Red God of War

Finally finished my Soviet Artillery.  I've been playing way to much World of Tanks.  But I'm putting an end to that.  I've just been so busy its a lot easier to sit down and play a video game for an hour or so then to sit and paint.

Anyway, one thing I tried to do is paint them as fast as I could.  I didn't worry about mistakes I would just go back and fix them later.  Seemed to work OK.  Let me know if you think they are ok with out highlighting.  Guns and Tanks I will still highlight.  But with so many infantry to paint, I have to take shortcuts some where.

Can you tell?

The major change with these guys is I did no highlighting on the soldiers.  Just to many soviets, and that step takes way to long.  I've put my 57mm gun and the 76mm gun to see if there is even a difference.  Close up yes, but with so many guys on the table and in the middle of a game, no one will ever know except me.

So, I have a tournament coming August 20th, and I've done more painting today, then I have in the last 3 months combined.  Hopefully I'll have some more pic's soon.  Including my revamped Marder III m's.

Lets see how the new camera with some lighting turned out.  There are still a lot of settings I can play with.  I think with any camera you have to get used to it.  These were all taken with landscape setting.  My have to try something different.  Color is weird. 

122mm

76mm

76mm

122mm

Lamps Extra Close

Tried to add a map.

New Camera Test

I got a new cell phone this past week, and its the Samsung Galaxy SII.  I had to give a plug here but this phone is insane.   How it pertains to FoW is that it comes with an 8.0 MP camera, and a 1080p video camera.

My old Camera takes amazing pictures, but its only 5.0 MP.
So these next pictures are some initial tests with the new camera.

As you can see, will take some getting used to.  And I'll need to play with settings.  But I think the potential is there.  I can zoom in super close with out the use of macro's.

And if I start to do some video's for the Rules Nazi, as its been suggested to me, this could work.

It will definitely be a lot more hand at tournaments, then lugging around my big camera. 

WWII Pin Up Girl

Jenny on the Harvard

As I slowly come back to painting with my summer being insanely busy, my family had a nice treat. Some restored WWII airplanes came to visit our city.

And my beautiful wife with her "pin up girl" style got some very cool pictures taken (by me of course) on these airplanes.

My boy even got to sit in one of them and help push the plane to get refueled.  He has all of the sudden decided that he is going to be a pilot when he grows up.  Well...actually he already thinks he knows how to fly because he plays flying games on the Xbox.

Cornell

One of the cool things was that the Cornell was originally based in Regina (my hometown) during the war. They found it rotting somewhere in the states and brought it back up and restored it. The entire airplane is made out of wood. I guess it was an engineering marvel for its time, since there was a shortage of metal during the war and they needed to use alternative materials to build aircraft.  This plane is absolutely beautiful.  As the Pilot Todd Lemiux says its a flying artifact.

I always wondered why these planes were yellow.  Apparently it was because there were so many of them up during the war at one time that they painted them yellow so they could easily see each other....Go figure.


We would have never even know about this event unless my wife didn't dress up in her pin up girl style at a wedding we were at. The pilots were staying at the same hotel, and thought it would be awesome for her to get pictures taken on these vintage airplanes.

Harvard

For me the coolest plane was the Harvard. This is what a WWII plane should look like. It was used during the war to train Spitfire and Hurricane fighter pilots. This particular plane was built in the 50's however.

The BEST PART of the whole day for me was I got to talk to a WWII veteran. who used to fly these planes, Oh man the stories he told. I could have listened to him all day. One story he told me was that one of his buddies was on a mission over Germany in a Lancaster Bomber. He was the navigator or something. He told me his friend didn't know how to fly by he knew ever inch of the plane. Almost everyone on the plane was dead including the pilot and copilot so he had to fly the plane back. The tower told him to set the plane down about half way down the runway. He Said "F-that" I'm using the whole runway. Later he found out that the tower saw his wheels come with in 6 inches of the farmers fence as he tried to land at the start of the runway.

Thank you to the pilots for the great hospitality and historical information. I look forward to see you again.
I'm really proud of what they are doing to try and preserve these aircraft. 
Thank you to;

Todd Lemieux - Cornell pilot
Liam O'Connel - Stearman pilot
Ulrich Bollinger - Harvard pilot

 Here are the websites you can visit for more information.
 http://www.vintagewings.ca/en-ca/aircraft.aspx
http://www.yellowwings.ca

I will have my Soviet Red God of War ready soon.
I also have a tournament Aug 20th and will be (hopefully) painting lots again in the next month.
Sorry to my 2 followers that I've been away so long.

