Hellboy (an old Spring Clean Challenge)

Honestly I didn’t really enjoy the trouble shooting on the printing, It took me most of my weekend with a lot of back and forth remodeling the last few pieces and testing print orientations and settings to get a finish that I’m accepting simply because it’s the best I can achieve. My task may have been made a little easier with a better quality PLA . This one was just too black and also a bit soft so. But ultimately I think this sort of model should be done with resin.

As you can see in the pic below there is a growing pile of rejected parts. I even gave up on printing the fuel drum , the piece I thought should be the easiest , and grabbed one out of a 1/48 Tamyia Jerry Can set

With the model completely tacked together I’ve given a quick rattle can coat of Vallejo black flowed by a top down Bone White to show up more flaws.

Next step will be to disassemble, clean up some daggy areas and touch up with a bit of putty, and get on with adding some colour.

So I found the generator token kind of anoying in that it it looked like a bit of random oblong with glowing bits, could have been nothing. I could have taken the idea of a generator quite literaly and looked for a typical diesel engine shape and stuck a cylinder on the end , and this would be fine for a typical german generator from WW2 but I I felt that a generator thats probably firing up cyber apes and zombies should be something a bit more.

I did look to cheat and see what I could down load and print off but I wasnt satisfied with anything. Honestly as an Architectural Tech I actually spend a lot of time 3D modeling but spending all day at work on CAAD doesnt inspire me to pick up more software for hobby fun, and its been some years since I’ve fired up Blender and dived in for hobby purposes. But I wanted to have a crack.

So basicaly I took lots of inspiration from very early generators and dynamos chose a radial engine to power it and gave a diesel conversion.

With a bit of luck I’ll have the modeling finished by the end of week and printing next wekend.

With the craziness that’s been surviving Christmas now behind I finally found a few moments recently to put the finishing touches on some more pieces. I must admit I’m pretty chuffed with my broken ‘jar’

Perhaps the most difficult thing to find a decent example of, the orrery. The Mantic orrery that comes with the Wizard Study is ok I guess but I couldn’t justify a whole Terrain Cate for it. I did consider making my own model but it wasn’t like I had the time . After printing I did think to remove some of the struts to see more of the planets and in hindsight I probably could have shrunk the sun a little but on the whole I’m pretty happy with it.

So way back before covid ,when gaming was still a regular thing, one of my mates donated a few pieces from Mantics Terrain crates to my Hellboy box. There is no doubt that the bookshelves and desk work wonderfully on the board but from an aesthetic view they also highlight how good it would it would be to do away with all the cardboard counters.

One other thing that happened shortly before covid was the arrival of my Creality CR-9 FDM printer. I’m not going to get into depth about printing the stuff here. But I will say that after 18 or so months of keeping an eye out for appropriate STLs and learning a few ropes about printing I’ve almost put together a collection I’m happy with. I say almost as there is an objective generator/science experiment that I’m not settled on yet but I have Brain In Jar and the Arc Of The Covenant to cover me for now.

Finding Doors was relatively easy, thingiverse is good for much

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1126259

The Boxes and wardrobes were by Epic Minitures on MyMiniFactory

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-mimic-set-2-disguise-monster-classic-encounter-collection-165610

And the tables, chairs and orrery were by Darkest Desire on MyMiniFactory

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-orrery-re-supported-168057

Not an official Hellboy piece , just a few bits and pieces put together while playing with putty durring my Hellboy project. Still a brain in jar is perfect prop material for helboy so I decided to add an extra game piece and call it a clue.

In truth I’m still feeling my way with sculpting and epoxies but it was a lot of fun.

Thats it for hellboy I suppose, I have learnt a lot through this project and pushed my boundaries on not just how to paint a lot of minis but also find new ways to paint them.

So After spending altogether too much time agonising over getting the correct colour graduation from tip to tail with numerous glazes, highlight passes and washes it still didn’t feel right. Then I referred to the original art work and realised the 2 legged croc was meant to have wings! There was nothing else for it but to pull out the Apoxie sculpt and sculpting tools.

So only St Leonards worm to go. Though the last few have been churned out pretty quick I’m going to take a little break and contemplate my purple worm a little more to give it the love and attention it deserves.

Buisiness as usual today with Rasputin as the foocus while chipn’ away the others.

Only 6 to go now.

You OTT members are the best. Have to say a big thanks for all the recomendations. I was thinking I might break 500 with a few more consistant entries but when I saw 700 + this morning it made my day.

Kriegaffe , He’s got a gun and Iron Boots done

When trying to paint a whole box full of minis at once its still good to focus on groups that are either the same or will use a similar palette or maybe just require similar techniques. With so few left to go I am loosely working on them all at once but focused heavily thes last few days on the hairy ones.

Did I mention that our last gaming session was cancelled at the last moment due to a vomiting girlfriend? Well them’s the breaks. But it was serendipitous in that I got to finish the Conqueror worm before it was required in this weekend’s get together. Yay!

Strange how all the agonising over how to handle this large mini ended with such a simple solution. I had decided on the direction I wanted to take it, and stayed the course but still had a few moments towards the end thinking my pallete was to small for this to be complete. After zenithing I used some Art Spectrum White Opaque Ink, Badger Opaque Yellow Ink, and Holcroft Melon India Ink to create the orages. There were a few moments where I dabbed in a little Flash Gitz or Wild Rider (great colour matches to the ink) to hep control flow. A little Art Spectrum Burnt Sienna glaze over to darken some areas and a final Abbadon Black drybrush to the extremities to char.

The conqueror worm, hmm, have to say there’s some interesting interpretations of the board game version of conqueror worm and there’s some great ones ,I quite like uglebs (https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1392178/ version , but my own interpretation is still not one I’ve found anywhere else. I keep seeing it as a creature that burst up from the molten rock depths and is almost white with heat. The original art and my interpretation will require and almost inverse shading effect so below is my re zenith followed by some basic white, yellow and orange inks through my airbrush. Next, brushing in the rest of the detail starting with a drybrush of black.

Not green stuff green stuf but dark green paint.

I had been a little perplexed with the finish of my Hellboys and didn’t think I had adequate contrast then I stummbled on an old 3 Colour Up tutorial.

https://www.beastsofwar.com/3-colors-up/skin-tone-tutorials-demonic-red-part/

Basicaly it goes into how green is a great colour to shade red, opening my eyes and proving just how little atention I was paying to colour therory in Art school.

So swallowing my fear I made used a very thin mix of Vallego cam dark green and set to uping the shade. I was so happy with the result and I think you should be able to see the difference if you compare to the earlier photos below.

So social distancing is relaxing in my corner of the world and we are allowed to get together and game this Thursday but I’m not quite done. So I vow to get over myself and aim to get as many as possible acceptable for the table top (I don’t think any of my painting gets past table top ready really but still I like to pretend I have standards) And I vow to my self to finish them later.

So below is a record of my current level of finish. I dont believe any are quite 100% and you will spot the odd bit here and there but for once I’m glad the pics are showing the faults, it makes them easier to spot and I have a record of them for when I sit down to fix and finish over the coming weeks