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Hellboy – Doors to Somewhere?

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Stop me if you’ve heard this before. I make some progress on the diorama only to not have some kind of supply that I need and then have to take the week off from it while I wait to get said item. That is exactly what happened again this week so I don’t have anything to show there unfortunately. I should have a much more sizeable update next week on the diorama though so I hope you’ll look forward to that.

Instead, I started painting one of my birthday presents as I’m eager to get them on the tabletop. They aren’t the most exciting thing you’ll ever see but they should dress up the table nicely. The first three doors were pretty quick and only took a couple of days to finish the set of them.

I have a little experience with Terrain Crate products which tend to have annoying mold lines and bendy plastic. These “Dungeon Doors” are chunky and solid so there is no rubbery plastic here. Unfortunately, the mold lines (which aren’t pictured) and these weird circles on some of the stones are almost impossible to fully remove. I scraped the crap out of them with a metal file and you can still see them if you look hard enough in the pictures. Especially the one below.

It is a bit annoying that you can’t get those out but it isn’t a deal breaker. They’re thankfully only on one side so that helps too. Also, ignore the dodgy NMM metal on the door frame above. I wasn’t sure how to tackle it but I got it right on the front of the door which is good enough for me.

I have quite a few more doors to paint but at least I have four done for Hellboy which is a great start. They didn’t take too long and weren’t as tedious to paint as I feared they might be so I wouldn’t be surprised if I do more in the near future as I’d like to play Hellboy again sometime soon.

It is Friday at the time of writing which means it is Fallout Friday and Modiphius surprisingly released another rules expansion/supplement today. Homestead further expands the Settlement mode which seems like it would be a pretty appealing way to play the game. Its basically a campaign where you can accumulate buildings and upgrades over time as you build up your post-apocalyptic community. They also released Ghoul Settlers like the ones at the Slog (a radiated swimming pool basically). I really like ghouls and have been wanting Modiphius to make more so this release is yet another that I’m excited to be able to paint one of these days.

Speaking of things I want to paint eventually, I realized when putting away my birthday gifts in my hobby desk that my backlog is getting to the point where it is hard to organize everything. It doesn’t help that my old, beat-up IKEA desk is missing one of its shelves after moving a year ago. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like things in their house to be disorganized so this has me feeling motivated to just get some stuff done whether I need it soon for gaming or not. I don’t know if I can maintain that motivation or feeling for long but if I can, I’ll get this diorama done and turn my attention towards reducing my backlog. Of course, this is all easier said than done so we’ll see how far I get.

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41 thoughts on “Hellboy – Doors to Somewhere?”

  1. Those doors are really nice, Jeff! 🙂 I could just about make out one of the circles you mentioned when I looked hard enough, looks like it might be an ejector pin mark to push the item out of the mould. Sometimes they can be filled with a layer of plastic putty and filed flush with the surface, but not always. Dooway still looks really good though!

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    1. Thank you, John! I’m glad they aren’t as noticeable as they initially were. I feel the circles are easier to see in-hand than in the pictures which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think you’re spot-on about using a bit of plastic putty. I didn’t expect the plastic to be as difficult to file and so I just filed them and moved on but I’m going to take your suggestion for the remaining ten doors! 🙂

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  2. The doors are great mate. Out of curiosity I had to look for the circles you mentioned and even though I found them they’re hardly noticeable at all hehe. I can tell you’re a perfectionist, nothing wrong with that, but try not to stress. If you hadn’t have mentioned the circles I wouldn’t have noticed at all hehe.

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    1. Cheers, mate! I’m generally more grumbling when minis have flaws like this though it is true that I’m always trying to do the best I can. Games Workshop tends to spoil us with minimal issues in their products and then I start to expect or hope that everything goes that way and it generally doesn’t! 🙂

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  3. Those are some nice looking doors! I second John on the filler before sanding, great way to smooth these out. I’m partial to vallejo’s plastic putty for this kind of work. They’re barely noticeable though, I wouldn’t have spotted them if you’d not said anything.

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    1. Thanks, mate! I will definitely slow down and use some filler on the next set. I’m glad the roughness of the sculpts doesn’t come through. I think the drybrushing helped cover it up a bit which is fortunate.

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  4. Those doors look great and I really like the texture on the wood. I have the same models, so I know what you mean about the mould lines and such. I was going to knock these out with Contrast paints originally, but didn’t like how they turned out. So now they are sitting in the drawer until I get time to tackle them with traditional paints.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words, Faust, and if it is any help, I drybrushed the wood and the stone parts of the doors. So something like 80-90% of the surface area was super quick to paint and easy to get good results with.

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      1. Oh nice, I didn’t realize the wood was drybrushed. I guess I need to look at those minis again and see how much texture is there on the wood surfaces. I might also have better luck with the GSW Dipping Inks I picked up.

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      2. You can get a lot of texture from drybrushing thankfully. Unless Mantic has done different versions, the doors that I have have no wood grain or stone texture which I was initially disappointed in but I was glad that drybrushing helped cover that up. However you decide to tackle yours, I look forward to seeing them when they’re done!

