Hoffman Avatar of Voltron... I mean Amalgamation WIP

I finally got my hands on the crazy Avatar version of C. Hoffman on Saturday :)



Here he is all on one well packed sprue. I clipped off all the parts and got to sanding off mold lines.



to match the rest of my crew I had to work out where to put in some gems. 1st obvious spot was to drill the eyes out of the face.



I used a round rotary bit on the back of the mask to open up the eyes area to fit in the smallest of my green gems.



They fit in nicely. I'll glue them in place after painting the mask.



The chest of the robot already had a sculpted gem in the middle of it's chest continuing the Iron Man look of the other robots. I drilled this out then used rotary bits and a knife blade to expand the hole big enough to fit the largest of gems I have. I went a bit deep drilling though so had to fill it back up a bit with a cut off bit of sprue.



There it fits in just right.

After the converting I kept cleaning parts and glued him into his stock pose.











He really is quite a beast. Nice presence on the table. The only dissapointments I have is the plastic version of C.Hoffman seems less defined and a bit weedy compared to his metal version. Not that keen on him just being kinda strapped to the robot's arm either. Lastly The design of the feet is a bit weird, and more importantly, doesn't really fit on the top of the base. Surely the sculpter knew what size base this would be going on, yet the very fragile claw tipped feet look destined to get hooked on stuff in carry cases and break off. They also seem very flat which I don't like very much. Maybe I will think of something that extends over the lip of the base for him to stand on or I will redesign his feet.

Hoffman's Crew done ... mostly

I've managed to get everyone in my initial gang done :) Now just need to get the mobile toolkit and the claw guy done. Here they are:





















































I think I overdid the rust spray on the smokestacks on the Peacekeeper so I'm going to give it a black wash and a bit of metal drybrush to tone it back.

Painting Wild West Bases

I got a lot of comments about the bases as I've been painting my Hoffman crew so I thought I'd write up something about what colours I use as I do up the next couple bases.
 

The starting point is a few bits of broken coffee stirres, some rocks, a couple plastic cacti from Pegasus Hobbies and a heap of sand.
 

This was given a spray of undercoat, in this case Army Painter undead flesh but white would do.
    

All the ground was basecoated with a nice earthy brown and the cacti with khaki. I actually used a sample pot of house paint for the brown since I had used it for my big base board for my Western town.




Drybrushing: a sandy yellow over everything including the cacti.
 

Next a very light drybrush of off white on the larger rocks.
 

Next washes: a bit of Army Painter Soft Tone painted around the rocks and cacti to give a bit of depth. Also a bit here and there on the cacti.
 

Next some Thraka Green wash over the plants.
 

Now some Strong Tone washes over the wood planks and a bit more defining around the rocks..
 

Using a warm light grey I picked out the planks a bit for that weathered look.



Now using grass tufts I give the bases some foliage. It's a good idea to have the minis on the base when you do this so you don't get the grass obscuring the figure.



All done.
 

Finally paint the edge whatever colour you like, I've gone classic black. Now I just need to get the minis finished.

Saloon

Been working on this one for a while. It was actually the 1st building designed for Aetherworks but ended up taking me ages to getting around to. I experimented a bit on this one with my very old airbrush and brand new air compressor laying down the initial shading on the coloured areas of the building. I kinda went too dark though and the building was too pink rather than faded red so it took a fair few washes over the top the soften the shaded areas and to fix the colour more to my liking. After that I painted all the trim areas and door and window frames then added some good old Devlin mud for shading then drybrushed them with white. I experimented a bit in masking the building walls while doing all the drybrushing, I think it helped a bit, same goes for the floor boards which were several shades of brown. I think I may go back and put some scaled posters on the walls sometime but I'm pretty happy with the result at the moment. It looks like a good start to a street butted up against the General Store.