Like a Thunderbolt from a clear sky

Yes folks, Project Thunderbolt is done! First, I think some musical accompaniment is needed, crank this up:

Yep, the long running series keeping content on the blog while I batch painted two massive aircraft is finally concluded. We can finally bask in the loveliness that is the Thunderbolt and I'm rewarding myself with a rather generous glass of Pimms (it is summer after all and I'm British). But enough waffle, to pictures of shiny things!

Obviously, I have talked at length about painting these guys so I'll mainly be focusing on the finishing weathering and detail stages and waxing rhapsodic about how lovely these sculpts are. Seriously, I defy anyone to hold one of these in their hands for more than a minute without making it "fly" and murmering "braaaauuuuu dakkkakakka" under their breath. That is the mark of a cool aircraft, vroom noises. Fact. But anyway! Weathering on aircraft is all about restraint, there really won't be a lot of chips and dings that aren't battle damage. Frankly, if an aircraft is flying into something hard enough to chip the paint then that is a sad, sad, crashing plane. So keep the normal chipping to an absolute minimum. Instead, streaks of muck, soot, dust, whatever the plane might have flown through are the best option. Note that while the jets are heat-discoloured, the rear "jet" isn't. That's because I figure the rear nozzle is the rocket motor that Thunderbolts have to break atmosphere (completely wrote "break atmo" in a Firefly reference but figured clear communication over nerd points) and these haven't been fired yet.

On the wings you can see the streaks of dirt, on the dark surfaces it was mostly Ammo Rain Marks streaked on and stumped with odourless thinner. The undersides were more muddy coloured to stand out. I realised I hadn't talked about the decals much as to my decision making process for where they should go. Some were obvious, the numeral and weird sine wave thing were in the classic place that the JG-52 markings were found. The rest needed to have some thought put in. Most of the "label" style decals were scattered around areas that need to be "soldier proof", bomb mountings, ammo storage etc. Things like the little white triangles I figured would work nicely as a targeting point for machine spirits to lock on to the plane when recovering to a carrier. There are a bunch of little steel discs that initially looked like fuel ports but there were way too many. I figured instead they were magnetic cradle clamping points. The triangles allow the cradle machine spirit to target the attachment points.

The business end of the Thunderbolt! Beware all ye that this is pointed at.

And that same business end with the torpedo of significant Jeff-obsession clamped on. The yellow cradle blends so nicely with the nose cone that it could have been designed to go there. Really happy with how that went down. You can see the muddy-toned streaks on the wings and some of the labelling decals if you zoom in on this view.

There have been better shots of the pilots but this final round-up didn't feel right without showing off at least one of them.

And finally, the prodigious collection of ordnance and an example of the basing. The rubble was my normal mix for urban basing, sand, cork granules and Secret Weapon bricks all welded down with thinned PVA. The ordnance was orginally all white (so it would not show up against the pale underside of the aircraft. The red, white and yellow elements would pick up the spot colours on the plane. The bombs though, just looked like toys in white. Did not work. So instead, I pulled the mid grey colour from the fuselage and used that as the ordnance colour. The torpedo got a dark sea blue tone. Torpedoes want to be camouflaged against the dark ocean once fired so a darker tone is appropriate. The ordnance seems small compared to the aircraft (which are huge) but each was like painting a normal 28mm fig (but simpler paint scheme).

And we're done! It's been quite the long haul but I hope you've enjoyed the journey. These now need to be shipped off to the client and long years of happy air-to-mud exploding action.

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part Six

Oh bring me bombs, lots of bombs from the starry skies above, doooon't blow me up...

I spent the end of yesterday and a bit of today cleaning and magnetising all of the ordnance for the Thunderbolts. This is pretty much the contents of the Academy 1:48 US WWII Armament set with a bunch of Imperial Guard hunter-killer and Manticore missiles thrown in for good measure. 38 Teeny magnets allow them to stick to the "invisible" layer of flex steel under the paintwork on the fuselage.

