Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Futzing with Metallics
After reading this post I decided to get some Citadel metallics, and... I'm debating whether I agree. The post claims that Citadel's metallics are higher quality than Vallejo's, but I'm having a hard time seeing any advantage at all to the Citadel metallics--they are uniformly less pigmented yet thicker. I'm not really seeing much difference by way of the claimed difference in mica flake size; after five coats of lightly thinned Citadel Burnished Gold, I'm almost but not quite to the coverage of three coats of lightly thinned VGC Polished Gold. However, the texture is much smoother, and I'm not seeing much by way of flattening the surface out, so maybe it will ultimately look better.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Paint Review Update
Two updates to my last paint review.
First, I'm less satisfied with VMA metallics than I was. All of five months after I purchased them, they've become sludgy and difficult to use. If you plan on using them very quickly you may be just fine, but if you use them like I do, you'll probably be annoyed. I'll probably be tossing out about two-thirds of each bottle.
Second, Reaper has released an "HD" (High Density) line for their Master series of paints. It sounds like these are intended primarily for basing, so I'm not sure what's up with their Pro line. I'll have to see if there's anything I want to try out.
First, I'm less satisfied with VMA metallics than I was. All of five months after I purchased them, they've become sludgy and difficult to use. If you plan on using them very quickly you may be just fine, but if you use them like I do, you'll probably be annoyed. I'll probably be tossing out about two-thirds of each bottle.
Second, Reaper has released an "HD" (High Density) line for their Master series of paints. It sounds like these are intended primarily for basing, so I'm not sure what's up with their Pro line. I'll have to see if there's anything I want to try out.
EJB3, JNDI naming, and a question of the necessity thereof
One of the more interesting things I'm picking up in my new job is EJB3. My background is almost entirely in non-JEE technologies--Spring, Hibernate, and everything built around those. EJB's purpose is very similar to Spring's, and the two have functionally converged over time to the point that annotation-based EJB3 is very similar to annotation-based Spring.
The aspect I'm looking at right now is EJB's dependency injection system. EJBs may declare fields with an @EJB annotation. This informs the EJB container that that field should be populated with an EJB which implements the class of that field immediately after the bean with the field is instantiated.
One thing to be aware of when doing this is that multiple EJBs may implement a given class. I'm not sure if the container's behavior is prescribed by the JSR or if it's just per-implementation, but JBoss uses multiple tiers which it analyzes. Multiple EJBs implementing the class in a given tier results in an exception, but if you have one in the "closest" tier and another in a different tier, you should be fine.
In thinking about the problem, it seems to me that multiple instantiations of an EJB interface should be relatively rare. For the most part they represent distinct pieces of the system which should be well encapsulated--having multiple implementations suggests to me that the responsibilities of the bean are not properly defined and the functionality which differs should be analyzed to determine whether it should be broken up, and I suspect that it probably should.
Regardless, it may prove necessary in some cases, and in those cases one can disambiguate between the beans with a string called a JNDI name. The JNDI name is passed to the EJB annotation. This should be unique within the system, so collisions at this level are illegal.
One of my coworkers is of the opinion all @EJB annotations should include this JNDI name. However, based on my thinking above, I believe the actual value of this to be incredibly small, and doing it just introduces overhead we don't need, and based on the YAGNI principle, should be avoided until it actually becomes necessary. We'll see how this is resolved.
The aspect I'm looking at right now is EJB's dependency injection system. EJBs may declare fields with an @EJB annotation. This informs the EJB container that that field should be populated with an EJB which implements the class of that field immediately after the bean with the field is instantiated.
One thing to be aware of when doing this is that multiple EJBs may implement a given class. I'm not sure if the container's behavior is prescribed by the JSR or if it's just per-implementation, but JBoss uses multiple tiers which it analyzes. Multiple EJBs implementing the class in a given tier results in an exception, but if you have one in the "closest" tier and another in a different tier, you should be fine.
In thinking about the problem, it seems to me that multiple instantiations of an EJB interface should be relatively rare. For the most part they represent distinct pieces of the system which should be well encapsulated--having multiple implementations suggests to me that the responsibilities of the bean are not properly defined and the functionality which differs should be analyzed to determine whether it should be broken up, and I suspect that it probably should.
