ReaperCon 2023 - The Entire Thing

 

This year I'm going to do one post for the entire convention experience. I found that daily posts just didn't have enough information for my taste so instead you get one after it's done. Also, that way I didn't tell the part of the world that reads my blog that I wasn't at home. Gotta think of these things, you know.

I drove down this year since I had the time to do it and I brought my cat rather than boarding her or having someone spend ten minutes a day at the house to feed her. I think it was the right decision. I don't know if she's saving up to punish me when I'm least expecting it.

Overall it felt like, well, ReaperCon. Same kind of vendor setup. Same kind of general space setup. Same pretty much everything. And that's the problem for me. It's the same as it has been for the last few years.

Don't get me wrong - it's a good all-around convention with the added bonus of having the well known artists as guests. People enjoy themselves thoroughly. But I've reached my saturation point. Hence it was my last year attending.

The pre-game was the Meet and Greet. I chose the package that came with the limited edition 100mm version of the convention Sophie miniature. Sadly the extras sold out before I could get one for my friend. My roomie and I went shopping after I got settled in the room and I was able to catch the tail end of the food options for MnG. The options are limited to what the hotel can provide and it's been hamburgers and hot dogs the last few years. That might not sound good but it's leaps and bounds better than the 'pizza' they served before that. Trust me.

I also had a Buccee's brisket sandwich I'd purchased but saved that for another day. I think Buccee's BBQ is overpriced and overrated now that I've had some. But hey, I had it. We'd gone to Buccee's for my roomie and he picked up some merchandise he wanted. We also hit the local Walmart for basic supplies like water, booze, and snacks.

Since there's no more metal trade-in at the convention I don't have to keep Thursday open to go through the Boneyard (their unpackaged minis). I'm still sad about that. It was one of my favorite parts of the convention. But it left me the chance to take classes during that time.

I took two classes - one on freehand for non-artists and one on painting tiny text. The freehand one was good but I already knew the material from other classes. The text one was, well, not so good. Let's leave it at that. My class experience wasn't a stellar end to the series. I also crashed my friend's class on using paper and brass foliage so I learned a little there and got some goodies.

One class was Thursday, I crashed the course on Thursday, and my other class was Friday.

I did sign up for some of the Hobby Hijinks events. Those are free things like speed painting, conversions, etc. This year you could register for them like classes but with no charge. I liked that because in the past it was whoever got there first. So I had some fun with doing silly things and being kind of social.

I signed up to play a game but bowed out. I'd had a long, hard day. I was hurting. And the GM had allowed their friend to be an additional player that made the table one person larger than the event showed. I don't like either of those things so I gracefully gave them my seat and went back to the room. I would have liked to have played but I wasn't in the mental state to be a good player. I only showed up because I didn't want to leave the table down a player so having the extra person was a good thing in the end.

I didn't do any vendor shopping this time around for two reasons. One is that my knees didn't allow me much mobility. The other is that I didn't need or want anything from the vendors. I made one sweep through to get a punch card filled for a free mini and that's when I took stock of who was there and what they were selling. So I kind of did a speed browse to confirm that I was right in what I didn't need.

I did enter into the painting competition. I wanted the extra convention money (which I never spend), the badge ribbons, and I pretty much expected to bring home a bronze medal. Once again I grabbed a few minis off the painted shelf, touched them up, and entered them. They picked the one I thought they would pick to judge and it was a solid bronze. See for yourself.

I forgot they make you name your entry so the 'Redemption' thing was very last minute. It doesn't really mean anything. But I nailed the face on that one and I'm proud of that. Plus I don't think people use enough copper in their armor colors.

I now have two bronze medals to hang up by my painting area. As much as I don't seem to think much of them I'm going to show them off. I did win them at a convention painting competition, after all.

I spent more time talking with the artists I know than doing much else. I didn't paint because I didn't bring anything to paint or any paints. I was going to spend time at the basic paint and take table but the hobby events were enough painting for me. I really don't like painting away from home and the plan to practice what I'd learned in classes wasn't necessary. I did bring home a few minis that I would have painted, if I had been at the paint and take table.

