And here we are at last. We put the finishing touches on in round 7, and now here is the first round of pictures of this monster, we’ll get more pictures posted over the next day or two of different angles and details.

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In our last installment we wired the LED spotlight. Now, after a short break while we were all battling with a rampaging flu virus, we’re going to make the final push to get this project finished. We had a ridiculous amount of little pieces, accessories and details to finish still and this was after making some concessions about what we could realistically finish and what we should leave out or save for other projects, which I’ll talk about later.

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Still going! It’s easy to start a large piece of scenery and think “It’ll be just as easy a smaller piece, just larger components.” But the reality is that to keep scale and detail level accurate, every inch needs to be given extra attention. We just keep looking at it and saying things like  “needs more plating there.” and “Why not add a real spotlight and post?” making the amount of work time increase exponentially. Also we’re having fun.

And that’s where we are now, continuing the electronic part of this project from the last chapter.

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And on it goes, still no end in sight!

In our last chapter we had completed a bulk of the structural part of this project and it looked pretty good. But we couldn’t stop there, there’s just far too much potential for detail in a piece like this.

Mismuse continued to turn out piles of metal plate bits. We decided that there should be a lot of metalwork in a structure like this, plates and reinforcements on walls and around passages  where large, angry beasts might be prodded through, flailing stucco-damaging appendages left and right. [Read more...]

It’s been a while since we last left off on this project log, but here you’ll see why and what’s gone into this colossal fighting arena so far.

My Nob shack has been voted off the island

In the previous chapter we were building the Nob shack on top of the observation platform. Well Mismuse walked by, picked up the balsa wood structure and while examining it, she “accidentally” crushed it between her fingers, and ended up designing a whole new shack. Only a minor setback fortunately, and just a small example of the kind of changes these projects go through.

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When we last left our Squig fighting pit, we were barely shaping the base and walls, and after sanding down the textured coatings we applied the first base coats of paint.

Some projects we follow the logical order of: build, detail/accessorize, prime, paint base-coats, highlight. And some projects, like this one, we have to apply a more flexible strategy. This thing was going to have a lot of woodwork and details, and getting a brush, or even airbrush stream into all the corners and crevices would be nearly impossible, and my cardinal rule for painting that I instill into all my henchmen or aspiring artists is this: If you do only one thing right, make sure your base-coats are clean!

Just like figure painting, scenery has (and should have) many different colored areas, and the sharper and more well-covered those areas look, the nicer the whole model will look. That being said, we started painting the woodwork the moment we glued it on.

Spiky trim, support beams for the seating areas, plank floors, misc. woodwork being attached.

This part is tough. [Read more...]

Part 2

Remember in part 1 where I decided that the walls needed to be thicker? Well that had the effect of pushing the whole structure just about to the edge of the board. Meaning the wide margin I left to pile up dirt around the sides was not so wide anymore.

MisMuse cheerfully brought this to my attention as she passed by and asked me “I thought you were going to make that thing look like a pit? It looks like a big Ork refrigerator laying on its side.”

“Well, I left a little space around the sides, I can still pile up a little…” I tried feebly to avoid what I knew was coming, it was inescapable and the worst part was the sinking feeling, the immediate knowledge of what I was about to hear, and what I had to do.

“It’s just square walls.  It should be a pit,  you know? a  dug in look? But if you want to send it out like that, hey you’re the boss.”

Then she walked off as I slowly drew my knife. [Read more...]

We’ve had a long running project for a client, for an entire city for his Orks, approximately 22 structures in all, including things like HQ buildings, armories, refineries, watchtowers, a cantina, fighta-bomba airstrip and hanger, and of course, a fighting arena for Squigs.

We’re not even at the halfway mark for this project yet, but we’re getting ready to tackle a very unique piece, which is the Squig Fighting Pit. Fortunately we’ve been given a fair amount of artistic freedom to do these pieces, because as you’ll see, our ideas tend to “evolve”. Case in point:

See this?

The idea was  “let’s build an orkish power plant looking thing.”

Here is what that little doodle turned into: [Read more...]