Hellhammer, Stormsword, Stretch and Hellhound

Just a little update on painting progress here. None of these is yet finished, but I did say the other day that I ought to be putting up more shots of work as yet incomplete. So here you go. The mud mix hasn't been wholly satisfactory, so all the models pictured here will be receiving another coat of it. Arachnophobes may be pleased to be warned prior to seeing it. The last picture is of a wee spider I found on one of my Steel Legion HWT bases. S/he is now somewhere in an adjacent room.

Rambling over field and dale

Well, around the garden, truth be told. Yes, this is another non-wargamery post, so goodbye to stilted formal language. Those denouncing my quotidian speech as egregiously peppered with purple patches may disagree. Anyway, what's going on here? Well, the blasted wound has finally scarred over, so I'm cutting back on the food and restarting the exercise. I was going to walk five miles today, but the hayfever I mentioned in the last post quite did me in. I've plastered my face with Vaseline to keep the pollen out, and this has had some slight impact. I had a test-run of press-ups earlier, to see if ten was a reasonable figure. It was. My stomach felt a bit woo-ahh, but one has to expect that after using abdominal muscles for as little as possible for two months! So provided I'm no fool and don't spend the next hour skipping and trampolining, I have a good base for recovery. Again, vast quantities of protein will be filling me. I mean to walk five miles a day every day, and have Sunday off. Walking is no problem: only the soles of my feet will lament it. Throw in fifty press-ups and twenty-plus crunches (I have yet to test feasibility in this instance), and I think we've got a nice, gentle first step on the Road to Wellsville, as that Cornflakes man might say. Come Sunday I shall review the situation and come up with a plan for next week.

Of course, despite being in corpore sano once more my mens is not quite sana yet, since I still need to sort out a job and can't pending the Christian Aid collection week. That said, the situation works completely to my advantage. With a job I should have less time to exercise, so these next few weeks will serve a great purpose! Per ardua ad astra and all that.

In other news, my friends and I have added reading to our mini-film-club, so I'm knee deep in Frankenstein, as it were. On the film front, Spinal Tap this week, so do remember to rock on, chaps and chappesses! Tuesday night will be very great, too, as I'm seeing a couple of friends I haven't seen in ages: the one works in distant Scotland-land, and the other is an ever-hard-working doctor, so opportunities to see either are few and far-between. I have another friend who's a doctor and lives in the land of Picts beyond the Wall, so I haven't seen her since she moved up there. When I have money, though-!

I mentioned the lovely visit I made to Dolgellau the other week. While there I watched The Lone Gunmen, which I had never before seen as the show, which premiered in America in March of 2001, had an opening episode dealing with a plot to fly a 'plane into the World Trade Center in New York. Anyway, it spurred me on to go back and watch the residue of X-Files episodes I had previously given up on. There's some nonsense in the antepenultimate or penultimate (depending if you count The Truth as one episode or two) about Scully wanting proof at long last about one of their cases. Since I was just sticking on DVD after DVD while painting some model soldiers, I had seen mere hours before an episode from that very season called Scary Monsters which ended with a small boy's ability to project his fantasies into the minds of others being accepted by a load of child psychiatrists. They've had proof of weird stuff before (Tithonus, Squeeze, Firewalker are three such episodes), so I'm not sure the writers were paying attention to their own prior work. Anyway, the whole isn't too bad when one's mind is half on painting. I do like Robert Patrick, and have vague memories of certain scenes in some episodes: Cary Elwes shooting a mob guy, for instance. Although at that time I was years from watching The Princess Bride, so his face meant nothing to me.

In a little while I shall watch the concluding two-parter. I must have stopped watching the show regularly in the autumn of 1999, as I had no TV at uni. We all used to crowd into a friend's room to watch something. The Simpsons, perhaps? Anyway. It's called The Truth and this is doubtless one of the greatest examples of product misrepresentation known to man. ;-) Happily, the fact that The X-Files made such a hash of combining its two myth arcs has put me off shows such as Lost. I say happily as I haven't heard such gnashing in teeth and tearing of garments as on the occasion of the apparently uninspiring finale of said J.J. Abrams show.

