It's been a while, but you may remember that apart from Mecha Galaxy, there are other war games that I play. They involve using, what my wife indulgently calls, toy soldiers.
Some of the models I make are of a larger scale, but I have recently (thanks to certain clan mates) taken an interest in smaller scale models.
This led me to three things....
1. My search for suitable models found some which are within pocket money range of most folk, so if you love mechs, why not get some?
2. Painted always looks better than unpainted, so maybe people would want to know how to do so in a simple manner...
3. Some of us are getting to ... a certain age... whereby detailed painting is not something we can do much of, either due to eyesight or other appendages beginning to... do their own thing. So any paint scheme needs to be easy enough for us codgers to get away with.
So, if you want some of your own "toy soldiers", here you go. The ones used in the following photographs are mechs from EM4 Miniatures. Extremely reasonably priced, although at the cost of being a tad generic. They are sized at 25-30 mm scale.
The ones shown here have been built up as the equivalent of the Robotech Defender/Battletech Rifleman and the Robotech Phalanx/Battletech Longbow. They could however stand in for perhaps a Buchis and a Dread if you wanted as the weapons are similair.
Note: This is not an in depth painting guide with tutorials in different techniques. Any special techniques will be displayed in italic bold so that you can Google the term for further information.
So lets dive straight in.
I've assembled 3 mechs, given them a quick grey undercoat with a cheap spray can of primer, then painted the base colours.Detailing is relatively scarce so as to keep the paint scheme simple. Apart from the all over paint scheme, the only things of different colour are weapon barrels and missiles that have been base-coated black and drybrushed silver, silver cockpit canopies, white on insignia plates and some block colour for unit markings.
So at this stage, you have a pristine mech as it walks off the production line. To be honest, good enough for a first attempt at this stage, and you could actually stop there. But no war machine stays pristine for long.
Here, I have used straight grey to expose undercoat where paint has been chipped away by barging through obstacles in combat. Just make not to get it only on raised areas or corners, and pay special attention to the feet and legs as they are most prone to wear.
Now I have used silver on those same areas to show that the paint has been stripped back to bare metal. I haven't attempted to completely cover the grey, so we have some areas where it has been stripped only to undercoat and other deeper scratches which completely bring it back to the base metal of the mech.I particularly like this stage as it is counter intuitive; from bottom to top it should go metal - undercoat - top coat but we have actually applied them in the reverse order for ease... its just our mind that reverses things to see what we know should be correct.
I have now applied an ink wash in a slightly darker brown than the base coats. This will fill darker in the detail areas to make the detail stand out by shadowing it, while muting the other colours to make them less stark.I have used brown regardless of the base coat used. Yes, in advanced painting you can use darker shades of whatever base colour you use, but in a simple paint scheme a brown wash shades any colour except perhaps blacks or dark greys.... it's like applying a sepia filter to a photograph.
We are now getting even more battle worn. The gun barrels have been blacked out to signify them being hollow. An orange ink has been used around exposed bare metal to signify new rust, remembering to start at the metal then paint downward to show that rusty water has stained downward. I have also stippled the gun barrels with grey, then black closest to the muzzle to "soot" them and show they have been fired.
With the painting almost complete, I have now turned my attention to the base. It needs to be disguised so it looks like actual ground, and most modelers use some form of texture material for that.The mix I have used is one that I use for a lot of modern / sci-fi figures. It consists of sand, fine model railway ballast, fish tank coral and pieces of cut up model sprue. This mix also has some small aluminium pieces that I picked up in a metal work shop.
To glue it in place, use a mix of PVA glue and water with a dash of detergent. The detergent breaks the surface tension of the liquid and allows it to flow better around the basing material to bind it together.
The end is in sight.
The base got a coat of black and was then drybrushed grey. To blend the mech with the terrain it is moving through, I used the same grey stippled around the feet and lower legs where dust and dirt has been kicked up. Remember that in real life, a person or vehicle that flicks up mud while travelling tends to get more up the back than the front. so pay special attention there.I also did a little spot color on the missile tips to emphasise them. Oh, and don't forget clan markings on the insignia plate, which I cheated with and used a 0.3 mm fine line pen for rather than a paint brush.
So no excuse people... go get yourself some mechs to adorn your play area!
Submitted by David McCallum #701548