Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah a new type of STC is found - Print and Play terrain cont.

Technically this should be a Free Radical Collective post, as I'm not going to make this but it's a simple block so there's not much that can go wrong [is there?!]. What you have above is an isometric render of the 3 storey tower block. There are two floors in the .pdf but feel free to reprint them if you want more floors.

You can choose to keep the stained glass windows or cut them out. Equally you can go at it with a craft knife or a Dremel multi-tool and make a ruin. You can even print an extra set onto card and add some of the decorative details onto the paper so it has a little more depth, your choice.

Essentially all you really need to do is print these, stick them to foamboard and cut out. I might suggest using A4 sticky labels for the printing, then either bevel the edges to 45 degrees or remove an interior 5mm strip so the boards can slot into each corner - simple!

To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 44MB in size [I make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg but what the hey?!]:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbQjF5ZEI1T0ZjMlk/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-JNwR7EHbnXAW_18d03Fr6w

There will be a wide version coming up next month and then I'll look at the marble version - great if you can put it on black card, I may make the tall one fore this ;)

Cel shade robotech awesomeness!

I saw this insanely great Cel Shade Robotech model the other day. I can really see Tau benefiting from this kind of treatment, but even Space Marines you could manage it. The great thing is the process is relatively simple. I mean the highlights are so simple, no blending or shading needed just making sure you choose the right colours, manage to keep your edges neat and your colours nice and flat. The hardest part is probably doing the black edges but even then with the varied line weight it's probably easier than line highlighting

I recall someone on BoLS once talking about using a painterly style to do their army, being bold enough to go beyond the accepted conventions of how to paint figures, using the Wii game Madworld as an example of how one could paint an army in a specific style or like Sin City, pause for thought at least

Anyway, for more pics point your cogitators here:

http://www.fg-site.net/archives/3021338 and here:
http://kotaku.com/80s-cartoon-classic-comes-to-life-as-incredible-model-1466494917

'nids part 112 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt7.

Here you can see how I capped the spikes, not quite the 'talons' I'd intended I really struggle with fine detail and I'm not sure DAS works that well fine. I'm not too upset though, the sculpting looks cool, if a little too like the roof of my bastion than the bone white bits they'll be painted as, still nevermind. All these spikes took a further 1 hour 10 minutes, taking us to 13 hours 55 minutes 

The next night I went all out on the flesh fibre bundles on two towers, this took a further hour and 26 minutes. 

Finding ways to overlap the fibres makes them slightly more interesting and I am finding myself trying to 'fill in' all the tower when I still want areas of the bonewhite structure to be visible. I'll try to take that into account on the other towers, four more to do, including the 4 and 5 tier towers, which is like another 5 three tier towers - roughly 3 hours 35 to go and then the bases...

15 hours 21 minutes is the current project time to date. I'm not sure whether you all think that's a lot of time but I'm still not doing more than 90 minutes in a sitting so unless it gets annoying it doesn't bother me. 

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. |

ebay sales I shouldn't regret, but kind of feel like I do

I'd been watching a couple of 'buy it now' auctions from the same seller for a few days on ebay. What really struck me was the Space Hulk Genestealers on offer. Sure they weren't the coolest choices out of those that came with the box but even standard stealers usually cost more than £5.50 for six! You can't even pick up five Termagants for less than £6 at GW so this, I felt, was a bargain.

So, when it came to pay day and they were still there I decided to snap them up. Indeed the bargain was even better as they're on 40mm bases to account for the Space Hulk metalwork they're mounted on. A set of five 40mm bases is £3, so I got £3.60 worth of bases. All I had to do was split them off the base, trim the mount down a bit and re-base them on 25mm bases. One stealer did snap at the ankle so I might just have him as a Ymgarl and cut him further down and have him emerging from dormancy. I'll also need to mix them up with more bits too, but still a bargain.

However, it didn't end there, as they also had a Warrior and 4 Termagants for £3.99. Again, taking into account five gaunts are £6 another bargain. he's even got the Deathspitter and both have their Rippers intact so I should be able to make another base with the couple I have knocking around. The other bonus, I have five spare 40mm bases to mount him on! I'm sure at this point you're wandering why I need more Tyranids when I said I wasn't going to buy any. Well with a new Codex coming out who knows what I might need but additionally I have started something I will refer to as Project X. It's a small expansion of my Tyranid force for a very specific reason. The current amount of figures I have was not going to be sufficient so if I can pick some up cheap I'll do it. Project X will feature here and there over the next 12 months, I just need to stock up on bits in case they're needed.

