Rogue Shots

Not too long ago I posted a picture showing off the progress I'd made in putting together my ongoing terrain project. Rogue Pom has also been working on some cool scenery pieces lately (you can check out his most recent work here) and asked if he could see some of my buildings from another angle for better reference. He's now planning out some construction work of his own and as I'm happy to help out, not to mention pad my post-count a little, here's a few additional shots of Sector 7G:

If anyone wishes to see more photos, perhaps of specific buildings, just let me know and I will be happy to get them posted. I plan on eventually showing off each piece individually in more detail once I start painting them. Considering my usual pace at completing hobby projects, I'm sure that day will still be quite a while from now.

Tonight my wife and I are going to Canada to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and then tomorrow I should be able to start priming and painting the Imperial Guard that I brought with me on vacation. The weather here is just as I'd hoped it would be and I do not foresee any problems with humidity. Woo-hoo!

If I Can Prime It There

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me with familial sadness in no short measure, but the Emperor has no time for whiners so let's get to it. After several more scattered nights of construction, Sector 7G now consists of 12 buildings and one space filler, enough to cover an area 32" square as can be seen in the picture above. There's still more to be built as I now aim to eventually double the current size of this cityscape, but I'm ready to move on to something else for the time being. I made a number of really dumb mistakes while putting together the last few buildings and have had my fill of sawing through floor sections. Also I've not detailed anymore pieces since the last update but that's easy work. I'm not worried about finding some spare time here and there to finish them off.

As desperate as I am to get back to painting, brushwork continues to be on hold as the weather on the Carolina coast has been brutal and I have not been brave enough to try any priming in the heat and humidity. The few late-night priming sessions I attempted have been rained out so I'm not sure what to do. My experiments priming with gesso have not gone well either and now I'm scared to use the stuff on anything that I genuinely want to paint. Plus I'm heading off with my wife and daughter in about a week to visit family in western New York. I'm therefore reluctant to start anything too ambitious since I'll be gone for probably two weeks or more. But therein can be found what might be my last hope to get some real painting done this summer.

I know that most of the east coast is suffering under similarly dreadful climatic conditions. My hope however is that there will be enough improvement going from South Carolina to New York to allow me to prime as many miniatures as possible while I'm staying at my in-laws house. And maybe, just maybe, I might even get some painting done while I'm away on vacation. If not, I'd still be coming home with models primed and ready to paint upon my return. Thus my goal for the coming week is to focus on assembling a batch of dudes to take with me.

I have several projects up in the air from which I can choose but I also need to keep in mind the constraints imposed in taking this on the road. One primary concern is that the figures all should be easy to transport without taking up lots of space. And if I am to have any chance of painting, then I also need to plan out in advance the color scheme and limit it enough to what I can pack in a travel bag. It may be overly optimistic to think that I'll get anything at all painted, but I've had success in the past as a traveling painter so why not give it a shot?

The gluing commenced late last night resulting in the five guardsmen pictured above. More to come soon as I intend to go over my plans for this in a couple days once I have some additional models built. The basic idea though is for an Imperial Guard force themed to go with my Sector 7G terrain, and one that would make use of my Deathstrike missile launcher as well. The opportunity to fire that thing in a game has proved to be too much temptation for me and so I'm excited to have found a way to include it in an actual army project.

And thus the endless procession of new projects continues....

Update, Sector 7G

In an effort to build some much needed hobby momentum, I've spent time over the last couple of days working on a few pieces of terrain for 40k. It's been almost a year since I did anything with my "Sector 7G" cities of death project so this seemed like a reasonable place to start up again. When I last left off with it, I had assembled seven buildings with another two almost complete. Eventually I will expand this urban industrial collection by an additional four or five buildings along with assorted space fillers, but for now I just want to finish a few of the ones that I put together last summer. It will be good to finally check-off even a small portion of this from my to-do list, plus I'll still be able to use the terrain blocks individually as they are done.

Here's a group shot of what I accomplished before setting them aside to work on something else... I believe it was Dark Angels. Nonetheless, I've begun detailing two of the buildings, the results of which can be seen in the above picture, but more clearly in the shot below, as evidenced by the scattering of sand and some Imperial Guard bits. I enjoy making little scenic additions to these types of pieces, which is the main reason why I chose to base all of them on the modular movement trays. Hence there are a couple of little vignettes that I'll point out once they're painted. Future construction efforts will involve making the aforementioned building sections, but with more emphasis on irregular footprints to help break up the monotony.

