Thursday, December 19, 2013

Lady Justice and her Crew

Anyone who has been to the store for any length of time in the past month knows I have been obsessing over the game Malifaux! It's kinda ridiculous...

Anyway, I have been working on painting up these minis for a couple of days now and I am just too proud of them not to post photos. 

This is Lady Justice (center) The Judge (right) and the 3 Death Marshals 






I had a lot of fun painting these models! I have only painted a couple of miniatures before these so I am sure I will learn more advanced techniques in the future, but overall I am very happy with how these turned out and I can't wait to get them on the table and kick some zombie ass! 


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Adding Flock to Terrain

Well it has been awhile since I've been able to post anything new, but I have been busy working on projects. Today I thought I would show you a really easy way to spice up some terrain. 
This is one of my favorite ways to finish up a piece I have been working on, and it give it an overall completed look after everything has been painted but just needs that little extra. I got these done in a couple of hours. 

Battlefield in a box has some great ready to use, pre-painted terrain. We have had two "Autumn Wood" sets of trees on our game tables for awhile but the bases were plain black. The box comes with a small packet of flock, but I needed a LOT more to get the effect I wanted
For this project I used Gale Force 9's Autumn Flock Blend (which matched the flock included perfectly), and Secret Weapon's Fallen Leaves.




I started with the plain black base from the Battlefield in a Box set and used a paintbrush to spread some Citadel P.V.A. Glue which is really thick and tacky, on certain areas of the base where I wanted to stick the flock. Any random pattern will do, I wanted mine to look very curvy and natural. 


After I had the glue where I like it, I sprinkled the flock out of the container onto the base and used my fingers to spread it out. I did this in a cardboard box so I could tap off all the extra flock and easily collect it to reuse on the next wet glue spot. 


Here are all the done bases. I added some to the tree bases as well, to make it look like the leaves are falling off them. After all the flock is glued on with the first layer, it is stuck on but not very securely. You don't want to leave it like this because this first time someone moves a unit of troops through your forest half the flock will be missing. 

What you want to do is use some liquid Scenic Cement or other spray on adhesive, it looks like really watered down school glue. I put it into a small dropper bottle and dripped it onto each spot of flock with the glue. You want to get it really nice and saturated with the liquid glue so that once it dries, your flock wont be able to fluff off when people touch it. 


Here you can see the color difference where I have already put the layer of glue. By then I realized it was much easier to sprinkle the tiny leaves onto the flock spots when they were still dry. The liquid glue coats them, securing them to the flock with only half as much work. 


This is what your spots should look like after they are saturated with the glue. Don't worry about putting on too much, it will dry clear and the color will be vibrant again when everything is finished. You will want to let these dry for at least 24 hours before you play with them or you could mess up your flock, and then you will be sad...really sad. 


Just walk away and let these dry overnight, or work on another project...
I flocked a different Battlefield in a Box set today as well. This one turned out amazing and it was even easier than the first! I opened up the  "Rocky Outcrops" set and used the same technique, but only the last few steps. All I had to do for this set was put the liquid adhesive into the dropper bottle and spread it around the bases in a random pattern where you want to stick the grass, again I tried to make it look as natural as possible. Then I took the grass flock included in the box (which was the perfect amount), sprinkled it a little at a time over the wet glue and tapped off the extra. 


I left some of the base untouched because I wanted the rocky areas to show through. After everything looked the way I wanted, I did the whole saturation thing again and dripped glue over all the flock. This is how they all turned out after they dried.  


One of the things we try really hard to do is keep our terrain looking nice as well as be functional for a variety of games. These are perfect for Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux, or really any tabletop miniatures game. 



Best Birthday Present EVER!

This isn’t really a project we have been working on but it goes with my 40K Grot Army so I thought I would share it anyway. Plus, I think it’s super awesome and I can’t wait to show everybody! Teddy had a friend of ours custom make my birthday present:
This is my very own Ork Glyph, complete with a little bow and everything! I love it!   
This thing is seriously heavy too! It’s made out of a quarter inch steel and it’s probably 30 lbs. In a couple days this bad boy will be hanging on the wall in the store if you want to see it in person. 