But I can't go Tyranid without some bits for my Dark Angels and £2.49 got me these Scout bitz. That's 5 scopes on those bolt pistols that I can graft onto my rather plain Dark Vengeance and Battle for Macragge Tactical Marines. There's also two Bolter straps, plenty of grenades and other equipment and not to mention a Heavy Bolter I can add to my Land Speeder that is missing one.

Add on the £4 postage and £15 is quite a good price in my book, except I then went and missed out on two more Macragge sets for £15 and £16, one was missing the scenery but did have a box of Tyranid Warriors and the other had a bunch of Eldar jetbikes. So you see it was a bargain but I kind of regret the other missed bargains too... Still we'll work with what we've got.

Terrain is everything - hedge your bets.

A quick one, another gem from the old White Dwarf back catalogues. This time it's more a tutorial than tmeplates - how to make Warhammer fences, walls and hedges. Hope you enjoy it.

Fences: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbUW56R0VDUWlvZ0k/edit?usp=sharing

300000

And there we have it, I hit 300,000 pageviews before I could make 200 followers. It kind of snuck up on me, I'd been watching it closely and then the new print and play page managed to tip me over the edge. The real shocker is that the last 100,000 views have happened in 6 months, while the first 200,000 took 2.5 years.

Anyway, I thank you all and I would be even more elated and happy for your support, unfortunately I'm struggling what to say at the moment because once again a personal situation is overshadowing things, which is why this post is late. On Friday night my Great Aunt passed away, she was 93 and it wasn't unexpected but it's difficult to get my head around. Auntie indulged my passions my whole life, when my grandparents and parents struggled to connect with the things I was interested in she was the one buying Dwarves from Games Workshop mail order so I had exactly what I wanted on Christmas day. She would listen to me drone on about the games, the painting and then later on future hobbies, past-times, family life, hopes, dreams, work frustrations - she was always there to listen, I'll miss her dearly.

I'll not say any more than that. I want to, I want to leave some testimony like I did for my Dad but I'm not sure this is the same thing and I'm not sure I'm ready yet. I've got a couple of posts to round out the end of the month, not quite the continued push of the Print and Play terrain I'd hoped, but you never know.

Once again thanks for visiting and I guess thanks for 'listening' too I'll try to measure up to the support I've received so far.

Terrain is everything - Hail the Omnissiah a new type of STC is found - Print and Play terrain

A few months ago EvanS kindly pointed Fritz40k to my humble little blog and its FREE .pdf building templates. He was impressed despite his actual need for 'print and play' terrain. Something you can print out and play with pretty much from the get go. So I tasked myself with doing just that. Originally I planned to just add texture to my existing plans but thought why not make something new. Here's the first one, a mash up of some found imagery and a new building template with elements from my existing STCs.

You can choose to keep the stained glass windows or cut them out. Equally you can go at it with a craft knife or a Dremel multi-tool and make a ruin. You can even print an extra set onto card and add some of the decorative details onto the paper so it has a little more depth, your choice.

The roof section also comes with a Standard Manifold Coupling illustrated on top. You can keep it as is or cut it out to add any other modular plugs. Additionally it will provide access to the first floor, which is also available in the ST, should you wish to add it to your model.

Essentially all you really need to do is print these, stick them to foamboard and cut out. I might suggest using A4 sticky labels for the printing, then either bevel the edges to 45 degrees or remove an interior 5mm strip so the boards can slot into each corner - simple!

To access the full STC please point your Cogitators here, be fair warned it is 44MB in size [I make no apologies for this, I could probably render it as a .jpg but what the hey?!]:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B97Rk-BalgZbWGV6Y3VhbklkaFU/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-Mms6BUvH7PgpnNWADH86dg

As you can see from the teaser picture below I have some other sized versions which are awaiting completion and a different colour of building. In truth I have five different styles so far, I think they get better as I developed them.

As you can see I started to get adventurous, this plan will be slightly more complex because you can print the windows onto printer acetate, another copy onto card and another onto foamboard. Remove the windows on the foamboard, add the window sheet, then use the card version to add some details!