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The last six months of blog posts have been more Tohaa-heavy than I had intended. I generally try to maintain a mix of different types of projects from month to month, but for most of this year, general life chaos and egregious personal irresponsibility have nixed most of the side projects I was intending to work on, and left my output fairly narrowly focused on the Space Artichokes.<\/p>\n
It is to this same well that I return today, but fear not, for there is light on the horizon. Today’s post is a roundup of the final work I recently undertook to get my Tohaa army up to a playable, painted 300pts, which means that after this goes up, I will once again be free to bounce from project to project in the manner that my ADD so fervently demands.<\/p>\n
And if nothing else here interests you, you can always scroll to the bottom and ogle the Asparagus Hedgehogs. It’s okay, I’m not here to judge.<\/p>\n
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The Kotail Mobile Unit were the models that drew me to Tohaa, so it’s actually a bit weird that they were the last things I finished on my way toward a functioning army.<\/p>\n
Corvus Belli produced two incredible Kotail models, but you’re allowed to run up to four in an army, so of course my first Artichoke purchases were a pair of each sculpt. However, to actually run two identical models would be to let down not only myself, but also you, my beloved public. So from the start, there was never any question that one of each sculpt would receive some level of putty makeover.<\/p>\n The decision about how to modify them was very easy to make– my armies tend to be made up over over 50% specialist troopers with plain rifles, and Corvus Belli was nice enough to ship one of the Kotail sculpts with a pair of rifles that I could divide between my two Forward Observers. That left one arm to build for each model; I cobbled together a very basic “pulling something from hip pouch” pose for one model out of the existing arm segments, but I didn’t have appropriate parts to do the same for the other model, so I dug out my wire and putty and started sculpting his other arm from scratch.<\/p>\n I drilled a wire into his exposed shoulder, bent it into the correct proportions, and then covered it with a thin layer of putty to give me a base to work on.<\/p>\n Once that was set, I started adding higher layers. Here I’ve bulked out some basic arm muscle groups and drawn lines for where some of the panels will end up.<\/p>\n The Kotail uniform’s arms consist primarily of horizontal straps over top of the living meatsuit; I rendered these straps by laying tiny putty snakes over the musculature, flattening and straightening them out, and then sculpting tiny buckles in the center of each one.<\/p>\n Unlike the detail-oriented fastidiousness that went into sculpting Neema<\/a>, this project was only meant to be tabletop quality, so I didn’t worry myself too much about the slightly rounded edges on the straps– it was nothing I couldn’t cover up later with paint. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Once the meatsuit and straps were done, I started adding armour plates. The gauntlet was built in three pieces, starting with this elbow-to-wrist bracer. I allowed this piece to set completely before coming back to add the next layer of plates.<\/p>\n While that was setting, I added a very basic form for the shoulder pad, which would give me a platform to work against when sculpting the final shoulder later.<\/p>\n I also needed to fill in quite a bit of the model’s jacket; the original model had its elbow pressed tightly against its chest, so when I scrapped that original arm, there was a large hole left behind. I filled this in by adding crumply cloth and more straps, doing my best to mimic what was only the other side.<\/p>\n Once the shoulder foundation was hardened, I shaved it down as thin as I could safely manage with a sharp knife, and then started filling out its final volume and shape with a cleaner layer of putty.<\/p>\n I used a putty mix heavy on the yellow hardener component, for reasons that largely elude me now– in theory this would’ve been a good spot for a much bluer mix, as blue is much less likely to retain tool marks, and thus smooths much better than yellow mixes.<\/p>\n But, whatever the reason, it still worked. So, whatever.<\/p>\n *shrug*<\/em><\/p>\n The top part of the shoulder is a crescent-shaped ridge, which I copied a bit sloppily from the other side. The sloppiness was a roughly equal blend of not really caring and “OH MY GOD THE TOURNAMENT IS IN FIVE DAYS AAAAAAHHHHHHH”.<\/p>\n This is not an uncommon motivational framework in the Potatocave.<\/p>\n With the arm coming along nicely, I started working on the focal point of the custom arm– a primed E\/M grenade. My basic plan was to first sculpt the grenade itself as an extension of the arm, and then add the hand around it. Here I’ve trimmed the basic putty ball down a bit to give me room to sculpt details without ending up with a grenade the size of a cantaloupe.<\/p>\n I didn’t really have a plan for what the grenade would look like, so I made sure there was a circular inset that I could make super glowy, and some other random plates and ridges radiating out from there.