Saturday, March 31, 2012

Buzz Bee Double Shot - Zombie Hunter

Buzz Bee Double Shot with Shells
A couple of good friends had their birthdays recently and I decided to put together a dart blaster based gift for them. I chose the Buzz Bee double shot in part because of it's nice clean design but also because of the sweet shell ejecting feature. The pain scheme is pretty basic with a semi gloss stock and a metal esk finish on the barrel and stock feature. The metal effect was an accidental result of dry brushing too hard and actually turned out really well especially after I added a brown wash weathering effect.



I wanted to add some little details so I included each of their initials on the stock as well as a Zombie Logo. Additionally the blaster was provided in some thematic packaging to complete the effect.

Close up of details on stock
Packaging

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Friday, March 16, 2012

Seaview Lion Park

Upon the proposal of volunteering in South Africa as a holiday, my initial response was somewhat hesitant. I was concerned that working for free in another country was not the best way to vacation; wouldn't skiing in Japan or perhaps touring New Zealand be a better option. However the enthusiasm of my partner, who made the suggestion, was not the be dampened by my initial apathy and after much assurance that I wouldn't spend my holiday selling tacky souvenirs, the flights were booked, leave applied for and the trip locked in.

The reality of volunteering at Seaview Lion Park is a wonderfully relaxing, amazing and (I hesitate in using the cliche) life changing experience.



The Seaview Lion Park is located outside of Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The Park boasts a large array of different animals including 50 or so Lions, Leopards, Servals, Caracals, Meerkats, Bush Pigs, Siberian Tigers, giraffe and assorted other grazing herbivores. In addition to the fauna there are panoramic ocean views, diverse if somewhat pointy flora and of course the wonderful people(of whom I sadly do not have pictures).


Never mundane the focus of every day was the animals, sure there was enclosure cleaning, food preparation and clearing bush land, but the biggest activity was simply, spending time with the animals. Different animals wanted different things, the Lion cubs wanted the simple company of their extended pride but other animals such as the Servals wanted to play chasing Peacock feathers all around their enclosure. Some of the animal residents less tolerant to people intruding on their territory, such as the Leopards, still thoroughly enjoyed a scratch through the fence. A popular spot to relax was the baby Bush Pigs who liked nothing more than curling up on your nice warm lap for a nap.
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Volunteers stay in basic cabins nested among the lion enclosures and eat in the onsite restaurant. The surrounding area was filled with opportunities to explore on your day off; we went up to the Addo Elephant Park on a small tour conducted by Freewalker to see the huge African elephants.



When the time came to leave, say good bye to all my new friends, both animal and human and go back to the real world I thought back on my time at Seaview and I would not have traded it for ten Ski trips no matter the destination!


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Buzz Bee Tek 3 - Steampunk



So I have a couple of big projects planned for the next few months but I wanted a nice small one to try testing out some different techniques. This great little gun cost $7 from Toyworld so was a good option to test on. Being slightly obsessed with Steampunk I thought I would try a gun with some nice brass/copper accents to it.

The techniques I was looking at here was the use of an airbrush to apply my base coat. As well as the use of metallic dry brushing over a base coat.

The results were excellent, the airbrush applies a really even, amazingly matte finish with the only downside being the time it takes to paint (easily resolves with a larger capacity nozzle) and that multiple coats and a varnish are defiantly required. I am really thankful that the friend I mod with happens to own one!

At each main stage I took a picture of the parts and they are all shown below if you are interested in the step by step.


Original Toy

Disassembled Toy
After sanding and undercoat
After base coat of black and brown

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Friday, February 3, 2012

Devilfish

I found the following images sitting in an unfinished blog post from around 2 years ago however I thought I would just go ahead and publish it.

Tau Devilfish

These images are of a Warhammer 40,000 Tau Devilfish Troop Transport from Games Workshop. It was painted as part of a larger Warhammer army I was working on in 2010.


Detail shot of hatch details and markings

Detail shot of side insignia




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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Nerf N-Strike Maverick - Apocalypse Paint Scheme

After my successful repaint of the Nerf Longshot I thought I would give it another go and perhaps implement some improvements in the process.



For this gun I sanded down the whole surface and removed the logos. Sanding did give a better surface for the paint to adhere to however removing the logos did mean that the result was a little bland. This could be remedied by painting a custom logo or leaving some of the branding in place. Additionally I weathered the result with a brush which gave much better control of the detail.


