05JAN21 - Paper Sentinel Build Video

In tune with my papercraft armor as of late, the above is my video slide show of my build process with photos I took to document my build on the Zealot forum.  No music yet, and not narrative either as I'm slowly learning Shotcut and creating these kinds of videos to grow my channel as my hobby video channel!

Finished product here for all to see!

01JAN2021 Paper BMP continued (Part III)

 As promised, albeit too many months later (and at 2AM on the first day of a new year), I have returned to bring some more paper craft goodness to the blog.

Today, I'm going to show some photos of my laminating process and some of the details that worked, and some that didn't go as planned...

Figured I'd show a couple things that didn't initially go well, namely the vents.  For these I attempted to use regular typing paper of my templates and slice slots where I would insert a flat object while the paper was wet and drying on the hull.  It sorta looks like vents, that got stomped on by a careless soldier during a hail storm...  Yeah, I'll find a way to make good looking paper vents...  Someday...  Until then, don't do this.

Next up, this is what worked.  I guessed, and made a good assumption, about the thickness of card the next few details needed to be when they got glued onto the hull, and on top of each other.  Wicked simple, realistic, and just damn good looking.  Sometimes you just have to wing it and guess how thick you want each layer in a detail to be, or replace the paper with a found object like a cotton swab stick, toothpick section, or candy stick (for cylinders).  Next up I used a toothpick to carefully dab a drop of glue onto each rivet head detail of each layer of detail.  Again, you have to think ahead a few parts and try to add such rivets to the lower level of lamination before adding parts on top, otherwise you might not be able come back and get those rivets in place because your tool wont fit in some spots!

Tracks were pretty easy and strait forward, just tedious.  I cut out the strip on a single sheet of index card stock for the base of the track.  For each tread, I cut a strip from my cereal box stock the with of the tread pad, and then cut hundreds of strips to glue into place on the track before wrapping them around the road wheel/drive/idler assembly (thankfully those weren't individual details as well...).

Finally, we get to start making magic happen.  Here I used a dark burnt umber while assembling to get the lower recesses that gave me a hard time the first time I built this model (seen in the background in a few places).  By the time I got to the third one, I just left the tracks assemblies off completely until everything was painted!  Learning to think ahead by pre-assembling saves time later as you find these recessed areas and pre-paint before assembly (especially the insides of gun barrels and exhaust tubes...).

22SEP2020 - Paper BMP Part II

 So for this part of the build, I will go over my work on building up the main hull of the MICV, the "metal bawx!" to quote a certain Dawn of War: Soulstorm Chaos Space Marine leader...  

First off, this design is great as Patoroch designed some interior supports right off as your first parts.  These I originally printed on regular typing/copy paper and ended up using the glue stick to attach to some incredible cereal box type card or chip board.  It came from a food box, so, I have no 'craft store' or 'art store' term for it.  Treated right, this really stands out as a great foundation for the rest of the build to attach to.  In fact, other components showed some warping as a result of me not using this again in other places...

As you can see, that cereal box provided a very sturdy 'skeleton' on which to flesh out this armored vehicle.  Best part of armor building is that it truly is nothing more than figuring out the geometry of a box, and then adding greebles from there.  For this BMP, that was the rear of the hull where there is another box in the form of the upper rear hull where the weapons ports exist for the infantry dismounts to stick their barrels out of and engage the enemies on the sides of the vehicle (and as you can see, there are also two ports to the rear for such a reason).  

Now that the main hull box and the rear hull are attached, I add the side armor that provides the basis for the tracks to be applied.  This is our first step in laminating.  My analysis of the pattern and assembly led me to conclude this part needed to be a bit thicker than even my card stock.  So I glued the card stock part to the same cereal box card as my skeleton to form a thicker armor sheet on the sides of the hull to mount the tracks and other features.

Here we conclude this portion of the build workflow.  Keep the idea of lamination in the back of your mind though!  We will return to this later, a lot, I promise!

21SEP2020 - "Paper tiger" - BMP inspired "count's as" Chimera by Eli Patoroch

 Over the last couple of years I have been very deeply involved in building a lot of armor for the gothic SF universe Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K).  40K gamers are familiar with the cost of doing so, and would be surprised to find that for less than $100 USD I have been building just about non-stop without buying a single kit.  No, I download a design and print it out on nice card stock and start building it.  I spend months building a single one at times and proudly post my work on Zealot, Cardboard Warriors, and Facebook in the relevant Groups.  Part of why you rarely see hobby post here...  Sorry...  I'll try to do better!

Please take a moment to peruse the desktop printer compatible designs on the linked pages!  They are incredible, and will forever alter your perception of that humble piece of paper when combined with the right card thickness and reinforced with your morning cereal box.

Step one to any such project, find a printable template to build!  My first, project was created by a talented Ukrainian artist Eli Patoroch.  He wasted no time in combining features of Games Workshop's Chimera and it's source inspiration, the Russian BMP-1/2/3 series of Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicles (MICV).  His template can found on the following Google Drive link, or you can search Zealot or the Facebook group I listed above.  For American/North American readers who have to use US Letter size paper, you can scale this down to about 96% to get the template to fit on our shorter but wider sheets.  I recommend 100#/271gsm for card stock weight.  Since building this, and scaling it, I've found an a US source for ISO A4 card stock that is close to that weight.  