Right, putting that aside, I'll go watch The Truth so I can more credibly whinge. :-D

Hellhammer and Stormsword

I have almost completed my assembly of the superheavy tanks. The Stormsword will be carrying a double load of sponsons, so they need some work before I can apply them to the model. Anyway, here are the two together from the back and from the front.



You can see here how I decided to provide a gangway on either side of the Hellhammer for the crew. I cut a 14mm wide strip of 0.5mm thick plasticard to run the length of the indentation on the side where the sponsons can sit. I then cut some plasticard with treadplate markings to the same dimensions and glued that atop. I replaced some rivets and added a viewport.





I replaced the exhausts at the back with some of my own design, using 9.5mm plasticard tube, and inserted a smaller size for the tops.



These four are seen prior to a little filing to get them all to sit flush in the exhaust area of the Stormsword.



Here they are in place.



I added a smaller gangway for the Stormsword crewmen.



Here is the Hellhammer chassis immediately prior to undercoating. You can see I have filled in some of the larger gaps with Greenstuff, fitted less Gothic headlights. The kit's go into (one of) the box(es) of bits. This beastie will have some very long name, I suppose. I joined two nameplates from the kit together.









Here is the Stormsword likewise just prior to painting. Again, headlights, viewport, blocked some gaps where I switched the two kits' engine sections, &c, &c. The engine panels will be secured at a later date. I mean to model them open. perhaps even with a crewman looking in, wondering why the Stormsword has four exhausts instead of the Baneblade's two. Doubtless the answer is that the Shrine counts as a force-multiplier. ;-)









Apologies if the above is a bit terse or conversely scattered. I have been blowing my nose for about forty minutes. Good old summer!

Colourful pictures

As an introductory aside, you know that pain you get when you have appendicitis? That pain you ignore because it's precisely like every instance of indigestion or wind you've ever had? I'm having that now, and have been for about an hour. Since I have no appendix, I shall proceed on the assumption that appendicitis ain't to blame this time. ;-) Anyway!

I think I have previously mentioned my dislike of the shrines on the back of Baneblades &c, so I cut this one off and covered the missing details with plasticard. After this picture I covered the problem areas at the bottom as well.



Here are some pictures of Stretch. The doze blade has yet to be attached.









Here is the turret of the Hellhammer.









Here is some terrain I am working on. A hill and a rampart thing. I'm sorry. My descriptive capacity plummets when I'm in pain. Ow.

Hellhammer and Stretch Chimaera (continued)

I am surprised that I neither have blogged about these guys nor put up any more pictures since last week. I think I must have been distracted by my attempts to write that story. Still no joy, as you can tell! Anyway, here are a few pics of the Hellhammer and Stretch prior to painting. By now they have been undercoated, received their basic camo, had a layer of gloss varnish, received transfers, and had a second coat of varnish to protect the transfers. This is what they looked like prior to painting. I nabbed the Baneblade kit's vision ports, and have used them as headlights and rearlights on Stretch. I have left off the Hellhammer's stowage bins, and used one of its hatches on Stretch. The missing hatch has been replaced by a spot of plasticard. As you will see, I have followed through with my plan to use a crewman to represent the vehicle's Heavy Flamer turret.

Dreaming of Dinosaurs

I was away this weekend, having an awesome time with friends. Here's a dream I had on Friday night.

I was looking at my brother's collection of manga novels (which doesn't exist; I'd been looking at my friends' collection that evening), and was disappointed to see, as I stood up, that they had used Tommy Lee Jones to voice a character who looked exactly like Tommy Lee Jones in the animated film version of one of these books. Then i was with him and a couple of other guys on a train. All shiny metal and so forth. We had to break out the back doors because there were zombies or killers on the train. So we got out, jumped out the back and ran about forty feet from the train. Then the train's jet engines started up, and were covering us with smoke, dust and giant dustbunnies. The train and track (and perforce we) were in a huge metal tunnel because something outside was dangerous. But we found a gap, and escaped out into a snow-covered landscape.

One of us jumped onto a wall and saw some buildings at the foot of the hill we were atop. So we hastened down the hill, wondering what had made the giant hand and footprints that vaguely resembled those of a human, but were about six-foot long. We got to the bottom and realised there was a townlet or a collection of buildings. Two of the guys went off to look at the other side of the street, while I and another fella inspected our side, seeing our train (which looked just like an old-fashioned steam train) and several others in a metal-barred shed. Then a woman drove up and warned us that we were in danger and we should come with her. Collecting our two friends, we followed her back to her base, where a group of her people had been attacked by an invisible mutant tyrannosaur which was still there. No-one knew where, so I fired a few random shots with a long-range rifle I had (it looked like an M-16 with and extra M-16 barrel on the original's barrel) at the wall, about twelve feet up. It didn't appear, but a mark of blood did. I'd hit the beast, yet it remained invisible.

So I fired again until I exhausted my clip (four or five shots in all), then ran off, chased by the invisible dinosaur. I was going to hide in some toilets, but was certain that a juvenile mutant tyrannosaur was in there, waiting to pounce on me. Instead I kept running, and a visible juvenile jumped down on me. The two small arms of the original dinosaur had mutated so that they connected and formed the greater part of a circle, coloured yellow, connecting the dino's shoulders and going behind its head. I tore one off, and it became visible. Despite the fact that it was already visible. Anyway, the big beastie corned me, and spoke to me telepathically after I yanked one of its arms off, rendering it visible. I responded with words, and persuaded it to hold off on eating me. We went over to an advanced transportation system which aliens had abandoned years ago. It was about the size of one of those swinging pirate ship you get at funfairs. I got in with the dinosaur and the leader from earlier. Someone behind us ran off, pulling a red-haired woman (from The Fifth Element?) behind him/her, afraid that the transportation system was going to fail. With the dinosaur distracted, I was able to disconnect my plasma pistol's energy cell, and somehow jab it into the dinosaur and drain it all at once. I knew it only had a charge of 450 somethings, and that I'd need 600-ish somethings to kill the beastie in a prolonged firefight, but I banked on having enough time to get away afore it awoke again.

Then I woke up.

Rambling update

The turret of the Hellhammer and the whole of the stretched Chimaera are drying from their undercoat. If I haven't finished them by Wednesday night, they'll have to wait until Sunday night, as come Thursday I'm off to see friends in the wonderful world of Wales. I'm very much looking forward to that, so no apologies to the AFVs! I was looking through some old military modelling magazines, and found an article by a former Centurion crewman, which I'm going to pop up on www.alternatehistory.com at some point. There's a chap there named Mac who's a big armour fan, especially when it comes to the Centurion, unless my memory's gone wonky. Mm, I just considered the possibility of a stretched Baneblade. Nurse, get the pills; the patient's off his rocker!

So I slept most of today. About twelve hours or so, plus a three hour gap when I woke up and stumbled around a bit, getting nothing much done. I missed the rain, except for pulling closed my window when I heard it spattering all over Blue Platoon of the Guard. I'm low on space, so Red and Blue Platoons are protecting the window from Chaotic incursions. Or something like that. The Heavy Weapons Company is doing the same job of protecting the bookcase on my right. Medals all round, as I haven't seen a single daemon ever since they took up their posts.

On the downer side of things, last night I dropped and broke a pint glass I got at a local beer festival last year. I blame the fact that it contained about a quarter of a pint of orange juice and that I dropped it on a blanket. It would have been happier with beer and floor, no doubt. So if I suddenly type a scream, I've found another shard of it. So with beer on my mind, I went to order some Timmermans, only to discover that it's actually slightly cheaper to buy singles from my local Tesco of Timmermans Strawberry than to order from my usual online place. Disappointing! Still, the other flavours are only available online, so I'll doubtless make another order soon. I'm planning a barbecue, and you can't have a barbecue without beer. Unless you want to, of course. I don't believe there's any actual ordinance laid down in regard of beer and barbecues. In fact, I retract the remark in its entirety, milud, and ask that you instruct the jury to disregard it.

I'm not really sure how to continue or finish this, as my mind has gone a-wandering, picking daises-a-way-oh! Let's say I'm stopping here to go get a fan from the attic. I am going to get a fan, but that's just a manufactured reason. Darnit! Disregard again, jurors!

Ooh, a hundred posts!

