2 Days to go :s

Greetings friends!

So today is Wednesday, which means tomorrow is Thursday followed closely by Friday.

What's so important about Friday? Well for those who remember from the other day, this Friday is the first night of a gaming weekend I am having with myself and a friend, which means I have very limited time to get these models painted.

Well shit!

How did I get to this stage? Well it's because of a number of reasons; firstly you have my love of video games.

Recently my wife and I have been playing through the Batman Arkham games. She was doing it as she had never played them and wanted to play the latest Knight, and it was my recommendation to play all the previous games in the correct order first. As she was doing that I decided to join in, replay through the campaigns to refresh my memory and also aim for a higher completion percentage.

In addition to that we also have the shooters in the form of Wolfenstein: New Order which I picked up over Halloween, and Call of Duty: Black Ops III which I have also been playing up until last week.

Rest assured I'll be giving Black Ops III a second opinion, as my views on the campaign seem to vary drastically from that of Joe Public.

Then as if that wasn't enough I was introduced to the Constantine TV show after seeing the cameo on Arrow last week. Since then I have been watching those episodes via my computer pretty much every night, and am currently at Episode 09.

What this means; the time I have set aside to paint my models has instead fallen on the way-side and I have only moved slightly forward.

How slightly? Well I do now have Link Bots for both Red Claw and Trydan forces!!


Check out these bad boys for my Red Claw. They look sleek and high tech now, but gimme the right paint job and an attempt at dirty-ing and weathering and we should have what looks like Bots that have been salvaged from other tech and put to use.


Then we have these spider dudes! Never before have I seen models so perfect for Trydan Link Bots! They are high tech and sinister looking at the same time, the type that look perfect for the closest we have for an 'evil' Force in Override.

You may recognise these babies from the Dropzone Commander range, and until now it never occurred to me how perfect an Epic scale model could be for synthetics and Link-Bots in Override.

Since those photographs were taken I have done a little bit of modelling work on the Red Claw bots, namely taking one who was not properly sat on his base and moving his leg into more of a run pose, I have also removed the Gatling Guns from their undercarriage. There was nothing that could be done with them for a paint job, they were Gatling Guns.

Normally that would be fine, however for Link Bots it poses the issue because Link Bots are all 1st Law Programmed, so it is impossible for them to hurt anyone, so why would they have guns? And teeny-tiny ones while they're at it?

So where am I with my Red Claw? As a reminder this is where I left off before:



So I am happy with the skin and hair, that looks striking enough for my liking, it is now time to work on the weaponry and bases as well as sort out the armour.

The armour I figure I do not have a hope in hell in sorting out before Friday. The weapons and bases are another story.

The weapons are going for urban camouflage. I will try this by creating a two tone pattern tonight in different shades of grey. I will then black wash the lot and then try and highlight back up in the relevant places.

The bases are similar. It's a dark grey base, a black wash then shaded up in 2-3 shades higher. Once complete a brown wash to dirty the lighter tones completes the effect in a way that I for one am very happy with.

Once done it is then just a case of painting the Field of Vision guidelines. These I am going to be trying to do tomorrow, namely as the guide tool I've been sent by my friend doesn't work fully so I need to wait for a new version.

His version of FOV guides can be found here, with his very impressive looking UEF Force:


However I am going to try for something more subtle with mine, aiming instead for single bold lines rather than block colour. We will try out the differences in our game(s) and see which/if either works best. We can then use photos of these in the book as examples of painted guidelines.

Anyway, so yeah that's my plan for the next two nights including tonight. Fingers crossed I can stick to it!

Until next time; stay safe and be excellent to each other!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley