Droid Bar

Hey, hey, hey, it's Mark DesLauriers! And have I got some miniatures to share with you!

Okay, Fat Albert rip off intro aside. I do have some miniatures to share with you and it's a good thing that we allow their kind in here. I painted these droids all around the same time.

Lets go to the Droid bar, Droid bar, Droid bar!

I was super excited to get C-3P0 and R2-D2 painted up. Sadly, I don't like how 3P0's paint job turned out. The gold color isn't quite right. Maybe I'll go back and re-paint him one day. Maybe Force Awakens him up a bit and give him a red arm. He's a fun figure to use in Imperial Assault Skirmish as well. He's slow, but can give allies a boost and if adjacent can complicate things for enemy attackers.

R2 was a lot of fun to paint. He had lots of little details to paint and I don't think I've quite gotten over painting white yet. I made his 'feet' pretty dirty. I figure that no matter how many times he gets an oil bath, those are the first things to get dirty. R2 is also fun to use in skirmish, although not for fighting. Usually I just set him up next to a terminal and use his ability to draw extra command cards.

Blam! Murdered you.

IG-88 was a pretty easy miniature to paint. He's mostly all the same metal color. I think I made his blaster rifle darker, to give it some contrast from the rest of him. You can clearly tell that I was having a good time making feet dirty. As IG-88 also looks like he was stomping around in a muddy puddle. He's a pretty tough bounty hunter in Imperial Assault Skirmish as well. I have a friend who likes to use him to great effect. He has a higher cost, which I guess is the trade off.

I tried to play around when painting the Medical Droid. I think I painted him a metallic color and then gave him a green glaze. Then proceeded to throw washes at him followed by some dry brushing. I think it turned out alright. Saska, unfortunately is the result of being tired and done with painting for the day. I had tried to wet blend her jumper, but was left frustrated with the results. So then I just threw some green at her and then gave it a wash and more or less called it a day. Her face also turned out poorly, in my opinion. She isn't likely to be a figure that I use in Imperial Assault, so I doubt that I'll ever come back to her. But maybe. For the bases, I tried to give them an air brushed look. Or at least to make it look like they were standing on metal decking. I may or may not go back and re-base them.

In older miniature news:

We're nothing but trouble!

...getting a shot of their 'good' side.

The man eating tile on the left was a gift from my girlfriend. Despite being mostly stone, it was fun to paint. Probably because it is eating someone. I guess when roaming in a dungeon, it pays to carry a ten foot pole around with you.

The goblin like creature in the middle, is a GW mini. It came in a set of four. They are supposed to be hunters. The other miniatures in the pack are equally cool (although I haven't gotten around to painting them yet). I like how his nose turned out. I believe I achieved it through wet blending (it was one of my first attempts at the process).

The terrifying chest on the right is a mimic from the Reaper Miniatures line. Both it and the stone tile were pewter. The goblin in the middle was a resin figure. Anyways, this was my second attempt at a non metal metallic paint job (the gold trim). I think it turned out alright for what it was. I love how non metal metallics look when done right. But the time involved is a lot greater than just using metallic paint (at least for me and my skill level). I made the dungeon tile base that it is on, using green stuff. I was pretty proud of the result, although you don't actually see too much of it.

Anyways, there's work to be done. So I best get gone. Thanks for looking at my poorly painted miniatures!

Wookiee Mania!

It's looking to be a slow work day, so I figured why not post some poorly painted miniatures! It sure beats transferring my Citadel paint pots to eyedroppers. Why would I take on such a tedious task? I'm glad that you asked! So when I first got back into painting miniatures, I needed some paint. GW locations were nearby and they had been around for quite a while. So I figured that they were the way to go. Conveniently they were changing over the colors names and branding. So I picked up a carry case that could hold miniatures and contained all of the new colors and technical paints; at a decent price. Ps. There are a lot of colors and different technical paints.

The GW paints are pretty thick. Which I don't mind, because you can easily thin the paint. What I don't like is that their paint costs more, for less (compared to Reaper, Vallejo, Game Air. I can't say either way about the P3 line.). That being said, it is easier to find their paint than those other brands (P3 is probably the exception). However I did find a hobby store that carries the Vallejo and Game Air lines.

The major sticking point for me, in regards to the GW paint line. Is that the paints come in pots. So you need to drop your brush in there to get the paint out (they do have a little tray on the lid that holds some paint). Which is fine if you are only using one color. If you are pulling multiple colors onto your (wet) pallet, you are constantly having to clean your brush in between pulling colors. Worse, this is the case even with their airbrush paint line (which makes no sense to me, but I get that they already have the paint pots).

