Missile Pods

Because I am naturally lazy and I'm always looking for shortcuts to systematize my painting, I wanted to get a bunch of missile pods done so I could just go and pin them on finished models. It also frees up some space around the head of Gears while I am painting, and makes reaching small spots easier.

First, I pin the pods on paperclips and mount them on a plastic cork (natural cork it to hard to pin something into). I then prime them.

Second, I basecoat them in black. In this case, I used two thin coats to get a really even color without losing any details.

I then brush on the metallics. In this case I used three shades, from darker to lighter: Shadowed Steel, Honed Steel and Polished Silver.

Then, I fix the black on the front and back of the missile pod.

Fifth, I apply decals. I just don't trust myself to get a good result through freehand. After the decals are completely dry, I brush on a generous amount of brush-on sealer, before spraying gloss varnish to really seal in the decals and prevent them from coming off later on.

Finally, I paint the individual pods with two coats of bright red. One of my gripes with Heavy Gear miniatures is that they are often not cast as well as they should, so you often get imperfections that are very hard to fix. Missile pods are the most common victims of this, with many individual missile pods often deformed and not looking like circles at all. So at this stage, I have to make sure I get perfect red circles to at least give the illusion that the pods are perfectly formed and aligned.

I will probably finish the pod by doing an extremely light whitelining highlight to add definition to the details, such as the panels and the pods themselves.

Voilà!