Riveting stuff

So i thought i would write a tutorial about how i do my rivets. A few people have asked me about them recently, so i figured other people might be interested. This technique was originally presented in the Forge World Model Masterclass book (a book a definately recommend). The text and images are my own though.

Let start with the tools - this technique needs a very specific set of tools

 

 As well as the usual super glue, pencil, ruler and the plasticard that you want to rivet  you will need a pin vice with a very thin drill bit (the one i used here was 0.5mm) as well as some very fine tweezers.

On the right of the picture above you will notice a container. This holds the contents of a Brita Classic Water Filter Cartridge. Water filters are essentially made up of small plastic balls and small shards of charcoal. Simply get hold of a water filter and carefully cut the top off it (I used a small razor saw). Empty the contents in to a suitable container and you have a supply of rivets that should last a long time!

Here is a closer photo of the plastic balls that are inside the filter. It is these that we are interested in

Once you have collected your tools and have a suitable piece of plasticard to work with we can begin the rivetting work. First stage is to mark out the location of the rivets on the body work. Care must be taken at this stage as poorly aligned rivets looks both awful and unrealistic.
I find that for 28mm or 1/35 scale a spacing of about 5mm looks good. But you may find that others work for you.

After the positions have been marked out you can begin the drilling. The aim here is to make a small indentation where you want the rivet to be. You definately dont want to drill right through the plasticard! (Note in the picture below i would normally have a ruler placed so all the rivets are aligned, but i ran out of hands to hold it with! hence the wobbly rivet line!)

Once the holes are dilled, take the drill bit out of your pin vice and replace it with a short piece of fine wire. I use florist wire for this work. Put a blob of super glue on to a scrap piece of plasticard. Then dip the wire in to the glue and quickly transfer some glue to one of the holes you drilled.

Once the glue is in place grab your tweezers and pick up a plastic bead from the water filter. Place this in the super glue (the capillary action will draw the bead in) and then quickly wipe down your tweezers. If you dont wipe down your tweezers very quickly they will become a gluey mess! Here is what you will have at the end of this stage

Now simply repeat the whole process for all the holes that were drilled. Generally i try to work on groups of rivets in 10's, so gluing 10 in one go. Once you have got the hang of the basic process you can quickly speed up. I would also recommend choosing a whole load of size matched plastic beads before you start - the beads are many different sizes and some will fit the scale of your model better than others.

Here is a door i am working on at the moment for a diorama that shows lots of rivets in place pre painting

And here are some rivets in place and painted (in case anyone is wondering... its the inside to a chimera for a diorama based on krieg that i am doing. All parts were scratch build)

New Blogspot "Follower" box

Just noticed that Blogspot has updated the "Follower" box - am i the only one that thinks that the new design is horrible... Fonts that dont match, horrible big images and an advert for google at the bottom :(

Oh well, i guess i'd better put some time aside to adjust it as best that I can...

Black Rose

Not much to say about this one. The model is "Black Rose" by Freebooter miniatures. I always expect to enjoy painting FB mini's more than i actually do,  Rose especially had a face that was a nightmare to paint...

Video tutorial reviews (Warning! Long post!)

Recently ive been buying a lot of video tutorials about modelling. I've always found paper tutorials to be okay, but they lack the ability to actually see things like the thickness of the paint, the direction of brush strokes etc.
This is a collected review of several different ranges of tutorials. I will review each as a set (by company rather than by subject) and at the end i will compare and contrast the different companies style and give an overall recommendation.

The companies whose videos im reviewing are:

Miniature Mentor
Night vision creations
Steel Dog
Compendium Films

I should say right from the start that each of these companies covers the subject of modelling in different ways. MM and Steel Dog are mainly looking at the "Fantasy" end of the subject, with NVC and Compendium mainly focussing on "Real" subjects (such as tanks and the like). Obviously this changes the way the subject is dealt with. However, i still think that the different products can be compared, we just have to take in to account these differences at the start.

Miniature Mentor
Miniature Mentor (MM) produce a series of downloadable video tutorials (some are also available on DVD). The download tutorials are supplied as zipped files accessed via a link sent to you in your purchase reciept. The videos themselves are in .H264 format and the quality is excellent.

They range in price from about $15 - $25 as well as offering a subscription service where you can access all of their films at any time. The subscription is priced at $70 which to me seems a little bit high. I've purchased almost all of their films to date and i have yet to spend near $70 in one year - Im not sure who the subscription is aimed at; however it may prove to have more value depending on the speed at which they can produce future videos.

In general MM tends to focus on the new wave "French" style of miniature painting - ultra smooth blending with acrylics. Many clean lines and with an attention to colour matching and theory. This is a style of which i am a particular fan (for an example, just check out "Ravage" magazine at your local hobby store).

Each tutorial starts with a very nice "Interview" with the artist featured. Generally the artists are well known in fantasy modelling circles and are often multiple award winners.

