Hawk the Hunter

 

One of the very first videos we rented on our Betamax video player was Hawk the Slayer, that and Sword and the Sorceror. I'm pretty sure this was my choice, my parents weren't that fussed and I can't imagine it being my brother's choice but anything fantasy for me was a must. I still love the film today, cheesy it may be with production values some scoff at but it holds a special place in my childhood.

 I even have a foil etched slipcase VHS copy as well as the paperback 'book of the film' that literally promised there would be a sequel, something the film only hinted at.

 

Well, after 35 years the Director has finally got backing to create that sequel - Hawk the Hunter. So far he's got backing from Rebellion, video game publisher and owner of 2000AD no less. However, they're still looking to secure the remaining 20% of produciton costs so have gone to Kickstarter to see it through. Although it's highly unlikely it'll stretch to getting Tom Hardy as the lead, which was rumoured a few years back.

The fact is I'll be backing this myself, the first time ever I'll have backed a Kickstarter and just had to share so you can all appreciate the awesomeness of Hawk, I mena he has a MINDSWORD!

Here's the Kickstarter pager https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723609774/hawk-the-hunter

Otherwise this is the deal:

700,000

Over the weekend I managed to reach another arbitrary milestone [I've another two about to threshold real soon]. 700,000 views is still an amzing figure though and I feel really privileged because even though my stats have levelled off over the last few months and are lowere than they once were I'm still getting hits that many bloggers would love to have.

I can't thank you all enough for the continued support of the blog, particularly as there have been some lean times over the past few months - this may actually be my least published year. But it is your support and following that continues to drive me to post and hopefully I can continue with this momentum as there are a lot of things going on and it's ideal material for shorter, more regular blogposts in the immediate future.

Anyway, thanks once again for making this achievement, you're all awesome!

Dark Angels - Bastion levels of redundancy

Just in case the salt staining on my current Bastion could not be removed I quickly knocked up a spare the other night. Last night I primed it and wisely decided not to use salt but I did want to add a little more texture to the flat surfaces. To achieve this I added a mix of Satin Black paint [the same paint I've had in the garage for over 14 years!] some plaster, PVA glue, some of the finest sand I could 'pinch' out my basing sand and water. The still wet finish looks almost 'Blanchian', probably an ideal derelict structure.

 

However, I looked at the dried version this morning and it's not quite so gross and distressed. I'll be adding some Martian Ironearth and perhaps some Valejo Red Oxide texture in places to make it a little less plastic model and a bit more futuristic Grim Dark fortification. I'll then be adding Hunter Green. I also thought while I was at it I'd also throw in a Defence line and Comms Relay too!

 

I currently have a real sense of hobby momentum, which is only hampered by the lack of time and setbacks that are slowing progress. I really want to get a number of projects done so I can start playtesting the Dark Angels list I have in mind for Blog Wars X.

But this is still great progress and even though it's a second Bastion and defence line and not really on my new Hobby Season list the progress, even if it was thwarted on the first one was so quick I think I can chuck these into the mix without delaying other things too much. Even if I can rectify Bastion 1 and postpone completion of these then the effort so far won't be wasted as it'll be a head start for when I do get chance to complete it, like those 20 genestealers waiting to have their bases painted...

Dark Angels - Inglorious Bastion!

This is where Ifound myself after the shadow wash, I mean it's a bit Nurgle but I was confident I could rescue it from here and there was still some of the chipping and the Martian Ironearth crackle effect visible which just added texture.

Here is where the salt started to appear, only lightly. I'd done the Dark Angel drybrush and was happy with the result. So I thought applying some water would help dilute the effect so it was less visible...

....and it was! The vibrancy came back the spotty white mottling disappeared and all was right with the world.

I set it out in the sun to dry and...

The filthy white salt deposits came back in a vengeance [a Light Vengeance?] it's almost like the Polyvine debacle, no matter what I do it comes back worse and all the shadow wash is fading too.

Suffice to say I was not happy. I'd brushed it with water about twice at this point. The next option was to run the entire thing under the tap.

It's currently drying in the hope that thetotal saturation will have leached away sufficient of the salt as to no longer leave staining.