Prior to finding the A4 size paper, this was the cardstock I used and scaled my templates down to.  After printing them, use a clear matte or clear flat spray coating on the printed templates.  Be liberal with how much you use, let one side dry, flip, and apply to the other.  I have found this does a wonderful job of eliminating much of the warping that occurs when you use glue.  It does not eliminate all of that, but I will get into that in much greater detail later.  I discovered this trick when I acquired some Dave Graffam models and read his Paper Model Guide which you can acquire freely on Wargame Vault.  This little tip opened the possibilities of papercraft as much as discovering how cosplayers build armor out of paper and coat it in epoxy resin before adding fiberglass and autobody filler.  This was the missing tool in my paper building skillset I so critically needed to discover!

Different project, blurry, but you get the picture.  Krylon Satin Finish or similar, and don't forget ventilation and a good face mask!  Mine has seen a lot of use given the scarcity of face masks lately, it only reinforces the need for good ventilation for this step.  Otherwise, your tools are much more simple.

Most of your basics: quality glue stick, quality PVA glue, good ol' No. 11 hobby blade, a ball end tool (smallest diameter you can find), and a strait edge (or three).  Different template than the BMP, same process building!

Why the ball end tool you may ask?  Two reasons.  First: every fold gets pre-creased with the ball end tool.  No matter which way I fold (mountain or valley fold), it will fold nicely with the tiniest of radius smaller than the thickness of the other material around it.  Second: details such as seams or gaps between armor panels, lightly depressed areas around view ports, and other such details get some treatment from the ball end tool.  This takes some time to analyze your build process to nail down just what exactly you need to do.  Patoroch models mostly come with an assembly drawing, normally without all the views you (think) you need.  Keep reference pictures handy in your search engine on a device near your workbench!  

That is all for now folks!

Orks, bugs, and my painting evolution

Years ago I never blended colors together, or if I did, it was rather limited.  I painted with whatever was in the pot, and attempted to use another similar color in the pot if I did attempt to mix paint.  I never forced perspective, and did not give two hoots about what I read in Shep Paine's great tome of wisdom about building dioramas.  Arrogance of youth you might say.

Fast forward to when I took a 2D Design course as my Humanities Elective at my local community college (after all, if I need the credit, might as well have some fun...).  We took the primary colors in acrylic, and mixed them to get our color range.  We did limited palletes where we merely painted in a single color or de-saturated palletes, and all the wonderful other color concepts (to include black and white).  It only took a few years before I started exploiting this knowledge for my game miniatures.  You've seen the results before (in previous posts).  

Well, here are some pictures needing shared here on Sudsy's Tactics of the results of these experiments.  My memory is a bit foggy as to the exact pallete, but it involves the Delta Ceramcoat paint I've raved about before.  Well, my photography got better as well...  For the most part.

This is my Ork Nob for either Warhammer 40,000 or Gorkamorka.  This was a more recent use of both a wet pallete and more advanced forms of blending and forced perspective (thanks Shep Paine, I finally figured out what you meant, even if I don't have the full stop sign yet...).  However, this was not the first project...

My hive tyrant was my first us of what I learned in that 2D design course.  In fact, I used the same paint from that course thinned down considerably (after all, it was Liquitex Basics tubes...).  I loved the result, and I know it is NOT a completed model (yet).  I hesitate to complete it lest I ruin it...

This Carnifex is how I started out.  I cringe to think about how I left 1:1 scale lighting to do the work on a 28mm figure.  Sure, it works alright for a large bug like this...  But only 'alright' to 'sorta'.  Guess I can say that 2D design course was worth more than the Humanities Credit I took it for in the first place!

07FEB14 Miniature time!

I don't even want to look at my past posts to see how poorly I've updated this blog.  So, without further delay, here is what I've been up to lately:

28mm scale model of the Heuvelman IA25M used by Hammer's Slammers in David Drake's series, reference from Mongoose Traveller's Hammer's Slammers supplement.

The Miniature collection (with other odds and ends).  Large figures are 1/6th scale, small ones are 28mm or so from Rackham and Games Workshop.

My 1/12th scale reference drawings for a future sculpt of a Warhammer 40K (Games Workshop) Tau Fire Warrior

Some Reaper CAV Saber AFV's that I finished up and integrated into my slowly growing 6mm scale Dirtside 2 force.

Paints I used.  With enough Windex you'd be amazed at how nice you can get that Liquitex Basics to become very fluid.

A Unioc from Howard Tayler's masterpiece web comic "Schlock Mercenary"  My FIRST 28mm figure to reach COMPLETION.

Google's little animation of a series of photos I took of the Unioc during the painting process.

Unioc work in progress with inspirational and scale reference minis

Sideview of the Unioc in green.

How far I got the first day.  

So, while its been slow in anything but the computer gaming sector, I've been no complete slacker with my table top games.  I'm pretty proud of my first complete 28mm figure!  Even if its not human....  You'll notice, if you've followed me since 2007 when I first blogged, I only really finish alien figures.  Don't ask me why, but my aliens always seem to come out better.  I might also just be too critical of my human faces at this point.