I have a battered folder with all my class notes and handouts from every class I've ever taken at ReaperCon. It's got a lot of history in it. Since I wasn't coming back I felt it was acceptable to have the artists sign it - sculptors on the front and painters on the back. I'll cover those over with packing tape to preserve them as part of the whole. I do refer back to those notes at times so it's a nice way to remember everyone.

I stayed a day later than I normally would because it meant spending time with my roomie. Last convention and all that. He left early the next day to get to the airport and I wonder if the room felt as empty for him when I would leave early in previous years. It was nice not to have to rush but it was sad that he was gone and I'll probably never see him in person again.

The attendees seemed to have a good time like they always do. This is their convention now and it's a good one for them. It's a nice mix of the art side and the gaming side with the chance to socialize all weekend. And it's one of the nicest, friendliest conventions I've ever attended.

That being said the unthinkable happened. This was a convention where you could leave your stuff out all weekend and be sure it was safe. The artists left their minis at their tables so you could see them even when the artists were out and about. This year someone went through - twice - and stole minis from the artists. That really bothers me and I'm hoping desperately that it wasn't a convention person who did it. I also hope they can get the minis back. But it's going to change the tone of the convention going forward. I could have done without ending on that note.

I don't know if I would drive rather than fly if I were going back. It was a very long, boring drive broken up into two days on either side. If the hotel were closer to the cheap airport I don't even think I'd need a rental car now that I have no reason to go to the factory. If I'd been running games and needed all the accessories then driving would be the way to go. I've seen how careful my roomie is with his luggage weight and how much he has to bring. Driving means it's whatever fits in the car.

I don't have pictures of the convention itself. I didn't find any reason to take them. It was an event hotel with all the generic fittings and some Reaper specific decor. The painting contest entries are on the ReaperCon website so if I feel the urge to see what was there I can scroll those. There's a lot of entries if you want to see some good painting and imaginative work.

Last year I didn't think much of missing the convention. I have a feeling that I'll get a pang when it rolls around again but no more than that. It turns out my roomie only showed up this year to force me to show up so we could have a proper goodbye. I think that's sweet in a number of ways. I needed this last visit all around.

So there it is. After all these years my last ReaperCon. And it goes out with a whimper, as it should.

A Pause in our Program

Yeah, I know I haven't posted in a long time. Most of that was me just not painting. But the reason now is that I'm moving.

Expect the painting and printing posts to pick up again when I'm in my new place.

Ork Speed Freeks - Work In Progress 5

This time it's red. Lovely, lovely, pain-in-the-butt red. I won't go into the long winded details of the painting techniques because I did that in Part 4 of this series. You're welcome.

I'm still using craft paints, as the picture below shows. Here's the set of colors this time around.

The specific paints are:

• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11039 Wine - Pantone 7623
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11003 True Red - Pantone 186
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 308062 Light Coral - Pantone  489 (closest, Pantone is darker)

This time there's no white or ivory. Red is one of those annoyingly difficult colors because it's wonderful right up until you get to highlighting. Highlighting means using some other color than red because red plus white equals PINK. While pink is not a terrible color in and of itself it doesn't work well for most things I paint red.

If you look up tutorials you find a lot of different ways to go with red highlights. Because of all the dark yellow on mine I decided to lean into the orange range without actually going orange. I picked that coral color because it's still in the red family while leaning into orange. Coral is one of those colors I dislike for no reason I know. It seems to work for this so now I'm stuck with having coral paint around.

To same some time here's the red and red-coral mixes dried on the parchment paper for your review.

You can see that there's three shades on here. Let me explain them.

Center right - True Red. I like this color. It's a vibrant red with not so great coverage. At least two coats are needed to get this one decent. More on that later.

Lower center - True Red and Coral in about a 3:1 ratio. I'm not exactly sure since I mixed and added until I liked it. This was the color stippled over the base coat.

Upper left - True Red and Coral in about a 4:1 ratio. Again I can't be certain because I mixed on the fly. This one is darker than the first mix because it went on after the glaze.

Not shown - The color from the upper left with more Coral to use as edge highlighting. It was probably about the same as the one in the lower center or slightly lighter.

As you can tell I'm not very concerned about matching these colors again. Orks are wonderful for variation. What I was concerned about was building up a depth of colors.

First up - base coating.

Nothing too fancy here, it's a red base coat. If I were doing fancy painting I would have gone back over all the areas I was going to paint red with white or grey so they were a consistent base. As it is there's black, grey, white, and some yellow under there. There are differences where those change but I didn't think it was important enough to spend the effort.

Base Stipple

As you can see there's a lot of difference between the two colors and it looks pretty harsh. This time I cut down a smaller brush for stippling since I was going to be painting smaller areas. I also did a few lines of the lighter color on the weapons where I wanted a different effect. I'm going to work on that later as I get more into the details.

Glaze

The wine glaze smoothed out those color transitions nicely and added the depth and lining. The red-coral mix is still more visible than the yellow mixes were but that's part of painting red when you're not doing it in lots of layer transitions.

I also moved the glaze around while it was wet so it would have some variation rather than making it smooth. It's kind of subtle but adds to the overall effect.

Second Stipple and Edge Highlights

And the bulk of the red is done. It's still got a kind of pink cast to it in my opinion but not enough to make me want to do anything about it. On the tabletop it isn't all that obvious and with all the other colors that will be involved it won't stand out like it does here.

I'm not going to say the red is done. I know I'll be using red in detailing so there will be more on the models. I don't know what I'm going to do about color, depth, etc. until I get to that point.

One thing that slows down the process now is picking where to paint a color. That happens at the base coat step. Orks are random. Random is more difficult than people think. We like patterns. Trying not to make patterns is frustrating because I keep double checking myself. In this case it's worse because of the prevalence of red in the canon color schemes. I did my best.

Going forward the posts won't be about a single color. I'm past that point in the process. The bulk of the models have been painted and now it's on to the detail work. The technique I use for important colors is well documented (base coat, stipple, glaze, stipple, edge highlight) so I'll do the same as here and just link back to the original post without showing all the stages of the process. Unless I think it looks cool in which case you get to see all the steps.

You will notice I haven't really touched the orks except when I overpainted a color. That's because I consider them a separate object to paint. It would have been very nice if the riders were separate models but they're not so I work with what I have. I did do some black base coats when I was in my black phase and those may or may not stay. It's all about what looks good in the moment really.

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 4

And we're on to colors! Well. One color. Since these are going to be run mostly as Evil Sunz that means yellow is the main color for them. That's just how it is. And of course yellow is one of the more difficult colors to paint.

I started trying out miniature paints and found that even with the surplus of paints I have I didn't have the right yellow to get a color I wanted. Yes. I did look at mixing, as much as I don't like mixing paints for armies. I even ordered another set of yellows but I'll show you what happened there later. I ended up buying craft paints for a couple of reasons.

One - They're cheap. Vehicles take a lot more paint that miniatures for the most part and there's no real need to use the expensive stuff for them.

Two - They cover well. Once again I'm looking at army painting here. So covering well is an important thing.

The colors I decided on were these. They're the Hobby Lobby house brand so I included Pantone numbers for those who are looking for a close match. Since I have a Pantone sample swatch book I have to assume everyone has one.

• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11164 Ripe Apricot - Pantone 150
• Anita All Purpose Acrylic - 11005 Bright Yellow - Pantone 116 (close enough)
• Ivory (any will do)
• White (any will do)

The first layer is 2 coats of Bright Yellow over grey primer. Or use white primer. But I don't recommend black primer once you get into the colors because it's a pain in the butt to get both coverage and bright colors. But you do you.

It looks a little bland but that's fine. It's a solid yellow base to use to build up (and down) colors. I left some areas unpainted that I plan on painting other colors and I painted some areas that will probably get painted other colors. It's an evolving process.

Now we get into the fun part of painting orks - the lack of uniformity. For most factions you want things to be uniform. Because, uniforms. The ork faction is pretty haphazard by design so it gives you a lot of creative freedom and the ability to cut as many corners as you want.

The next layer is a stipple of lighter yellow. Let's get into that.

For those who aren't familiar with the stipple technique. You need a brush with short, stiff bristles. Take one of your synthetic ones that isn't floppy and cut it straight across a short distance (1/8 inch or 5mm at minimum). This brush is gonna get wrecked but that's fine. Then pick up a small amount of paint, maybe double what you would use for dry brushing but half as much as you'd use for regular painting, then you're ready to stipple. Stab the area to be painted randomly with the brush. Voila - stippled. Or maybe gobbed in this case.

