Project Update: Phoenix Bomber

Subtitle: Stupid Purple

When last we'd met, I'd finished the red undercoat of my Phoenix, and was contemplating the application of the white accents. I should have done some more contemplating.

The red undercoat has bloomed through the white and made a lovely purple tone. I quite like the purple; it reminds me of some flowers my mother planted in the back yard of the house where I grew up. What it does not remind me of is the white accent color of the rest of my army.

Two possible causes of this debacle: the paint siphon cup that I'm using is stained with the red I've been using as a basecoat, and the red pigments are mixing with the white; or, the solvents in the cheap airbrush paint I've been using are dissolving the lower layers, and causing the red pigments to bloom through. The test is simple. I've replaced the small siphon cup I'd been using with one of my larger glass siphon bottles, and put down another layer of blue. If that stays blue, then the siphon cup was the culprit. If not, then I brush on a layer of varnish, then blue, before I return to airbrushing the white.

Either way, gigantic hassle, but not unexpected: I constantly experiment with new techniques. Sometimes they come out terribly! With luck, the blue I've just put down will be the fix we need - if so, I'll post pictures soon.

I heard there were these special French paints

Once upon a time, while I was wandering the streets of West Lafayette, Indiana, I noticed a shop called the Game Preserve. Thinking to myself "I can always use something else to distract me from the homework I'm not doing," I went inside. I assumed that I would see a shelf somewhere that had Dungeons & Dragons materials, which would at the time have been enough for me to decide that the place was cool.

I was instead confronted with a glass case that contained what seemed like hundreds of exquisitely painted miniatures. I knew that some people used lead figures to represent their D&D characters, but this was different. Even though they were clearly fantasy figures (elves, dwarves, et cetera), many of them were organized in military units, marching in rank and file. It was breathtaking.

That was my first introduction to Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I started to pick up some figures, paints, and brushes, and tried to paint my first miniatures. They were terrible. No matter what I tried (then) my minis looked (to me) like flat, paint-by-number blobs. They didn't look anything like the figures in that magical glass case.

Particularly impressive to me were a group of five miniatures standing by themselves near the front of the case. They looked to me like a combination of fantasy and sci-fi, laden with guns and swords, power armor and horned helms. I eventually learned that these models were Chaos Space Marine Terminators from Warhammer 40,000, but at the time all I could see was how incredibly well painted they were. It looked to me like they weren't painted at all, that this was simply a tiny window into the world where these terrifying soldiers stood menacingly on the battlefield.

I needed, desperately needed to know how I could make my miniatures look like these. I didn't know enough then to ask the right questions about technique and materials, about the best ways to learn composition and style. What I actually asked must have sounded something like "How did he paint them like that?" I say must have, because I vividly remember the manager's response:

"The guy that painted those is from France. I think he was using some special French paints."

Years later, after I had unwittingly befriended "the guy from France," Matthieu ChanTsin, and learned that he'd painted those models, I pumped him for information about those special French paints. "I don't know what you're talking about," he told me. "I painted those when I was working for a Games Workshop store, and I just used Citadel paints."

The punchline of the story is that when I asked that manager (Mister Carlos Fernandez, gaming celebrity) about his response all those years ago, he didn't remember it at all. A simple throwaway comment had me convinced for years that special, perhaps imported, but definitely expensive materials were required if I wanted to paint beautiful miniatures.

The moral of the story is that you can do anything with any tools, as long as you know what you want to do, and know how to get it done.

Special thanks to Matthieu ChanTsin and Carlos Fernandez, for providing me with the material (anecdotal and neurosis-related) for this post.

Project Update: Eldar Phoenix Bomber

Of my ongoing projects, my current favorite is an Eldar Phoenix Bomber. I think it is my favorite because it is probably the most useless of the things on my hobby bench.

That statement requires a lot of unpacking. I've said that I enjoy playing 40K, but there's some nuance to that statement. I do not enjoy playing 40K anywhere near as much I enjoy modeling, painting, or owning finely crafted and painted miniatures for 40K. Because I don't feel any pressure to get things painted so I can play with them, I don't have a particularly large painted army - the most I can really field in any reasonably painted state is around 500 points. But my reasonably-painted state is fine indeed. For example, here are my Eldar Fire Dragon aspect warriors:

I don't really field models painted to a lower standard than that unless there's an emergency.

Playing 500 point games is a very different experience than the 2000 point variety. Faster and cheaper probably sums it up (this can be a very expensive hobby, after all). But there is another type of game, for those who find 2000 points to be a little restrictive. Apocalypse is a streamlined 40K ruleset that accommodates very large armies, starting at around 3500 points per side. It would be hard to notice a five-man squad of Fire Dragons in a game like that, which is where models like the Phoenix Bomber come in.

The Eldar Phoenix Bomber is a flyer, which is a unit type that isn't even legal in a standard game. As a flyer, it can get just about anywhere on the board that you want it to be. It also has an interesting mix of armament for an Eldar unit: two shuriken cannons for other flyers, a pulse laser for light vehicles, and two phoenix missile launchers (same stat line as a reaper missile launcher, with a total of six shots) - great for infantry. While most models in the Eldar range are specialized to the point of laser focus, the Phoenix is a rare all-rounder.

