The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Berserk? Don’t mind if I do!

So for the past few days I've been tinkering with the Berserker a bit more, and I think I've reached the point where I'm happy introducing the model to The Warp (also known as a jar of stripping solvents). I learned a lot from experimenting with it, though!

 

It's currently a bit glossy because I was working on getting it prepped for some oil paints. I did try and give it a splash of color for comparison's sake, but I don't think it did a lot. I'm not entirely unhappy with the look, but I have come to realize that what I'm doing to this model is just a little too weird. At the outset, I wanted a white, ceramic looking armor, but I also wanted some rusty weathering. While the two can coexist on the same model, I think it's only possible if the weathering's done to a much lesser degree. As-is it's sitting in a weird niche between clean and weathered, and I think that's the problem with why I'm not too enthusiastic about it. I could certainly drive the white down by weathering the hell out of it, but then I'll have one warjack that looks like absolute hell, and I don't plan on doing all my warjacks up similarly since I like to think Khador has at least a bit more pride in their warmachines than an ork might.

So, with that said, off to the stripper it goes. I will give it another go once I get it cleaned up - I'm told that sponge-weathering is much more effective for limited amounts of chipped paint and the likes, so I'll experiment a bit with that method in the mean time!

On the fence

I mucked about with this a bit more, and I'm still unsure how I feel about it.

 

The weird thing is, these pictures make it look a little better than I think it looks to the eye, which is the reverse of the way macro photography usually works. I think it's just a bit overwhelming to look at and try to piece together in person.

I feel like the concept's there, but the execution is lacking. I tried to clean up the pistons and weapons a tiny bit with some boltgun metal and mithril silver, followed by some thin black washes all over the model. I am not sure if I want to keep working on it in it's current state, or chuck it into the paint-strippin' pot for a rematch with different weathering methods. I think part of the problem is my chosen scheme - I really wanted to pull of something like this Spriggan, which I idolize, but I went too far with the hairspray-chipping and made a mess of things.

What do you guys think? Press on and keep trying to clean the thing up, or toss it to the proverbial lions and strip it for another go?

Painting? That’s madness!

Okay, so I decided to go ahead and start messing around with my Berserker's paint. You may or may not like what you're about to see, it's mostly me experimenting with things.

I've been trying to refine the hairspray technique over the past few days, and I figured I might as well give it a go on a full model instead of just test pieces. At worst, I can just chuck the model into a jar and scrub it clean and give it another go.

So, with that in mind, I went about setting up my undercoat of rust and metal. I started by hitting the model with a spray of Krylon Rust-color Primer, and let that sit for a little bit. Then I grabbed my airbrush and Privateer Press's P3 paint color Thornwood Green and hit the model with it in localized areas. Thornwood Green is a very desaturated, dark color that I thought looked like a pretty good contrast to the rust color. I sprayed it focusing mostly around the areas that I knew would be a dark iron or metal - the boiler, the joints, pistons, and the weapons. The goal behind this was to get a bit of variance in the undercoat, so any paint that was uncovered wouldn't all be the same shade of rust orange.

 

At this step, I'm fairly happy with the way the thing looks.

Now, here's where the hairspray method comes in. Just to reiterate what I've posted in the past, the goal of the hairspray method is to create a sort of masking layer that keeps any paint applied over it from sticking completely to the model. It can then be removed with a brush and water.

I hit the model up with a coat of Testor's Glosscote to help protect this rusty undercoat from the steps to come. Then, once that dried, I gave the model a good spray from head to toe with hairspray, and let THAT dry.

Once that was done, it was time to apply the base armor color. I wanted my warjacks to be a white color, like a sort of ceramic, so I thinned down some skull white and ran it through the airbrush, coating the model head to toe. I didn't worry too much above the coverage on areas like the boiler or weapons, or the pistons, as I know those are not going to be white by the time the model's done.

 

So far so good.I let that dry for about ten minutes while I cleaned out my airbrush.

Now, here's the tricky part. Using a stiff brush and some water, you can stipple the coat that we just airbrushed on. The water on the brush will dissolve the hairspray beneath the paint, and cause the paint to lift and come away as you attack it with the brush. By doing this, I can remove sections of the white paint and reveal the darker coat I first applied.

In theory, it's a really nice and easy way to weather things. In practice, it's... well, it's easy to go overboard, as you'll see below.

 

A problem I encountered as I did this was that the white paint I was attacking with the brush would pool in the recesses of the model, meaning it got washed into the joints in the pistons and what have you. I'm not too particularly worried about that, as I am pretty sure that a bit more time with the brush and some water can get that cleaned up - I'm just taking a break from it for now, as I'm tired of working on it.

I think the model is also suffering from a bit of a lack of definition. I'm thinking after I work at cleaning the metal areas up (pistons, axes, etc) some more, I'll give the whole thing a thin black wash before continuing, to try and bring the edges back out. Any areas I overdid with the weathering can, of course, be touched up with a brush by hand and some white paint.

Try and withhold judgment on the weathering until I have a bit more time to clean it up. I know it looks a bit extreme, but I still think I can make it work. If not, it's not a huge loss - a quick bath in simple green'll clean it right up for another try or a different painting method.

Warjack on the run

So I tinkered a bit more with the Berserker and I'm reasonably happy with it's pose now.

 

Got a good bit of forward movement behind him. Now I'm hoping to do a bit of extra cleanup and detailing - things like adding Khadoran iconography on bare plates to try and liven things up a bit. Fortunately, the Khador symbol is very simple to cut out of styrene, so I don't imagine I'll lose too much sleep over it.

As far as painting goes, I've decided I don't want to to the common red Khador theme. I'm going for a cream/white color as my primary, instead - sort've a Khadoran Navy theme, if you will. This is why I've been testing the weathering effects in white on a dreadnought torso the past few days to try and get a handle on things. Hopefully I'll be able to do some decent weathering without going overboard!

Berserker!

I figured I'd toy around with my first Warjack this evening, so I grabbed one at random from my big pile o' Khador and started tinkering with it a bit.

First order of business was the pose. Something called a 'berserker' shouldn't just be meandering forward like the stock model seems to want to do. I did the best I could to set this thing in motion by converting it's legs into a foward running position. The arms then needed reposing as well, so I hacked away at the upper arm sections to removed them, and replaced them with a simple ball joint system so I could get a rough pose in place.

 

I reposed the leading leg's foot a bit so it was angled down and looked a bit more like the thing was running forward. I'll be lengthening the weapon handles by a little bit to try and make the weapons look more impressive, though I'm giving thought to replacing the stock axes with some chainaxe type design ala 40k.

The upper arms'll be improved with the addition of more hydraulics/wiring/worky bitz to try and joint the arms into the shoulders properly, but only after I remove the mold lines on the model.

I've also given some thought to lighting the head of this thing, but I probably won't do it, and I'll paint any glow effects on instead. The only way I can really see getting an LED into the visor of the head would be to make a mold of it and cast it in clear resin with the LED embedded inside. Then, I'd paint everything but the visor, and the LED'd shine through there. Seems like a ton of work to do for not much payoff as far as I'm concerned, and I am trying to improve my painting, anyway.