Regardless, it may prove necessary in some cases, and in those cases one can disambiguate between the beans with a string called a JNDI name. The JNDI name is passed to the EJB annotation. This should be unique within the system, so collisions at this level are illegal.
One of my coworkers is of the opinion all @EJB annotations should include this JNDI name. However, based on my thinking above, I believe the actual value of this to be incredibly small, and doing it just introduces overhead we don't need, and based on the YAGNI principle, should be avoided until it actually becomes necessary. We'll see how this is resolved.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Paint Review
So I've now used something like a dozen brands and lines of miniature and related paints, and I have opinions.
First off, a couple terms. Saturation refers to the "strength" of a color. Low saturation means closer to grey, while high saturation is very colorful. Coverage refers to how dense the pigmentation within the paint is. Paints with strong coverage are generally easier to work with for most purposes.
I've found a few paints that are all equally solid in my opinion: Vallejo's various model lines, Privateer Press's P3 (P3), and Reaper Master Series (RMS). Even among these, however, there are better and worse colors, and I've found experimentation is key to determining which is best for a given color.
Of Vallejo's lines, I've primarily used the Game Color (VGC) line, though I have some of the Model Color (VMC) and a few Model Air (VMA), specifically metallics. The VGC line is solid, but there's some weakness in the yellow/bone range, and there seems to have been a malfunction in their dark green, in that every one I've tried has been somewhere between a wash and an ink, good pigmentation but really, really thin. VMC is generally okay, though I've found the metallics from this line to pop nicely. The VMA metallics, however, are really impressive... except when they're not. The Chrome and Rust colors look incredible, but the Copper and Brass are painfully bad for their names, looking more like a tinted silver than either copper or brass. They might have a use, but it's something other than what they call themselves.
Privateer's lines seem to specialize in very vibrant, saturated colors. They have excellent colors across the gamut, though there's a little too much specialization in browns and olives, in my opinion--a few of the browns I have difficulty telling apart, and probably ten of their colors are olive or olive-tinted. I've yet to find one of their paints I was dissatisfied with, coverage-wise. None of this applies to their metallics, however. I've heard that the paint manufacturer managed to screw up all of P3's metallics in their first batch. I've further heard that the issues have been corrected, but that there's so much of the first batch floating around that all new orders for the metallics still get that bad batch. They are universally awful in my experience, which is really too bad in that they have some distinctly unique colors, such as Blighted Gold.
Reaper's Master Series line seems solid. It's not quite as consistently vibrant as P3, but it has a broader range, and the "Violet Red" is the best looking red I've seen in miniature painting lines. The metallics are good, but I have a hard time saying they're better than Vallejo's. They have a few different colors, however; the Old Bronze is a particularly nice somewhat green gold.
To be honest, I haven't used too much of Citadel's modern lines. I generally preferred the VGC line years ago, which has a color-for-color match to the Citadel paints, and even the problem dark green I thought better substituted by P3 Gnarls Green. I also have yet to try Reaper's Pro Series line. Per their marketing, they suggest using the Pro Series for base coating and the Master Series for further layers, much like the Citadel Foundation and VGC Extra Opaque lines in comparison to their respective standard lines.
Containers strongly affect the usable life of a paint. The worst offender is the modern Citadel line; its hard plastic containers with their hard plastic tops appear to allow more air in and let more moisture out than any other line I have. After two years in my kit, they're dried to solid lumps in their pots. By way of comparison, I have older Citadel paints (made by Coat d'Arms, now an independent) that are over a decade old that are still usable. Silicone tops appear to be the best at keeping in moisture; nearly all of my P3 paints are good, even after around five years. Dropper bottles appear to be very good as well, though I probably lost 1 in 5, and many 1 in 10 remaining are a little thick.
One trick I've found is moving paints from pots to dropper bottles, which can be purchased relatively cheaply. The transition is slightly tricky, but in moving 25 P3 paints to droppers I had no significant mishaps. You'll be left with a small amount in the pot, but it's not too hard to use that up. Bonus for that is you now have empty pots, which do have a use in my experience: wash containers. I have about a dozen washes of various colors in my empties, and the generally leak-proof nature of the P3 caps is hugely useful.
