miscellaneous: battlefoam

Back in November I took advantage of Battlefoam's Black Friday sale and ordered up a whole mess of custom foam for various projects. Last Friday, it arrived.

Two trays of custom-sized foam, two trays of Battlefoam-sized foam, and eight trays of Spartan-sized foam snuggly packed inside a new Spartan Bag. All the foam was custom-cut based on designs I sent them.

First we'll look inside the bag...

I used the Battlefoam Custom Tray Creator for my Dystopian Wars FSA foam. As you can see, it fits the models well and I added a little room for expansion of my forces.

The remainder of the foam in my "Spartan Games Bag Custom Load Out" bundle was designed for my Aeronautica Imperialis models and made from designs I mapped out in Illustrator and sent in as PDFs.

All 6 trays fit quite snuggly in the P.A.C.K. 216 I bought at Adepticon a couple years ago.

The Battlefoam-sized trays were designed using the Custom Tray Creator and laid out to fit all 2000 points of Iron Warriors I have planned in a single Spartan Bag. My only quibble here is that the "Vindicator" hole from the Custom Tray Creator is extremely tight at the dozer blade. While this'll help during transport, I worry about wear on the paint job as I pull the model in and out of the tray. We'll see once I've actually painted the damn things.

Last, but not least, is the custom-sized, custom-cut foam trays I had designed for Wizkid's Star Trek: Fleet Captains. The foam has been made mostly unnecessary in the latest printing of the game, as Wizkid's has re-jiggered the inside of the box to better support the models and cards without breakage. However, I'd already designed this thing up in Illustrator and paid for the foam, so I went ahead with it.

As you can see, some of the ships sit pretty low in their holes. I had Battlefoam send me the insides of the holes, and will likely pull out the wire foam cutter to make varying height bases in the bottom of each hole. As with the Aeronautica foam, I probably could've designed the holes a bit tighter, but this being my first experience with Battlefoam's foam, I played it safe rather than sorry.

The lid sticks up a 1/4" or so due to the foam's base. I think it's a small price to pay for the protection the foam offers.

My initial impressions overall are positive. The foam appears to be of high quality and fits most of the figures snug. All quibbles are based less on practical application than theoretical at this point. With one of the Fleet Captains foams winging its way to Los Angeles soon, and most of the other trays headed to Adepticon with me, we'll see how the models, and my impression of the foam, hold up.

miscellaneous: paint stands drawing to a close

Spent most of this week's hobby time finishing up the Orky paint stand commissioned by a local gamer. While I'm happy to provide the service, I severely underestimated, and undervalued, my time. With 13-14 hours into it when all is said and done, we're looking at about $3.35/hr! Not even half minimum wage! I'm still up to popping these out for folks, but I'm pretty much out of the Ork-style paint stand business unless I either cast the front-plates (downside: each is no longer unique) or I jack the price way, WAY up.

Unlike last update, I shall provide pictures!

Grandstand

Completed this one a couple weeks ago, but forgot to take pics. It's a bit barren 'cause I didn't have enough of any particular iconographic bits to decorate it up for a distinct army. Thought about stenciling in some numbers between panels, but ran out of steam. The hazard stripes were less to provide visual interest (which they do), than to provide practice for a soon-to-be-blogged project relevant to my interests.

Trenchworks

Did this one 'cause I needed to decorate up the dropper-bottle stand I pioneered in this post. Oddly enough, as I was finishing this one up a friend asked if I could do up a Death Korp of Krieg-themed paint stand for him. I showed him this one as proof of concept and he loved it. His will be a bit more involved (earth showing through the boards, lasguns and battle detritus, etc.) but probably won't be started for at least a couple weeks.

The lot of 'em!

Have a couple undecorated stands in there, but no desire to make 'em look pretty at present. Too inspired by real hobby projects at the moment. I'm sure I'll come back to 'em the next time my hobby batteries need a recharge.

Orky Commission: 90% painted

Just need to add a little freehand to the stand on the left, decorate the Rhino doors in Ultramarines and/or Space Wolves colors, and arrange delivery/payment. It'll have to be this week. Not because the client requested, but because the proceeds are going towards Space Marine on the Xbox 360 next week. Which is where I spent my hobby time Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I wasn't as enamored with the demo as some of my friends, but I liked it well enough to walk into Best Buy and pre-order it the next day - Emperor's Children and Iron Warrior skins were too good to pass up. You know what they say:

"Iron Within! Naughty Bits Without!"

build: paint stands, now for dropper-bottles!

