March 2018 Summary (Hobby)

March was a fun month where I found a more than ample opportunity to engage in some hobby-related work whilst travelling around the countryside with my family and other whatnots.  As it happens I saw the newest Blade Runner movie and started watching the West World series - the first bit of television I've consciously watched for months!  Anywho, as far a summary goes, here's what's been done:

An Ork Warband

Last year my mate Brendan provided me with some Orks in varying degrees of completion.  I complete the first nine some months back and the next eight have taken a while (maybe two months of dabbling?) to get to a point where I'll label them as finished.

That brings the family's Ork faction up to about two dozen Orks, including Storm Boyz, Nobz and even a big walker thingy.

Genestealer Cultists

Earlier this year another mate James passed me some Genestealer Cultists, in varying degrees of completeness.  Both James and Brendan are very skilled painters, so it is a bit daunting attempting to complete work which they had begun.  Not really having the skills to replicate James' painting, I decided to introduce lots of colours onto the models in the hope that the diversity would somehow translate into commonality.  Well, I'm glad to report that the experiment worked and I've now increased my Cultist faction by five more models (and with still one more to go, who was lurking at the bottom of my bag, sneaky fellow!)

As for Cultists (I don't presently distinguish between Chaos and Genesteeler) we've got about 20 of models and I've still got another 10 or so NOS in the shed waiting for an opportunity to join the heretical cause.

Terrain Manufactorum

With our Nunawading 2020 setting now taking shape and our first game locked in for Melbourne's Little Wars event (around June 2018) James, Brendan, Ross and I have all been building the city of the future, all in 28mm scale.  My recent efforts were buoyed by the acquisition of a derelict printer and PC tower, which were duly stripped down to their bare components and repurposed recycled into glorious miniature terrain.  Also, last week I received a cheap ($15) gravity-feed airbrush which I've got to say is much easier (well at least quicker) to use than my Aldi syphon brush.  Mmm, soon I'll have to get some more airbrush paints as well.  Onto what's been created:

Rooftop Skins

These are used to cap the top of and add some character to the interlocking boxes I created last year.  You can read the write-up of them here.  I especially like Apartment 12R with  PC fan on one side and what looks like a shuttered window (sourced from a broken aircraft carrier toy) on the other (top-left and bottom-right photos in the picture).

Red Door Palace Redux

Another rooftop skin, this time for the Red Door Palace.  I'm quite proud of this one, especially the two long edges, one of which uses a printer feed tray and the other has what look like spotlights.  You can read some more about the skin here.

Barricade and Sign

I've now made plenty of big buildings (I've got one more in mind) so now I'm instead creating scatter terrain and adornments (like the skins) to augment what I've got.

The idea of the (mobile?) barricade is to block off a street or something* and was made using another part of a printer with some circuit boards glued to create a boardwalk - it worked quite nicely methinks.  The sign was made using some leftover concreting stays (things that hold up the mesh latticework that's employed when you're laying reinforced concrete), just cut to size and then adorned with some coloured acrylic.  I think the effect is great, so I've got another two or three on the workbench awaiting construction.  I've still got to get around to applying some advertising etc onto the coloured acrylic, maybe that's a job for this month?