Technical August: Monthly Hobby Challenge – Personal Round-Up and August 2018 Painting Round-Up

Another month where a singular post for both my personal round-up and my challenge outcome works best. Mostly because I got very little done for the challenge this month. Well, maybe that should be completed for the challenge, as I did work on a few other things – just none of them were completed.

As you can see here, not a lot of “Technical” stuff got completed in August on my part. Other stuff I worked on but did not complete included some more experiments with gemstone paints (mixed results), shellac spray primer on Reaper’s Bones models (seems great so far, but not finished or sealed to see the final results), work with decals and weathering on a trio of tanks that got hung up by painting god damned road wheels (super tedious) and another armoured vehicle (ran out of time). So they will no doubt trickle out over the coming months. It certainly didn’t help that August was a much more work-intensive month than was expected (my team leader has been on LSL for the last 2 months, and wasn’t replaced, so a colleague and I have had to pick up all of the firefighting and admin that she would have done as additional work – credit to the colleague for going above and beyond, since my (separate) IT duties haven’t abated, either).

On top of extra work from work, August is cold and rainy. Even when winter’s not so severe here, it’s cold and rainy because it’s still winter. Given that I’m a guy who works best when the weather is nice, the days are longer and I can spray as needed, it probably wasn’t the best month for this challenge for me personally. Ah well, c’est la vie!

So instead I got a bunch of Neglected Models completed, as well as scatter terrain targeted mainly on making Imperial Assault look better. Some IA models as well, and more stuff for Brimstone. One of the models was actually inside for a touch-up when I took the group photo, but has been included into the group shots via the magic of Photoshop. Because of course, I’d already put stuff away when I got inside and noticed. Aaaaand I’ve just noticed one model that I forgot to give a post to. That’s the kind of month it’s been. Expect that one real soon, then.

Overall, 52 models. Not too bad. The scatter terrain really bumps it up as always, but even so, there are quite a few “real” models in there, so it’s still pretty decent for an overall shitty month.

Add to the 382 from Jan to July, and we’re now at 434 for the year.

Community Round-up for Technical August will be published next weekend, so if you’ve got something that you’d like included – make sure that you post in the comments section of the challenge announcement post within the next few days. If it’s not there, trust me, I’ll miss it – even if I’ve liked and commented on it on your blog. 

Star Saga: Small Doors & Crates (Technical August ’18)

Star Saga: Small Doors & Crates

Today’s post features some more boardgame scenic items. We have the six smaller doors from Mantic’s Star Saga game, along with six rather generic looking crates. The crates are pretty simple. A couple of tones of grey and a bit of metallic on the corners for wear and tear. Lootable crates are very much a thing in Imperial Assault, so these got found in the Star Saga accessories and got bumped to the head of the queue.

Star Saga: Small Doors & Crates

Once again, the impetus for painting these was Star Wars: Imperial Assault. I don’t expect that the smaller doors will play a part, but I did start them at the same time as the larger doors, and so I managed to make myself finish them off. Four of them are pretty generic, but the final pair feature a window, so I tried something a bit different to the typical “black” effect. I painted the windows with Vallejo Model Air Steel, and then painted them in with slightly diluted Warcolours Turquoise Gemstone, finally giving that a gloss varnish to complete it – hoping to get a kind of variation in the tone of light coming through the “blue” of the turquoise. I’m counting them as a submission for Technical August. I think they worked out okay – certainly fit for the simple purpose, but they’re not all the way there yet!

Star Saga: Small Doors & Crates, Imperial Assault

Ghaarkhan protects temp-Jyn and temp-Fenn from a Probe Droid while they furiously open their Star Wars Battlefront II Loot Crates trying for a rare Star Card. Yong Out!

This stuff isn’t really exciting, but as I’m documenting everything that I complete at the moment – here they are. And more importantly, they (well, the crates) will be straight into active gaming use. So there’s always that!