AHPC XIII - 15th (And Final) Submission

 

As predicted, this submission took me very close to the wire yesterday - it was just before midnight that I finished writing the post, six hours before the deadline. If I hadn't stayed up working through Saturday night I wouldn't have got it done in time. Of course, if I hadn't spent so much time working on that backdrop then I wouldn't have been in such a rush at the end.

Full post here

Backdrop

Cargo

Figures

Small Scale Ships

Spirit of Camberwell

As you can see, I went a bit overboard with the weathering. I started off just trying to obscure the white edges of the decals and maybe add a couple of damage chips, but realised that some of my sponge dabs were a bit too large and heavy. So, I needed to add lots of smaller, lighter dabs to obscure the heavy ones. Then I tried softening them with a thin airbrush coat of the orange base colour and airbrushed streaks with a dark brown...

...and completely forgot to do any weathering on the landing gear!

Still it doesn't look as bad as I thought, and at least the orange isn't quite so lurid now. Mind you, I could probably have got that with just the dark brown streaking.

Saturday Workbench 18 March 2023

 

OK, so it's actually Sunday here in the UK but it is still Saturday to the West! Tomorrow is the final day of the Challenge, and I'm frantically trying to finish things off in time to get everything photographed and the post written before the deadline.

Today has mostly been cutting up the decals I've made, gloss varnishing the Type S ready for adding decals, painting and gloss varnishing the backdrop pieces, priming and base-coating 1/270 and 1/1000 versions of the Type S (I thought that if I do have time to get them finished, they'd make a great addition to the post - I'll just have to see how things go tomorrow), painting up some snack and drinks machines for the backdrop and adding decals to everything that needs them.

Speaking of the decals, they've been an absolute nightmare. First off, when I went to print them, my inkjet printer wouldn't output black. I knew the cartridge was a bit low, but there should have been enough. Luckily I had a spare cartridge, so I put that in, hit print and...yes, not printing black. After about 30 minutes of going through the cleaning, deep cleaning and print head alignment processes, I finally managed to get it working. Of course, that was about 2am on Thursday night/Friday morning. Yesterday I hit them with gloss varnish to seal the ink in.

This evening I was adding the decals to everything. The small ones for the cargo items were (mostly) good, the ones for the Type S went on nicely. However, I had real problems with the ones for the backdrop, possibly because of the size. The 36 x 56mm ones weren't too bad, the 16 x 96mm ones were a touch tricky, but the 36 x 196mm ones...let's just say that there was a lot of swearing. Luckily I had made sure to print extras of each, which was all well and good until I accidentally picked up one of the boards to move it after applying a top coat of MicroSet, and of course my thumb just happened to land right on top of the softened decal, pulling it up as I removed my thumb. And no spares remaining! I've printed another sheet and varnished them. I'll have to apply that one tomorrow.

Tomorrow (today, I guess) will see me doing lots of varnishing, some touching up around the edges of decals on the ship, some weathering, some more varnishing, photography, photo resizing and then writing a rather long blog post for the submission.

AHPC XIII - 13th & 14th Submissions

With painting of the Type S finished (barring application of decals and some weathering of the exterior), I spent a bit of time painting a few figures for the last two studios.

Entry #13 - Japanese Casualties

Full post here

Entry #14 - WW2 German Propaganda Team

Full post here

As you can see from the map below, I have submitted something for every studio in the Green and Blue zones.

The only to bits of the map that I won't have visited are the Gift Shop and the Yellow Brick Road.

AHPC XIII - 12th Submission

 

I only had the one figure submitted as an entry this week - an old school early 1980s Hobgoblin by Citadel. I submitted it for the 1980s (or retro) studio.

Full post here

That leaves me with just two studios - World Cinema and Historical Drama - to visit to have done something for every studio. I've got figures I can use for both of them, and I should be able to get them done this week, leaving me free to focus on finishing the Type S and some extras to go with it until the end of the Challenge.

Speaking of the Type S, I'm almost done with the hull pieces:

Just a few details left to do, then some touch-ups and varnishing. I also need to hit all the interior pieces with a coat of matt varnish before I assemble the ship.

