Painting Progress – 20100111

So far, I’m pretty much on-schedule.  Maybe a hair behind, maybe a hair ahead… it’s difficult to gauge beyond that I’m close.

Over the weekend, I:

  • Wrapped up 6 Flesh Hounds.
  • Wrapped up 1 Bloodletter (because, for some bizarre reason, I decided to do a how-to on my paint scheme).  I needed the extra one, but probably should have done a whole batch of them and just took pictures of that one along the way.
  • Basecoated a number of models: 9 Bloodletters and 8 Flesh Hounds.
  • Made good progress on 5 Bloodletters.  I’m at the highlighting stage.
  • Figured out how to convert the Bloodcrusher Icon and Musician.  Began that work.
  • Finally attached Karanak to his base.

The last two deserve some elaboration, I think:

  • I went a-Googling and came across some conversions; unfortunately, I’m having trouble relocating them to post here.  In them, the modeler had the Bloodletters sitting back, instead of hunching forward.  That hadn’t occurred to me.  So, I’ve started the conversions: basically using the plastic Bloodletter torso glued and greenstuffed to the metal Bloodcrusher Bloodletter legs.  The heads on these will probably be plastic, and the Hellblade arms will probably be metal.  When I’m done with them, I’ll post pictures, of course.
  • Because I’m not using the metal Flesh Hound models (though, more recently, I’ve started to take more of a shine to them), I can’t really use the Karanak model.  Instead, I’m using the Avatars of War Netherhound.  The model is not without some issues.  I finally just wrapped some rubber bands around my needlenose pliers and, to the best of my ability, straightened out his legs.  I wasn’t able to quite get one of the rear legs where it needed to be, so I cut some plasticard in the shape of one of the stones in the textured plasticard I’m using on my bases (two sheets’ thickness) to raise it up a bit.  I don’t think it’ll be noticeable when the base is painted.

In terms of the schedule:

I do a lot of thinking about the schedule: mostly because I’m 1) excited about the project and 2) at work a lot, and unable to work on the project. :)

I have three weeks left in January, four in February, and one week in March if I’m going to have things ready in time for Madicon (my goal).  In a perfect world, I’m totally done before March hits, but we’ll see.

I’m setting aside all of February for the big models: the two Bloodthirsters and two Soul Grinders.  Now, I’m hoping it doesn’t take me nearly that much time… but I’d rather be safe than sorry.  That means that, in three remaining weeks of January, I have to:

  • Paint 8 Bloodletters (2 batches of 4)
  • Paint 8 Flesh Hounds (2 batches of 5 and 4)
  • Finish converting/assembling and then paint 4 Bloodcrushers
  • Paint Karanak
Which is a bit optimistic.  I expect these will push my month of big models back a week, which is okay.  (One week is okay; two weeks isn’t.)  Plus, again, I’m holding out hope that I can do more than one big model a week.