The small missile racks were intended to look like the racks on a Hawker Typhoon, I think I'm sort of there with them. The Thunderbolt wings are angled downward about 2/3 of the way along so there is a limited amount of room to mount wide racks. They look fine though and once they've got a coat of the light blue-grey will look like part of the fuselage.

Alternatively, both aircraft can be equipped with four small munitions for the stuka-like ground-pounding.

If heavy air-to-mud missile action is required, both aircraft can hang four big ol' manticore missiles on their wings. The mounts angle outwards too so look quite nifty.

In addition to the smaller wing mounts, really big bombs can be mounted on the dorsal mount.

Or a slightly smaller, fatter big bomb...

Or a slightly longer, thinner big bomb... (spot the guy who doesn't know jack about bombs)

But then, the really cool thing. The freakin' torpedo! It clamps to the yellow nose but magnetically attaches to that same dorsal mount. The mounting brackets for this will be yellow rather than the light blue. How cool is that? A torpedo!

A final tip for the day, if you've got a stack of small magnetic thingies to prime, wrap a nice big steel ruler in cling film; magnetise your stuff to it; go nuts with the spray can. When you unwrap the ruler later it will be unsullied by overspray. Perfick. Painted bombs and weathered planes to go folks! Getting close!

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part Five

Eyup all, another quick update in the ongoing Thunderbolt build log: I've not been able to do any step-by-step pics this time as it was reaaaally slowing me down.

As you can see, the metal and other details has been painted. No weathering yet as the decals needed to go on first. These are mostly the Graf & Grislawski JG52 decals and some Forgeworld Aquillas.

These have been set and flattened with Micro Set and Micro Sol and a coat of matt varnish to kill the carrier film shine. When there are a lot of decals to do it takes a while, take my advice and break it up into hour or so chunks as you will make mistakes around hour three or four. Decals are the easiest way to get crisp detail in painting. Not the quickest.

The client had had the nifty idea of magnetising the canopies in order to allow the cockpit detailing to be seen. This was an easy matter of another strip of flexi-steel on the back of the cockpit and a thin magnet glued inside the canopy. Works like a charm. This pilot's dedication to a beau back home (another one of the JG52 decals) can be seen on the canopy.

That's about it for today, weathering and bombs to go and the job is done.

EDIT: I noticed as I was writing this that the varnish had caught the light in an odd way in the photos. So went back to check it out. The bloody thing had clouded. I don't know if it was humidity or some MicroSol left even after an hour of drying but clouded it has. I'll have to fix it. Hopefully the old dodge of a layer of gloss varnish and then matting it down again will work. Fingers crossed. :(

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part Four

Hiiiiiighway through the DANGER-ZONE....

Yep, today it's the turn of the bold pilots to get coloured in. These two are currently called - in my head - by their high gothic callsigns of Mavericus and Anser. These seemed like a nice self contained episode of the build log so a post it is.

With cockpits and the like start from the bottom and work up. In this case, the light grey interior was first, then the seats, finally the pilots uniforms, their faces and then helmets. This way you are always layering the next section over a potentially messy previous one. There's not much to say about the cockpits. I did a suggestion of instrumentation - as frankly there won't be a lot seen - and decided on a light grey interior to help people see the interior details existence through the canopy.

I figured that they needed brown uniforms in order to stand out from the predominantly grey airframe. Note that the outside of the cockpit hasn't been highlighted. That'll come with the rest of the fuselage. The jumpsuits are Val US Field Drab; the straps are Val German Camo Beige; the leather Val Leather Brown. These have been given a wash of Agrax Earthshade and then highlighted first with the original colour and then with a little Deck Tan added.

This shot is very work in progress but I knew that the gloss varnish on the helmet glass would erase the work I'd done making the patterns and colours of the helmets show through the tinted glass effect. Stoopid cameras. You can see it in the flesh but the camera picks up too much of the reflected light. This was achieved by a first applying a basecoat of Val Dark Sea Blue, washed with black. This gives that armoured tinted glass feel. Then to show the colour beneath you thin the paint down and apply glazes of colour to the glass. This allows the helmet colour beneath to "show through" the tint. Worked quite nicely.