I mixed up a lighter shade of yellow from the base coat; I wanted something duller than the color straight white would give so I decided to use ivory too.

First I tried straight ivory paint and didn't like that the result was really dull and greenish.

See? Meh and greenish.

Next I tried a half-and-half mix of ivory and white. I wanted to dull the color (ivory) while still keeping it bright (white). That was the winner. Coincidentally it's almost identical to Reaper Miniature's limited edition Golden Glow paint.

Now that I had the lighter color I blotched stippled it all over the base coat. In reality I painted blotches over about half the base coat so I had both colors showing.

The orks sat here for a while due to some pretty serious real life issues. If you know me either you know what happened or you can ask. If you don't know me then just accept that they were pretty serious life issues. It took me a while to get back to painting in general.

On to the next step - covering up all that paint. Really what I did was paint over everything with a transparent glaze of the darker yellow. That blends the colors into a more harmonious whole while leaving me the ability to keep going light again. If that makes any sense. Just look at the pictures.

I used acrylic blending gel rather than matte medium because it has the glazing properties that matte medium doesn't. After mixing it with the paint I added flow improver until I was happy with the result. It's just like making the contrast paints in that I drew up the paint onto the side of the palette until it had the right viscosity. I'd try to explain more but it's something you have to learn in person. Remember - paint is cheap so keep trying.

You can see the previous colors through the glaze and that it pooled in the recesses to do some nice shading.

Next up was more paint! I'm using the light yellow mix again. I did the same stipple thing as before but in smaller areas.

These pictures are doing double duty because I took them after I used a lighter version of the light paint to do edge highlighting. To make it lighter I used white. That made it the bright color but it was already light enough that it didn't go cartoonish on me. I wasn't very picky about edge highlighting because orks. But I did do all the hard edges and the softer ones on those face fronts. I also did some on the big curve of the wartrike front fenders.

And that's it. The yellow is done. When I paint more the lighter yellows won't be exactly the same but they'll be close enough. You can see that this turned out a very good yellow without leaning into the orange too much and without being YELLOW. It is a difficult color to paint but I think I chose well when I picked the shades.

I got pretty sloppy when painting these. It's part of the way things go both when stippling and when glazing. Once I saw it was going to get messy I accepted it. That doesn't mean I didn't try to make it tidy. It meant that I knew I was going to have to do cleanup after it was done. As it is I'm going to hold off on that until the rest of the colors are painted or I'd be doing that more than is needed.

I did say I'd let you know know what happened with the set of yellow paints I ordered. I'm not going to name the brand. I like the brand. I use them when I paint miniatures. They didn't work for this particular project but that's nothing against them.

This was one coat of the darker but not darkest yellow in the set. You can see that it already went green and just didn't look right. At least it didn't look right to me. It wasn't ork yellow. So I painted over it with the craft paint and never looked back.

This little end bit is to remind you to try things. Nothing was harmed here and it didn't take me much time to try, decide, and move forward. Some won't work, some will work, some will surprise you. If you're really not sure try one decent size area or a failed print/piece of sprue and use that as your test piece. 

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 3

Each step is less and less surface area to paint. Yay! This time it was the silver for anything I want to be metal. It's painted over black to give it some depth. Rather than doing large group pictures going forward I'll be showing smaller batches since details will start to matter soon.

Yes, I can see the layer lines too.

The Megatrakk Scrapjet has the metal on it. I'm not really sure how I'm going to paint the treads yet so those are still black. I forgot to get a side picture to show the tread workings but since it's been further painted I don't want to muddle up the order. There's a lot of silver in there too.

I'm trying very hard not to let the layer lines bother me but I have a feeling that these will be retired in favor of resin printed ones at some point in the future unless I can minimize how those layer lines stand out. For now they stay. This taught me lessons in patience about printing thinner layers even though it takes longer, and I've done that with other vehicles going forward.

Shiny metal guns, struts, exhaust, claws, etc.

The leftmost magnetized arm looks like it doesn't sit flush but I think there's a loose piece of pin in the body cavity causing that. I didn't do a lot to make these pretty pictures since it's a WIP.

Yet another view, showing the differences. I know there's a lot of faces as the front fender but that's because I forgot to print one of the options and printed that one twice.

