Weekly Finds #17

Another week has gone by extremely quickly... almost the end of the second month. Which means my Birthday is close, but also means University is closer...

Friday Quick Tip: Colour Wheel Scheme by Grey Death from The Painting Corps - This post by Grey Death helps reinforce why Sandwyrm's colour theory series is so important to read. Understanding the way colours interact can really help make your miniatures pop... or you could go the easy way out and paint Black Templars.

Weathering Techniques: Oil Paints by James Swallow from TTG Bunker - I came across TTG Bunker as a result of James becoming the latest follower of Imperial Life thinking of changing the blog name to Imaginary Life. The blog has several great tutorials as well as some amazing terrain... fortunately the tutorials explain how to create such amazing terrain.

Tutorial: Advanced Freehand Painting by Roman from Massive Voodoo - This is an amazing miniature and I'm not saying that because of the boobies. The tutorial really reinforces some of the points made by Ron from his own thoughts from last week. Can see in the pictures how Roman painted the freehand over the base colour and then did the highlights after.

Back-to-Basics: Eyeballing Distances by Kirby from the Pinktastic Blog - A very simple post by Kirby that explores some points when it comes to distances it actually relates well to his post from last week about bubble-wrapping... the need to eye-ball how far a threat is. And although they are only related by the concept of distances, here is a post by Fritz on different units that can play around with movement in some way or another.

Tutorial: Using material from old watches by Roman from Massive Voodoo - This is more of a series of inspirational pictures then an actual tutorial... but it is still cool and worth pointing out. Especially the use of tiny pieces to make handles or the larger pieces to make battlefield debris for bases.

Top Tip: Army Trays by b.smoove from A Gentleman's One - I like to use my foam trays and I can imagine others prefer to use display boards. But this is another great way to store and move miniatures around quickly... avoid the tedious task of moving one or two miniatures at a time.

Prepare For Glory! Mastering The Assault Phase by Fritz from Fritz 40K - Although I am generally not a fan of what Fritz has to say... like his Black Templar Guide... he does make some good points in this post. Especially the last paragraph in regards to multi-charging and then focusing attacks on the weakest unit. Miniatures in the picture belong to Zavret who posted them in the comments from the discussion...

Mega-tutorial: How I painted 54mm Verthandi by Ana from Painting Mum - This is indeed a mega tutorial that I stumbled across because of Colonel Shofer's blog. And the miniature is absolutely amazing. At 54mm there is alot more detail... it really is a size that enables painters to push themselves. Ana has other posts that focus on the Verthandi miniature such as this one about freehand and weathering a shield...

The end of something great...

... and the birth of something else.

Weekly Finds #16

Another week with me behind on posting this...

Freehanding: When to do it by Ron from FTW - I actually like this post for the simple reason that it talks about something I haven't seen mentioned by others before. When to do freehand. Plus the miniature below looks gorgeous...

FoW Antenna Tutorial by Matt Varnish from Drunker Gamers of Ottawa - This is an awesome find by Matt Varnish. This tutorial could easily work well on 28 mm miniatures. Especially, on something like this.

An Often Overlooked Cover Save Trick by CVinton from Dark Future Games - Possibly cheesy, possibly breaking rules as intended. But it seems like something that could be legal from RAW point of view. Plus it makes complete sense from a real world point of view...

Transfers the Easy Way: You were all right! by Drathmere from 40k Hobby Blog - Yay! We were right about something. Plus he goes into detail in the comments on how he managed to get the transfers onto the curved surface nicely... I hate transfers.

Bubble-wrapping 102 by Kirby from The Pinktastic Blog - Another article I think for Kirby's Back-to-Basic series. They are all turning out great, especially with the added pictures to illustrate the point being made. Shame Kirby is cutting corners and not taking the effort to place units in the best positions...

Chaos Lord revamp by Ron from FTW - Although this isn't a tutorial or guide or whatnot... the conversion looks awesome. And for that reason has been included after all there is no set purpose for these posts except to display things that I find over the week.

