Griffin Miniatures Greys - WIP flying bases

[Daeothar]

True layering begins now, after several sessiosn of washes and glazes to get the skintones to where I wanted them. As you might be able to tell, I went a lot heavier on the pink and purple on this large batch than I did on the initial squad, but I like it; it immediately draws the viewer towards the face and it adds some much needed colour to an otherwise quite monochrome scheme.

The miniatures of the older squad will be mixed in with the new ones, so they will not stand out as much.

Like I said; the actual layering can now commence. First will be a black basecoat for the eyes and the guns, bandoliers, orbs and chairs. And this requires actual precision, so the going will be slower, but also be much more fun

[Commander Roj]

I can only hope so.

[Ragsta]

Lovely work on these cool l'il critters so far, Mr Daeothar. I smiled to myself when I read that you decided a bulk painting project was what you need after your shuttle- sure mate JUST 47 models  Having said that I am hoping to clear off 60 Guardsmen soonish myself... 

[Daeothar]

Cheers guys

Hey; what could go wrong, right?

I used to be that painter who put the maximum effort in each and every single miniature. Obviously my collection grew at a snail's pace. But for some reason, I've found myself drawn to batch painting big groups, and my armies reflect that; Night Goblins, Tyranids, Imperial Guard, these Greys.

There simply is something very satisfying in painting loads of similar miniatures I've found...

But yes; the old adage here seems very appropriate:

We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy

Good luck on the guardsmen!

[Ragsta]

 

Yes, my good pal Scarper on these hallowed pages teases me constantly about my fondness for collecting horde armies- swarms of Nids and Humans!! Oh yes and I have an armoured company of vehicles (12+) staring at me awaiting their turn...

[Daeothar]

There is more progress, but unfortunately, I did not take a picture of it when leaving the house this morning. I've decided to split the large lot into 4 smaller batches, to prevent burnout.

So the firsts batch of 11 miniatures has received its black basecoat on the weapons and eyes and then the first layer of silver on the technological parts.

I used Vallejo Game Colour Chainmail Silver, as opposed to the Vallejo Liquid Silver I used on the Original squad, because I didn't feel like going through the assle of digging up the isopropyl alcohol. But the colour is ever so slightly off and not as smooth as the Liquid stuff. So I'll probably redo this step with the correct paint.

But in the meantime, I did take possession of the following: 2 boxes of Pegasus Hobbies Aplha Centauri Ufo's. They hold 2 each and are just right for this project. I'll probably build 2 Flying, 1 landed and 1 crashed. The latter will function as an objective or as a bit of flavoured terrain.

I did ample research into the size and suitability of these saucers, and was eventually convinced that they would do. But I hadn't imagined that they would be so perfect! They come with pilots, also of a grey alien design, but these are the more tropish variants, with large heads, so they look like small children.

However: the bodies and hands are almost a perfect match with those of the Griffin Greys! So instead of resculpting and reposing the three I had put aside for this purpose, I will now probably just headswap them. Because even the hands are of the same design!

For now, I will most likely paint up two of the four squads and then do one or more of the UFOs for variey and then proceed on the greys

[Sunjester]

I'm looking forward to seeing those saucers built and painted!

[majorsmith]

I had some of those greys years ago! Brings back memories! Can’t remember what I did with them though! They look great!!

[Inso]

I think those saucers will fit in really well... This is really taking shape into a cool army .

[Daeothar]

Busy weekend, but I did manage to finish the first of the four squads

And I've got some free evenings lined up this week as well, so with a bit of luck I'll be finishing the second one by the next weekend (fingers crossed)...

I ended up going with the 'normal' metallic paints after all, and after highlighting with pure silver, the new ones actually have come out brighter and more chrome-like than the old ones Also, the heavier pigmentation of this large new batch is not as noticeable (when compared to the original squad) as I had initially feared, so we're good on that front too.

Regrettably, I'll have to totally rebase the original squad. They're on (UK) coins right now and I had hoped to be able to slice off the putty/paste base witht he puddle bases in one piece and simply glue them to slotta bases, but the material is too brittle and breaks off instead. So rebasing it is...

[LouieN]

Good looking aliens

[Daeothar]

A week of no LAF regretfully did not mean a week of no work and other commitments, but I absolutely managed to register some more progress! For starters, I finished the second batch of 11 minis; 22 more to go

So, as I promised myself some posts ago, I started on the Flying Saucers after reaching the halfway point. And since they're really simple models, and there are only 4, I decided to do them all in one go.

I began with assembling the cockpits into he bottom half of the saucers; a really straighforward job of placing 4 quarters of the cilinder in their slots and glueing them in place. Cleanop on these parts was very minimal too, so they went together like a breeze.

I then put on a coat of grey primer, followed by a coat of sprayed on silver. I did this on the top and bottom halves of the saucers, plus the insides of the cockpits. I kept he two halves separate for now, as there are some clear plastic parts that will fill up the circle of holes around the bottom edge and around the cockpit and I wanted to keep them clear. I could have masked them all off, but there's loads on each saucer, and I have four to do, so this will be faster in the end.

The clear lenses also need a colour, and I am as of yet undecided on which one. I tried painting a bright blue on the inside, but it looked way off, so I took that off again. I am now leaning towards a luminous red/orange, but this might be subject to change...

Following the above, I then came to the conclusion that the chairs were not chairs at all, but some sort of backrest, as the provided aliens were standing in place. So I made some seats with some styrene rods and profiles, matching the backrests, because I want my pilots to sit in comfort while abducting people.

