yeah,
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I saw some of the best homemade Asteroids I'd ever seen...
on dakkadakka.com One of my first comments was he should cast and sell those!



I was in luck Eggs made a Kickstarter.


Whisk forward 4 months! And the postman delivered my KS asteroids Huzzah!!
They came very securely packaged in Egg boxes, some very cute marketing.

I have all four sets. 24 different asteroids.



They are most eggcellent in quality. (Sorry I'll stop with the puns soon...)
I've done a little bit of casting myself and I have to say that for home casting these are really good! There is some flash that will need removing, and there are some small air bubble holes that I will ignore...

next the easteroids were cleaned up removing mold lines, flash and resin vents..
I didn't bother green stuffing the air bubbles.

I used a hobby drill to quickly clean up the stem holes and drill them a bit deeper.


And then I washed them to get mold release agent off.



I didn't want to get any paint on their nice clear bases.
so I made a way to hold them out of some pine battens and nails.
I pre drilled 2mm holes in the the wood before hitting the nails all the way through.

Each asteroid was held in place with a small blob of blu tac in it's stem hole and stuck onto the nail point.
Each batten was held upside down to test the asteroids didn't fall off.

Next steps Painting.

Panic...

yeah
Painting

I did quick research on the interwebs to confirm the colour I'm aiming for.

I want a dark reddish brown to a light creamy white highlight.

Spray Paint base coats.
I don't use expensive army painter or GW sprays for terrain projects.
I used two cheaper sprays from the DIY store.

I sprayed at a distance of about 8" from the rocks.

Inking the shadows.
I used Vallejo black dipping wash. This was needed to darken down and Matt the bright orangey brown of the spray. The wash was put on very heavy and wiped from the main surfaces with a bit of kitchen roll.

The colour is going in the direction I want very dark red/browns in the shadows.

The asteroids battens are top heavy now and want to fall over.
So while they dried I used mini clamps on the end to hold them upright on a thin piece of wood



Dry Brushing...

I did 3 Dry Brushing Layers using a 3" brush

1st layer - medium brown (GW Graveyard Earth)
2nd layer - light brown (GW Kommando Khaki)
3rd layer - I mixed the light brown with white for a very light gentle highlight



---
Dry brushing complete with Pretty good results.

Dry brushing loves rock like textures

At this stage you could if happy use a regular clear varnish, and stop

--

I decided to keep going and use Army painter Soft tone varnish.
To tie the colours together more and increase the shading.

This stuff is varnish based so it also protects the model.

I brushed on a healthy coat of soft tone on the full set.


Once the Quick Shade was dry I gave them a quick light dry brush to pick the highlights back up again.

Check out the results in this battle report.
http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/133259-sir-the-possibility-of-successfully-navigating-an-asteroid-field-is-approximately-3720-to-1/ <- 200pts Asteroids Belt Battle!

Panic....

Nice painting!