Conversion and Painting - Vehicular Combat, First Car(s)

As I have mentioned before, I've been working on a Vehicular Combat project for Adepticon.  The game is Devil's Run and I need to bring one modified Hot Wheels/Matchbox car for the game.  I jumped on this project because it ties into a bigger project that I have wanted to undertake for some time, so this was a nice way to get it jump started.

Note, I'm not sure if Devil's Run is necessarily the game I want to use for my bigger project, but Adepticon will give me a nice preview of the rules.  In past years I had also tried Car Wars, which I was not terribly happy with (although the game at Adepticon was a lot of fun).  I've also wanted to read through and try a game called Road Kill.  Lastly, Osprey is supposedly publishing a ruleset called Gaslands, someday...

In any case, if you want to check out Devil's Run you can find the rules for free on their website here.  For Road Kill, the kickstarter had the rules posted here (note Road Kill is actually written to be 10mm rules but it should be an easy adaptation).

Anyway, moving back to the topic of conversion and painting of my first vehicles.

The first batch, de-assembled and striped.  Anyone know
the theme for the bigger project from just this photo?

Various conversions were started on all 4 of these vehicles, but the focus quickly narrowed to the El Camino for various reasons, mostly related to conversion issues on my part (I may have bitten off more than I can chew for a couple of the conversions).  The El Camino is also one of my favorites for the big project.

First conversion and a bit of battle damage from a dremel.

Above was the first conversion of the El Camino.  Unfortunately, I got carried away and did not refer back to my "reference" material because the dual, forward mounted guns was not the "right" configuration.

There we go:  One gun, one rocket launcher mounted aft.

From here, the model was primed and the underlying rust work started:

• Base Rust:  Applied to most of the model. 
• RMS Muddy Brown
• Rust Variations:  Dry sponged onto various areas (damaged panels, roof, bed, lower part of the panels, etc)
• RMS Chestnut Brown
• RMS Mahogany Brown
• RMS Rust Brown
• RMS Forest Green
• RMS Marigold Yellow
• RMS Imperial Purple

My buddy John, over at 40K Hobby Blog, held my hand through this rust/painting process.  He agreed with my concern that there was not enough "contrast" at this point and that I should add darker browns to contrast my eventual grey base color.  Unfortunately I set the model aside for the night at that point and when I got home the next day, I just jumped to the next step without remembering to do it.  LOL.

Varnished, hair-sprayed and base coated

• Base Color:  RMS Cloudy Grey

Anyway, at this point it apparently is a pretty time sensitive process to start removing the base color to reveal the rust.  And, of course for me, that is when things went sideways.  Some kind of family "crisis" and ended up only returning to the model after this base color had fully set.  Holding my breath, I still started trying to remove the base color with mixed success.

Definitely not horrible, but it is a little awkward, I think, since there is still paint in the recesses of the damage areas.  Not much I can do about it at this point other than starting the rust part all over again.  I decided though I was just going to chalk it up to a learning experience and move on due to running out of time.  I will need to come back with weathering powders to hide some spots where I accidentally removed paint all the way down to the bare metal.

Starting metallics and highlight/shading

• MG, Rocket Launcher, Chains:  Following Dave Taylor's Metallic Guide
• Window Plates:  Following Dave Taylor's Metallic Guide
• Spike:  RMS Muddy Brown

Following Dave Taylor's metallic methods, I started in on all the other metal bits.  I also started some shading and highlighting of the base color.  I was really not happy with the base color (too blue) or the highlighting (too sloppy) or the shading (not enough contrast) at this point.  For better or worse, Adepticon was less than a week away at this point so I had to press on.

So at this point, things got a little hectic in the rush to finish up.  But lots of progress was made, just not captured in photos.  Really unhappy with the roof, bed and bumpers I repainted them brown and sponged rust variations back on.  Hairspray technique again and using a lighter shade of the base car color, the roof and bed were sprayed.  Then quickly removed.  Bumpers were similarly done, only with AP Gun Metal.

After finally, being satisfied with the rust I moved on to highlights and shading.

Much better and starting to come together, I think.

