Mierce Miniatures Chimera

Over the past ten years, the most impressive monsters I've seen are by Mierce Minatures. We just finished this chimera, at standard quality. 

Some Infinity Minis

Infinity paints itself. The models are great, and the sculpting is very painter friendly.

We just painted these up, this week.

Some Slaughterhousers

Some #PrivateerPress, #Hordes Farrow Slaughterhousers. I like how these came out. These were done at showcase quality.

Navin
Paintedfigs

Kickstarter Reward Painting - Shadowstar Corsairs

Shadowstar Corsairs is game (just funded!) by Ryan Wolfe. If you've ever gone looking for scifi space ship layouts for RPGs and skirmish games, you've probably found his Future Armada line. I've been using them for a couple of years myself and I recommend them. 

Shadowstar is a board game ("of space commerce, coercion, and combat!") which uses a lot of the Future Armada designs. They're available as plastic injection and resin casts.  

Being a fan, you can imagine I was pleased when Ryan asked if me to paint some Kickstarter rewards. He sent us some goodies, and here they are, painted: 

[Note: The Akita (bottom leftmost) is getting blue striping instead of red.]

Ryan is quite pleased with how they turned, and I hope his backers will be as well. 

This is the second Kickstarter we're working for. The first was Clint Maclean's Sharktipede.

I'm keen to see how things will turn out. Ryan has been great to work with as well. After I mentioned that we're using his Renegade ship plans in our RPG, he sent me one on the house! I thought that was quite nice of him. 

Shadowstar Corsairs is fully funded and still has 20 days left to go if you want to jump in.

Navin
Paintedfigs

Giant Convergence of Cyriss Army, Warmachine

So we just finished over 205 models of Convergence of Cyriss, from Warmachine.

We painted these at showcase quality. You can see the full gallery of these here.

Here's a video of them:

Some highlights:

Navin
Paintedfigs

Paintedfigs paints Danger 5

We painted Hitler!

If you haven't seen Danger 5, here you go (you're welcome):

Crooked Dice makes a set of these, and we got a chance to work on them. Please note Chestbridge has the Sit Down Gun. 

Navin Weeraratne
Paintedfigs.com, Paintedfigs, Painted Figs

Uranium Glass in a Trench Warfare Diorama

We just did some Imperial Knights for a client, who wanted us to come up with a display base for them. I pitched the idea of a nuclear battlefield - with actually radioactive material. The client was game, and this is what we did. 

Uranium Glass

Uranium glass is a material made from glass, infused with Uranium. It is mildly radioactive, but quite harmless. You can buy Uranium glass off Ebay for a few dollars a bag. It is unremarkable, except that it glows bright green in UV light.  

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

I wanted to crush some up, and distribute across the base. Then, with some built in UV lights, get them to make the board fluoresce.   

What Sort of Battlefield?
I wanted something with a trench warfare feel. Soldiers in great coats, grim terrain, grimy trenches. We looked about too see what odds and ends we had, and came up with some props.

Troopers, complete with hoods:

Some marines, including an Inquisitor scale mini, to create a temple:

Some Flames of War tanks, converted to be "Big Dog" equipment transports:

And a few other odds and ends: 

We cut some hard board and built a frame, fitted with expoxy. Then we laid down some styrofoam. We left a gap on one side for the trench.

Then we worked on the temple. Originally I wanted alien trees with glowing, UV, lures. A bit of reading and I realized that no trees, alien or otherwise, would survive in No Man's Land. Artillery barrages would just chew them up.

The same could be said for a temple of course. However, 40k is full of abandoned shrines in unexpected places. A few statues could be expected to have survived here and there. I couldn't have UV lures. However, I hoped some illumination for the shrine wouldn't seem too contrived.

So we built the temple as housing for the electronics. 

Next, we textured the board and built the trench. For texture, we just used dirt. You've got to be careful not to create any regular patterns - they will show, after painting. For the trench, we used toilet paper. It creates an amazing effect when soaked in white glue. Add a few coats, and it becomes very tough. 

Next was painting. We primed the board black and gave it a little drybrushing. We painted the terrain props and the minis to tie in the with Imperial Knights. The statues we have gave a gold, "Honored Imperium" feel.

Once the painting was done, we got back to the electronics. I got a lot of help with this, thank you Akash Ratnayake! We hooked up some UV LEDs to a some batteries, and fitted them into the "temple" casing. At first I was going to use some resistors, but they weren't needed. There was enough natural resistance from all the wire that got used.

We picked up everything we needed from Lankatronics. They were pretty awesome and the owner was very helpful. 

Then, we had to break up and apply the Uranium glass. You'd think breaking glass would be easy. That is, if smashing against granite, swinging a hammer at full extension, is considered easy. I have no idea why this material was so incredibly strong. Perhaps to stop dumbasses like me, from trying to break it.

While Uranium glass is harmless, I wasn't taking chances here. I did not fancy myself or my team breathing in any particles. We used masks and gloves.

We ground the glass down to take off the edges. Then, we glued it to the base. We used thinned coats of white glue here, they dried clear. Here and there, some super glue was used on the larger pieces.

As you can see, I'm a bit "quick and dirty" about this kind of thing. 

Once that was done, we popped the batteries in to see what we had.

It was, unfortunately, not as impressive as we'd expected. A more powerful UV lamp would have perhaps have done the trick. We still got the green glow, but only closer to the shrine. Also, it wasn't as bright a glow as expected. 

Shipping 

This always kills us. Shipping the board cost almost as much as my rent. I had a feeling it would be high, but not that high. Things worked out though, since we'd been given a good budget to cover the costs. The two more or less cancelled each other.

It was good fun though, and the first time I've worked with electronics. It should open up opportunities for my personal projects.

Take care,

Navin Weeraratne
Paintedfigs.com, Painted Figs, Paintedfigs