High-tech lowlifes street food.

I had a long weekend this weekend, which gave me a bit more time to do hobby stuff. As a result the airbrushing stage of my three Cyberpunk food stalls has been finished. They are made by Micro Art Studio for Infinity. But they will work for any cyberpunk setting. Mine aren't quite as gaudy as the originals, though I did add some decoration. What is left now is adding some washes, detail painting and weathering/chipping/grime by more "traditional" painting. As I was at it, I also did a set of data terminals and an info hub. Because you do need something to hack at some point. ;)

Here are the WIP pictures:

The info hub is a first attempt at airbrush OSL, but I'm not as neat/skilled as I would want to be with it. I think it's acceptable for a scatter terrain piece, though. 

Roofs and doors are kept separate, so mini's may make use of the cover they provide. 

I may add some bits and pieces to the stalls in the future. To show they are food/tech/whatever vendors. Perhaps as loose inserts, so I can get more functionality from them. Now to find a source of tiny sauce bottles, takeway cartons/bowls, etc...

See you next time!

Complete at last!

It took me a while, but now I finally have all the Appleseed movies and books I know to exist:

I've been re-watching the movies in order of release. Today I received Appleseed XIII and Appleseed Alpha. I'm two episodes in on XIII and saving Alpha for the weekend. Good times, and a nice distraction from the worries about the In-laws' health.


See you next time!

A change of gears.

I've done a bit of painting on the Warhammer Quest display backdrop, but a combination of the size and extent of the paintjob on it, as well as some real life worries had me lose steam for a bit, hobbywise. As a result the backdrop project just became this massive beast, staring me in the face, making me lose heart.
So I decided to change gears for a bit, and just pick up a random project on a whim. Clear the palate as it were. I wanted to do something none-fantasy, but not grimdark (I felt like I had enough doom and gloom on my plate already...). Something small and easily finished.
I had a look over my stacks of mini's ready to paint and WIP (I have an archival drawer cabinet with minis from various projects that are either WIP, primered or ready for primer. I tend to switch gears a lot usually, and this is my way of accomodating my hobby-butterfly tendencies).
My eye fell on my partly painted Appleseed Landmate conversion from a couple of years ago...

At the time painting on it had stalled out, because, well, painting that much white neatly was an absolute bugbear. Luckily, this time I knew what I was in for (and had nearly half a decade more painting experience under my belt). The trick to painting white is accepting it will take a bazillion layers...

Anyway, here is the result:

And the anterior:

In the end, it turned out a little lighter/brighter than his buddy I painted years ago:

(Old one on the left, new paint in the centre, and Special Ops Landmate on the right.)

Here's a pic of the whole gang as it stands now:

The SWAT team in the background isn't formally part of the Appleseed project (they're painted in the colours and markings of the Arrestatieteam, the Dutch equivalent of SWAT), but as they're carrying futuristic gear anyway, they might as well be co-opted.

With him, all my law enforcement Landmates are painted. On the to-paint tray are still 3 opposing force Landmates and 9 Bubblegum Crisis "Boomer" miniatures that need converting into combat cyborgs. When I'll do those minis? I don't know.
I had intended this mini to be a single painting project, to reboot the mojo, but I've finally watched Appleseed Alpha ("for research") and am currently rereading the manga, and it's drawing me in again. So this project may just have a longer breath than I had planned.
I also discovered that the particular Infinity models I used for these conversions are being replaced with a newer sculpt that isn't compatible with the looks of these (It's a nice sculpt, but there's just not enough of the classic Guges in it). So I kinda, sorta, somewhat quickly ordered an extra one, to convert into a support Landmate with an Anti-Landmate Sniper rifle.

There's still plenty on the wish list for this project, with the top picks being; a Landmate for Briareos, suitable clean sci-fi terrain, and most importantly, a ruleset that does what I want from Appleseed style gaming.
After that it's just tasties: more (varied) opposing force, some vehicles, civillians...
But there's not much of a priority on that, because as far as I know I don't have anyone to actually game this with... It's mainly just a modelling project and homage to Appleseed. But who knows, if I get enough finished I may just draw someone in?

See you next time!

Ack! Didn't make it!

My original plan was to get both regular ESWAT Guges done this week.
Sadly, I only got one finished.
The white (aka: the main colour) gave me so much grief, I decided to focus on just one Landmate instead of  painting both side by side. That way I'd only need to strip one if things really went wrong.
It cost me two painting days, but it didn't go wrong, I managed to get the white to an acceptable level (only to have the camera obliterate most of the highlighting and shading, naturally):

Pull over and exit the Landmate! NOW!!

As with the previous Landmate, the AV-aerials (the "bunny ears") are magnetized. They're fragile parts, and this way they can pop loose and back on again without ill effect. Being able to pose them is a nice little extra... :D
The grenade pack can also be added or removed through the power of magnetism.
Again, as with the previous Guges, the base got some asphalt style decoration.It looks nice, and emphasises that these are, in essence, urban vehicles.

