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WWII: Struggle for Europe____WWII: Struggle for Asia => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobsalt on July 30, 2009, 12:59:28 AM
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We haven't played in almost two months. There was a Bible study at church that fell on our usual night to play so that's kept us from conquering any more ping pong tables. Tonight we have a dinner to wrap up the study and hopefully we'll get back to it next week. I've also been doing a lot of painting for new units we're going to start using. I need to get the photos up for those.
Bob
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Here's what I've been working on.
Photo 1
Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers. These don't
have torpedoes because the ones that come at this
scale are about 1/3 too small and I don't have the skills
to make them from scratch. The planes closest to the
camera are a little out of focus but you can sort of see
my attempt at a camouflage pattern used by the IJN.
Photo 2
G4M "Betty"s being escorted by a couple of A6M2
Zeroes ("Zeke"s).
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Next photos
Photo 1
Aichi D3A "Val" dive bombers. These were a lot of fun to
paint. The one with the orange tail is in the colors used
by the squadron based on the Akagi on December 7, 1941.
The red-tailed ones are from I believe the Zuikaku, and the
green ones are from later in the war.
Photo 2
The Zeroes all together. I did a lot of research on these. I
came across a couple of interviews with former U.S. pilots
and they said that the colors you see on models/miniatures
for carrier-based Zeroes are usually wrong. Most of the time
whe you see one they're painted a very light gray - almost
white. These former pilots said that they were usually either
a very light gray with a slight greenish-tint or a very light
tan color. The "gray" ones are almost an exact match to the
true historical color. The tan ones are slightly too dark, but
they look REALLY good on the map.
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WOW - these look awesome! That is a fantastic paint job for these 1/600th scale planes. . . wish I had the patience to do that. . .
It has bee a quiet month or two. But John and Mike are back at it in their big weekly game in the advanced section. Spring 1942 summary is posted now down in the after action reports.
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So Bob. . .do any painting for other people? How did you get the white trim around the red Japanese sun - that is really a fantastic painting job - best I've seen on 1/600th scale minis.
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Mark,
Thanks for the compliment. No, I do not paint for other people. It usually takes me too long
to paint each aircraft to ever be able to make it profitable. And as much as I appreciate your
kind words I honestly feel that my paint jobs are really only average. They'll look good enough
on the gaming table but I wouldn't enter them in any contests.
I'd love to tell you that I painted the Japanese insignias but I didn't - those are decals from
Dom's Decals. He does a line of 1/600 and 1/300 decals as well as selling the Vapor Trails
aircraft. Everything else is hand-painted though. I've done a lot of research to try and make
sure that every aircraft is painted in a historical scheme.
If you think these are good you should see some of the ones that Peter painted. He built a
lot of models as a kid and is a lot better at detailing than I am. He's also good at seeing little
scraps laying about and seeing how they can be used to add just a bit more detail to an
aircraft. He's been painting mostly US aircraft.
If I think of it I'll try to get some more photos posted tomorrow.
BTW - did you change the title of this thread? I hope I wasn't so immodest as to start a thread showing off my work - and then call it awesome.
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Hi Bob - ok - please do post some more when you have a chance - I'll definately look into getting some decals.
I did change the heading for the thread - and just changed it back to miniature pics -
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Bob - very impressive - deserves it's own thread. :)
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I finally got around to getting out the camera to take some photos of our latest work.
First photo up is some of Peter's work - the French air force.
We replaced the Blenhiems that came with the game with 3 x SNCASE LeO451. Fighters are D520's and a
couple of American P-36's.
(http://)
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Next up are some Japanese bombers I did. 4 G4M Betty's and 3 G3M! Nell's.
The rear Betty is in a pre-war metal finish. The one in front of it is from a squadron based on Rabaul in 1943,
and the other two are in standard camouflage patterns. The forward Nell is a pattern used in China; the other
two are in a mid- to late-war pattern. These two weren't all that difficult to paint, but were very time-consuming
- each of them took over an hour. In our rules the metal-finish Betty will be an air transport, the Nells will be
standard army bombers, and the other Betty's will be naval bombers.
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4 x Japanese A5M Claudes. In our rules aircraft will be broken down by fighters, bombers, tactical bombers
(Stukas, etc.), heavy bombers, naval bombers, naval fighters, naval dive bombers, naval torpedo bombers, and
air transports. Fighters will be further divided into early, mid, and late war.
