Hellcat tank crew

 In between playing video games, guitar and working, I have been able to make some headway on the Hellcat diorama. My painting's not so great, really haven't painted in depth in a long time. I tried to get the drivers face a dusty look, came out looking like someone hit him in the face with powder.

 This was brutal. I kept having to reposition arms, break some stuff off to get everything to fit, position the crew just right... You can see in the fourth picture that I had to trim off the tip of the commanders shoe so he can fit and have the "correct" looking posture, otherwise, he looked like he was just floating in the cuppola. Not to mention finding a spot where that machine gun fits . And then trying to get the shell loader position correctly...drove me INSANE! Those aren't even his original arms/hands. I took pieces from other soldiers and glued them on him, I was bent on having him loading a shell in the breech. I hope it adds motion and character to the overall scene.

 I've started painting the tank and I'm pretty satisfied with it. The term "you are your worst critic" is really strong with me, I usually feel my work isn't good enough no matter what I do. But that will only drag you down in the end, you'll have something that looks great but you make it worse by adding a little more, then a little more, then a little more.

 Tank pictures coming soon.

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Da Moon! Da Moon!

I tried to take a picture of the moon when it was full but it came out too bright and blurry to be able to see any of the marks or craters. So naturally I took out my telescope and spent far too much time trying to line up the telescope with the moon and then the camera with the telescope. And then re-align everything every couple of minutes because, guess what? THE MOON FREAKING MOVES! I mean, come on, who would think it would be more frustration than fun, with minimal pay off?!

And this cool shot of a halo of light around the moon, doesn't happen often and it's very cool to see first hand.

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I've been obsessed with...

 I don't even particularly like the game but I still find myself playing it all the time...like ALL the time. It saps your night away.

 The game is a third person shooter but with a touch of RTS components, which is kinda cool if you know what you're doing. You can build buildings such as bunkers, starhawk pads, jeep garages, turrets, walls, etc. Each building costs in game currency, called "rift" that's a blue ball of energy that floats towards you. You gain this rift a couple ways: by being near a spawn point, by killing/destroying enemy buildings or vehicles or from rift barrels throughout the map.

 One problem is that there is an overall team build limit for structures, you can only have 32 buildings at once. So if some idiot decides to build 10 walls for no reason, you're down ten structures. There are a lot of wasted buildings in this game. For instance if you build a vehicle building, it comes with a vehicle. A lot of people don't realize that you can spawn new vehicles from that same building, but instead, they just build a brand new building. When you have a 32 building limit, there is no sense in building five garages at your home base.

 However, the game IS fun. It has a touch of...unreal and tribes almost. Jetpacks and a shotgun or rocket launcher is my favorite thing to run around with. Not to mention it can be a lot of fun flying a starhawk.

 Not sure if I'll buy it right away though, I have too many games I haven't even started yet.

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The Hoplites shield

  I noticed that the detail stamped in the middle of the shield was off center. There's an ornamental forearm grip down the center and around the circumference there is some kind of hook that rope gets tied to. This was all off center, so when I tried attaching the braided rope it looked all messed up and out of proportion.

 So I decided to make a cast of the details, then sand them off and realign them properly. I used Castin Craft's mold builder and some casting epoxy mixed with purple paint so I can see what I was doing (it dries clear on its own, hard to see detail on a clear piece).

 The mold builder gets put on in thin layers (about 13 layers, depending on the size of the mold). The first two or three layers are what counts the most as these are the layers that have the detail. The rest of the layers are for support so the mold doesn't tear. You can use a hair dryer to make each layer dry faster.

Still some fine detail stuff to work out, but it will look a lot better.

 As for the hand that I screwed up awhile ago, I wasn't sure how to repair it. I tried to sculpt new fingers but it wasn't coming out even close to mediocre. So I went with the simple solution, drilled holes and used wire to secure it in place. This also allows me to bend the fingers at the knuckles so I can make it look like the hand is actually grabbing the spear. Which I had to fix since it snapped in half. Brass rod and some small diameter wire for the hand grip in the middle.

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More hellcat

 Well after a fairly decent disaster on the the Greek Hoplite with this hand and fingers, I decided to take a break from him and work some more on the Hellcat diorama.

 I repainted the wall and added some moss and seeds and crap to the cracks and crevices. Finished painting the tree leaves and trunk, added some green moss to give it a bit of character. Added seeds and leaves to the grass and added more flowers and stuff.

 I'm thinking the base is pretty much done, now to finish the tank and crew.

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Toes

 Well seems like I got a boost of motivation and this is what happened. I primed the toes I previously sculpted and they looked all flat and gnarled up, they looked horrible. So I really only had one option left: Make new toes! I cut off the old plastic and sculpted new ones from apoxie sculpt.

Toe nails and all. They look rough now but I'll get them smoothed out before I paint. And besides, the feet are gonna be pretty dusty anyways, he just got out of battle! So maybe it won't look so bad.



 The spear broke in half and I couldn't aline it properly so I cut the bladed ends off, drilled some holes so they can be glued to a brass rod I cut to the appropriate length and scuffed up with sandpaper to give it a wooden texture (hopefully).

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Hoplite part 4

Well this is taking longer than I expected. I keep putting it off because it needs so much work, a vicious cycle of procrastination.

I added putty to the top of the plume to give it some texture, before this it was just smooth flat plastic.

 Next, the inside of the shield has some type of braided rope that goes around the inner circumference of the shield. I anchored small diameter wire to my light and just started braiding it, I hope it looks natural when it's attached to the shield.

 And the biggest set back for me, the feet. The toes were basically one large rectangle of plastic. Between this and not really feeling motivated enough to do a good sculpting job, I barely worked on this kit over the past two months. I know it's probably a simple job, but I want to do it right.

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