And sitting lowers their profile considerably (that, plus the headswap ), meaning I could actually cut down the domes of the saucers to lower their profile to something a bit less Jetsons in appearance. Because they looked way too cartoony before.

For this, I drew a line at the appropriate height and then used my Dremel with a cutting disk to cut them down. This went remarkably smooth and without mishaps. I had sort of calculated for the loss of a dome, since one of the saucers will be a crashed one, and I want that dome broken anyway, but I guess I'll have to do this in a controlled manner now

I then painted up the cockpits. Since I wanted a Men In Black kind of aesthetic for all the techy bits, everything needed to be silver/chrome, so I only picked out a few highlights on the cockpit interior with silver paint after giving them a thin black wash. Following that, I painted up a few of the controls like red gems and painted the large display in black and red as well. I tried for displays showing the craft in the actions I planned for them. So one if flying straight, one is banking, one has landed and has some schematics of a planetary system up on his screen and the fourth has a cracked screen, since it has crashed.

Then it was on to the pilots. I actually did this just last night, but I'm going to keep subjects together for readability (the cyberdisks will follow later on).

I cut up the plastic alien bodies that came with he kit by removing the feet and heads. I then also cut a wedge in their pudgy little bellies, so I could then heat them in hot water and bend the hips into a sitting position. I also bent the arms forward, so they could manipulate the controls on the dashboards.

After this, I put pins into the legstumps and necks. I cut off the heads from three Griffin Greys that had suffered breakages before, and pinned them onto the bodies. Using putty, I then fixed the belly cuts and crotches, and (crudely) lengthened the legs to appear whole and as long as those of their footslogging colleagues. They did not need feet, as those would be invisible under the cockpit dash anyway.

Oh, and I also shaved down the fingers of each hand to be a bit thinner, matching the Griffin sculpts.

So; that's where we are right now. I will write a separate post detailing the upcoming cyberdisks, even though I worked on those inbetween jobs on the saucers.

Next thing to do now is to paint the pilots, decide on a colour for the lenses and come up with a way to mount them on their (Flying) bases

[Daeothar]

Cockpits.

I just noticed that most of them still require some blacklining around the gems...

[Daeothar]

Since my main inspiration for this army is the old X-COM PC-game from 1994, it was only natural that I would look at the game for units to complement this rather large force of Sectoids/Greys. And in the game, Sectoids are accompanied by Cyberdisks when on terror missions. So that's what I was going to add.

Cyberdisks are large, well, disks, resembling miniature flying saucers. They're very well armoured, emotionless and faceless, so perfect as a heavier support unit.

I early on recognised that Lego radar dishes were the perfect size and shape, so I ventured out to a Lego parts reselling store here in town to acquire some.

And you thought us wargamers were nerds...

I initially went for 8 stud wide disks, but they were unexpectedly low in supply. However; in the same bin, the Lego guy also had 10 stud disks. And I immediately noticed that those did not have a flat area in the middle where the four studs sit; the curvature continued on, which suited my purposes just fine. (I had been wondering how to deal with that flat portion and concluded that using putty and sanding would be the best way of realising a smooth dome shape. But now I wouldn't have to dread bodging that job ).

Therefore I bought 10 of those larger than originally planned disks instead. And at €7,- for the lot, I considered it a nice deal; I will be able to make 5 Cyberdisks out of that stack. Of course curiosity overcame lego-guy and he wanted to know what I was building with them.

So I told him.

I have never witnessed such a mix of consternation, horror, fascination and indignation overcome a grown man in one fell swoop, but there he was. Still recovering from the realisation that I was actually going to cut up those precious parts when I marched out the door. I must go there more often

Once home, first thing I indeed cut off the studs, which, besides the already present center hole, left four smaller holes as well. These holes I filled up with styrene rods of the right diameter and once the glue dried, I cut them off flush with the surface. But due to the shrinking/melting of the plastic this did leave a still uneven surface.

So I used Vallejo plastic putty to fill the holes and leave some material proud of the surface, to be sanded down smooth. Then, a coat of grey primer was applied, but obviously the surface was not smooth just yet.  In fact, the putty, even though I had it let dry for 48 hours, in the last microns above the plastic decided to roll off with the sanding paper.

Meaning I had to do this again. But this time I used the tried and tested method of superglue and baking soda. This dried much harder and adhered much better, so I was able to sand it down perfectly flush with the surface of the domes.

I did two like this for the first cyberdisk, but I glued in a magnet into the center hole of the bottom half, so I will be able to easily base it.

Following this, I used some flexible metal guides to carefully scribe some lines into the surface of the disks. I aimed for them to resemble the panel lines of the saucers, without being identical. So the saucers have 7 lines radiating out of the center, while the Cyberdisks have just three.

Then I took a length of styrene strip and glued it to the inside of the lip of one of the disks. Once marginally dry, I glued the top disk on top of that, perfectly recreating the shape of X-COM's Cyberdisks.

The recesses strip between the two halves of the disk will be painted a luminous red/orange as per X-COM's depiction of them (and which will most likely also be the colour of the gems on the saucers) and the rest will be a plain silver with some black panel lining…

(I just realised I do not have a picture of the completed (but unpainted) Cyberdisk, but I'll add that as soon as possible)

[majorsmith]

They look great! I used tau drones for mine without the guns