Japanese

[ravenflight]

Hi All,

My new project just got kicked along this weekend.

It is an early Japanese list, but I haven't quite made up my mind on the layout at this stage.

The meat and potatoes of the army will be maximizing the Ashigaru archers and a good strong Samuarai Foot contingent.

I'm not necessarily sold one way or another on the light lance/bow armed mounted, so am still in the 'deciding stage' with them. Fortunately, the way I was going to layout my mounted was with both Yari and Dai-Kyu with a mix of both as I do not believe that in the crossover period either would be used exclusively. Samurai being so 'individualized' in their combat that many would still carry bows in a lance armed unit and vice versa.

Additionally, it's not going to add any confusion to my opponent because I'm either all lance or all bow, so I'll declare when I put it down and declare loudly about the depiction and why... I'll also use them dramatically differently (skirmishing vs impact etc) so I don't think it will be an issue.

I've bought exclusively Eureka Samurai (http://eurekamin.com.au/index.php?cPath ... 06&sort=3a) in 15mm and my traditional 25/28mm commanders. I'm not sure if it's an eye thing or what, but it really does work for me having the 'heroic' scale miniatures.

So, I'll include the step by steps as I go in separate posts.

[ravenflight]

By the way, just in case there are any who are expecting an Simon "Mr Lurker" Lurkio speed of paint report, can I strongly suggest that you'll be sadly disappointed. This is a project that I hope to have completed for MOAB 2015 (4th to Monday 6th October 2014), but I will be trying to do a top notch job on the painting so do want to take any pressure off. I completed my Louis XIV army in just under 4 months, so think this will be finished in around 6-8 months, being slightly larger and a lot more complex.

I did not want to paint my army in units as I'm planning on painting this army with as much variety as possible, so will paint some Samurai with bow (command figures within my Ashigaru BG's) at the same time as Mounted Samurai with Bow at the same time as foot samurai with Naginata.

My first step was to assemble my 28mm commanders and make sure that the diorama I'm planning for the command bases works. I think it does. I have an 'action figure' 28mm commander, a Samurai holding a standard, and an attendant holding the reigns of a horse. I wont put up any photographs because my camera is not really suited to it, but hopefully I'll get a better camera within a short time or be able to beg borrow or steal a better camera.

I also started on my first batch of sashimonos on the backs of the troops.

On the sidelines I've been producing my mons which are going to be laser printed onto white transfer paper. I have been a long time 'fan' of Oda Nobunaga and so will be using the Oda mon. If my army ends up being lance armed it will be based on the battle of Anegawa (small amounts of information) and if bow armed it will be his father Nobuhide (the Tiger of Owari) or grandfather Nobusada.

That's where I'm up to so far... no paint has wet my brushes, but the early stage 'getting ready' stuff is started so I'm happy about that. I an unlikely to actually wet a paint brush for a number of weeks yet.

[ravenflight]

Well, I'm fairly happy with the way the mons are coming along. I have a work colleague who modified a picture I had to be a vector image of the Oda mon, and I have been busy choosing colours. I'm not set in stone or anything like that, but this is what I've come up with so far:



This will assume a white coloured backing paper laser transfer paper. Naturally these are oversized for now.

I also continue to put the Sashimonos on the backs of my Samurai and Ashigaru (they aren't great photos as only taken on a phone):

[ravenflight]

Ok, so with Easter here, I've finally managed to get all of the Sashimono's on the back of all of my men.

I'm not sure if I already said this but...

I got the majority of these figures from a friend of mine who had started to build a FoG:AM Japanese army, so a good deal of the follower/ashigaru figures are from a lot earlier than the period when they started wearing the Jingasa, but I've done a little bit of research and it seems that they can only categorically state the Jingasa being worn from around the time of the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. So, I'm going out on a limb here and using some of the earlier follower figures and mixing them in with the later ashigaru figures. They will all have sashimonos and I'm sure I'll get someone telling me how historically inaccurate my army is, but at the end of the day I'm not that bothered by it if the army looks good.

So, tomorrow spray painting the undercoats.

I'll hope for fine weather

[ravenflight]

Well, the figures were white undercoated on the weekend, and I've started the process of applying paint.

The way I paint is that I blu-tac the figures on individual 3" nails. This gives me a good handle to hold the figures, and I have a block of wood with 59 holes big enough to hold the nail.

The army I'm building has 244 (not counting the camp) figures in it, so that means I have to do 5 of those blocks of wood (counting the camp) to finish the army.

Given that I want to use this army at MOAB in Sydey, that gives me about 1 month per block of wood. For me, this is a big undertaking and I'm not convinced I'll manage it... but if I don't I'll be a long way along to getting it done and I'll definitely get it done for Can-Con.

The flesh that I've done is Vallejo Flat Flesh (70.955) with a Vallejo Cavalry Brown (70.982) thick wash. I'm not sure if I'll go back and highlight or not. I'll probably work that out once the figures are 'finished'... i.e. once I think they are done, if I can see 'hmm, this needs doing' then I'll go back.

