Cryx Battlebox Finished!

So I finished my Cryx Battlebox a few days ago.  Having been busy with work and the cherry blossoms, I haven't had time to take nice pictures, but for now, these get the point across.  The auto-focus on the camera really loves the OSL, so the they are bit blurry.  As a side note, I finally found orange ink from Liquitex making the this a bit easier int eh future now that I am getting better at the OSL.

More Cryx Battlebox...

Okay, so despite it being 84 degree, sunny and breezy out, I am having a miserable time and hiding indoors.  I am allergic to pear tree pollen and having a heck of a time breathing.  Despite being cheap when it comes to AC, I always run it during this time of the year just to filter out the pollen.  Being 84 is also uncommon for this time for the year.  While in the basement, I decided to finish the pre-sealing work on my Cryx.

I telling a guy I was training, that eventually you just have to stop working on a model and move on-that you'll never really improve my just painting and then correcting the same model over and over again.  Well, that applies to me as well, and I have been doing a lot of experimenting with these guys and that orange glow, and the blue fades for color theory.  Time to move on, or I'll just ruin what i have under layers of ink.  So here we go.

Group shot, you can see I deliberately upped the blue content in the big guy.  Remember I haven' t Photoshop'ed these images, so the blue are much brighter than in person.

Denny's orange glow is coming out really really well.  The finger glow looks much better than expected.  Once the whole thing is matte varnished, hitting that with gloss should make it really pop.

Big Blue, who is not that blue in person, but the orange and blue work really well together.

Now, due to the high pollen count and not having having a nice matte varnish handy since Hobbytown closed, I'll probably airbrush the sealer onto these guys after a quick pass looking for anything  like accidents with white paint or scratches.

Next up, will be matte sealing, then spot sealing with  satin and gloss to highlight various spots.  Then some oils (or gloss and ink mix) to the inner pistons.  After, static grass and and other scenic elements. Then done!

As a side not, I got my hands on USB 3.0 card reader, and boy does that speed up moving the files off my memory card. The tethering cable from the camera to the computer was brutally slow.

The woes of yellow ink...

So for anyone in who lives in the NoVA area (specifically the 95 corridor in Prince William County), you know we have had a bad run over the past few years with gaming stores.  Recently, I discovered it is even creeping in to craft stores.  So with our GW gone for years now, Game Parlor gone for a while, and HobbyTown gone, I went to Micheal's for of all things... yellow ink.

I am painting some Cryx and I wanted to a nice orange glow from the "furnace" over a deep blue chassis (Exile Blue for the PP paint people). For what ever reason, the first attempt I used paint.  This gave me a chicken 'jack that looked like it was on fire.  Neat, but not at all what I was after.  So I decided to try and do it with ink to get a more menacing glow.  Well, okay, I can see orange ink not being that common since it can easily be made from red and yellow ink.  Given that it will take a lot of ink over an entire army of Cryx that happen to glow a lot (actually they wont, but I want the glow consistent over all my models to do and will painted at different times).  I decided to hold off making a big batch of custom orange ink, and just try out of the inking methodology on a chicken 'jack with green just like in the back of the Cryx book.  Well it turns out I didn't own yellow ink...

Yellow ink...  I tend to use calligrapher's ink for my models.  It is cheaper, comes in bulk (for my purposes bulk is those little glass jars), and is generally nice high quality stuff.  It doesn't come in yellow though.  Which when I think about it kinda makes sense. Who writes in yellow?  Well, as I mentioned above, hobby supplies are in kinda short supply in NoVA.  So Micheal's doesn't carry it (or sable brushes anymore).  GW doesn't carry ink anymore (woe to me, for I have all the other inks).  Fredericksburg is so far away that I have to plan my trips there carefully (which wasn't going to happen in the time window I wanted to start the orange glow).  So Warstore here I come...

Ah Warstore...  If I ever get married, I have a hunch my credit card will be blocked from there.   So I am snooping through the volumes of stuff on there and find Vallejo Transparent Orange.  Oh, premixed Orange?  that is exactly what I need, so I go and order it and red and yellow and wood.  Wood ink you say?  Ya, that should have tipped me off that I wasn't buying ink.  Of course, I proceed to buy tons of things that are not ink, like Heavy Gear: Blitz, ACTA: StarFleet, an extra Ashlynn to convert into a non-pumpkin head, etc..  The key is, not ink.. .  Well, Neil manages to get that box to me in less than 48 hours, pretty sweet, and everything is actually in the order!  So I run to the basement with my transparent paint in hand, excited to get my green grow trials underway.  And I was less than impressed.  Transparent paint is cool, and I can see potential for it; however not as a substitute for ink.  After all that, off to Game Vault in Fredericksburg Saturday night for yellow ink (and red, and green and blue).  Oh well, So here are some snap shots of what I have been painting.

Here are the base coated Cryx models that haven't had any attempt at lighting.

  The bugger on the left is my first attempt at OSL of an orange glow, as you can see he is on fire, which is not a sinister orange glow.  The Green glow is the attempt where I actually had yellow and green ink.  I also switched shades of green ink from Windsor Newton Green, to PP green. I am starting to get the hang of the white base for the white base. The use of the white base for green glow is giving me fits.I think the inked one looks better in person, the camera is picking up a ton of glare that wont be there on the final model (ink being shiny until sealed and all).

Here are the same models on the opposite profile.  On the right is my green glow using green ink and yellow transparent paint.  While not hideous, it was not what I was looking for.  You can also see the subtle highlighting and shading I started on the orange one.