Reaper, Vallejo, Game Air, as well as some other paint lines come in eye droppers. You want color? Just drop a few drops and away you go. Much quicker in my opinion. So I decided to switch all of my Citadel paints from pots to droppers. I bought a bunch for super cheap on line and now...now I actually have to put some work into transferring them over. It will be worth it in the end, but it isn't something that I look forward to doing. So my work area is currently a mess. I suppose I should get that done sooner rather than later. I do have a bunch of miniatures that I want to paint. Anyways, on with the show!

Wookiee Madness!

At the last tournament event at one of our local gaming stores, I ran a team mostly comprised of Wookiees. Because why not? They're tough! Sadly, they're also a little slow and if your opponent can stun them and keep a little distance, they can't do a lot. I think I ran one elite unit and one regular unit, in addition to Chewbacca and some ranged units. Either the Rebel Saboteurs or the Echo Base Troopers.

Team Grey

Since I was running with two different Wookiee Warrior units, I decided to paint each group a different color with a different base set. That way I could easily distinguish between the two units.

Team Brown

I also gave them different colored arm bands. I'm happy with how their fur turned out. Lots of layering and lots of washes. I think their scratched up swords also look good. I'm not sure if you can tell or not, but with team Brown, one of the Wookiee's has a lighter blond fu manchu moustache. Ha. He's definitely ready to tear off his shirt and throw down!

Who are you and what have you done with Chewie?

I figured that I may as well paint all of my Wookiees. I'm disappointed with how Chewbacca turned out. I felt like their was a lot of pressure there, because everyone knows what Chewbacca looks like. It doesn't really look like him. He just looks like another Wookiee to me (speciesist, I know). I did like how the rust turned out on his base. I feel like I've gotten rust on a base (and probably weapons) down. I have some rust powder that I've been meaning to try out. Most likely on something large and filled with metal surfaces. Large miniatures kind of intimidate me at the moment. However, that might change once I get the hang of my airbrush.

Chop dem giant Kashyyyk vegetables!

He's definitely putting his weight into this swing

I like how both Gaarkhan and his base turned out. Stepping on that stone fit with his sculpt and really makes it look like he's coming down hard on someone with his vibro glaive. He's not someone that you want to mess with. I can't remember what he is like for Imperial Assault Skirmish. Chewbacca is fun to use, but too expensive for what you're getting. You get 40 points to build your army and he costs 15 points, I believe. He does tend to stick around, but that's a lot of points for one character.

As usual, the professional looking photo was provided by my good friend James. The poorly taken photos were provided by my handheld portable phone device.

A homemade spray booth and some miniatures

I recently bought an airbrush. But when using it, even when painting into a box, paint misted out into the room. Opening a window probably would have helped. So I decided that I should get a spray booth. Sadly, all of the good deals that I could find were only applicable to the United States. So instead of spending $175 for one locally, I went to the hardware store and bought the necessary materials (thanks DIY sites!) to make one myself.

I'm sure you don't really care about the individual prices for the components, but my home made spray booth ran me about $80 (I spent more than I needed to on a fan that was quiet. Money well spent in my opinion). Then I found an eight pack of LED lights for $50. I put two inside my spray booth, which leaves six to go either in my painting workstation or under some kitchen cupboards.

Those are some miniature bases on top of my freshly minted spray booth.

A shot from behind. You can see where the fan connects to the plastic box and the vent tubing that will be hanging out of the window when I am airbrushing and have the fan on.

A look inside the spray booth. I couldn't find a furnace filter that fit the box, but I did find a filter that I could cut to size.

The fan behind the filter.

The LED lights in action. They'll come in handy during the winter months.

I think I'm going to try and find a lazy susan spinning plate. So that way I can easily move the miniature around while inside the spray booth. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to try it out.

Now, onto some poorly painted miniatures!

I painted these Imperial Officers around the same time as the Royal Guard Champion and the Royal Guards (it kind of sounds like a band name.). They weren't difficult to paint, but there was a lot of flash on them. I thought I got it all before painting them. But you can clearly tell in the pictures that I didn't. At the time I was running two Imperial Officers, so I wanted a quick way to distinguish between them.

I've seen a few different mods for these mini's, including a wicked looking Grand Admiral Thrawn. But didn't want to spend that kind of time on them. I thought about painting their uniforms a different color (I believe that the three uniform colors are black, grey, and olive. Each reflecting a different part of the Imperial military). But then I would have had to grab different paints. So instead I based them all differently. I think they turned out well. The next time that I base with flocking, I think that I'm going to mess around with some thicker clumps to make the ground look more interesting. One shouldn't slack too hard on the base. Especially since it can really tie everything together.

They went that way! No this way! Dolts, they ran over there!

