They were half cleaned up then put back in their box, then later cleaned up some more and put in a different box. I’ve always wanted to do these models justice especially due to their veteran nature and I have been working through my normal tactical Marines instead.

This time I want to get them finished and since getting the airbrush I’m a little excited at what I can achieve with these models.
I’d really like to get that smooth finish to the armour that makes Space Marines look so cool.

Something extra cool was that I magnetised the weapon onto one of the models. I have a real thing about magnetising stuff and this was a little tricky due to the fragile nature of Citadel Finecast and the placement of the arms.
Luckily, it was already somewhat cut at the wrists where the weapon with moulded hands attaches to the body of the model. I was able to cut the left arm down a few millimeters to use a magnet as part of the arm.

On the other sides for the connecting magnets I cut a single magnet into 4 pieces using my (old) hobby cutter and embedded that into the one of the wrists attached to the gun and one attached to the main model. Both guns mount up pretty well now and just need spraying.

And again, probably due to these not being the most recent moulds, there is 1 Sternguard model that I think just looked terrible due to the air bubbles visible all over the model. I will say that I have noticed that the more recent models have amazing moulds and look fantastic in the blisters. I’m mainly talking about the warriors of chaos Lord that was recently released as well as the chaos space Marines champion released a few months ago.

I’m going to have to get some liquid green stuff and fix this, but the bottle I had seems to have disappeared…

I have a list of things including an entire army of Necrons in that list, and it got a little bit longer this week when I purchased 2 more models.
I already have had a Stormtalon waiting patiently for some attention for over 6 months, and now I’ve gone and bought another one and a Stormraven!

Honestly, I was surprised at how easily the Stormtalon was to assemble.

I managed to assemble each one in a single lazy evening of assembly. This is contrary to the Ork Battlewagons which took me an entire weekend to assemble 2.
Now, In fairness the Ork Battlewagon kit is as awesome as it is devilishly complicated and has so many accessories and options that its just an all round awesome kit. I’m expecting the same dedication to assemble the Stormraven, as it appears to be a larger kit.

Earlier this week I finished both models and have some pics to show.

I would say I’m pretty happy with the results.

I’m pretty happy with the magnetised and swappable rear turret on the Razorback, but I’m a little disappointed that I managed to lose one of the hatch covers.

For those who are wondering whats in it:

-AMD 8-core 64-bit x86 “Jaguar” CPU
-Radeon GPU (Apparently AMDs ‘Graphics Core Next’ with 18 compute units, effectively 1152 Radeon cores)
-8GB GDDR5 RAM and
-USB3
-802.11n WiFi
-HDMI connectivity and (interestingly) legacy AV output
-Blu-Ray

Something I was personally surprised but then happy about is that the PS4 is basically a PC.
This is great news as it will make development much easier if games console games development is aligned with PC development (FYI, Microsofts ‘The Next Xbox’ is rumored to also have a similar x86 AMD CPU).

A couple of videos:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

More available on the Youtube channel and Twitter channel as the Sony official site doesn’t mention much yet.

Expect lots of gameplay vids to be released throughout the year.

Over to you, Microsoft… lets see what ‘The Next Xbox’ will bring…

Update: A popular rumor has it that Microsoft is soon to announce an ‘Xbox Event’ to be on April 26, apparently to announce the new Xbox.

Destiny:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I can say with quite some confidence that this is going to be awesome.
Bungie are a top-notch developer and they know how to make games.

Destinys website and Twitter channel have more details.

I recommend that anyone interested in Bungie, check this video.
It’s about Bungies history. This is a game studio that made a game which broke world records. Thats no mean feat, and this is their story:

Warning, its nearly an hour long but totally worth it

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Update: Destiny announced for PlayStation 4

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Google have just released a new tantalizing video, and the signup for public Beta ends February 27th.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And now the catch:

What happens next?

The deadline for applications is February 27th. If you are chosen, we will reach out to you with an invitation to become a Glass Explorer (please remember to follow us so that we can contact you directly). Explorers will each need to pre-order a Glass Explorer Edition for $1500 plus tax and attend a special pick-up experience, in person, in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles.