It's now a hundred and two, as I wasn't paying any attention. Still, let's celebrate the passing of this arbitrary base 10 milestone with, uh, something! A cheer! Huzzah! There we go.

I popped out and had a brief sunbathe this morning, as the weather is what everyone calls gorgeous. Why sunbathe if I implicitly disagree? I need sunlight for its medicinal properties, silly. I have been restricting my online presence in an as-yet-unsuccessful attempt to get some writing done. Fingers crossed tomorrow will be the day I pull it off! I have got a little more done on the Chimaera, pretty much finishing the turret. I have been finding it difficult to get anything done, though. I've been letting myself get distracted all day. Subconsciously avoiding the writing? Maybe. Subconsciously avoiding stuff is one of my great - great? Lame, you mean - skills. I never was any good at it, as avoiding stuff in a great way surely means not letting your failure to do it drive you bonkers! I just haven't been in the right frame of mind to write. Right, write? Yes, I think that proves my point. My English has gone into hibernation. Nor have I been reading books these last few days. Bad things both, and I shan't let either continue.

I also need a shave - Lord, is there anything I'm not doing wrong? :-D Seriously, though, it isn't the end of the world, and I know it, yet I feel fine! Thank you, REM. Everything is still fuzzy right now. I want to get a job, but I'm still recovering. Something sedentary would be a sensible choice after having sat about for two months (so far!), but working in an office is right out unless they don't keep them heated like ovens these days. I assume they haven't changed the basic nature of humanity in the last half-decade, and so I am driven away from that. Plus, in about a month I would need a week off for this charity thing I'm doing. In short, conflicting desires and possibilities are leaving me a bit muddled.

I do have some concrete plans: the aforementioned charity doodah, going to visit friends in north Wales, then south Wales, have people round here for a barbecue, since the weather's "great", keep working on all these wee models, and in the long term lose a shedload of weight and so on, and so on. In a word, although it might sound as though I'm getting downbeat with failing to accomplish this, that and the other, I know I will get it all done, and that I can't expect to get it all done with a snap of the fingers. I'm not Julie Andrews. Although my Cockney accent would make even Dick Van Dyke wince! Until next time, Bat-fans. Same Bat-place. Same Bat-channel! Keep the Shark-Repellant Bat-Spray handy, kids!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jg2okfrmR4

Stretch Chimaera

I mentioned the Chimaera I planned to lengthen for a PCS or CCS. She is coming along very nicely. Here is how I went about adulterating the kit's normal appearance. First, I sawed the four side panels. I cut out four pieces of 2mm thick plasticard, as tall as the Chimaera's side (about 43mm, IIRC) and 30mm long. I glued these in place and cut some strips of 1mm and 0.5mm thick plasticard to help secure them. Be careful when doing this not to glue a support strip anywhere that will stop you from assembling the vehicle. I used some offcuts of 2mm thick plasticard to make a 10mm wedge to connect the inner and outer sides of the vehicle. I did not want it to come apart, bend or anything!









I test-fitted the inner parts of the vehicle, then glued the upper and lower parts of the vehicle in place. Remember you will need to cut a piece of plasticard for the bottom of the hull, as it's now 30mm longer. I used a large number of the old track guards. I have a box of these things. There is a gap in the track beneath the top ones, and there is a small one in the bottom tracks.











Then I started work on the detailing. The side panels on the upper hull were blocked off with 0.25mm plasticard, then I cut some 2mm thick plasticard and glued it in place. The dimensions are 29mm by 28mm. The edges need tidying. For the bottom of the hull I used 0.25mm plasticard to copy the shape of the wheel holders. Then I used a 30mm by 2mm strip of 1mm thick plasticard to continue the lines of the side strips. There is tidying needed here: Greenstuff, no doubt. There's a wealth of rivets to apply. For headlights and rear-lights I used those Gothic view-ports from the Baneblade kit. I also nabbed some equipment from the same, and used one of the nameplates to put on the flank. The turret will only mount a Heavy Stubber, as I'm not too keen on the kit Heavy Flamer. So I shall represent the turret Heavy Flamer with a crewman toting a Heavy Flamer. I shall not give him a set of tanks, but instead run a cable down to the innards of the vehicle.





Still work to do, but she is coming along a storm!