Sunday, October 17, 2010

First Roman Unit Painted

I finished another 12 Romans and so have completed my first first 20 man unit of Roman Veterans.  I think they came out nicely and were a lot of fun to paint.  I just noticed that I forgot to finish the shield trim of one of the legionaries (front row, second from the left) - oops!

All that's left for these guys is to varnish the shield transfers with gloss coat (extra protection),  spray the whole lot with matte finish and then base.  The Little Big Man Studios shield transfers came out very nicely and can make an average paint job like mine look great.

I'm still working on my photography skills.  The first picture was without extra lighting and the second has my "natural light" lamp lit from behind the camera.  I did pick up a new digital camera - a Sony cybershot DSC-W350.  It's a marked improvement over my I-phone which was my primary camera for the past few years.

The next unit will be regular Legionnaires and they have been assembled primed.  You can see I've adjusted my assembly technique to leave the shields off the models.  Doing so creates a bit more to paint but makes applying the LBMS shield transfers a lot easier.

To date, the Romans have been my favorite set of 28mm figures to both assemble and paint.  Hopefully in a few months I will be able to field an army for the table top.

As for my war games table, you can see it's been put to use by my son's robotics team.  It will not be available for proper miniature gaming until late December but coaching the Robotics team is a lot of fun.

7 comments:

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Nice looking unit :)


I like the Robotics connection too. Things like that can stir the imagination of engineers young and old alike :)

DeanM said...

Wow - that looks like a HS shop class - huge table and ongoing project. Cool. And the Romans look great too. Dean

Doc Smith said...

Your Romans will base up nicely - good result. In door photography is always tricky as the light balance is not always catered adequately by the auto lens system of your average digital camera. Unfortunately I think most solutions involve a $1000+ digi SLR but at least the image s/ware you get nowadays gives you a few more for blog posting.

I use CorelPaint to punch up or down the Gamma and brightness-contrats-intensity (then save the image in CorelDraw & export as a jpeg). I take a lot more average photos than good ones and this method nearly always helps.

The robotics coaching looks like it'll be a lot of fun and well and truly compensate for temporary loss of your gaming table!

Cheers,
Doc

BigLee said...

Looking good.

jmilesr said...

Thanks for the comments. The robotics is both challenging and a lot of fun. Giving up the games table for a few months is a small price to pay.

I'll give corel paint or its mac equivalent a go and see if that make the photos look a bit better

Miles

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Do like the Romans in black - far more classy than the usual imperial red...

If you want a quick and easy to play with, Picasa is the one I use for boosting my amateurish photography... I especially like the "Feeling Lucky" button!! :o))

Guidowg said...

Coming along great Miles. Just wish I could find my painting mojo again as its warming up here, 32 today, and painting usually get shunted down the list.

You'll have your Roman army finished in no time, well after the robotics project is completed anyway.

Cheers.