<\/p>\n Once the grenade was hardened, I started adding fingers. The thumb was rolled out as tiny putty snake, trimmed to length, and then laid around the grenade in what felt like a plausible “I want to throw this at someone” pose.<\/p>\n I planned to have the index, middle, and ring fingers clumped fairly close together, and the pinky a bit more off on its own, so the main three fingers were applies as a single block and then divided up with a knife…<\/p>\n …like so. I then cut each finger to length and segmented them by adding knuckles with a Clayshaper.<\/p>\n Once the hand was finished, I was free to add the last arm plates.<\/p>\n I then did a bunch more detailing and cleanup work while staying at my parents’ house for the weekend, and forgot to take process shots of any of it, but here’s where he ended up:<\/p>\n Nothing amazing, but good enough.<\/p>\n Aaaaaaand then I painted him.<\/p>\n And also the other one.<\/p>\n And also a prone sniper.<\/p>\n All in a week and a half, which might actually be the fastest I’ve ever painted three dude-sized models before.<\/p>\n I am seriously the slowest painter. >_<<\/p>\n “WE ARE MIGHTY BECAUSE WE ARE WRAPPED IN MEAT.”<\/p>\n “There is no pocket where I am reaching.”<\/p>\n “My leg is just itchy.”<\/p>\n “We are a vegetal people. Meat burns us.”<\/p>\n “My life is unending agony.”<\/p>\n The three new meatfolk were the last models I needed to complete my 300pt army.<\/p>\n They all look so pretty together. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I have a long tradition of building my own custom army transports and trays instead of buying pre-fab ones. There is no cost savings to doing this, and multiple hours of labour are required to build everything, so I really have no defense for this practice other than “making army boxes is cool”. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n This time around, I was fitting the army into a Fake Fancy Box I bought at Homesense. I chose it because the yellow and burgundy pattern matched my army scheme– over a year ago, before I switched to a completely different scheme. But the box was still the perfect size, so I didn’t bother myself too much over the aesthetics. ~_~<\/p>\n To fit all of my models inside and keep them from banging into each other, I would need to set up foamcore dividers and trays. I tried a few mock layouts to try to find the most efficient storage pattern:<\/p>\n This pattern was my first thought, and was a strong candidate because it would fit 14 models on a single layer.<\/p>\n However, I ended up going with this layout instead, because it increased the capacity of each layer to 12.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n …HEY WAIT A SEC<\/p>\n Ahh, whatever. Math is for nerds.<\/p>\n The edges of each tray were built to be 35mm tall, to fit a 25mm base with a bit of extra leeway.<\/p>\n The walls and floor of each tray were held together with nails and hot glue.<\/p>\n The interior dividers were shorter, at about 30mm, to leave room to drop a lid inside each one.<\/p>\n The divided trays were set up to fill only part of the box, with a large gap on one side to accommodate my Gorgos TAG.<\/p>\n The trays were all coming along quite nicely, but of course, simply laying models down inside foamcore boxes would be pretty disastrous to their paintjobs. To keep everything safe, I needed to add padding.<\/p>\n I considered a few options for this, but eventually settled on a microfiber blanket I found at a local surplus store. I cut 1″ strips from the blanket’s outer trim, which caused a red Fuzzsplosion all around my modeling desk.<\/p>\n I am still finding red puff clumps three weeks later.<\/p>\n I fully expect that the inside of my lungs is a field of crimson.<\/p>\n When I die of cancer in February, YOU ALL KNOW WHO TO SUE.<\/p>\n The cancerblanket strips were laid inside each row, stuck down with a pile of hot glue, and then trimmed to length.<\/p>\n Another strip was added for each row on the lid, so that the models could be sandwiched together in fluffy safety.<\/p>\n It all closes up pretty nicely, except for this hole I had to cut for the Ectros’ gun, because his pose is GANGLY AF. >_<<\/p>\n I WILL NEVER BE RID OF THE CRIMSON PLAGUE<\/p>\n Anyway, terminal illnesses aside, it all came together beautifully. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n And now my Space Artichokes can travel around in luxury, swaddled on all sides by decadent shag carpeting.<\/p>\n We should all be so lucky.<\/p>\n I finished the three meatsuited figures above with three working days left before the event I was attending. The event’s Warcor had pre-announced the scenarios, and among them was the new-ish “Rescue”, which requires each player to extract four civilian models from enemy territory. I wanted to have civvie models that in some way fit my army, but given the extremely tight timeline I was working in, I didn’t have anywhere near enough time to sculpt actual Tohaa civilians. Out of options, I turned to my reliably rapid fallback:<\/p>\n![\"tohaaupdate_ref_01\"](\"http:\/\/www.captainspud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/tohaaupdate_ref_01.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nPart 2: Transport Box<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\nPart 3: Hedgehogs<\/h2>\n