Note, I deviated from Dave Taylor's metallic method for the window plates.  I just was not getting what I wanted, probably because I did not know what I wanted.  I started to hit the plates with Vallejo Smoke and discovered, for myself, something wonderful!  Because I was in a rush, I did not want to apply a bunch of layers of Smoke so I did not bother to thin it.  It quickly began to "gum" up in this state and achieved the wonderful grimmy affect you see now.

The rims were AP Gun Metal, followed by a thinned Vallejo Smoke.  The tires themselves were Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber.

The car in the picture above is a bit shinny (it's worse in person, under proper lighting), that's because it has had a gloss varnish applied for the next stage.  The plan was to lock everything in with a dullcoat after I apply some weathering powders and pin washes.

Or, in other words, my attempt to screw it all up.  Issue one, was that while I intended to use oils for the pin wash I did not prepare to use oils.  That means at 9pm I realized I had no mineral spirits to thin down my oils with.  So, pressed for time I attempted a acrylic pin wash.  Didn't work so well.  The second issue is apparently I have forgotten how to use weathering pigments.  I really struggled here.  I at least managed to get some mistakes covered up but I'm not happy with either of my "finishing" steps.  But I have run out of time, so I hit it with dullcoat and called it done.

The "bad" things I've learned through this process:

• Working with die cast metal Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars sucks.
• Chop topping the taxi cab was a horrible idea resulting in a continued nightmare.
• Replacing windows is a pain in the ass.  They are sooo small!  And some have a lot of curvature to them!
• Chains suck too!  I cant say how many attempts it took to attach them.  Or how many times I had to reattach them.  I can only pray that they stay on now.
• The weapon bits from Brigade Games, originally crafted by Dave Taylor I believe, seem a little oversized to me.  Since I bought a ton of them, I will continue to use them but fair warning.  The other bits and pieces from those sets seem reasonable sized though.
• DO NOT reassemble the model completely before painting.  I knew this.  I don't know what happened.  I was dry fitting the model.  Next thing I knew, I grabbed the glue.  Then an hour later "OMG, why did I do that!"  Painting and handling this model would have been so much easier in separate pieces.
• If using the hairspray technique, do not let the base color (top layer) completely cure before you start rubbing it off.  Even if the baby is crying, house on fire, etc.  lol.
• Not sold on being able to do a pin wash with acrylics.  
• I suck with weathering powders.

The "good" things I learned:

• I like this entire vehicle weathering "thing."  Lots of fun and you can be fairly carefree about it and get decent results IMO.  Well, at least till you hit the home stretch.
• I guess, although that may be debatable, that I can do this vehicle weathering "thing" to some degree.
• Hopefully, I learned from the "mistakes" from above.  LOL.
• One model down, 3 more immediately to go.  Another 6-10 after that.  Ok, that last part I am not to happy about but at least this "project" has gotten started!
• Family stuff is a big factor but I really should paint more.  When I do have time, I get caught up in assembling stuff (or playing Xbox) and just don't get around to actually painting enough.

Also, this technically (and I will count it) achieves one of my hobby goals for 2017.  I had a goal to paint "something" for Adepticon.  And I have.  Sure, I planned to have actually 4 of these guys done for Adepticon but still, I will take this one as a victory.  Of course, after Adepticon I have to figure out what is next (I think I had a goal to have something painted for the CMON Expo, which is in mid May.  doh!).  Plus I have a backlog of incomplete stuff that needs to get done.

In a hopeful note though, at least for my hobby productivity, I haven't played Overwatch in over a week and it will be a full 2+ weeks before I get another chance to play.  And I have to say I have not really missed it.  So I don't know if I will go back to it.  We'll see.

Anyway, next stop Adepticon!

Dropfleet Commander, Scourge Cruiser Assembly and Magnetizing

In the previous post, I covered how I assembled and magnetized my Scourge Frigates.  As I began to write up the Cruiser assembly and magnetizing section, I realized the length dictated that I probably break the post up into two parts, so here is the second part.

KS Exclusive Scourge Battle-Cruiser

My first attempt to build and magnetize a cruiser was a complete failure, so it quickly got re-purposed to the Kickstarter exclusive battle-cruiser (which has special/different bits).  This hid all the mistakes I made and ultimately the battle-cruiser was not a suitable for magnetizing anyway (that "crown" is the deal breaker).  