Couldn't resist dropping Mavericus into the plane - still a lot more work needed obviously - just to see what he looked like. Badass is my verdict. Then got curious, what would he look like with canopy in place?

Ah, damn near invisible. Never mind, I know it looks cool in there. Now all you do too. :)

That's it for another day.

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part Three

Hi folks, after the giddy diversion of turning five and four hundred posts it is back to the business at hand. Namely, the Thunderbolts, when last we left them I had got the yellow on (finally) and the first greys. Now we're ready to start the real fun:

Following the guide that came with the transfers (you can just see it to the left) I laid out the pattern for the hard edged "top-down" camo. The masking tape is the Tamiya stuff and is awesome. Very low tack and fairly conformable, note I've added the canopy so as to have a consistent pattern, it comes off again to reinsert the cockpit later.

I found the Basalt Grey to be far, far too close to the Dark Bluegrey in order to work. I added a fair whack of German Grey to the paint and used that instead. Either the RLM colours are different to the Vallejo or the colours used in reproduced pictures are very different. Either way, the new colour works nicely and after all, these are Imperial Navy, not Luftwaffe.

When you remove the tape you are left with gorgeous clean, straight lines to the camo. There really is not any better way to get this sharp effect.Next I needed to get the underside camo sorted. For this I masked around the edge of each of the wings and on any other area that met the underside:

With this done, I sprayed the Pale Grey-blue onto the underside and left it to dry. Again, I think this colour is a little lighter than I was expecting but it seems to work. The idea was to prevent the plane being spotted from below by blending it with the clouds and bright sky above. This done, I stripped off almost all the masking tape.

you can see a tiny patch on the right there where the masking failed but for the most part, perfect.

Nice clean yellow nose emerges, the top-side camo is safe while the blue-white base is neat and tidy. Lovely. Now to move on to the complex lateral camouflage.

The representation of this camo varies, smaller depictions generally just use fuzzy blobs but the actual camo is a series of elegant, almost flame-like patterns blending the pale lower hull and the dark two-tone upper hull. The first stage (2) is to add the Pale Grey-Blue on to the tail and sides. Next (3) is to cut back in with the Dark Bluegrey in order to neaten the pale colours. Finally (4) the German Grey (ish) darker tones are added to finish the disruptive effect. Tricky, but nifty.

At last we can remove the masking tape covering the recognition flash on the fuselage. Unfortunately, all the various layers of paint and the fact that these were the first bits of tape applied meant that there was some bleed-under:

The reason for this was the deep panel lines (far, far deeper than an equivalent 1:48 kit would be) and other areas where the tape couldn't quite mash down. I was initially irritated as it was an evident failure, but it's growing on me, could be re-worked as weathering. Hastily applied recognition flash with cheap paint flaking off.

And there we are. Quite a jump in progress there from last time. Next will either be the cockpits or the metalwork and other details. I'll keep you informed.

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part Two

Hi folks, this update is a smidgeon later and shorter than I had intended, there is a short angry saga to explain this:

The above picture is of the undercoated Thunderbolts, note the white will be where the yellow is going to be. Eagle-eyed readers might spot some yellow on there already... yeah... that is how a crap paint can cost you four clear days of productive work and cause no little fury. Some of you might remember me being excited about Minitaire paints by Badger turning up. This was because the colours were not the usual drab military colours but instead the bright, saturated ones suitable for a lot of 40k stuff. I picked some up as it was literally the only pre-mixed option at the time. I was new to airbrushing and didn't want to mess up the mixes. I also assumed the problems I had were my fault rather than the paints.

I know better now.

Minitaire yellow joins all of the other Minitaire paints I have tried in the bin. No matter what I tried it would not cover properly. They shrank from edges. They pebbled so badly on a second thin coat that it looked like cellulite. I assumed there was a problem with the resin release showing through the primer. I stripped the paint, cleaned the "problem areas" - so I thought - and left them to dry. This takes some time. Then I tried again. The exact same problem. Rage, paints hit bin, strip models again, leave to dry. Buy some Vallejo Game Air Sun Yellow. Which was perfect.

