I just received an email from a group of people who are running a Warhammer 40K Live Action Role-Playing game at Origins.  Here is the description of the event:

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Our LARP is entitled Nox Termimus, and takes place on the hive world of Megiddo.  We'll be using pre-made characters, but as a result we've tried to include as broad a selection of character as possible.  The rules set is home brewed, based primarily on Cthulhu Live 3rd Edition and heavily informed by Dark Heresy.  The player's introduction and cast list follows:

For over fifty years the hive world of Megiddo has been embroiled in bloody civil war.  On this planet overrun by mutants and heretics, only the great hive city of Arx Primoris stands as a beacon of order, orthodoxy, and Imperial authority.  The citizens of this decaying world now prepare for a last desperate stand against the enemies of Mankind.  But within this time of despair there is a glimmer of hope in the form of a Lord Inquisitor.  The citizens of Arx Primoris pause in anticipation and fear, knowing that the mercy of The Inquisition is as harsh as it’s justice.

Inquisitorial Coterie
Lord Inquisitor Mortiphonsus Plaxx - Aged and respected Inquisitor Apprentice Inquisitor Gorderic Zail - Young but ruthless apprentice of Lord Plaxx Bella Nightfall - Mistress of Blades, Callidus Assassin, vengeful hand of the Lord Inquisitor Young Stewart - Scribe, Savant, and Psyker thrall

The Rulers of Megiddo
Lord Governor Trask vonKilmer - Planetary governor and voice of The Emperor Prince Daveen vonKilmer - Rake, Princeling, and scion of House vonKilmer Lady Marium Dionisia vonKilmer - Eccentric daughter of Lord vonKilmer and jewel of the court Heinrich the Confessor - Respected theologian and semi-retired priest of The Ecclesiarchy Caspirov Maccabius - Director of the Admunustratum Bureau of Mutant Affairs Guildmaster Erasmus Byle - Wealthy merchant and robber baron Lady Lucretia Byle - Noble-born wife of Erasmus and a familiar sight at court

Imperial Navy Contingent
Admiral Doramus vanRichen - Former noble citizen of Megiddo, master of Battlefleet Walpurgus Navigator Gadevillius Brom - Navis Nobilite and advisor to The Admiral Engineseer Descart Gundamus - Tender to the machine-spirit of the Dominance Lieutenant Maximillian Gorst - Last of an old naval family

Citizens of Megiddo
Esthme Genevieve vanHogarth - Last of a fallen noble house Archibald Orvile Hrusk - Patriarch of the Hrusk line Arthus Hrusk - Hab worker Abigail Hrusk - Granddaughter of Archibald Hrusk Half-Mad Thomas The Olde - Madman of the sump, and reluctant prophet of the ash wastes Tien Voor - Last surviving Astropath of Megiddo

Registered Mutants
Quasimodo Kyphosis - Brute and bully of the mutant underclass Hephaestus Vix - Wretched mutant slave Travis the Bent - Humble toiler of the middle hive Sigismund Seeungeheuer - Young mutant and agitator

Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Contingent Logis Mechanicus Eximius XXVIII - Senior Priest of Mars Preceptor Pascal Mazinger - Lexmechanic, monk, and retainer to Logis Eximius Servitor Ogram MXII - Augmented servitor and defender of Logis Eximius

Crew of The Jeweled Chalice
Captain Malifax Randal - Rogue Trader
Feral Goor, The Render - Primitive brute and right hand to Captain Malifax Felinn Baal - Off-world entrepreneur

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Sounds pretty interesting to me.  The event is currently scheduled for 9pm on Friday, so after you've finished playing our Apocalypse game earlier in the day consider heading off for some live-action 40K.  The more 40K themed events the better I say!

I went over the basics of Outlining (it really is a pretty simple idea) last time, but I want to take this opportunity to show you another example – and, also, a nifty way of cutting down painting time.

Take a look at the image at right.  It is of a Landraider Crusader that I am slowly working on.  The picture shows both sides of the tank.  Notice how sharp the corners and different levels on this side seem?  Compare that to the other side (bottom half of the pic) – see how flat it looks?  That’s the benefit to outlining.  It makes the individual bits far more distinct.

What’s cool about this example is what I used to do the outlining.  To see it just click here.

It really is just as easy as drawing a line.  This is especially true for a vehicle as the sizes are large (for miniatures at least) and the corners often sharp.  Using typical outlining techniques – usually a wash put in place with a paint brush – using an art pen is not only far faster, but even neater.  The lines are solid and straight, only requiring touch-ups if and when you slip.

Even better is that the art pen can at times be used on figures as well.  When this is a suitable choice depends on the model in question and how sharp the portions of it may be.  The most likely problem is that the lines the pen leaves will be just too thick and therefore look too artificial.  However, with a .005 width art pen you can often get the lines thin enough to work.  You can even use different colored pens! 

