Been a slow week for me, as it's the last week of summer stretching into the first week of teacher work. So I've been filling the time with using up some of this huge variety of plastic scenery filling up my wargames closet. I also wanted to try some new techniques out that have been bouncing around my brain for a while.
First up I assembled this beauty. Going to try to paint it up using some marble effects since that's another technical area I need to improve on. No plans on basing it right now.
Next is a destroyed tank and crater piece. I've had this idea in my head that is damaged by some type of heat gun or ray (melta?!) and then is turned into a type of pillbox or defensive position. So, after willingly sacrificing the very first tank I ever built (forty pounds of plastic glue and all!) I pulled out the brand new heat gun from Harbor Freight. Warning - ONLY DO THIS OUTSIDE AND AWAY FROM FUMES, PLASTIC FUMES ARE TOXIC, ETC ETC. I did it outside to be careful. Learned many things.
1.) The tank literally shrunk! The entire left side shrunk in, as plastic contracted when heated. This even ignored the plastic glue holding the track side to the body. I started really hot (like, 700 degrees hot) and probably should have started lower to see the results. But that's okay considering that it definitely did melt!
2.) Battle damage from the melta blast should have been showed prior to the melting to try and encourage melting damage to appear. IE, the drill holes I then stuck into the tank after all the work was done should have been done first.
3.) Make sure to add to the story. You can see here the desiccated arm I've inserted inside here, as well as trying to pull apart the rest of the sponson to make it look more damaged. I'll enhance this with rust and other damage, but it needs to dry first.
Cheap, DAS clay is your friend here. I used it to add some weight to a the crater and hide the joins, as well as building out the base. I'll need to add a variety of scatter such as rocks and other smaller pieces of grit to hide the joins more readily. I also used a variety of pieces from the bitzbox to add more of a sense of damaged machinery. I think the sandbags lend to the scene. I know that they aren't perfect, but I need to let them dry before messing with them some more.
I also had some time to build a base for this lovely statue. Now he's got the real height he needs. Materials were a flower box and a picture frame for $1 each from Michaels. In addition, the foam bricks were tiny amounts of offcuts from blue foam from Firedragon Studios.
Finally, I put some effort into building this bad boy. A lovely Armiger for my tiny Admech force (or to back up ANY loyalist army). I sucked it up and magnetized the arms so that I can turn this into the shooty version if needed. You can see the current base of this guy here.
So after two hours worth of work, I ended up with this.
- Blockade
