From Barks: Xmas-a-tron (5 points)

I like to start each Challenge with a seasonal miniature. Here is a free 3D sculpt from Imitation of Life. I used Contrast over a metallic undercoat- it came out darker than expected, and is far from my best work. The LED lighting is unforgiving. But I do like experimenting with new techniques, and it was quick- about an hour all up. I haven't done any snow so it can fit in with my post-apocalyptic wasteland scenery.

1x 28mm figure: 5 points

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Haha, good one Barks. Thus begins the host of whacky holiday season figures we'll see over the next few days. I wonder if he's taking or defending the Christmas presents? Perhaps the gun is one, and is really a TV remote. Anyway, I do like his fur-trimmed winter boots, scarf and antlers(?!). 

Welcome back to the Challenge Barks.

From ChrisW - 1 trip on Sarahs yacht and Planet Earth Planet of the Apes (665 points)

Travel to Mars and Earth this week, lets see if the plans work out...I doubt it will happen...but if not all this week then some for next week too.

 Well only made it to Earth...

So, if we did not set goals how else will be be disappointed? I could be like Peter in the movie Dodge ball and not set any goals, maybe I would get more sleep and not stress out trying to get stuff done, yeah, maybe. As I am sure people have noticed, I seriously under estimated how many points that I would be able to achieve throughout the challenge. Now that I am submitting my 10th post I realize that I still have not gotten any better at setting goals/targets

This week is another fine example of my poor estimation skills and an example of how I consistently think I will 'easily' be able to achieve whatever I have set as my goal only to find the hours flying by and me not getting everything done. I know boo hoo hoo!

This week starts with a journey via Sarah's yacht to planet Earth courtesy of Zira.

Then we land on a world turned upside down! Shock of shocks the cities are waste lands, and the world is ruled by apes. Yeah heard that one before.

 This week I went a little overboard and built a 3' by 3' gaming board for Pulp Alley meets Planet of the Apes. Standard styrofoam sheets carved up, painted, flocked and debris and details added. The Sidewalks are thick cardboard, the rubble piles in and around the buildings is made of cork sheets broken up into random chunks. 

As it looked when only 2' by 2'

I randomly gouged the surface, then painted it with black paint mixed with white glue. A textured brown past was applied to the rough areas and the urban bits were dry brushed various shades of grey. The highway had many layers of grey dry brushed over black 'tarmac' and dark grey sides. 

 

The dome on top of the building is a nice find. Dollar stores often sell globes of plastic plants. I bought one to disassemble to use the plants as small scatter terrain. It left me with a green plastic globe. Cut that in half and voila a roof dome.

 The spaceship is a paper kit that I downloaded for free, and printed at a larger scale. Still not up to a 28mm figure, but then the ones used in the movies were not really in proper scale either. The wreckage behind the ship is a bunch of bits from my bits box glues together. Note, the engine in the centre is actually a replica Stanly Cup toy. The part nearest to the capsule is off a Star Wars skiff.

The combatants

The humans

Anything not listed below does not count for points (cars, scatter scenery etc was not done for the challenge but is there for flavour)

The fence was done for the challenge just do not know how/if to score them.

•  20 points for planet Earth 
•  20 points for Sarah's yacht
  
• 290 points for 25 human (2 kids counted as 1 person) & 33 ape 28mm figures
•   60 points for 6 x 28mm mounted figures
•   25 points for 1 x 28mm vehicle wagon and 1 ape crew
•  40 Subway & back engine part 28mm vehicle
• 120 points for relatively flat 36" by 36" table [see below]
  
• 20 points for the two half buildings [combined] and debris
• 40 points for the Bridge/highway 14 x 8 x 6
• 30 points for the domed building 9 x 10 x 6 [without dome

 665 points

For the table my thoughts are:

36" x 36" = 6 cubes by 6 cubes = 36 cubes @ 1" thick. 

Divided 36 cubes by 6 = 6  6" x6" x 6" cubes = 120 points

Maybe my thinking is wrong...😇

   Squirrel points

  Previous weeks

1. Super heroes
2. Epic 40K
   
3. Sci-Fi Robots 28mm
   
4. Dystopian wars
5. Dr Who                                                                                                                                            
6. Pulp
7. All Quiet on the Martian Front  
8. Back of Beyond                                                                                                                               New this week
   
9. Post apocalypse

That was certainly worth waiting for! And the honour of Team Tuesday is rescued with this mahoossive points-bomb from Chris! Huzzah!

That's a great looking table and a fantastic collection of Planet of the Apes figures. I can't fault your scoring for the terrain boards.

Now, to end my comments with a quote:

"Oh my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it! [screams] You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

Tamsin

From Barks: Sci-fi ups and downs (40 points)

First, some 'Volucrix Reavers' from Descent, painted to match the boardgame's art. I think they would make good porigotas for Stargrave. They are mostly Contrast Ultramarines Blue over white.

Second, a post-apoc girl from Tagged Events. The arms didn't print properly so I greenstuffed on some some new ones from the bitz box. I like how she came out; I'm cautiously anticipating GW's Necromunda: Ash Wastes that was recently announced.

Third, a zoat. This is one of the least enjoyable models I have ever painted- and I've painted a lot. It's an over-engineered push-fit model, such that when you glue it there is no room for the glue and it doesn't fit together well. So there was a lot of dodgy greenstuffing going on. Next, I struggled to interpret its inscrutable alien technology. I had no image in my head of what I wanted it to look like; what bits would be which colours and where I would like to draw the eye. It's a bit of a hot rainbow mess, and some parts have ben repainted multiple times to try and save it. I could bring it up a notch with some fancy effects and a lot of edge highlighting, but it isn't worth it and barely reaches the standard I set myself. Does not spark joy.