Those two structures seen above are the ones I've chosen to address first. The one on the left is the building that I first put together when I started this project. It's also the one that was first referred to as Sector 7G, prior to me deciding to put together a bunch more of them and call the whole group by that name, so this is kind of special piece for me. The one on the right, imaginatively named Pump Station, is the one that really got me motivated to start up again on this set of urban terrain. After painting, I'm going to fill the reservoir area with resin water effects (tinted, maybe?) and use the experience as practice for when I likewise fill the skull pits on my Realm of Battle Gameboard. It has only been about three months since I worked on the gameboard so it can still wait a bit.

The days have been predictably humid here and so I was not able to get these sprayed this afternoon liked I had hoped. Therefore I've planned a session of late night priming this evening. I'm still trying to get my painting situation sorted out, but until then I think messing around with Sector 7G will be a nice way of easing back into the swing of things. I haven't entirely settled on a color scheme for this set of terrain so I'd love to hear any suggestions.

More Urban Landscaping

I have finished four buildings for my new 40k terrain collection and the fifth, my largest so far, is probably about half done. These buildings are tricky though in that the smallest I've done to this point, the pump station, has taken me the most time due to the extra time needed to make the floor sections fit in place. I therefore really have no idea how long the current construction project will take me complete. My goal now is to have around 8 to 10 buildings, as well as some smaller scenic pieces and barricades, which should keep me busy for the next couple of weeks perhaps. I'm definitely learning some useful techniques for assembling these kits, although it feels to me like each building somehow manages to present new challanges, and unfortunately quite often it seems the only solution is lots and lots of tedious filing and scraping. Oh well, the buildings look really cool when finished and I'm overall having a lot of fun putting them together. I will eventually post up some pictures but it could be a while as these are busy times for me.

City Planner 40,000

My urban scenery collection for 40k has grown with another burst of assembly today. I started to put together the pump station but had to stop because I ran out of wall sections, lacking two particular panels that I need to complete the main structure. I placed another order for some more kits and thought I would not do anymore until my purchases arrived. I couldn't resist though and started tinkering with the remaining panels that I had left over from my initial Manufactorum boxes. I realized I still had enough to assemble a ruined building using the left over door, the remaining window sections and the six end pieces. So other than the one door it is entirely window panels or else damaged ones. It is therefore easy for me to imagine that it was designed to take advantage of either a lot of natural light or else significant ventilation. I should be able to finish putting it together tomorrow and the pump station soon after the shipment arrives so I will quickly have the core of an industrial center built and ready for use. Now as for when I will get around to painting them is an entirely different matter.

WIP - Sector 7G

The photo above is a WIP shot of my first Cities of Death terrain piece which I have named Sector 7G. Since taking these photos I have finished the assembly stage and ended up using almost exactly one kit's worth of pieces, although I did take wall sections from both Manufactorum boxes. I've also drawn up plans for a very simple pump station, a blasted chapel and some administration buildings, all of which I will mount on bases identical to the one I used for Sector 7G. I would also like to do a couple of larger buildings on bases twice that size but I think I am going to stick to the smaller stuff for a bit. I still had a few problems with 7G and so I would like to try to work them out on simpler structures before moving on to more complex ones. I am really looking forward to incorporating water effects into my terrain pieces so that too might require a few baby steps as well for which I think the pump station should help.

Building A Building

I spent a few hours tonight working with two boxes of the Cities of Death Manufactorum kit and have probably 90% of my first building assembled. I don't know why but I've always found scenery and terrain projects to be particularly enjoyable even though they can be quite intimidating for me at times. When these 40k scenery kits were first released I tried putting one together but had a lot of difficulty getting it to assemble the way I wanted, and didn't bother with them again until now. One valuable thing I learned with that first go-round is that a single box is insufficient for anything except rather small ruins or a single corner of a larger ruined building. So for my second attempt at the Manufactorum I assumed I would need at least two boxes. I'm putting together a single-storey, mostly intact structure as I've decided I want a mixture of blown-up ruins as well as some with only minimal damage.

I'll post a work-in-progress shot soon but for now I have got to go pack up the bus again. Tomorrow is my first anniversary as a married man and we're heading out of town to celebrate. With the coastal South Carolina summer in full effect, it's going to be nice to feel some cool mountain air... adios!