The good news is I've had a look at the dried article and about 95% of the salt staining has been removed. Their are still bit in some of the crevices but I may be able to mitigate that with successive paint and weathering powder as Greg suggested. Bottom line I'll be having another crack at the shadow wash and another round of Dark Green highlights and hopefully we can move on from this debacle. Suffice to say I'll be cutting salt out of my menu for the foreseeable future, it's bad for my blood pressure!

To Do List 2015/16

Lets get straight into it... first and foremost I need to make the transition to my 40k Man Cave. There's been a lot of time spent on that recently and although it's not been miniatures it's directly hobby related so must be part of my list. 

But whats the rest of the plan for 2015/16... well I'd got this sorted out pretty much a fortnight ago and then suddenly I realised I could actually set myself a deadline for some of these. Essentially Blog Wars X is due on November 7th and I have promised to take Dark Angels. I quickly looked at Battlescribe for what I've got and what I can do to make a list I'll be happy with. G.O.D. knows if it's competitive or not but then Blog Wars isn't about that so my initial 6 items [in priority order] are these:

1. A fully functioning Dark Angel force [1850pts] 
2. Dark Angel - Dark Vengeance Tactical Squad
3. Imperial Knight - Cerastus Lancer
4. Dark Angel - Bastion and Quad Gun
5. Dark Angel - objectives
6. Dark Angel - Ravenwing bike squad

Now this will give me a number of interesting items to paint and use. I'll be proxying my Cerastus as a Paladin [because only the Paladin and Wardens are BW legal] and I'll be throwing in the Land Raider Redeemer I traded with PeteB yonks ago. So it'll be a bit of a mixed bag of models and I'm not hopeful on the Ravenwing, I was taking them for their mobility but should that look doubtful I might throw in some more Deathwing, although the points will be tight to do that.

Now, the other items I'd had on my list

1. Dark Angel - Ravenwing Nephilim Jetfighter
2. Imperial Knight - Paladin
3. Dark Angel - Azrael
4. Dark Angel - Land Speeder Typhoons
5. Dark Angel - Drop Pod

I know that's similar to last year but I'm being very specific about a number of things there that I'm committed to completing, although some of them have already been started which will help set immediate deliverable goals. Having a November deadline will get over a quarter of my list done in 80 days so compared to this year everything else I do will be a bonus. I'm hoping to focus on more Dark Angel stuff aside from the above but I am going to add in some Nid projects to mix things up and treat myself  when I've been good.

1. Old One Eye
2. Remaining Genestealers
3. Project Z?! Still a mystery project ;)

I also have a few other jobs that I want to remain on/be added to my list but probably have no intention of doing but the road to hell is paved with good intentions

1. Some bits of Imperial terrain I have knocking about
2. 60mm Dreadnought crater
3. Tyranid Bastion Crater
4. Tyranid Void Shield Generators
5. Tyranid Promethium Relay Pipes
6. Battle for Macragge crashed Aquila Lander [finish off]
7. New Armies on Parade board - Project X? [I'm highly doubtful on this one but the bits are still knocking around] 

 

Once again, this years green stamps of approval [with transparency] if you're joining in and comment below to share your To Do Lists and I'll add them to the community page.

 

And without transparency

 

Dark Angels - Bastion goes green, with added airbrushing!

When last I shared we were at the undercoat and salt weather stage but then I jumped forward in time to the present to reveal things had gone awry, well this is the intervening period immediately after the salt weathring, wherein I realise my initial plan was flawed and seek to fix it, which eventually worked, up until the salt started to show it's presence [did you follow all that?]...

It's always difficult trying to convey colours in my pictures, I make no apologies for using my phone camera because it's a choice between inaccurate colours or no pictures. So I'd rather have something approaching the actual colours than me just trying to explain in words.However, these weren't too far off the mark. As you can see the Hunter Green really isn't the green I was looking for.

Some additional matt black spray helped tone down the red undercoat so I was approaching the green I was after. But it was then that I thought to use my Valejo Dark Green as it just won't work out of a brush.