Completely unrelated to Imperial Assault, here a few miniatures that I painted a few years ago. This Rock Troll is a Games Workshop miniature. I think there were four different sculpts. I picked up all four, but have only painted this one. For fun, I added an axe lodged into its back. Rock Troll's don't care. The axe came from the very first miniature that I painted as an adult, a GW painting demo Dwarf. There is a story behind the axe being there. It will probably come up one day in one of my fantasy games.

These two cult going adversaries belong to the Reaper Miniatures line. You can clearly see that the anti-Paladin's sword is broken. It isn't an uncommon thing with pewter miniatures. Both of the bases were home made.

That's all for now. Thanks for checking out these poorly painted miniatures!

Activate Bat-Skates!

Today we'll be looking at some Royal Guards along with the Royal Guard Champion. Despite his high cost in Imperial Assault Skirmish, the Royal Guard Champion was one of my favorite characters to use for quite a while. I used him as well as a unit of Royal Guards in the first tournament that I ever attended at one of the local gaming shops. I hadn't used the Royal Guards prior to FFG issuing an errata for them, but apparently they were pretty powerful.


The fact that FFG was open to fixing cards that were overpowered, was a breath of fresh air for me. I frequently play Dice Masters and while the game is a lot of fun to play, there are a lot of things that could be fixed to make the game more balanced. But I'm not here to open that can of worms.

As I mentioned above, I used both Royal Guards and the Royal Guard Champion in a tournament and wanted to play with a painted team (one nice thing about playing Imperial Assault Skirmish at a tournament, is that your miniatures do not need to be painted in order to participate.). So I started painting one of the Royal Guards. Before I had stopped painting, I had started getting into wet blending. So I figured that is what I would try to do here.

Then I got frustrated. Which was good. It led me to an awesome youtube site: Sorastro's Painting. He does a lot of painting tutorials for the Imperial Assault miniatures. I can't say that I've watched all of his videos, but I have seen a few. I tried to follow along with his video for the Royal Guards. But felt that the one I painted came out too orange and ended up re-painting him. One great thing about painting miniatures is that you can always strip the paint off of a miniature or paint over it (as long as you don't mind losing some of the details) if you are not happy with how it turned out or feel that you could now do a better job than when you first painted it.

Standing at attention

Because the Royal Guards took up so much of their base, I didn't bother re-basing them (that is not entirely true. I re-based one, just to see how long it would take.). Instead I painted one of the bases grey and put some flocking on the others. One day, I may go back and further highlight their robes. Whenever I watch a tutorial or read an article, the painter always seems to take it a step or two further than I would. I yell at the page and go: Why would you keep going? It already looks good. The answer is usually contrast. A miniature may look good when you're got it up to your face. But a few feet away from you on a gaming board and something is lost in translation. I'm slowly trying to work on that. To take a miniature a step or two further than I normally would to try and make it 'pop'.

Focus on me!

Despite liking the Royal Guard Champions' deployment card (with the exception of his cost), I'm not a big fan of his outfit. It didn't excite me and I had great difficulty painting him as as result. Looking back, I probably could have done a better job. But I've got too many unpainted miniatures to worry about touching up the Royal Guard Champion now. Because of his stance, putting him on a new base was somewhat difficult. As you can see below, his feet don't quite fit on the base. Looking at it now, it kind of looks like he's skating. Ha. If I ever get really, really, bored one day, I might have to put some skates on him and attach him to an icy base. Now that I'm thinking about it, it would be pretty hilarious. I may just do it anyways. Now all I can think about is Batman and Robin and the bat-skates incident.

Activate Bat-Skates!

The nicely photographed pictures were taken by my good friend James. The low quality picture was provided by my phone.

Bleep Bloop goes the beat up Droid

Today we'll be looking at some Viper Probe Droids. Not only one of my favorite droid types in the Star Wars universe, but an amazing secondary threat during combat encounters in my Star Wars RPG sessions. Since they can hover, they can be placed just out of reach over a cliff keeping them away from pesky melee characters and hopefully forcing the Crew to split up their attacks.

They're fun to use in the Imperial Assault skirmish game as well. I'm always trying to get them adjacent to enemy units and then exploding them. Ha. It's kind of a double edged sword however, as it destroys my Probe Droid and gives Victory Points to my opponent. But no one ever said that I played smart.

The Probe Droids were originally attached to their bases by the limbs. Which I wasn't happy with. These bad boys hover, so lets get them some fun bases and make them hover! This required obtaining clear pins and some drilling, but I feel that the extra effort was worth it. I painted them up after my Stormtrooper units as another quick and fun (this is a lie. My memories of painting the Stormtroopers was not fun.) set of mini's to get me back into the swing of painting.

-Beep-Bloop-

I'ma explode you!

