Marvel Crisis Protocol: Ultron

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Ultron

A Crisis Protocol Core set model today to open February’s completed work – The big bad of the second Avengers film – Ultron! I have to admit that I don’t know much about Ultron as in my comic-reading days back in the late 80’s and 90’s my Marvel focus was much more on Spidey, the X-Men (and spin-offs) and the Punisher – so while I know and have a basic knowledge of most of the heroes from that era, villains are a bit more vague. I’ll have heard of most of them, but not necessarily know much about them. Ultron is one of those villains.

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Ultron

An early touch point for the painting of my Ultron model was the rather excellent rendering painted by The Solo Meeple, though in the end mine turned out quite a bit brighter than originally planned. I also found the panel “gaps” in Ultron’s armour where the red-orange glowy bits to be really shallow impressions at best across much of the model.

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Ultron

When I sprayed this guy, I ended up with a bit of texture from the black primer – it was around the same time I varnished Red Skull and had a similar issue. Lesson learned – don’t spray when it’s too hot – even in the shade! I hope that’s why this happened anyway – so I can consciously avoid it happening again. It does give his, err.. skin?  armour? carapace? a slightly pitted look (especially when blown up in these photos!), which I guess can work for a metal villains but I do like the smooth look much more. I was satisfied with how the rubble on his base worked out, though. I added some weathering powders to give it a bit of colour beyond (not-quite-50) shades of grey and help define it a little from the silver metal man standing on top fo them. I might actually need to go back and add a little more brown to them, though not too much as it is supposed to be urban rubble… whadda you think?

January 2022 – Personal Painting Round-Up, “Paint What You Got” Challenge Round-Up

January! The month where annual leave happens! Where it can be horribly hot, or just nice and warm. When a lot of models might get painted, or just a few. On the painting front at least, January was a productive and successful month as I got a fair few things completed.

A good chunk of the models were 18 simple boardgame models from Shadows of Brimstone, with a side of prettying-up of 10 bits of prepainted scenery – just walls in this case. I also got a few less-simple boardgame models done – 8 of sculpts from the Zombicide boardgames as well as 6 from Fantasy Flight’s Journeys in Middle-Earth – good models in terms of produciton quality, but in this case, 4 rather cartoony sculpts, one that’s a bit more middling, and just one that I really quite like.

Then there’s the German armour – 14 Panzers to reorganise and supplement the ones I’d already painted last year as well as 7 Armoured Cars across a few variants. Add to that one certain Marvel model to continue the WWII German theme, some “old”-school metals (not to me, but whatever) in the form of four 90’s Blood Bowl models, and some properly old-school models in the foursome of Mega-City Judges from the mid-1980’s.

All in all, a pretty productive month. Obviously helped by annual leave, nice enough weather, and – oh yeah – the fact that I was still on crutches for most of it – so I wasn’t wasting my precious painting time by leaving the house to go and do anything in the outside world… My total fo January 2022 was 71 models. Not too shabby, I have to say. February’s numbers are right down from that with a return to walking and so things like not being on leave, working on-site, going to the gym and fun stuff like getting home from work and crashing out with no painting. You know, regular life stuff.

Now obviously, all of the January models up top count for Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge, but that challenge actually started on Boxing Day (26th December for those unfamiliar) – so aside from those January models, there’s also these! A reasonable little batch I weathered, painted and completed in those final 6 days of December 2021…