Firestorm Armada: Aquan Update 3

Battleship and Cruisers complete!


     These models went very fast indeed. Most of the heavy lifting was all taken care of by the airbrush. Object source lighting (OSL) with the airbrush is awesome, but I can see how too much can look a little silly. Getting the pressure setup just right on the airbrush also seems like it takes a deft touch. That's something I'll have to learn as I go. I kept the engine glow as subtle as I could, and it doesn't show so great in the photo. Much in the same way that the diamonds look slightly less white than in real life. For whatever reason, these Aquan ships make my camera's color balance a little wacky. Oh well... can't expect too much out of a five year old camera.

     Frigates are up next, and I'm hoping to get them finished before the week is up. That's a challenge, with my schedule. But I'm going to give it the old college try. First order of business will be to drill out the mounting points on the ships for the flight stands. For some reason, they're all a little malformed, and all in the same way. Nothing I can't fix.

     Here are a few more pics of the finished ships:

I turned the lights on!

 Magic space crystals propel the ship.

 And the battleship has MANY crystals.

 Cruisers have less crystals, but two of them are pretty large.

There you can see the two large crystals.

     Hope you enjoyed! I ordered some more war gaming goodies from Thewarstore.com, and should have those before the week is out. I'll share more when I have product in hand!

Firestorm Armada: Aquan Update 2

Quick Update


     So just a quick little update. Really this is just to show where the color scheme is going. I've noticed that my camera doesn't like taking pictures of this color scheme. Too much blue, I assume. Now the orange (you'll just have to trust me that it's actually orange and not yellow) and the teal green colors add some really nice contrast. I'll be going through and highlighting and touching them up. I've been debating if I should go through and actually color each of the little raised dots on these ships. There are TONS of them, so it would be a bit of chore, but it might look nice. Grrr.... I'll have to test it. Anyways, here are a few other pics:

Firestorm Armada: Aquan Update

Aquan Prime Beginnings


So a little update. I finally had some free time to actually get some painting in. After my previous paint tests, I was a little nervous, but after putting the paint to the model, I'm more convinced than ever that I made the right choice. Looks good. I ran my airbrush at a lower pressure than normal. This allowed a lot more control, and the paint didn't dry up in the nozzle so fast. Soon I'll set aside some more time for painting and get some more color variation on these models. I think they'll come out pretty snazzy, and certainly very different looking from my Dindrenzi. Here are a few more pics:

Three Years of Blogging!

Three Years of Blogging!


     First things first: HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! Also... YAY for three years of blogging. I just happened to check when my first post was the other day, and I had no clue that I even started this thing that long ago. Seems like only yesterday I was still working my way through my first 40K army. I was in a big rush as I was going to take my freshly completed army back home on vacation and play my very first game of 40K with a friend.

     So many things have changed in those three years. When I got started into this hobby, Land Raiders were roughly $20 cheaper. That's really sad, when you think about it. The kit is exactly the same. The only thing that has changed about the kit is that the mold is older, thus less quality. Has the cost of plastic gone up that much? Certainly not. I know that GW prices their kits based on how many they think they'll sell, not how much they actually cost.

     In the recent months, since GW's price change, draconian shipping policies, and "Fine Cast" shenanigans, I've lost much of my interest in 40K. I know I'm not alone in that. I certainly still enjoy the fiction, and I'll very much stay with the game. The biggest thing is that I'm done building new armies. I've already stated that I'll only every upgrade existing armies from here on out.

     So I'm building two Firestorm Armada fleets, and looking at also trying out Infinity and Battletech. What I'm seeing is that there's some fantastic new games out there, and they're cheaper and the developers are far more eager to please. I'm not wishing any ill-will on GW, I just want them to take a good hard look around them, and realize that their current business model is dated, to say the least.

Aquan Prime is ... Primed?

     Just finished putting a base coat of dark blue on the cruisers and battleship for my wife's Aquan Prime fleet. I've had to do some tests to figure out how to paint this fleet up. Certainly I'm trying to keep that cool aquatic style of the Aquans. So I made a few trials on a few pieces of cardboard. I ended up with the following scheme:

     And there are teeth marks on that cardboard from a cat. Stupid cat! Anyways... I'll be painting up the cruisers this week. That's all for now. Here's to three more years!