Weekly Waffle #318
20th January 2024
Welcome to the weekly waffle for what is now three weeks on the run. I know that sounds really lame with over three hundred previous articles. But give how low my hobby mojo has been over the last year I’m taking this as a small win. Part of keeping that mojo going is trying to keep my expectations for each week manageable. I do have some big ideas for this year with on of them being a rehash of my Ork army. But crucially on this front I don’t have a deadline that I’m working towards. I’m just doing it for the fun. So I have lots of ideas for different and interesting takes on units that I’m going to play around with. However not having a deadline it means I can pick up and put down projects as my interests change.
As well as the 40K ideas I also have a few ideas for a slightly different take on some Necromunda lists. These may or may not come to pass but I will try a couple of test models just to see what they look like. Enforcer’s will probably be the first and will be based on some Alien Colonial Marine inspired minis, from We Print Miniatures. I think that with a couple of tweaks they could have that real under hive feel. Having said that they may just as easily look rubbish. But I’m still going to give a couple a go at some point.
On the Adepticon front a space has come up on one of the classes I was on the wait list for so I’m happy with that. We haven’t sorted the flights out yet but that should be resolved soon. The real issue for us is that you can’t fly directly from Manchester to Chicago. So we either need to change in London or Amsterdam. Amsterdam is winning out of me at the moment but we will get them booked soon. The one thing we are really avoiding is having to change flights in the USA. This is because we have to fully clear customs and we have seen and heard of to many people missing connecting flights because of this. It normally takes us a couple of hours to clear customs at Chicago so we aren’t going to take the risk.
On the hobby front I’ve finished off one mini and then started and finished another. Both of the are HQ choices for my Orks. First up is the Crazy Scientist from Puppets War. This was released alongside the Time Jumper Race Car. So for anyone familiar with Back to the Future this is really the Ork version of Doc Brown. Just like the car it’s a 3D printed resin model. The quality is really nice and every time I get something from Puppets War I have a little smile on may face.
I got this model just because I like the look of it and have no idea if it would ever find its way into a list. But you can’t have the car and leave the doc on the shelf. There are also some really nice little touches such as the little bot with a hover board under its arm. Which is just another touch to the films. Because he is a weird boy I gave him a bit of a wacky hair colour but other than that I’ve just gone with my standard speed freak colours.
Overall I really like how it’s turned out although I have to say it is a mini I may revisit in the future. There are a couple of things I would like to try to give it a little bit more pazaz. But for now this the version I have.
The second miniature for This week was inspired by something I saw on Instagram about painting Ork skin. It was basically a slap chop approach but instead of using greys and white for the dry brush they used pink. So basically under painting to give a different tone when you apply a contrast paint. It was something that perked my interest so I decided to give it a go.
I didn’t have a mini in mind but I walk past a GW store on my to and from work so I popped in on the way home to see what they had in. On a tangent I have to say I’m usually disappointed whenever I go into a GW store because they rarely have what I’m looking for. And this time wasn’t much different with me nearly leaving without picking anything. But I was on a mission and went for the Pain Boy. I just thought it would be interesting to paint rather than thinking it would fill a slot in any future list.
So with the mini in hand I built it up and primed it with a Vallejo black surface primer. Then raided my paint box for some pinks. I was sure I had a bright pink I was going to use for the final dry brush but couldn’t fi it so I just went with what I had. And then found it when I’d painted the skin. What I didn’t do though was dry brush the whole model which was a bit of an error. Having said that I thought it looked ok but it’s an approach I will beed to play around with.
If you want to see more of my Orks you can check out the Ork page in the gallery’s.
With the skin done I went with a standard red, blue and yellow palette. I tried to make sure I had some variation between the the base colour and highlights. I know I can push this much more and will keep working on that. But for this guy I was happy and really wanted to get him finished. Rather than striving for perfection with every mini I was thinking about recognising what was good and what wasn’t. Then take that into the next project and try to make it better.
The finishing touches were to use a black oil wash over the Metallic areas. Then some weathering powders on the base and lower legs to try and tie the two together. And there we go with a pain boy that I would be more than happy to put down on any table. But I’ll let you be the final judge of that.
That’s it for this weeks weekly waffle and I hope you have enjoyed a little read. At the moment I’ve no idea what I’m got to do for next weeks update. I do have some bases on order so with a fare wind I may have Orco One finished off. I’m also going to spend some time looking through my pile of shame for something else which may be a bit of Necromunda. Either way I am fully committed to having something for you so if you get the time please pop back and see what I have for you.
Until then keep safe and have a good week whatever it brings your way.
