Sunday 25 September 2011

Dad's Army 6 - Finished

I was on holiday last week, so took the opportunity to finish the diorama (pictures at the bottom for the impatient).

Following the abandonment of the full church hall model, I scribed a new floor piece, and started painting it.

Painting the floor

I spray undercoated the floor in black, then used a mixture of drybrushing and washes to paint it. The original flooring in the show was very light grey. However, I decided that if I tried to match that, it would look like concrete, so I settled on a "scruffy brown" look.

I started the washes using a largish flat brush. A number of passes later, when nothing much had changed, I realised that this wasn't the correct approach. I was sure I had some foam brushes, but couldn't find them. I picked up a packet of twenty for £1.99 from one of the local discount book places, and tried again.

Using a two inch foam brush proved much faster, and gave a better finish. I ended up with an approach where I put some paint on, decided it was too much, then washed it much thinner with the foam brush. Weird, but it worked.

Due to the washes going everywhere (as is the nature of washes), I had to redo the gaps between the boards, but the end result looks reasonably floor-like. Annoyingly, I forgot to do the edges, and only noticed when all the paint was packed away and I'd all but forgotten what colours I'd used. This was the first of a few occasions where I had to try and colour match what was largely free-painting (a term I may have just invented :-)), but I got away with it

The nameplate

I ordered a name plate from NameIt, with the inspiring text of "Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall". It's not very exciting, but should at least let people know what it's meant to be.

I had trouble getting the name plate aligned on a previous figure, so this time I was ready for it. I used masking tape to mark out the border of where the name plate would go. This also let me use pencil on the tape, so I could get it centered vertically on the plinth. A further piece of tape along the bottom edge let me drop the name plate against it, ensuring it was horizontal. This would be much easier to see in a picture, but I forgot to take any of that stage :-(

The name plate sticks reasonably well, but not was well as I'd hoped. The plinth is varnished, and I suspect it might be something to do with that. The next time I'll roughen up the plinth surface first, or use glue in addition to the sticky pad thing on the name plate.

Putting it all together

The final piece of the puzzle was drilling out the holes in the floor for the figures and gluing them in place. I was about half way through when I realised that I didn't have to drill out holes for both feet, and, in fact, one hole would give me more flexibility for the final positioning.

I altered the positions of a few figures from what I had planned. The biggest change was moving Mr Hodges to point at Pike, who's messing around at the edge of the board. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had drilled two holes for Mr Hodges, I couldn't quite get him positioned as I wanted: to do so would have exposed one of the holes. In the end, however, it's not too bad, so I'm happy enough with it.

One very unexpected occurrence was that the superglue lifted the paint off the floor at a couple of the figures. Worst affected was Mrs Fox, where the paint between her feet disappeared almost back to the plasticard. I touched it up without too much trouble, although colour matching was (again) a pain.

Still, everybody's in and settled. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it. It would have been great to have done the whole church hall, but it wasn't to be. I have learned a lot, even from the failed attempt, so there's probably one more blog post to come regarding lessons learned and future approaches to adopt.

Some pictures below of the completed piece.

It breaks down into five small groups:

Wilson Mavis

Sergeant Wilson and Mrs Pike. Presumably Sergeant Wilson has upset Mrs Pike again, and is trying to apologise.

Blewitt Fraser Godfrey

Mr Blewitt, Private Fraser and Private Godfrey. The Fraser figure is kneeling, which proved problematic when trying to find a reason for him to be there. In the end, I'm assuming he's pointing out Mr Blewitt to Private Godfrey, who's going to see if he can help - reaching, I know...

Mainwaring Vicar

Captain Mainwaring and the Vicar having a chat. Warden Hodges is also part of that group, but has turned around to shout at Pike.

Mainwaring Vicar Hodges

Warden Pike

The aforementioned Warden shouting at Pike, who's probably acting out a scene from a movie he's seen recently.

Jones Verger Fox

Corporal Jones regaling Mrs Fox and the Verger with one of his old war stories.

Finally, the group shot

Finished Group

Final challenge

The final challenge is to transport the diorama, possibly in a rucksack, on public transport. I have some boxes that should fit nicely, but I need to make sure I don't scrape any paint off during the move.

Wish me luck

Sunday 18 September 2011

Dwarf Shortbows

036 Dwarf Shortbows

I have quite a few things almost finished, and as I'm on holiday next week, I have high hopes of actually completing a lot of the stuff. Until then, however, it's more Dwarfs from ye olden days.

As mentioned on more than one occasion, I have no gunpowder in my army, and the army is composed of single figures (with a few exceptions). This may cause a few problems ranking them up, but does give, in my opinion, a much more interesting visual spectacle.

