Thanksgiving in Normandy

After eating our Thanksgiving dinner, my son and I settled into our first ever game of Disposable Heroes. This also is the first time my 15mm figures have seen actual action. All the figures are from Peter Pig's World War II line. It took me nearly a year to finish a platoon of German and US figures. Progress was on and off during that time, plus I was learning as I was going. I am still a newbie painter.

The buildings are all from Landmark's Normandy line. I'm still working on scenery, so we used what I had on hand. A bit abstract, but it worked. The table changed a bit after I took the upper-left photo, with more hills behind the buildings in the left foreground. That's from where the platoon of US infantry was approaching. There goal was to secure the east-west "road" on the northen section of the town between the church and farm house. They knew the farm house was occupied by a German platoon HQ and machine gun, but had no idea where the other rifle teams and MG's had been deployed. They were about to find out! And learn the benefit of cover. I played the Germans and Jeremy played the Americans. We didn't finish the game tonight because we both had to wake up early for Black Friday!

The Figures
I used the Vallejo German and American paint sets. Flesh is P3 Midlund Flesh. I gave the figures a coating of black magic wash and then applied highlights. I individually mounted the figures on half-inch fender washers, textured the bases with wood putty, dipped in sand and painted (US) or dipped in Woodland Scenics brown ballast (German), flocked, and added some scenery bits here and there.

Because many of the weapons are small and DH differentiates between them, I used small stones to mark all US infantrymen carrying carbines. To me, 15mm carbines look too similar to Thompsons. I also tried using the same poses for different ranks, though US sergeants and lieutenants have the white stripes on the back of the helmets.

It was a fun and sometimes frustrating project. The US infantrymen are my favorites because they took so much work. The Germans were dead easy compared to the US. All I need now are a few Shermans, a Panzer IV, a Stug, and an 88. I also need more terrain!

I hope you enjoy the photos.

1: Using the cover of a wooded hill, a BAR team approaches the southeast outskirts of the village at sunset. So far no signs of the Germans anywhere. The village was eerily quite. Why hadn't the village been shelled prior to their attack?










2: The BAR team spots a group of Germans behind the wall in the back yard of some row homes. That MG42 is going to be a bear to take out!










3: There they are--the Germans and their MG42. That wall is going to be a problem for the Americans! Eventually, the two units of Germans will totally take out the BAR team and pin two rifle teams while suffering only a couple casualties themselves.









4: A heavy machinegun finally arrives, giving the Americans some needed firepower. The machinegun will pin down the Krauts behind the wall, allowing some rifle teams to get into a better position to flank the defenders.







5: A rifle team maneuvers through a patch of woods, getting a bead down the street and into the church yard.











6: In a gutsy move, a depleted rifle team finally flanks the Germans behind the wall. In a few seconds, they will pull the pins on their grenades, giving the Germans a little Thanksgiving surprise!








7: Meanwhile on the other end of town, a German MG42 team waits behind some sandbags.

Fly's Studio: Part 6 - Exterior Trim

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

Due to my schedule this week, this will be a short installment today. After painting the base color on the exterior walls and the floor, I drybrushed the trim using Americana Avocado Green. I want the side windows and trim to look like the owner gave them one coat of paint and then ignored them, while maintaining the paint on the false front. I will paint the sides of the shingles dark gray once I work on the roof. I chose the lighter, faded look of Avocado Green because the front trim will be a dark green against a light tan. The interior trim will be the same dark green with most likely buff walls.

Color-Coding Paint Bottles

I got this idea from someone online. I don't remember who, when, or where. I totally forgot about it until last week, when I sat down and took inventory of my paint collection. Shook each bottle, inspected it, and painted the bottle's cap. It has really helped me see the difference between colors, intensity, and sheen. Here is a quick shot of some of my craft paint collection. I also own a number of Vallejo, Reaper, and P3 paints. I did the same with those, but they're not shown here. Give this little trick a try. You won't regret it.

Fly's Studio: Part 5 - Exterior Wood

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

This installment details painting the base coat on the wooden exterior walls. I'm trying to make a building that looks uncared for on the sides but looks good from the street, just like many real boomtown buildings did.