These Claudes represent Japanese early fighters. The white ones are models of two fighters that were based
on the Soryu; the other two were based on Kaga. When I painted the Kaga ones I misread the photo caption
and thought this was an army paint scheme. It wasn't - it was used by the Kaga air wing. In our game though these two will be land-based army fighters.
The Kanji on the port wing of the Soryu fighters was very difficult to paint, but it is very close to the actual Kanji
painted on the real fighters. The striping and numerals on the starboard wings are authentic. The only thing
missing from these fighters that was on the real planes are some Kanji on the fuselage - these were far too
small for me to even consider painting.
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Russian bombers painted by Peter. Lead plane is a B-25 lend-lease plane. Lend lease rules in the rules we're
working on will also work differently.
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Sturmovics, also painted by Peter.
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I-15's, again by Peter.
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Soviet Yaks and a lend lease P-40, all by Peter.
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B-25's. The lead bomber is done up in an early war scheme, and was painted by Peter; the rest were done by
me and were among the very first planes I ever painted. The four in back will be naval bombers, painted in
various Pacific schemes. The other two are in a late-war all-metal finish. Note the nose art on them.
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Various US fighters, all by Peter. We still have a LOT of these to paint. Peter kind of got bored with panting
these and set them aside to do the Soviets. I see his point - there isn't much variation you can do at this scale.
Note in particular the P-47 at the bottom - you can't really tell, but it's actually a Brazilian fighter, thanks to some
modification of the decals by Peter. My wife was rather pleased with this one (she's from Brazil).
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More of Peter's worlk. First plane is an F$F, leading 4 Devastators, all in pre-war high-visibility paint schemes. Also
here are three P-40's. One of these is a Chinese Flying Tiger, complete with hand-painted insignia. I'm especially happy with the F4F - this is another one that is modeled on an actual aircraft, and I think Peter did an outstanding
job on this one.
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More US naval air in 1941-42 schemes, all by Peter.
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Allied bombers. 2 Stirlings, a Lancaster, an early-war B-17, a B-24 in desert scheme, and a Blenhiem. Peter gets
bored painting the same aircraft over and over so he tends to move from one plane to another. Again, I think
he did excellent work on these.
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Various British aircraft. In the rear are Seafires done by me. All of these are panted in authentic schemes - one
is done with New Zealand insignia. 2 others are done with insignia uses by the Royal Navy in the Pacific. The
insignia were modified to get rid of the red center to avoid confusion with Japanese aircraft.
Forward of the Seafires are 4 Beauforts - three in Atlantic schemes and one in New Zealand paint & insignia.
The other 4 fighters are 2 Spitfires, a P-40 in desert scheme, and a P-51B, all done by Peter.
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Me-110s, all done by me in various paint patterns. These look pretty good once you get them painted up
(if I do say so myself), but they are a real pain to paint. The cockpit lines are really bad, and the tails were all
distorted. Painting the canopies required a lot of time (and many do-overs). I still have two left to do - after
that I really wouldn't mind if I never painted another one. We would tell you the same thing about the Bettys
and Lancasters.
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Do-217s and Stukas. Each of these is in an authentic scheme (several are actual individual aircraft) except the
red-tailed Stuka, which is intended to be a naval dive bomber in the event anyone ever builds the Graf Zepplin.
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These are the only Italian ones I've done so far. These have been among my favorites to paint so far. The
miniatures are very well done with very nice lines. The camouflage pattern was time consuming but not all that
difficult. I've got 4 more of these to paint. Two will be done up as air transports and two will be done in a
different camo scheme to act as naval bombers.
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Last picture for the night. These are the bf 109s I've done so far. I still have a bunch of these to do. All of
these are historical paint jobs, and several of the aircraft are models of individual aircraft - notably the two
in desert camo in the front, the green one in the foreground, and the one with the red tail & swastika.
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Well Bob - that is nothing short of incredible! I am not familiar with all of the paint schemes so those are a pleasure to view. Not to mention educational...
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Well Bob - that is nothing short of incredible! I am not familiar with all of the paint schemes so those are a
pleasure to view. Not to mention educational...
Thanks for the compliment John. I'll pass that along to Peter as well. He may read it himself though - he can
access the board but still does not have member access so he's given up trying to post. I really wish you all
could do something about that - if he could post he would add a lot to the discussions.
