Traders Galaxy 2024 Painting Challenge – Botwar, Beat Em Up and Rise of the Democracy miniatures

Unlucky for some, the number 13, but when everyday is rubbish you don’t notice! Until work is over and you can get painting again!? Despite the blistered fingers, the multicoloured painted nails and the odd superglued skin graft we soldier on.
Today was a drybrushing day. I managed to give the Mongoose and the two Democracy tanks a drybrush of pale green just to take away some of the darkness caused by Contrast paints.

My castle walls got a drybrush too.

Then I had an attempt at printing an attack jet from a while back using my FDM printer. The FDM just can’t do the detail, but I’m going to make use of it and turn it into a wrecked jet. So I got some primer on it.

Back again so soon?
I managed to get a bit more black to tidy up Leviathon, but I will start to focus on him a bit more now I have got some of the other figures out of the way.

Just a reminder that I took Igor Dragon and attempted a crazy conversion. I used some Green Stuff to change his stance and his arm poses and with little amounts of Green Stuff I gave him a mohawk and a beard. I am no sculpter and so the figure is pretty rough, but in my eyes I wanted to create T.G. Maracas. As you will have seen, I painted him a few days ago. Tonight I finished some detail like the ‘Clubber’ logo on his shorts. I also sculpted a punch bag that he is hitting, so hard that it explodes. For his base all I could think of was a gym floor, so I did that.

I also managed to get Syndey finished. Again I had slightly changed her pose to get a better kicking stance, then mounted her atop a police car and gave her a little kicking effect, a bit like Chun-Li from Street Fighter 2. For those who like the detail. She has Dallas Cowboy shorts on with the stripe down the sides. I was going to put the star on her jacket, but the frills made it too hard and I didn’t want to risk it. She has gloves on in the style of Michael Irvin ( I know wrong decade ) I also gave her some Reebok Royals for trainer as Reebok was big back then!

Back again so soon?
I managed to get a bit more black to tidy up Leviathon, but I will start to focus on him a bit more now I have got some of the other figures out of the way.

And then the evening just felt frustrating as I moved onto Gorg. The idea for his base was to have a corn field so Gorg would be creating a crop circle. I had 3 soldiers fighting Gorg, one firing a rocket at him. Then I mad one tiny civilian with his hands up in the air running away. The other 3 civilians I put a blue halo over there heads and put them under a cone of light emenating from Gorg like the vintage UFOs. The halos were to represent Gorg taking control of them (I know he doesn’t have mind control but theatrical license was needed). This proved to be both hard and frustrating. I got the civilians with their halos on then I put some fibre optic around the cone, which was crazy hard to get to stick. When I eventually got it to work I put the cone in place and while fiddling I knocked a halo of one of the civilians, but now I coudn’t get back in to fix that. You can’t really see through the cone anyway, so that was probably all wated effort. So finally I stuck Gorg on top, and built in to the bottom of Gorg I have wired a tiny LED to give out light into the cone. I’m not sure it is powerful enough to give the effect I wanted, but I’ll take some test shots tomorrow. So I’m happy with Gorg as the concept, but maybe I was a little too ambitious.

Finally I got the first coat on my castle walls.

And finally some castle walls that will be needed for operation David and Goliath, a really big base!

And as always, rather than finishing off what I started, I finally got the explosion I wanted from my 3D prints, so that got a quick prime, ready for the weekend task (I hope).

And during my lunch I collected so prints off the resin printer. I’m still trying to get to grips with it. I have realised now I was definitely over exposing my prints, so I have dialed that back and getting slightly better prints, now I’m just dialling in the fineness of detail. The 2 light tanks picture shows the one on the top was over exposed, the one on the right was less exposed but printed faster. I also printed off a couple of the exclusive Beat Em Up thugs, so might try and get them painted this month too. And some missile trails that I’ll be needing for various bases.

Next up, he was hot off the 3D printer this morning. It’s one of those obscure miniatures that I found while trawling Traders Galaxy – The Adventurer. This guy has to make it into Beat Em Up! I’ve slapped the first coat on him. I apologise if the figure isn’t great but Resin printing is new to me and still struggling to get things to print, let alone deal with the software putting supports in the most annoying places like right on his face.