So, the last couple of days' painting brings my fully painted Appleseed family to:

From left to right: Regular Olympus Police ESWAT Guges, Administration Covert Ops Guges, Briareos and Deunan. 

Still left to paint:

A second ESWAT Guges, two OpFor regulars Landmates, one OpFor officer Landmate, and 9 renegade Combat Cyborgs (based on Bubblegum Crisis Boomers, but they are still in their plastic baggies).

I guess I will need appropriate terrain at some point as well...

As for a timeframe when these will get finished: No idea... 

Especially since I'll only only be home in the weekends for at least half a year, and I'll need to cram my entire family life, social life and all various hobbies in those short two days. I'll need some time to recharge as well, so I fear hobby-time will often become a casualty.

See you on the other side of the tunnel!

Field trials commence, of a sort

Happy New Year!

Well, another calendar completed it's cycle, again without ill effects. ;-P
No painting today, I was a still a bit woolly and lazy from last night's celebration....

I did however, decide to pull out the modular interior/dungeon terrain a friend of mine put in "foster care" with me. Looking at the Appleseed artwork, there is a lot of relief in the terrain. I was wondering how to emulate that (preferally without having to build a fully contoured modular table...). I thought that separate modular "elevations" may do the trick. I could "proxy" the idea with his terrain modules.

Here's a quick experiment on a 2.5x3.5 foot board (the misses normally uses this for her puzzles):

The modular elevation idea seems to work quite nicely, even if they're a bit on the square side for Appleseed. I may need to introduce some non-90 degree bends and some curves.

As you can see by the dice and 2 Landmates (one painted, one primer black) on the board, I couldn't resist a little impromptu field test. :)
 I used the Mobile Frame Zero rules I told you about in previous posts, but with a base unit of measurement of 5 cm (instead of 5 studs).
I played the rules a bit fast and loose this time: I didn't bother formally calculating Asset Value and determining attacker/defender. I just wanted to test movement and combat/damage with this run.
It seems to work quite nicely for this sort of thing, with maybe some Appleseed-specific house rules needed.
And a bigger table is definitely needed with a 5cm base measurement! Speeds felt right though, scalewise.

One thing that bothered me was that there were a couple of instances where, in an Appleseed setting, the Landmate would have reacted to the other's actions. But they couldn't because they weren't the active unit at that time. I might seek a way to enable this. (As part of the Appleseed-specific house rules mentioned earlier)
Here is one such example:

The black Landmate in the background was already in that location when the painted Landmate darted across the open to get into the cover you see it standing behind in the picture. It just didn't feel right that the black Landmate couldn't squeeze of a snap shot in the hopes of a lucky hit as the enemy passed through view. 


What I am thinking of at the moment is allowing each Landmate/Unit to retain a maximum of one each of their unused white (general use), green (movement) or red (attack) D6 at the end of their activation.
They can use one of these dice in response of specific enemy actions: If an enemy moves into their line of sight, or if they themselves are attacked by the enemy unit. A unit may only do this once between activations.*
At the start of their next activation, all retained dice are discarded.
On the one hand I fear that this may promote reactive tactics (like Warhammer 40K 2nd Edition's "Overwatch" as an extreme example) which would de-emphasize the Mobile Suit Zero's focus on decisive, offensive action.
On the other hand, I may also rebalance the seeming over-effectiveness of the "half-frame infantry" I described in my December 22nd  post...

I'm also not entirely sure about how relatively fragile even armoured Landmates seem to be compared to half-frame infantry under the regular "one hit is one system lost" rules. It may need to be tweaked to "one die lost per hit" to redress this. But at that point, on top of al previous house rules I feel I'm crossing over from "tweaking the ruleset I chose" to "writing my own rules, inspired by the ruleset I chose"!


*: This is somewhat inspired by the Infinity game ARO rules. I've been lurking on their forums for the clean sci-fi scenery inspiration, but have gotten quite intrigued by the game itself (Yes, I'm hopeless, I know...).
I've also been messing around with the demo of Frozen Synapse (pc game) which also features this sort of responsive fire mechanic. (As well as abstracted, rectangular terrain representation. Could this have inspired my idea to pull out the modular terrain, I wonder? If not, it is at least a curious coincidence.)

Painting the others

Just a quick pic of where I got today, before I'm off to a New Year's party:

Have a nice one!

First landmate done?

Well, here is how it looks now:

The main colour is a bit darker, and somehow greener, than I had intended. It is however neat and clean, which makes me nervous about redoing it and messing it up. So I think I'll just keep it this way for now.
Now I just need to reread the last two manga's to see if I can find some markings to add.