First off, a couple terms. Saturation refers to the "strength" of a color. Low saturation means closer to grey, while high saturation is very colorful. Coverage refers to how dense the pigmentation within the paint is. Paints with strong coverage are generally easier to work with for most purposes.
I've found a few paints that are all equally solid in my opinion: Vallejo's various model lines, Privateer Press's P3 (P3), and Reaper Master Series (RMS). Even among these, however, there are better and worse colors, and I've found experimentation is key to determining which is best for a given color.
Of Vallejo's lines, I've primarily used the Game Color (VGC) line, though I have some of the Model Color (VMC) and a few Model Air (VMA), specifically metallics. The VGC line is solid, but there's some weakness in the yellow/bone range, and there seems to have been a malfunction in their dark green, in that every one I've tried has been somewhere between a wash and an ink, good pigmentation but really, really thin. VMC is generally okay, though I've found the metallics from this line to pop nicely. The VMA metallics, however, are really impressive... except when they're not. The Chrome and Rust colors look incredible, but the Copper and Brass are painfully bad for their names, looking more like a tinted silver than either copper or brass. They might have a use, but it's something other than what they call themselves.
Privateer's lines seem to specialize in very vibrant, saturated colors. They have excellent colors across the gamut, though there's a little too much specialization in browns and olives, in my opinion--a few of the browns I have difficulty telling apart, and probably ten of their colors are olive or olive-tinted. I've yet to find one of their paints I was dissatisfied with, coverage-wise. None of this applies to their metallics, however. I've heard that the paint manufacturer managed to screw up all of P3's metallics in their first batch. I've further heard that the issues have been corrected, but that there's so much of the first batch floating around that all new orders for the metallics still get that bad batch. They are universally awful in my experience, which is really too bad in that they have some distinctly unique colors, such as Blighted Gold.
Reaper's Master Series line seems solid. It's not quite as consistently vibrant as P3, but it has a broader range, and the "Violet Red" is the best looking red I've seen in miniature painting lines. The metallics are good, but I have a hard time saying they're better than Vallejo's. They have a few different colors, however; the Old Bronze is a particularly nice somewhat green gold.
To be honest, I haven't used too much of Citadel's modern lines. I generally preferred the VGC line years ago, which has a color-for-color match to the Citadel paints, and even the problem dark green I thought better substituted by P3 Gnarls Green. I also have yet to try Reaper's Pro Series line. Per their marketing, they suggest using the Pro Series for base coating and the Master Series for further layers, much like the Citadel Foundation and VGC Extra Opaque lines in comparison to their respective standard lines.
Containers strongly affect the usable life of a paint. The worst offender is the modern Citadel line; its hard plastic containers with their hard plastic tops appear to allow more air in and let more moisture out than any other line I have. After two years in my kit, they're dried to solid lumps in their pots. By way of comparison, I have older Citadel paints (made by Coat d'Arms, now an independent) that are over a decade old that are still usable. Silicone tops appear to be the best at keeping in moisture; nearly all of my P3 paints are good, even after around five years. Dropper bottles appear to be very good as well, though I probably lost 1 in 5, and many 1 in 10 remaining are a little thick.
One trick I've found is moving paints from pots to dropper bottles, which can be purchased relatively cheaply. The transition is slightly tricky, but in moving 25 P3 paints to droppers I had no significant mishaps. You'll be left with a small amount in the pot, but it's not too hard to use that up. Bonus for that is you now have empty pots, which do have a use in my experience: wash containers. I have about a dozen washes of various colors in my empties, and the generally leak-proof nature of the P3 caps is hugely useful.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Warhammer 40k: The Half-Assed Wargame
I've had a squad of Games Workshop Space Marines kicking around in my stash of miniatures for a couple years that I finally dug out and started to paint. In looking through the various chapter options I could paint, I decided to go for Dark Angels--I liked the bizarre hybrid of armor and monastic style. I paint them a lovely shade of primarily dark green, and start thinking, do I want to actually build up an army? What else would I get and/or want?
