Okay! Magical updateness. Here you can see the results of what I said I'd experiment with. I tried doing a mix of black with the boltgun, which actually did somewhat give me the results I wanted in making it a bit darker, but I figured that a wash would be the better route, and it was. So I went over the silver areas of their weapons and then did a bit along the riveted crests of their backpacks and along the little nubs on the side. Left most of their silver bright, but just a wee bit of dirt and definition went a long way on some stuff, even if the effect is subtle. At least I think so.
Next up we have my real feat of the evening. Sy gave me a pretty sweet figure that I guess he wasn't planning on using which he got free from... White Dwarf? I think. I can't remember what he said, but I know sometimes subscribers get free shit. Anyway, he's an Ultramarines leader named... Saracius or Sicarius or something like that. But, given that I didn't paint the Ultramarines from the Macragge set as Ultramarines but went with a pseudo Angels Vermillion scheme instead, thought I'd do the same here. I think Sy and I have decided to jointly try and get up a 500 point Space Marine army just to have around for variety's sake and such, since neither of us really want to play Space Marines but we both have a fondness for them in a certain capacity.
So anyway, the real bitch of this thing was that I had to take off the big U/upside-down Omega symbols that the guy had all over him. There was one on his left knee that was easiest because of the fact that there was nothing surrounding it, and then there was one on his chest that was tricky because it had a little knob in the center of it, and lastly there was the one on his right shoulder which was really hard because it had a skull in the center that I wanted to keep and it came really close to a chain that he had wrapped on the shoulder. And the figure is all metal, meaning it was going to be a bitch to remove those symbols. However, to my own surprise, I managed to do it! And pretty damned well. I got around the skull on the shoulder well enough, the knee was pretty simple, and the chest didn't end up being too bad as I removed the little knob/jewel thing along with the symbol and went for a smooth chestplate.
The biggest problem was my, er... injury.
Yay! First major modeling injury! Yeah, kinda' stabbed myself pretty bad. Not super deep, but the cut was nearly an inch long. Bled out quite a bit, a tiny drop of which you can see on the paper there, heh. And that's the figure in question. You can't see much in the way of details, but I described the deal pretty well I think.
Okay, so I removed the symbols that I wanted off him, but what to put up in their place? I didn't know. Sy and I debated some stuff, and in the end I decided on trying to do some chains out of green stuff. [For those who won't know, green stuff is a two part epoxy putty that you cut up and roll together. It's basically kind of like silly putty or something, but once the two parts are rolled together they react and begin to harden. They stay pliable for a while so you can fuck with it and shape things out of it, then eventually it'll harden into a nearly-solid rubbery substance. You can use it to just fill cracks on a model or strengthen something, or you can full on use it to model stuff.] I didn't know if I'd be able to, but I thought I'd try since I've been wanting to work with green stuff more and get a little more familiar with it. Things started poorly as the water I was using to keep it off my tools and my hands ended up pulling the thin line of stuff I was trying to work off the model because the water would drop down onto the surface of the model while I was working it. That was presenting a problem as I really needed the stuff to stay stuck to him at least moderately while I was shaping it. Blast! So I scrapped that idea after a while and decided to form the chain *first* on a flat surface then move it onto him. It worked surprisingly well, though getting it onto him was a real chore. Involved a lot of tweezing and teasing it around with the tools I was borrowing from Sy. And here is the illustrious end result!
I'm totally happy. Waiting for this to harden nicely, then I'm going to drop some glue onto it to keep it down since I really couldn't press it onto him well, and then I'm going to do another chain and wrap it the other way across his chest. I think it's going to look pretty sweet.
So yeah, that's what I did tonight. Julia was also busy learning how to cut out and clean her plastic dwarf models.
Aaand... that's about it! Might be doing some more tomorrow, we'll have to see.
