Tuesday, January 29, 2013

I have Gas (Giant)!!

What's the fun of blowing each other's ships up if you don't have a planet to fight for?  Not a whole lot, that's what!  How can we rectify this?  With a trip to Hobby Lobby!

Is that planet actual size?

Hobby Lobby has a pretty wide selection of foam balls, eggs, rings, and whatever else you could possibly want.  Important to us, however, are the balls.  I was shopping around to see if I could find some good sized balls... I tell you what, let's call them globes.  Globes sounds less dirty to me.  So I was looking around for some foam globes and then, on the top shelf practically hidden away, I found these 12 inch diameter half globes!  Score!  What luck that this would be the exact maximum size allowed in the rule book AND it's already cut in half so the diameter can be measured easily without a base needing to be added!  So I snatched this bad boy up.  The only downside: $9.99.  Yea.  Ten bucks for a piece of foam.  Now I'm sure that there are probably a lot of cheaper alternatives out there and if you can find them, please tell me.  I kept thinking of just turning a bowl upside down but they're all flat on the bottom so that just isn't going to work.  Maybe when Easter comes around, they'll have some giant eggs or something we can use.  Anyway, until then, we have this ten dollar chunk of foam.

I purchased this 12" diameter half globe and two 4" full globes (I hope to make some moons or something out of those) and took them home.  Well, first I went and had 75 cent tacos at Amigos, and THEN I went home.  Today, while wifey was at work, Oliver and I got to work on turning the globe into a... globe.  I let Ollie do most of the work for the first part and that was to cover this bad boy in a layer or two of PVA glue in order to cover the porous texture and give it a layer of protection from any spray paints that I might use.

SPREAD IT ON!!
Once this was complete, the globe had a much smoother texture.  We just let this dry for an hour or so while we ate some Captain Crunch and watched Spongebob.


After everything dried, we threw some Apple Barrel Primary Blue to the whole thing.  My initial plan was to do more of an Earth-like planet with continents and stuff.  However, after experimenting a bit, I wasn't happy with any of the methods I was using and decided to start over and go with a gas giant.


 Okay so I feel like I  forgot a few intermediate steps here because the next picture is of the completed planet.  Now I know you all feel like I'm doing one of those How to Draw an Owl instructional drawings here but it really is straightforward from here on out.  Once you have a big giant blue planet, just take your airbrush with whatever colors you want to add and start spraying continuous lines around the planet.  The sloppier the better, actually.  A few lines were a little too straight or a little too dark for my liking.  The best ones seemed to be the lines that were vague and squiggly.  It definitely made them look more like the clouds of Jupiter or something.  I think this same idea would look great with some browns and reds.  I might try another one now that I think about it.

How to paint a planet: First draw a circle.  Then paint the rest of the planet!
So I have no idea why I keep making all of this Line-of-Sight blocking terrain when I play Dindrenzi.  I'm really only hurting myself, I think.  Who cares?  It looks awesome to have a table full of terrain so I'll adapt.  All in, I had maybe eleven bucks in this project.  The child labor definitely helps, though.  Oh, if any of you have a good method for painting Earth-like planets, please let me know!  I'd love to give it a shot again!

3 comments:

  1. Very nice gas giant.

    for earth like planets i have found one tutorial online so far that seems to work: (http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/terraforming-process.html)

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  2. Nice looking gas giant! For future planetary purchases, you can print out a coupon for 40% off one item from the Hobby Lobby website (one coupon per person per week). Michael's has a similar offer.

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  3. Stormcrowe, thanks for the link! That is definitely going to happen now.

    Scribe, thanks for the info. I'm going to have to talk to my wife about this. It seems like something she should have informed me of!

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