Of Paints, Blogrolls and Terminators.

I've had a rough 48hrs with work, so bare with me as some of what follows descends into a rant. Only some of it mind, because not everything under the sun is bad.

1. New Citadel Paint Range.

I know these have been talked about to death across the blogsphere, so I'll keep this brief. I'm not amused. I don't mind a new range of paints. I don't mind a new formula. I don't mind that the names have changed. But I DO MIND THESE AWFUL PLASTIC POTS! They really are the most hateful little containers.

Now, I'm not short of paints by any stretch of the imagination, so I'm hardly going to fall over myself to buy this new range in the first place. Aside from the washes (where they annoying pots are less of an issue) and the glazes (because I'm curious), the plastic pots really do put me off trying the rest of this range.

Seriously Citadel, all it would take is a better storage medium for the paints and I'd be buying these. Hell, I'd probably by the full range with the carry case. As it stands, I'll stick with the far more sensible sotrage of my Reaper and Vajello droppers and the far more sophisticated pots of P3 and Cote D'Arms.

2. New Forgeworld Terminators

 

I love Forgeworld's stuff, I really do and their order logs + my bank balance should be a testament for this. But I really don't like these new Tartaros (Tartar Sauce?) Terminators. I've looked and looked at these, trying to find that little glimmer of love in my heart and it just isn't there. I can see what FW have tried to do with making thise consistent with the MKIV armour, but the end result doesn't work me. I like the styling of the MKIV armour and it does look "advanced" as that particular Mk is supposed to do, but it just doesn't carry over to these Terminator kits.

The things which bother me most are the shoulder pads. They're just not big enough. I think if they extended into a proper half hemisphere like the standard Terminator armour does, I'd be a but more enthused. 

Also, I'm a bit fan of the aggressive "look" of the standard Terminator armour, especially the current plastic range from Citadel. For the first time I'm feeling a bit "disappoint" with something from FW.

3. From the Warp Blogrolls

You may have spotted that I've removed the FTW blogroll widget from this page. As you may know (and if you're on the blogrolls you should), Ron has done an overhaul of the blogrolls and is starting afresh. One of the policies of the new rolls is that the blogs must be 40k focused, accepting that occasionally people will have non-40k side projects.

Right now, I'm in the middle of making a Gundam kit, which is evidently not 40k. As a civil servant, I'm a big fan of being consistent on a policy position, especially when starting out a new system. So for the time being, I won't be part of the blog rolls. This is Ron's decision (obviously), but I fully agree with him on this, because it would look very odd for him to say "blogs that focus on 40k" and then on the new blog rolls have "random Gundam stuff." It just wouldn't look right and if I were Ron, I'd make the same decision.

Once I'm back to painting 40k stuff and have a few weeks worth of material on this page, this may change. I hope. :-)

Gundam WiP - Points of Interest

So this is where I am at present, after a few hours work this evening, I've assembled the shoulder housing and finished both arms. Assembly is proving to be slow going, partly because everything needs to be repainted to a varying degree once it comes off the sprues. If I ever do a Gundam again (which won't be any time soon), I'll be taking a radically simplified approach to the painting so the "tidying up" stage for each piece is a lot quicker.

Plus I've had a bit of a disaster with the electrics at home which meant my painting space was unusable for a few days. All fixed now though. 

I'm going to briefly talk about something we normally don't have to worry about painting Warhammer miniatures, articulation. Thanks to Swelter for their comments, which prompted me to think about this. Thoughts after the cut.

Gundam WiP - Mostly Armless

Please forgive me the awful pun.

So most of this evening has been spent building and painting an arm. Just the one. These things take time. the photo above is a shot of the arm skeleton in its near nekkid state. This is quite a few parts in and of itself, with lots of hidden bits to help with articulation, I particularly like the clear plastic green bits, they're a nice visual touch.

The skeleton takes a bit of putting together and, invariably, I make a mistake reading the Japanese instructions. This is largely because I cannot read Japanese at all and mostly just stare at the pictures to get the jist of what I should be doing, then look at the Kanji and wonder what Bandai are trying to tell me with the various accompanying warning symbols.

Red button is no turn delightful?

High voltage death doing?

More pictures after the cut?

Gundam WiP - Assembly Commences

Grainy image courtesy of high ISO setting on my camera, which isn't particularly great but it does the job. Purpose of image.......................to see the glow! Yup, although the model is far from finished, I had to fit one of the LED lights into it just to see the lighting in effect. It isn't super bright, but with all the lights out there is still a pleasing glow. A lot quicker than painting on a particle effect I can tell you!

But this is getting ahead ourselves, we need to step back to some time earlier and peak past the cut.