On to Gorg, well not much has happened to him as I needed to get the human victim painted first so I could then make a tentacle out of Green Stuff and stick it to his tentacle. While painting the victim I chose blue for his trousers, but when I looked, suddenly it was obvious who the victim was.. so yellow boots, a yellow hard hat and beige shirt and the victim became Spike Witwicky! I’ve attached the tentacle and started painting a few more converted Democracy civilians and finally I had one last thing to do.

The last photo shows that I painted up a 10mm Carl Weathers in his Dillon gear from Predator in tribute of his great performances. R.I.P. He will naturally be standing against Gorg in the final miniature.

Last of all for part 1, I managed to resin print some of the original classic 10mm Democracy Infantry. I did this because I wanted a Red female character. So for Red’s Rescue I went with what I think was the story of her being rescued from the roof of a building. I painted up the little miniatures, then I built a rooftop out of a Square miniature base with some tiny Green Stuff bricks used to build a wall. I stuck the troops on, then poured a little UV resin to sink the bases under. It’s so useful UV resin as it instant cures! Finally I used one of my missle trails to be a distress flare. That is going to go on the roof.

At the end of yesterday when I reviewed my pictures, I noticed that my Gorg looked like a strawberry ice cream cone… well that’s worrying! So today I got an hour in working on the minis which was good. Gorg got some silver and gold paint to make him less ice cream like. I also started fiddling with him, as last night I thought he’s a big monster, he needs to be more rampaging. So I cut his front two tentacles and repositioned them. One will now be lifting up a car and the other will have an innocent bystander, played by the tiny Democracy soldier that I converted to be holding his arms up.

I also want Gorg to look 50’s saucer like, but not figured that bit out yet. You’ll see some more Democracy soldiers that have had their arms cut off or repositioned, some will become mind controlled lackies, others will be fighting gorg.

For the car I had a few spare experimental Camero prints, so I am just using one of them. I also managed to get one of my missiles from yesterday stuck to a 3D printed jet trail.

And finally I returned to the ninjas. It was a bit better today as it felt like progress was being made. I got them drybrushed with some uniform grey, I got the wood and leather base coated brown and I got the metal base on the weapons.

Why is it you always kid yourself, ‘it’s the weekend I’ll have plenty of time to do what I want’? Anyway after painting my daughters room I finally got some time to relax in the evening, by doing some more painting! I added a little shade to parts of the ninja and I’ve selected some bases for them.

Gorg got some Contrast paints to create a bit more shading, though I’m not touching the tentacles yet until I have built the tentacle that will be holding a human. I did start painting the humans that will feature in his base.

I also started on the thug I will now call Nick after (Nearly Headless Nick in HP), he is intended to go with John, when I get round to him. John will be literally knocking his block off!

I finally got a very quick spray of primer on Leviathon. He’s a big guy and going to take a fair bit of paint, but hopefully will be a good centrepiece. I did a little bit of converting to make him point, you’ll see why later in the month.

I also got some inspiration for Strikeforce my plane, check out the last pic! I want to have my plane on a base which looks like the U.S.S Flagg. Let’s see how it goes!

I thought I was being clever by choosing a couple of squads of Ninja. This would give me a banker of 11 figures, thus meeting the minimum requirements and being mainly black, the paint scheme should not be too difficult. But normally I like individuals who I can think about and craft a story, with the ninja at best your ninja Fred or ninja Jerry, so after painting ninja number 7 (let’s call him Bert), I found my interest waning. For those who remember the Fast Show and the painter character, I was quickly seeing black everywhere.

So i changed it up a little and started on Overlord Gorg, who is more of an individual. I’ve got a great idea for him (if it works), along the theme of alien invaders.

I also painted a few tiny missiles which I had sitting around in a drawer as I’m going to arm my Strikeforce plane when I get to that miniature.

Finally I got some primer on a thug from Beat Em Up who I have converted with The Adventurer’s gun arm and then I cut off his head. I then stuck some red resin blood splatter that I made by mixing resin and curing while pulling it with a cocktail stick. Beat Em Up is about to get gory! He is going to be part of the scene for one of the main character’s bases.