<edit>

I did go back and highlight. It's now blended flesh... looks much better. Same two colours though.

<edit 2>

Just a side note:

Most of the samurai of the period wore a mask called a "mempo". I started to paint the majority of my samurai with Mempo and it looked decidedly odd. I've then gone 'ahistorically' with flesh faces. My reasoning is my old catch cry - "never let the facts get in the way of a good paint job". I believe that if a figure looks good, despite historical inaccuracy, then it's the right thing to do. Having my figures historically wearing a face mask and people going 'why are they half negro half caucasians?' would detract from the overall look of the army.

Which, incidentally, may be why nearly every artwork in the Osprey books has the figure without a mask???

[ravenflight]

Started layering clothing today.

My plan is to do all of the clothes under the armour first then mix up the colours I use and do the armour so that no two armour and clothing is doubled up. Well, there probably will be double ups but minimise them anyway.

Green clothing started today.

[ravenflight]

So, I've all but finished one strip (60 figures to a strip) of clothing. I can't wait to get to the armour, which will all but see those figures finished, but I am taking my time (as you can see by how long this thread has been since it's started).

I'm off from work for a week (I had an operation this week) so will hopefully get a lot done between now and next weekend. I'm also on 6 weeks of 'no lifting > 5kg' so renovating the house has taken a 6 weeks + hiatus which should increase painting time somewhat.

So, here are two sample pics of the colours I've used:





One thing I did notice on the 'white undercoat' is the necessity to be very careful to ensure that you've covered all bases, but I think the overall effect is quite nice.

I have a total of '10 colours' on each strip - doing 6 figures for each colour. I have another 10 colours to do (so I'll have two strips) but many of them are variations on a theme (lighter blues and greens etc) but I think that is very natural as well.

Once I have two strips done I'll take all of the figures I've done and mix them up so that no two colours are next to each other and start patterning the armour. The end result will be that no pattern of armour will be next to the same colour of clothing.

I haven't made up my mind yet, but I'm considering keeping the sashimonos all the same colour for various BG's. I think there was a sense of regimentation in the Japanese of the time and perhaps having different colours will cause too much of a cacophony. I'll make that decision once the armour is done and I can see what they do look like mixed in with each other.

[list_lurker]

I love the vibrancy that a white undercoat brings. It's just too time consuming I find.

Good job so far!:-)

[ravenflight]

I love the vibrancy that a white undercoat brings. It's just too time consuming I find.

Good job so far!:-)

Agreed about the time consuming angle. This has probably been my most desired army in my history of wargaming. Both a lack of quality figures and a lack of skill in my painting has stopped me from pursuing them until now. The Eureka Japanese are first rate, and I feel my painting up to the task. It will be my 'centrepiece' army, so am prepared to go the extra time to get the vibrancy happeining.

Thanks for your feedback.

[kevinj]

Of course for Simon "too time consuming" would mean that he'd need to start painting a competition army more than 2 weeks before the event...

[ravenflight]

Of course for Simon "too time consuming" would mean that he'd need to start painting a competition army more than 2 weeks before the event...

I was thinking something similar q.v. my second post on this thread

But then I'm a mere mortal, and I've seen what becomes of those who challenge the Gods!

The only way I'll ever challenge Simon is on the wargames table and even that is unlikely to happen and likely to be doomed to failure, so... I'll just crawl back into my 1 army a year hole

[ravenflight]

So, I now have the flesh and clothing of two strips (118 figures) done and started on the armour.

My first step was to do the actual silks of the lamellar and then just wash the armour with a darker version of the same colour. That was pretty much my entire intent, however I want to make some of the colours quite fancy.

This is where I've stumbled onto a problem:

As you'll see in the photograph above I have attempted to do a simplified version of the Samurai archer on the cover of Osprey 23 "The Samurai". I've done three shades of violet, from quite dark (about 50:50 Vallejo Game Color 72016 Royal Purple and White) and then taking three stages of lightening of the colour adding white.



I have to say I'm a little disappointed in the overall effect. I think it's because there isn't a big enough shade difference, but I'm finding it actually quite difficult to get a big enough shade difference without it seeming to go the other direction.

I've had a thought which I'm about to experiment with and that is making a very light batch of violet/purple and painting the whole armour that colour. I'll then wash the whole lot with a very thin wash. Once dry go over the lower 2/3rds of the armour and when that is dry go over the lower 1/3rd of the armour as well. It's an experiment, but we'll see how it turns out.

I guess my concern is that it appears that a lot of effort will be gone into, which will not really be able to be seen on the games table. At what point do you stop trying to get the figure looking good and start trying to get the figure on the table?

Comments at this stage are very appreciated

[ravenflight]

So I've been struggling a little bit with the armour of my Japanese.

I'm sure most of you know the makeup of Japanese Lamellar armour, but for those of you who don't know, the majority of Japanese armour was made up of small plates of lacquered (generally black) metal that was woven together with brightly (usually) coloured silk.