Enjoy some more pictures of our day.  Also a few crappy video's.  Camera wasn't so good.  I have more videos' form a differant camera I haven't uploaded yet.  see how those turn out and i'll post them later.

Ulrich pilot of the Harvard

Todd pilot of the Cornell

Even propeller is made out of wood.

Harvard on the runway

Jenny and Dhamon with the Cornell

Stearman

Stearman on the runway

Jenny on the Harvard

Dhamon helping refuel the Cornell

Half a boy pushing the Cornell

Putting the Harvard to bed

Stearman most popular to fly.

Boy and I on the Harvard.

Dhamon in the Cornell

World of Tanks

Well I figure its about time I make a post about this stupid game. And by stupid I mean the game is awesome. The reason I say stupid is because its really hurting my painting time.

The cool thing about this game is that you don't just get in a tank and go...well you do...but you start in not much more then a tractor with a machine gun.

As you play you earn experience and money. Each tank has a tech tree. You use experience to improve everything on your tank. Once you have the tech you spend your money to upgrade something on your tank. Eventually you will gain enough experience to purchase the next tank on a countries tech tree's. So, there are sort of 2 tech trees. Each country has one for all the tanks you can get. And then each tank has one for all its upgrades.

I recent addition to the game which is crazy cool, is Clan Wars. The game has clans like every other online game, but now clans can actually battle for territory. They have a map of Europe. Each clan can own territory and attack other territories. Victory is decide by in game clan battles.  I'm already in a Clan with my fellow flames of war players and the WWPD guys.

What i've discovered now is that you can do custom paint skins.  The problem is no one else can see them, and if you make a paint scheme for a panther....all your panthers look the same.

What they need to figure out is what we used to do in Nascar.  We could paint individual cars, and then you could download packages.  But somehow individual skins were picked up.  So all cars didn't look the same.  Then you could do clan paint schemes and individual tank numbering.  The game is always in development and still growing so we shall see what happens.

They even keep individual stats on every player in every tank you've played in....crazy.

Give it a try, you won't regret it.  Its FREE!  But be warned...My painting has really suffered.
http://www.worldoftanks.com/

Calgary Military Museum

The Boy

So, between WoT's and other stuff I haven't been doing much painting lately.  On top of that I went to Calgary this past week.  One thing I did while I was there was go to the Museum of the Regiments...Which isn't the Museum of the Regiments anymore.

Calgary used to have 3 military museums.  Basically an army, navy (why there is a navy museum in the middle of the prairies I'll never know) and air force.  And they used to be spread out all over the city.  What they've done is brought all 3 together into one giant military museum.  I hadn't been there since this has been done, and I also know more about what I'm looking at now.

I applogize for the pictures.  some will be good some bad.  I took them all with my phone.  I didn't take my real camera because I didn't really plan on going there.

And please feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.

Out side they had some vehicles.  2 of them I had no idea what they were.  Since my forte' is WWII, I was sure they were post war tanks.  One of them looked like a Russian tank, but couldn't fathom why they would have a soviet tank.  They had no plaques outside to tell you want kinds of vehicles they were either.  Indeed one of them is a Soviet T-72, and the other one is a Centurion.

Churchill

Firefly

Centurion

Bren Carrier & the Boy

the Boy & a Soviet T-72

Pretty cool

You know, I've seen these tanks before, and I work with models of them every day, but I've forgotten how big they really are.  Even the firefly seems huge.  I can't imagine how big a Konigstiger would be in real life.

They also had a couple of AT guns outside.

6 Pounder

17 Pounder

Lots of cool stuff inside.  Including a very cool Diorama of another firefly that was apparently actually in Italy.

One thing that caught my eye in particular is the patches on the infantry uniforms.  The 3rd Canadian infantry division is prominent in FoW.  A couple of books show to paint 3rd Canadians with a blue formation patch on their shoulder.  The uniforms of the Calgary Highlanders at this museum also have these blue formation patches.  The only problem is the Highlanders were part of the 2nd Canadian.  So, who is wrong?  the Museum or Battlefront?  Seeing how BF already screwed up colours on the 4th Canadian decals, I wouldn't be surprised.  After about 30 seconds of digging turns out BF is wrong.  The 2nd Canadian Infantry division patches are blue.  The 3rd Canadian infantry division patches are suppose to be Grey.




















Lots of cool artifacts.





















































































Navel and Air Museum stuff.  Super Cool.  Even some Nazi artifacts taken from a German Sub.