A painty Haqqcident - Jazzy Jeff's shiny trousers & gluey fingers

Hi!

After binging on Infinity for my two weeks off of work (Easter holidays - No being a teacher isn't easy, yes the holidays are good, no it doesn't really balance out, we do it because we care!) I have come back to the real world and am trying to balance work and going to clubs to play. This has meant I still haven't painted any more stuff as I keep playing instead, I haven't written any more blog posts and I have been to the gym a lot less than I should have!

Anyway, I have learnt so much in the last 6 weeks that I could probably have written 6 posts, but I'm going to jut have to settle for one right now as I have a pile of marking staring at me. I'll write up about games I have played in the next post (There is a lot in that I am putting it off!)

Salute

Salute was AWESOME! I have never been before and it was so overwhelming and huge! Inevitably, I spent too much, but I was happy with everything I brought back, it was all stuff I had wanted already anyway:

Sa-LOOT!

Assembly

Flash or not flash? That is the question! How am I meant to know if that tiny spike on top of the gun is flash or a sight? This was my first frustration with assembly of these tiny beautiful models. I now have an eye for this, having started at over 30 models while making them, but occasionally I am corrected. Put my Lasiq on the board the other day and my opponent pointed out the flash on the gun...

Now not flashy Lasiq!

Seems guns are my weak point...  It has also taken me a bit of time to get used to super glue. I superglued myself to a model first time I tried to assemble one. Then there was the time I superglued a complaint code to myself. Also the spraying of the primer in the eye. It's fine, I'm basically an expert now... :/

Advice to other model noobs - pegs. Yeah I could pin. No, I couldn't be patient enough to order and wait for one of those tiny drill things from ebay. I'd probably be awful at it. I'm sure I'll regret this when I drop this bike in the near future:

Super high-tech assembly equipment (Anti-finger gluing technology)

New kids on the block

New kids on the block

HVT. Cute but deadly tiny pig protecting her...

I was pretty happy with the new additions to the gang above. The bikes have been amazing to zoom around with chucking smoke about for my djanbazans and being all impetuous and carefree, chain rifling scary opponents without even blinking. The Jannisaries have been a learning experience because I just got hacked straight away - back to the drawing board with that. Advice of fairy dust and tinbots and things were offered which I am yet to try. I love my HVT who I have kidnapped from Yu Jing and the Djanbazan is a welcome addition to the army as I already love my sniper so much. More on these guys in the next post with all of the gameplay stuff in!

Jazzy Jeff & his female friend

My first dip of a brush into the world of painting Infinity miniatures, or any miniatures for that matter, in fact let's just say first time trying to paint any object in the world ever, was exciting, satisfying and hilarious. James Newman (Gribbley Gaming) helped me as I have not one artistic bone in my body. (I am hoping my saving grace will be patience and mild OCD.) He used a Naffatûn to quickly show me various different techniques one could use to paint. Dry brushing, using thinner, water, layers, washes and highlighting were shown to me at lightening speed and with a deft hand which had more than 10 years of experience behind it. 

Slightly disorganised new painty area :)

The view from my painty area

My attempts to mirror this on a different Naffatûn were... mixed. 

The armour was fairly straightforward to do. Just used some gunmetal paint, then a black wash, then highlighted with silver. Light bounces off shiny things and creates highlights and shadows, yeah science. I get that stuff. I thought, wow this isn't too hard. It looks pretty good. Winning. Although I did keep getting told off for forgetting to clean my brush and not having the paint thin enough. Whatever, it was armour coloured. Cool.

Then I needed to paint the cloth or non-armoured parts. How are you meant to know as a complete novice what is armour and what isn't? Bearing in mind I have no armour knowledge. I mean, it's a bit niche. I'm not really into history and haven't played other table top games and definitely have never looked at actual soliders. I haven't even watched war films for goodness sake. When I asked how you can tell what's meant to be armour and what isn't, Newman looked at me like I was asking how to tell which part of a person is a face. I felt like a moron but I am just not used to miniatures and how they are designed. Was that bit round the arm meant to be made of metal or not? Who knows? Everything is so tiny as well sometimes I had to look away for a minute just to unsquint my eyes and unfurrow my brow for fear my face might get stuck that way. Took me a while to get used to but then it became clearer as I worked my way round the model over and over again. 