Step 1: Drybrush Americana Burnt Umber
Using my soft cat's tongue brush, I gave all the exterior walls a heavy drybrushing of burnt umber, which is a dark brown color. Because I plan on painting the facade a buff color with deep green trim, I left it black. Remember to drybrush the wood behind the roof's facade, along the roof, and behind the roof.


At first, I ignored the doors and windows. I figured I would drybrush them with a green, so I really didn't need to bother painting them brown. After some thought, I realized I wanted some of the wood's aged brown to show through, so I quick drybrushed the trim burnt umber as well. I also drybrushed the wood on the porch roof sides but realized that I had wasted my time. Later, I will paint the wood the same color as the facade. Oh well. Live and learn.


Finally, I drybrushed the interior floor and porch burnt umber as well. In later installments, you will see my frustration painting the floor. Like I mention in the introduction, you will get to see my success as well as mistakes. Luckily, some mistakes work out for the better!


Final Thoughts
If you like, you can stop right here and have a nice looking building. All you would have to do is finish the roof, facade, interior walls, and doors. Of course, I didn't stop here. In Part 6, I'll show how I painted the trim a faded "vomit green" (my son's description) and gave the building a more weathered look, with individually worn boards.

Fly's Studio: Part 4 - Painting The Stones

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

In this installment, I paint the stone foundation.For me, painting buildings is one of the most relaxing parts of the hobby. My main process for painting these Western buildings will be drybrushing. I don't have to worry about being exact, the process is quick, and if I don't like something I just paint it black and start again. Repainting rarely happens.

Step 1: Primer Touch-Up
After the gesso dried a couple days, I came back today and touched up any areas the primer missed, hitting them with a dab of black craft paint. Here you can see the building wall, a nice solid black.


Step 2: Drybrush Americana Graphite
I began giving the stone foundation a heavy drybrush of Americana Graphite, making sure to get some in the massive spaces between the stones but leaving quite a bit of black for deep shadow. This is my base dark gray. Don't worry about getting paint on the wooden walls. It will happen, as the photos show. Because I easily can touch up the primed walls, I do the foundation first.


Step 3: Drybrush Americana Neutral Grey
Every step of drybrushing is lighter than the previous. Not just in color, but in application. Again, don't worry if some areas are darker or lighter than others. Mistakes are good at this point! The one photo shows the contrast between the Graphite and Neutral Grey.


Step 4: Drybrush Americana Slate Grey
Again, a ligher gray and a lighter touch. My camera setup isn't professional, so the subtleties might not show up as well as they do in person.


Step 5: Drybrush Americana Grey Sky
A very light drybrush of Slate Grey to pick out highlights.


Step 6: Drybrush Ceramcoat Antique White
The final drybrush is a very light and random drybrush of Antique White to pick out the top highlights of the rock. Never use pure white because it is too stark. Antique White has a buff tinge, dulling it.

Step 7: Touch Up Black
The final step is to touch up the wood with black. Because I will be handling the building during the painting process, I'll let the paint dry a while before I continue. Plus it gives me time to write this article.


Final Thoughts
At this stage, the stones look good but still a bit "clean." When I am done with the entire building, I will come back and muddy up the foundation and the bottoms of the walls slightly. That will tie it all together, making it look realistic. If I didn't stop to take photos and answer the phone several times, the whole process would have taken no more than thirty minutes. Not too bad for a Friday morning! Now to eat lunch. I'm not sure if I'll continue working on this today. I also have to finish my 15mm Peter Pig WWII guys. I'll keep you posted.

Do You Have The Latest "Ant Man"?

I'm not really quite sure what to say about this photo other than those guys sure look impressed with the selection of comics. My son, Jeremy (aka Rover Dill), built this scale comic shop several weeks ago. It occupied a corner of our enclosed patio until we had to dispose of it this week. We hated doing it but had no choice. Even though the store was making a good profit, selling mostly to pro-wrestlers and evil villains, it was starting to get "unwanted" customers of the small, crunchy kind.

For the floor, Jeremy used tiles from Home Depot. Eveything else is cardboard. He practically used my entire bottle of $5 Weldbond, which is the best white glue ever made, and an entire box of finishing nails. He snagged images of comic book covers off the Internet, shrank them using Paint Shop Pro, and printed them. It was pretty neat. He saved the "comics." Maybe someday he'll open up a new store in the better side of town.

