The Yule break was spent recovering financially from the wedding, honeymoon, and Christmas (thus we didn’t go anywhere), and I got to spend two weeks straight painting miniatures. I’ll post my Infinity Stargrave Crew later, when I have time to give them a little photoshoot. But grinding 4-6 hours a day until my hands quit holding the brush steady actually energized me, and I’ve been more productive this January than the last two years combined. All of the YouTube I’ve been watching of Black Magic Craft and Squidmar and Miniac &c., &c., &c sort of finished percolating and fermenting and in a frenzy of cyanoacrelate and white clue I slapped together the rough forms for all sorts of stuff. Finally doing a little wargaming also helped motivate me, to be honest. A couple rounds of One Page Rules Grimdark Future with what I had (which was entirely fantasy themed) got me, not dissatisfied with what I had, but excited for what I could make for next time. As a bonus it’ll be handy for the SF TTRPG games I run.
Stacked crates under a tarp don’t need to be painted! The shapes of miscellaneous insulation foam cubes and wooden beads are softened a bit by a tarp made from a dried out wet wipe soaked in water, PVA glue, and (not enough) paint. They need some painting up but the look of them’s good so far. Next up, pens into pipes inspired by Haunts’ Wargaming. I saved the tips and backs for greeblies later. I made them up separate so I can stack them one high for difficult terrain, two high for cover, and three high for blocking LOS. The plastic is smooth so a roughening with 80 grit sandpaper makes it easier for glue and primer to stick. Last of all, the start of a middlingly ambitious bunker project. Two open-backed halves that can stand independently, but I’ve got (after losing and re-ordering) some magnets I’ll be secreting in the tops of the pillars that’ll attach to a roof that makes it a single piece with two entrances.
I was a little bit surprised how easy it was to think about SF terrain, but having spent all my life in a combination of agricultural and hydrocarbon production areas, I’ve seen more boneyards than I can count. The only thing I’m better prepared to recreate from memory than unused, beat up, or shabby industrial equipment is childhood trauma. Seriously, though, I’m feeling way more confident about my future plans to do some various rusted-out and moss-covered variants of abandoned tech/mech.