Why "Dicing It" Doesn't Work - Statics, Probability and Bias by Purgatus from Best Overall - Your brain may owie after reading all that... but on the bright side it may owie your enemies brains as well. Plus it is another weapon against the legions of the uncleaned masses who spew out idiocies every chance they get.

Reality Asplodes...

... from a Golden Daemon winner educating a bunch of idiots on how to play the game. That is right boys and girls a jaw dropping good painter is schooling some self-edit. For those who can't fathom this being possible here is the thread, and more importantly here is DV8's blog.

Edit - looks like DasPanzerIstUber decide to remove all of DV8's posts... at least the idiot Slipp had all of his dribble wiped clean as well.

Weekly Finds #15

Weekly finds has returned from the warp including those that went missing... there are alot for this week.

Stormraven Tips and Tricks by Mad Boy Genius from Bell of Lost Souls - This was actually on Spikey Bits first, before being taken down. But any ways this is actually a pretty good article that not only makes some great suggestions, such as the magnet location, but also the little trick with plastic glue.

How to Paint Human Eyes by William Davies from Wiltrichs.com - An extremely detailed tutorial by a Golden Daemon winner... jokes, it only involves two steps. But look at the teeth on that marine.

Stormraven Stay-by-Stage Painting Guide by Simon Grant and Nick Bayton from Games Workshop - This was the guide that accidentally appeared on the Games Workshop website which then subsequently resulted in the interwebz labelling it all sorts of horrible names. And are now in love with it. I suspect the same will be true of the Dreadknight which looks like a Knight Titan of sorts.

Glowing Powerfists Part 3 by Ron from FTW - This is indeed a spiralling out of control series on OST... but I'm sure there are those that find it useful. Can find links to the previous two parts in a weekly finds post from last month.

Working with Vallejo Putty 401 by Roman from Massive Voodoo - I have to get some of this stuff. No question about it. There are so many unsightly gaps on my Land Speeders that this stuff looks like a god send. It also looks like an easier solution to using plastic glue like MBG suggests in his Stormraven article. And it looks like Wayland Games stocks the stuff... awesome.

How to prepare a plastic model by Roman from Massive Voodoo - This is a rather straight forward article... but using sand paper is something I've gotta try. I know that Sandwyrm uses it and I'm sure there are dozen of others.

Friday Quick Tip: Sandstone/Limestone Cliff/Hill Face by Grey Death from The Painting Corps - Getting the pink stuff in Ozlandus seems to be a real challenge. The white stuff is what we have easy access to and that is horrible for making terrain. The little beads ruin any texture you try and create. But what Grey Death has achieved is simple and gets what he needs can see the finished results here. Sandywrm's own display board blows everything out of the water with the detail and effort he has gone into. For me it will be the simple Battlefoam X-Board as it should have the surface area for all my troops and 8+ vehicles.

How to: Awesome Vehicle wreck markers by CVinton from Dark Future Games - These are 1000 time better then the craters that Kirby et al. use in their battle reports. I'm just going to use black cardboard until I find some MDF boards that I'm happy with.

Dark Angel black colour scheme by Ron from FTW - This just looks cool. Hopefully Ron writes up a tutorial once he has perfected his recipe...

The Babe Wore Red step-by-step by Volomir from Volomir's Blog - Look at the picture... it is like a miniature version of Sin City.

Going to end this long list of articles/tutorials/thoughts with something awesome to a fanboi at least. Behold the inner workings of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's mind.

Aracknarock Spider

Look what has come up on the Games Workshop website...

It has a lot of potential for conversions... imagine what a Slaanesh Greater Daemonette would look like with that has lower half. Or Defiler...

Sales at The Tin Soldier

Got this email today and thought I'd pass it on...

Dear Customer

It is with mixed feeling that I announce the closure of The Tin Soldier, Sydney, due to building renovations, effective 13th February 2011.

Penrith "Tin Soldier" and The Web store will continue trading as usual.

To mark this occasion we are having a "Renovation Sale" from tomorrow morning until close of business Sunday, 13th February. Store hours are below.

Discounts of 25% to 50% will be available on all of our floor stock.

