Well, this bunch is finally finished. Thanks to everyone for sticking with me on this little project. Last night I got all the weapons glued in place only to discover that two crossbows were missing. I have no idea if I lost them or if they were actually missing from the blister. Either way a replacement pack is on the way from which I will swipe two crossbows. The rest will probably go into the ReaperCon Melt bucket.
Today was touch up and basing today. Touch ups always take way to long and I'm sure I still managed to miss a few spots here and there but overall I'm pretty happy with the entire army. I used a new (for me) technique to add static grass to the bases and get it to stand up straight. I used my Grass Tech II static grass dispenser. this is a powered unit that charges the fibers as they come through a wire mesh and gets them to stand straight (more or less) up. I apply my favorite glue (matte medium and water) attach a wire that goes back the Grass Tech II , hit the power button and shake. Creates a huge mess on miniatures because its designed for large area applications. It also had an interesting side affect. Let me introduce the Norman Chia Pets:
Any way I now have static grass all over the place. Its bad as shipping peanuts. Here are a few shots from last night, they are starting to look like real warriors now that they actually have something to fight with.
That's also about as neat as you will ever see my painting area. It only looks like that way because I pulled out the airbrush to work on my ReaperCon competition miniature after I was done. That requires a certain level of neatness to be able to work relatively efficiently. Also I wanted to see if I could keep my highlights more or less intact by airbrushing on an acrylic matte coat. Overall I would say it worked out pretty well, although my airbrush didn't like it very much. Here are the knights ready to be sprayed:
And finally the finished product:
1 Saga Point - 12 Norman Levy
1 Saga Point - 8 Norman Crossbowmen
1 Saga Point - 8 Norman Spearmen
1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights) - Note all the shields were painted by hand. I did use the Little Big Man Studios site as a reference. If you don't want to go to the effort of painting shields (almost any kind of shield) I highly recommend them. You can find his website here:
LBMS
1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights)
1 Saga Point - 4 Norman Hearthguard (Mtd Knights)
Free! - 1 Norman Warlord
So that's it, finally finished. Oh and for the sharp eyed among you, I did forget to edge the bases for the knights, however, I did get that taken care of.
Kris this new post isn't showing up in my Google Reader. A lot of people are having that problem right now.
ReplyDeleteChia Normans now that's priceless. How do you even come up with ideas like doing the static grass? It looks great (after you wipe down the Normans).
I see the mess in the background of your painting table and I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who's not overly tidy in their workspace. I would never have noticed that you hadn't edged the bases but I'm certain that some of the guys around here would have.
I'm off to the Land of Nod now because I'm beginning to get cross-eyed from painting.
Static grass has been around along time as one of the standard ways to do bases. The problem with it is getting it to stand, more or less, upright. Typically you use some kind of plastic "puffer" to squirt it on to the base and hope that it builds up enough charge to stand up, otherwise it just lays flat and kind of looks like you just mowed the lawn. This is the first time I have tried it using one of my model railroad tools. I thought it would just charge the wet glue, but apparently the paint works as a pretty good conductor too so the whole miniature is charged. Its easy to shake off but I admit I love the Chia Pet Normans! I'm heading to bed myself. Just wanted to post these guys to the world and I'll be quite happy to hand them off to the client tomorrow.
DeleteI'm sure he'll love them. Your blog just updated on my blogroll and I just sent you an email. I'm talking to you in two places at once. Now, I'm really going to sleep!
ReplyDeleteIsn't the internet a wonderful place! Now if we had been on top of it we could have had an IM going as well!
DeleteLovely work!
ReplyDeleteA general though on the grass aplicator... is it worth for just miniatures? I have often thought about it, but always felt that the mini would cover a lot of the trajectory and it would only really work on the edges of a base. It does not look that way on your minis though. What are your thoughts?
I was using the larger version, the Grass Tech II, there is a smaller version called the Grass Tech which is much simpler in design and wouldn't spread the static grass in as large an area. It didn't even occur to me that there might be a "shadow" zone created by the miniature itself, I just flowed the glue onto the base and then fired up the Grass Tech and shook it on to the mini, pretty much from directly above. I didn't have any problems with getting the static grass where I wanted it. Anything that wasn't in the glue shook off very easily. I quickly had a large pile of static grass, be sure you are working in an area were you can recover and re-use it. I bought the Grass Tech II for my railroad and could easily justify the expense because of the area I needed to cover with it. I also bought it during a sale so I received both the Grass Tech II and the Grass Tech for the price of the Grass Tech II. The Grass Tech II is 139.95 and the Grass Tech is 39.95. Its cheaper than the Noch Grass Applicator which I think is 189.95. I could easily justify buying the original Grass Tech for use on miniatures but it would be hard to just pick up its bigger cousin if I was only using it for miniatures. Now if you are making a lot of terrain and want to use static grass this is definitely the way to go.
DeleteTHX Kris! Will keep that in mind. I have had some thoughs into terrain lately (starting with new boards replacing the styrofoam with MDF for my wargaming). If I go down that road the GT II would make sense!
ReplyDeleteTHX,
Burkhard
Remaking terrain boards would definitely make the Grass Tech a good purchase.
DeleteThat's lovely work Kris, the grass tech is ingenious but as you said and showed a little messy, do you retrieve the excess static grass?
ReplyDeleteI just made sure that I was working on a clean surface (in this case a large piece of white polystyrene plastic that was handy, a piece of paper would work just fine too) and it was something I could just sweep the static grass either into a bag or back into the hopper of the GT. Just had to think ahead a little bit.
DeleteAll are excellent painted figures! And I love the shield patterns!
ReplyDeleteGreetings
Peter
http://peterscave.blogspot.com/
Thanks Peter, the client liked everything too! That's always a relief when they don't give you any direction.
Delete