So finally I had the yellow areas coloured. Now to carefully mask them off (almost certainly I'll get some bleed under but it's easier to fix than getting clean yellow over darker tones).

I've burnished the nice flexible Tamiya masking tape over the bits I want to stay yellow and packed the nose. This allows me to put colours on top and keep that nice clean yellow.

Next colour along is Dark Bluegrey a surprisingly agreeable colour and when this settles I'll mask off the camo patterns and get the Basalt Grey on and then the light underside. Honestly thought I'd be there by now. Curse you Minitaire! Curse you!!!!

That's enough of my griping though, we're back on track now. More fun next week!

TTFN

Operation Thunderbolt - Build Log Part One

Greetings one and all, I'm trying a new approach for this next project. As it'll be a fairly long one I'm breaking up the reporting of it and spreading it over a series of articles as a kind of build log. "What project?" I hear you ask. Well, it's a cool one, a brace of my very favourite 40k aircraft. The Imperial Navy Thunderbolt:

These two have come ready assembled (thank the gods as my tempestuous relationship with Forgeworld's instructions is well documented) but they still need a little work. Mostly cleaning casting plug remnants, mould lines and the main thing the client wants. Bombs. Lots of bombs. Missiles too:

We're using a box of Academy's 1:48 WWII ordnance for the job. 1:48 is perfect for 40k's slightly exaggerated scales - indeed, I think it is the right scale for any "chunky" 28mm figure as the Bolt Action stuff I'm doing indicates. These need to be interchangeable, so the only practical way to go is magnets. However, magnets over such a variety of sizes of hard points and ordnance will lead to problems with fiddly making-sure-everything-is-exactly-the-same-size-and-polarity-itis. I eventually realised that it would be a bit too fiddly. Never mind the inevitable mistake when a magnet gets put in upside down. No. A better way needed to be found and one presented itself in the form of movement trays. You see, lots of people (Maisey of the Beard Bunker included) use magnets in their bases to stick their models down to movement trays to prevent that "we're in a pile at the bottom of the hill boss" formation so popular when gravity gets involved. What do the magnets stick to? Sheets of very thin, self adhesive flexible steel. Essentially plastic impregnated with fine steel filings which leaves it both magnetic and very, very soft. You can cut it with scissors. Or...

If like me you've got one, a guillotine (really useful bit of kit) which will give you perfectly straight cuts no muss, no fuss. I cut 5mm wide strips of the flex-steel - measured to fit the rectangular mounting points on the underneath of the wings. These were then cut to one inch lengths and moved on to the sticking.

The self-adhesion will stick 'em in place just fine but I feared for it's longevity. So after they were all in place (note the extra centre-line mounting for really large bombs) I ran some superglue around the edges. Capillary action will draw it in and seal the edges up nicely. Ought to be bomb proof now (badum-tish). These 0.5mm thick flex-steel pieces will vanish nicely beneath the primer coat and will just look like extra sculpted panels. The idea is that if the client just wants to use them as interceptors the wings will simply look painted. No obvious points of attachment. The magnetised hard points for the bombs and missiles will just snap into place and - hopefully - not leave a mark.

Speaking of paint, the scheme we're going for is an "Imperial-esque" variant of a neat WWII luftwaffe scheme the client found. Looking forward to playing with it. Handily, the transfer sheet came with a colour guide complete with RLM colour values. Five minutes on Vallejo's website found me their equivalences pdf and the correct colours for the greys are found. But that will wait for next time gadget. Next time!

TTFN

p.s. like the idea of seeing more workbench articles? Seeing the process instead of the finished result? Let me know in the comments.

In the Navy

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth...
...And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Excerted from High Flight by Magee

There is something uniquely cool about the concepts of space travel. It evokes that romance of the age of sail with it's dangers, isolation and possibilities. Warhammer 40,000, of course, adds another few elements from the age of sail: brutality; press gangs and ruthless captains. These fine gentlemen are the focus of todays offerings! These are part of the leviathan command crew (I've now tagged all the Leviathan models as such) and represent the two fleet elements that have come together in the client's warzone. We decided that two would be in a classic British Napoleonic navy mode and the other two in an emerald green that we vaguely remembered being associated with the Segmentum Obscurus/Saturnine fleets. I'm afraid I do not know the manufacturers of these chaps so if anyone can illuminate me I'll re-edit to include the original manufacturers.

