'll never have time, right? 

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everybody. 

Hurricane Mortarion.....

For those of you who haven't read his statline and abilities by now, Mortarion, in-game, can pretty much kill an entire standard 2000 point army by himself, with room for afters (providing you never, ever roll a 1). All of the Primarchs, in fact, are ludicrously powerful (and should be), not to mention ludicrously priced (despite preexisting competition)  and by the time FW gets to the Emperor (in 12 books or so) I expect to see 40k's first 1000-point character, if not one that breaks that 4-digit cost. Oh well. At least we get some new, if very pricey, models to look at. I'm not going to gush about the new FW Angron because, well, I think it's rather boring. 

On to Mortarion. 

Mortarion is based on Kabuki Models' Uriel, from their Dark Messiah line. I can't tell if they mean for this line to be a game, a line, a state of mind or whatever, but it is full of some very nice, if reasonably priced, models. My only complaint about them is that heads, being proportionately correct, are too small compared to 40k-scale heads, and so side by side the models would look rather weird. I had originally intended for Uriel to be Sanguinius, but A) his pose is far too static and B) I didn't want to have to green stuff all that hair. Plus, his body was covered in so much lovely death imagery that I figured it was only a short leap to the master of the Death Guard.  The head is from a Valkyrie door gunner, and the scythe blade from an old Rackham dwarf who now swings a more appropriate axe. 

Any interest in seeing Rackham dwarves? They're quite characterful, if oversized. No? Yes? Anyway, moving on...His belt buckle is a rather hastily molded Death Guard crest on a terminator hip pauldron. It didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped, but still says "Death Guard", doesn't it?

That right arm took a bit of remolding; originally it was palm-down and pointing at... well, you, I suppose. I don't know what the original model was going to do with his not-very-threatening lance, but I thought him blasting away with the Lantern would be more threatening by far. Originally I'd thought to make it out of an actual lantern,  but the lantern bits I'd had on hand were either too big or two small, so more's the pity. 

Kabuki sculpts these really nice shoulder pads with shields for heraldry, so I tried my best for another DG crest. The only problem is, of course, that the are within was way small, and my smallest brush was getting rather fractured at that point. They do sell the shoulder pads separately, by the way. 

I used ork bike exhausts along with some power cables for his backpack, which makes him look rather like a walking chemical plant. They flare out nicely in a wing-like fashion, which I prefer to some of the other 3rd-party reproductions that look more like a walking pipe organ. Speaking of pipe, in hindsight I should've thickened that scythe handle somehow, but the blade has bit of wire running clear through it and around the other side (hidden by that grille) and it's not like I'll be hauling him to a lot of games, anyway. 

He also has this lovely little chained Grim Reaper back there, which is I suppose is the 31st century way of saying "don't wear this in a closed garage". I had thought for some tracery on the cloak, too, but Mortarion is more the working man's Primarch, all about sticking it to overlords on mountain tops, and so I thought he'd be above such finery. Also, I'm a bit lazy and my eyesight's too poor to go putting tracery on everything. 

Vintage model enthusiasts among you will note that the Lantern is, in fact, constructed from the back end of a Battletech Warhammer's PPC. The barrel is, presumably, elsewhere. I had the bit in my box, and it looked just big and retro-sci-fi enough to be a decent facsimile of the artwork, so I decided to go for it. I need to look for a bit showier of a base in the future; the one that came with Uriel was more of a half-shelf, and not very useful or interesting in this case. 

The Primarchs are, of course, giants, towering over even the already towering Astartes. If Azrael here ever ran into Mortarion, he'd be David to Mort's Goliath, although this time Goliath would be stronger, faster, and certainly cleave him in two with that scythe. 

More models, and something of a review next time. 

For all of you in the Northeast, particularly PA, NJ, and NY, stay well, and stay dry!

9/11

This day in 2001, the gates of Heaven irised open to receive more than 3,000 souls. 

Never forget, America, and stay vigilant.