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Tutorial: DIY Infinity Hacking Device Projector

Recently I’ve decided to take my previous Hacking Device Holoprojector concept to a higher level. The key point was to use the same base material: a Coca Cola bottle plastic, but instead of painting simbols and lines on it – make it look more like a complex holo projection with many ‘windows’ opened at once. A devious plan formed in my mind and here I am sharing it with all who are eager to read it!

Inf Nomad Hacker 1

I USED:

* Scissors,
* Twizzers,
* Super Glue,
* Coca Cola bottle XD
* Piece of plastic/brass mesh,

0 1

0 2

1  Using Scissors cut a small piece of Brass Mesh and a small piece of Coca Cola bottle.

1

2  Still using Scissors cut a piece of Plastic into small rectangles.

2

3  Use some oval shaped tool to softly bend both the Brass Mesh piece and Plastic rectangles.

3

4  Using Super Glue, attach the Brass Mesh piece to a miniature.

4

!  I recommend to paint the miniature along with Brass Mesh piece at this point.

5

5  Using Tweezers and Super Glue attach Plastic rectangles to a painted Brass Mesh.

6

6  It is done, but you can apply some Skull White onto the edges of Plastic rectangles to make them look more 3D.

Inf Nomad Hacker 2

And that’s it 🙂 Whole process takes up to 10 minutes so I decided to remove old Holoprojectors from my Nomadic Hackers and install brand new ‘software’. Hope you give it a try 😉

Special Project: “Nomad Soul”

 Second ‘Special Project’ in 2015! It was emerging between my thoughts once in a while for some time before I was finally motivated to work on it. The crucial point for me was to accidentally bump into an online Painting Contest at Data-Sphere forum. I already had the concept and materials to make this piece so an opportunity for a nice competition was the final push I needed.

This time I choose a Nomad miniature as a centerpiece of the Diorama. It is my favorite faction in Infinity the Game, and the Grenzer model I’ve picked just ‘screamed’ to let him ride that awesome haqqislamic bike. The pose was almost right if only I done something with the coat and the only thing holding me at bay was a pair of hands. In the end I used original Sniper Rifle left hand of a Grenzer, Shotgun right hand of a Jagguar and stripped a Spektr of both arms.PanOceanic antennae was added and after rearrangement of the pose some Green Stuff Sculpting had done the rest.

A ‘concept art’ which shows my overpowering drawing skills.

WIP nomad soul 2

First step was to arrange the miniature on a bike.

WIP nomad soul 1

Some conversion and Greenstuff sculpting.

WIP nomad soul 3

WIP nomad soul 4

Next step was to create a diorama thus fulfilling my mind’s eye concept. I’ve picked a nice candle for a diorama’s base and starterd to work with main arrangement of things…

Preparation of diorama.

WIP nomad soul 5

Basics of diorama and miniature composiotion.

WIP nomad soul 8

WIP nomad soul 6

WIP nomad soul 7

Facture added.

WIP nomad soul 9

Then came the ‘Painting Time’. Usually I start by painting the miniature but this particular project was an exception. I’ve started with diorama instead to be certain that in the end I will be able to paint it correctly. Painting rust and dust is still new to me.

Diorama paintjob in progress.

WIP nomad soul 11

WIP nomad soul 13

WIP nomad soul 12

Once I was sattisfied with diorama’s result I’ve focused all of my attention on the miniature. I tried to begin in accordance with Angel Giraldez’s online Kum Bike tutorial and it wen’t rather off at some point. Still I was able to create something unexpected and extraoridinary if compared to my other miniatures.

The actual miniature preshaded and with red armour in midpainting.

WIP nomad soul 14

WIP nomad soul 15

Something to look like NMM appeared on the bike. Armour lined and shades appplied.

WIP nomad soul 16

WIP nomad soul 17

WIP nomad soul 18

Closing to finish line I’ve figured that something went really wrong. I couldn’t pinpoint the cause – just felt taken aback while observing the pice. It took me half a day of painting different miniatures to finally understand: The diorama sucked! It was a total disaster! There was not enough space for the biker which was posed so that only a small part was visible. Black rant of the base made too much bad contrast while the candle… oh the candle justed didn’t fit…
It went wrong in the forums too as I was told that my ‘OSL looks more like a nuclear blast’ to which I actually agreed…

Bad – bad diorama… bad nuclear blast…

WIP nomad soul 19

WIP nomad soul 20

WIP nomad soul 21

WIP nomad soul 22

I’ve made my mind then and remade the diorama totally. I cut the stuff into pieces which I used to create foundation for another ‘faster, harder, better, stronger’ diorama. This time I picked a much more suitable base for it too. I also fallowed an advice of Claudius Sol and dimmed the OSL.

Diorama cut and rebased.

WIP nomad soul 23

WIP nomad soul 24

WIP nomad soul 26

At some point the diorama needed just the final touches.

