Posts made by Spitfire38

The variety of your pieces is great, and they really pop on the Global War board!

Nice work John! I love the new green.

Don’t worry about it, John! Giving timelines is a slippery thing, because things happen and plans change. I’m glad that they are turning out well. I will be excited to see the pieces!

@dangermouse650:

Thanks for comments. Yes, these are brown-washed and then dry-brushed. I chose a gray for the dry-brush thinking that when metal is out in the elements the paintwork fades and flakes off, also from lots of use. I have over done it on a couple of the pieces, brush wasn’t quite dry enough but overall i think it turned out ok. It has given them a weathered look i think.

Yeah, the grey does give it a nice flaking look! And if you think it was too heavy, then you can just dry the brush a bit more the next time as you mentioned.

@Dafyd:

Spitfire; truly amazing work.  I have painted some small sacle models before but this is …well…truly amazing work.  I am curious, how do you prep the pieces to be painted?  Do you use Kylon Fusion paint to hold the colors to the polypropolene plastic or do you use the acrylic paints and then clear coat them so the paint won’t come off from handling them?  Your roundels; are they paonted or are those a micro decal?  I don’t mean for you to give your sevrets away, but I was just wondering with admiration and trying to figure out how you did it.

Don’t worry, they are not trade secrets. I don’t know if I have any of those - much of the reason that my pieces turn out how they do is just the fact that I have been painting for a while and have a good sense of what works!

To prep my pieces, I spray them with a basic gray primer. I try to keep the coats thin. This helps the paint bond to the piece much more easily than if it was straight onto the plastic. If you want more information, look at my tutorial thread, which is stickied at the top of this subforum.

The roundels are a decal. On my personal pieces I hand paint them, but decals give you crisp and uniform work, especially when you get in to things like flags, stars, etc.

And finally, thanks for your praise!

Nice work! I really love those infantry. You got the gray and khaki spot on.

May I ask why you decided to highlight/drybrush the vehicles with gray?

HBG Infantry are virtually the same size. Hopefully this helps?

The Allied paratroopers are slightly shorter than the OOB infantry, but imperceptibly so when looking down on the game board.

@John:

Both Spitfire and myself are detail oriented people, so I study what I want in color schemes and how I want him to present it. I send him detailed pictures and instructions, and he makes the magic happen.

My goal is to combine my pieces I’m painting with his to some day to have two completely painted Global sets with painted neutral, pro allied and pro axis pieces.

It is ambitious project which will take a number of years.

After that will be facilities and whatever else comes about.

It is indeed an ambitious project - I would love to see the full set someday! Maybe we can all meet up at a conference someday and bring our pieces to show them off.

Happy painting (and playing) everyone.

@jwo1984:

One thing I like about spitefires reditions of your pieces is how he makes it quite distinguishable between the countries and there units. � Maybe it is the color themes … or the decals made clearly visiable and the top or sides of the units. � Something I might have to work on as like DangerousMouse… I search through history and want to replicate exact aircraft color schemes…and tanks and ships as accurately as possible. � So for a new player playing it can be harder for them to look at the board and really know the difference in the Brit ships and Anzac ships …or Russian green tanks and the US green shermans…

That’s a problem I used to run into as well. However, I haven’t played Axis and Allies in quite a while for lack of a player base, so I have pretty much resorted to painting these days. Also, they guy I normally play with used to paint with me, and he is a big WWII buff as well. Unit identification between the two of us isn’t much of a problem - as long as you have interested players I haven’t found it to be much of a hassle.

@dangermouse650:

Nice work spitfire, looks good on the board John. Currently working on my own 96x48, it will cover the slot cars though…… :-D

@coachofmany:

very nice pieces, a lot of hard work!

@jwo1984:

Pacific theater is looking intense John brown.  such a great display of detailed and colorful units and pieces on the board! makes me want too launch into a pacific battle right now.  Looking forward to seeing the US get painted and added too these shots.  Unfortunately the Anzac and Chinese forces are just not enough to contain and fight back the expanding Red Sun!

@SS:

Sweet !!! Keep up the awesome work.

Thanks DM, Coach, jwo, and SS.

And thanks to you too John - you really did set up the pieces “in action”! They’re looking good. They look good facing off against each other. I keep returning to the IJN disruptor camo as some of my favorite work. It’s sad to send off the pieces when they’re finished, but I look forward to you enjoying them!

Sweet! I am excited to see them in action  :-D

@LHoffman:

Those Anzac ships looks awesome. Great looking stuff Spitfire. I appreciate the well placed contrast for the camo schemes and accents with the colors. Very appealing.

It can be a challenge to differentiate different Powers’ look from another, because they can tend to look similar (UK and Anzac in particular). But you have done a great job with these.

Thank you LHoffman. You have an eye for figures, so I appreciate the feedback! I feel like I am getting a better hang on what a good camo looks like in terms of the curvature and placement of the lines and splotches, the color contrasts, etc. Personally the ships weren’t my favorite, but everyone I’ve showed my pieces to prefers them.

@cyanight:

I agree completely. Very nice job.  I also like your selection of roundel decal for ANZAC.

Many thanks! John picked out the roundels - I think that the ANZAC roundel looks especially crisp and distinct.

@dangermouse650:

Very nice spitfire, very nice….

@John:

All I got to say is, wow Spitfire! Awesome job on these. I’m very pleased. I can’t wait to see these in person. Great job! :-D

John

Thanks DM - I appreciate the compliments. One of the reasons I paint is so others can enjoy! Which pieces are your favorite? I think mine would have to be the Kangaroo mechanized infantry. John did a good job picking the scheme, and I think it came out well.

Once you get the pieces, let me know how they look with the Japanese, John!

All of the ANZAC and Chinese forces have been completed! Here are some ‘glamour’ shots of the figures. Specific shots can be found earlier in the thread on page 1 and 2.

Update on the ANZAC and Chinese pieces:

You guys can expect to see some photos of the completed ANZAC and Chinese forces in the next week or two. I hope that those Flying Tigers were a nice teaser; there’s more where that came from!

Best wishes on this Thursday afternoon.

Spitfire38

@jwo1984:

These P40’s look awesome Spitfire! well done on the shark mouths…they aren’t easy to do and those teeth turned out very nicely! I wonder if we can get decals in the future for the shark mouths??

Thank you! I am happy with how they turned out as well. As Cyanight said, “Every artist is their worst critic”, which I have certainly found to be the case :) The shark’s teeth are just white dots - no triangles or anything like that. I used a toothpick to dot the . You will likely have to wipe the tip of the toothpick off each time and get more paint on it each time if you want the precise, small dots. Decals might make it easier - I do not know of any company that provides them, but I am sure you could find them. The difficulty would be finding tiny ones. I personally prefer hand painted, but decals are growing on me as I paint John’s set. They are rather expensive and time consuming, but they give you really crisp looking roundels and stars!

For anyone wondering how I would paint the American star roundel by hand… I wouldn’t. I have found that I cannot paint stars that look good when they are that small, so I generally abstract it and paint it as a white dot in a blue circle or something like that.

I am always amazed by your color tones. Great job DM! Those carriers have some good markings on them. Your pieces give me inspiration.

Wow, really nice work on that navy. The grey spotting/stripes on the side give some nice contrast.

@Proud:

Nice work on those P40s there Spitfire.

Thanks! I appreciate it.

Great pieces Cyanight! My personal favorites are the Hellcats - behind the M10 Wolverine, they’re my favorite tank (destroyer really) of the Americans.