So, here is my problem, how do you paint that and make it look realistic?

If you paint it with the silk colours then it looks too bright. If you paint it with the lacquer then it looks too dark.

So, my solution has been a bit of a discovery in painting as well.

I wanted something relatively quick to paint. I mean, I could go into painting each individual lamellar plate on the figure, but it would take forever, so that wasn't an option. I knew painting the armour black wouldn't work.

My solution was to paint the 'silk colour' of my armour, and then glaze the armour with a black. It seems to have worked quite well. No photographs yet, because the end result will look better than they look at the moment. I have cords and the rest of the armour attachments to paint up first and it looks a bit rough right now, but I can tell that my solution will work. One thing I did discover though, is that I have to paint the armour ridiculously bright. For example, at the moment I'm painting blue. I used Vallejo Medium Blue (70.963), but knew that it wasn't going to be bright enough, so popped it up a few shades by having 1/3 white. Right now, without the wash the Samurai look like a bunch of harlequins. Once the glaze goes on though, I feel that the blue will be closer to a 'Prussian Blue', so will probably look just about right.

On a totally different note, one thing that I have learned through this experience is in my shading of the clothing. I'm not going to go back and re-do the clothing, but I note that some of the clothing looks a little 'not quite as good as I'd like'. I think the reason for this is only using black and whites to do my layering. For the most part it's fine. Add a bit of white to blue and it becomes light blue. Add a bit of black to blue and it becomes dark blue. The difficulty comes in colours that have a large amount of white already in the paint... for example, orange and yellow. We all know that black and white make grey, so what you end up with when you try to darken the yellow with black paint is a very yucky coloured dirty grey yellow. My solution will be to use other colours to darken the yellow. For example, browns may work better.

If you look at the picture here:

You'll see that the folds and shaded spots actually look brown. Indeed, they blend in well with the background wood!

So, lesson was learned fairly early. I've still got half of my army to do... so will have the 'other half' looking even better.

[ravenflight]

Ok, after nearly seven months of mucking around, I'm finally on the downward spiral of finishing these guys off:

Here are the first finished unit.

Oda's Hamamoto Guards are ready to take all comers:







My theory on painting the armour on these guys is that the Tsuru Bashiri (Breastplate) and the Kabuto (Helmet) were often very heavily decorated:



So I have tried to 'blend' the colours in a way which would give the distant appearance of the decoration without going into the detail. For the most part this has meant going a very light shade of the main colour of the lacework on the armour, so if the lace was green, the decorative work would be light green or lime. I came into some problems with colours like red and the like which don't lighten down very easily (red becomes pink obviously), so in some cases I went pink, in other cases I just stayed red.

I haven't given these guys Sashimonos. There are three reasons for this:

Firstly, I need an easy way of distinguishing the Hamamoto from the rest of the army!,
Secondly, these guys are so tough that the don't need no stinking flag to frighten the enemy!!; and,
Thirdly, everyone knew who they were... they are the Hamamoto Guard for God's sake!!! They don't need any assistance in being identified!!!

For the most part the rest of the army have Sashimonos

They will be up in the next couple of weeks.
Hope you like them.

[nigelemsen]

Hi, sorry, I hadn't notice another entry on the forum... They look nice... Reason I use over washers is that I can't paint as neat so cover up many sins with a brown wash and basing...

[ravenflight]

Hi, sorry, I hadn't notice another entry on the forum... They look nice... Reason I use over washers is that I can't paint as neat so cover up many sins with a brown wash and basing...

Historically I've used washes a LOT, but chose in my Louis XIV and Japanese to do deliverate layering. It does take more time (q.v. seven months to paint an army that should have taken half that) but I find it impossible to get bright effects with washes. I don't doubt there are techniques, but I'm unsure of the method. My initial thinking is to do the figures normally, wash them down, and go back and highlight, but there are risks in that by using the wrong shades etc. I've got some DBA armies coming, I might try it with them.

My next project MAY be doing a single 54mm figure for the CanCon painting comp. I have a real desire to try my hand at NMM (not metal metalics), so thought of something like a Cuirassier or (better still) a Carabinier of the Napoleonic Wars.

I'll path you to a NMM knight I saw in "Cool Mini or Not" when I'm home and messaging on a computer not my phone.

As promised... here is some of the best NMM I've ever seen:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/350515

[ravenflight]

Two pictures of my battle lines:

New camera so the colour saturation is a little better...

I still have to do the mons. I am having difficulty getting motivated to finish the army. I've got some time off over Christmas and want to have it totally finished by CanCon at the end of Janaury, so will post those when done.

[ravenflight]

THEY ARE DONE!

Oh My God, it has seriously been the longest project I have ever undertaken.

Anyway - unfortunately I can't get the pictures up at the moment as I'm packed up ready for CanCon but I'll certainly take some pics at the con and post them when I get back.

I'm very pleased to have this done, and very happy with the result.

[list_lurker]

well done! let us know how they fight

[nigelemsen]

Very nice...