If you’re rich bold enough to pay the $1500 plus tax, get in there.
I wish I could…

More details available here.

I think the yellow base-coated one doesn’t come out so well in the pic I think as the color looks a bit odd, but still I’m happy with it as my first airbrushed models. I’m planning to start detailing it soon with a paintbrush.

Vehicles in 40k have always been a sticking point for me because I’ve never felt that I do them really well by hand.

As an Ork player, of course I’ve gotten good at painting troops but vehicles have always seemed somewhat daunting to me, mostly because of the large flat areas that I would need to paint. I did successfully paint 3 Battewagons and 2 trukks for my Orks, but Ork vehicles have that ramshackle look to them which allows for very few large flat neat areas.

And so it is that upon purchasing my airbrush, I’ve been busy this entire week and have been unable to get any hobby done. Today, I had some time and decided to continue with a Rhino and Razorback that I primed a few months ago using a can of Army Painter Desert Yellow.

As for the Army Painter cans, I’ve had mixed results, some models coming out great, others looking terrible. For example, I used a can of Army Painter Plate Metal on the Dreadknight I did a while ago, which came out great, and I’ve used that color of Army Painter again and had consistently good results. The Yellow on the other hand has an annoying tendency to lay down too thick and obscure detail on the model, making some of my marines look terrible but still paintable. Results of the Desert Yellow are also quite unpredictable, even in identical conditions.

To say the least, I’m glad to be past it, and using an airbrush instead.

So, what have I done recently?
The tactical squads, a Terminator Squad, Captain and a couple of Melta guys (Gotta have Melta).

As for these Rhinos, I’ve primed them to the best I could get with Army Painter, and today I used my Airbrush to coat the interior of a rhino and I detailed the rest using a brush. All it needs is some a little drybrush and a wash and will be ready to go I think.

Of course, I also need to paint the outside as well…

In a way I’m writing this to encourage everyone who’s profiting from this stuff now to set aside some of the money to help the users in what is sure to come. But also to the users to wise up and also to stop being such children.

There’s a lot more to the article and the extract above is a tiny fragment of that, but it is mostly written from the perspective of that of a provider, not so much from that of a user of such a service (Even though these are clearly the people reading the article). As I was reading this on the train, I finished reading, and stared out of the window dreamily attempting to imagine how my own life would be affected by such a world-changing event such as Facebook or Twitter disappearing. As an (Occasional) user of both Facebook and Twitter among many other ‘cloud-based’ social media services I eventually came to the conclusion that, surprisingly, I’m mostly quite prepared for a social media apocalypse.

So why write about this? Whats the point here?
Well, bear with me and I’ll try to get to that (I may repeat myself but meh).

Firstly, consider that the way our world and social society currently work are unlike anything that we have ever had in human history. We have accepted a normality regarding releasing control of our media and identity-related assets into a ‘cloud’, which we have little idea how this data is used.

After considering my own contingencies and backups of my own generated media (And feeling a little bit good about my natural distrust of social media networks), my mind wandered to others. Those who stood out the most especially were those who’s losses in the same potential catastrophe would affect me in their unpreparedness. This may sound selfish at first glance, I admit, but I ask that you think about this… If your wife/husband/other-family-member loses (for example) your childhood photos or other important media such as the baby photos of your own children, does that not affect you? Of course it does.

Remember, this can happen at any time. PCs crash, hard drives die, fire happens, etc… I dont mean to sound like a scaremonger here, but most of us apparently at some point lost interest in keeping huge photo albums of pictures in and instead place gigabytes of photos, taken from mobile camera-phones on Facebook as backup (Once again, Facebook is NOT your friend). A lot of people don’t backup separately either, just to Facebook. Somewhere in this process, we lost the part where our parents and grandparents would meticulously maintain physical photo albums and store them in the safest of safe places.
So, if for example, my own girlfriend were to lose our holiday photos then this would be an issue for me. Likewise, I would expect it to be an issue for her if I did the same. As such, I will certainly be making sure her laptop and photos are backed up like mine are already.

