Outpost 206

Compared to the rollercoaster ride that was the building phase covered in Part 1 , the painting phase wasn’t quite as eventful in terms of obstacles to overcome and solutions to improvise. Though, as I’m sure you’ll see in the pictures, I was continuing to fight an uphill battle against the cheapo plastic that kept flaking off no matter how many times I washed the figure, sprayed it with compressed air, and brushed with a screen-cleaning brush (which didn’t really subside until I was all done painting and sprayed it with a protective coat). Also, this was my first time painting using a wet palette that I bought on Amazon. I will say that it’s pretty invaluable in projects like this or miniature painting. In my previous projects, it was easy to let my paints dry out since I like to take my time and it’s nice to not have to worry about that anymore. I also found that I don’t have to thin my paints quite as much when I use a wet palette, so that’s a plus. Starting out with a basecoat, I d

 I’ve been wanting to get into action figure customization for a few years now and with the progress I’ve made over the past year and a half with scratch-building and miniature painting, I figured it was time to put together what I’ve learned thus far and see what I could come up with. I went digging through my junk drawer and came out with a bag of cheapo bootleg toy soldiers (complete with massively oversized weapons and paint jobs that are even worse than mine) and another bag containing Iron Man parts (purchased for $1 at a yard sale) that are in more or less the same 3.75” scale as the soldiers. Given the parts I had at my disposal, I knew right off the bat that I was going with a cyborg super soldier theme. Exactly what toy these Iron Man parts came from, I have no idea except that they appear to be part of a “build your own figure” set that allows for mixing and matching different arms and legs with different torsos based on a peg-system. As for what the cheapo soldiers migh

I started this project with one goal in mind: to apply the basics taught in the Reaper Learn to paint Minaitures kit . Nothing fancy or anything experimental outside of coming up with my own color scheme. So I opened up my Cigar Box of Unpainted Miniatures and picked out a miniature at random. That miniature was a Reaper brand Arthrand Nightblade, Elf Ranger . My secondary goal was to make this my first mini-painting project where I used Vallejo thinner on my paints instead of just drops of water (I’m told this is better for overall brush control and is more accurate with how the paint applies itself) as well as attempting to use a magnifying glass, though that wouldn’t come into play until later on. Looking at this mini, I knew I wanted to do three things with it: Make it a Dark Elf (and mix a skin tone that best fit what a Dark Elf looks like in my head, independent of any real influence from gaming, pop culture, etc). Make the hooded cloak a dark blue and the rest of his outfit a

By now, I think we’ve all heard the quote commonly attributed to Albert Einstein about how failure is success in progress and that’s how I’m choosing to look back on my recent attempt at painting camouflage for the first time. Alongside the cyborg miniature , I also wanted to try out the Mars-pattern camo scheme on a Reaper-brand miniature (the name on the packaging is Blackstar Corsair Charlie, though I’ve stocked up on the Alpha and Echo versions of this model for later projects) so I painted them both at more or less the same time intended to give them both the same color scheme. In the process, I made the same mistakes with Corsair Charlie as I did with the cyborg in addition to some brand new ones. I didn’t take any early photos on this paint job, so trust that I base-coated most of the model in Vallejo Calvary Brown with the helmet dome and hands painted with Reaper Pure Black. The base, I would worry about later. After the base, I did the same camouflage pattern with the same

After I saw a great youtube video about painting different types of camouflage patterns onto miniatures, I was immediately taken by the Mars-pattern camouflage (having never seen it before) decided to try it out for myself using the paints I had on hand and one of the Fantasy Battles brand Cyborg Endoskeleton miniatures that came in a pack of six. While this article is about the trials and errors of my first ever attempt at painting camouflage, a word about said cyborg miniature because it’s an odd one. First, it’s not immediately apparent that it’s a cyborg (as opposed to just a straight up robot) aside from the fact that it looks like someone stuck a Darth Vader helmet on a skinless T-800 but I’ll give Tehnolog (the manufacturer of the Fantasy Battles minis) the benefit of the doubt and just assume there’s a squishy organic brain or heart somewhere inside of the endoskeleton. Maybe it tells you on the package, but the package is all in Russian. The other thing is that instead of t

Since I decided to devote the bulk of July to finishing a complete draft of the novel I’m working on (that’s Phase Four of my Five Phase Writing Process ), it’s occurred to me that writing is one of my hobbies that is the least conducive to writing blog posts. This is largely down to the fact that I don’t really like to talk about my works-in-progress until they’re done and a 300+ page novel has a much slower turn-around than say, a miniature that I painted over the course of a weekend.  But that isn’t to say my newer hobbies like mini painting and model making are going on the backburner (though they are taking a backseat to writing this month) because over the long fourth of July weekend, I set aside some hobby time for a model kit that’s been sitting in the corner of my living room for a couple months now. I felt like I hit a snag with my writing and my brain needed a break, so why not wind down than with a nice, simple, snap-together model kit? Namely, Armored Puppet Ryuen. Fro

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, then you probably know by now that I have a tendency to ramble on about my various creative processes, so I’ll try to keep this article as brief as I can. Because if I don’t, we’re going to end up with an e-book length screed on our hands and I’d rather not have to do that. Instead, I’m going to list the basic steps in my Five Phase Writing Process and elaborate on each of them one by one. Intro Like many people, I struggled with writing novel length-works for a number of years and the drafts where I did manage to sweat it out until the conclusion felt horribly unsatisfying and took forever to write. So I read (and continue to read) countless craft of writing books and this not only helped me pinpoint what my various hang-ups and bottlenecks were but how to address them within my own writing process. Years of trial and error eventually brought me to a five-phase process that allowed me to tackle each of my writing hurdles one document and/or

I usually like to have two crafting projects going at once because if I’m painting a miniature and I’m waiting for it to dry or if I just primed something and it needs a day to cure, I might as well work on something else if I already have my newspaper laid down and my painting supplies out. Along with miniature painting, building and customizing inexpensive snap-together model kits was another thing I started getting into during the pandemic and I had a Gundam model sitting around that I bought on the cheap a while back (a Gundam FG 1/144 RX-78-2 Model Kit, to be exact). I should preface this by saying that while I am a bit of a mech-head, the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise was always one that eluded me for one reason for another. When it came to giant robots, I was all about Transformers, Robotech/Macross, Patlabor, Tetsujin-28, Mazinger Z, and Getter-Robo among others. So obviously I don’t consider myself any kind of a Gunpla builder (those guys are too hardcore for me), let alone a

For the first miniature I painted without the Reaper Core Skills Learn to Paint Kit telling me exactly what to do and where to do it, I decided on one of the NECA/WizKids brand werewolves from a Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Minis two pack. I decided on this particular werewolf because the other one in the pack was carrying a severed human arm and, at the time, I didn’t have any flesh tones I could use on that. I always try to go into a custom miniature paint job with a general idea or vision in mind and what I wanted to try to do here was a werewolf with a blue and white color scheme that was vaguely inspired by Ralph from Rampage and Sabrewulf from Killer Instinct. The goal in mind was to continue practicing the basics (basecoat, wash, dry brush in that order) using the paints from the aforementioned Learn to Paint kit, which ended up being primarily the Dragon Blue, Pure White, Mountain Stone, Leather Brown and for minor details/color mixing, some Desert Sand and Candlelight Y