Friday 2 August 2019

Space Hulk: 3D Hirst Arts build part 4 [Mass painting & starting details]

Continuing to make slow but steady progress towards having a full set of Space Hulk tiles painted for games. This follows on from months of casting & building and is finally starting to take some shape...



Last post left off with the 2 pictures below - having undercoated all the plaster floor and door parts with a coat of cheap, dark green/grey latex housepaint. 



I'm still not 100% convinced that latex paint is a great option for terrain. Without fail, I always end up with parts sticking together just a little bit when in storage, regardless of how long they have been left to dry/cure. Anyway. They all got a coating of latex paint in roughly 1:3 water to paint, slopped on and neatened up with a housebrush. 

The main set of time consuming painting is then these four colours... 


The parts then get a heavy drybrush with some cheap craft paint in cream (Jo Sonja) for the edging. 



Leadbelcher floor tiles. There are no doubt cheaper ways of doing silver flooring, but I really like the texture of GW metallics and have had far more pain getting lumps out of the cheaper alternatives. It's probably the only GW paint overindexing in this whole project, and given the total time spent so far... not worth the hassle to save a couple of dollars.


The excellent instructions from Hirst suggest drybrushing the silver floors in (which is a perfectly good idea), but I wanted to use a solid paint followed by a wash as (for me at least) I can keep the colour more consistent on lots of pieces than having to match up  levels of drybrushing. Using some different washes (black, sepia, agrax) can add a sense of weathering over the silver with a lot more consistency than through drybrushing. 

Teclis blue and Mephiston red pipes follow up; these are also GW paints but using relatively small amounts given the size of the pipes so I'm not burning through too much (maybe half a pot of each for the whole set). Both also have pretty good coverage without needing multiple coats. 

But damn... are these taking a while to paint. The detail helps define the corridors and add a slash of colour but painting these in on 80+ parts is time consuming. Still some rooms to go, but all the corridors (and about half the rooms) are up to at least this stage. 




The floor gets a nuln oil wash or a hint of agrax to add some depth/dark back into the tiles. 

Then the most fun part of the job - adding some room specific details. 

A number of the parts ended up with the more unique/detailed casting from Hirst - hatches, holes, entryways... The fixed hatchways got some attention first - I'm finding that base-paint options are the easiest here as they have better quick coverage for terrain, without having to apply multiple coats. 


Darkening recesses back into the hatches and adding a bit more grime with nuln oil. The rough edges on the grey are intentional as I was brushing on quickly. They will eventually be hidden under some hazard stripes - the plan is to cut some paper printed with stripes and glue down a little square border for the tile. Printed paper probably won't be as nice a finish as painting them on directly, but much quicker and more accurately parallel. 


I also made a few end-caps using the 1cm square tiles that were leftovers from the edge mold. These are very simple in setup, but add a really nice bit of colour detail once hazard stripes have been painted on (these have been done with a brush). 


Doors are getting a similar treatment - craft paint dusting on the doors themselves with a massive drybrush; followed by silver 'feet' (leadbelcher) and averland sunset yellow step. Once a couple of layers are built up, freehand on black hazard stripes. 



The black stripes on the doors aren't very neat, but the area is a bit awkward to mask off and after trying to carefully measure the first couple with a ruler it was taking way longer than I wanted to spend. For a one-off diorama - absolutely... for 20x doors used as background scenery... it's fine if they are a little off. 

In hindsight, I might have used printed paper for these as well, but there are little rivet holes in the steps that would be lost if covered over with a paper insert. 

There is still plenty more to go on the rooms, including some of the more special/intricate pieces - like the broken control room (from 4th Ed box - plaster version below) and some red (blood angel) boarding torpedoes. 


Having said that - the corridors are now largely finished, and the time consuming repetitive paint jobs are mostly out of the way. Adding some room details and weather should be a fun part. 

For anyone looking at building these - it is a BIG project to work through. The stuff laid out on my dining table in these shots is only about 2/3 of the tiles, plus doors, fans and inserts for various ducts now shown. Only start if you have a high level of patience and not much sense. :-)




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