It brings my total Appleseed cast to:

Painting the first landmate

It seemed only right that the first Landmate to be converted also be the first to get painted...

I didn't get farther than just the basecoat today, but here it is:

For some reason the pic seems a bit greener on my monitor. It's actually a mix of the two Vallejo paints you see in the background...
Now I just need to figure out how to shade and highlight it.

Landmate conversions: done.

Well, it seems I survived Christmas... I managed to make my save vs In-laws roll. :-D

In between festivities I finished off the last two grenade packs. Today it was dry enough to go outside with a can of primer:

I just need to wash the recesses where the spray didn't reach with black paint and they're ready to be painted.
The 2 "trooper" Guges will be painted in the 2004 movie white E.S.W.A.T. scheme. For the Guges "officer", I'm still debating between the two tone (metallic?) blue of the 1987 anime or the grey/brownish "covert" colour seen in some colour artwork.
The three OPFOR landmates will get several tones of grey, maybe or maybe not with an accent colour.

The next stage

<Insert obligatory Post-Apocalypse quip here>

I had some spare moments to do a bit more on the two Landmates today. The Bunny Ears are now reality:

And, as you can see, I've built the frame for the two grenade packs (one is on the table, the other attached to the left Landmate's back), as well as the first set of launcher barrels. On the right of the picture is the pack I originally built for my first Landmate conversion.
I don't have the exact same parts I used last time, most importantly the discs that the barrels should mount on. So I'll need to find an alternate way of doing those, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Oh, and I've done a (solo) playtest of an idea I had for minifig-scaled infantry in Mobile Frame Zero yesterday.
My basic idea was this:
-Each 2 infantry count as a single Frame and they split the dice between them. As such, each infantry in the pair gets 1 white die, and 1 die from every 2-die system (mainly weapons) you choose for the infantry pair. Single die systems (Defense, Sensors) you allocate to one of the pair. (So, if you want both to be armoured, you need to take two Defense systems...)
-To counter the fact infantry only has a single white die (and so often has to choose between moving or defense), I ruled that infantry can't be spotted.
-Infantry activates in pairs (not necessarily the pair you created as a single frame, you can mix as you want during the game).
-It takes 2 infantry to claim an objective.

I played two games, one with both sides having equal numbers of Frames and Infantry, and a small difference in the number and type of systems. The second I played with one side consisting of 2 Frames and the other of 4 infantry to see how they balanced with each other. Let's just say the Frames took a beating in that second game...

Things I ran in to:
-The paired activation results in potentially confusing activation sequences if an infantry pair both target different Frames. Which Frame is forced into activation?
-2 Infantry appear to be more powerful than a single frame, simply because they get to use a larger portion of the dice you roll. And, because of the no-spotting, they can have turn in which they are effectively invulnerable (due to Defense 6).
I'm thinking of ditching the no-spotting rule and seeing how that goes as far as redressing balance.
Also, I'm not happy with infantry lacking ranged weapons suddenly turning into jetpack infantry through gaining a bonus green D8. I may need to knock the bonus movement die down to D6 for infantry.

Now if you'll excuse me, the zombies have closed in again and I need to fight them off. ;-P

Do you like messy workbench pics?

...
You don't?
...
Well, you're getting them anyway! :D

Like I said in last post, those Mobile Frame Zero rules had me thinking about my Appleseed conversions again.

I had this duo lying around since at least 2009. They're two Infinity Yu Jing Guijia that I'm converting in police issue/ESWAT Guges Landmates. One was mostly finished, the other was just sawn apart in preparation for the conversion. The above pic shows where they are at today. To get them ready for primer, I "just" need to add the "bunny ear" antenna to their back, and build them their back-mounted grenade packs.

The conversion already done on them consists of the following:
-Arms cut apart at the elbow, to lengthen the upper arm and repose them.
-Sword and fingers of the left hand removed, replacement hand sculpted to hold the gun.
-Head replaced with a plasticard and greenstuff custom sculpt.
-Master arms (from GW Space Marines) added to their torso.
-Magnets mounted in the shoulder bulges (for "bunny ear" sensors) and in their back (for the grenade launcher)

They will be joining this lot:

 That's a prototype Guges in the front, next to Briareos and Deunan (who will, most likely be piloting the prototype... I don't have a Landmate for Briareos yet.). In the back are three terrorist/foreign power Landmates, an officer model in the middle, flanked by two troopers.

Oh, here are a couple of pics of how (once made) the "bunny ears" and grenade pack will fit on the police/ESWAT Guges:

I'm not sure when this lot will see paint...
If I can't get them finished over the holidays, they'll most likely have to wait 6 months or more to be completed, as I'll be away from home during the weekdays the first half of the coming year. Which means weekends will be friends and family time, instead of loner-hobby-time. ;-P

Have a good holiday season, all!