OK, this look way over the top and the airbrushing is slap dash, so much so you can just see in the right where I got carried away and spilt the paint out of the spray cup! But the hope was some washes might tone it down, or at least it was until I decided to see what it was like with some of the salt rubbed off... I know, I know it's too soon, but better to find out now what it's like than further down the line.

And I'm actually quite glad as this isn't what I was after. Now that may be because I hadn't added any shading to the Red Oxide Primer but to be fair I'm not entirely sure what I was looking for. This isn't your typical salt weathering to reveal rust, it's something else, in my head, slightly obscured by all the other detritus in my 'mind palace'.

So I thought sod it, lets remove all the salt and boy is it a bugger to get rid of. I managed about 90%, which is OK because if it won't come off with a toothbrush scrubbing then it can stay, because I do like the gritty textured finish [oh the naivety]. I may try and do that on the next one...

Now it messed up a lot of the airbrushing but that wasn't really a problem as after I took these I gave it another coat of Hunter Green and returned it much to the point that we began this post.

In the next update I set about doing my normal efforts, adding a shadow wash and then drybrushing it with results I was really happy with, particularly as the bulk of the flat surfaces ahd been done and only another se tof light highlights were required and then it was all the details like metals and lights, cables, banners etc. followed byt the actual weathering powders. So it was progressing really quick with still a fair bit to do but most of those things were fun and interesting, that is until the salt showed it's ugly face.

Hobby Season 2014/15 Review

The 2014/15 Hobby Season draws to a close, and how did I do? Well I managed to complete 5 out of 17 items on my list, these were

Blood Bowl Elves - there is still a Treeman to add to make them more interesting but for the first time ever I have two, painted, functiona,l Blood Bowl teams. We don't play it much but the actual achievement means more than the outcome.

Dark Vengeance Deathwing - despite some reservations about colour choices, again this was an important milestone and despite a subtly different way of painting them they do fit in with my existing Deathwing, At least if I can't meet this year's early hobby targets these models will be useful at Blog Wars X

Dark Vengeance - Dark Angel Chaplain Seraphicus. I'm not entirely convinced Chaplains are any good but I was definitely chuffed with my effort on this one. I don't know how often he'll see the light of day but it's handy to have options.

Genestealer Cultists - I honestly don't know how this happened. The original cultists were a nightmare to paint and I suddenly got the urge to do these despite languishing for too long [they began as a concept in December 2013!]. Personally I think it was an avoidance tactic for the Dark Angels but it did pay dividends to the Fallen, we'll get to that later

Project Ω, Realm of Battle board -  I could have thrown in the towel when things went 'Polyvine up' but eventually I got this done. I'm not 100% convinced of it's durability after all that effort but should I get chance to play on the board it'll more than stand up to the occasional use.

Now that doesn't seem like a lot but as per last year what of the things not on the list well these included:

• Dark Angel Techmarine
• Spawn of Cryptus
• Dakkafex No 2.
• Malanthrope
• Deathleaper
• Asmodai
• Tyranid Maelstrom objective markers
• Vortex template
• Dark Angel Scouts

 

 

 

 

A lot of single models in there but some of significant size and others just very different to paint, the scouts in particular were an unexpected bonus but although those additions make my effort look somewhat more significant there were even more contributions in the shape of:

• a massive brood of Genestealers - waiting to be painted
• A Cerastus Knight Lancer - constructed and half painted
• A Knight Paladin - half constructed
• A Ravenwing Nephilim Jetfighter - half constructed
• My Bastion  - constructed and undercoated
• Old One Eye - constructed and half painted
• and various other bits and bobs built, modelled and painted...
• not to mention the time and effort on the 40k man cave. 

Oh, and I came second in this

And I won these

So although the mid part of the year may have been a bit in the doldrums, the blog was downsized a little to reflect this and the To Do List was only scratched I think the balance turned out quite well with all the extras, and awards. 2015/16 holds a lot of promise but also change, thanks to the transition to the man cave, theres no guarantee my output will increase, but I'll cover that in my next post. All I can say is thanks for persevering with my efforts and your own, your continued support is a great motivator and hopefully you'll all be along for the ride in the next season :)