Memory is a funny thing. If you had asked me how many Dwarf shortbows I had in the army, I would have said about fifteen. However, on searching through the drawer for them, it turns out I have eight. I suppose with a musician and standard bearer (and possibly a separate commander), it takes the unit size up to ten or eleven, but still fewer than I thought.

Anyway, the archers below are from Citadel and Grenadier, circa 1980s, possibly 1990s.

Some members of the unit

Shortbow 1 Shortbow 2 Shortbow 3

Some more members

Shortbow 6 Shortbow 7 Shortbow 8

In the final group shot, one of the dwarfs appears to be armed with a spear rather than a bow. The picture below shows be does, infact, have both

Shortbow 5

I'm not sure where and when I got the Robin Hood figure below. According to stunties.com, it was a promotional figure from the Nottingham store opening. I have never been to the Nottingham store, certainly not back however many years it was, so I don't know what route he took to my army.

Shortbow 4

Finally, the group shot.

Shortbow Group

Sunday 11 September 2011

Ogres

035 Ogres

I had planned in this post to lament the lack of variety among the new Citadel Ogres, and to show some of the far more characterful models they used to produce. However, while I'm certain the figures below are 1980s Ogres, I can't find many references to confirm that they are (other than the oriental Ogre which, ironically, was one I thought wasn't from Citadel). There are a couple of pictures on ebay, however, so hopefully I'm on the right track...

White Dwarf finally dropped through the letter box. It was over a week late - the second time in the last two months. I have read some rumours that they're only shipping to subscribers when they ship to retailers (a week later than it appears in their own shops), and I'm starting to think they have some credence to them. This is very annoying, if true, and yet another unannounced and unexplained change that makes things worse than they were (actually, that's slightly unfair, because I haven't bought any Finecast figures yet. My annoyance with the Finecast change is more that they pulled the metals without warning and without giving people a chance to buy any models they wanted. When they moved from lead to white metal, they at least had a big sale of the lead - and yes, I did just use the "s" word in an article on Citadel :-))

Anyway... grumble over and lament begins.

The description and background of the Ogres seems to portray them as nomadic, primitive and with a lust for war. To me, this describes a shambolic force with loads of individuals, rather than any coherent fighting force. However, when I look at the pictures, I see neat rows of marching figures, looking virtually identical. Possibly it's because there are so few figures in an "army" - I counted about 20 in a 2000 point force - that the similarities jump out; at least in a large force, you can spread the figures about, reducing the regular appearance.

So, having been saddened by the new figures, I turned to my few old Ogres.

Ogre Group

made up of the following figures

Ogre 1 Ogre 2

The aforementioned oriental Ogre

Ogre 3

and the standard bearer and musician

Ogre 4 Ogre 5

I have this old Grenadier (I think) one. No idea why I didn't paint the eyes, as they're considerably larger than on normal figures. Also not quite sure why I didn't have him as part of the group shot.

Ogre 6

I have a couple of the old Ratmen Ogres lying about. I'll try and remember to include them in some pictures of my skaven models.

I only have a few Ogre figures, as I never really viewed the Ogres as "army" material - much more as a mercenary unit attached to another force. Given the blandness of the new ones (and the fact they're probably much larger),  I don't think I'll be expanding my warband any time soon. Another reason I don't think I'll be buying any new ones is that I spelt "Ogre" as "Orgre" pretty much every time in the first draft of this post. If I can't even spell the word, I should take the hint and move on...

Sunday 4 September 2011

Chaos Dwarfs

034 Chaos Dwarfs

No Dad's Army news this week. I'm working on the new floor piece, but still have to paint it - yet another fun hour of scribing. I'm beginning to understand why people buy laser cutters: it saves so much time and effort. Sadly, it's not cost effective for me, but, when I win the lottery!!

I've just started painting the Pig Iron command group, wardroids and Imperial Guard Sentinels, so there's nothing to show with them either.

Instead, it's back to my Dwarfs and some more figures from many many years ago. This time it's the turn of the Chaos Dwarfs.

These guys were originally painted as a unit for my regular dwarf army, fighting alongside their less chaotic brothers (and a few sisters). Not sure how that fits with any background canon, but that's not my problem :-)

Chaos Dwarf 1

Chaos Dwarf 2

Chaos Dwarf 3

They go together as a unit as shown below

Chaos Unit 1

Chaos Unit 2

Being sneaky chaos types, as I was putting the figures away after photographing them, I found another one who'd been hiding (in a manly, Chaos way, of course).

Chaos Dwarf 4

I did pick up a couple of chaos dwarf centaurs at one point. It was during Citadel's "big hat" period, so I decided to replace the giant hat with something more sensible. It never really worked, so I didn't finish the test piece. It's still lying around, so maybe I'll revisit it at some point. If nothing else, it could join the Dwarf Cavalry unit.