This sale will be on a "first come" basis, and unlike previous sales there will be no "Rain Checks" or customer orders taken.

After the 13th all non finalised customer orders will be handled by the Web store at www.tinsoldier.com

Future orders may be placed at either the web store or through Penrith. (02) 47314623

Tin Soldier Management and Staff wish to thank you all for your support and we look forward to continuing this through both our Penrith location and the Web.

STORE HOURS

Wednesday 9th 10am to 6pm
Thursday 10th 10am to 10pm
Friday 11th 10am to 6pm
Saturday 12th 9am to 5pm
Sunday 13th 9am to 5pm

We look forward to seeing you there

Gary Wells

Probably be in the city this weekend to pick up some vallejo paints and see what else they have in store. 

Weekly Finds #14

A short post for this week...

Modelling power cables by Ron from FTW - I'll never understand how some people have such natural skills with green stuff... I understand how to smooth it and the importance of giving it time to harden between stages. But some people can produce amazing details at heroic scale. And Ron is one of those people with his skills at creating cables and other details. Fortunately there are companies out there like Dragon Forge and Secret Weapon Miniatures that do alot of the hard work for the average hobbyist like myself.

Greenstuff 101 by Kirby from 3++ is the New Black - I'll be completely honest, there are dozens of blogs that do a better job of providing modelling and painting advice. But it is pretty cool to see Kirby giving his thoughts/experience with Green Stuff. Can find some videos by Corvus over on his blog on how to create press moulds using greenstuff.

WIP: High Elves Sea Guard part 5 by Volomir from Volomir's Blog - Twice in one week I've seen two separate painters use glazes on metals to produce some amazing results. The other painter is Gunzhard over on the BnC with his Librarium Painting Challenge thread.

Tutorial - How to create dosh by Roman from Massive Voodoo - Hopefully the picture below gives you an idea what Roman means by dosh. And without a doubt the first technique is my favourite for creating dosh...

Painting Fur and Feathers part 2 by Mananarepublic from Bell of Lost Souls - Compared to Ron's method for painting fur from last week this one is actually long. And if your after a more detailed tutorial on painting feathers then head over to Studio McVey Blog where they have a tutorial for painting their Raven Priest.

White Dwarf 374 February 2011 - Blood Angels

Inside this month's issue:

Blood Angels Feature: Andy Hall sits down with rules connoisseur Mat Ward and sculptors Dale Stringer and Jes Goodwin to find out all about the new Furioso Dreadnought and Stormraven Gunship.

Liber Apocalyptica: In this month's Liber Apocalyptica, Robin Cruddace presents background on the Assault on the Hellspire along with four new datasheets for the Blood Angels, including Dante's Sanguine Host and the Archangel Skyforce.

Armies of Middle-earth part 2: The Dark Hordes: In his continuing quest for which War of the Ring army to collect, Andy Hall explores the Evil forces of Sauron.

Shaven Tactics: Die! Die! Man-things: Jeremy Vetock explains how to win games with the chittering hordes of the Skaven, including sneaky Skaven tactics and useful tips on which enemies to avoid at all costs.

Authoring Astartes: So how do you write a story or novel about Space Marines? We asked author and former Games Workshop developer Gav Thorpe how he goes about taking the Astartes from tabletop to book.

Skies of Blood Battle Report: Archon Valossiann Sythrac strikes against the forces of the Imperium once again, but he hasn't reckoned on the presence of Astorath the Grim and his Blood Angels.

Standard Bearer: Jervis offers his thoughts on campaigns, and why they are his favourite way of playing games.

Armageddon: The Studio has been resounding to the echoes of battle as we start our latest Planetary Empires campaign: a refight of the Battle for Armageddon including the fiery and headstrong Black Templars.

Army Masters: Empire: In this month's army showcase, we take a look at the army of Ostermark painted by Christian Bryne. 

Army Workshop: Blood Angels: Nick Bayton and Duncan Rhodes pick up their paintbrushes to give their two different lessons on how to paint an army of Blood Angels.

You'll also find full details of all the latest releases and news, a directory featuring all of the hobby activities in your local area.