Ruined a perfectly good plate for this painting malarky - Hope you're all happy now!

With the armour and 'cloth' (or whatever the hell it is) done, I moved onto the trousers, which for some reason I had decided I wanted to be purple. I later realised the colours didn't go at all between the silver armour, olive ruck sack and then purple... so I have changed my colour scheme now. Anyway, I thought it was fine and I was doing the right thing. Little did I know... I had put the paint on a bit (ahem) too thick. This makes the model 'lose detail', I guess because you're just slathering paint over all of the sculpted lines and designs and sort of covering them up? Surely this wouldn't be such a big deal? Who cares really, it's only a pair of trousers. What detail is even on trousers? So I put the wash on. Maybe more wash will compensate for the less than ideal paint underneath? I'm sure someone said "You can just slap wash on it's fine." Was it fine? THEY LIED. The trousers were so opaque. Like, I can't explain how, but it was like you could actually look at it and tell no light would ever make it through. I don't know how it even looked purple with the black hole properties that this covering clearly possessed. And then, to top it all off, the overzealous wash on top had made them go shiny! Genuinely looked like something out of a 70s disco. 

So here he is - All singing, all dancing, and all shiny!

So, Jazzy Jeff, as he will always be affectionately known, was born. I like to think he keeps up the spirits of the other line troops through song, while wearing his shiny purple disco trousers. His favourites include 'Whoa black betty, Djazbazan', 'Fiday, fiday, gotta get down it's Fiday' and 'Stayin alive'. The Najjarun engineer provides the sandwiches as he has a back pack and they all pull together in spite of the battle taking place.

Anyway, that was my first attempt. Since then, I decided to change the scheme to silver, olive and then green for the trousers etc. Started on the female Naffatûn. She looked great. Even used brown and then sepia wash I accidentally ordered previously to do her hair and it looked good. This is as girly as I'll get, I'm doing the hair of a girl soldier. No one even showed me that, I felt well smug. Here she is, WIP, with way less shiny trousers than Jeff (Sorry for terrible photos):

Not so shiny but just as jazzy

Bright light definitely not helping here!

But then I learnt lesson number 2 - If you don't finish the model and varnish and look after it properly, the paint comes off. So her trousers may not be shiny like Jeff's, but her hair is speckled with grey (primer showing through from underneath) and some of the highlighting is not as pronounced as when I did it. Stupid egg box with tissue in not protecting my lovely model. I HAD TO buy a KR case at salute because of it (that is my excuse anyway!). Is it bad that when I just wrote 'HAD TO' my brain said that it 'had thermo-optic camo'? Infinity on the brain. 

I do have to say that I do feel that despite all of these (failed) efforts, I am glad I'm trying and do stick by what I said when I started: I would rather try to paint my own models and them not look great but at least I've tried, than not even make the effort. So I love my naffatûn, even if she does look very, informally dressed and a bit ill. Maybe a touch too shiny. Still, cool hair so whatevs right?

I love my Naffatûn, even if she looks rubbish. She flames people, it's fine.

Anyway, now my models are snug in a new KR case, along with some new models, which are sitting next to the rule book and core book, and my new metal dice, and NOW I HAVE SPENT FAR TOO MUCH MONEY THANKS A LOT SALUTE.... and I am looking forward to my next painting adventure, and when I find the time I will paint thinly, finish and varnish and then put that model in my nice foam padded hard box case. Although for that to work I'll need to learn to paint faces, which I can imagine will be about as easy as wandering past a hidden deployed tuareg with a shotgun in the second half of your order and surviving.

Next time, lots and lots of games to report back on.

Bye for now :)