Had a request for a blueprint for Vallejo/dropper-bottle sized paints. I tried to use as little wood as possible while remaining sturdy enough to hold paints. I've managed to use just three pieces of wood to make a five-tiered shelf holding 40 paints for just $7. I've built in 1/8" wiggle room per level for decoration/facades. If you want to go simple-and-easy, you can just grab some 1/8" square plastic or wooden rod, cut it to size, and glue it to the front edge of each level and call it a day.

Paint Stands, Mk.Ib: multi-colored "blue"print
( click to download PDF )

Mk.Ib: front (with Mk.II for scale comparison)

Mk.Ib: back

Not entirely sure how I'm gonna decorate this one yet. Might go steampunk with it...

build: work-in-progress: paint stands, step-by-step

So it turns out that the two paint stands I built were about 13 spaces shy of holding all the Citadel and P3 paint pots I currently own, much less the colors I'll be adding as needed. With that in mind, I started work on a couple new stands using the same blueprint. I changed the assembly steps a bit to make the process faster/easier and, this time, tried to document the process in a meaningful way.

Step 1: Cut and assemble your pieces

Step 2: Glue the 1/2" bars to the underside of each platform

Step 3: Pair the platforms, glue them together

Step 4: Glue the paired platforms together

Step 5: Glue your horizontal and vertical braces in place

Step 6: Decorate to taste

I've tried to get creative gussying up each base, partially to see what I can do, partially to show that there's as many options as are there are thoughts in your head. Experiment, play, and have fun. I'll end with some completed shots of the first two paint stands. I hope to have the next two (stonework and grandstand) finished by this time next week.

Ork

Tom Sawyer

In Situ

I'd forgotten I had some of the old, hexagonal Citadel paint pots. They don't fit quite as well and overlap about 1/16" on both sides of the stand. If you've got a ton of those old pots, you may want to add 1/4" or so to the width of your stands.

build: paint stands, complete with blueprints

Finished decorating my Citadel/P3-sized paint stands yesterday while the kids napped. I went for two different looks, partially to show off what can be done cheaply/easily to make 'em look unique, and partially because I got tired of fitting and weathering plasticard. The armor plates and fencing, besides being decorative, work to keep the paints in position those days I need to move the stands from my shelf to the painting desk.

Paint Stands, Mk II: front

Paint Stands, Mk II: back

If anyone wants to have a go themselves, the blueprint PDF was finished this morning. Should print nicely on one 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, and I've color coded the pieces to be as self-explanatory as possible on that single sheet.

(right-click to download)

Not that I didn't take a few "in-progress" photos. Unfortunately, they're less of a how-to assemble and more of a treatise on using what you have available to hold your project together as the glue dries...

The blueprint has a built-in allowance for decoration the width of your standard popsicle stick - about 1/16 of an inch. You could just as easily forego the decoration and stick some 1/16 wooden or plastic rod on the front edge of each level to hold your paint in place. That's what did along the back edge of the top level.

The armour plated stand is primed black and the plan is to slap some paint on it while the kids nap today. I'll take some pics of the paint-in-progress as I plan to use my standard method for painting run-down Ork vehicles. As for the smaller "fence" rack, I'm gonna have a look 'round to see if I have any wood stain lying about. If not, I wonder if I can Tom Sawyer the twins into whitewashing it for me...

build: work-in-progress: paint stands

As I prepare the remaining aspects of my "Summer of Spartan" - finish the sea table, make more islands, paint my remaining FSA - I find myself running out of space in my hobby room. I've rearranged things to create more room, but still find myself sitting on the floor instead of at my desk. As part of the reorganization process, I've come to the realization that I need more paint stands. The ones I made years ago when I used Vallejo exclusively are no longer cutting it for my growing collection of Citadel and P3 paints.

Paint Stands, Mk I: fit Vallejo paints like a glove

As you can see, they work great for dropper-bottle paints. However, the bigger form factor of the Citadel and P3 ranges gets problematic with my initial design. I'll do a how-to with "blueprints" later this week as time permits, but here's a glimpse at the current state of the project.

Paint Stands, Mk II: built for burlier paints

When all is said and done, they'll hold 36 paints and be a screaming ode to my inner MekBoy. (Despite the flood of Dystopian Wars material since this blogs inception, my first love of wargaming is, and likely always will be, the Orks of Warhammer 40K.) Not bad for about $10 worth of wood and some scrap plasticard.