The Unnamed Gorkamorka Site

It’s been quite a while since I wrote part one of my spraypaint guide, but here’s the second half.

Caps

As I mentioned in the first half, caps matter when painting which is clearly explained by the painting company tempe. There are a whole variety available, more than I can even tell you about as shown on Stubbins Painting San Diego`s website, but you don’t need to know everything, just what works well. If you buy low quality spray paint you’ll probably get a cap that looks like this one.

Perhaps this isn’t true of all low quality paint, but in my experience it’s true. It’ll give a relatively thin line of paint, splatter everywhere, and not forgetting its miraculous ability to leak all over you.

If you’re buying paint from a store that sells graffiti paint (my current favour is the Monster Colors online store) then it should be easy to pick up some caps at the same time. Don’t worry, they’re quite cheap (~£2 for ten at the time of writing).

The two kinds of caps I’d recommend for spray painting models are fat caps such as “pink dots” and calligraphic caps. The former is a wide spray that should allow you to quickly cover a vehicle or piece of terrain in a few passes, the latter provides a thin line of paint that can quickly be passed over things. By “a thin line” I am referring to a sort of fan shape that can allows a screen of paint to be run over models – it’s my cap of choice for most things, including individual miniatures, although it does require much quicker strokes.

Preparing the model

This is one of the reasons I favour spray paint intended for graffiti – it sticks to just about anything. Whilst other paints might require you to carefully wipe models down and prime them, that doesn’t apply with decent graffiti spraypaint. Make sure they’re not too dusty (you want to paint the model, not the dust) and then start spraying!

Technique

The way the paint is used is pretty important and I’ve seen a lot of people treat it as if a slow and deliberate coat is the only way something will stay painted. Actually, that’s the exact opposite of what you want to achieve. Quick coats are far better for models, otherwise you’ll find you’re clogging the model with paint and destroying all the details with large gobs of paint.

Before I continue, I want to mention drying time – graffiti spraypaint is designed for just that – graffiti. What this means is that it’s designed to dry quickly, stick to itself and not have many issues with what is being painted (hence why no primer is needed). What this means is that a quick coat will dry in seconds. I’m impatient and it’s often cold outside, so the sooner I’m done painting, the better.

This means that when painting, you only need to spray a thin coat, perhaps reposition it a little and then spray again. As long as you keep the coats quick and light, the model will have dried by the time the next coat is applied. This is NOT true if you use crappy paint, so be careful. You’ll be wanting to spray the model from a distance of somewhere between six and twelve inches, sometimes less, sometimes more. I don’t measure, I tend to just go with what feels about right. Here’s a video so you can see what I mean:

Once you’ve painted the model, give it a little while to dry (drying can be sped up using a hairdryer) and check it somewhere with even lighting to see which bits you’ve missed. If you got it all first time, well done, if not, take it outside and give it another blast.

Final quick tip – if you’re painting individual warriors, try sticking them to the edge of a cereal box. That way you’ve got a convenient way to pick them up and get them from different angles to ensure decent coverage.

If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Just a short note to say that Artur from Kromlech has recently mentioned that there’s some Ork pirate parts in the pipeline, the first of which is apparently a hook hand replacement. This may seem trivial but what it means is that very soon there will be one kind of replacement arm that doesn’t have a model available for it (the telescopic arm).

If there’s any Gorkamorka parts you particularly want to see produced leave a comment and we’ll see if we can convince them to have a stab at them!

Given how busy all of us here at tUGS have been lately, it’s understandable that we’ve got a few bits of junk lying around. One of the bits that has finally reached the top of the heap is part of an Easter egg box. My girlfriend (Gorkers, Da Not So N00bz) suggested it be used for a crater or similar, an idea which immediately appealed.

I figured the plastic itself would be a nightmare to get spackle to stick to, so the first step was to build up some structure to create a skeleton for the polyfilla to build on.