This leads me to poking around on the internet and finding out that, first, there was a major revamp to the Space Marines in general about three years ago, but the Dark Angels chapter wasn't really made up to date as well. The miniatures line for the Dark Angels lacks a number of unit types which would take a lot of work to model. They've never really bothered making the chapter rules fit with the current edition. It's kind of an eternal cycle of making things work for one faction, then the next, and never really building a coherent, unified, here-is-how-all-the-sides-work set of rules. They'll probably get around to fixing up the Dark Angels eventually, but not until they have the miniatures to support it, so until then, they'll pimp other factions and units.
Oh well, I'll put the space marines on the shelf.
This leads me to poking around on the internet and finding out that, first, there was a major revamp to the Space Marines in general about three years ago, but the Dark Angels chapter wasn't really made up to date as well. The miniatures line for the Dark Angels lacks a number of unit types which would take a lot of work to model. They've never really bothered making the chapter rules fit with the current edition. It's kind of an eternal cycle of making things work for one faction, then the next, and never really building a coherent, unified, here-is-how-all-the-sides-work set of rules. They'll probably get around to fixing up the Dark Angels eventually, but not until they have the miniatures to support it, so until then, they'll pimp other factions and units.
Oh well, I'll put the space marines on the shelf.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Painting With Thinned Paints
For whatever reason, it took me close to a decade to get serious about my painting techniques with miniatures, but now I have, and it took me far too long to figure out how to work with thinned paints.
First off, pretty much every line, regardless of the hype, has paints that are a little too thick for use straight from the container. Personally I'd prefer this was the case, in fact, since I can by thinning materials far more cheaply than I can buy the paints. Right now I am trying what is alleged to be Jennifer Haley's thinning mix: 1:1:2 retarder-to-flow improver-to-water. Usually I'm finding, for base coats, 1:1 works reasonably well with P3, Vallejo, and Reaper Master paints, and for tinting coats, around 3:1 works well, but at this point it's much more dependent on the line or even the individual paint. I've tried washes at very low paint ratios (10:1) and have found it almost too thin, but I'm still working on my patience.
Next, once you have your paint, what to do with it. At first, I had the biggest pain working with these thinned paints: I couldn't control the flow, they'd sweep into crevasses or over other surfaces abruptly. Eventually I became conscious of exactly what I was doing wrong, however, when I watched my subconscious behaviors working with the normal paints. I frequently use the edge of my painting station to wipe excess paint off the brush after dipping it; the reduced paint volume allows for increased control. Once I'd made this connection, I watched the spread of the thinned paints as I stroked the brush against that surface and could easily see that it would start off bleeding every which way, but within a few strokes became controlled. So for now, every time I load the brush, I watch the area I brush until the paint gets to the control level I want.
First off, pretty much every line, regardless of the hype, has paints that are a little too thick for use straight from the container. Personally I'd prefer this was the case, in fact, since I can by thinning materials far more cheaply than I can buy the paints. Right now I am trying what is alleged to be Jennifer Haley's thinning mix: 1:1:2 retarder-to-flow improver-to-water. Usually I'm finding, for base coats, 1:1 works reasonably well with P3, Vallejo, and Reaper Master paints, and for tinting coats, around 3:1 works well, but at this point it's much more dependent on the line or even the individual paint. I've tried washes at very low paint ratios (10:1) and have found it almost too thin, but I'm still working on my patience.
Next, once you have your paint, what to do with it. At first, I had the biggest pain working with these thinned paints: I couldn't control the flow, they'd sweep into crevasses or over other surfaces abruptly. Eventually I became conscious of exactly what I was doing wrong, however, when I watched my subconscious behaviors working with the normal paints. I frequently use the edge of my painting station to wipe excess paint off the brush after dipping it; the reduced paint volume allows for increased control. Once I'd made this connection, I watched the spread of the thinned paints as I stroked the brush against that surface and could easily see that it would start off bleeding every which way, but within a few strokes became controlled. So for now, every time I load the brush, I watch the area I brush until the paint gets to the control level I want.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Miniature Painting: Priming
I'm not sure if anyone will ever see this, but I'm throwing out what I've figured out about miniature priming out there in case it's useful to anyone else.
