Squirmydad's Creations

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my three idiot sons are here to knock over your shit

[squirmydads-creations]

A Madboy contemplating existence within a metal box. Part 2 of my "Welcome to Armageddon" series. The destroyed Dreadnought is a 3D print that I found on makerworld.com

It's good to get back to my painting desk, the past couple months have been a hurly burly of events. But the high tide has passed and as it goes out I get to take a breath, clean my desk, and paint more dead Space Marines. 🙂

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33 years later, I painted another Space Marine. I think I've gotten a little better, my solution to the eyes was to just not do them. I do need to redo that shoulder pad as my free hand Crimson Fist did not work out very well. I think I'd like to paint each Marine in the Armageddon box in a different chapter color, the sculpts are very nice, even though I don't care about Space Marines at all, they'll make good painting experiment projects.

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In honor (?) of the new Armageddon release, I present the first Space Marine I painted, 33 years ago. Tragically I haven't got much better at eyes. :/ My heart wasn't really in it as I've never been a fan of the Imperial poster boys and I only painted the plastic sm's from the 2ed 40k box to be a loaner force for people who wanted to learn to play but didn't have any of their own minis. I'm pretty sure I was using cheapo craft paint for the armor as well. In the early 90's everything had to be black-lined, it was just ala mode' for the day, and was the most time consuming part of the process for me back then. I probably should have spent more time on eyes. :)

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Part two of my "Welcome to Armageddon" series will be a destroyed dreadnought, and I'm starting with the nice bright undercoat as it's going to be a Blood Angel.

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Gnolls, gnollls, gnollllllsss. Another five of these beasties, that puts me up to 12 out of the 22 that I'm working on. The first two are from Artisan Guild, and I've found everything that they have sculpted to be a joy to work on. The three slobbery axe boys are from Tabletop Gaming Guild, and are a little simpler in their textural detail. They still get the job done though.

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Does the type of undercoat for miniatures matter? I was watching an army painter tutorial on base coating and they talked about only needing to put down a white coat and then speedpaints work great on top of that. They're right, to an extent, also depending on the paint, but I found that doing the Slap Chop white highlight over black and then applying speed paints adds more depth. To experiment with it I used the same speedpaint red on these two minis and I definitely like the depth of color on the Tim Curry devil miniature better.

It was pretty sure it would be better, but I always like doing little experiments to see it with my own eyes.

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Guh-noh-lllls, Gnolls. Or hyena humanoids. These are the first Gnolls I've ever painted as I never used or encountered them much in the Fantasy games that I played. In Gamma World there are canine humanoids called Arks which seem very much like the Sci-Fi version of Gnolls. When I was running the game I used them all the time as a low level encounter. This is the first five of the 22 that I'm working on for my Gnoll pack. This group was purchased from Tabletop Gaming Guild on Etsy.

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Little ruined cottage, 3d print from Makerworld.com designed by everythingDND. I wasn't paying close attention when I hit print so it printed as one solid object, instead of having the roof removable. Oh well, I painted the burnt out interior in blacks with some ash greys for highlights. I need to find a 3d mini that I can place into the slicer program so I can check the model scale before printing as the cottage would have worked a little better with a 15% reduction. Next time.

Every project is an opportunity to learn something though so I tried different layering and weathering techniques on the walls, rocks, and roof shingles. Some teachers talk about learning muscle memory from doing something repeatedly, the concept of "eye memory" occurred to me on this project so that I train my eye for when an effect looks good so that I don't overdo it and muddy it.

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Way back in 1991 White Dwarf published an article on how to make scratch built 40K size vehicles of Epic 40K vehicles. I really liked the look of the Gobsmasha and built this chunky card version, the one on the right in case you were confused. Recently I found a 3D download of a Gobsmasha on Makerworld com, designed by Knight Designs. The downloaded one was much easier to work with, although I put the gun mantlet on upside down. I also took this painting opportunity to try out some Sharpie brush tip paint markers to do my edging with, they work pretty well, I like the constant flow, I just have to be careful with how I hold the tip so it doesn't make a big blort of paint. Which is the same problem I have when using a normal brush anyways.

[squirmydads-creations]

Welcome to Armageddon!

In anticipation of the release of the 40K 11th Edition box set i'm making some themed terrain for my favorite army, the Orks. This is a 3D printed piece that I found on Makerworld so you are welcome to download and make your own Space Marine "Welcome Wagon". When I get the box set I'll be able to fill up that crater with Space Marine corpses, it'll be a good use of the new minis. 👌

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I'm working on a project and the center skull was already painted red and I wanted to see what a speed paint gold would look like over the red. Not very impressive. So then I added agrax earthshade over the speed paint gold which is over the red and it looks a lot more interesting. Just one of today's experiments.

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Goblin Saboteur, who I call "Little Boomer". This is a Mantic metal mini that I had mistaken for a Star Saga mercenary but I'm pretty sure its actually a Deadzone Rebs special figure. He wears orange to make sure people see him coming, what good is stealth if you don't get credit?

One of the less amusing things about this mini is that it doesn't really have a face....like the sculptor just gave up. Or maybe it just got dropped on the factory floor. Eiter way it unfortunately only reinforces my negative opinion of Mantic's models and minis.

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This may look like frontier justice, but actually the man on the left with the book of spells is a Rail Baron Necromancer who is using the willing sacrifice of this indentured farmer to summon a gang of Gunslinger Revenants.

[squirmydads-creations]

Wind turbine generator covered with grunge, the third piece of scenery included in the Strontium Dog box set. This is another laser cut heavy cardstock piece and the generator box didn't really go together as cleanly as I would have liked. However, copious amounts of oil stains and rust, which I threw at this model with wild abandon, really help to hide the defects of the model construction.

I also had fun with the base as I used some more of my Vallejo diorama FX Earth texture; I put it on with a little trowel and then took a big scuzzy paintbrush with wet bristles and stabbed it all over the place into the clay to get a good chunky ground texture. Lots of fun making this little piece.

The Army Painter branf oil stains paint goes on like a heavy dark shader, but dries semi-transparent with a little sheen. I found myself putting on two or three layers to get darker spots, a lot of fun to play with.

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I put together a Venusian Askari lizardman for Space:1889 using the Wargames Atlantic's Classic Fantasy Lizardmen and a little 3d printed fez cap. The fez needs a little work, I'm going to contact WA and see if they'll sell me the head stl's so I can do a better fez version.

Here it is with figures from Warlord Games and Copplestone;

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I didn't realize it until a few days ago but I dug through my gretchin pile and turned up a grot version of Commissar Yarrik! Let the Waaagh! for Armageddon commence!