Western Photos 3

During the late 1800's, not everything in the West was "to scale." Take a look at the buildings pictured here, and those I posted earlier. You will typically see buildings built with high doors and ceilings right next to buildings built on the cheap with lower doorways and lower ceilings--even a shack right next to a false front store. Of course, you don't see this as much on Hollywood backlots, giving the impression that 1880's Western towns were neatly designed and built. Far from it.

Fly's Studio: Part 3 - Primer

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

This afternoon here in Seminole County, Florida, we're getting our typical heavy thunderstorm. The lights flicker and windows rattle with nearly every lightning strike. (Left: Actual radar image after the brunt of the storm had past our area, allowing me to turn on the computer.) Of course, I want to prime my models but can't go into the garage. I'd be spray painting in 100% humidity. Even before the storm the humidity level was 66%. What's a Central Floridian to do in the middle of summer? Whip out the handy bottle of black Liquitex gesso!

During the storm, I primed the building using a Blumenthal #5 brush reserved for this purpose. I simply glop it onto the building, work the gesso into the cracks and crevices, and make sure not to have huge puddles of it anywhere. Because the gesso will shrink and harden as it dries, you really don't have to worry about applying it evenly like normal paint. In fact, you don't want it too thin due to the shrinkage. When people ask how I paint it on, I always say "glop it."

I prime nearly everything using black or gray gesso, from 10mm to 28mm figures. I do not prime my Aeronef ships and microarmor with gesso, spraying those instead. Gesso loses little detail when it shrinks, but I want as thin a coat of primer as possible on those ultra-small models.

Well, those are the Fly's Studio updates for today. I have to wait 24 hours at least for the gesso to dry and harden. In the meantime, I'll be working on the paint scheme I want to use. I'm pretty sure I want the sides to be worn, bare wood like my Arnica shack I posted a while ago but with a worn, painted front. I'll keep you posted.

Fly's Studio: Part 2 - Prep Work

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

In Part 1 of this series, I mention how I had just started cleaning up the building. Today, I show some of the work I did to clean up one of the door openings.

The first photo in this series shows the right side wall of the studio. It has a large window and a door. Prior to taking these photos, I had already cleaned up the window. It had looked just like the door, with thick resin covering the opening and large glops of resin clogging in the corners. I took photos of the inside and the outside to show the extent of the resin, not only around the door but also around the corner posts.

First, I punched out the resin sheet covering the opening, puncturing it with my file and then breaking off as much as possible. After that, I began cutting and chipping down the remaining resin, using one of my disposable knives. I was not going to waste expensive Exacto blades doing this. In the one photo below, you can see me cutting down the excess resin.

Safety Alert!!! When cutting the resin like this, little bits will fly everywhere. Though I always wear an optivisor over my glasses when working on models, I thought would be safe. I was wrong! A chip flew up under the hood and into my left eye. Luckily, I was able to remove the chip with a q-tip, an unpleasant experience. After that, I grabbed my safety glasses. My optivisor fits over the glasses easily. Filing the resin also creates fine dust, so be sure to keep everything away from your workspace, especially digital cameras. Yes, I learned the hard way about that as well. Safe from flying debris, I continued scraping.

After I scraped and chipped the resin away, I then filed the opening and wall boards as smooth as possible. Using my triangular hobby file, I filed out the slats between the boards so the slats ran all the way to the roof. Using a hobby pick, I also cleaned out any globs from inside the slats. Finally, I chipped away any excess resin from the door trim. The photo below shows the finished doorway.

Once I trimmed and filed the excess resin off the entire building, a process which took me about 90 minutes, I scrubbed the roof and building parts in hot soapy water. This step is important because you must remove all the mold release agent, resin dust, and other dirt. When I finished washing the parts, the water was dark gray. If that isn't proof enough, I don't know what is.

Final Thoughts: The building took more work than I would have liked, with the cutting and scraping bothering my hands. I have bone defects in my hands, so too much twisting and pinching causes pain. Sometimes the pain can linger for days. (This is why I must buy miniatures free of excessive flash and mold lines.) I will finish the other Old Glory buildings and scenery bits I purchased, but I will not be buying any more. I like them, but not that much.