While I do think the quality of the frigates and cruisers are excellent, these special add-on parts for the battle-cruiser (at least for Scourge) were a bit of a let down and required significant work.  All the pieces (crown and the forward "winglets") had large ports and vents, as well as pretty bad mold lines.  Additionally, the crown was badly curved.  It took some work, but all of that was addressable and I think it looks great now.  And overall, I've seen much much worse.  It was just a little disappointing after how great the frigates were.

Cruiser Assembly and Magnetizing
Anyway, back to magnetizing the cruisers.  As I tried to wrap my head around magnetizing the cruisers, I stumbled across a great blog post at NanoTanks that really helped break down the issues at hand (you can find the specific post here).  To cover all the bases you are looking at:  3 different wing options, 4 "mouth" options, crown and no crown, and belly or no belly.  Hmm, I think that is 48 permutations.  Not all permutations are valid configurations in the rules of course but wow.

I'll cover the crown first, since it requires placing a hidden magnet during the first steps of assembly.

Never mind those small holes in the mouth, we will come back
to that later.

In the picture above, you can see a large magnet recessed (left) before putting the upper fuselage piece on (right).  This upper fuselage piece is fairly thin and a larger magnet can provide enough attractive force to hold the small/light crown (the small piece on the cutting pad between them) to the upper hull.  

The "large" magnet.  Not really that large except when
compared to the "small" magnets.

Two small magnets placed below the crown.  Note
these were not recessed as they are fairly obscured.

A bad picture with the crown held on by the magic of
magnetism.

The wings and belly are easy enough:

Small magnets for the wings and in the socket, similar
to the frigates.

Wing Option 1

Wing Option 2

Wing Option 3

Again, small magnets for the belly option.
I used 2 here to minimize rotation.  Again, ignore those
holes in the "mouth."

Show me your belly!

So far not to bad.  Now all that is left is 4 mouth options but this is where things get tricky since the 4 options are actually:  1 no option (vanilla/plain) and 3 attachments.

My first approach failure was to place a hidden magnet (one of the large ones) in between the left and right halves of the fuselage, in the mouth area.  This was difficult to do without drilling through the side but it is doable.  The next part, was to attach ferro paper to the backsides of the 3 attachment options.  This failed because there was simply not enough attractive force.  Hell, even just the paper by itself didn't hold in place.

The second approach failure was to drill two holes, as seen in some of the pictures above, in the mouth section and attempt to place the small magnets on the backsides of the 3 attachment options.  This was a very bad idea due to the obvious alignment nightmare it creates.  This also completely eliminates the no attachment option.  I was going to live with this though because the 2 cruisers builds that have vanilla mouths are already visually distinctive by being the only configurations with launch pods or the belly or I would just keep 1 or 2 cruisers aside specifically for the vanilla mouth configurations.

Building on the second approach (and having no way to turn back from the mess I already caused) I decided to drill out just the forward drill hole for a large magnet and reamed it out to be even bigger than that.

These magnets are not recessed either but
hidden away in the large hole through the mouth.

So the magnets on each side do not actually make contact but the attractive force is more than enough to hold them securely in place.  And reaming out the hole to be a bit larger than the magnets addressed the alignment issues.

There you have it, Scourge Cruiser magnetizing with all the options.  Except the vanilla mouth option that I gave up on.  Or did I?

I just happened to have this, never have used it before.

I didn't create the mold using this cruiser which has
the two holes drilled in the mouth.

Lip balm is great when working with green stuff to
smooth it out and to minimize sticking.

Thinly rolled greenstuff pressed over my molds.  Yes
there is a "little" excess.

BAHAHAHAA

Its not necessarily the prettiest solution but from the angle and distance that you view the ships from, it works beautifully.  Sort of.  The greenstuff is a bit flimsy since it is so thin and I am worried about the long term wear and tear of removing these pieces (the large magnets have the stuff together pretty tightly).  I tried the same thing with 2 different kinds of milliput that I had but was not pleased with either result.  I will try again though, maybe my ratios were off.  I've also heard of mixing greenstuff and milliput.  And there is also Magic Sculpt (?).

There was yet another potential solution failure I attempted after this.  But I don't want to talk about it.  Let's just say it was a really bad idea.  Oh no, I just thought of another potential solution that I happen to have the materials for, hmmm.