WIP nomad soul 25

WIP nomad soul 27

Here’s the final piece: “NOMAD SOUL”

Nomad Soul 1 s

Nomad Soul 4 s

Nomad Soul 7 s

Nomad Sould night 2

View complete Gallery… Like/Don’t like? Vote at CoolMiniOrNot…

Tutorial: Painting Five Layers Technique

Here is a technique that I have developed through years of painting and find it most usefull up to this day.

Introduction:

Five Layers Technique is a basic technique of choosing and applying colours. I especially reccomend it for begginers as it is simple, easy to learn, fast and rewarding. You can apply almost every colour using this technique and achieve good results as long as you choose proper paints to do so. It is especially good for either painting entire army ‘tabbletop level’ or preparing a miniature for much more complex paintjob.

The main concept of Five Layers Technique is to paint different colours using five layers of paint. Starting with a foundation layer, covered with base layer, finished with highlights, all being washed and edged. Here’s an example of how does it look like when finished:

Yu Jing 9

Choosing colours:

It does not matter if you have a steady hand and a lot of patience – if you pick your paints badly this method will not work. Choosing proper colours is the key to succeed. The colours should pe picked in this order:

* Base layer: pick up a medium tone colour,
* Foundation layer: choose darked version of the base colour,
– The exception to this rule is if you would like to keep the colour bright such as bone, vibrant purple, creme, yellow, etc. In this case a little bit brighter, preferrably pastelle foundation colour will do.
* Finish layer: choose a brighter version of the base colour.
– Try to keep it the same distance as it is between Base and Foundation layer.
* Wash layer: use either same colour wash or brown.
–  Brown wash fits in most cases. Be aware tho – it will do much damage if you pair it with pink, purple, violet or white.

Here’s and example of a proper layer set:

five layer technique 2

Applying colours:

Let’s talk about how to apply choosen colours. There are some rules that must be followed. Below is the order and all the important leads:

– Foundation layer: Must be painted thoroghly. Paint should be delivered into recesses and cover all the flat areas, in the same time it must be kept from obscuring details too much. Some water may be added to the paint to ease the process.

– Base layer: May be painted scruffy and without dedication. Paint should be applied to all the flat areas and bulges leaving some of the Founation layer visible around it. Protruding areas should be ‘base’ covered wholly. I susually use flat brush for this layer to quicken the process and leave some Foundation layer visible without effort.

– Finish layer: Is the hardest part. Only protruding elements, central parts of flat and bulged areas should be covered. Some ‘edging’ may be done but next layer will render it almost invisible.

– Wash layer: Is the easy part. A lot of wash should be applied onto efery surface with no regard for details. Medium brush is good for the job as brushes too small won’t keep a lot of wash in them.

– Finish layer: Goes once again. Only protruding elements, central parts of flat and bulged areas should be covered but some parts of previous Finish layer should stay visible. At this point ‘edging’ is desirable.

Here’s a step-by-step example of this method:

five layer technique

That’s it 🙂 Below are some colours recepee examples for this tutorial:

flt 1
Foundation: Khorne Red (GW), Karak Stone (GW), Xereus Purple (GW), Tausept Ochre (GW), Stegadon Scale Green (GW), Regal Blue (GW),

flt 2
Base: Wazdakka Red (GW), Skeleton Bone (AP), Liche Purple (GW), Golden Yellow (GW), Hawk Turquise (GW), Ultramarine Blue (GW),

flt 3
Finish: Wild Rider Red (GW), Skeleton Bone (AP) + White, Genestealer Purple (GW), Golden Yellow (GW) + White, Hawk Turquise (GW) + White, Lothern Blue (GW),

flt 4
Wash: Red Tone Ink (AP), Strong Tone Ink (AP, Purple Ink (AP), Seraphim Sepia (GW), Turquise Ink (P3), Blue Tone Ink (AP),

flt 5
This how it looks like when Wash dries up,

flt 6
Final Finish: Wild Rider Red (GW), Skeleton Bone (AP) + White, Genestealer Purple (GW), Golden Yellow (GW) + White, Hawk Turquise (GW) + White, Lothern Blue (GW),

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful.

Special Project: “Lone Sentry”

Recently I spent a lot of time working on a ‘Special Project’. I have read/watched tutorials and acquired Know How in a hope of expanding my painting skill. I even visited a friend from Fantasygames Painting Studio to watch and learn. In the end I feel like if I ‘gained a level’. Here is a shortcut of a tremendous amount of hours spent on learning and a week of hard day and night labour:

“LONE SENTRY”

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Infini uber wip 3

Pano king WIP

Pano king WIP 2

PANO KING WIP 1

FINAL RESULT:

b3 31

b3 32

Check out this project’s Gallery…

Special thanks to:

Shizune (Made by Shizune) – for Painting Panoceania Blue Armour Tutorial
C’tan (Fantasygames Painting Studio) – for all the help, know how and this awesome Salt & Hairspray Tutorial

Review: Board Game AVP The Hunt Begins

Hey guys! Some of you may find this interresting. Recently I bought a hot stuff: AVP The Hunt Begins boardgame and what I found inside the box forced me to write this review.

