Desert Insurgent -Basic Painting Tutorial

Phew, I managed to find time to get a tutorial together! Unbelievable...

I'm down to the last 20 odd sets of these Desert Insurgents and considering retiring the mold already. The range will be expanded but I can't really keep the same sets in production indefinitely, catch em while you can they might be out of stock for a while. Email me (sales at miniaturesofthenorth.com), £15 a set.

I've used a variety of paints and inks here so I'll keep the naming conventions simplistic (along with my basic commentary).

1.Preparation

Wash these things in soapy warm water with an old toothbrush to remove the mold release powder, then once dry clean them up with files and a hobby scalpel – standard procedure.

Here's the metal (with an ink wash so the detail shows up). They can be assembled perfectly fine without any green stuff, and I'm surprised the fittings all line up as good as they do after molding, but I like to stick a little putty over the wrist joints and into the ball fitting of the neck for the sake of it.

2.Undercoat - White spray

3.Colour blocking – Give this guy two coats of ochre.

4.Washing – Use a suitable “earthy” wash or water down brown paint.

5.Drybrush – Get in about the mini with a light drybrush of Bone.

6.Colour Blocking –

Wrappings and scarves: Sandstone

Rifle: Black

Casings and shoulder pads: Dark Grey

Pouches and belts: Dark Brown.

7.Colour Development-

Wrappings and scarves: Wash with “earth” or watered down brown.

Casings and shoulder pads – Roughly layer on pure white. Make it streaky and rough.

Robes – Extreme highlight with Bone.

Skin – err, skin colour.

8. Colour Refinement-

Wrappings and scarves – Highlight with the original Sandstone, for final highlights mix in a touch of white to the Sandstone.

Casings and shoulder pads – Wash with watered down black, then do a final highlight with pure white.

Rifle – Extreme highlights with Grey.

Pouches and belts – Highlight with a lighter brown, wash with brown ink then extreme highlight in the lighter brown again.

Skin – Wash with “earth” and then highlights with a touch of white to the original skin colour.

9. Detail-

Battle Damage – Paint scratches and chips to the edges of the Casings and shoulder pads with dark grey, then a tiny thin line of light grey in the centre of it(leaving dark grey at either side of the scratches and chips). LESS IS MORE.

Buttons and buckles – Simply silver metallic washed with black, highlighted with a lighter metallic.

10. Basing-

Easy – Sand and stone glued in place. Paint it with Ochre (same as the original mini colour blocking), wash it with “earth” or watered down brown then highlight it with Bone. Paint the edges of the base Dark Brown.

The time to Rebel has come. Follow the Protocols_

These are my err personal gaming rules. They've morphed on a bi-annual basis since about 2008 and only last year settled onto something that I was comfortable with. Detail and abstraction have waxed and waned over time. Right now I've found a good balance, and the final hurdle I'm facing is one of page layout and graphics.

At the core of everything are the Tickets and the A.C.K.A.D.I Core Disciplines – these are the characteristics and respective values of units and characters. Around this orbit the Action & Reaction mechanics (like shooting, close combat, movement, etc.) which are all mutable – you can use the same characteristics for a unit in a 6mm scaled massive battle, a super detailed single character adventure (where dice pools track your bullet/ammo count) or a squad level skirmish game: which is what I'll be presenting first.

To reiterate, the characteristics stay the same but the mechanics change how they are used.

Shooting example:

• In super detailed adventure mode – the required dice score to hit is determined by your ACCURACY versus the targets AGILITY.
• In 6mm battle mode – you simply need to roll equal to or higher than your ACCURACY.

Here are a couple of choice exerts to give a flavour of what the Protocols are all about. This is a very early cut so liable to future editing and restructure, only the basic aesthetic and rules are locked in.

I'm aiming for 12 pages max on this edit... wish me luck.

This blog still lives!

If you're still with we after a near two month “hiatus” then thank you.

First things first:

The Website – still very much a failure to launch scenario, but I'm not too concerned about that for now. I think in all honesty I'll downgrade myself from a “boutique webstore” to a garage supplier.

Purchasing – if you want either the Desert Insurgent or Techno Communion set's drop me an email, sales at miniaturesofthenorth.com. I've gone through a fair few runs of the mold so far, thanks to all who picked some up, I may yet break even... one day. (I have about 5 Techno Communion sets left and around 20 Desert Insurgent sets). Payment though paypal.

Sculpts – Pictures or it didn't happen right? Oh well, pics below.

Projects – Narrowing and solidifying. I'll chuck “refining” in there as well. By that I mean clear direction, solid designs, crystal clear 'universe' and... rules. I'll be creating separate pages on the blog to house all this.

Right so here's the important bit:

Space Opera: Rebellion Protocol. More sci-fi armour and less bayonet gothic. All very much WIP.

Bronze Age: Fantasy Hoplites (tests)

Cyclopes and Dwarf Stone Golem

Also tests in 10mm and 15mm

Tests for something new... 19^th century clockpunk. Frankenstein like Black Praetorians will probably get done first, all your favourite horror elements (bats, black dogs, evil scarecrows, witches and all that good fun stuff.