As I type this, the building is air-drying. Next step is priming. I'm looking forward to painting this building, but I'm not sure what I will make it. I just now got an idea for "modular" signs. Change the sign, change the building. One day a bank, the next day a dry goods store. Hmmmm.... Something to think about. I'll keep you posted.

Fly's Studio: Part 1 - The Parts

In case you are just joining us, this series of articles chronicles my real-time adventures preparing and painting Old Glory's Fly's Studio from their OK Corral series of 25mm Western buildings. Because the entire process is an experiment, you'll get to see my successes and mistakes along the way. To see the entire series of articles, click on the Fly's Studio link.

On May 31 I placed a large order with Old Glory, taking advantage of their 60% off cowboy sale. My box weighed 14 pounds! Along with many West Wind cowboy figures, I ordered several buildings, including a newer modular building and some older resin buildings. The first building on my worktable is Fly's Studio (MW101), a nice small building with a real boomtown look to it. Though concerned that it would be scaled for the smaller 25mm Old Glory Warpaint cowboys, I quickly discovered that it scales perfectly with all my West Wind Victorian and Western figures. It also fits in well with my Arnica buildings. Would I pay $32.50 retail for this building? No. For the price I did pay, I would have liked another. My town of Guntown needs all the buildings it can get!

The Components
When I ordered the kit, I expected it to come with walls and roof sections that I had to assemble. This is how my Arnica buildings came, as well as every model railroad building I have ever assembled. I was surprised that the building has only two basic parts: the building itself and the roof. It also comes with an interior wall that slips into recesses in the base board. Yes, the interior walls and floor are detailed, a nice touch. Rounding out the components are three solid metal doors (I only picture two here) and two thin dowels representing porch posts.

The doors are slightly shorter than the doorways, but this doesn't detract from the kit. I could easily scratchbuild some doors, making a front door with a window unlike the included metal version, but I'll stick to the included versions.

The dowels, however, need to go. They just do not work as porch posts. I will either construct new posts out of styrene or simply leave the off. For ease of play, I am leaning toward leaving them off. I know that within 10 minutes on the table, I will bump my figure into them or drop the roof on them, snapping them off at the base. (Yes, I am slowly overcoming the model railroad detail freak in me and becoming a gamer!)

Prep Work
As soon as I inspected the Old Glory buildings, I realized that the resin would take some serious clean up work. Not to insult Old Glory, which makes a fine produce, but I expected this. My Arnica buildings, on the other hand, had literally no flash and dried goop to scrape. I figure a bit of roughness in the model will add to Guntown's hardscrabble look.

Today, I cleaned the roof and the front as best I could. Later this week I will finish cleaning the building, wash it, and then prime it with black gesso. In Part 2, I'll explain why I choose gesso over black spray primer.

Western Photos 2

Horus Sarcophagus

After riding The Revenge of the Mummy indoor roller coaster at Universal Studios Orlando, you are exited into an Egyptian-themed gift shop, which should be no surprise to theme park goers. For pulp gamers, though, it's like uncovering the treasures of the ancient pyramids. Aside from the obscenely-large plastic Mummy cups and Mummy t-shirts, all sorts of Egyptian nick nacks clutter the shelves, nick nacks you can use as scenery in a pulp or VSF game set in the ancient pyramids.

After passing up the excellent golden thrones, statues, and other items I could not afford at the time, I settled on this "Small Horus Coffin With Mummy" from Veronese for $9.95, minus my passholder 10% discount.

According the modern repository of all knowledge, better known as Wikipedia, "[Horus] had a man's body and a falcon's head. He only had one eye because after Osiris was murdered by his brother Set, Horus fought with Set for the throne of Egypt. In this battle Horus lost one of his eyes and later this became a sign of protection in Egypt. Horus united Egypt and bestowed divinity upon the pharaoh. The pharaohs were viewed as the reincarnation of Horus."

As you can see in the photos, the sarcophagus and mummy are huge and impressive. Since the mummy is way too large for a normal human being, I won't be using it, but I will be using the sarcophagus, which could contain a smaller mummy from a company like Reaper, a vast treasure, a passageway to another level, or spawn tomb guards. One never knows in a pulp game. Finally, one word of advice when opening any ancient, potentially cursed sarcophagus--be careful!