**Originally Posted 11-1-2013


Finished our Zuzzy Mats

We finally finished our Zuzzy mats, and just in time for the tournament this weekend too! People are going to love hiding in the woods, and running through the broken city streets from 40k zombies (I love zombies)!
I picked up where I left off earlier this week, ink washing the different textures of my mat in two different shades of green. This is the step that took the longest. Luckily, it is followed by the easiest step- drybrushing. Let the ink sit for a couple hours and completely dry, this is extremely important because if you get impatient and don’t wait long enough you will mess up your drybrushing. (Its hard to DRY brush on a mat that is wet….)
Anyway, then I took a two inch paint brush from the hardware store and grabbed another of my Citadel paints – Elysian Green. I used that to highlight all the high spots over the entire mat. This helped to give it a little more depth and also tie the two shades together a little bit to provide some unity.
After I finished all the drybrushing (which actually didn’t take long at all), Teddy used a can of spray sealant and sprayed a thin coat over the mat just for added protection to my paint job. The Zuzzy mat website claims that sealing is unnecessary, and I believe them. However, with the amount of play our mats get on a daily basis, a little extra protection never hurts!
We let that set overnight and then used some carpet tape to secure the mat permanently to our table. We weren’t originally planning to do that, but the edges were starting to curl up a little bit and we didn’t want that. And, that’s it! The mat is all ready to play on, and so is the city map actually.
After Teddy finished ink washing his mat, he used Citadel Dawnstone and the same technique to drybrush over the black and give some added dimension and age to the asphalt.
Here are both the mats covered in terrain and ready to play!




**Originally posted 11-1-2013


Check out our Zuzzy Mats!

We recently received our new Zuzzy mats in the mail. We ordered them months ago and they took a long time to come but I think it was worth the wait because even unpainted they look great! Teddy and I each picked one out and those are our projects this week.
I have spent the past two days painting and I’m guessing I still have another day to go on this bad boy, but I will update our progress as we get closer to finishing. This is “The Moorlands” Zuzzy mat which I am painting to look like a forest floor. The first thing I did was grab my citadel paints (no primer necessary) and a large drybrush. Zuzzy says you can use any acrylic paints but I prefer Citadel, and I had plenty on hand.
The Zuzzy mat is made out of latex so I was a little skeptical about how well the paint was going to adhere but I used the test swatch they gave me and tried to rub my sample colors off and they stuck tight. The mat was still really flexible and not a single bit of paint flaked off. So, I began painting the 4′ by 6′ mat we have on one of our gaming tables in the store. My entire base layer is Loren Forest. In the picture above you can see where I started painting the different splotches. There are two different textures on the mat which are hard to see in the photo but the spaces that are already green are more of a grassy looking area while the parts that are still gray I am going to make look more bare with rocks and dirt.
I finished painting the entire mat Loren Forest but you can see how just the textures make the paint look different shades before I even started the ink washing process.

All together it took me about 4 hours and 7 paint pots to get the amount of coverage I wanted over the entire mat. I was really happy with the results, and after I let that dry, I started adding the ink wash. We really wanted to differentiate the two textures so Teddy and I agreed on a nice deep green for the lush grassy patches and a brownish green for the flatter spots.
Again I went to my trusty Citadel paint line and grabbed Biel-Tan Green and Athonian Camoshade. As I started with the green I thought it might be a little too dark, so I started trying to spread the ink a little further. This was rather difficult as there are sooooo many cracks and crevices for it to get into, but I was able to manage and as it dried the color toned down a bit.

I am about halfway done with the wash and so far I am really liking it. Once I finish that up, I can move on to dry brushing!
I can’t forget to mention, Teddy has been very busy too. He picked out “The Wounded City” Zuzzy mat and has been working on it pretty quickly (although his is far less work than mine, just sayin’). This mat is a huge part of Teddy’s city fight themed table. Parts of the mat have brick showing through the asphalt. He used an old Citadel Foundation called Mechrite Red, which of course, they don’t make anymore. Sorry. Then he started washing the entire mat in Nuln Oil, which we used to black wash pretty much every piece of terrain on our tables, no joke. Anyway, here are some photos of his progress and I will post an update of our finished tables very soon.








**Originally posted 10-28-2013


Starting Over

Hey everyone! 
I have been having TONS of problems with my other blog, so I apologize for not posting anything in awhile. 
Anyway, after all that I decided to just start a new blog and see if I can transfer my other posts over to the new location. 

Thanks for being patient!