With something as irregular as a figurine more touch-ups are apt to be needed than with vehicles.  Still, it is faster than usual painting methods and at times better, especially if your natural painting ability isn’t that great.  Fortunately for us non-gifted painters it doesn’t take that much talent to outline sharp angles with an art pen!

More to come…

Long time readers of this blog might have noticed that there are actually TWO people on the author side of this site.  To the rest of you... hello.  While Ranillon may have me out-posted by over 80 posts, and while his available time with the hobby has allowed him to surpass my armies in both quantity and quality, I have... uh... I have three kids in diapers. 

Warning... PICTURE OF KIDS ... 

Yes, life happens to every avid gamer in this genre and we find our priorities suddenly change.  A move, a killer job schedule, a busy school schedule, a new relationship, or even having kids.  All this and more can turn your gaming schedule on it's ear and leave you with precious little time to enjoy the hobby.  You either know this already or you know it's coming.  The trick is... what to do about it?

There are several key things you can do to maximize your remaining time and stay involved in the hobby.

• Personal Time - No matter what events in your life are eating away your precious free time, you have to set aside SOMETHING for yourself.  Raising 3 kids makes this tough, but if the wife and I don't reserve "me" time, we'd go mad.  Mad I tell you, mad.  I get saturday evenings to myself (which is my reserved gaming time) as well as weeknights between 10 and midnight (which is when I paint and convert minis).  Your schedule may be less demanding than this, but the principle is the same.  Set aside the time, make a routine out of it, or you'll never get anything done.
• Deadlines - I'm one of those people who works best on a deadline.  If I have two months left until that tournament, i can whip out an entire army in that time.  But without a deadline, I never seem to get anything done.  (Just ask Ranillon, he pokes fun at me for it.)  If life is taking away your time, consider setting goals and deadlines for yourself.  Give yourself so many weeks to finish that unit and schedule a game with friends to debut it in so you force yourself to paint it up on time.
• Discipline - When you're short on time, maximizing use of that time is key.  With only two hours a night of personal time, it's easy to have too many things to spend it on.  This is my biggest failing.  I lost a lot of 2008 to Neverwinter Nights 2 and Civilization 4, and that killed my productivity in the hobby.  If you're one of those gamers who can paint up one army and feel comfortable using it over and over again for years with your local crowd, then losing your time to video games or other things isn't so bad.  But the true fanatic is one who wants to expand their collection, constantly adding new squads, new vehicles, new armies.  And to do that, you need to avoid giving in to other hobbies until your army is done or until you reach the stopping point you set out to hit.
• Focus - Yes, stopping points.  You have to focus on what you're working on.  Painting up a unit of Kroot Mercenaries followed by an Orc warlord conversion followed by several test paints of High Elf Spearmen does you no good as a gamer.  Those kroot should have been followed up by an Ethereal conversion and then a newly painted Sniper Drone team.  THAT would have done you some good, and would have allowed you to field a better force.  Stay focused.  You can work on the elf army next.

With these things in mind, even a gamer with limited time such as myself can make decent contributions to his collection.  In the next month or two, I'll be focused on producing terrain for Origins.  Specifically, woods and trees for use in the Rogue Trader rounds.  Stay tuned, and see if I can practice what I preach.

Here is my latest room for 40K Space Hulk -- the Cannon Chamber.  The idea is that this is where one of the guns in the hulk is located.

This time I want to talk about something related to layering, but not quite the same thing – namely Outlining.

Whereas layering is about mimicking the shades and highlights you would naturally see in an object or person, outlining is more about distinguishing one part of the painted model from another.  To take a look at what I mean check out the two pictures that accompany this post.

The first is of the right hand of my new commander sans anything but the basic first covering of paint.  It’s not just bland, but as many of the parts are the same color – fingers from palm, razors from supports – they tend to blend together.  Where does one end and the other begin?  One way to tell the two apart is to use layering to give different parts different looks, but often that by itself isn’t going to be enough.

Now check out the second picture.  It’s of the left hand and here I have only done outlining (there is still a lot of layering to do).  Note how I have used washes to fill in the deeper portions of the model but also to “outline” the various parts of the gauntlet.  Yes, in the case of the icon and wreath the washes also serve as the first layer before highlighting, but just as importantly they serve to make it clear how one part is different from another.

That is the whole point of outlining – to make the various parts of the model distinct.  It’s related to layering, but is not quite the same thing as the aim of outlining is to literally outline a particular bit of model.  Once you’ve outlined something that’s it.  You don’t add in more layers of outlining.  As part of layering you can easily outline as well using the same washes (and sometimes paint).