AHPC XIII - 11th Submission

While I'm working on painting up the Type S Scout, I'm taking breaks to paint up the odd piece. This week, I had two pieces submitted in one post, covering one studio and another ride in the limo.

Lady Sarah's Limousine - Agent Lake

This would have been a very simple paintjob, but I decided to try something different - highlighting the purple of the dress more towards the red spectrum (I usually go the other way, towards blue).

Superheroes Studio - Judge Dredd Bust

This was the 75% scale 3D print I printed several months ago. It was fun to paint.

Full post here

Current status of my studio tour:

There are just three studios that I haven't visited yet - I've got figures ready to go for two of them and will have to root around to see what I've got that I can use for the third.

AHPC XIII - 10th Submission

 

For my tenth submission I painted up three Judge Dredd figures from Warlord Games - the Wally Squad pack. Between them, they gave me two studios and a ride in Lady Sarah's Limousine.

Full post here

For those who aren't readers of 2000AD, the Wally Squad are the Judges of the Undercover Division, and they receive a dispensation to break various Judicial Conduct rules to enable them to fit in and do their jobs.

Books Studio - Dirty Frank

Lady Sarah's Limousine - Aimee Nixon

The Casting Couch - Jack Point, The Simping Detective

I'd originally primed these figures ready for last year's Challenge but was put off painting them because of an issue with the sculpts - for some reason, they'd been done with quite deep seam lines on Frank's sleeves, Aimee's stocking and Jack's trousers (not to mention the solid "emoji" disc on his shirt); presumably that was done to make it a little easier for people using contrast paints (or equivalent from other companies). I recently discovered a trick for dealing with them - the gaps can be filled with Mod Podge. A couple of applications later and a re-prime, they were much better.

Current state of my studio tour:

AHPC XIII - 9th Submission

 

My 9th entry in this year's Challenge was this crate, which I had painted up in the style of Piet Mondrian for the "Arthouse" studio. The crate itself is a 3D print scaled up to 200% of the original size - it measures 2" x 42 x 2". As it counts as terrain, it only scored 1.5 points - fortunately the 20 bonus points for the studio made up for that.

Full post here

This entry also meant that I had completed the four Blue Zone studios I needed to enter the Director's Chair studio, where Curt will set me some fiendish task...

Wednesday Workbench 08 February 2023

 

Well, it might be Thursday now in the UK, but it's still Wednesday in places West of here! The reason for posting so late is that my laptop decided to throw a wobbly and stop responding earlier this evening. It was fine when I popped to the kitchen to start cooking my dinner, but when I returned a few minutes later the screen was black with a message "No Bootable Device Found". After several unfruitful attempts to restart it, I gave up and dragged my old laptop out of storage, then spent a few hours getting it up and running (mostly transferring files from my backup drive) so that I can at least communicate and do things until either my current laptop is fixed or I have a replacement - I'll be taking a trip to Currys PC World tomorrow for that.

So, what's on the workbench? As you might be able to guess, I have finally got around to priming the Type S Scout Courier. It's taken me four days so far and I've probably got one more day to go.

Why am I priming it now? Quite simply because the item I painted over the weekend (and which will be up on the Challenge blog on Friday) completes my tour of the studios and will give me entry to the Director's Chair studio - I've already agreed with Curt that my task will be to get this fully painted.

AHPC XIII - 7th and 8th Submissions

 I decided to split my submissions over two posts this week.

Entry #7 - 15mm Gallic Cavalry

These are the ones that I didn't have time to do last week, so got carried over for submission this week.

Full post here

Entry #8 - '80s Drow

For the "Fantasy" studio, I decided to paint up some early 1980s (pre-slotta) Citadel Drow. They'd been sitting unpainted in my collection for about 40 years, so it was about time they got some love.

Full post here

I've got one more studio to do before plonking myself down in the Director's Chair and being given a fiendish task by the Show Lord; I suspect that task will be to crack on and paint the 28mm Type S scout Courier which was meant to be my main focus for this year's Challenge. As that job will take me several weeks, I will paint up a few odd figures each week, if only to have something to post.