Spring Painting: Update Two

One more week is past, and I squeezed in another few hours of good painting time. For the most part, I continued to focus on the Battletech Thor model I've been working on, but I did put a little planning and thought into one of my RPG models.

As planned, I finished the NMM blue shading Monday night. I will go back to smooth out a few blends and add some further details later on, but I am satisfied with the work, as far as the initial shading process goes.

Spring Painting: Update One

Tonight, I present the first progress update on my drive to complete some projects ahead of ReaperCon this April. I started with the least complete and most recent project, the Summoner A omnimech that I started this month:

On Wednesday evening I put in a little bit of time cleaning up the primer and residual mold lines on the model while I finished applying the green base coat to the 'mech's body.

Bones-apalooza approaches

The Reaper Bones Kickstarter is set to start shipping within the next week. I'm pretty excited to get my hands on all the plastic goodness, and Dakkadakka recently posted a photo of their giant bone dragon, Kaladrax, fromt he GAMA trade show:

Those are regular sized, 28-32mm figures in the background, cowering in fear. See the full sized image here.

All I can say is... wow.

Setting Goals

My "Shelf of Shame" has been growing. I've been playing in a variety of games lately, and I keep picking up a miniature to represent a character or fill out a unit roster and... starting to paint it. sadly, only a few of these new projects are actually done. The problem has reached the point that I can almost hear them all mocking me from their place on the work bench or, worse, the book shelf.

This is a common malady for painters, especially for those not painting towards a hard time limit, like a contest or a tournament. Sometimes deadlines are not just good, but necessary.

To remedy this, I have decided to set a target: I am going to try to finish five of these projects between now and ReaperCon, in just four weeks. If things go extra-well, I will enter at least one of them in Reaper's Master Series Open painting contest to be judged.

The projects chosen are a Summoner Omnimech (top), Barghest Battlemech (right), Reaper Bones Gnoll (left), Warlord Bow Sister (middle-left) and Halfling Sorcerer (middle-right)
To help motivate me, and keep me honest, I will post an update each week, listing my progress, or lack thereof. My progress tonight was to paint the green and yellow the Summoner model. Tune in next time to see what's changed.

Storm Zone Update

The past few weeks have been consumed with preparation for a business trip (now over) and for Total Confusion 2013. With the convention in the can, I am hoping I can turn my attention back to painting.

Part of my preparation for TotalCon was to help a friend to prepare a demo of Firestorm Armada. We staged it as a reprise of our past Aquan vs. Dindrenzi starter fleet battles, this time sitting on the sidelines and watching while our demo-ees locked horns.

The demo was small, but I think everybody had a good time. Only time will tell if it will lead to an expanded local community.

Lack of Focus

I've been spreading myself a bit thin lately. I have joined several new gaming groups in my area, and I have not withdrawn from any of the ones with which I was already involved. To top it off, I am racing to prepare for this year's Total Confusion, where I will be both playing in games, and also running several events.

A quick glance at my painting station shows all of the projects that have piled up as I lurch from one priority to the next.

My main goal right now is to finish the Firestorm Armada ships you see on the left for TotalCon, as I promised to have them there for a friend's demo game. After that, I want to finish up some of the RPG character models I've been working on. Of course, I also want to paint up a few competition pieces for upcoming events. (One of which has been partially blurred in the picture.)

The good news is that I should have WIP entries for some of the projects before too long. I have high hopes of actually finishing several of them in February.

Cool Stuff for Battletech Fans

If you like Battletech, or at least, like giant mecha, you might be interested in Ironwind Metal's inaugural Kickstarter project. They are trying to raise funds to produce the "Spectral" land-air transformable mechs (LAMs) introduced at the tail end of the Word of Blake story line.

Even if you don't care a wit for the game or for the story, I hope you'll agree that they're an interesting take on the classic transformable mecha concept. You can find out more by visiting them on Kickstarter.