About Aliens vs Predator franchise: I personally love AVP. The retro futuristic setting and it’s owerwhelming dark mood keeps my heart burning with desire for more and more AVP stuff to buy. In AVP universe human is reduced to the role of prey. Even tho Colonial Marines are tough bastards equipped with deadly Smartguns and Pulse Rifles they still fall to Alien predation and are no match against masters of the hunt, the Predators. Hunted for sport or means of breeding they must cooperate to survive the inevitable doom.What I find the most important in all AVP products is for them to be based on Aliens (2nd movie) and Predator (1st movie). So we have some armed to the teeth Colonial Marines, being thrown between an angered Aliens hive and dreadful Predator hunters. They try to survive, while their number dwindles slowly. All the time the terror is multiplied, but still badass Marines cheer up the mood with good, oldschool oneliners. This is how I see it. That’s the way I love it.

So when I found out about AVP board/miniature game being released I was extatic! I jumped right onto Kickstarted and was taken aback by the information of who releases it: Prodos Games. After seeing the difference between Prodos’ Warzone Kickstarter and Warzone final products I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend some cash in advance. I’d held my hand and awaited KS campaign results. After it came to an end Prodos surprised me with an option to buy the game via their site. That was unexpected and bothered me a little so once more I held my hand and didn’t made the purchase. Finally the AVP The Hunt Begins hit the stores and this time, being sure that I will get my copy, I made the purchase.

The box looks amazing and weights a lot so once you will hold it in your hands, you’ll probably buy it 🙂

packed avp
THE BOX: The way with which game elements are packed is mediocre. Cards packed in small paper boxes. Miniatures packed in zip bags. All zip bags packed into a medium cardboard box. A huge foam square glued still inside the cover of the box (what the fuck?! Why have you damaged my beautiful box Prodos?). Regardless of the foam my Rulebook was already damaged so this sole fact halted some of my enthusiasm. It was balanced with an easy but clever move with which Prodos prepared Cardboard Sprues to be taken out of the box. A small hole big enough for a finger was cut in the sprues. (Why haven’t I seen anything similar in other board games – I don’t know, but it’s a nice idea).

packed all

figurka packed total

figurka packed

packed gąbka

wnętrze pudła

packed instrukcja

packed wypraski
MINIATURES: Miniatures are amazingly detailed and kept to the scale. Look at these Colonial Marines. These look amazing!

figurka sm
Still some molding solutions are just idiotic. Take a look at this Alien miniature. It has mold channels inside it’s hands! I work with miniatures for more than fifteen years now and I’ve rarely seen such stupid way of placing the mold channels. Some of the hobbyists may have a real problem dealing with these.

figurka alien
And now the worst thing. My Disc Predator was a miscast and looked like this. Yeah Chinese – you fucked up my Predator Miniature and then packed it into my copy of the game. What do you think I feel like right now? This miniature is trash. Instead of painting it and playing the game I placed a complaint to my local store and await a new miniature.

figurka predator
I thought that Prodos Games evolved a bit after Warzone. A lot of mistakes in production process there. As it stands I was wrong – Prodos seems not to learn from it’s failures.

CARDS: In my opinion Cards are the biggest disappointment in the whole product. The material with which they are made is bad. Boardgame Cards where made this way like ten years ago. The differences between Prodos Cards and Fantasy Flight Games’s ones are huge. The quality is light years away. Still it gets worse. The cards lack all the climate that made AVP what it is. For example: there are no quotes from the movies, no one liners that built the Alien and Predator franchises. Not a single ‘theme’ motive on the objective cards. Even card backs are devoid of thought through theme. These looks like if Prodos Games forced the product at speed and without taking theme and AVP mood into consideration. “Just print the rules”. Here, take a look:

[This looks ok,]

karty all

[These are faction cards and they look ok,]

karty avp przód
These are faction cards backs and I can’t help myself not to wander – where the Fuck are Colonial Marines cards? Was it so difficult to make them look more like card fronts?

karty avp tył
These are Enviromental Cards. Wow Prodos Games – so much climate, so strong AVP theme… How have you planned to build the atmosphere of the game without a plot/story/setting motive?