This is why it is important to plan for these things, make backups, and don’t fall into the mindset that so many others (Especially the younger generations among us) that Facebook cares about you. They really do not, and I’m often surprised at those I meet that imagine Facebook as this consumer dreamland created just for them (Yes, I’m that guy that reminds people that Facebook is an evil corporation). Why else would Facebook sell your data to anyone willing to pay them enough? Worse, what happens if they throw in the towel when the next Facebook (Remember MySpace?) comes around and people move to that?

Realistically, Facebook wont last until the end of time, or even the rest of your life, so what happens then?

My Solution?
I put the redundancy of my digital content at the top of my list.
I have a home server which I backup my phone and PCs to remotely via Dropbox/Google Drive.
My PCs and laptops also backup directly to my home server automagically when at home.
My home server backs up my photos to external local storage nightly.

Where does this leave me?
It means I can leverage the ease of cloud based services to facilitate my own remote backup purposes.

How can you do this?
Well, it’s actually not that hard. All you need is a place to backup to (Your PC will do), a Dropbox account (Which is free upto 2GB to start) some free software and you’re good to go. Alternatively, you can backup directly to your server via WebDAV (Web folders), which takes out the middleman and also means you do not need your private photos going through some cloud company. This is an approach I’m moving to, as having complete control of my own data is important to me.

I’ll go through what I’ve purchased, but first I want to go through my reasons for purchasing this.

My Reasons

There are a couple of reasons why I wanted an airbrush for miniature painting, and it is my belief that this is a great investment.

Firstly, I absolutely despise basecoating models using cans outside.
Where I live I dont have a whole lot of outside room and it gets quite windy regularly and unexpectedly, so its a test of my patience to shield from the wing and spray when I think its safe. It also feels like a chore to get a cardboard box ready and prepare it outside, and takes a while to dry and is quite bad smelling.

Next, I’ve tried to make the experience of spraying better by using different brands of spray paint, from GW’s benchmark spray to Army Painter which is very unpredictable and a few others. I feel that I’ve wasted a lot of money doing this as some of the models and finishes have left me very dissapointed in how heavy they go on, messing up all the detail on the models. I’ve spent hours upon hors looking at forums and guides on how to spray correctly and avoid the issues encountered, but I see that so many others have had similar experiences that its disheartened me.

Lastly, I want to achieve a better finish and do it quickly. This is the main reason that I went with sprays to begin with, and why I eventually went to using sprays of varying color. I’d like to establish good even and thin coats quickly and in comfort. Sprays did not deliver this, and cost a lot as a result.

So in conclusion, I’m happy that I purchased this, and feel that I’ll be learning a cool new skill by using an airbrush also.

What I bought
I did lots of research and decided to purchase from this seller:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008BH2Z6G/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1HGRE909K6WTV

It was a bit more expensive than other sellers but I discovered its from a real proper Airbrush specialist with a website store called Airbrush Supply Online, so I also ordered a bunch of other things from the same seller which reduced my postage (Shipping to Netherlands). I had a good think and when reading advice from professionals, it was advised that if you’re seriously considering getting into airbrushing, even on a budget, consider seriously that you may need to buy more than just the compressor and airbrush, such as cleaner and thinner (If you don’t want to use water). I purchased these things at once too.

I also emailed them for more details about the Amazon link above, because it was vague as to what was being supplied, and these are the models of compressor and airbrushes that come in the link above. They also responded promptly and with accurate information.

Compressor: AS-186

Airbrush 1: HS-35 (Gravity feed)

Airbrush 2: HS-28 (Bottom feed)

Lastly, I decided I wanted something extra fine as an airbrush once my skills develop a little.
From the same seller I purchased the HS-80 airbrush, which is apparently a straight clone of a £300+ Iwata:

So all in, this kit will set me back ~£120 not including extras I ordered.

Lastly, look what arrived today:

Now if I can actually get some time to get home and try this I’ll be happy.

Hopefully, more to come.