Even though I've been playing a lot of Star Trek: Attack Wing in the past few weeks, I have also been painting. With Fallcon fast approaching and me slated to be running a tournament / demos for Dreadball, I wanted to get another team finished up. To my disappointment, I wasn't able to conjure up the energy to get them completely done.
After almost a week of required rest following Fallcon (required because I caught a brutal cold during the event), I finally mustered up the fortitude to finish another season 1 team: The Royal Eternian Rams!
When I played in my first league early this year (January thru March) I decided to play with this team so that the Forge Fathers would be represented. We had one player drop out and I took up the slack by also playing a human team as well. (The Avion Warriors have already been showcased on my blog, you can read about them here.)
Like most of the other players in that league, none of us had fully painted teams. A few were primed in different colours, but none finished. My team was primed with Army Painter plate mail metal, and had some brown and white on them. Continuing with my "Masters of the Universe" theming I knew they needed a lot more work. Upon inspection these guys totally reminded me of Ram Man. See for yourself and tell me I'm wrong.
After looking over several source images again, and taking a look at the 2002 toy, I realized that the white tabard and brown pants I had started with weren't right. Digging through all of my green paints I decided that GW Knarloc Green was the one I wanted for the pants.
Next I painted their shirts with GW Mephiston Red. I felt that I missed the brown so I went for something softer and chose P3 Hammerfall Khaki on the tabards. They could easily have been red, but I think it might have proved too "Santa Claus." I thought that all the silver armour could use some help and even though Ram Man doesn't have any on him, decided to add some GW Shining Gold for a touch of variety.
At this point I felt like they were almost done, but something was missing. Just...that little extra. Casting my eyes over my paint racks again I found it, Vallejo Model Air Panzer Dark Grey. It looks almost black and has a touch of green in it, and worked perfectly on the boots, gloves and belts to tie everything together.
Finally I painted the eyes white, and also did the electronic 'eyes' on their gloves white as well. The gloves got a wash of GW Thraka Green to get a slight glowing effect. They'd need a further touch up after shading.
Now here's where I went off the deep end and took a huge leap. To date I've tried two different varnishes for shading / dipping. This time I wasn't going to try it on a crappy test figure; I was going to use the brush on method with some MinWax Tudor gloss! This stuff is supposed to be comparable to AP's Dark Tone. Well I'm pleased, and relieved, to say that it worked brilliantly. I ended up with a little too much varnish pooling on the tabards, but otherwise I'm very happy with the results.
After the varnish I applied some AP Matt Varnish and then finally the player number decals. The final result looks good to me and I'm very happy with my MinWax choice. It's $8 a can rather than $33 for the Army Painter alternative. While I won't need to buy it very often, that's almost a 75% savings which you'd be crazy not to go for. AP's paint and primer is awesome, but I'll be going to MinWax for my quick shade varnish.
After almost a week of required rest following Fallcon (required because I caught a brutal cold during the event), I finally mustered up the fortitude to finish another season 1 team: The Royal Eternian Rams!
When I played in my first league early this year (January thru March) I decided to play with this team so that the Forge Fathers would be represented. We had one player drop out and I took up the slack by also playing a human team as well. (The Avion Warriors have already been showcased on my blog, you can read about them here.)
Like most of the other players in that league, none of us had fully painted teams. A few were primed in different colours, but none finished. My team was primed with Army Painter plate mail metal, and had some brown and white on them. Continuing with my "Masters of the Universe" theming I knew they needed a lot more work. Upon inspection these guys totally reminded me of Ram Man. See for yourself and tell me I'm wrong.
After looking over several source images again, and taking a look at the 2002 toy, I realized that the white tabard and brown pants I had started with weren't right. Digging through all of my green paints I decided that GW Knarloc Green was the one I wanted for the pants.
Next I painted their shirts with GW Mephiston Red. I felt that I missed the brown so I went for something softer and chose P3 Hammerfall Khaki on the tabards. They could easily have been red, but I think it might have proved too "Santa Claus." I thought that all the silver armour could use some help and even though Ram Man doesn't have any on him, decided to add some GW Shining Gold for a touch of variety.
At this point I felt like they were almost done, but something was missing. Just...that little extra. Casting my eyes over my paint racks again I found it, Vallejo Model Air Panzer Dark Grey. It looks almost black and has a touch of green in it, and worked perfectly on the boots, gloves and belts to tie everything together.
Finally I painted the eyes white, and also did the electronic 'eyes' on their gloves white as well. The gloves got a wash of GW Thraka Green to get a slight glowing effect. They'd need a further touch up after shading.
Now here's where I went off the deep end and took a huge leap. To date I've tried two different varnishes for shading / dipping. This time I wasn't going to try it on a crappy test figure; I was going to use the brush on method with some MinWax Tudor gloss! This stuff is supposed to be comparable to AP's Dark Tone. Well I'm pleased, and relieved, to say that it worked brilliantly. I ended up with a little too much varnish pooling on the tabards, but otherwise I'm very happy with the results.
After the varnish I applied some AP Matt Varnish and then finally the player number decals. The final result looks good to me and I'm very happy with my MinWax choice. It's $8 a can rather than $33 for the Army Painter alternative. While I won't need to buy it very often, that's almost a 75% savings which you'd be crazy not to go for. AP's paint and primer is awesome, but I'll be going to MinWax for my quick shade varnish.
Comments
I'll admit though, Dreadball is a tough game to demo. But once you have a good handle on the game people can pick it up fairly quickly from you.