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  6. Great work on the doors, mate! I’ve got those myself but haven’t done anything to them at all. What are you planning to do with them… or are they included in one of the Hellboy sets?
    Either way, these examples are probably the best painted ones of those doors in existence at this point in time, so you should email pics of them (or a link to this post) to Mantic and see what they say. I’ve got Ronnie’s email address if you need it… 😏

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    1. Thanks, mate! Not only did I wonder if you had them, I even dug through your site to see if you had painted them before I started on mine! 🙂 I’m just using the doors for Hellboy though they could be great in other board games too, I would think. I missed the original Kickstarter, but my understanding is that you could buy these doors as an upgrade or add-on that is compatible with the game. I was going to mention this above and forgot but the bigger door is quite a bit larger than the cardboard tokens you get so I’m not sure how well it will work in-game though I look forward to finding out soon.

      How did you get Ronnie’s email!? I didn’t know you were in his ear 🙂 I post some of the better Hellboy stuff I paint in their FB group and he kindly likes it which is pretty cool. I keep hoping that they’ll show me in one of their weekly hobby round-up videos but from what I’ve seen its pretty much all Kings of War stuff that makes it into those videos. I do really appreciate you saying that these doors are the best examples ever done. That is not so secretly every painters dream, I figure 😀

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  7. Brilliant work on those doors mate! They look brilliant.

    Modiphius and you are making it increasingly difficult for me to resist the nostalgic pull of Fallout. I loved the settlement building aspect of Fallout 4 as it helped me feel like I was helping pull the settlers out of darkness into a new age of civilization.

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    1. Thank you for the kind words as always! While I’m not trying to tempt you to spend money, I suppose I am sharing Fallout things to see what you think of them because you’re one of the few people who would consider buying the minis and playing the game so its cool to hear your thoughts. Having said that, you’ve got a lot of projects on the go and I don’t know that I recommend you jumping in. What I would say is that Fallout Wasteland Warfare is very RPG-like and customizable which I like. I think I’ve said this before but I think Modiphius supports the game much better than GW does with MESBG in terms of high-quality rules and supplements. Its crazy how much there is for Fallout now and I haven’t played any bad scenarios yet whereas I played some subpar narrative scenarios in MESBG unfortunately.

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      1. With Modiphius putting out the Fallout RPG as well as the Wasteland Warfare skirmish game… it is mighty tempting given I gave up my PC gaming and it is as close as I will get to playing Fallout 4 again.

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      2. I didn’t realize that you weren’t able to play Fallout 4 any longer. That is rough. I can see where the RPG and miniatures game would be even more appealing in that case.

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      3. I am a house husband these day. Having Little GG “full time” caused me to have a lifestyle change from my much more relaxed “early retirement” that allowed me to game at basically any hour of the day… hence how I racked up thousands of hours of gaming. Mrs. GG and I decided with the little one coming it may be best to retire the PC and pick up something else. Originally it started as just playing a bit of Saga thanks to a mate of ours but it rapidly grew into the obsession it has since then become.

        One thing I noticed with the GURPS Mars Attacks RPG and the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures is that these RPGs are packed with background information, trivia and lore. I spent so much time in the Commonwealth I get nostalgic thinking about places like the Starlight Drive-In and Diamond City.

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      4. Early retirement is the dream for a lot of us and so I’m glad to hear your got to enjoy some of it anyway! That makes sense. Keeping up with the latest technology gets pricey and while I have all these video games, I’m using a low-end gaming PC that is getting old (6-7 years) and a TV that is ten so I’m feeling pretty behind the times lately.

        I don’t know how much content Modiphius has released for the RPG but the minis game has so much stuff now, especially for Fallout 4. If you can 3D print, there is even more available. I would imagine they put a lot of care into the RPG in that sense too.

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    1. Thank you, mate! This project has certainly been an exercise in patience, if nothing else 🙂 I’m unstuck now though and will have a solid update to share next week. I’m looking forward to seeing what you think when that time comes!

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  10. Sorry to hear the dio was delayed, but on the positive side it wasn’t a mental block holding you up. Great use of your time getting these doors done, they look very effective, and would look great on any table. John is right on the cause of the holes, as the plastic is still warm at the time it drops out of the mould it can leave indentations.

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    1. Thank you for the kind words and I will get that diorama finished sooner or later! That is interesting to hear about the cause of the circles. I haven’t seen them before but now I’ve hopefully learned/figured out how to handle it better thanks to John’s and your advice.

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    1. It is a little hard to say because I don’t track my work closely and I did these in one batch. The bigger door definitely took quite a lot longer than the rest. I’d say the small doors were maybe 4-5 hours in total. Maybe slightly less. The fact that I could drybrush everything other than the metal bits really sped it up. I have more doors to paint so I may try and track my work time and report back. I’m curious to see what it is now myself!

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  15. Heh mate those doors came up a treat, I can feel for you in regards to those annoying ring marks as I have had some on some figures and there was no way I could get rid of them completely!AHHH!

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    1. Thanks for the kind words and the circles will drive you crazy the more you look at them! I’m working on some more doors now and it seems like the more patient I am with them, the better luck I’m having, for what that’s worth.

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