Sk8r Bois ToyBoarders finished for Splafiti

My first Sk8r Bois are finally finished and spray varnished.

I haven’t done much painting in the evenings recently, as I have been busy at work, then relaxing in the evening reading up on the early Scouting and Guiding movements for my Scouting Wide Games for the Tabletop Project.

Both are part of my DMZ Demilitarised projects, developing more of my non-lethal strategy game projects:

https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2022/02/24/some-more-peaceful-or-non-lethal-tabletop-strategy-games/

Toyboarders

These AJ’s Toyboarders figures (plastic, near 54mm) available from Vat19.com are useful for my skateboard version of Splatoon or Spla-tack!

Splafiti involves skatebaording round a squared gridded rundown city street scape, spray painting and graffiti tagging the city walls. The aim is to overpaint the rival gang’s graffiti whilst dodging the cops and city workers who are trying to stop you or paint out your tags.

It’s a fun four-wheeling, free-wheeling strategy game about dominating territory.

Game development shot whilst using unpainted Toyboarder figures 2020.

Splafiti Rules 1.0: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/spla-fiti-and-skateboarders-wip/

So the most recent bunch of figures are the DF62 Crew, my first 5 Splafiti gang members with distinctive yellow edged boards. These can join the two Sk8r Girls that I have already finished.

I painted these Toy Boarders in bright Revell Aquacolor Acrylics, a mix of Matt and Gloss, as I knew they would be gloss varnished in the end, appropriately with aerosol spray varnish.

I used a restricted palette of three or four main colours – bright red, yellow, dark blue, green – in the same approach I have taken from Britain’s Ltd. to paint the non-uniform clothing of their tribesmen like Native American Indians or Zulus and irregular troops.

What I wanted to get close to was What If Britain’s had made toy boarders? (to match their garish and short lived sparkle motor bikes?)

I wanted to keep the toy soldier style in the pink dot face painting as well.

I like how the washed out T-shirt / Sweatshirt and Hoodie logos have come out, sketchily painted and then outlined with fine black pen OHP DVD markers.

Figures have been based for stability on MDF 2p tuppenny bases, painted tarmac grey, as the Toyboarders on their boards are unbased.

Unfortunately I realised that stuck down, it was impossible to create tiny board art on the underside of the boards.

In the absence of a handy skate park or half pipe, I’ve improvised using a borrowed Mello skateboard.

This is quite a cool board with LED dynamo wheels that light up as it moves, although my days of falling off skateboards are long gone. It hurts more the older you get!

I usually listen to suitable period theme music whilst painting figures. In this case that meant an abrasive mix of American Skate Punk from the 2000s, (ranging from from Blink182 and FallOut Boy to modern First to Eleven and Halocene skatepunk covers) and Avril Lavigne albums (from the original Sk8r Boi track to the newest Love Sux album) was all required listening from my music collection and Youtube / Musi playlists.

The Youtube videos for many of these tracks and the recent Skate Kitchen NY girl skaters film proved useful non-uniform reference.

Next up, I need a rival gang of boarders, on different colour-edged boards, so some more painting required!

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 2 April 2022