For years, I would use the standard aerosol primers from Citadel, Foundry, and a few other companies, and overall it was okay, but annoying in places. If you look carefully at some primed figures, you'll see a roughness of texture that isn't the detail of the figure but how the primer dried. This in turn may be caused by poor technique while applying it, atmospheric conditions, or other issues, but I found something I prefer far more.
Plain old acrylic gesso makes for a superb miniature primer. It's something like a mix of acrylic binder, glue, and a strong pigment, very thick in comparison to most miniature paints, though I've never noticed any of the pigment grains distorting the priming surface. It has a few peculiar properties which make it surprisingly good.
Foremost is that it shrinks as it dries--out of the bottle it's quite thick, but it can be immediately brushed onto a miniature with no watering whatsoever and result in a good priming coat. I've found that it's a little too thick to get into the details straight from the bottle, so I tend to add just a little water to thin it, though this tends to accentuate the minor downside of its shrinkage: it tends to pull away from ridges or out of areas where it wasn't thick enough. As a result, gesso priming usually requires two passes. I've read that it should be allowed to dry for at least 24 hours before painting; I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I wait it out, though I might do a second pass early if the unprimed spots become obvious.
Secondly, the actual dried layer of gesso is neatly uniform and pulls nicely into details. It seems less prone to obliterating them than aerosol primers.
Third, it doesn't outgas horrible fumes. No need to find a well ventilated area to apply it in.
Finally, it's not quite as "thirsty" as aerosol primers are, though I've yet to see an issue with the paint not adhering. If you've worked with washes, you may have tried and been dismayed at the failure of washing a freshly primed figure--the primer layer tends to negate any levelling of the wash and simply uniformly color the figure. Gesso priming allows for this technique, if you like. I've found even thinned paints will tend to spread out much more than I'd like, making it difficult to control layers until there's enough paint down to suppress that flow.
Other things worth noting: it's more time consuming to apply, but it's far cheaper than the aerosols.
For years, I would use the standard aerosol primers from Citadel, Foundry, and a few other companies, and overall it was okay, but annoying in places. If you look carefully at some primed figures, you'll see a roughness of texture that isn't the detail of the figure but how the primer dried. This in turn may be caused by poor technique while applying it, atmospheric conditions, or other issues, but I found something I prefer far more.
Plain old acrylic gesso makes for a superb miniature primer. It's something like a mix of acrylic binder, glue, and a strong pigment, very thick in comparison to most miniature paints, though I've never noticed any of the pigment grains distorting the priming surface. It has a few peculiar properties which make it surprisingly good.
Foremost is that it shrinks as it dries--out of the bottle it's quite thick, but it can be immediately brushed onto a miniature with no watering whatsoever and result in a good priming coat. I've found that it's a little too thick to get into the details straight from the bottle, so I tend to add just a little water to thin it, though this tends to accentuate the minor downside of its shrinkage: it tends to pull away from ridges or out of areas where it wasn't thick enough. As a result, gesso priming usually requires two passes. I've read that it should be allowed to dry for at least 24 hours before painting; I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I wait it out, though I might do a second pass early if the unprimed spots become obvious.
Secondly, the actual dried layer of gesso is neatly uniform and pulls nicely into details. It seems less prone to obliterating them than aerosol primers.
Third, it doesn't outgas horrible fumes. No need to find a well ventilated area to apply it in.
Finally, it's not quite as "thirsty" as aerosol primers are, though I've yet to see an issue with the paint not adhering. If you've worked with washes, you may have tried and been dismayed at the failure of washing a freshly primed figure--the primer layer tends to negate any levelling of the wash and simply uniformly color the figure. Gesso priming allows for this technique, if you like. I've found even thinned paints will tend to spread out much more than I'd like, making it difficult to control layers until there's enough paint down to suppress that flow.
Other things worth noting: it's more time consuming to apply, but it's far cheaper than the aerosols.
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