February Doldrums

I'm sure you can tell that February has not seen a lot of production from me. Its been a stressful month for a number of different reasons. I think the biggest was the whole Hippo episode. I'm glad I was able to get it done and delivered to my brother but I didn't get to enjoy the process and I didn't get to do everything I really wanted to do. He was more than a little demanding about the whole thing and said a couple of things that really upset me quite a bit. It happens in families sometimes and I'll get over it.

It did affect my desire to work on anything this month not that I lack for things to do. I currently have 3 projects (it could be stretched to 4) on my bench that I need to do something with. Finish is probably the word I'm looking for.

#1 - The Church. The church is at that awkward stage. There is light at the end of the tunnel with this one but what is left is tedious. I need to finish getting the stained glass in the windows. I need to get all the corner strips cut and glued into place and finishing textures applied. The roof, at least, is in place but there is a lot of paint work going on there. Enough that I'll probably pull out the airbrush to get the base coat on and then get the final weathering on the whole thing finished after that. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't another 10-15 hours left to go.

So close and yet so far.

#2 - HO Scale Minis. There are 13 of these guys just waiting to be finished off. Just need to pull out the blues again and it should be reasonably quick. Maybe a couple of hours here.

#3 - O Scale Minis. There are 7 of these guys in exactly the same state as the HO minis. I stretching this into project number 3 since I really paint them all at the same time.

Just crying out to be finished even though I don't have either an HO or O scale layout at this time.

#4 - O Scale Gunsmith. The reasons I want to do this are mixed. This is a kit my wife actually started with just to see if its something she would enjoy doing. She decided it was not something she liked and further commented that the instructions required a translator (she is an IT person and while she is a director now she began her career pulling network cables, setting up servers and pcs). I consider this particular kit to be pretty basic. Its the Gunsmith kit from Stoney Creek Models and was part of the Crossroads Collection which Roger Malinowski envisioned as kits that he would keep available as opposed to his annual limited run kits. The reason I have pulled this out is because I recently learned that Roger had passed away from cancer. I have seen this announced on any of the model railroad forums that I frequent. I decided that I was going to build every Stoney Creek kit that I own, about a dozen, even though I don't currently have a layout for them to live on. This is the obvious first candidate since it has already been started. I plan to add an interior to this since there is the potential it might occupy real-estate that's right up front. While it has been started I wouldn't be surprised to see this one eat up another 20 hours or so of time to build and finish.

I think its been sitting in this box for about 6 years at this point.

Again its not that I lack any projects to work on. I just can't quite get up the enthusiasm to work on anything at the moment.

Painting the HO ScaleHumans - Skintones

I went back to try and find the ScaleHumans on Shapeways because I forgot to bookmark it. Shapeways drives me crazy. ScaleHumans is the name of sculptor's shop on Shapeways. That's the easiest way to get to his stuff (Shops/scalehumans). If you are trying to look for him as the designer you need his name, not the shop. The sculptor is Richard Kapuaala (designer/rkapuaala) and that gets you to his bio on Shapeways and you can get to his shop from there as well.

Back to the painting. I finished up the fleshtones on these. I, of course, went a bit to wide with my last skin tone and had to dial it back with a glaze of my dark skintone (Burnt Red Brown, A.MIG-0134). Then it was back to the main highlight (applied a bit more carefully this time) and followed that with one more higher just to emphasis some of the facial features.

The facial details on these is a bit better than the ones from Modelu. That little bit of exaggeration by the sculptor goes a long way to be able to make the details pop.

Skintones:

Burnt Red Brown - A.MIG-0134

Red Leather - A.MIG-0133 

Burnt Sand - A.MIG-0118

Painting the HO ScaleHumans - Detail Wash

After some relatively intensive training over the last week and a half I have finally found my way back to the workbench.

I'm back to the HO scale group from ScaleHumans on Shapeways. I only had time to do the basic wash to bring out the details on these. This really made the detail pop, but it also emphasized the printing lines on them as well. You can definitely see the difference between the Tan Fine Detail plastic and the Clear Ultra Fine Detail plastic. When I order again I'm definitely going with the Clear Ultra Fine.

Like with previous work this initial thin wash is done with Reaper Miniatures' Brown Liner. Because I do two thin washes I use Vallejo Airbrush thinner to thin it out instead of water.

These seated engineers are all printed in Ultra

.

Pretty sure this one is in tan

These three are all done in tan plastic

This is a mix. The two on the left are in tan the two on the right are in ultra

More Railroad Figures - ScaleHumans on Shapeways

In my quest to find better modeled railroad figures I hit Shapeways and quite frankly was a bit disappointed by what I was finding until I worked my way through the truly massive list and found ScaleHumans.

He does a lot of figure modeling and has a selection of railroad figures available in a variety of scales (much like Modelu). This aren't scanned they are 3D sculpts. Screen resolution being what it is I figured they only way I could get a good idea of what they might look like was getting an order placed. And off an order went. At the time I ordered three sets, 2 in HO and in O. I ordered everything in a tan plastic and that was probably a mistake. One set of the HO figures ended up being canceled because it wouldn't print in that material. I emailed back and forth with the sculptor and all of his stuff should only have been available in the Clear Ultra Fine Detail Plastic.

The sets arrived this past week. Off the bat they looked pretty good, one O scale engineer had a broken hand and two had hat brims that didn't completely print. One HO scale engineer also had a broken hand and that sucker slipped right out of my hands and disappeared forever. Most of the hat brims didn't really print very well either. The O scale ones were all fixable without to much effort, the HO we will have to wait and see. The two HO sets are interesting. The set that did print in the tan plastic are definitely bigger than the ones printed in the ultra fine. I may re-order than tan set in ultra fine to see if they come out the same as the tan or smaller like the ultra fine. Don't hold your breath it will be awhile.

Here are the sets I ordered (these are how they appear on Shapeways):

HO Engineers and Crew Pak II (7 figures)

6 Figures HO Scale 1:87 Scale

1-48 Fig pak 2 Engineers and crew

The HO Engineers and the O scale Engineers are the same figures. The other HO set is not currently available in O scale.

The O scale engineers getting their pins.

The front of the brim is missing on this one.

And a good chunk of the side is missing on this one. Both relatively easy fixes at this scale.

Quite the difference in size between the HO engineer pack and the other HO pack.