I Hate Zelda.

Ok, so the title is patently untrue, but that's part of the problem. Since Skyward Sword came out last Sunday, I've had four days where I've had any sort of free time. The majority of said time has been spent on that game. In my four play sessions, I've accumulated 25 hours of play. Do the math. And yes, I know it's sad.

The Devil wears green.

This game is incredibly addictive to me. Given the game-play innovations that have been added to the traditional Zelda formula, this game is too much for me to put down. Add to that the fact that at 25 hours, I'm maybe only half way through the game, and will have more to do after the credits roll, you can probably figure out that my other hobbies have suffered.

Over the past few weeks, I haven't had Magus' minis, since he wanted them back for a bit. So working on my commission hasn't happened. I have managed, however, to get three, that's right, three minis of my own painted.  I've finished up Rahn and Sylys, making my first attempts at Object Source Lighting, or OSL. Overall, I'm not exactly happy with the results, but with practice, I hope to improve. I've also finished my Dawnguard Scyir.

OSL is hard.

A little bit about the Sciyr: though I like my yellow scheme, over the past week or so, I began to feel that I didn't want to take the time to paint it anymore, and was looking for a way change up my scheme a bit without alienating models from the rest of the force.My main goal to that end was that I wanted the three sub-factions to be discernible and unique from one another. Initially, I thought about more or less inverting the scheme, with grey armour and yellow clothes, but after a quick test model, I decided that was a bad idea. So after some color brain-storming, I came up with the following: The yellow stays. It might be a pain, but it looks really good. That means that the trim colours for each sub-faction would change, but the grey for clothing would stay. Rahn and his Mages and anything Houseguard, along with the Myrmidons would retain the granite. All the Dawnguard would receive purple for their capes and trim; the mage hunters would receive a dark blue. 

Purple is the answer.

I'm hopeful that this will solve my partial exhaustion with my colour scheme while still retaining the feel of a unified force. Epic Eiryss is next on the painting docket, but I think I'm going to take her of the chimney thing she drags around everywhere. For reference:

I hate that gargoyle.

I think I'll have to find a way to satisfactorily cut her from the piece and mount her on one the custom bases that should be coming my this week. The thing is, her cloak is modeled to the wall, so I may have to rebuild it with green stuff... and my modelling skills in that medium are... sub-par, to say the least. I may even just cut her cloak shorter. I'll see what solution feels best then. I'll keep you posted on my progress, maybe take some WIPs.

The End

I recently picked up a copy of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for Xbox 360, with the goal of playing through the series in chronological order. That means that I start MGS3: Snake Eater.

I've played every game in the series in some capacity or another, but the only two I've beat are Twin Snakes on the Gamecube (which, if you don't know, was a remake of the original MGS for Playstation), and Peace Walker on the PSP. I must say, that MGS3 is the best of the series. Of course, I'm only part way through the game and still have the rest of the series to play, but this game is GREAT. With the HD treatment, I'm hardly even aware that I'm playing a game that's almost 8 years old. The voice acting and cut scenes, while sometimes over the top are awesome. The story is fun, and Snake as one of my favourite video game characters of all time.

The End is near.

Today I reached a part of the game where you have to fight one of the main antagonist's soldiers, know only as, "The End." The End is an old man (like, over 100 years old) that only ever sleeps until it's time to fight. Then he's this agile old man that is a peerless sniper. This lead to probably one of the coolest boss battles I have ever fought. Most boss battles are the of the "run,dodge, fire, dodge, repeat" variety, but not this one. This is a game of sniper versus sniper. You must methodically comb a massive area of forest, using all the tools at Snake's disposal (including thermal goggles, a directional microphone, sniper rifle, and motion sensor, to name a few) to attempt to sneak up on the old man and hit him before he hits you. I spent close to an hour on this fight, looking for his heat signature, tracking his foot-prints, and looking for the flash of sunlight of his sniper scope, in a true test of gaming endurance.

I understand that this sort of boss fight is not for everyone. In fact, the guy who made the YouTube video above hates this fight. I, for one, found it to be an awesome departure from the standard boss fight fare of most video games. Hideo Kojima has been pushing gamers for years with the Metal Gear series, and I hope he continues to do so in the future.

...

Oh, and did you hear that Metal Gear Solid 5 was announced today?

A Work In Progress, Continued

Insanely tired... So why did I stay up 'til 3am? 'Cuz I'm an idiot, that's why. 

...

I spent about 45 minutes painting while watching T.V. tonight, which is equivalent of sitting with the brush in my hand, doing nothing. I did, however, manage to get the Scyir up to his second level colours. Tomorrow, I'll finish him off, save for the bases.

Behold! A picture!