This may sound a bit of an odd add-on to painting, but remember that we are talking about a comparatively tiny figure.  What is easy to see on the full-size equivalent can disappear on its miniature cousin.  Outlining aims to exaggerate the placement of items on the model so that the viewer can see it easily.

More to come...

I love capes – or, at least, painting them.  They are made for a painter like me.  Whereas the scariest thing I can face on the hobby table is a flat surface that needs to be filled, capes are ruffled surfaces perfect for highlighting.  So, here is an example, one I want to use to demonstrate how quick and easy something like this can be to paint.

In this case I started off with Mechrite Red (a GW foundation paint that is one of the few good reds out there – usually reds are weak and require many coats to get right), went to Blood Red, and finally Blazing Orange.  Note that I didn’t use any blended colors.  I wanted to illustrate the results you can get using off-the-rack pigments.

Just like before I worked my way up, putting on the colors in the order of darkest to lightest, lowest to highest.  As I went the colors were spread out less and less to mimic the effect of the light reflecting off the material of the cape.  Every frame at left is one color being added at a time.  In this case I didn’t even drybrush, but merely painted out the reds carefully.

For those that don’t know drybrushing is when you take a brush, put on a small bit of paint, wipe off almost all of that paint, and then carefully dust what remains on to the model.  You do so briskly back and forth.  The aim is to let the brush automatically leave the pigment on the highest parts of the figure.  Done right it makes for a more gradual transition between colors.  The difficulty with dryburshing is control – it’s easy to spread the paint in places you don’t want it to be.  Also, it can produce a fuzzy result if the paint is too dry and a gloppy one if it is too wet.  It really is an art and properly so – a big difference between a good and great painter is how well they drybrush.

However, this is a post on how to be a pretty good painter, not a great one.  It’s also, in this case, about getting the best results with the least effort (and skill).  So, for this cape I have refrained from drybrushing just to show what you can achieve with straight painting (which is easier to do).  Later on I will use some drybrushing to improve the effect.

One other trick I’ve used in the last frame is a wash made of watered down Mechrite Red.  I then applied it liberally across the cape to soften the transition between colors.  It’s an imperfect substitute for drybrushing, but – again – it’s also quick and easy to do.

More to come...

Now that you understand the basic theory behind painting miniatures it’s time to give you an example of the ideas in action.  In this case I am going to paint up my new commander’s face, in the process illustrating how shading and highlighting can bring a model to life.

 Take a look at the first frame showing the face with only a basic covering of Dwarf Flesh (a flavor of GW paint).  Like the rest of the figure it is flat and uninteresting.  Sure, the natural shadows of the model does give it a modicum of life, but especially once you pull back and take a look from feet away the whole face seems to meld into one big pale glob.

 The second frame is my commander’s face after I used a wash of brown ink.  To do so I just wiped the stuff all around with a brush without too much concern as to where it went.  The liquid nature of the wash means that it will flow into the crevasses of the model automatically, thereby darkening the areas you’d want to be darker anyway.  Notice how just this first layer of extra paint adds depth to his face.  Thus, even just an extra five minutes to add a wash can be a significant improvement.

 Note:  I typically prefer to use a darker wash to the faces of men and work up from there.  More typical would be to use a lighter wash.

 In the third frame I have gone back with more Dwarf Flesh, but this time I’ve tried to only add paint to the raised portions of his face – the nose, the cheeks, forehead, lips, and chin.  This forms two distinct layers with more subtle differences if you look closely.  Again, the aim here is to highlight those parts of the model that would be highlighted naturally thanks to the light of the commander’s environment.

 In the final frame I have gone back once more, but this time with a mixture half of Dwarf Flesh and half of the lighter Elf Flesh.  Accordingly, I have attempted to place it only on the highest portions of his face, again to emphasize the lighting.  Now there are three distinct layers, but the extra care I’ve taken helps produce additional subtle shades between them.

 That’s layering in a nutshell.  Just how many layers you add is up to you.  I find that three or four is usually good enough, but if you read White Dwarf or painting manuals the experts there may apply anywhere from 5 to 10.  Generally speaking, the more layers the more gradual the shading and the better the overall effect.  However, there is definitely a point of diminishing gains here.  While extra layers may add extra depth beyond four or five the differences are going to be hard to notice unless you do a careful job.  More to the point, they may not be noticed at all unless a person eyeballs the model up close.  From five feet away they are only going to notice three or so layers anyway.

 Thus, here is a case where the Five Foot Rule truly applies.  Doing any layering at all really helps your painting job, but since most people will only be seeing it from five feet or more you don’t necessarily have to be all that neat or spend all that much extra time.  You get the most bang for your painting buck with just three or four layers.  Beyond that you are not just going for a pretty good job, but a great one – with all the extra time and effort that entails.

More to come...