The Nob Bikers with their power claws (which haven't been seen before). The claw arms are magnetized so I can swap out weapons and because of that they're painted separately. That's why they weren't shown before.

I was bothered by the rectangular block on the back wheel/tread area (see previous posts for those) because it didn't seem right. Finally I realized I had forgotten to print the guns. Sigh. I hadn't even prepared the files for printing. Those got printed, I stripped the paint off the contact areas on the bikes, painted the guns up separate, then attached them. I have to touch up the joins but they're out of the way enough not to matter that much. Forgetting the guns. Sheesh.

Here's the boyz! Warbikers go vroom.

Another view showing the variety of poses.

Now we're getting into the basic fast attack troops. They don't have weapon options so everything is what it looks like. One again it's silver over the black.

Another set of warbikers. These have humanoid skulls on them in various places.

Another view of them.

Yet another view! The humanoid skulls are quite small compared to the size of the orks, which is as it should be.

A different set of warbikers which adds variety. I prefer a variety in my troops and luckily I can get it with 3D printing them. One of these guys isn't behaving at all when it comes to attaching the front wheel assembly. I have it pinned and even now it's a bit loose. Once it's on the base it will be fine but I need to be a bit careful when handling it. I don't like him.

My, that's a big gun you have there.

More warbikers, more guns.

Yet another different set of warbikers. I don't quite understand the metal plates wrapping around the tires but I guess it's an ork thing. I'll be doing some weathering on those when the painting is done. These have a space for a gun to be attached to their back and I had an extra so the center guy got two. His grots like him better.

Oh yeah baby.

I still really like the unusual aspect of a trike with two wheels in the front. It's way front heavy because I didn't hollow those out when I printed them and I won't make that mistake if I print another. I probably won't because these don't have a lot on the table at once and I have different versions if I want another one.

I didn't magnetize his claw arm because he only has one arm option. I could have done it but the other one I have right now has a claw on that arm too. Seems like this fella likes his power claw.

I touched up the black after painting the silver but I know I'll have to keep touching up things as I paint. It's part of life. Going forward I'll be using craft paint for silver rather than the expensive stuff. Silver is silver and these things eat paint and brushes. I bought more cheap craft paint brushes too.

The silver that's on it is Army Painter Plate Mail Metal. It covered great in one coat.

The Games Workshop Way is to pick out details on metal with a bronze/copper color. I did a little of that and painted over it. I'm not sure how I'm going to pick out the details on these yet. There's a nice amount of detail on the weapons so I'll have some fun with it.

Next up will be painting yellow because most vehicles are used in Evil Sunz clan games and their color is yellow. Yes, I know red makes things go faster but that's more a Goff color. Yes, I know Goffs tend to be painted black more than red until you get into the bigger guys. But yellow it is and it's the next largest color block.

Yellow sucks to paint and I'm very sure you're going to be reading a lot about how yellow sucks to paint in the next post.

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work in Progress 2

I'm through what I consider the most tedious part of painting - large base coats. I can't find a way to describe them as interesting. What's even less interesting is doing them twice.

In the last post I had base coated them black with a different shade of black on the tires. I wasn't certain about the tires. I was right to be uncertain about the tires. And the base coat needed some work.

This time I did what I should have done in the first place. I used acrylic craft paint (Hobby Lobby store brand) instead of the miniature paint. Not only is it much cheaper it's got more coverage. And it's cheaper.

Woo. Black. At least it's a more solid undercoat and I finished base coating all the areas I currently think will be metal. I'll be figuring that out as I go since that's detail stuff.

A bit more tidy in these shots, showing where the metals will be once they're finished. A lot of what the other pictures showed are the undersides, which to me are important to paint but won't be seen much if at all once they're done. It's a personal quirk.

I haven't done any work on the separate arms. I'll correct that in the next painting session since I'll need to get metal on them and eventually paint the skin at the same time I'm doing that for the base models. I might as well set it up with these.

Next up - lots of silver, which should be only slightly less tedious than the black because there's less of it to do.

I have something special planned for the megatrakk scrapject canopy windows but it will be at the end of the process so you'll have to wait for it. I also have to test it and confirm it will be what I want it to be.

Ork Speed Freeks - A Work In Progress 1

I've started on making an Ork Warhammer 40k army. 3D printer go brrrrr.