First up is the hawkish figure that I was referring to as The Admiral in my head while painting him. He's an older, gaunt, severe looking chap and well suited to the image of the senior officer. For the classic Napoleonic look I needed dark - almost black - blue dress uniform jacket and cream-white breeches. The blue-black really is practically black, I just mixed a drop of Val Prussian Blue into the black and then added The Fang for highlighting. The Fang a blue-grey for those unfamiliar with Citadel's current daft naming, honestly, The Fang, not The Fang Blue-Grey, just The Fang. Unless you are intimately familiar with the backstory of the Space Wolf chapter of Space Marines then this is meaningless. Sheesh!

The cream breeches are the same method of the wraithbone from the Corsairs, i.e. Zandri Dust mixed with white and highlighted with white. See? Solve one problem and open doors in the future. The trick is remembering all these mixes and tricks and the blog has been invaluable for that. One feature on this chap that I'm really happy with are the fairly naturalistic ostrich feathers. They're all over the place in empire armies and the like and I'm starting to warm to the idea of painting them undyed. This method uses Val Deck Tan and Val German Cammo Black-Brown (two really useful paints) shaded with Agrax Earthshade and rehighlighted with the original colours. Creates a lovely soft natural tone.

From the same fleet we have this chap, who I had in my head as a fairly recent promotion. He cuts a rakish, dashing figure and put me in mind of a hard charging ex-frigate captain recently elevated to the captaincy of a capital ship and thus a presence at this table. It has just occurred to me as I type this that were we to be doing this project for a diorama these fellas could have been painted glowing green to be hololithic projections around the command table while still being aboard their ships. Hmmm..... thinks.

Anyway! This paint scheme, focus Jeff! Something to mention about all of these models is that they have simultaneously incredibly dense AND incredibly fine detailing married to average castings. This is not a useful mix. The hair on this gentleman for instance is painted on despite having sculpted hair. It was so shallowly and finely sculpted that neither wash nor drybrushing could pick up the texture finely enough. Likewise, lots of the dense decorations and honours on the others might as well have been flat discs for all the help the sculpting gave to the painter. There is a reason that things tend to be a bit scale exaggerated at 28mm.

This photo just about manages to show the difference in tone between the blue-black uniform and the grey-black cloak (Val German Grey washed twice with Nuln Oil). Those highly complex areas of braiding at the corners of the uniform jacket were essentially painted as solid colour (my fake NMM) and then washed with very, very thin washes of the uniform colour in order to define the braid.

Speaking of braid, this chap is covered in it! Those tiny little tabs on the lapels - not, I have to report, brilliantly cast - were properly fiddly but very worth doing. We've moved into the Saturnine fleet colours, the green being bog standard Caliban Green highlighted with increasing amounts of Warpstone Glow. You'll notice on the other models that I've used the green as a spot colour and of course the red sashes. Here the dark blue-black is the spot colour. The upshot is that the four of them hang together quite nicely despite being very different principle colours. The other change is a reversal of the cream-white breeches and grey-white socks/gaiters. With the green I have used grey/white breeches as another change that nonetheless binds the models together.

I think this one is quite the vain individual. The coiffured hair and fine cravat speak to this but also, in 40k at least, the odd, flat face can be explained as repeated juvenat treatments. Quite the dandy I think.

Finally a blatent Nelson - although with a weirdly sculpted upper lip which became a mustache. When divvy-ing up the models I deliberately assigned him to the green pile to further diminish the Nelson look. The normally tricolour decorations on Nelson's uniform were retained but the traditional blue swopped out for imperial black. The black/white/red thing is very 40k Imperial and helps to make him more of a 41st century gent.

Hope you're all enjoying the Leviathan series, I certainly am as the variety is very much spicing my life. The Eldar are still rolling but these bright peacocks are really helping the corsair uniform scheme. More soon!

TTFN