The start of a city

 So, now we get to the start of thing. Let's get this blog rolling!


Like I said in my introductory post, I game* a variety of settings and have several genres of miniatures in some state of preparation.. Several of these (Rioters and Riot Cops, Zombies, Appleseed, etc.) are traditionally associated with an urban enviroment.
Guess what I don't have, scenery-wise...
*: Or rather, "build stuff for", seeing how rarely I actually get to play....


So, a city needs to get built. Problem is: Zombies and Rioters are (mostly) contemporary, Appleseed and such isn't. And them I'm not even factoring in things like Warmachine....
My city will need to be flexible.

Here's the plan:
The buildings will be a mix of (somewhat) old-timey and current day brick buildings and more modern/sci-fi "slick"/concrete buildings. That way, by varying the ratio of "brick to slick" I use when setting up the table, I can slide from a bit in the past to the (near-ish) future.
I'm doing this because I also have some Appleseed miniatures in the works, and they require a more "future" city: Leave out the brick, and use only the slick buildings: Instant Olympus!
Somewhere in the future, when the city is far enough along, I could consider adding some typical Warmachine style buildings to complement the brick buildings. But, as I have enough alternatives for Warmachine terrain, that won't be necessary for some time.

The buildings:
Each building will be on a base with an integrated sidewalk.
Because I want the buildings to remain as flexible as possible, I can't have any "street furniture" permanently attached. But I don't like the look of street signs and lampposts with massive bases...
Plus, with permanently attached items or items on larger bases, there is the risk of damage if someone nudges them too hard while moving a miniature.
The solution? Magnets!
I'm painting the sidewalks with so called magnetic paint (paint with ferrous particles mixed in). I painted a set of test-bases and built a street sign and some lampposts (from Fenris Games) and glued magnets to the base of the poles:

Originally I had hoped to use magnets with the same diameter as the poles themselves.
Sadly the magnetic paint didn't have enough pull for that. That is why you see the larger diameter magnets under the lampposts.
Still a lot less intrusive than mounting the lampposts on bases, don't you think?
The street sign turned out to be secure enough with a double stack of magnets.
If anyone nudges them while playing, they will simply move out of the way, or fall over, without being damaged.

Last year (the day before yesterday ) I painted the magnetic paint on the majority of sidewalks. Here are the building bases with the magnetic paint drying:


I intend to have all buildings have an accessible interior. Mostly this will mean no more than some interior walls and stairs. I want to keep the interiors as uncluttered and useable as possible. The more I put inside, the less room for miniatures, and the more I pin myself down to a particular era or setting.
Plus, I like to have some of my sanity remain intact....

So I'm ready to start on the next phase: the buildings themselves.
I've got enough sturdy card and depron for the brick buildings. I still need to get the foamboard and/or foamed PVC for the slicker buildings, so those will come later.
That also gives me the time to work out shapes and layout for a couple of Appleseed landmarks: Onimal Coffee house and Akechi motors. I really like the idea of building these. I may build them with replaceable signage,though, so I can use the buildings themselves for other settings as well.

I couldn't help setting up a quick "proof of concept" with some of the stopgap scenery I'd been using so far:




Preliminary conclusion: Yeah, this is gonna work. I need more corners, though...

A start of sorts, and some introduction/preamble

Why start this blog?

Well, I've got "several" hobby projects that I alternate between, and it's getting hard to keep track of it all.
So far I've posted it all scattered over several forums, but I want to keep it all in one place for ease of reference. (And hopefully also to keep myself on track and maybe actually finish something for a change....)
I've started a blog before for my Space Hulk 3D project. But as I work on that project only rarely, that blog is infrequently updated and dormant the vast majority of the time. Boooring.
This time I intend to put everything I make/do hobby-wise in this one blog, in the hopes of keeping this one more active and to keep myself going.
Who knows, someone might even read it and maybe like what they see?

What have I done in the past (A.k.a. what could you expect to see)?

Most of that can be found in my Photobucket...
A few highlights:

-The Space Hulk project I mentioned earlier:

-The usual 40K stuff (and some =I=Munda stuff). I'm discovering however that the game, as it has become, doesn't hold my enthusiasm that much anymore. The background story is still very enticing, though (hence the =I=Munda)...
-Zombies, always a favorite!

-Crimson Skies, I just love the setting and the planes.
-I have a 20mm WWII (DAK) army lying unassembled and unpainted in storage somewhere...
-I'm also working on and off on some Appleseed miniatures:

Expect the occasional non-wargaming stuff too, like:
-Toys for my son

-Some amateur propmaking

(That skull is not mine by the way, but storebought....)

And lots more....


I tend to regularly switch from one project to another, whatever catches my interest at any given time.
(Unfocussed? I prefer to think of it as spontaneous and diverse. ;-D )

In the next post I will tell a bit more about what I'm working on at this moment.