The tutorial proper follows the interview and it is here that the "meat" of the actual tutorial is presented. The camera remains focussed upon the model for almost the entire tutorial, except for cutaways to show the consistency or colour of the paint on the palette or to show cut aways with explanation of some part of the technique that they are currently showing.

The MM style is very much to be considered in with "proper" art - they focus a lot on why colours are chosen, where to place the colours and how to move the brush itself.

This "low level" tutorial style is very useful, if you are unused to mixing colours, or making decisions about which part of the model to paint and in which order. However for the slightly more experienced painter, it can often be a bit too much detail. MM tends to do continuous shots with audio of the presenter and the painter talking about the technique over the top. Whilst the actual conversation is interesting, because of the detail being show it often ends up that what you are actually watching is literally paint drying! The presenter often seems to run out of things to say; and rather than use (for example) background music he resorts to silly platitudes ('Nice job', 'great work' etc).

I also found it rather annoying that they dont show the final model at the end of the video - its quite unnerving to always see a model at such an extreme close up, so it becomes hard to see how the parts fit together in the final model.

This is not to say that MM's tutorials are bad! Far from it, they are excellently produced (the photography is clear, the cutaways are useful and the techniques are solid) and have contributed a lot to my knowledge of the subject. In some ways tho, i would like to see them produce slightly shorter films, with more of the "Paint drying" being removed, if only to speed up the process.
Overal they built to be a nice collection of tutorials and with a few small changes could be an excellent series for anyone interested in fantasy modelling

Steel dog
Steel dog produce a series of downloadable and DVD tutorials. The download comes via an email link as a .divx file. I have to say that this was my first annoyance with Steel dog - Divx is not a particularily useful file format for me - although it will play in VLC, i prefer to have all my modelling videos in iTunes, so i ended up converting them to m4v file format to watch inside iTunes. Each video costs $20.

The Steel dog videos concentrate on slightly different areas of modelling to the others, mainly covering some more esoteric areas, such as how to produce bases, non metallic metals etc. Again this is firmly in the realms of Fantasy work, although most of the techniques would be suitable for AFV modelling too.

The videos themselves are fairly low quality (from the point of view of the actual pictures). Close focus on the parts tends to be blurry and generally the camera is focussed on the presenter, sometimes making it hard to properly see what he is doing on the work bench.

However, the topics covered and wonderfully inspiring! After watching each video i have been left with a sense of "I can do that", even for things that ive always been scared of (scuplting!). The presenter has a slightly infection enthusiasm for the subject and seems to truly love what he is doing. Whilst the techniques covered are much more suited to "gaming" models rather than proper display models, with refinement they work beautifully for static models.

In all? Well i felt that Steel dogs videos were let down by the camera. Without the close focus many of the techniques are lost. They are inspiring though, so they may well be worth the investment.

Night vision creations 
Night vision creations (NVC) currently produce 2 DVDs, both under the "F.A.Q" title. The first deals with the application of pigments and the second with "Modulation style" of airbrush painting. The focus here is solely on ultra realistic AFV models (generally WW2 German Tigers). The DVD's cost about £10 in the UK (I got mine from ModelZone in Holborn).

Produced and written by Mig Jimenez (google his work if you dont know Mig Jimenez....) the F.A.Q series are superb. From the packaging, which includes an inlay book detailing each technique and the products, to the DVD itself everything oozes quality.

The camera work is steady and ultra clear. Each step is covered in enough detail to be understandable, but without boring the viewer. The narrator speaks only when necessary (and obviously from a well prepared script) and the background music is awsome!

The techniques presented in these videos gives amazing results, but having tried a few of them, they are incredibly easy to actually pull off to a reasonable level. One thing about the F.A.Q videos is that they do rely on the purchase of quite a few supplies (pigments and oil paints being the key). However, i really feel that the investment is worth it, for the results that it generates.

Compendium Films
Compendium files produce a series named "Expert model craft". Like NVC they focus on the "Realistic" end of the spectrum. Each DVD is nicely packaged and aswell as the main feature they also include several bonus chapters, such as a profile of the narrator, a selection of images of their models as well as a list of the sources and references used in the production. Each DVD is priced at around £15

The DVD's each focus on a small area of model work, generally following an artist as they build a complete kit. One artist of special interest was Macus Nichols (the editor of Tamiya Internation Model Magazine), because of his special focus on building to deadlines. His tutorials tend to focus on getting great results quickly, and being an impatient modeller this definately appealed to me.

Generally these films remind me very much of old modelling shows i remember watching as a child on BBC2! In the main the presenters are slightly older and they have a considered, patient approach to model making. Personally i like this style. Its relaxed, yet exacting.

Overall
If you are solely a fantasy modeller, or you never go near tanks i would definately recommend Miniature mentors videos to you. They cover the techniques needed for single model painting is great detail and you will be able to learn a lot.
Anybody interested in AFV modelling solely, i would point to the F.A.Q series. Overall the F.A.Q series was the best presented, planned and executed set of the DVD's.
If you work in both fantasy and AFV arenas i would combine the Miniature mentor and F.A.Q series. Together they give a great combination.