I tried to paint some scrape lines on their bodies to give the appearance that they were a little beat up. I've done this in the past with things like swords and shields. I'm not 100% satisfied with how it turned out this time around, but that's alright. I've come to terms with the fact that my miniatures will never look as good as the professionally painted ones. That being said, I'm still happy with how they turned out and if I keep painting regularly, the quality can only improve.

Below are a few miniatures that I painted a few years ago. The droid is from the Reaper mini line. I bought him when I was living in Vancouver. I was pretty excited to paint him, since it was the closest thing to a protocol droid that I could find at the time. I decided that he did the books for a junk hauling company. Hence him being all rusted and navigating through debris filled terrain (another useful tactic during RPG combat. Difficult terrain can slow down melee characters and provide some interesting narrative options. Difficult terrain doesn't need to just be broken glass on the floor. Maybe you're in a research office filled with bookcases and narrow passageways. Or a warehouse cluttered with open crates. How about a narrow hallway filled with steaming hot pipes. Or an air vent. etc. etc.).

Beside him is a smuggler from a WoTC blister pack, way back when they had the rights to Star Wars. I think it was from the Star Wars 3.5 era, not the much better (in my opinion) Star Wars Saga era. I had wanted to paint trees on his shirt. But I was happy with how the shirt turned out and wasn't confident enough in my fine detail painting skills to actually go through with it. Fun fact, the other half of his face looks pretty gnarly. Poor pewter mold lines, I think. Other than that, I was pretty happy with how he turned out. I think I'll leave him out so that he can get used in my next campaign. Most likely as an NPC. My Crew of players are too cool for Humans...

So a Human smuggler and a Droid walk into a bar...

Plans for the future? The next miniatures that I plan to show you were my Royal Guard Champion and Royal Guards (the miniatures that I had painted after the Probe Droids). James had read my previous entry and said that he would be down for taking some more pictures that show off my mini bases. That makes me happy and the only thing holding us back from taking more pictures is that elusive mistress known as free time.

Again, the nicely photographed pictures were provided by my good friend James Davis. The one with poor lighting was provided by my phone camera.

Go trooper, go trooper, go!

Finally! Thanks to my good friend James, his picture taking rig and camera, we (he) were finally able to get some pictures for me to display. I think that the pictures turned out great, despite exposing all of my painting flaws! I think maybe in the future I would like to experiment with different backdrops.

I also realized that the straight ahead picture shots, while empowering, result in you not being able to see the miniature's base. Most of these Stormtrooper bases are pretty plain, but there are a few that I put onto nicer bases and it would be a shame if you couldn't see them. Personally, I feel that bases really add to a finished miniature and recommend that if you like it, you should put a base on it. Or under it, I suppose.

Anyways, so before this past January, I had only painted a handful of miniatures over the previous year. So I thought that starting with some white Stormtroopers would be a good place to start. It ended up being a lot more work than I had thought. So much white, so many layers and the game came with so MANY of them! In Imperial Assault, a Stormtroopers deployment card contains three units. I was in Star Wars RPG mode, where the Stormtrooper minion groups usually travel in groups of four (much to the dismay of my players). So that was how I had painted them. I couldn't figure out why I had one extra figure, so I painted him black (I was so sick of seeing white).

This black Stormtrooper knows where it's at. You can't even see where s/he's been shot.

Remember: Shoot around, not through. That is the Stormtrooper way.

I think around six or so months after the base game of Imperial Assault was released, an expansion box that contained some Sandtroopers came out. It took me a while to get these guys painted. Mostly because I was sick of painting white miniatures.

All right everyone, lets keep our eyes peeled for some droids...

Finally, the creme of the crop. These bad boys came out of a blister pack (with some handy command cards and a skirmish map that is currently in tournament rotation.) and sat on my painting station for quite some time. I was so sick of painting white, that I let them sit there for a few weeks. I had plans of painting them like Palpatine's Shocktroopers. But I was ready to be done with Stormtroopers, so that didn't happen. They did however score some fancy bases. I took a shot just before writing this with my phone's camera. The photo isn't nearly as nice as the one that James had taken. But I wanted to show off the bases that they were standing on.

Nobody move, nobody get hurt.

If you like it, you should put a base on it.

One day I'll paint up my Snowtroopers and Kayn Somos. But it won't be white away. Ha. Do you see what I did there? Improper use of grammar? Shut up. Puns are like buns that are exploding with fun. 

My thanks once again go out to my buddy James, who took time out of his busy day to help me take pictures of poorly painted miniatures to post on this poorly chronicled blog.

A Brief Update

So instead of taking some poor quality pictures with my phone. My good friend James has offered up his picture taking services (along with his picture booth), so that you might see how unprofessional these painted miniatures actually are. Hopefully by the end of this long weekend, your presence will be graced by some Stormtroopers. After not painting miniatures for quite a while, I thought they would be a good place to start. After all, how hard can painting a white miniature be?