It has some redeeming features:

• I like the skin
• I don't have any more of them to paint
• It gets me 8 points to my challenge
• It fills a good slot on Slowpainter's ABC

5x 28mm figures: 25 points

1x big guy: 8 points

Slowpainter's ABC: Z is for Zoat

If anyone's got any suggestions for a quick fix, colour theory, spot colours, consolation etc.- let me know.

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Great post Barks. Your Reavers kind of make me laugh as, when grouped in your photo, they have a wonderful K-Pop, boy-band, music-move look to them. 'Ladies and gentlemen! Please, give a big hand for 'Volucrix and the Reavers'!! :)

My favourite is the post apoc gal with the yellow autogun and great blu doo. I've heard about the new 'Ash Wastes', but have not researched it yet, being somewhat overcautious with GW's releases of late. I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

Funny, I had the opposite experience with the Zoat, as I quite liked the model and had a lot of fun painting it. That being said, I can understand your aggravation with puzzling out all the grafted tech amongst his flaps and folds. I remember I had to do a bit of Google-Fu to figure it all out before painting it. Since you asked, here are my efforts with the arcane critter (along with his pal, the Ambull) - funny, as a bit of foreshadowing, you commented on it saying you were planning to tackle yours in the near future. As a small consolation, I'm scoring the Zoat as a 40mm cavalry figure for 15 points as I remember him being a rather large lad. 

- Curt

From ChrisW - Another Mixed bag (535 points)

 We travel from LV-426 to Cybertron via Sarah's yacht...

...and then we plunge into the great Abyssal arriving at Krypton.

 

 Cybertron

Dystopian Wars Prussian medium robots and 2 Canadian Robots

• Medium robots (7) 40mm tall figures 

 

Dominion of Canada robots

Metzger robots (3)

For a long time these were the biggies in the Dystopian Wars universe, supplanted just before Spartan games went belly up. Also Prussian, they are amphibious and come in both land and water versions and I am painting them in pairs. I figured, I already have 2 pairs painted up, so might as well finish up the last of them...(and yes it is an excessive amount of these for anyone to have)

 

 

Waterline versions

Krypton (Super figs)

I have actually had to stop myself from painting these figures over the last couple of weeks. I am trying to keep with the planetary themes and move in some sort of order throughout the rings. So while I have back tracked once, I really only want to use Sarah's yacht to skip over any planets where I just can't match any figure to theme.  

So Krypton means super heroes, and for me that is a good size collection of Old Glory and Reaper figures. Some of the Old Glory figures (5) are quite large topping out at 60mm! Most are listed as 33mm on their site, but really are in keeping with the scale creep of 28mm modern figures. Some of the figures are very primitive, you could not confuse them with the modern DC or Marvel lines. Heck, even some of the Heroclics are better figures. So why was I keen to paint these, dunno! It just got into my mind to do them. I figured contrast paints might work on these as there were some deep details, but my experience with contrast paints told me that contrast alone would not work. Maybe that's just me, I have some luck with contrast, but basically as a base coat, adding highlights after. 

The Big'uns (4)

Exitor, Host leader

 

Triangle man & Major Payne

The rest of the named supers (mostly named by me)

 Teuton, Red Dynamo and Basher. All are from Reaper, the 'twins' are bones while Red Dynamo is metal.  

Red lightning

Blue streak vs Earth Mother

The villains: King Pin, The Magister, Pinhead

Orange Julius, The Proletariat, Green virus

Ultra, Night watch, Guardian

Dynamo, Gladiator Ape

Green Ronin, Mr Hilter, Cyberman

Artemis, Blue Hawk, Blue Angel

The Henchmen

These guys worked out as I envisioned them. I see them as being made out of a super strong, but malleable plastic and can transform themselves into different shapes or even weapons. Well I figured that would mean the plastic would get discolored when it stretches out, hence the change in colour from a deep pink to the light pink shade.

I find the eyes kind of freaky in the pictures. 

 

 Gun toting & sword wielding elite warriors

 They sorta look like Ninjas but I already have lots of Ninjas and just did not want to do more dark outfitted ninjas, besides, this is for a superhero game, so bright colours should be the rule! This is more like the orange that I was trying to achieve with the workers from last weeks post. Would have been a good idea to have paid attention to what I did to paint these guys.

  28mm vehicles (5 cars)

 

The points

• 40 for two planets
• 20 Sarah's yacht (Blue Angel)
• ?? points regular 3 x ? DW Metzger robots 75mm tall
  
• 45 points waterline 3 x DW Metzger robots (treating as 15mm vehicles)
  
• 91 points 13 x 40mm tall DW robots & the 4 big supers
  
• 185 points  37 x 28mm foot
• 100 points 5 x 28mm cars

Total 481 + Big robots

Squirrel 3 points Post apocalypse, Super, Dystopian Wars

 (may be too late this week, but will learn for future posts)

Wow, what a load of robots! And submitted before midnight in the UK too! Lovely stuff, Chris!

You might have avoided causing me some confusion by posting the Supers first and noting that Blue Angel is your fee for taking Lady Sarah's Star Yacht from LV426 to Cybertron, but I got there in the end!

I've scored the regular DW Metzger robots as 40mm vehicles. Just to note, 15mm vehicles are 8 points each not 15 points. You've still got a total of 535 points for this submission.

Tamsin

 

Yep, brain not too good sometimes, thought 15mm figures, saw the 8 points, but '15' stayed in mind, so I of course recorded 15 points each, I am a dufus...!😁

Thanks again for your help, maybe next week I can be before noon your time, baby steps