Almost every model I'm using is from Gear Guts' Mek Shop. Lemme tell you about them first so I can move on with the fancy pictures and stuff. First, I subscribe to his Patreon which I recommend to anyone doing 3D printing since it's one of the best value Patreons I've seen. The USA shop (linked above) sells the print files and also printed models. If you're in the UK or Australia there's shops that sell printed models (yay lower postage!) but not the files. Rumor has it there may be a vendor in Canada at some point but as of now there isn't one.

For those not familiar with Warhammer 40k I'll give you a summary of what's going on. You have models. You roll dice. Either you win or lose the fight. OK. I'll be nice and give more detail. When playing you choose a point value for the game (typically). Then within that point value you pick and choose models with various roles, based on the rules, to fill it out. I've chosen a faction that's quite frankly silly but fun - Orks. The roles are the same across the game but the model roles have different names.

I was doing random printing for a while then found a local group that seems nice and meets regularly. That meant putting together a playable force. I poked around on the Discord and Facebook groups to see posted army lists that didn't chase the meta and found a couple of forces I liked. I settled on a 500 point Speed Freek force to start learning the game.

That meant printing warbikers. A lot of warbikers. But that's fine because GG put out a lot of warbiker sets so I had variety, which I really like on the table.

After much printing I had this:

These aren't totally warbikers. The vehicle on the left is a Megatrakk Scrapjet that I already had printed. That one is off the filament printer so it has layer lines. I played with various ways to minimize them but forgot that the missiles are pretty rough. Oh well. That's what paint is for. The big guy in the middle is the boss - the Deffkilla Wartrike. I chose that model because I liked the oddity of having two wheels in front rather than in back. Finally I have the Boss Nobz on their bigger, fancier warbikes. I accidentally printed two of one of them so I have an extra that I'll paint up because I'll use it at some point later. They're not actually missing arms. Those have been magentized and printed separate since they have weapon choices.

These are the warbikers. They're kind of low level cavalry and the lowest level in this force. As you can see I went for a variety of models so that they'll be more interesting on the table. That jerk in the upper left caused me no end of issues until I finally drilled holes and pinned parts of it together. That showed him. Once again I have one more than I need for this force but hey, I'll use it at some point.

3D Printing

I figure the printing part should get it's own little section in this first post. Each warbiker (boyz and nobz) was a separate print and took about four hours. The Deffkilla Wartrike took two prints and about maybe six or seven hours. The Megatrakk Scrapjet (I had to look this one up since I printed it a while ago) twelve hours on the filament printer but would have taken two or three prints on the resin one for no time savings but also no layer lines.

I won't get into comparing costs with buying them from Games Workshop. That's not the point here even though I know I saved money on most models I print. The point is that I get a huge variety that you don't get from boxed sets. I can also edit the files to have magnet holes printed into them for when I want to be able to swap out parts. With kits, if you get the parts you need to be able to swap them out at all, you need to drill holes and no one likes that.

GG also is nice enough to have the gun barrels recessed so that's less work since drilling out gun barrels is part of detailed model preparation. Yes, I know you can paint the black dot and make it look like the barrels are drilled but that's not a concern when it's part of the model.

I've also printed the bases for when they're ready to be used. I didn't print fancy ones since my plan is to do the traditional sand bases with some grass tufts. I have sand. I have grass tufts. I don't want to print fancy base toppers. It was an easy decision and I can print the bases very nicely on the filament printer.

Painting

The rest of the posts will be about painting the models. That's the fun part. Orks aren't known for their precision or fashion sense. They're the only faction in the game rules that's allowed to loot models from any other faction and make them their own. Colors have meaning to Orks because part of their silliness is that whatever they believe happens. They believe that red makes vehicles go faster so the rules give you that option to give them extra movement. The various Ork clans also have colors to differentiate them.

The good thing is that you can mix up the colors without a problem. Just because yellow is used for a certain clan doesn't mean that same color can't be in a different clan army. This is excellent because if not for that you'd either have to pick a clan and stick with it or have multiple models painted in multiple colors. While GW would just love for you to have the multiple models (don't get me started on 'what you see is what you get' rules) the general flow is just to say what clan(s) things are when playing.