As I'm hosting a tournament this weekend, Magus has taken his stuff home to plan lists. That means I get to paint my own stuff for a few days. Awesome. 

...

I'm off to bed.

Painting Mustard

I've been asked several times now, both in person and in certain forums, how I go about painting the my Retribution Forces. Seeing as how I have nothing better to do at 2am on a Tuesday(Wednesday?) night,  I thought I'd post it here.

First, All the yellow is done as follows, all will with Games Workshop paints:

- Over a white basecoat, paint Iyanden Darksun foundation
- Wash with Ogryn Flesh Wash
- Leaving the wash in the recesses, paint with a 2:1 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Bleached Bone
- Leaving the previous layer showing a bit, paint on a 1:1 mix of the same colours
- For highlights, I use a 1:2 mix of the same colours
- For spot/extreme highlights, I use pure Bleached Bone

Anything that's metal:

- Since painting metallics over white is @$$, I paint it with Astronomicon grey to darken it back up.
- I paint a few thin layers of Boltgun Metal
- I wash it fairly heavily with Asurmen Blue Wash
- I then reclaim most of it with more Boltgun Metal
- Another, light wash of Asurmen Blue to smoothen the transition
- Highlight the edges with Mythril Silver

All the Grey Stuff:

- Astronomicon Grey Foundation
-Badab Black Wash
- Astronomicon Grey to reclaim some spots
- Highlight with Codex Grey

The Cloaks/Capes:

- Charadon Granite Foundation
- Devlan mud wash
- Reclaim with Charadon Granite
- Highlight with varying mixes of Charadon Granite and Codex Grey

For spot colours, I tend to use either Hawk Turquoise or Ice Blue. I know purple is the complimentary colour for yellow, but I like blue better. 

A Work in Progress

Just a few words before bed.
I've been keeping up as best I can with the Khador commission, but also painting some of my stuff on the side, so I don't get burnt out from painting either faction. Tonight I painted three more Winter Guard Infantry, including the Standard Bearer, making a total of 10 models ready for the dip. Now I just need a decent day to go outside and play with it. Being the middle of November, I may be hard pressed.

On a side note, I must remember to make sure that all the model are firmly attached to their bases. I've incidents in the past of models breaking in the most terrible way. On top of shattering the model into its component pieces, it tends to make the quick shade settle in a way that makes then final product look haphazard.

Also tonight, I got the base colours and some washes on to my Dawnguard Scyir. I love that model.  His pose just screams, "Come at me, bro!"

I've also been working on Adeptis Rahn v.2.0. He's looking good, if I do say so myself. He was the first model I painted for my Retribution force, and I was still finalizing the colour scheme at that point. I thought that since I'm working towards a fully painted force with a decent colour scheme, I owed it to myself and my favourite Warcaster to give him a repaint. At this point, he only needs some highlights along with a small bit of freehand and a decent base.

Finally, I'm quite excited to have ordered a large amount of custom bases from Dragon Forge. I'm hoping these bases will give my force that little something extra and help them stand out. These are all from the "Forgotten Empires" line:

That's all for now. More when I have it.

For Khador!

As I mentioned earlier, I have worked with the Quick Shade on Khador models before. Just a moment ago I found a picture of how it turned out, so I thought I would share it with you.

What do you think?

Painting

As per usual, its been three or so months since my last update. That notwithstanding, here's what's been going on for the past little while.

Recently, my friend Magus asked me to paint all of his Khador force. This is quite an undertaking, since he owns something in the range of 70 points. I myself own somewhere in the vicinity of 120 points of Retribution of Scyrah, the majority of which is unpainted. I did agree, however. He has promised me payment, and as a show of good faith, bought me a unit of Dawnguard Invictors.

I spent the better part of 6 hours the other night just painting the man's infantry. In that time, I managed to painted two of the four main colours of the scheme on 18 minis. As I'm a pretty slow painter, I think this is going to take a while. That's ok.
Instead of painting everything to my normal standard, (using washes, highlights, etc) I'll be putting only flat colours on each model and then using the Army Painter Quick Shade, Dark Tone. I've used this stuff on a couple Khador models before, and it works great. Really, its only a matter of getting the flat colours on a high voloume of models.

I don't want to burn myself out on painting Khador, however, so I've decided to alternate between painting Magus' stuff and my stuff. The advantage of doing a job for a friend is being able to do it at my leisure. I hope that the other guys at our FLGS take note of the painting and approach me to do the same for them. I figure if I can make some cash of it, I can support my habit, er, hobby by doing my hobby.

I also started doing a repaint of Adeptis Rahn Shyeel, my personal favourite warcaster, now that I've definitely settled on a colour scheme and improved my skills. I'll get some pictures up at some point.