Hot glue was used for this, in conjunction with a load of old coffee cup heat shields, provided again by my other half. These were ideal for this as they had a natural curve to them, helping them wrap around the curvature of the plastic, uh, thingy.

With the card firmly in place, I started adding pre-mixed filler to the structure, which was then left to dry over night. In the morning a few areas were added to and some PVA glue was added to the empty centre to create an initial layer for adherence. Later some of the chunky seashell sand I use was added to this area, creating a texture that would hold filler. Once that was dry, a final, smoother coat of filler was added. Not too smooth, mind you. It’s supposed to be rocky, so no need to be too careful.

The final stage of construction was to add fine grain sand to the piece, excluding the centre. This took several layers and was held on by PVA glue, a process which was aided significantly by my trusty hairdryer. What can I say, I’m impatient!

Once the thin sand was on, I wanted it to blend with the basing of all the rest of my terrain, so I added some of the shell sand to it around the edges and scattered patches across it where it seemed sensible.

With that it was outside to paint it black and add the other base colours, dark brown for the centre, a faux Snakebite Leather for the rest.

Lastly it was drybrushed with a lighter brown colour on the outside (as per the base painting here) and a little Bestial Brown on the inside to dull down the glossiness of the paint. There we go, finished!

This concludes our series of scenarios from Tim Cammack, although if there’s any more good stuff from him out there, please let us know. We’d love to hear from him, if he’s out there somewhere in the world as it’d be nice to be able to share our appreciation for his work. To encourage him to get in touch we’re providing a photo from the late 90s. The big question now is..
..have you seen this man?

This final scenario has players trying to get their grubby meathooks on tasty, tasty meat squigs:

News has just hit town that a Mob is herding big Meat Squigs out in the desert. Meat Squigs can feed a Mob for a whole week. The race is on to try and bag as many Squigs as possible, without paying, of course.

Download PDF

Recently Tristan from Terrain From Junk held the site’s first terrain building contest. He asked for pieces that were 36”² or more and built from some of the types of junk he’d already listed on the site. I took it upon myself to enter a piece, if anything just to get through some of the junk I had building up around my flat.

A while ago there was some renovation work going on nearby and on our way back home Ross found a medium sized PVC tube which he donated to me.

So gathering up a few other bits and pieces I set to work on an entry, to be finished in a couple of days, in between revising for my HRD exam. I also used:

• -Wooden coffee stirrers
• -Corrugated cardboard
• -Tub of hot chocolate
• -A couple of yoghurt pots
• -A few pieces of plasticard and some other odds and ends

I drew up a rough idea of what the piece should look like, although the finished version isn’t quite the same and I never did figure out why there had been a shack there.

The general idea was to create a piece that indicated the presence of a large amount of scrap below the ground, or possibly as if a large lump of the space hulk had torn off hurling engines in all directions as it broke up.

I imagine the pipe as part of a connective structure in a bank of many similar engines that has been decaying slowly and recently was blown over, crushing the nearby shack.

In terms of gameplay I wanted to build something that would be big enough for most normal vehicles to pass under it, rather than being entirely blocked by it. I also wanted to provide a bridge for foot models, allowing combat to occur around it and to create a tempting vantage point. There’s entrances at both end of the pipe to encourage its use (and to prevent any one model being impossible to flush out).

A combination of PVA glue and hot glue were used to hold the whole thing together – hot glue where a quick bond was required and PVA where it could wait.

I added some detailing to the engine itself, although I really wanted to add more. Sadly I didn’t have the parts, nor the time, to add them. Let the chips fall as they may!

It was spraypainted black and the base was given a rough coating of Snakebite leather. Essentially I followed the same painting procedure as for my mutie tent, the rest is mostly just drybrushing Tin Bitz and Boltgun Metal, although I did the rust using this method, et voilà:

That’s pretty much it. Here’s some more photos, or thumbnails at least. Click on them to see larger versions.

Lastly, I’ve got this one. I took two photos that ended up so close together that they give a faux-3D effect when viewed as an animation. The image links to a larger version of it.