The pictures show the primed models. I went fancy and tried using an appropriate color of primer for what the part will eventually be painted. Black primer where there will be a black base coat is a no brainer. Grey is a neutral for the body of the vehicle. White is for the 'contrast paint' (Part 1 and Part 2 of that process) since I developed the color scheme to work over white and personally prefer white as a primer color anyway.

I will probably do the same thing with future models. It's kind of a pain and it makes me learn how to better control my airbrush but it should work out better in the long run. I'll know that as I paint these. I highly recommend Badger Stynylrez primer for either airbrushing or brush painting. That stuff sticks like you wouldn't believe. I linked to their main site but you can find it on Amazon as well. I don't know what's in it but I firmly believe that it's some kind of unicorn fluid and we'll leave it at that.

The treads on the Skrapjet (I got tired of typing out the full name) I also airbrushed in the black paint base coat because those things are brush killers. If you can see it at all you can see it isn't as shiny as the rest.

Here's the work I did last night - base coating. I bought a pack of cheap synthetic brushes for painting vehicles because there's no way my mini painting brushes were appropriate and even with my my massive brush collection I didn't have the right ones for this work. Everything but the tires are painted with Reaper Pure Black. The tires are Secret Weapon Tire Black, which is actually kind of green black. Secret Weapon is no longer available so this is me using my stocks.

Going forward I'm probably going to use craft acrylic paint for the black base coat. There's no reason that I can see for using the expensive miniature paint for this. It's black and it's going to mostly get covered over with other colors. I'm going to have a close look to see if the Tire Black is different enough from the Pure Black to justify using it here. It's a thin paint out of the bottle so it may need two coats to show a difference and with it being in short supply I don't know that I want to use it on army painting. I'll make that call when I see it.

The next step will be painting the undercarriages. Those will be streaky metallic since they will have been fairly abused by terrain and they're not visible for the most part. I know I could leave them black but metallic will stand out more against a neutral background. If these were flush with the bases I wouldn't bother and probably wouldn't have primed them at all to get a better glue bond.

Speaking of glue bonds I did try a little sanding to make flat spots on the tires so the bikes would 'sit' better and have larger contact points with the bases. I found out the resin is excellently hard and sanding was a tedious process for minor results. I always planned on pinning the bikes to the bases anyway and the sand will hide the fact that the tires aren't compressed. I can strip the paint off the contact points when it's time to combine them so I didn't bother with trying to avoid painting the areas I did sand.

I'm kind of sort of waiting for some paints I ordered from Warcolours before painting on colors but they're taking their own sweet time getting here from Greece so I may use some of my copious paint collection to start. I want the colors to be different shades. That fits the aesthetic of the faction. I always planned on painting them in groups so that they would have different shades. I just wanted the new stuff as opposed to the hundreds of bottles of paint I already have.

ReaperCon 2021 - Day 4 and Wrapup

 

Day 4 barely exists for me now as a convention experience. I say goodbye to people and fly home. There's a few classes and until this year the biggest Sunday attraction was the auction where you could use your ReaperBucks. Way in the early days I was part of the auction (it was fun and informal) but that changed and I didn't see a reason to stick around.

The last few years they started having prize drawings and you could buy additional tickets with ReaperBucks. This worked out well for people who weren't there for the entire convention.

This year there was no auction and no raffles. They did a straight up booth to buy stuff with convention money. I heard the prices ran the gamut from reasonable to not so much without much sense in how they were assigned. I don't need anything so I ended up handing over mine to someone buying up discontinued terrain tiles.

I did pick up my painting contest entries and got my medal since I wasn't at the award ceremony to get it then. I'll do another post to talk about my personal experience with the painting contest now that I sold out and entered one.

After that is was all packing and travel back home.

My ribbon collection isn't impressive but it pleases me. I don't try to accumulate them on purpose so if I get them I get them. This is the final result for 2021. Notice that "Bronze" ribbon in the lower left because you don't get those until you pick up your entries so they're hardly noticed at all at the convention itself.

I'll hang this on the corner of the bookshelf with all the previous passes. It's quite colorful over there.

As I have for many years now I wonder if the convention was worth the time and money. I do ask myself that every year. And so far the answers have weighed towards going again.