The steel dog films are hard to judge. The quality is a let down, but the material itself is great. My recommendation if you are just putting models together for the battlefield, rather than for contests is to take a look. Lots of the techniques are fast and very suitable for army building

The compendium films DVDs were in many ways my favourite - the slowness of the presentation, combined with the accuracy of the result really appealed and they are slowly building up a nice collection of subjects.

So, which of the companies films would i recommend? This is a tricky one, because each covers so much of the modelling field, what i really want to say is that you should purchase all of them! If thats not possible, i suggest that you watch the clips provided by each manufacturer on their websites and try to judge which matches your needs closest.

The good and the bad....

I wanted to do a post about two shops that ive recently had contact with. One to give you a warning to stay away from, the other to recommend with the highest respect!

So first, lets deal with the bad. I placed an order several months ago with Arcane miniatures for a big collection of miniatures. First thing that i noticed was the slightly odd ordering system. Rather than having an online "shopping cart" you had to email them with a list of what you wanted and then pay via paypal. Anyway, i sent my email off to them and within about 6 hours i had a response with details about what was in stock and how to pay. I duly paid through paypal and then waited. And waited. And waited.
When the miniatures hadnt turned up after several weeks, i thought that i would send an email to Russ at arcane miniatures to find out what had happened to my models and recieved no response. After several more emails (and a bit more waiting), i phoned arcane and was met by an answer phone. In total i sent about 8 or 9 emails and phoned half a dozen times. All emails and calls went unanswered.
In the end i had to resort to a claim through paypal. Even with this, Arcane didnt get back in contact. In the end (today) Paypal refunded my money because they could not contact Arcane to deal with the dispute.
So my recommendation is to stay well clear of Arcane miniatures. I dont want to say that they are rip off merchants (Indeed, i dont know if this is the case), but there is definately something odd going on. Im just glad i paid through paypal, rather than by cheque, because at least i got my money back.
If anyone else has had dealings with Arcane, id be interested to hear your comments / experiences.

Now the good. I cant recommend Antenociti's Workshop highly enough. Great selection of products, high quality casting on their models and very helpful staff. I've met them a few times at Salute now and they are always helpful and knowledgable about the products that they sell. An order placed late on a monday night was with me by the end of the same week. Make sure you check them out.

First experiments with casting...Part 2

So its now the morning, and the plaster appears to have set, so i set about popping the plaster from its mould... And hit on the first problem! It would seem that both of the mixes that i used were slightly the wrong consistency.

The thicker consistency plaster doesnt look like it set properly, whilst the thinner plaster had an odd "oily" texture to it (it felt wet, but in a very odd way - the same way that olive oil feels!). Here is a picture of the two plasters still in the mould

You can clearly see how the thicker plaster has become lumpy. The thinner mix looked a lot better, just some small amounts of shrinkage around the edges.

I flexed the mould slightly to release the plaster and immediately found a problem with the thinner plaster - it cracked!

After popping out the thinner plaster, i then moved on to the thicker mixed wall - and again it cracked. I was left with two broken walls!

After cleaning up the thicker wall (the thinner one didnt seem to need it), I was left with the four major sections. As a first go at casting, they are not too bad. I dont think they are good enough for the main walls for the diorama tho, Im not sure that they have the structural integrity that i need, but not to worry they will be recycled for use as small parts of masonry or possibly part of the upper level!
So now i'm back off in to the kitchen to mix up some more plaster and retry my moulds... More updates to follow

First experiments with casting...Part 1

For a diorama that im working on at the moment i needed a corner of a building. Normally i would have made this from foam board and plasticard, but because i wanted to do some specific damage results the foam card would be no good.

So i decided to have a go at casting some "walls" using normal plaster of paris. The idea that i came up with is to use the plaster sections as the basis for the wall and then build on top of them using my normal plasticard.

I've cast small things before, but nothing that required me to build my own mould nor that require perfectly flat edges, so i decided that it would be worth documenting the process from mould to final "wall"

The first thing that i did was to cut two squares in to a piece of PVC foam (if you havent seen PVC foam, its the same as Foam board but the card is replaced with plasticard). I then cut around the gaps in the PVC foam, and glued this new square to an even bigger square! Easier shown than described, especially at 2am! - Here a picture of what the final mould was:

Next i mixed up my plaster. I actually ended up doing this in two batches, as i wasnt sure what consistency to make the plaster.

The first batch that i mixed up was thick -about the consistency of yoghurt. It didnt flow well in to the corners and felt sort of 'lumpy' going in.

The second mix that i did was much runnier - about the consistency of thick milk. This flowed a lot better in to the gaps, although i did find that at lot of water ran to the top very quickly...

In the picture above, the top most mould has the thicker plaster, the one at the bottom has the thinner...

After about ten minutes, i scraped the top of each mould using a piece of thick plasticard. I then wiped down the edges and set the plaster aside to dry.  So now the mould are sitting in the corner of the room drying. Ill post another update in the morning to let you all see how they turn out!