We did a lot of research on the paint schemes on the internet, as well as several books I had. We got really
lucky a couple of months ago when I was in the local used bookstore. They had a book that was about 200
pages - all of it full-color plates. The title is "Flying Colors" and it had paint schemes I had never seen before.
What's so nice about this book is that instead of generic patterns it shows specific aircraft that were flown
and lists not just the squadron but in many cases even the name of the pilot who flew it. About half of the
Axis aircraft you see here came directly from that book - all of the A5Ms for example.
Another good source for painting aircraft is Wings Palette (http://wp.scn.ru/en/news). There are a TON of
drawings on this site. Navigation is a bit difficult and English is obviously this guy's second language, but
it's got probably the largest selection of color drawings you'll find on the web of WWII aircraft. Since the site
is Russian it has a lot of Soviet schemes. Almost all of the Soviet planes were painted up from the data on
this site, and abut half of them represent individual aircraft that flew in the war.
We still have a lot of planes to go - then we'll start on the armor and ships. My wife likes to paint, so she
has already painted all of the US infantry. I'll get some photos of those up soon.
Overall, looking at how long this has taken so far I'd say we still have a couple of years to go...
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Did you let Mark know about Pete's issue with becoming a member. I don't handle much with the website...
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These are the most amazing paint jobs I have seen at this scale. . .Would Peter be up for painting planes for me?
Bob - private message me Peter's email and I'll figure out what went wrong with his registration.
Mark
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These are the most amazing paint jobs I have seen at this scale. . .Would Peter be up for painting planes for me?
Bob - private message me Peter's email and I'll figure out what went wrong with his registration.
Mark
Well, get his access straightened out and you can ask him yourself. ;D I sent you a private message on that issue.
As to painting up some planes for you - I don't know, but I kind of doubt it. You'd have to ask Peter yourself if he's interested. My guess is probably not. He's got some things going on in his life right now that probably will limit his free time for the near future. He comes over one or two nights a week to paint - that's about all the time he can or wants to put into it. Also, all of the stuff we use - the paint, brushes, decals, etc. are mine. He doesn't have any materials so he can't paint them if he's home with nothing to do. He'd have to come over to my house to use my stuff, and if he's going to do that we still have over a hundred aircraft to go, then there's the armor, the ships, etc. still to paint. I estimate at the rate we're going that it would take at least another year or so to get everything in the game painted.
If he (or we) did decide to do some "paint for hire" I'll be blunt - it likely would not be cheap.
Right now we average about 1 plane for every 60 minutes of work. That takes into account the initial clean up and preparation, the actual painting, drying time between applications, and detail work (it doesn't include the priming, lacquering, or researching color photos or plates of the aircraft you're working on). Some go quicker, some go longer - this depends both on just how detailed we're going to be and also on the quality of the miniature itself. The last two nights I've been working on 6 Fw-190s and an He 111. They are each almost ready to lacquer - 2 of the 190's need a couple more details and the 111 hasn't been decaled yet. My point is that's seven aircraft ALMOST ready to be finished off - and it's taken roughly 8 hours of work time to get to that point. Again, slightly less than one plane per hour.
Then there's the cost of the materials. Not just the paint, primer, brushes, etc., but also the decals. The sheets we use from Dom's Decals aren't that expensive individually but when you use as many of them as we are it adds up. We are also using a lot of decal sheets from other scales from a local hobby shop to enhance the detail, and these are rather expensive. The swastikas on the tails of some of the German aircraft I did, for example, are kill marks from a decal sheet for 1:72 scale P-47s and P-51s.
I think you would find that if you set your mind to it you could probably do some that would be every bit as good as the ones we've done. Before we got started on this my miniatures painting experience consisted of painting about half a dozen each Flames of War vehicles and 1/2400 naval miniatures. Peter had never painted any, though he spent a lot of time building models as a kid. Neither one of us were what you would call experienced when we started on this. The trick is to be patient when you're working and start with something basic. For me, it was the B-25's. They were a good mold with no problems, and the paint schemes I chose were very basic. After painting those I did some Zeros, and gradually started doing more complicated schemes as I became more confident. Try painting a few and I think you'd find that you'd be better at it than you think.
At any rate, you’ve got his e-mail. Drop him a line and see what he says.
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Mark - are you trying to tell me you don't have time to do your own painting? C'mon - prioritize. :)
Actually - if you "mass paint" units the same paint scheme that will cut down on time. Of course, its not as cool...