SMOL Tanks - Part 1

I don't just go see movies! I do paint stuff sometimes.

It's been literally years since I picked up a paintbrush. I didn't take the time to set up my painting space and because of that I didn't paint. I wanted to paint but didn't have anywhere to paint. It's a vicious circle. Eventually I had some help and did the work myself to make an area on the paint desk where I can reasonably work. I also set up for streaming while I was working on the desk. That's a whole 'nother topic.

I also had cataract surgery this year. When I'd healed up I sat at my desk, pulled on my Optivisor, and promptly freaked out because I couldn't focus on the mini I was going to paint. Turns out that the changes in my vision meant my trusty magnifying visor didn't work anymore.

Side note on that one regarding cataract surgery. They replace the little bag of clear goo in your eye with a plastic lens that has a serial number. One thing you lose is the ability to auto-focus, to squint and change your focal length. Squinting only gives me a headache now and I'm training myself not to do that. To top it off I chose distance lenses so I'd need glasses for reading but not for driving. The way the surgeries turned out I can see up close but need glasses for driving, really for anything more than six feet out if I want clarity. Turns out successful cataract surgery means your vision is correctable to 20/20, not that it will be that.

I pondered the vision thing and came up with a solution. I use my distance glasses to correct myself to 20/20, then add magnification on top of that. I tested it with the visor, it worked, now I have magnifiers that clip onto my glasses. I can now paint but I'm honestly not sure what level I'll be painting at yet.

Back to the tanks.

I asked my friend Randy to print some as he was winding down his printing for ReaperCon and because I don't have my resin printer going at the moment. Randy has a resin printer with the big bed so he printed a hella lot of tanks for me.

I got these from a Kickstarter because who can resist teeny tanks? They go with a ruleset the developer has been making. They're in two pieces - the tread and the turret. The turrets determine the model stat line. The treads hold turrets. Since there's a number of turret options Randy printed me a variety of turrets. A lot of variety of turrets.

The entire tank body is about the size of a regular d6 when you put them together. They're so cute! That picture shows an assortment of them I was cleaning up at the convention. I was removing support marks and I had to file down the peg on the turrets to fit the tread holes. I don't know if that was a model design or printing issue. Regardless, filing it resolve it.

There's a fair bit of detail on these but once you get into them you can find where they're variations on the same theme. The designer used the same turret base and modified them into different weapon systems for the most part. That's fine. It means more assembly line painting styles.

After counting things out I have enough to make ten sets of tanks. The game rules are for 1 to 4 tanks. I have more than forty treads but there's four styles and after sorting them out it turns out I can make ten different colored sets of treads. That's the color that will matter in game because I'm not dealing with having four of each turret for each set of tanks. That's just nuts. So look at the tread color for the army.

I've gotten to the point of putting all the metallics on the pieces. As you can see there's a lot of pieces. Some of them are metallic right over primer, some are black with metallic on top. It all depended on the piece I was painting. But all of them have been done with the silver and brass colors. Yes. I had to pick out details in brass. Sue me.

That's where I left things. Next up will be the white undercoat since I'll be using bright colors and I need to clean up where there's metallic and black overpainting. I know I could just touch up those spots but then I'd have two different whites under the colors and I simply can't have that.

I don't know quite what to do with the missiles. The tiny missiles on the tiny tank turrets. There's a few different versions of them - just the nose showing, the top third/half of a missile. and full missiles. When you're at this scale you need to be careful about how detailed your painting is because it's easy for what looks good up close to be less good or lost on the tabletop. I know the bodies will be white. It's the missile detail that's making me ponder my options.

I plan on getting to the white this week and it will take me a while because I'm in no rush and I'm learning what I can do again. My hands work just fine, thank goodness. It's the sight thing that I'm learning. Oddly enough I can get a brief moment of sharper focus my opening my eyes really wide. I don't get that.

I also need to decide what ten colors to use on my treads. White and black aren't options for me. Certainly the primary and secondary colors, which make six. There's this great electric blue that Vallejo makes I might borrow from the store for a set, which makes seven. I have so much paint that I'm not at all concerned about finding three more distinct colors.

Until I have something more exciting than the same picture above but with a more solid white I'll go back to reviewing movies. I'm making myself finish these before doing some ork skin color tests I've been champing at the bit to do. But nope. Gotta finish the project I've started. Willpower!