[Predator and Alien stat cards look nice.]

karty enviroment

karty postacie
And now the worst shit ever: Colonial Marines stat cards look ALL THE SAME! Hey grunts, which one of you is an awesome Smartgunner? Anyone called for a Medic? Really? Couldn’t these be done differently? It’s not that there’s plenty of graphics in the game with not more then a dozen in the Rulebook and half a dozen on the stat cards…

karty sm postacie
And where are all the Marines? I’ve looked through the Rules and there’s only a single Colonial Marines picture (well not exactly as it depicts a Weyland Yutani commando) and like two or three  pictures with a Colonial Marine being a background. It seems Prodos forgot about Human species being the epicenter of the AVP theme. Sure I like a feel of the call of the hunt as a Predator or to stalk the dark corridors as the Alien, but as a human the faction I feel the most related to is Colonial Marines.

grafika pred 1

grafika avp

grafika alien 3

grafika alien 2

grafika alien 1
grafika sm
CARDBOARD TOKENS: I have mixed feeling about these. The cardboard material is bad still the visual aspect is quite nice. Take a look at this:

wypraska
Looks good doesn’t it? And now let’s do the things Prodos style, with as much minimalism as one may have. Sentry, Hidden, Activated tokens all look like shit. Devoid of climate and pathetic in design. Other tokens look ok but not awe worthy.

żetony małe
[I just can’t understand the reasoning behind designing Acid Damage token to be one sided. It was childishly easy to copy/paste the same graphic to the other side.]

żetony duże

żetony duże tył
THE RULES: The final part of this Review – the Rules are BAD. I’ve played a lot of games both miniature and board games in the past years. I love Space Hulk for it’s simplicity, Rune Wars for many strategies and easy to learn rules, Zombicide, Catwallon: City of Thieves, Super Dungeon Explore, Warhammer 40,000, Infinity, Mordheim and more. All these games are more than playable and rewarding. I find AVP The Hunt Begins rules rather easy but written in such a way that I was forced to jump between the pages and search for some rules all the while these were formed in a way that my Wargaming hardened mind couldn’t comprehend. AVP rules are just unreadable, full of missing letters, idiotic key words and above all – they are totally devoid of flavor. Prodos Guys – just see to Zombicide rulebook and you will know what I mean by climate!

So in the end I give this game a 5 out of 10 and am very, very disappointed in the product I have waited so long for. If nothing changes in the way Prodos Games designs their products I will reconsider spending my cash on their products in the future. If not for the miniatures – this game would’ve been a stain on the AVP franchise as big as PC Aliens – Colonial Marines was.

And Prodos – this is a 10 out of 10 and it’s a fucking mascot. You were owned by a Facehugger mascot! Let it be a warning to you – that purchasing a copyright to a franchise does not mean you can blew all the rest up. You should’ve made sure that your rules and game components would stand to the great AVP franchise and you have failed in that. Shame!

faCEHUGGER
Agree/Disagree? There’s a comment section below where you can stand for your opinion 😉

Tutorial: Painting Infinity Nomad Red Armor

Here is a Step-by-step guide of how to paint Infinity Nomad Red Armour – Scar_hand Painting’s style 🙂

A complete Recipee used to paint my Infinity Nomads may be found in COLOUR RECIPEES: INFINITY NOMADS. You can also find some additional pictures in the NOMADS: CORREGIDOR lvl 4,5 Gallery.

Colour Recipe:

* GW Standard Brush,
* Tamiya Modeling Brush HG,
* AP Wargamer: The Psycho,
* GW Chaos Black Undercoat,
* GW Mechrite Red, (When this one runs out i’ll switch to P3 Formula ‘Sanguine Base’ instead),
* GW Wazdakka Red,
* AP Skeleton Bone,
* White,
* AP Strong Tone Ink,
* AP Red Tone Ink,

1  I used Chaos Black spray to undercoat the model. I usually do this by applying eight layers of undercoat from eight different angles (four at the front and four at the back of the model, each at the same 45* angle with one directed up, one down, one left and one right side of the model).

2  The first layer of Red was made with Standard Brush and Mechrite Red. I tried not to fill the recesses too much and to cover all buldes smoothly.

red 1

3  I switched to Tamiya Modeling Brush and applied Wazdakka Red to all bulges and flat surfaces of the armour, leaving cavities Mechrite Red'ed. This madethe armour look more smooth and ready to be highlighted.

red 2

4  I applied a 50%/50% mix of Wazdakka Red and Skeleton Bone in the middle and on the edges of particular surfaces.

red 3

5  I added White to the Wazdakka/Skeleton mix and further lined the model.

red 4

6  More White was added to the mix and another layer of lines and points was made.

red 5

7  I switched back to Standard Brush and washed the armour with Strong Tone Ink.

red 6

8  I switched to The Psycho to add some Skeleton Bone/White lining in the key points of the armour.

red 7

9  I switched to Tamiya Modeling Brush and washed the armour with Red Tone Ink.

red 8

9  Oops! I did it again washing all the armour with Red Tone Ink to finally finish it.

red 9

Hope that you find this little tut useful and that you will post some pictures of miniatures painted this way 😉