I'm thinking about it this year and the balance has shifted again. Some rumors about next year are making me hesitate but since they're rumors and the convention is almost a year away I can set those aside. My class experiences are making me wonder if I've learned all they have to teach me, given my interests. Then I wonder if maybe it's time to try teaching again. I know very few people at the convention now and it's fewer every year so the social aspect has dwindled to almost nothing. The main swag was purchased online by anyone and the convention swag will hit the store anyway. There's a lot to drop into the hopper as I put this one behind me and think of next year.

One thing that never changes is my hate for Texas weather. I could accept it more before my move but now the whole concept of 'humidity' is unpleasant in the extreme.

Reading back over the daily posts to correct stuff (I typed them on my phone for reasons that made sense at the time) I noticed a generally negative tone to them. Some of that I'll put down to being in pain. It comes through in my writing. Some of that I'll put down to be just stupid tired due to travel and socializing after so much time being alone. The rest? That's because my convention experiences just aren't all that light and fluffy. I go there expecting to have fun and then rediscover that the events and general activities aren't what I enjoy very much. 

Don't think the convention isn't fun if you like painting, gaming, hanging out, etc. ReaperCon is still the nicest and friendliest convention I've ever attended. Where else do you feel people could set up their large paint stations in the main hall on Thursday and leave them there until Sunday, unattended at times? No one gives that a second thought. Overall people are friendly and there's plenty of things to do. I think my personal experiences come from having been to so many of them and seeing the changes in the convention, the attendees, and the company. I accept that things change. My question is whether I want to be there for them.

ReaperCon 2021 - Day 3

  

Day 3 should be a shorter post. It was my 'day off' as it were. No classes, no obligations, etc.

I spent the morning hanging out. I would have liked to have shopped the small selection of vendors but on my first pass through on Thursday to get the punch card done I saw there weren't many that interested me. So that was out.

Because I entered the paint competition I was eligible to vote for Best in Show. I made a pass through the entries and didn't find anything I really liked so no one got my vote. I'm harsh on that kind of judging.

My Best in Show choice has to 'catch' me. It doesn't need to be the best paint job or anything. There has to be something that makes me want to take it home. I didn't see anything like that this year so I abstained.

I made good on my promise to myself to at least do a Paint and Take. That's where you sit down, pick a mini, and paint it. It's a nice way to introduce people and get them started - free mini and they provide brushes and paint.

I painted a bit on this one and realized a few things. I really dislike painting direct on their 'these minis don't need primer' models because they do need primer unless you want to wait forever and have to keep throwing paint on until it covers. I also didn't like the strangers who don't understand painting etiquette. The person who I think was supposed to be keeping an eye on things seemed more inattentive than they should have been. So I stopped after that bit of paint on her thorax. 

That experience let me cross off all the scheduled paint events from my list.

I physically overdid it when I took the factory tour. Walking isn't my best thing and by this point I was in bad shape. Even after being here so many times I enjoy the tour. This year they included new areas that they bought and/or built out since the last convention so I was excited to see them.

Unfortunately my knees were not of the same opinion. I expected to have to skip the upstairs portion. I did the last few conventions. I didn't expect to have to miss other sections. The owner giving the tour was nice enough to ferry me over to the new buildings in the company golf cart tho.

One new building will be warehouse. That makes sense. The other is mostly for their streaming stuff and that didn't interest me. I may blog about that later.

In the building with the studio is a wall of names. We were asked during their last Kickstarter if we wanted our names painted on the new building. I certainly did. Instead they put them on an inside wall so they wouldn't be exposed to the elements so our names will last a lot longer.

It was nice to find my name in there. It was even nicer they're in alphabetical order.

The studio areas were efficient and they find them useful. The other areas are still being made less industrial, except the room where they make their newest type of plastic minis. I'm still not sure of that process or material. I'm also not interested enough to ask.

After a brief look at a couple of specific vendors I cleaned up what I had at the paint table and took it back to my room to pack. I still have the gift certificate that came with our VIP ticket to spend. They didn't have what I wanted in stock but they should be refilled tomorrow. 

Finally there's the paint contest results. I never go to the awards ceremony and didn't see why this year shod be any different. I got a text that I won a bronze medal for this dude

Not too shabby for the amount of work I put in. I did spend time replacing the broken dagger. I also think he looks better with the replacement.

So that's day 3. Tomorrow there's more going on but I leave before the official end of the convention.