Holiday Side Project - Aeronautica Imperialis Bases

 

Greetings and Happy Holidays from 262Krieg.  I hope your family is safe and enjoying whichever winter holidays you choose to celebrate.  Here, we enjoy Christmas and while our celebrations have been much subdued by the pandemic, we're still in good spirits and have very much enjoyed our time this year. 

With vacation time off from work, I got inspired to dip a toe into my growing Aeronautica collection after reading a post over on Warpstone Pile. I honestly hadn't given any consideration to how I was going to paint Aeronautica minis, but this post got me thinking.  If the bases come apart (easily), then painting them would be easy.  Since they are a mechanic of the game, one doesn't want to disrupt the functionality of the dials that track speed and elevation.

So in short order, I had eighteen bases open on the workbench.  You want to keep track of which dial goes where since they are not the same.  But otherwise, a little prying with a small paint chisel (others use screwdrivers, etc.) and - POP - you have them apart.

Next I needed a paint scheme.  So as I typically do, I turned to a Google image search.  There isn't a ton of pics out there, but there are enough that I spent an hour or two going back and forth on what to do.  In the end I kept coming back to this reddit post for a "radar base" scheme. Since facing is part of the rules, I like the notion of green indicating the front ark, and red the dangerous back arc where you wouldn't want to find an enemy war plane tailing you. Then I saw this variation and I was convinced. 

So I set to work on may own take on these bases, minus the radar blips which just seem odd to me on a base.  I should note that I did not follow the video tutorial, but rather went off on my own with a simpler take on the scheme with less steps and masking.

I did mask off the stems, since mine are glued down and I wanted to keep them clear.  Then I used the airbrush to prime the base tops with Vallejo Surface Primer Black. With this dry, I first painted the green sides with Pro Acryl Dark Camo Green.  Next went on the Pro Acryl Bright Yellow Green, focused on the center and front rim of the green side so some of the darker green remains and blends forward into the brighter green.

The red was done the same with Pro Acryl Bold Pyrrole Red sprayed over Pro Acryl Burnt Red.  I was very careful with the red so I got no over spray on the green side.  I obviously could have masked this as is done in the video, but I wanted to work on my air brushing skills.  Since the dark fade is desirable here, I knew I had a good chance of keeping the red on its own side since I didn't want to go up to the trim in any event.

The irony of painting this scheme at Christmas time was not lost on me...

The details came next with Pro Acryl Bright Titanium White for the arrow symbols and Pro Acryl Dark Silver Metallic for the bolted trim and front triangle plate.  A touch of Pro Acryl  Rich Gold Metallic finished off the Aeronautica Imperialis symbol. And after some clean up on the rims, I had 18 pretty decent looking bases.

After a coat of spray lacquer to seal the paint, the masking on the stems was removed.  When it comes time to paint planes to go on these bases, I'll probably add some highlights.  But I dunno.  I like them as is, and I'm not sure the highlights are worth the risk of messing up the red and green blends which will be hard to touch up.

I liked enough other schemes that I saw while Googling that I'm planning different schemes for the Ork and T'au bases.  The bases here will be used only for my Imperial planes.  I'll probably replace the green with blue for T'au and I have a different look entirely planed for the Orks.

Maybe it's a bit wonky to start with the bases, but when inspiration strikes I try to go with it.  Having these cool looking bases will further prompt me to put some time in on the planes, I hope.   But before any of that, I will get back to completing the Dark Angels Primaris characters I have left from the Indomitus set.  Check back at the end of the week to see where those have got to.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!