And to field it, I'll need to paint up around 2,650 more points, which at the current rate is just this side of never - that's what makes it "useless." But with so little pressure to get it finished, working on it is very enjoyable. Combine that with how cool the thing looks in my head, and it is easy to see why it is my favorite.

This work-in-progress shot of my Phoenix Bomber is from above, giving a good view of the craft's overall profile. The red you see here is the first stage of any model that displays my craftworld's colors, and it is almost complete (I still need to overbrush Vallejo Blood Red on the vertical stabilizers). Still remaining are the airbrushed white accents, ventrally-mounted weapons, pilots, basing, and detail work.

The model originally came supplied with a large Citadel flying base, which is among the most ridiculous modeling suggestions ever made. The clear plastic material in those bases is rigid and brittle, and far lighter models than this have blithely shattered their bases with no provocation whatsoever. The stem of the original base was also no taller than an inch and a half, which means that the tips of the wings would almost brush the ground - not a dignified posture for a model in flight.

I took the liberty of replacing The Silliest Flight Stand In The World with a Twelve Inch Flight Stand from Dragon Forge Design. The new stand's primary component is an acrylic rod. It is supplied with two resin brackets to affix to the base and model of your choice. Here is a picture of the bottom bracket affixed to an eight-inch chunk of MDF:

Here is a close-up of the bottom bracket. It doesn't look very Eldar, and so I'll likely be covering it up with some base detail, but I'm not yet sure how I'll go about it. The volume of green stuff required would be prohibitive. I'll come up with something.

The top bracket had to be cut down to fit between the contours of the bottom surface of the model, but not too much. It too doesn't look very Eldar, but my feeling is that it will be obscured by the model too often for me to worry about it.

Come to think of it, that last statement isn't completely honest. I don't mind that the style of the bracket doesn't fit, but only when it is obscured by the model. A friend of mine once taught me that there will always be someone who insists on looking at every part of a model, and I don't want the underside of my Phoenix to have a big industrial bracket under it. In the end, as an engineering compromise, I carved out spots in the model and the top bracket for magnets I'd recovered from a failed hard drive.

The magnets hold the (expensive, fragile) model quite securely, and allow it to be removed when nosy admirers simply must check to see if I've painted the bottom.

I have a long way to go on this project, but with the base coats almost done, very nearly all that's left are the good bits. Base coats bore me to the degree that they generally take me longer than fine detail would.

The next steps will be finishing up the underside with a quick coat of Citadel Codex Grey, and then a wash in Badab Black. Accent color involves masking the reds and airbrushing Space Wolf Grey, then airbrushing a highlight of Titanium White. The result will look something like this:

The white-on-pale-blue imparts an illusion of contour that I particularly like, and that I use on all of my vehicles. It is also a royal pain to implement with a standard brush, hence the airbrushing.

That's the current state of my Phoenix Bomber. I'm not sure when I'll be working on it next, but I'll post more pictures as it comes along. Comments or questions on my techniques or composition are always welcome.

My Beloved Eldar

In my last post, I listed a number of projects that were currently underway in my hobby area. Even the least astute members of the audience will notice that the lion's share of them are Eldar.

The Eldar are essentially space elves from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe, and they are the reason that I became interested in 40K. The lithe grace of their infantry and the smooth, flowing lines of their vehicles set them instantly apart from the rest of the miniatures available for the game.

To help illustrate why I love the Eldar, and to provide a finished contrast to the in-progress projects I intend to present, here is a finished Eldar Wave Serpent transport from my army.

This is the left side view, showing the shape of the model and the high-contrast color scheme I've selected (in another post, I will discuss at length why bright white might not be the best choice for one's painting sanity, but I think it looks great).

This is a close-up of the articulated cockpit and pilot. The pilot is a resin model from Games Workshop's Forge World series - it is repurposed from their Phoenix Bomber.

This is one of two finished Wave Serpents in my army, and I have a third waiting for me to get around to it. I'll gush about its utility in-game another day, and I'll add it to my ongoing projects list when I bother to get it out of the box.

I'm working on lots of projects, but that's okay

I've always had more enthusiasm than drive for my hobby projects. It seems like every time I get excited about a new project, it cannibalizes some of my interest in the last one. I think this process works out pretty well for me, because whatever I feel like working on, I've got at least one project ready to go. But I admit it can sometimes feel like nothing ever gets finished.

I've decided to try to keep closer track of how many and what sort of projects I have lined up. Maybe that will help me focus on getting things completed, or maybe it will simply make me feel better about what I've gotten done already. Either way I win.

In no particular order, as of last count, I'm working on:

40K:

Eldar Phoenix Bomber

Eldar Autarchs, magnetized

Eldar Dire Avengers

Eldar Howling Banshees

Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner, magnetized

Eldar Nightwing, scratchbuild

Eldar Wraithguard, sculpting

WFB:

High Elf Lord on Griffon

Basically an entire High Elf army

Role-playing:

Online/Tabletop Convergence project

D&D Campaign: The Defense of Cyre