Anyway, that was/is my solution (for now at least).  I just need to finish the rest of these off (2 more cruisers, 8 more frigates) and get them off my hobby desk.  Maybe then I can focus my attention back to some other things that have been ignored for the past month.  I'll also need to order some more magnets (this project tore through my supply) before trying PHR or UCM (both of which look a bit more challenging than Scourge).

Btw, I think this is something worth mentioning:  Despite having a supply of magnets on hand for this project, this is actually the first time I had ever magnetized any of my miniatures.  Maybe it is just the engineer in me but I really enjoyed it.  As you can perhaps see from above, there is a certain problem solving aspect to it that I really liked.  And I really did not find it all that difficult, so if you have ever wanted to do it but been afraid to - give it a try.  That being said, if you absolutely hate pinning miniatures I can't imagine you would like magnetizing them.  

Dropfleet Commander, Scourge Frigate Assembly and Magnetizing

Shortly before Christmas, my kickstarter of Dropfleet Commander arrived and has been a bit of a distraction.  From the kickstarter I picked up a starter fleet for Scourge, PHR and UCM.  Actually, I doubled down on the UCM starter fleet because I love their ships so much.  Scourge were perhaps my least favorite, but to try to stay interested and motivated I started with assembling them first.  This was also because I wanted to experiment with magnetizing the various options, first on a fleet that I wasn't as excited by.

Up front, I will apologize for the quality of the pictures.  My new smartphone apparently has camera that picks up the scan lines from my bench light.  And since a number of photos was taken before I realized this, I was not going to go back and re-shoot them.

Frigate Assembly and Magnetizing

The first batch of Scourge Frigates, with a pile of bits for all the options

The frigates are actually a breeze to assemble:  just the center body of the ship and a left and right attachments (btw, I am going to call them wings from here on).  Easy, unless you decide to magnetize all the wings so that you are not locked into a particular loadout in army construction (or have to resort to proxying).  Seemed like a great idea at the time, now I would say it is more of an obsession.

In any case, magnetizing the frigates really is not that bad with a couple of tricks and practice.  The left and right wings are just ball-n-socket joints.  Drilling and putting a magnet into the socket is pretty straight forward.  You just have to be careful of two things:

1. Do not drill to far.  Drill a little, check to see if the magnet will sit flush.  Drill a little more, check again.  So on.  These pieces are not that thick and you will break through the other side fairly quickly.
2. ALWAYS check the polarity of magnets even before you do a dry fit check!  They have a habit of getting stuck, even when just doing a dry fitting, so you want to make sure if that happens you haven't totally screwed yourself.  

For the ball side of the ball-n-socket (ie, the main fuselage), you are going to need a very expensive tool to get the drill started on a curved surface properly:

Yes, a thumbtack.  Just sand the half sphere down a little bit and then use
the thumbtack "scar" a hole to start your drill bit in.  Great
to use on any drilling project.

A few twists of the drill bit and then drop the magnets in with as little CA glue as I can (it's a tight fit hopefully, so any excess glue will get all over the place) and I am done!

You can hopefully spot the magnets here.

A wing option.

Different wing option.

Now, I will say that I wish the magnetic attachment was stronger.  The wings are not likely to fall off or anything, at least with reasonably gentle handling.  But due to the ball-n-socket situation, they will rotate a fair amount.  That being said, I am justifying living with this defect by believing they would be articulated in reality and you can't convince me otherwise.  LOL

The magnets used, herein referred to as the "small magnets."
Also, these are about as big and strong as I think you can get for the joints.

One last thing to note is about the models themselves.  I think these particular models are excellent.  No significant mold lines.  The ports and vents are sometimes located in inconvenient locations but a closer inspection leads me to believe there was really no way around this.  You do need to be careful though.

These almost look the same...

As you can see in the picture above there are 2 identical wing options.  Except, they are not exactly identical.  When clipping one of these out the sprue, I was not careful and apparently caused (or left) a little to much tension on the wing and snapped that second "tail" partial off.  Ultimately, I decide to just cut the remaining tail off and completely amputate it from the matching wing.  The morale of the story is, be careful and mindful of what you are doing.  Some of these bits are tiny, thin and delicate.

In the next post, I will cover my attempts to magnetize the cruiser options.  That was significantly more tricky.