Summer projects

So. Thesis defended last week, I'm now officially done with uni, and a cand.it!

This means that right now, there's only two things on the schedule: 

Hobby and job-hunting. I won't bother people here about the last one, but I'm hoping to use the time untill I find a job to finish some projects, and, knowing me, starting about twice as many new ones. I've been thinking that maybe if I run a log of sorts here, checking stuff off, it'll help me stay focused instead of running off and doing other stuff at the drop of a hat. This post might be a bit wordy, but I promise there'll be pictures at the end of it. 

My projects for the summer will thus be, in no particular order: 

Ariadna: I want to get the stuff I've got painted before I consider getting more. This will be 4 Loup Garous, a female Chasseur, a female Paracommando, and a group of Antipodes with their controller I got as a graduation present from myself. (very thoughtful of me, I think) I love the models, and their sheer size:

Bear in mind that the lady is a tall woman, compared to the other models in the game she'd be pushing 2 meters I think.

Nomads: Same story. I've got a female Wildcat basecoated, 2 more Wildcats who're plain metal, a remote in a box somewhere, and I've yet to finish the Reverend Healer from the starter set, to my shame. 

PanO: I've gotten most of my first Knight of Santiago finished:

I mainly need to do details and adjust a bit on him now, so I've only got a single KoS left before everything PanO is painted. I'll admit that the legs aren't that good tho, so if I find the time and motivation I might redo the highlights there. 

JSA: Only got the starter plus a Keisotsu HMG and ML for a small intro force, but they're based now.

I've got Shinobu Kitsune as well, plus a ML Hac Tao, but those are lower priority painting projects.

Lion Rampant: As usual, a mate of mine, Mikkel, has convinced me to start another project. Historical 28mm Germans from about 1349, yay! This'll be a small force, 6 foot knights, 12 pikemen, 12 crossbowmen, 12 polearm-wielders, 6 mounted serjeants and 6 bidowers, skirmishing archers that I can swap in when I feel like using the pikemen as foot yeomen instead of serjeants. This should be a fun little project. He was kind enough to give me most of the stuff, so I'll have to find a way to pay him back. I'll be using Perry metals for this (except for the archers, who will be the old Perry plastic bowmen from the Bret starter), and so far they've been absolutely amazing to paint. I don't think a Perry sculpt has even disappointed me.

A bit of background: (Mikkel's a historian, and could probably give a much better account of this than I can) Valdemar Atterdag, king of Denmark, went to German in 1349 to support a friend of his, Louis IV of Bayern, whose claim to the margraviate of Brandenburg was challenged by an imposter also called Waldemar (but with a W). Only problem, the imposter had the backing of Charles IV, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. HRE politics can be slightly confusing, especially for a non-historian like me, so there might be some holes there. As far as I can tell, the two armies -Danish/Bayern versus HRE/German - had a bit of a punch-up, and then everyone more or less parted on decent terms, so not the WORST war in the Medieval period. Valdemar and Louis won, by the way, with Louis being reinstated as elector of Brandenburg although he had to make certain concessions.

Progress so far:

These chaps, the 6 to the right, are the foot knights of Charles IV, as well as his standard-bearer. I've gone for a bit of a mix of heraldry, and the fellow in the Bavarian colours will have a red band added, marking him out as a second son of a minor Bavarian family (I think) who has been sent to serve the Emperor, hopefully die gloriously and stop being a disappointment at home. I've dubbed him Von Baldrick. (I painted him before I realised that Louis, my opponent, was not just the margreve of Brandenburg but also the duke of Bayern, and there's absolutely no way I'm redoing those diamonds after getting them painted, so second son he is.)

The standard-bearer is in the colours of the empire, yellow and black. I'm trying to find the best way to add the imperial standard to the pole, but that'll come. Some of them still lack heraldry, but that'll come.

The rest of the army will be in the colours of the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the house of Este, who ruled there. From what I can gather, they were heavily involved with the Hanse-Stadte, and they never lacked for reasons to fight with Denmark so their inclusion should be fairly uncontroversial. This means blue/white and blue/red/yellow colours, but mainly blue/white.

Now, all I lack is 6 mounted serjeants, 12 pike-wielding foot-serjeants, 6 bidowers, 12 crossbowmen and 12 polearm-wielding foot serjeants. They're proving VERY fun to paint tho, it's wet my appetite for historical models a fair bit. I'm also really looking forward to trying out the Lion Rampant rules.

SAGA: Had a game last week when I dug out my old vikings. Good fun, and I'll be doing a bit here I think. Luckily I just need a single unit of hearthguard, 4 models, to make a decent 6 point force, so I might soon be placing an order from Gripping Beast for those, a rulebook and some dice. There might also be a small battlereport, if I can get the pictures to look ok.

Skellies & Skaven: A while back, Simon/Maelstrom sent me a load of models in a gift exchange. I'll be making a small force of skellies to use as general baddies and a small necromancer warband from them, as well as a few Skaven. It'll mainly be a fun little GS and paint project, with no specific build or aim in mind. 

Lastly, I've gotten into X-Wing as well, but luckily that's not going to intrude in the painting queue, being prepainted.

It's a fair bit to be sure, but I've been hobby-deprived while writing the thesis and I need to get back into it. When I get home tonight I'll be diving right in, I hope! I'm allowing myself one new project for every two finished, and I hope to finance it by selling off some of my old DA now that the new codex is out.

TL;DR: I'm busy and feel free to hurl abuse if I stray from the plans over the next while.

Spetsnaz

Spetsnaz is (practically) done!

Looking back, I can see spots where I might go back and tidy a bit before varnishing him, like his left arm and some of the transitions on the right metal armguard. Still, decently pleased with him, particularly the eye glow. I'm getting better there, I think. Might have the courage to go back over the PanO stuff and do their eyes red sometime soon.

Still mucking about with the Keisotsu, too:

Plenty of work to do yet, but he's slowly getting there I think. Still working on ways to integrate that orange into the scheme.

Had a moments weakness a few days ago, so now I own a box of Antipodes. They'll probs be the next Ariadna project, unless Margot or the female Chasseur manage to insert themselves in the painting queue.

Been a while..

Like the title says, it's been a while.
The last month I've been working on my thesis, so there's been precious little time for painting and other fun stuff. That's handed in now, however, so I'm back in the game. I'll defend it on the 18th, and after that everything should be back to normal hobby-wise.

Since last update, I've completed the metro, not to a great standard, but I've never been too fond of the sculpt anyhow. At least she's painted and ready for the table:

Next models for Ariadna will likely be the Spetsnaz with boarding shotgun and the unpainted parts of the Loup Garou link.

I've been looking at the JSA I've gotten as a side-project too. Eventually, I'd like a few smaller armies that I can field as 150-200 point forces with a bit of variation to help introduce people to the game, and these'll be the first of those. Right now I've got the JSA starter plus the Keisotsu with ML and HMG to make a full link team. I might add a support pack, a bike and some other stuff eventually.

Right now, I'm basically playing about with the colour scheme, trying to tweak the way I paint white and black and attempting to decide on an accent colour. I think I'll go red, but I might still need another for a bit of contrast, for instance on the rifles. Any suggestions are more than welcome!

I have to thank Cloak88 over on the official infinity forums for tips on how he does his white, having his recipe as a baseline saved me a heap of trouble.

In the absence of actual productive work, I've fiddled with some bases for the rest:

And that's about all I've done in almost a month. Living up to the blog name, I think.