Close up of weathering details

The Nerf Maverick is one of the cheaper Nerf blasters available and is a lot of fun to play with. If you are looking to pick one up for your own arsenal you can find them here.

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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Repainted Nerf Longshot

Lots of kids love Nerf guns and there are plenty of adults too whom enjoy shooting targets whether living or imagined with little foam darts. I must count myself amongst the latter as an owner of a modest Nerf arsenal. Around a year ago I had an urge to try my hand at modding a Nerf blaster to improve the range and accuracy. However after over 12 months of looking at the disassembled Long Shot sitting on my shelf I decided to do something a bit different with it.

Finally after gifting a friend a new Vortex Vigilon Nerf gun, with some background gleaned from the internet and spray can in hand I proceeded to repaint my Nerf Longshot.



Nerf Recon Barrel with weathering effects

Stock showing dirt and metal weathering effects
The final product also incorporates the barrel component off a broken Nerf Recon which gives the rifle some length and a bit more detail.


If you are interested in painting your own Nerf Longshot you can buy them online in Australia here

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Arcanacon 2010

On the Australia Day weekend each yeah a group of dedicated individuals run the biggest Warhammer 40k tournament in the southern hemisphere, Arcanacon 40k. About six months ago a good friend of mine asked me to come to the event with him. We had been playing Warhammer together on and off since the late 90s and we also attended ][con in November. I had tentatively agreed and after the great time I had at ][con was quite eager and excited. So on the 23rd and 24th of January I attended Arcanacon along with two friends, Tristan and Lauren.

Although I didn’t win very many games I had a blast playing them. I was extremely lucky to face six, happy, fun and relaxed players who were all, just as I was, there to have a great time. It seems like the overall attitude at the event was a relaxed one, there certainly wasn’t any raised voices or angry discussions and everyone I spoke to was enjoying themselves immensely.

Of the six games I played I lost the first four and then won my last two. Although I feel that I played pretty well in my games I did lose several based on silly tactical errors. It seems that the highly heroic act of dumping Fire Warriors out of their transports in front of a dug in Space Wolf Long Fangs or Howling Banshees, a Farseer and a Wraithlord is not tactically sound, especially if it means your troops get wiped off the objective in the last turn of the game. There were plenty of cinematic moments though like forcing a draw in overtime (we handed in our results and then kept playing) with gun drones against a Dark Eldar player.

There were two star elements to my army, the biggest and best were my two broadsides who blew up (no to be confused with destroyed, I’m talking explosions and disappearing tanks here) 12 vehicles. In fact they were so good at blowing up troop transports on two occasions they took out a transport, killing occupants in the subsequent explosion, and when the occupants jumped into another transport they took it out again, once more killing several occupants. It was very pleasing to see lots of craters where my opponents vehicles should have been. The other star performers were my Pathfinders; in all bar one game they were able to consistently mark threats for other squads to easily take out.

From the three of us who attended Aracanacon together Lauren did the best by far, making it into the top hundred and winning the “WATS Choice” award for her Tyranid Army. WATS Choice goes to the best painted/modeled army as chosen by the committee who organize the event. Her army was very deserving of the award with every model converted or added to in some way, delicately painted and beautifully presented on a desert themed display board. Sadly Tristan didn’t fare so well, although his army was also wonderfully painted it seems to be a lot harder to stand out with a Space Marine army. Additionally it turned out he went a bit soft with his list and got a rough chunk of really bad luck on his dice results.

The overall standard of painting and modeling was very high, I saw many stunning armies with excellent themes, phenomenal painting and gorgeous presentation. Terrain tables were of a similar high caliber providing a wonderful scenic surface on which to play. I had spent a considerable amount of time building a terrain table to take to the event which paled in comparison to some of the amazing club tables.

As an event with 200 participants the organisers must have been pulling their hair out at times, but it never showed. Bar a slightly late start and an overly long awards ceremony everything ran close to on time. As I previously mentioned, I have played Warhammer for quite a while, but I have never enjoyed the games as much as I did at this event. Not only did I have an incredible time but I came home re motivated to improve the painting on my Tau army, re-paint all my Imperial Guard which made up my first army and build another table of terrain.

So thank you to Mark and his team of organisers and to the players for such a great experience and see you again next year (if not earlier)!


Images contributed by 'Waggerz' on wargamerau, Viv of The Battle Bunker and myself.

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