Marvel Crisis Protocol by Lawnor

Back to the shacks.

The percolator, and some other details annoy me here. Whoever sculpted these did a good job, but clearly didn’t think about painting them. Google percolators. They’re all a mix of chrome, black and glass. I can’t use black against that black background. I don’t want to paint the jug as glass because it’ll be half brown coffee and half black background, or reflect the sky. I don’t like either in this location. In the studio scheme the shelf/window frame its sat on is steel, so chrome won’t differentiate too well, built feels like my best awkward option.

Percolator
Base: Reaper 89556 Adamantine
Layer: VGC 72.053 Chainmail
Layer: Chainmail mixed with VMA 71.064 Chrome

There’s a box or something on top of that cake stand. Lets assume its a takeaway cake box and paint it pink.

Small Cake Box
Base: P3 Carnal Pink
Edge Highlight: Carnal Pink mixed with White

That cake stand is annoying. What sort of monster puts a clear glass box there which clearly should have cakes visible through it? Screw it. I’m treating it the same as the windows, which will match the cars I did earlier. Still, I need to paint it’s gold frame first. I’ll do all the glass last.

Cake Stand Frame
Base: GW Retributor Gold
Wash: GW Agrax Earthshade
Highlight: Retributor Gold
Highlight: Retributor Gold mixed with P3 Solid Gold
Highlight: P3 Solid Gold
Highlight: P3 Solid Gold mixed with P3 Radiant Platinum
Layer: Chrome

Back to the Daily Bugles.

Here’s my next gripe.  They thought it was a good idea to expect people to freehand paint 8 newspapers on this terrain piece in the starter set!  Hell no!  I’ve been painting for 10+ years and I still can’t do that.  I found some printable newspapers online for use as base decorations.  Pretty sure I can glue them here instead.  I’ll want an off-white undercoat first to cover any gaps that show through, and to reinforce the white paper than sticks over them.  I’d hate to find out too late that the glue makes them semi transparent and the black or green bleeds through.

Newspaper racks
Undercoat newspapers with Reaper 09149 Mouldy Skin
Basecoat wood stand: P3 Bloodstone
Drybrush/Edge Highight: P3 Bogrin Brown
Pinwash: GW Agrax Earthshade

Sorastro linked some marvel themed newspapers, magazines and posters that are ready to print.  I tiled it 3 times on a sheet of A4 and printed it actual size.  That made them a little too big for this so I cut them down.  Try reducing the size by 10-20%?  I cut them out and dry fit them to confirm their size.  I then glued them on with a little PVA.  Once they’d had a few hours to dry I thinned a little PVA and applied this over the top to seal them in.  I did this again a day later.

Lastly, it’s the bags of crisps.  Do designs if you want.  I wanted quick and simple.  They’re small and basic.

Crisps
Blue: P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight
Red: P3 Khador Red Base
Yellow: Undercoat P3 Mouldy Ochre then base with P3 Sulfuric yellow

That’s the serveries done so let’s do the signs next, starting with the Daily Bugles.  it would have been nice if they’d included an alternate sign in the NYC Terrain pack so it could be different to the core set version if you wanted.  If I’d been good with tools and modding I might have sliced it up so it spelled “Daily Bulge” and make it sell adult magazines instead.  I’d have just made a mess though.

White Letters
Base: Reaper 09150 Bloodless Skin
Drybrush: P3 Morrow White
Once the rest of the sign is finished and the red has bled on to the white I went back with a mix of Bloodless Skin and Morrow White and fixed everything.  Pretty sure I painted a lot more of the letter fronts with this mix than I needed to.

Red Background
Base: VGI 72.086 Red Ink

That’s all I used.  I trusted the mess underneath to provide some tonal variation.  I wish I had not glued on either sign so I could have painted them separately.  I should have gone back with the airbrush before starting the sign and smoothed out the darker tones as they took a lot to cover with ink.  Oh well.  Lesson learned.

Bugle Emblem

Base: Overbrush with P3 Molten Bronze
Wash: GW Agrax Earthshade
Drybrush: Molten Bronze
Drybrush: P3 Rhulic Gold

Dark Grey Frame

Base: VMA 71.054 Dark Grey Blue
Drybrush: P3 Hammerfall Khaki
Wash: GW Nuln Oil

I then went back and fixed any contamination.

Over to The Daily Grind sign.  In the studio scheme the letters have this nice Cheers-esque transition to them.  I decided I wasn’t going to be able to do that, at least without putting in a lot more time and effort than I was willing to do for these pieces.  Then I did it really quickly and easily by accident and was super happy so went with it.

Letters

Base: VGA 72.709 Hot Orange
Overbrush/Drybrush VGC 72.008 Orange Fire.  Brush from the top down but stop half way.  I’ve no idea if I’ll ever be able to repeat this, but it just happened by accident and it looked great and natural.
Drybrush: P3 Mouldy ochre to just the tops of each edge

Background
Base VGC 72.147 Heavy BlackGreen.  This looked patchy as hell as some of it kept drying a little glossy while most of it didn’t.  I had to trust varnish would fix this later.
Pinwash: GW Nuln Oil

Frame

Base: P3 Hammerfall Khaki
Wash: P3 Gun Corps Brown
Drybrush: Hammerfall Khaki
Drybrush: P3 Menoth White Base

Here we see it before and after getting it’s final varnish.  Sometimes you just have to have faith and go with it.

On to the canopies.  I wasn’t sure whether to paint the metal frames or the cloth parts first.  There was a good argument for both.  In the end I decided to base coat the cloth, then paint the metal, then fix and paint the cloth

Canopy Cloth

Base Daily Grind: VMC 70.823 Luftwaffe Cam. Green
Base Daily Bugle: Scalecolor SC-32 Black leather

Brass Frame
Base: P3 Blighted Gold
Wash: P3 Cryx Bane base mixed with P3 Brown Ink
Targeted Wash: P3 Umbral Umber mixed with P3 Coal Black
Layer Highlight: P3 Brass Balls
Edge Highlight: P3 Brass Balls mixed with P3 Radiant Platinum

Green Canopy

Repair Base: VMC 70.823 Luftwaffe Cam. Green
Layer Highlight: VMC 70.922 Uniform Green

Red/Brown Canopy

Repair Base: Scalecolor SC-32 Black leather
Layer Highlight: SC-30 Red Leather
Layer Highlight: VGC 72.012 Scarlett Red

I think I tried blending the canopy colours together here.  Not my best work, but done is done and no one should be focusing on the terrain when playing.